Tim's Arc

Chapter 2 of 11

The maintenance hall ended at a fork. Three dark passages split off, none of them marked. Tim stopped, his sister heavy against his chest. He had no map. One wrong turn would drop them at a checkpoint, and the checkpoint would log every child who walked into it. "Which way?" he asked Riley. Riley stared at the three mouths of pipe and shadow. The confidence from the daycare doors was gone. "I don't know this part. We only went as far as the playground vents." Max tugged Tim's sleeve. "The slides," the younger child said. "We played under the slides. There's a grate that goes down." Tim crouched to Max's level. "The playground? The one with the two slides, the green and the orange?" Max nodded hard, hugging the shaggy toy. "We dropped marbles in the grate. They rolled down and came out by the water pipe. Way down there." Max pointed at the left passage. Riley frowned. "That's a kid thing. That's not a map." "It's better than guessing," Tim said. But he needed proof before he led two children and a baby into the dark. He pulled a bolt from his pocket and dropped it into the left passage. It bounced, then rolled, picking up speed on a downward slope. The sound faded away from them, not back toward the main ring. "Downhill," Tim said. "Away from the checkpoints. The checkpoints are up near the hab block." He looked at Max. "Your marbles went down. Down is good." He chose the left passage. The floor tilted under his boots. Riley walked ahead now, one hand on the wall, counting junctions under their breath. Max named each turn by memory. "The marble turned here. It went straight here." Twice the child was sure, and twice Tim followed. Then the passage opened into a low chamber. A thick water pipe ran across the ceiling, sweating in the cold. On the floor lay three old marbles, dusty, exactly where a child had said they would be. "Max was right," Riley breathed. Tim's chest loosened. They were under the playground now, far from any scanner. No checkpoint waited here. But the chamber had only one exit, a narrow hatch sealed with a wheel lock. Tim set his sister down on his folded jacket and gripped the wheel. It would not turn. He braced his feet and pulled. Rust cracked. The wheel gave an inch, then stopped hard against something jammed inside the mechanism. Riley crouched and peered through the gap. Their face went tight. "There's a light on the other side," they whispered. "A worker light. Somebody's been through here. Recently." Tim stared at the jammed hatch. He had found the safe path. It led straight to a door he could not open, with someone waiting on the far side.