Page 17 of Hunted

“Me?” he asked. “Why me?”

“Because I’m less of a stranger to this world than you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—” I shook my head. “—just go.”

He looked at his card, tapped it against the machine, and once it beeped, the doors opened for him. Valerian then quickly stepped through, joining Evie on the other side.

“Nothing to it,” I said to myself, and I tapped my card against the machine, only the doors didn’t open for me.

I tapped it again. The machine bleeped, but it was a different sound. Abadsound.

“What’s wrong?” Evie called out.

“It’s not opening,” I said.

“What does the little reader say?”

I looked down. “Seek assistance…”

“Come on, love,” came a voice from behind me. “I don’t have all day.”

It was a burly man with a thick beard and a heavy jacket on. I looked at him across my shoulder. “It’s not working,” I said. “Maybe this one’s broken.”

The man barged past me, pressed his card against the reader, and the door opened for him. He gave me a dirty look as he went past. Not wanting to be left on this side of the doors, I slipped in behind him barely a second or two before the doors closed again.

“Rude,” I said, as I joined Evie and Valerian.

Evie took my card. “Maybe this one’s not been topped up,” she said. “I’ll sort that for you on the way out. Come this way.”

Valerian’s eyebrow arched. The corner of his mouth curled.

“Please, don’t,” I warned.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“That grin you’ve got on says otherwise.”

With a sweeping gesture of his arm, he encouraged me to go on ahead of him. I didn’t argue. I also didn’t panic when I reached the moving stairs. I had never seen anything like it before, stairs that moved all on their own, but my mother had told me about human ingenuity and the kinds of machines of convenience they liked to build.

This was one such machine. It seemed silly, at first, but when I saw how far down those stairs were going to take us, and how far we would’ve had to climb on the way back, it made sense. I loved running around in the wild in my wolf shape… I didn’t like climbing the palace stairs.

The Underground was labyrinthine to me. Tunnels, tunnels, and more tunnels. Evie seemed to know where she was going. I had noticed the maps on the walls, but I couldn’t make sense of them because I didn’t know London.

Eventually, Evie brought us to what sounded like a train platform. The walls here were plastered with pictures of people dancing, pictures of food, and pictures of landscapes, each seeming to offer something to those reading them.

Looking down along the length of the platform, I noticed there were many other people waiting for a train, filtering in from other parts of the Underground station. We waited for a while, standing around, watching more and more people enter the platform.

At one point I heard a screech, which set my nerves alight. A moment later, I saw a set of bright lights emerge from the mouth of a darkened tunnel, followed by a monstrous beast of a train that moved at the speed of an arrow. I stood back as the thing came to a slow stop, realizing quickly that we were going to have to fight our way into this already crowded train.

When the doors opened, a rush of people spilled out of the train. Already I could feel the press of people around me, inching me toward the train, but I couldn’t move. There were simply too many coming out, and I couldn’t find a way to move in.

Evie, having clearly done this hundreds of times before, was the first one in. She was followed by Valerian, but it looked like he had struggled almost as much as I was struggling now. Everyone wanted to get into the train, but there simply wasn’t enough room. I wanted to shove my way past, but I knew that kind of thing was likely to get me into trouble, here, so I waited. I did my best to be polite, and patient—until I heard a quickened beeping coming from the train doors that told me I had only seconds to get inside.

I felt a hand reach out to me. I took it, and Valerian pulled me inside, again, just as the doors began to close. All of a sudden, I found myself pressed against him, surrounded by people, and unable to move. He looked down at me, and I looked up at him.

“You seem to struggle with doors in this world,” he whispered.