Author's Notes: It's been a long time since I've updated this story; sometimes life just gets in the way. Thank you all for sticking with it! To those of you who kindly left feedback and/or pm'd, my thanks and apologies for not having had a chance to get back to you (...yet).

There was a moment of shocked silence, then the torrent broke loose, boys crowding close, jostling, a dozen urgent questions overlapping each other.

"What happened—"

"Was it a dragon—"

"Anybody hurt?"

"—it still out there?"

"—sounded like a fire—"

"—fire for sure—"

"Where's Jack?"

A hush descended, so abruptly that echoes still resounded for a moment from the tunnel's brick walls. Race had bent over, hands on knees, to cough out the smoke in his lungs; now he straightened up to find all eyes fixed on him and Spot. He faced a sea of pale, anxious expressions, the entire tunnel holding its collective breath.

"He's still outside," Race told them through gritted teeth.

There was an explosion of movement from one side of the crowd and David burst through the front rows, lunging for the door to the ventilator. "Stop him!" Snoddy shouted. "You can't go up there!"

"Hey!"

"David—!"

Skittery seized David's arm as he went past, but it took the addition of Blink and Mush before they were able to drag him to a halt just short of the stacked crates. Even then, he continued to struggle against them, not with the coordination of a concentrated attack but with a single-minded purpose, as if he could haul them along in his wake by sheer force. Race found himself tensing in reflexive defense, hand slipping almost of its own accord toward the knife at his belt. But David didn't pull his own blade, only fought to reach the door, and Race let his hand drop to clench at his side instead. David's panicked gaze never left the brass panel covering the opening of the ventilator, their only way back out.

Jack's only way back in.

"What happened to Jack?" someone else demanded.

"David, calm down—"

"Is Jack dead?"

"Jack's dead?"

"'S matter with you?" That was Garrs, muttered as an aside to Snoddy next to him.

"Nothin'." Snoddy's reply was strained; he had leaned the stock of the shotgun against the floor, and Race could see his knuckles whiten around the barrel.

"The dragons got Jack!" one of the kids sobbed.

"Quiet down!" Race shouted. The babble of voices only mounted higher, drowning him out. He tried again. "He ain't dead!"

"Grab his legs—" Blink panted. "Dave, stop it!"

"He ain't dead..." The sentence caught unexpectedly in Race's chest, robbing his words of the volume needed to be heard over the din. He wanted to bellow it at them all, make them see the truth of it, but an awful surge of doubt clogged his throat. God, he'd bluffed countless bad poker hands in his time, fast-talked his way out of a million impossible situations, told outright lies with ease whenever necessary—and somehow he couldn't summon up the will to say what he needed to, right here right now.

Things were escalating out of control. "We gotta get Jack!"

"We can't! He's dead!"

"We'se gonna burn—"

"There's dragons up there—"

"They'll kill us all—"

"Knock it off!" Spot roared.

The noise died away, except for off to one side where the three boys had wrestled David down to his knees, probably only temporarily. Spot took two strides towards them, slammed the steel tip of his cane into the floor.

"Listen up good, M—David." The word sounded unfamiliar coming from Spot's lips; Race had never before heard him refer to Jack's right-hand man by his given name...not to Jack, not to David, not to anybody. "I know your hearin' is perfectly fine, so you listen. Jacky ain't gone." He was ostensibly addressing David, yet everyone else was leaning closer, no-one misunderstanding the fact that he was speaking to them all. "That shaft we just came through? It's full of fire. Ate up all the air. You open it too soon, you let in more air, you know what happens? We'se dead."

A new round of murmurs rose up from the crowd, but no-one dared to talk over Spot Conlon. Even David, gulping air, had slumped in the grip of the other three, though Race suspected that for him it had less to do with Spot's imposing presence than the incontrovertible logic of what he'd just said.

"Who's got the whole story?" Spot went on. "Snoddy?"

"Yeah." Snoddy took a deep breath. "There's a dragon, all right." He gave the assembled boys a quick account of what had taken place aboveground, from the first sighting of the dragon to the frantic retreat below. When he described the dragon shooting fire a mere couple of yards from the carriage, the huge gust from its wings fanning the flames into the entranceway, gasps and exclamations from the crowd nearly overswamped his words. Spot raised his walking-stick threateningly and the interruptions ceased.

By the time Snoddy finished, however, he sounded a little shaky. "An' I think...I think the lamp oil blew up." He trailed off with a low moan, face draining of all color. Race started forward but it was Garrs who was closest, catching Snoddy as his knees buckled.

"Garrs—" Spot said.

"Don't know, boss." Garrs lowered Snoddy to the floor; Bumlets grabbed hold of the shotgun before it could clatter on the ground, having to wrest the weapon away from its owner even as Snoddy's grip slackened. Snoddy mumbled something that Race couldn't hear, but apparently Garrs did, because he swore and set the now semi-conscious young man facedown instead, pulled up the back of his shirt.

