She touched her stomach. “Just a small cut.” I reached for her to inspect the wound, but she swatted my hand away. “Saul?” She scrambled to her feet. “Where is he?” Seeing the wall of rock that now separated us from him, her panic rose. “Saul!” she called, louder now.

“Shh,” I hushed. Even now, her cries might be heard on the street. Ignoring me, Sadie began to claw at the rocks that had fallen, separating us from Saul and his father. “I have to find him,” she insisted. “We were leaving together. We are supposed to get married. I can’t lose him, too.” All of the grief and frustration that had been building up inside her these past few months seemed to bubble up and spill over as she dug at the rocks.

“Stop.” I took her bleeding hands in mine to still them. “You’ll never get through. And if you keep tearing at it, you are going to bring the rest of the tunnel down on us as well.”

Her face crumpled. I would have thought that after her parents and her sister, no loss could break Sadie. But Saul was the very last person she had other than me, and the love she had only just found. The idea of losing him was more than she could bear. “We were so close to getting out together. And now he’s gone.”

“No, he made it safely to the other side with his father,” I replied, hoping that was true.

Sadie looked around helplessly. “We’ll never see each other again,” she cried.

“Don’t say that! We’ll get out and find them.”

“But they can’t wait for us on the street. How will they know where to go without us? They could be caught.” Even now, when we were trapped and in peril for our lives, Sadie was thinking about the others.

“Saul will manage. He is strong. And Kara will guide them to safety. All we have to do is find a way out ourselves and we can meet them.” I forced confidence into my voice, making it sound much simpler than it really was.

“How?” Sadie knew the tunnels a thousand times better than me. But she was too overwhelmed to think clearly and was looking to me for answers.

“The other grate,” I said. “The one that opens by the river. Can we get there?”

“I think so, if the explosions didn’t collapse that tunnel as well. It’s much harder to get to, though.”

“We have to try,” I replied firmly. Sadie took a long look at the blocked tunnel, not wanting to leave the last place she had seen Saul. “Come, we must hurry,” I urged, pulling her away. Reluctantly, she led me in the other direction, walking more slowly now. Despite the fact that the explosions had not collapsed the tunnel entirely in this direction, it had still left the path in ruins. Our progress was slow as we navigated around large craters in the floor and climbed over piles of rubble.