Chapter 9 - The Maintenance Tunnel
The back storage room smelled of damp cardboard and rust. Leo kicked open the emergency push-bar door, plunging out into the damp, cool night air of the waterfront. Directly ahead of them hung a heavy iron fire escape ladder, its bottom rung dangling six feet above the ground. The dark, oily water of the canal lapped rhythmically against the stone retaining walls just beyond the rusted platform.
"Up, Lily, hold onto my neck," Leo panted, his muscles burning from adrenaline and exhaustion as he hoisted his sister higher. He leaped up, grabbing the bottom rung of the ladder with one hand and hauling them both upward until his boots found purchase on the grating.
Behind them, muffled shouts and the dull pop of a suppressed gunshot echoed from inside the clinic. Miller was still holding the line, buying them precious seconds.
"Leo, my leg hurts!" Lily whimpered, tears wetting the collar of his hoodie as she clung to him with all her might.
"I know, baby, I know. We're almost safe," Leo lied through gritted teeth, climbing rung by rung up the vertical ladder until they reached the steel platform. He pushed open a heavy hatch leading down into the municipal maintenance tunnel, a subterranean concrete corridor that ran beneath the city streets, smelling of stale water and old electricity.
He lowered them both down into the pitch-black tunnel using a maintenance ladder fixed to the concrete wall. The descent was agonizingly slow, his arms shaking violently under Lily's weight and the dull ache in his own shoulders. When their sneakers finally hit the damp concrete floor of the tunnel, Leo pulled out his phone, using its weak screen light to scan their surroundings.
The tunnel stretched out infinitely in both directions, illuminated only by occasional amber service bulbs spaced far apart along the ceiling pipes. Water trickled along a central drainage trough, echoing softly in the enclosed space.
"Where are we, Leo?" Lily asked, her voice small and trembling in the dark.
"We're under the city," Leo said, looking back up the access ladder. The hatch above was closed, shutting out the nightmare they had just escaped. But as he turned back around to survey the path ahead, the beam of his phone light caught something that made his blood run cold.
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Standing fifty feet down the service corridor, blocking the only logical exit toward the subway lines, was a tall, familiar figure in a dark suit, casually leaning against a concrete support pillar and waiting for them.
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