Clearly, the City Pride designers had never stepped foot into this place, I think as we wind through two more hallways. Atlas leads me into a large room filled with what can only be called old junk. From the reach of the light, I can see a couple of old saws, a rusted claw-foot bathtub, a bunch of ratty paintbrushes, and dozens of old wooden crates and rolls of plastic.

Well, I can certainly understand why someone forgot about this room. “Are you sure we didn’t go the wrong way?” We had taken so many twists and turns I would struggle to find my way back to the staircase.

Atlas’s grin is bright even in the low light. “Follow me.”

I stick close behind him as we snake around the tub and weave a path to the back corner. Atlas squats and reaches for a thick loop of rope. Something skitters on the other side of the room. I spin toward the sound as Atlas laughs. “Don’t mind the rats, and they won’t mind you.”

“Rats?”

Atlas yanks open a trapdoor. A ghostly glow comes from somewhere below.

“We’ll have to be quiet from here on out. Unless of course you want to stay with the rats.”

Someday, I vow, I’ll get even with him for the amusement in his voice. But that’ll have to wait. I scurry down uneven steps—these made of weathered gray stone—and spot the source of dim light. A narrow doorway waiting for us at the bottom of the steps.

I lean my forehead against the cold concrete wall as the lack of sleep pulls harder. Atlas closes the trapdoor behind us, then he takes the lead again. We duck through the glowing narrow doorway and Atlas turns out his lamp.

“Are we there yet?” I ask.

“Almost,” he whispers. “We take a right here.”

He picks up the pace as we walk down a hallway with soft dirt floors that is wider than it is tall. How Atlas walks without stooping is beyond me. There can’t be more than a couple of inches between him and the ceiling in some places. I am about to ask again when I see the glow from ahead that shines so bright it seems like the sun after you look at it too long. I hear the low hum of voices. The tones of someone singing. A tapping sound like insects beating their wings against the cool glass of my bedroom window on a hot summer night.

The floor slants downward. My gym shoes make a sucking sound as I pull them out of a patch of mud, and I’m about to tell Atlas what I think of this hallway when he stops next to a set of stairs at the edge of the brightly lit opening.

My breath catches as Atlas leans toward me and whispers in my ear, “Welcome to Lyceum Station—home of the Stewards.”

Eight

Lyceum Station.

I’d assumed from the name it would be another room like the one my mother painted. Part of me had even hoped that it would resemble the unfinished painting in her studio. I couldn’t have been more wrong.