We turn left, then left again. A particularly long stretch curves slowly to the right for about a quarter of a mile before Sam hesitates. There are three right turns close together; she seems about to take the second, even takes a few steps into it before changing her mind and taking the third. We go up a set of six steps and then the tunnel curves downward and around to the right again.

After another ten or so minutes of walking, Sam feels the wall until she finds a ladder.

“Here,” she says, and leads my hand to it. “And be quiet when you get to the top; we’re not far from the Arc.”

“The Arc?” I repeat, remembering Galen Rye’s words: It might surprise you how effortless it was to enlist soldiers, to convince humans to join our cause. Offer them a hierarchy in which they can belong—Tier One, Two, or Three—tell them they will earn their place on the Arc, where they will be safe from the end of the world. “What is it?” I ask. “Some kind of bunker?”

“You’ll see,” she says.

I climb up the ladder. It’s greasy with moss and moisture, and made even harder to climb by the fact I’m still carrying the LucidVision in one hand, but I make it to the top, where my head hits against a metal grate. I lift it up and carefully guide it to the floor. I look around and see an old cellar, a portion of the floor covered in dirty tiles. Steel beer and cider kegs are piled high among a web of tubes and valves.

We climb out of the tunnel and make our way to the rotting wooden staircase against the brick wall.

We emerge behind the bar of a wooden-floored old pub. It has been long abandoned, but the ancient varnished oak of the bar still curves majestically through the middle of the room. Champagne flutes still hang like icicles from racks above the beer taps. The tables and chairs arranged around the room look as though they are waiting for clientele to walk through the boarded-up doorway at any second. If it wasn’t for the dust that rests over everything like snowfall, this place could be merely closed for the evening, rather than shut down for decades.

Sam joins me behind the bar and we both look around, mesmerized by this place that has been frozen in time.

The sound of marching boots from the street outside snaps us both out of our reverie, and we move quietly to the storage area behind the bar and into a long-defunct walk-in refrigerator in the back room. I sit on an ancient crate of beer as Sam pulls the door shut, careful not to close it all the way.

“What’s the plan?” I ask quietly.

“We wait.”

“Wait for what?”