Riley Cross's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Riley Cross counted six kids asleep on the stone floor, and the foreman wanted every one of them back on his factory line. She crouched by the cold iron door of her underground den, listening to boots scrape the tunnel above. Gears turned in the walls, and the lamps threw warm light on dirty faces. She had sworn to keep these runaways free. Tonight that promise felt thin. The foreman had hunted them for a week. He owned the children's old workhouse, and he treated missing hands like stolen property. Every day he mapped more of the tunnels. Riley knew that when he found the right door, he would drag the kids out and lock them back at the machines. She needed to send him the wrong way, fast. Riley pulled a folded map from her coat. She had made it herself over three sleepless nights. The routes on it were lies. Every secret mark pointed to an empty cellar across the district, far from her real den. If the foreman believed it, he would waste days chasing shadows. A rat scrambled up her sleeve and perched on her shoulder. Its fur stood in green spikes, and a tiny spiked band circled one leg. She had raised it from a pup, and it feared nothing. "You know his scent," Riley whispered. "Lead him to it, then lose him." She tucked the false map into a small pouch and tied it to the rat's back. Then she climbed to the tunnel mouth and set the rat down near the foreman's boot prints. The animal sniffed once and darted into the dark. Riley followed at a distance. She watched the foreman stop where the rat had dropped the map in plain sight. He was a wide man with a brass whistle on a chain, and he snatched the paper like a prize. He held a lantern close and traced the fake routes with one thick finger. "So that's your warren," he muttered. He blew the whistle twice. Men answered from the side tunnels. Riley pressed flat against cold stone and did not breathe. The foreman marched his men the wrong way, toward the empty cellar across the district. Their boots faded. The rat raced back to her and climbed her sleeve, trembling and proud. She hurried down to the den. The kids were awake now, eyes wide. "He's gone," she said. "We bought time." But relief lasted one breath. On the floor by the door lay a scrap of paper the foreman had torn and dropped. Riley picked it up. It showed her own tunnel, sketched in his hand, one corridor from her door. He had been closer than she knew. The false map had turned him away tonight. By morning he would compare both trails and learn one was a lie. Riley folded the scrap and looked at the sleeping children. She had won a night. She needed a new hiding place before the foreman came back angry.