When they stepped into the alley, Hopper was waiting for them. “I figured I would see you soon.”
Pierce immediately stepped between them and pushed Dizzy back toward the wall of the café to protect her. “How did you know we were coming?”
“Uh, dude, I’m not freaking blind.” Hopper pointed toward the sky. “I can also hear.” She fished a small radio from her pocket. “The Red Feather chain has been lit up tonight. Mouth swears you guys kicked her off her usual frequency. She’s using a backup to give out information.”
“Great,” Pierce growled. “That’s all we need.”
Dizzy squeezed out from behind Pierce. “Look, Hopper, we don’t have a lot of time. I need your help. My dad is missing—”
“He’s not missing. He’s a prisoner.” Hopper flipped up the hood of her purple hoodie to cover her hair. “We need to move. The Splinter rats are everywhere tonight. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“Neither do we.” Pierce gave Dizzy a push forward and followed close behind as they navigated the intersecting alleys of Low Town. Hopper led them to one of the more remote access spots for the abandoned subway tunnels. She pushed aside a heavy slab of wood to reveal a small manhole.
“It’s an abandoned water-testing checkpoint,” Hopper explained. Sizing up Pierce, she added, “Unless you want to get stuck, you’d better suck it in.”
“Ha-ha,” Pierce replied dryly.
Dizzy smiled as she followed Hopper through the small access panel and into the underground room. It smelled so musty and wet. She didn’t know how anyone could stand to live in these dank, dark sections of the tunnels.
Hopper snapped on a couple of battery-operated lanterns to illuminate the space, sat on an overturned bucket and gestured to another one for Dizzy. “Not far from here, there’s a subway tunnel section that runs parallel to the Low Town sewers. The section has been blocked off for a few months. I had heard from some of the moles—”
“Moles?” Pierce interrupted.
“Old-timers who have lived in these tunnels for decades,” she clarified. “Most of them can’t even see above ground anymore. They’ve all got wet lung.” She waved her hand. “Anyway. The moles were saying that certain sections of their tunnels were caved in and blocked. I was concerned about instability because there are a lot of kids coming down here for refuge at night, especially whenever the snatcher rumors start.”
“Snatchers?” Pierce sounded curious.
“Sex slavers,” Dizzy explained. “They snatch street kids because they won’t be missed. There have been rumors about the sex trade off the colonies.”
Hopper huffed with disgust. “Apparently it’s a growing business for the Splinters.”
Dizzy perched on the edge of the bucket. “What did you find when you went looking for the blocked tunnels?”
“What do you think?” Hopper shook her head. “The Splinters and Sixers were using that section as an underground warehouse. Ever since the food riots and that bust-up at the battery factory, they’ve been looking for alternative places to conduct their business, especially now that the government is doing public crackdowns for publicity. There are crates stacked all over the place down there.”
“Weapons? Food?”
She nodded in response to Pierce’s question. “I think they may be experimenting too.”
“Experimenting?” Dizzy asked, aghast. “With what?”
Hopper pushed down her hood and combed her fingers through her brightly hued hair. “About a month ago, I was walking the tunnels and I found a pile of bodies in an old storage compartment. The smell…” Her eyes closed and she looked sick. “I don’t know what they did to them but they weren’t killed with guns or knives.”
Pierce crouched down between them. “Gas?”
She shrugged. “Maybe? I wouldn’t know what that kind of death looks like. All I know is that these people were packed into that room and it seemed like they’d all dropped dead on top of one another.” Hopper shrugged. “After that, I put that area on quarantine. I told everyone to stay away from that section and they have.”
“But?” Dizzy sensed Hopper was about to drop something important.
“Right after you were Grabbed, I saw your dad hanging around one of the tunnel junctions. I thought that was weird because, I mean, I never see him down here. He’s always kept his business up top. Then—a few days ago—Ella comes to see me, right? And she tells me that she ran into your dad and he looked panicked. She thought this loan shark story was bogus.”
“It was,” Dizzy assured her. “There’s so much more to it.”
“I figured.” Hopper held out her hand to Pierce. “You want me to start drawing or what?”
