heard Liam. She said not to,” Lily replied. Her voice was frail. She was holding up pretty well, but things were still skating along the edge of the possible. It would get worse if we went deeper. I knew it. Lily knew it.
“There’s only one way she could have gone,” I said. I tore my eyes away from the painting. My mother, the house, my double. This place was focused on me in a way I didn’t understand. I couldn’t escape its gravity, but maybe Lily could. “Wait here with Liam. I’ll go.”
I bent, fetching Liam’s flashlight from where it lay on the ground. I handed it over.
“I shouldn’t let you go,” Lily said. Guilt in her voice.
“You wouldn’t be able to stop me.” I turned toward the black hole. Lily made a noise in a final protest, but I knew she was relieved to be staying behind.
I approached the darkened doorway. The edges were rough. They hadn’t been part of the bunker, I thought, but chiseled out of the wall after it was built. The space beyond was more tunnel than hallway, the walls rough and rocky. Natural caves beneath the island, maybe? But it seemed too straight for that, and while the rock wasn’t smooth like a manmade tunnel would be, it had odd marks, almost ripples, that seemed too regular to be random.
Something had carved this, I thought, but not a human something.
I walked forward cautiously. The tunnel narrowed, almost scraping my shoulders, and the ceiling was only a few inches over my head. My breath filled the space until it seemed it was the tunnel itself that was breathing. The walls cinched in, and now my shoulders did bump against the damp rock, and I realized what the ripples reminded me of—the ridges of a trachea.
Soon I was moving sideways, and every breath was cool and wet and tasted of silt. The flashlight beam struck stone ahead and stopped. No more dark corridor, only a final narrowing of gray rock with a crack the width of my hand running through it.
“Come on, Abby. Where are you?” I whispered. No answer. I growled in frustration and slammed my hand against the wall beside me, only succeeding in scraping the side of my fist. I forced my way forward to the crack.
“Abby!” I called. She had come this way so there had to be a way through. And maybe there was, in that other place. “Abby, can you hear me?”
There was a breeze through the crack, faint as a sigh. I could sense the void on the other side, the emptiness of another tunnel, maybe even a cavern. Nothing and nothing and nothing answered, and then at once there was an eye, pressed to the other side, glistening in the thin sliver of light from the flashlight. I let out a startled scream and jerked back, forgetting the cramped quarters. My back smacked against the wall.
“Sophia?” It was Abby. I steadied myself and leaned close to the crack again.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Liam wasn’t making a lot of sense. He said something took you.”
“It’s coming back,” she whispered. “I got away, but I don’t know how long I can hide,” she said. She made a gulping sound of fear and animal distress. “I hear it. Please—”
She reached for me through the crack, and I reached for her, as if I could pull her through, as if I could save her. But it was so narrow I could barely fit my hand through. She looked over her shoulder and her eyes widened. “No, no, no,” she said, in prayer and panic. I thrust my hand farther in, wriggling to try to eke out one more centimeter, and she did the same, frantic.
Our fingertips touched for one instant. I shoved forward, and my hand closed over hers. If only I could hold on to her. If only—
Something pressed into my palm. The sharp wooden wings of a bird, and with it something smooth and plastic. She closed my fingers over it. “So he knows,” she said. “Don’t let me be another mystery to haunt him, Sophia. Don’t let him follow.”
She meant Dr. Ashford, I realized. The man who’d protected her for years. Raised her. And if I didn’t get this out of here, he would never know what had happened to her.
“Next time you see me, don’t trust me,” she whispered.
“Abby—”
“Sophia. Run.”
The tunnel echoed with the sound of wings. Abby snatched her hand away.