A/N: Back from the school trip to Connecticut! This is Part Two of Chapter Six, brought to you by:

List:

Little Lobster: The Beta. The sender of the book parts. All hail, Little Lobster.

Lieutenant of Artemis: The random reviewer. All hail, Lieutenant of Artemis.

RoyalDanielle: Is back in business. All welcome back, RoyalDanielle.

I will be posting a double chapter update soon...now that I have more time on my hands.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the 39 Clues. I do not own Prada. I only own the normal font parts...and this A/N.

So without further ado...

They waited silently until the train left Nagatacho station. They were the only ones on the subway platform now. The train schedule, which Alistair had picked up from the attendant, said that the next train arrived at 5:40. He checked his watch.

Then he looked down at the tracks – the dark, narrow tracks that led into a pitch-black tunnel on either side.

"It's five-seventeen," he said, his voice shaking. "We have exactly twenty-three minutes."

Eisenhower stepped to the edge of the platform. "Fall in, troops!" he said.

"Is he always like that?" Dan asked Hamilton. "Like, all military and stuff?"

Hamilton nodded. "After West Point…well…yeah, I guess."

Vikram sneered. "Yes, that lovely school he was expelled from."

Alistair shifted uncomfortably. Being expelled from Harvard really is embarrassing …

Hamilton glared at the Kabra patriarch, but didn't respond. It was the truth, after all.

"I want to go first!" Madison said.

"She kept us waiting when she was in the bathroom," Reagan complained. "CanIgo? Please?"

"It's almost Mom's birthday," Hamilton said.

"Rawf," said Arnold, diving over the edge to chase a soot-blackened rat that skittered across the tracks.

"Disgusting," Isabel said, flipping her hair. "Public facilities these days are always so filthy. But of course, we, Kabras never have to go through such indecencies."

Nellie twitched. She could never stand rich, pretentious, spoiled people like the Kabras. "Maybe it's the indecencies that make you lose," she said flatly, glaring at Jonah and the Kabras. "Amy and Dan are winning, and they go through what you call "indecencies" every day."

Amy blushed, staring at her lap. Dan just looked away. The Kabras had no response to that, but just thinking that they would subject themselves to such filthy methods of transportation made them wince.

"Every Holt for himself!" Eisenhower cried, pulling green gardener's gloves from his pocket, snapping them on, and lowering himself over the edge. "Be sure not to touch the fourth rail!"

"Forgive me for asking," Ian was trying to retain as much dignity as possible. "but isn't it the third rail that you must avoid?"

"Third, hug-muffin," Mary-Todd said.

Dan rolled his eyes. "Duh."

As Madison and Reagan followed, Alistair took Dan and Amy's arms and stepped slowly backward. He was trying to escape. But Mary-Todd and Hamilton stood in his path, arms folded. "Uh-uh-uh!" Hamilton tutted.

"Nice try, Uncle," Dan whispered.

It was 5:19. Twenty-one minutes left.

With a sigh, Dan climbed onto the track, followed by Amy, Alistair, and the remaining Holts. A stream, inky black, ran between the rails. A gum wrapper floated by. Ahead of them, the tunnel plunged into blackness. Dan felt woozy. He and Amy hadn't had much luck in underground places. Images began floating in his brain.Running . . . running . . . from Jonah Wizard in a subterranean museum in Venice . . . from the Kabras in the Catacombs under Paris . . . from a train . . . from a memory . . .He could still feel Amy's hand yanking him away from the approaching subway car in Paris, his backpack disappearing underneath the tons of speeding steel, the scream ripping from his throat. To anyone else, the faded snapshot he'd kept in that pack – the smiling couple – would have seemed blurry and uninteresting. But to Dan, it was as important as life. He had looked at it ever day, memorized every last pixel. It was the only memento, the only remaining image of the parents he barely remembered. And now it was gone, a continent away.

Normally, Natalie would have sneered and made fun of whoever thought this, but one look at Daniel's face sent her skipping the other way. She knew she was lucky to have a mother however… different Isabel Kabra was. And she knew how much Daniel missed his parents. And besides…she couldn't afford to get her Prada ripped again.

So she simply sat there.

"Hup-two-three-four . . ." Eisenhower called out.

Amy pulled Dan forward, shaking the memory from his brain.Splash-splash-splash-thwuck, went his footsteps. "Thwuck?" he squeaked.

"Maybe a rat?" Hamilton suggested.

Dan shuddered. Rats… Mice were fine with him, but rats were not.

"Don't ask," said Amy. Even in the near-blackness, Dan could tell her face was bone-white.

They trudged onward, keeping to the middle of the track to avoid the third rail, until the dimming light of the station behind them faded to nothing. "Report on progress!" Eisenhower called out.

Dan's hands shook as he shone his pocket flashlight on the subway map. Ahead of them, the light of the next station was barely visible. They had passed the halfway point. "According to this," Dan said, "we should be about there now. The intersection would have been to our left."

"At ease!" Eisenhower said. "Fall in to examine hidden methods of egress!"

"Does he even know what egress means?" Alistair asked, continually being surprised at the Tomas' intelligence.

Hamilton shrugged. "I don't know. But doesn't it mean an exit or some kind of way out . . . or something?"

"Th-that's t-the rough translation of it," Amy said quietly, and continued reading.

Amy reached out to her left, feeling along the grime-covered surface. "Nothing there but a wall."

"Keep trying," Eisenhower said.