“Do you know how to use a tablet?” Pierce retrieved one from an interior pocket of his jacket.
“Yes.”
Pierce tapped at the screen before handing it to her. “It doesn’t have to be precise but I need details. I need to know approximate dimensions, ingress and egress routes, blind spots—”
“Yeah. I got it.” Hopper started to draw. “So—anyway—two nights ago, I’m trying to help Molly Mack hunt down one of her wayward twins and what do I see? Your dad with two Splinter dickheads. He was cuffed and gagged and they were pushing him toward that back section. I knew right then that this thing—whatever the hell it is—was so much bigger than I had ever imagined.”
Dizzy’s stomach churned violently. Was her dad still alive? Had the Splinters gotten what they wanted from him and killed him already? She couldn’t stand the thought of the nasty things she had said to him being the last words ever spoken between them.
After twenty minutes of sketching and scribbling, Hopper handed over the tablet. Pierce tapped the mic hidden in his watch and lifted it to his mouth. “Cherry 1 to SRU Alpha. Cherry 1 to SRU Alpha.”
Dizzy could only hear Pierce’s side of the conversation but it sounded as though it was going well as he transferred the schematics. She prayed Hopper’s intel would keep Venom safe and help them locate her father, the fuel rods and Terror.
Hopper tapped Dizzy’s knee. “So what’s it like up there?”
“Different,” she said.
“Different good or different bad?”
“Different good.”
“What’s the ship like? Huge?”
“It’s incredibly huge. Everything is so clean and neat. There’s ample food, good water and doctors. It’s so easy to forget that I’m floating in space.”
“And the men?” Hopper raised an eyebrow and tilted her head in Pierce’s direction.
“They’re…interesting.”
“I bet.” Hopper looked hopeful. “But you’re happy? I mean, your guy treats you well?”
“I’m very happy. My guy treats me very, very well.”
“That’s good. I worried that you might—”
An overhead sound interrupted their discussion. Immediately Hopper was on her feet. She snatched the lanterns from the shelf, switched off all but one and pressed a finger to her mouth, indicating silence. Pierce gently pushed Dizzy out of the way as men’s voices grew louder above them. Hopper pointed down the dimly lit horizontal shaft and the Shadow Force operative nodded.
Hot on Hopper’s heels, Dizzy rushed after her friend. The manhole cover made a scraping sound as it was moved. Pierce was right behind them and whispering into his radio mic. Her heart was pounding so hard Dizzy couldn’t make out any of the words he hissed. She thought he might have said Torment’s name but all she could hear clearly was the whoosh of blood thundering against her eardrums.
Suddenly the darkened tunnel lit up as electricity was restored to the section they were running down. A man behind them shouted, “There! Up ahead! We’ve got them!”
Pierce cursed before ordering, “Move it, ladies.”
“There’s a ground-access shaft not far ahead.”
“Faster!”
Dizzy kicked it into high gear, racing after Hopper. She made the mistake of glancing back and saw a group of heavily armed men chasing them. They had weapons that were older, projectile-firing models unlike the highly advanced energy burst weaponry of the Harcos. Pierce had pistols in the holsters under his jacket but she doubted one man could protect them against the seven she counted.
A second later, Pierce proved her doubts were misplaced. With all the ease and skill of a covert operative, he spun around and fired upon the group. Looking back, she watched two men drop like rocks. Another one fell to his knees and clutched his bleeding gut.
Though he had narrowed the odds considerably in their favor, there were still four armed-to-the-teeth men in hot pursuit. Bullets fired from behind them snapped against the concrete walls. She heard a sharp gasp and glanced back to see that a pair of ricochets had clipped Pierce. Bloody spots blossomed on his pant leg and his gray shirt. Shockingly the wounds didn’t seem to slow him down.
Pierce traded shots with the crew chasing them and dropped another two men. As they rounded a corner, Hopper snatched Dizzy’s hand and dragged her into a cutout section of the wall. Pierce used his body to box them into the space. While Pierce ripped a knife from his waist sheath, she held her breath in anticipation of the two men who would soon appear.