“He’ll just sell us out for more drugs. That’s what happened. He tells old guys where we hang out for some dope, then they come down here—try to touch us….” She faltered, then said in a false bravado, like she was not only trying to convince Doyle, but herself, “I have to do this.”

“Megan!”

Dicky gurgled.

Megan screamed, so high-pitched that it could have shattered glass.

Larkin ran to the edge of the walkway in time to see her, her hands and T-shirt bloody, fling the knife and Dicky aside before she took off running through the filthy water.

“Jesus Christ,” Larkin swore, holstering his pistol a second time before jumping onto the submerged tracks. He splashed through the water and grabbed the homeless man, his body odor and unwashed clothes ripe enough to make Larkin’s eyes water. He heard a scramble of boots on gravel, then a second door, toward the south, open and shut. “Go after her!” he called up to Doyle.

Doyle was gone in an instant, chasing Megan into the dark via this different route, but ultimately in the direction from which they’d come.

Larkin dragged Dicky toward a sort of elevated nook built into the wall underneath the walkway. There was a mattress, duffle bag, camping stove with a pot, and something that might have been SpaghettiOs inside, all neatly tucked away, where no MTA employee would ever know to look, unless they climbed down into the sewage themselves. He heaved Dicky up, pushing his bloody, sodden body onto the mattress before shucking off his safety vest. Larkin ripped the material until it was a long, reflective strip, and wound it around Dicky’s neck, knotting it tightly enough to put pressure on the wound—he didn’t think Megan had nicked an artery, there wasn’t enough blood—but not so much so that Dicky would choke.

“Give me your hand,” Larkin demanded, taking Dicky’s hand and making him press it over the knot. “Hold it like this. Keep putting pressure on it so you don’t bleed out.”

“…Hurts…,” Dicky croaked.