Sorry, this chapter is a short one. Hope you enjoy it anyway.

If someone had told me a few hours ago that soon, I would be getting drunk, coercing my best friend into drinking, trying to kill him, waking up with absolutely no memory of the night before, running away from camp, and following a homeless girl I had never met before into a creepy manhole with blood and vomit on that walls, I would have totally believed them. Then I would have run screaming off the nearest cliff because it's obvious I'm an out-of-control psycho.

And here I was.

The tunnel I was climbing down was so dark that even though my hands were directly in front of my face, I couldn't see them. The rungs of the ladder were scarily thin, slick with gray water, and, judging by the loud clanging sound my sneakers made when they hit them, hollow. Most of it was rusted, and some spots even seemed to be corroded.

My hands were now smeared with a disgusting combination of blood, sweat, and the mystery sticky stuff that covered the handle on the manhole cover. Crumbles of gravel and rust were scattered all over them like rainbow sprinkles, minus the rainbow. And the joy.

It I hadn't been able to hear Rowan climbing below me (much more quietly and expertly than I was), I think I would have scrambled back up, and gotten the fuck out of there.

Of course, the manhole cover was now closed, because Rowan had told me to drag it shut. It would have to be pushed up from the bottom when I left, if I could push it up.

It really just added to the overall terror of the situation.

Still, for some mystical reason, I trusted Rowan. Maybe it was the fact that she had tried to calm me down in the middle of a panic attack, or that she didn't mind telling me about her psychotic life when we had just met — hardly anything, but still — or maybe the fact that she was smart enough to know that she shouldn't know my name.

But I knew she wouldn't hurt me.

She was telling the truth. About everything.

I didn't know how I knew that, but I did.

Still, though, I had a feeling I shouldn't be doing this . . .

But I didn't have anywhere better to run.

So I kept climbing down.

We had been descending for almost five minutes — slowly, sure, but it still felt like hours. I called hesitantly down, "How much farther?" My voice echoed through the cramped tunnel, and I could have sworn I felt the ladder vibrate. I shuddered and clung even tighter to it.

"We're almost at the bottom," she called back. "Just another minute."

Great. Another minute of this. Well . . . I would have taken another five hours of this if it meant getting a break from camp, but I was not looking forward to another minute.

The next step, for one heart-stopping moment, when I expected my foot to connect with a room, it instead connected with solid air. I yelped with fear and clung tighter to the ladder before slowly lowering myself down onto the next existing rung, breathing hard and trying to fight the growing knot of panic in my stomach.

"Yeah, that's the missing rung. Gets everyone. All right, here's the end. The was a thud, and then Rowan called up, "Get your ass down here! We don't have all day."
I continued climbing down, although placing my hands and feet much more carefully and deliberately than before. "I'm pretty sure it's nighttime, actually."

"Whatever. Don't care. Okay, you should be good to jump now."

I was reluctant to relinquish my death grip on the damp, rusty ladder rung, but Rowan's voice came from directly below me, so I figured that I didn't have more than six feet or so to jump. I took a deep breath and pushed myself off the ladder.

Sadly, I had wildly overestimated the body control of a hungover kid who's entire body was still mostly numb, and I crumbled to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

This wouldn't have been so bad if the ground hadn't been covered with several inches of freezing water.

I yelped with shock and disgust, accepting the hand that was offered to me and hauling myself back to my feet.

Rowan was laughing again. "Man, I wish I had that on video. I could watch it for the rest of my life and never get tired of it." She slapped my shoulder. "Come on! Lighten up, it happens a lot."

"I'd lighten up," I grumbled, "except for the fact that — you know what, I'll shut up."

I couldn't see in the darkness of the sewer line, but I thought Rowan's face must have darkened slightly. "Sorry. I shouldn't . . . that's not my business."

"You're damn right it's not," I agreed. "Only that is kind of why I'm down here . . . I don't know. We'll figure it out."

"We'll figure it out," Rowan agreed.

We both fell back into silence for a moment, and I took the opportunity to examine some of my surroundings — not with my eyes, obviously.

