Chang spots me as I slide across a flat stone. The ground beneath is a good foot lower, and I steady myself with her help.

“Are you excited to start medical school?”

We continue forward in the semidarkness. For whatever reason, I felt a connection to Chang right off the bat, and that’s only grown after hurdling over shrubbery together. I pause, examining the answer to her question. “I guess. I don’t know, honestly. It’s been this goal that I’ve worked toward so long with my parents, and now I’m not sure it’s what I really want. So much has changed the last few years. Now it’s almost a way to honor their memory.”

Chang makes a clucking noise with her tongue. “Ah, I didn’t realize they passed on. I’m sorry. What would you do if you weren’t starting school on Monday?”

Cry? Stay here? Get hired as a waitress in the La Jolla restaurant where we had the med school mixer? Looking back on the last three years, I enjoyed volunteering at the veterans’ hospital, dabbling in all aspects of its business. I couldn’t do much medicine-related work, being unlicensed, but the hospital’s administration interested me more than I expected. Going over patient profiles, sometimes assisting in managing legal files. It fed my overanalytical brain when I wasn’t allowed to use it to treat real people. “Maybe something with law.”

“I could see that.”

“How did you learn so much about the tunnels? Trial and error?”

Chang laughs again. “A lot of error. At first it was a group of us that became interested, back in the eighties. We would get out of a gig—late nights led to many adventures—back then, taxis weren’t so pervasive. The police weren’t fans of the substances we were all smoking—it was the eighties, mind you—so we would take the tunnels under the city to get home and avoid the cops. Lots of people used to travel these tunnels, and I’ve met nearly all of them.”

A set of stairs leads to another domed hub, bearing three different routes. Chang shines a light on the walls to reveal words, graffiti art, numbers, and dates, all written in various colors; a discarded spray can lies at the foot of the wall. A visual diary of everyone who has passed through here into this secret society. For a second, the sight is beautiful, and my muscles relax. Then I see it. Sharp angles and even planes across inverse Greek letters. Symbols foreign to most eyes in these parts, but I can read them with barely a light to see:

I am here.