“I don’t think there’s a secret passage. My Earth powers would’ve found a break in the stone walls, and they’re completely solid,” Charlie said.
“What else can you sense?” I asked.
Charlie knelt to the floor and splayed his hand against the tile. “I can sense the pool, then the area where they hold fight club, and in the distance, Cellblock 9.”
Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed. “But everything else is just dirt and rock, and then underneaththat, the slab of concrete the prison is built on. There are no hidden rooms underneath the asylum, as far as my magic can tell.”
I threw my hands up and made an annoyed sound. “Ugh! If there’s no tunnel underneath the Institute, and the Underground isn’t in the basement, then where could it be? It must have a ward on it, and that’s why we can’t find it.”
“Could the wordUndergroundbe a way to mislead people? What if it’s actually in a tower, or in an abandoned classroom?” Kallie asked.
“Good luck finding it, then,” Marcus said. “This place is huge. The Institute has tons of sealed off corridors they never bothered to renovate after they converted it to a prison. We’d have to bust into them to even take a look, and that would get us into trouble.”
“Could the Underground be off prison property?” I speculated.
“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “It’s easier for the Warden to make people disappear when they’re on campus. Once they’re off Institute grounds, he can’t hide them as easily.”
“Could the Infernal Underground be in a section of Cellblock 9?” Marcus asked.
“No,” I stated. “My uncle was sure that it wasn’t.”
Kallie began pacing in a circle. “There are six cellblocks at the prison for the main magical races, and Cellblock 9 for the worst of the worst, but what about Cellblocks 7 and 8? I’ve never even heard of them.”
“The prison used to use Cellblocks 7 and 8 for the smaller supernatural races, people like Astromancers and hypnotists,” Marcus said. “But they didn’t send enough prisoners to the Institute to keep them running, so they shut those cellblocks down. They’re not exactly sealed off like the other corridors in the prison, but we’re not supposed to go down there, either.”
“So, what if it’s there, then?” Kallie asked. “It’d make sense if the Underground was in one of those abandoned cellblocks.”
“That seems too out in the open. Cellblocks 7 and 8 aren’t that far from the classrooms. Students would overhear them torturing people,” I said.
“But it’s the best place to start,” Charlie said. “We don’t have anything else to go on.”
“At least we have places we can start,” Marcus said. “It’s better than nothing.”
I wasn’t sure. It felt like we were overlooking something. But there was no time to lose. We had to find Alice and the others, and get them out of there. It was the only way to make up for the mess we’d landed them in.
But once we found them, would they be the same? I could only hope that, wherever they were, the Warden’s torture hadn’t driven them to madness.
Or that we wouldn’t suffer the same fate.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
CHARLIE
My head spun with all the information we’d learned about the Infernal Underground. It worried me that much of what we’d discovered was based on speculation, but something deep in my gut told me we wereright. Ava talked about intuition, and how supernaturals had the power to access unexplained truths. I didn’t have to know how to explain it. I just had to believe it. And I had to believe that one way or another, we would find the Underground and stop the Warden’s sick experiments.
I just hoped we found it before it was too late.
“Did you find anything?” I whispered to Marcus on our way to therapy.
“You mean in Cellblocks 7 and 8?” he asked.
“Shh…” I hissed. “Do you want everyone to know you went poking around in there? Let’s keep this under wraps, okay?”
He lowered his voice. “Kallie and I found nothing. Just empty rooms.”
“Hell,” I groaned. “This place could be anywhere.”
“We’re going to find it,” Marcus promised. “We just need more time.”
