Page 3 (1/2)
"Here, girl, what do you think you're up to?" a voice called
Jazz pressed herself against the wall and rated along her spine The light of its headlae as it bulleted into the station froainst filthy tiles, Jazz shuffled swiftly along the ledge, forcing herself not to i blown off by the wind of the passing train If she fell beneath it, her ive her
The train hissed as it slowed, the front car co toward the end of the platform, nearly adjacent to her now The conductor would see her Someone would be called More people would chase her into the darkness, and then where would she hide?
Her left hand suddenly pressed against nothing She slipped around the end of the wall onto a stretch of for-gotten platforh frustrated by her survival, and then she heard the sounds of disgorging passengers and others cli aboard A recorded voice announced the ti on and off to otten
Jazz laughed softly and without huap, indeed Never knehen you'd find yourself falling into one of the cracks in the world Here she was, living proof Alice down the rabbit hole
The train hissed again, doors closing, and started for-ward In the light fro before her Beyond it lay another stretch of platfor A rusted, padlocked chain locked the gate Soht have been able to snap the rust-eaten chain, but not Jas speed, and with it her pulse began to race again
She saw the shapes of people at first, and the occasional blur of a face, but the faster it went the more those people seemed to blur into one
The illumination frorate, but at the upper edge of her vision was a rectangle of darkness that see at the realization that either a sec-tion of the grate had been broken away or whoever had in-stalled it had left a transoripped the iron bars, propped the rubber sole of one trainer against the ifted at anything, it was cli Her mother had often called her aup trees and rocks and the way she could always e to break into their town house if her ht, once upon a tiirls alanted to be ballerinas or princesses, and people like her weren't allowed drea
Her foot slipped, but her hands found a grip on the transo the chain and sending a shower of rust flaking to the platform But she pulled herself up across the bottoymnast
She landed in a crouch and paused for ainto the distance Light from the station reflected off the tiles on the other side of the tunnel, giving her just enough illumination to see Voices ca into phones and excited tourists nattering in a es
She stood frozen, like a rabbit caught in oncohts And when soht had shown her the outline of a tall door, and she guessed it to be an old exit up to street level The Underground was rife with such things, she'd read, coe rooms and basements of chemists, mar-kets, and pubs that had once been Tube stations or buildings associated with them
Dark shapes scurried and squealed around her feet: rats As long as they ran away from her, not toward her, she could put up with that
The door stood open a few inches, the frame corroded Whatever lock had once sealed it had been broken, leaving a hole where the knob ought to be Jazz had a strange feeling that the door had been forced closed, not open
She reached out The metal felt warround, like a beating heart Jazz leaned her weight against it, and it scraped open across the concrete floor
Blinking, she waited for her eyes to adjust The stairwell ought to have been pitch black, but a dih to see that she had been wrong The spi-ral metal staircase did not lead toward the surface Rather, it led deeper into the ethereal glooo back For a moment she considered it But to what? The Uncles and her mother's corpse, and the mur-derous wo back now If she returned to the surface, it had to be far froot onto a train, it could not be at this station
Soround labyrinth, there would be another way up
The spiral staircase created an echo cha surrounded her as Jazz started down Such evidence of her panic forced her to calm down, to slow her breath, and soon her pulse slowed as well Still, she heard her heartbeat much too loudly in her head
It was at least thirty feet until the staircase ended The blue glow brightened into silvery splashes of light froed bulbs, metal-wrapped cables bolted to the curved stone walls She wondered ould come down here to replace these bulbs when they blew
More hesitant now, Jazz stepped away froed into a vast space that made her catch her breath Above her was a ventilation shaft that led up to a louvered grille Daylight filtered down, a splash of light in the false underground night Like distant streetlamps, other vents served the sa-abandoned station The platform had been removed, and beneath her feet there was only dirt and broken concrete In a far-off puddle of light, a short set of steps led up to where the platform had once been, but now they were stairs to nowhere Without the platform, she noticed for the first tih the city's innards
Peering along the throat of the tunnel, past the farthest splash of light, she saw only darkness But somewhere down there, where the platform had once ended, there must be another door
Jazz started in that direction, but as she round underfoot disappeared in the dark She moved to the tracks and crouched to place a hand on the coldblood to the city's heart Noas dead She stepped over the rail and between the tracks Sih to match her stride to the carefully placed sleepers
The sound of herstones, sharp breath, footsteps
Walking into the darkness did not ht waited ahead and another remained behind her She could see those areas of the tunnel well enough Yet when she looked down at her feet she saw nothing, and even her ars
Water dripped nearby, but she could not locate its source She studied the walls, searching for any sign of an exit Without a way out she wouldn't get far, at least not without a torch
So for it to coain Seconds passed before she took another step, then she heard the sound again Not a rustle, but a whisper A voice in the darkness, speaking gibberish
"Who is it? Who's there?" she said, flinching at the sound of her own voice
The whispering went on and, from behind her, back toward that spiral staircase, came another voice, secretive, furtive The Uncles or their lackeys --those dark-suited BMW men--had followed her
"Shit," she whispered, and startedh they certainly must have seen her, no one shouted after her
"Bloody Churchill," one of them said, but this was no whisper She heard it clear as a bell "Thinks he's a general but hasn't the first idea how to fight a war Get us all killed, he will"
A child laughed
A burst of static filled the tunnel, followed byherdinner