Chapter 4 - THE SUBTERRANEAN PATH
"Run!" Ethan shouted, scooping up little Ben into his arms while grabbing Mary’s elbow.
The beam of his small flashlight bounced wildly against the ancient brick walls as they sprinted deeper into the subterranean maze. Behind them, the furious barking of two heavy hunting hounds echoed through the vaulted tunnels, amplified by the stone into a terrifying chorus of snarls.
"Which way?!" Lily yelled, holding her sister's hand tightly as they negotiated a slick, mud-slicked junction where three tunnels met.
Ethan paused for two crucial seconds, aiming his light at the tunnel walls. He was an archivist; he knew how the city had been constructed over the last century. Victorian storm drains always flowed downhill toward the river, while the modern municipal utility conduits—built in the 1970s—ran parallel to the main street grid above, marked by thick, black rubber-insulated cables suspended along the ceiling.
He spotted a bundle of thick black cables running down the far-right channel.
"Right!" Ethan ordered. "Follow the cables! They lead toward City Hall!"
They bolted down the right-hand tunnel. The air grew warmer, thick with the heavy heat of electrical currents and steam pipes. The ground shifted from wet cobblestone to smooth, poured concrete.
Behind them, the furious barking grew deafeningly loud.
"Vance, they’re in the utility shaft!" a man’s voice yelled from the darkness behind the hounds. "Shoot anything that moves!"
BANG!
A gunshot exploded through the tunnel, the deafening crack echoing endlessly. A chunk of concrete blasted off the wall six inches from Ethan’s shoulder, showering them with grit and white dust.
The children screamed.
"Get down!" Ethan yelled, shoving Mary and the children behind a heavy iron junction box mounted to the floor.
He turned, aiming his small flashlight straight back into the tunnel. The two massive black Rottweilers were twenty yards away, their jaws dripping with foam, their eyes wild and murderous. Behind them, Vance was sprinting with a heavy black revolver raised in his right hand.
Ethan reached for the heavy black utility cables running along the wall beside him. He saw a yellow warning sign bolted to the brickwork: HIGH VOLTAGE – 480V AUXILIARY PUMP FEED.
He didn't have a weapon. But he had his Leica camera strap.
With a surge of desperate strength, Ethan looped the heavy leather strap around the exposed manual emergency cutoff lever mounted on the high-voltage junction box. He planted his feet against the concrete wall and pulled with all his weight.
CLACK-CRACK!
The old lever snapped downward. A brilliant, terrifying explosion of blue sparks showered into the tunnel as the heavy iron conduit ruptured. A thick, live electrical cable snapped loose, falling with a vicious, whipping sound straight into the pool of stagnant water covering the tunnel floor.
BZZZZZZZZZZT!
A blinding curtain of blue electricity illuminated the darkness. The two hounds shrieked as the current hit the water, instantly collapsing onto the concrete. Vance screamed, dropping his gun as the shockwave surged through the damp air, throwing him backward onto his back.
"Move! Now!" Ethan screamed, grabbing his camera and pulling Mary up.
They didn't look back. They ran through the blinding blue smoke, sprinting down the utility tunnel for another five hundred yards until the concrete path angled sharply upward, ending at a heavy, yellow steel door marked:
PROPERTY OF MUNICIPAL TRANSIT AUTHORITY – EMERGENCY EXIT 14 NO ADMITTANCE – ALARM WILL SOUND
"Is it locked?!" Mary gasped, her strength completely spent, leaning heavily against the steel frame.
Ethan grabbed the heavy emergency panic bar. He looked at Lily, whose pale face was covered in soot, but whose eyes were still burning with that fierce, unyielding light.
"If I open this door," Ethan warned, "the alarm will sound across the central precinct. The police will come."
"The police belong to Valentine," Mary whispered, her eyes dark with despair.
"Not all of them," Ethan said, his mind recalling a single name—a man he had worked with two years ago during an archival audit of police department land holdings. "Captain James Miller. He’s the head of the Internal Affairs Division. He’s the only officer in this city who hasn't taken Valentine’s campaign money."
Ethan slammed his entire weight against the panic bar.
CLANG!
A piercing, high-pitched alarm shrieked into the cold night air as the heavy steel door swung open, throwing them out onto the frost-covered grass of a public park.
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Ethan blinked against the sudden brightness.
They were standing on the northern lawn of City Hall Park. Rising high into the dark winter sky above them was the majestic, granite facade of the Central Municipal Building—the place where the city's power was carved in stone, and where, four stories beneath their feet, the bronze key in Lily’s pocket belonged.