We seemed to be in some kind of city sewer tunnel. It was about five feet wide, and when I stretched my arms up, my hands flattened against the roof of the tunnel. The gritty slime feeling twisted my stomach into knots, and I quickly pulled away, wiping my hands on my pants.

The icy water coursed around our ankles, pulling us off balance. It was five or six inches deep, and I could hear it sloshing against the slimy walls, eddying and swirling.

Gray water, it seemed — the fairly clean water from baths, sinks, washing machines, and other appliances like that. Thank god we hadn't ended up in the sewer where the toilet runoff went — my night was bad enough without wandering around in piss and shit for several hours. And it smelled bad enough as it was

Rowan turned to glance at me. The whites of her eyes seemed to glow even brighter than before in the all-consuming blackness of the tunnel. "You good? Or do you need a minute?"

I shook my head. "Yeah, let's just go. I take it you don't sleep in gray water, so I figure you have some place dryer?"

She pulled something out of her pocket, and there was a clicking noise as she pressed a button. The next thing I knew, my eyes were filled with a blinding white light.

"Ahh!" I staggered backward against the filthy wall, one hand over my eyes. "Was that really necessary?!"

Rowan pointed her flashlight down the tunnel, and the bright beam lit up a long, dark tube, corroded stone walls slick with algae and grimy water. There was an angry chittering noise, and a slight splash as something large and gray slipped off the wall and into the water.

"One — bold of you to assume I don't sleep in gray water. And two — we do actually have a dryer place, if they don't kill you on sight. Come on."

Oh, joy and happiness, being killed on sight! Truly one of the wonders of the modern world.

I trudged through the rushing water after Rowan, iciness soaking into my beat-up shoes and the tattered cuffs of my pants. I was soaked and shivering from my ungraceful leap into the sewer water. I really wished that someone had brought long-sleeve scrubs to camp back when they first made the infirmary.

The water was flowing so fiercely that several times I was pulled off course, forced to lean against the wall until I could stand on shaking legs and continue staggering after Rowan.

The street girl had no such problems — she forced herself through the freezing liquid, soldiering on in a straight line despite the cold and the current.

I don't know how long we had been walking when we finally reached a fork in the tunnel. Rowan stopped, and I dragged myself up beside her, bitterly cold water splashing onto our legs.

"Watch it!" She briefly dipped her hand into the water before flickering several droplets on me. I yelped and jerked away even though I was already soaked.

"You watch it!" I kicked a spattering of icy drops onto her legs. She hissed at the cold, jerking away from me. "Oh, you are dead."

For a few moments, it dissolved into a no-holds-barred water fight. We kicked, threw, and shoved freezing sewer water at each other, yelping whenever the cold drops made contact, shouting out curses and death threats.

I should have been disgusted that we were fighting with sewer water, or terrified that I was in a pitch-black sewer tunnel in the middle of the night, but I wasn't either. Instead, I allowed myself to feel something I hadn't felt in a long time.

Happiness.

I was actually having fun laying with another kid, splashing each other with water like ten-year-olds.

And this was good practice for combat skills, but I tried not to think about that.

Rowan had the disadvantage of having to keep a hold on her flashlight with one hand, but she also had the tactical advantage of much more time spent staying upright in freezing, rushing water. Finally, she clicked her flashlight off and jammed it in her pocket, plunging us both into total darkness.

There was another splash, though not directed at me. This one sounded as though Rowan had fallen backward into the water.

For a second, I wanted to laugh.

That didn't last long.

Rowan didn't get back up.

"Rowan?" I called nervously. "You okay?"

She hadn't splashed me in several seconds, and I had no idea where she was. She was completely silent.

I whirled around, fighting a growing sense of panic. "Rowan?" I called, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice. I hated dark spaces, and it had been okay when Rowan was there, but now . . .

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Silence.

Fuck.

But I wasn't alone.

I heard breathing.

Heavy, rasping breathing.

I slowly turned, and two large, freezing, dripping wet hands wrapped around my neck.