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“Not if she’s smart.” I stalked away from them, down the straightaway. “Even if we can’t find the same door there’s got to be another way out of here. We can’t just sit still and be targets.”
Ben and the others followed a few paces behind. I could sense them, the sound of their footsteps and the odor of their sweat, their anxiety. Anastasia had returned to her usual composure—cool, detached. I couldn’t read her at all.
Ahead, the corridor branched. I stopped at the intersection and waited for the others to catch up. “Well?” I said. “Left or right?”
“We could toss a coin,” Ben said.
“It hardly matters,” Anastasia said.
“Left,” Cormac said.
I glanced back at him. “Is this some kind of magical hunch?”
“Just a hunch,” he said. “The regular kind.”
“Why not right?”
“Turn right if you want to, doesn’t make a difference to me,” he said, expressionless as always. He held the lantern low in his hand. The light shadowed his face so it looked like a skull.
I kind of wanted to keep poking him until he got angry. Just out of curiosity, to see what he would do. Instead, I turned right and kept walking. When I glanced over my shoulder to see if the others followed, Ben smirked at me, the expression he used when he thought I was being irrational. But if it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, right?
And how had I ended up in the lead?
These tunnels seemed to go on an awfully long time without turning, breaking, or revealing any features. We were under San Francisco, there ought to be underground cables, water pipes, sewer lines. As long as we’d been walking we should have been under the bay by now. I shouldn’t have felt like I was in the stone dungeon of a medieval castle. I caught a faint whiff of incense. I tried to follow the trace of the scent, thinking it would lead us to a door, a room, anything but the maze of tunnels.
A break in the stone wall revealed a smooth plywood door. It didn’t have a lock.
Like other doors we’d encountered, this one also had a sign on it, a vertical length of paper with Chinese characters.
“What’s it say?” I said, looking back at Anastasia.
She studied it a moment. “It’s a warning.” As if she hadn’t expected anything different.
I snorted a short laugh. Of course it was a warning.
It was a pocket door, the kind that slid sideways into the wall, but it seemed to be spring loaded, or stuck, because I couldn’t get it open. I grabbed the fingerhold carved into one side and shook—it rattled in its frame as if jammed. Maybe I could wrench it loose.
After figuring out what I thought was the side that opened, I worked my fingers into the gap until I found the edge of the door. The door frame scraped my skin, but I also felt a sense of hope. I could do this, get it open, and get us all out of this place. Standing back and leaning over, I braced my legs and put my weight into pulling back on the door, shaking it hard every now and then to try to loosen it. When it budged a quarter of an inch, I grinned and pulled harder, until it jumped another six inches.
“Ha!” I announced in victory.
“Where’s it go?” Ben asked.
“Dunno.” I put my face to the opening; the hallway appeared to continue on in darkness. Ahead, a faint white light glowed. An emergency light in a room, maybe, or the exterior light over a doorway? A streetlight and freedom?
I jammed my shoulder into the opening to force it wide enough for me to slip through.
“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Ben asked, hovering. He put his hand on the wall next to me and peered over my head through the gap. “I can’t see anything in there.”
Exhaling, I flattened myself as much as I could, pushed against the door, and popped on through. I stumbled away from the gap.
“There, see?” I said. “No problem—”
The door slammed shut behind me.
“Kitty!” Ben shouted through the wood. He banged on it; the sound was muted.
This side didn’t have any kind of indent to use as a handle. I pushed the door, rattled it, tried to get my fingers into the gap, but this time, the door didn’t budge, didn’t offer a centimeter of purchase.
