“I can’t believe we’re out of the Block,” she says, her voice hoarse.

“I know,” I reply. “I keep waiting for the simulation to end, to wake up in my cell.”

“It is real, isn’t it?” she asks, a look of anxiety in her eyes.

“I think so,” I tell her.

She nods and then lowers herself into the basement.

It is real, I tell myself, it is real.

I grab hold of the edge of the opening, and then drop down.

In the glow of the flashlight I can see the smallish room is maybe twenty by twenty feet. Boxes of old stock are piled up and a small desk sits in the corner. There is a hole hammered through one of the brick walls.

Igby walks to the desk and I see a contraption with loose wires hanging out of it. He flips the device open and a light comes from a screen within.

“Is that a laptop?” I ask, staring at the obsolete piece of machinery.

“Yeah,” Igby says. “Can you believe—?” He swears and yells as his hand brushes one of the loose wires, shocking him.

“You okay?” Pod asks.

“Fine, fine. Let’s go.” Igby picks up the laptop and walks toward the hole in the wall. He steps through and we all follow.

We find ourselves in a small gap between two walls. Ahead there is a second hole big enough to enter; we climb through and now we’re standing on an ancient subway platform with an ancient subway train sitting on the tracks.

“What the hell?” Kina breathes, looking at the antiquated red-and-white train, covered in old, dull graffiti.

“Just wait,” Pod says, smiling as he moves with Igby toward the driver’s cab.

Igby climbs into the cab while Pod climbs down in front of the train.

I move up the platform until I can see what Igby’s doing. Inside the cab is a mess of wires coming out of the dashboard, and Igby works fast to connect them to the laptop’s circuitry.

I crouch down to see Pod feeling around under one of the rails. He too produces a wire, this one thick and covered in rubber tubing that has been torn away. He pulls the inner wire into two cables and connects one side to a series of solar-cell car batteries that have been placed in a dugout in the far wall.

Unbelievable, I think, marveling at my friend’s dexterity and special awareness. The fact that he’s blind and yet can maneuver in such intricate ways amazes me.

“How are you doing down there, Pod?” Igby calls.

“Ready to go. You?”

“Let’s do this,” Igby calls back, and then leans out of the driver’s cab and calls: “All a-fucking-board!”