Part 22

We have made it past the first three turns according to the map, and its accuracy of our path seems to still be holding up, although there are definitely more branches in the tunnels than it shows.

We enter into another long abandoned train station.  Abandoned except for the group with the large television cameras.

“Perfect,” I hear a female voice exclaim as I extinguish my orb and pocket it and pull my coat tight, concealing my blade. 

“Um, excuse me,” the female voice says.  It belongs to a rather obese woman in a fancy pants suit, far too high dollar to be crawling around in the dregs with us.

I glare at her, but she ignores it.  “Can we talk to you for a minute, you know on camera?”

Mary looks at the woman and tells her “No.”  Keeps walking.

“We’re doing a piece on the street people that live down here.”

“Street people?”  Mary asked, her nostrils flailing.  “What makes you better than me?”

I tug at her sleeve.  We have all been in her position and I try to stop the fury that is welling up from within.

“Come on,”  Benny whispers, tugging on her other arm. 

“I will not come on.  Just because you have a fancy suit and happened to know who’s ass to kiss and when to do it does not make you better than me.  Does not make you better than any of us.  I’ve made more real friends, people who have risked their necks for me, in the month I have been down here than I had my entire adult life.  These ‘street people’ as you call them are better than you.”

“Close your eyes,”  I hear Benny whisper, and I watch as his hand slips inside his coat.  I squeeze my eyes shut and slap a hand, a little harder than I had intended to, over Mary’s.

“Come on,”  Benny says again a moment later and I pull my hand from Mary’s face and open my eyes. 

Amidst the swears of the camera men, I run, pulling Mary along with me.  She allows herself to be dragged, although protesting loudly.

I finally convince her to be quiet, although I can hear the news crew coming behind us, there vision finally having cleared.  We take four quick turns, two rights and two lefts, in that order, before we are certain that they are not pursuing us any longer.

“What the-“ Mary begins.

I raise my eyebrows and place a finger before my lips.

She begins again, whispering.  “What was that?”

“I dialed it to eleven,”  Freak Beans says, taking out his sphere, which begins to emit an almost white light, slightly tinged yellow, like a piece of aging newspaper. 

“Do we know where we are?”  I ask, pulling the map from my pocket and peering at it.  I find the old station we had just left and begin to trace the path we took, but of course the turn off is not shown. 

“We’re somewhere over here,”  Benny says with a smile, pointing to a blank spot on the map.

“Thanks,” I say.  “So do we double back and hope we make the right turns, or do we see where this leads?”  I ask, pointing further along the tunnel we are in. 

Benny begins to make a small pile out of trash he find lying about the tunnel.  “Let’s continue on for a little bit.  We can always come back here,” he indicates the marker he has just made, “If we decide it’s not going well.”

“Sure,”  I say.

Mary is still mumbling under her breath.  I catch ‘Who did she think she was?’ and tell her to let it go. 

“But-“ She begins, but I cut her off.

“You are about to become a Princess.  The first Underground Princess at that.  Let them have their ‘street people’ if that’s what allows them to sleep at night.”  I wish I had more cigarettes, but I am trying to save the few I do.

“You’re right,” she says, and goes to stand by Benny.  “Let’s get going.”

Benny and I both hold our spheres, him in front and me bringing up the rear.  “This looks like an old barber pole,” I say, stopping at something jutting up from the ground.  I wipe some of the dirt and grime from it and smile.  “I’ll be, it is!”  I shine my light upon the wall, illuminating a tarnished brass sign for the Barber shop screwed into the white tile wall.  A rotting news stand sits beside it, amidst a pile of broken tiles.  “All that’s missing is a shoe shine box.”

Benny clears his throat from a few feet away, where he has shifted a pile of debris, mostly rotting cardboard.  “It’s right here.” 

I put my pack down, undo the top, and dig around for a minute until I pull out a red chisel tip marker.

“What’re you doing?”  Mary asks.

I ignore her as I hold my Sigil Sphere aloft, peering through it at the wall, where I begin to draw my own symbol, one box atop another, slightly skewed, an S in the top and a C in the bottom on an unbroken ceramic tile.

I walk around the corner and test my handiwork, appearing back where I had just been standing.

“Oh!”  Mary says, realizing what I have just done.  “Is that all it takes?”

I sag, catching myself on the news stand with an outstretched arm.

Benny rushes over and helps me to the floor.  “Yes, that is all he had to do, but it takes a lot out of us to do it.”  He scowls at me, “Do you really think now is the time for this?”  He waves his right hand at my handiwork.

“Just in case we need to come back this way for anything.”  I close my eyes for a moment and then struggle to my feet.  “Lets get going,”  I say, taking the lead.  We go another two hundred feet before we come to an intersection.  “Right or left?”  I ask.

“If it goes through, left will take us back to the tracks.”  Freak Beans says.

“Left it is,” I say and head down that corridor.  A large cat, black of course, scurries out of our way, a recently killed rat the size of my calf muscle, hanging from its mouth. 

“Careful, kitty,” Mary says, adding “I hear there are alligators down here somewhere.”

“Alligators?”  I say over my shoulder.  “Doubt it, but there’s piranha if you know where to look.”  Walking in front of her, she can’t see my smile.