Wendy's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The hatch's lock still hummed behind them. Wendy stood in the dark and listened to Frank set down his tool bag. His work light snapped on. It showed a low tunnel, pipes overhead, and three branching halls. She had thought finding the entrance was the hard part. Now she saw she was wrong. "Which way did my brother go?" she asked. Frank knelt at a cracked cooling line. He did not look up. "I came to fix these lines. That's the job. Not your brother." "You said kids don't come back. You know this place." "I know the pipes." He pulled a wrench from his belt. "The rest of it changes. Halls move when the station shifts. I'm not walking you into that." Wendy stared down the three halls. Each one looked the same. Without Frank she had no map, no light of her own, no idea which turn her brother had taken. Her chest went tight. She had sealed herself in for nothing. Then a low bark echoed up the middle hall. Frank froze with the wrench halfway to the pipe. A black dog trotted into the light. It was thick and muscled, with bright green eyes and a tag swinging at its throat. The tag said Loki. The dog stopped, looked at Wendy, and barked again toward the dark. "That's my brother's dog," Wendy said. Her voice broke. "He brought it up with him. It followed him down here." The dog turned and walked a few steps into the middle hall, then looked back. Frank set the wrench on the pipe. He watched the dog, then Wendy, then the dog again. "Animal's been eating something down here," he said. "Means someone's feeding it." "Then he's alive." Wendy took a step toward the hall. Loki wagged and moved ahead. Frank swore under his breath. He stood, slow, one hand on his bad knee. "The lines can hold another hour." He hitched the tool bag onto his shoulder and pulled a folded paper from his coat. It was hand-drawn, creased soft, marked with routes in faded ink. "I keep my own map of the parts that don't move. It's not much." Wendy looked at him. "You're coming." "I'm following the dog," Frank said. "You're following me. Stay close. If I say stop, you stop." He held the light out down the middle hall. Loki was already trotting ahead, tag jingling, sure of the way. Wendy fell in behind Frank. For two days she had been alone with a wall. Now she had a light, an old man who knew the pipes, a hand-drawn map, and a dog that knew her brother's scent. The three halls no longer scared her. Only one mattered. They walked into the dark together, and the middle hall swallowed them.