There was a suppressed hiss from Snoddy, startled oaths from the crowd. "'S his back..." Garrs reported to Spot. "Skin's turnin' red." Even in the low light the angry blotches were visible. Snoddy had been bringing up the rear, shielding the rest of them from most of the heat, and he hadn't said a word about it.

"Burned?" Spot asked immediately. In his peripheral vision Race watched him pivot and take two measured steps towards them, reach out and set his hand on Garrs' beefy shoulder.

"Not directly, boss. No blisters, neither."

Thank god for that, at least. Broken skin on a burn that size meant infection, and infection meant a lingering, painful death.

Crouching, Race let his palm hover an inch above Snoddy's exposed back. Even without direct contact, he could feel the heat radiating off his skin. "Jesus," he said. "Somebody get some water. Specs, Dutchy—"

"C'mon." Specs squeezed Dutchy's arm and the two of them hurried down the tunnel.

Garrs pulled the back of the smoke-darkened shirt higher, not ungently; Snoddy flinched sharply and in an instant the mood of the crowd shifted, like a ring of wolves drawing tight. Garrs bristled at them, and it was only because Race was watching out for it that he saw Spot's fingers close on Garrs' shoulder. It had an immediate effect. Garrs aborted whatever sudden defensive move he'd been about to make, lowering his fist and getting to his feet, though only grudgingly.

If the swiftness of the Manhattan boys' reactions had been unplanned, Race thought, forcing some of the tension from his own shoulders, it had nevertheless come as no surprise. The last time they'd seen Garrs, he'd been whacking Jack across the face. And now Jack was missing, and the group was ready to erupt.

Just then, Specs and Dutchy returned from the far end of the tunnel, their hands full of supplies. There was some momentary confusion before the boys sorted themselves out, Dutchy and Bumlets falling to the task of soaking cloths in clean water and laying them over Snoddy's reddened skin, while Race and Specs did their best to work Snoddy's shirt off over his head without aggravating his injuries any further. Around them, muttering and heated whispers were starting up again.

"Race, you saw Jack?" Chopper asked, his voice hopeful.

Race slanted a glance in Spot's directon, noted he'd moved off some ways down the tunnel with his crew surrounding him. Nobody would call Spot a liar, but all the same, Race knew the Manhattan boys needed some kind of reassurance from one of their own.

He hadn't seen Jack, not after the initial blast of fire. But this question he could answer. "Snoddy here did. Like he said, Jack was makin' for City Hall."

"You can't make City Hall from here," Bailey declared. "Ain't no way!"

"How the hell would you know?" That was Blink; he and Mush and Skittery were still closely guarding David, who remained silently on his knees, though his shoulders had lost none of their bowstring tension.

"'Cos I was a messenger boy, that's how," Bailey retorted. "I made the run from the Postal Telegraph—" he jerked a thumb at the unseen street above their heads, where the ruined telegraph building still loomed on the corner "—over to them big newspaper offices 'least once a week. I went across this Park more times'n you can count. So I knows."

"He's makin' it up," someone grumbled.

"I ain't," Bailey said. "That's a good long run, I'se tellin' you. Ain't nothing there but grass and some trees, and we know most of them's burned up to nothing already—"

David had blanched. "That ain't the same!" Race said hotly. "How can you tell, you was on a bicycle!"

Bailey sneered. "Not me. They don't give us bicycles when we'se workin' this far downtown, 'cos of the traffic—"

Race made to surge to his feet, was brought up short by the fact that he was still supporting Snoddy's shoulders from beneath. Specs quickly shifted Snoddy aside and Race sprang up, fists balled, to confront Bailey. "Shut your mouth."

He could see Mush murmuring to David, trying to distract him, but David too had risen abruptly, control slipping in the face of renewed fear. And although most of the crowd were glaring at Bailey, there were more than a few uncertain expressions amongst them. Messenger boys knew their business, and they were paid by the job, not the hour. They got where they needed to go, and they got there fast.

Bailey stood his ground, apparently oblivious to David's growing agitation. "I'se just saying what none of yous wants to say—"

Race narrowed his eyes, took a step towards him. "You'se saying somethin' none of us wants to hear."

"You really think he's still out there? There's dragons at the door, you numbskulls! You'se all gone stupid, you'se gone soft—"

Bailey was cut off again, but this time by a deliberate, metallic tapping sound that seemed to ring incongruously loud in the brick confines of the tunnel. The crowd of boys parted in a rippling wave as Spot advanced, steel-shod cane striking the ground before him like a rattlesnake's warning.

He halted, third apex of a triangle opposite Race and Bailey, cane balanced lightly in his hand. "We'se all gone soft?" Spot repeated quietly. "Have I?"

"But—" Bailey started.

The Brooklyn boys moved up to flank Spot, but what shut Bailey up was the way Spot's sightless eyes turned on him, unerringly. Bailey might never have been a newsie or encountered their upper ranks, but he hadn't survived this long without some sense of self-preservation.

"It's not good to do that," Race mumbled, "not healthy..."

And then he heard himself, and trailed off.

"Arm up," Spot said into the silence. "We'se going out."