Dan frantically pushed and punched, but the wall was solid. Thick cement. He checked his watch, which was already beginning to lose its glow-in-the-dark properties.

5:30.

"Th-this was a dumb idea," he said, his voice echoing dully in the tunnel. "Look, we have ten minutes. We left the station eleven minutes ago. We have enough time to get back before –"

"Abort mission!" Eisenhower barked. "Dress left! And . . .hup-two-three-four!"

Dan began to run, nearly tripping over his sister.

"Ow!" Amy cried out. "Dan!"

"Sorry!" Dan said. "See you at the platform –"

"Dan, my foot is stuck!"

"Very observant, Daniel," Ian said sarcastically.

Dan whirled around and shone his flashlight on Amy's crouching silhouette. She was grimacing, her left foot jammed under one of the rails.

"How do you get your feet stuck under a rail?"Nellie asked incredulously.

Amy shrugged. "I d-d-don't know. I-it just happened."

"I'll rescue her!" Hamilton shouted.

'Good,' Ian said to himself. He didn't want to see Amy die, however much his mother wished it. And besides, if she died, Korea's…events between Amy and himself would never have happened. 'Wait…was that good or bad?'

Ian shrugged to himself mentally. 'It'sallin the past,' he reminded himself.

"No, me!" Reagan shrieked. "I never get to rescue first!"

"Stand clear!" Eisenhower boomed.

"Rawf," Arnold barked.

Dan elbowed his way into the crowd, trying to reach is sister, who was screaming at the top of her lungs, "You're only making it worse!"

Dan's hair began to rise in swirls lightly from the back of his head. A low but steady wind was gusting through the tunnel from the south. Dan could see Amy's face looking up to him, eyes wide. "Dan? How accurate are those train tables?"

"I don't know!" Dan replied

"When a train is entering a t-tunnel, don't you f-feel the air being pushed – ?"

Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-onk!

The atmosphere tensed, except for Isabel and Vikram Kabra, who both wished that Amy Cahill had actually died. It would have made the Clue Hunt so much easier, making Daniel Cahill fall apart. It would also have dispirited Ian, whom Natalie claimed had a crush on the girl.

Dan spun toward the sound. Two distant headlights, like reptilian eyes piercing the darkness, were headed their way – and growing fast.

"Holts –bolt!" Eisenhower commanded.

As one, the Holt family turned away from the approaching train and broke for the next station at a dead run.

"Don't leave us!" Amy shouted.

Dan pulled and pulled. Amy's foot was jammed. Tight.

"OWWWW!"

"I'll . . . get . . . it," Dan said through gritted teeth. He knelt in the icy trickle of water running between the rails, now choppy with the vibrations.

"Run, Dan!"

"Wait . . . I know . . ."

The laces. Dan dug his fingers into her shoelaces and yanked hard.

They were knotted. Wet and stuck. Her foot seemed glued to the shoe. If he could just slip it out, use the wetness to slide . . .

The screech of the brakes filled the tunnel. The wind whipped around him like a gale, throwing dust and debris into his eyes. His vision flashed white. His body was telling him to go. Now.

"JUST RUN!"

"Stop it, Amy, I can't leave you –"

She had saved him. He could save her. He had to do it.

Amy smiled slightly at Dan - one of those rare moments in which she realized that she did truly love Dan . . . the times when he wasn't being annoying. He was a good little brother, at least when he wasn't pretending to be a ninja or dancing around like a hyperactive monkey.

Dan noticed his sister's eyes on him and felt a bit uncomfortable. Girls didn't hug him. Ever. Hugging was too girly. Except he wouldn't mind if one certain girl did…

Pull!

The wind was violent. The noise pressed into his ears like a solid thing. He pulled again, wiggled, jerked, pounded.

She was resisting now, pushing him away – trying to save him. Her breath felt cold on his neck, the veins in her throat bulging out.

He realized she was shrieking, but he couldn't hear a word.

HO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-ONK!

Dan's body froze solid as he turned into the glare of the oncoming headlights.

"And the train hit Amy and Daniel, breaking every bone in their bodies and leaving much blood on the tracks. A funeral is held, and the Kabras stole all their Clues. The Kabras win, and they rule the world forever." Isabel Kabra continued. She said it so calmly, as if she was reading from the book itself, and Jonah actually half-believed her until he realized that it was Amy holding the book, not Isabel . . . and that Amy and Dan were there in the room with them, which probably meant that they did not die. Probably.

"Hey!" Dan glared at the Lucian matriarch. "How about you die?"

Amy didn't say anything, but she agreed with Dan mentally. 'Please fall off a cliff.'

"Whoa, whoa, whoa –" Nellie held up one hand, and Saladin screeched, as if he were backing her up.

"No more arguing, kiddos. I want to read." Nellie looked at Amy expectantly.

Amy handed over the book, relaxing slightly on the sofa. 'Isn't the next chapter about meeting Ian?'Her stomach lurched as she thought about it. And then Korea…in my thoughts…Butterflies entered her stomach. 'I don't want Isabel going anywhere near that book anymore. . . I don't want her killing me and Ian . . .AndI don't want them havingso much fun laughing at me…'

Amy paled. 'And then,after this book, we have Nataliya to protect…I'm starting to think these books aren't that good for us after all.'

Amy shook her head, dispelling any worrying thoughts. 'Focus on the present,'she thought to herself, and leaned forward to listen to Nellie reading the book.