“When this is all over,” she says, pointing her finger at him, “I want you to go visit Mom.”

“I’ll call her–”

“I said, go visit her. Promise me.”

“She may not want to hear from–”

“Promise me!”

“I… OK, yeah, I promise.”

She stands still. Staring at him with a look he cannot parse.

“Can we go?” he asks.

“Thanks for saying you’re sorry.”

“I am. I am sorry.”

She swallows hard, then nods. “We can go now.”

He finds the bolthole carved by Davey a long time ago. Covered up with a false limestone pillar carved with an X etched into the rock.

Mookie shoulders into the stone, pushes it aside.

A small passage is revealed. A musty breeze breathes upon them.

“C’mon.”

The men in the tunnel are Sandhogs, yes. But Sorago knows that they’re more than that. They’re men of the 147 ½ – a cabal within the union that know of the monsters, that are familiar with the ways of the Underworld, that protect the city’s most vulnerable projects from intrusion by malefic forces.

A malefic force such as Sorago.

He runs through the tunnel, feet echoing on the round concrete beneath him – a tireless journey. He is at present alone, and alone they may defeat him. It takes a lot to admit that, for he is a woefully efficient killer – but they will be many and they will be prepared.

That is why he cannot go in alone.

Ahead he sees the first sign of them.

Gobbos.

Not just a pack. An army. Fifty of them. Or more. Among them, black shapes – the reaper-cloak Vollrath, the advance knights of the Hungry Ones.

Sorago is not a zealot of the worm-gods. Few Snakefaces are. This is a strange role for him, to help bring them to the light of the above world. But it is all for a good measure. Candlefly says that it is his will and the will of the whole family that they will not serve the gods but rather be served by them. And that is a mission Sorago can get behind.

Not that the gobbos need to know that.

The Vollrath know but don’t seem to care – what that means, Sorago cannot say.

All that matters is that they gather like this under a single purpose.

Normally getting gobbos to work together in this number is an impossible effort: a Sisyphean task that will inevitably roll back upon you. But now they are bound by the whims of their worm-gods.

Which means Sorago now has an army to bring with him to the end of this tunnel.

They hear the screams.

Echoing through the concrete tube that is Water Tunnel #3.

Mookie lifts the concrete piece back in place. Then grabs a handful of nearby dust and blows it back over the seams, making them disappear.

“It’s already started,” he says. “You stay here.”

“What?”