I strain to hear any movement behind us, back at the manhole cover, and am met with silence. Using the pocket flashlight on Angela’s key chain, I confirm no one is following me. But either Mathieu or Jean-Luc could be around any of these corners, could appear from either end and sandwich us in an attack.

“Let’s keep moving,” I finally breathe. The dirt walls, though high and well packed, inch closer the longer we stay put. Chang nods, turning forward, giving me privacy to fall the fuck apart.

“No one knows how they’ll react once they’re down here,” she says, generously. “Some people love it. And others . . . less so. What are those coordinates again?”

“Forty-eight degrees, fifty-three minutes, five-point-seven-five seconds north latitude, two degrees, twenty minutes, one second east longitude.” I recite the coordinates of Angela’s Divine Research blog post by heart, drawing strength from their sound, not even needing the note I wrote earlier.

Chang trails her hands along the walls, her wingspan just wide enough to touch. “Forty-eight degrees, huh? That will take us under the river—my favorite part. What’s special about them? Your coordinates?”

It’s just the two of us, and she already knows it on some level, so I mete out a bit of the truth. “I read it in Angela’s research. And fully expect to find buried treasure there.”

Chang laughs. The high-pitched sound is disturbing in the dark. “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

She leads us straight, at a descending angle, for what seems like forever but is probably another five minutes. Crags of rock stick out from the otherwise smooth ceiling, and I have the wherewithal to admire the tunnels’ architecture. Chang shares how she first got started down here with her husband back when it was a niche interest deriving from cave exploration in the south of France. I suspect she’s filling the audio space for my benefit when I start to hyperventilate for the third time. My balance falters as the fever creeps back up, spiking intermittently in a way I’ve only experienced a few times in my life—once when I had mono, and another time when I ate a bad oyster. I stop to lean against the wall. When I’m able to breathe normally again, she resumes listing the people she’s taken belowground over the years and who, I assume, came out alive after.