I sit back, in a state of shock that my friend would do such a thing. I wipe the wetness from my cheek. “Wren, it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

The electric sound of the train begins to fade out and we start to slow down. The lights inside the carriage begin to flicker.

“What’s going on?” Kina asks.

“The geniuses up front must’ve got their calculations wrong. We’ve run out of power,” Pander explains.

The train rumbles to a stop, the clicks and clacks—that I’m sure must be audible aboveground—begin to slow, and the lights go out completely. We jerk to a halt.

“What now?” I ask.

Seconds later the doors are being hauled open by Pod and Igby.

Igby shines his flashlight into the carriage. “Right, so I misjudged that a bit, but we’re close, maybe only a ten- or fifteen-minute walk, so let’s get moving.”

Pander leads Wren onto the tracks, shuffling between the tunnel walls and the train’s exterior. Kina follows, and then Akimi.

I stand in the doorway of the train, looking into the blackness, and I can feel my hands begin to shake as flashbacks of the last time I was in a train tunnel spark inside my mind. I remember the rats so vividly that I can almost feel their teeth sinking into my skin once again; I can almost smell their damp rotting stink and hear their shrill squawks.

“Luka, come on,” Kina says, stopping to look back at me.

I nod and jump shakily down onto the tracks. I squeeze myself between the train and the wall until I’m in front, standing between the two rails. I want to walk forward, I want to follow my friends into the darkness, but I can’t make my legs move. My heart is racing, I can hear blood rushing in my ears, and I feel as though I can’t breathe. The air down here is so old and stale that it must be toxic. I can feel sweat beading on my forehead. What if something bad happens inside these tunnels? What if I die in this darkness? What if …

A hand grabs mine. I look down at the fingers interlaced in mine, and then up at Kina’s face. Her eyes look deep into mine and she smiles. Her smile only ever takes over one side of her face, and she’s so beautiful.

My heart slows to its normal pace and I can breathe again.

“Feel like going for a walk?” Kina asks, and her smile broadens.

I take a breath and let it out slowly. “Yes,” I tell her. “Yeah, I do.”

And we move into the darkness together.

Igby’s estimation of ten or fifteen minutes turned out to be off the mark. Half an hour later we’re still walking through the darkness.