She didn’t get out at the holding cell with the others but stayed huddled at the back of the truck until, finally, it rolled to a stop near a mess hall and parked. There was a rumble of voices and footsteps, and then the driver and the other soldiers climbed out, leaving her alone.

She counted to a hundred in her head and then, peeking over the top of the seat to make sure no one would see her, she climbed out herself.

Now, to find the Professor.

After an eternal trek through the dark, dank tunnel, Dorothy was certain she was lost. She’d been walking through the darkness for what seemed like hours, the overhead lights growing a shade dimmer with each step she took farther into the tunnel.

She didn’t have a map and, even if she did have one, she hadn’t any clue where the Professor was headed, and even if she did have a clue where the Professor was going, her two choices, at the moment, were to keep following this dark tunnel or head back in the opposite direction, toward the mess hall, where she would almost certainly be seen.

She shoved her hands into her trouser pockets. Her heart was sputtering faster and faster with each passing moment. But, on the outside, she kept calm. Like her mother taught her. She couldn’t risk being caught and thrown in a holding cell before she could find him, so down the tunnel it was. The Professor had to be here, somewhere. He had to be.

Something in the tunnel was dripping; the steady beat of water hitting brick was like a metronome. After Dorothy made it to one hundred, she counted back down to zero. Drip. Drip. Drip. She said the alphabet next—both frontward and backward. She’d just started trying to remember all the words to a nursery rhyme about a sheep when she reached a solid brick wall.

“Blast,” she murmured. Dead end. She turned in a circle, fighting the sudden urge to hit something.

Desperate, she pressed her hands to the wall in front of her, fingers moving anxiously over a brick. There had to be a door. She couldn’t be trapped. There had to be something—

After two minutes of searching through the dark, she felt the rough edge of wood. Her breathing began to steady, somewhat. She knew it. She followed the edges, until she found something cool and metallic. A doorknob. She tried to turn it, and, there, her luck ran out. Locked.