I DON’T REALIZE HOW AFRAID I AM UNTIL THE last remaining lights begin to flicker. I feel like we’re on borrowed time, as though any minute they could all go out and we’d be left here. I mean, how long can we survive under here? A day—maybe two? With just granola bars and this thin, humid air. Where will we sleep? What will we do for more food? We won’t find Sammy. I’ve known that since the moment I chased her down these tracks. I knew that even as I told her that I would help find him. I lied to her. I looked her right in the eye and lied. Because what we needed was to find an exit, and lying was the only way to save her.

“A right turn!” she exclaims. “Sammy always makes right turns.”

We turn right, just as the tunnel splits. Sydney’s ability to know where her brother has headed is either uncanny or complete nonsense. Still, I can’t help but feel sad for her. I don’t have a brother or sister, so the only person I can imagine being in this much of a panic for is my mom, and it’s not like she’d ever get lost in a subway system. Still, what’s up with this kid? Why is he running off and hiding in dark, underground tunnels? When I was his age, I didn’t even let go of my mom’s hand at the grocery store. More than that, what did Sydney mean when she said that she was all he had? Why does it seem like he’s all she has, too? Why is she the only one responsible for this little boy who seems to be more trouble than most adults could even handle?

Everything about this girl is troubling and enigmatic, from the dogged way she moves through these tunnels to the way she seems to be tougher than anyone could bargain for.

Either way, I have no choice but to follow her . . . for now, at least.

We climb a set of stairs hidden on the right-hand side of the tunnels and I release a breath of air as we continue to walk and are not greeted by another surge of water.

I check my watch as we continue walking—it’s three a.m. We’ve been walking since about seven in the evening. About eight hours.

“Sydney,” I ask. “Do you really think your brother could have gone all this way? This deep underground?” My voice is soft, tentative.

“You don’t know Sammy. When he wants to stay hidden, he stays hidden. This isn’t the first time he’s done this,” she says, and I raise an eyebrow in bewilderment.

“Not in the subway, stupid. But he’s run away before. I took him to Coney Island once and he had a meltdown and hid under a concession table.”

“We’ve been here for hours. Some of the things we’ve gone through to get here, could Sammy have done it all by himself?”

She doesn’t say anything and I wonder if she’s heard, so I continue. “What if he went another way, what if someone already found him and he’s safe above ground somewhere?”

“Sammy’s not like that, he wouldn’t go off with a stranger. He’d probably run away and hide if someone that wasn’t me tried to help him. That’s why I have to be the one. That’s why I have to find him.”

“Even if you kill yourself in the process?” She doesn’t answer and I sigh. I’m trying my hardest not to scare her away. “So what if we find a door that leads to some manhole in Times Square? Will you just go back down and keep looking?”

She’s shaking, her teeth chattering, her tiny shoulders moving up and down. I put my navy blue jacket over her shoulder and she shrugs it off.

“No one told you to come chasing after me, you know. Like who told you to follow some crazy girl into the subway, anyway? Don’t you have, like, a family or something? Some wife who needs you to buy spare batteries or board up some windows?”

Through the flickering lights, the trickling water, and the impending darkness, I do the one thing that I can. I let out a laugh so loud it bounces off the walls of the narrow tunnels and echoes back to us.

“A wife?” I say, the word coming out with another torrent of chuckles. “What, you think I’m married?”

“What?” she says, annoyed. “Isn’t that a normal thing for men your age to do?”

“Sydney,” I say, my mouth hitching in a smile that’s impossible to shake. “Just how old do you think I am?” She pauses and suddenly looks unsure, her face twists into a slight scowl at being wrong.

I respond for her. “I’m nineteen.”

“Nineteen?” she exclaims. “You’re nineteen? How? You’re a cop.”

I laugh again, the surprise on her face is like a kid’s—so unassuming and completely earnest. “I’m the youngest person in my class to graduate—youngest kid in my precinct.”

“And all of New York, too, I bet.”

I shrug and she glares at me before shoving me hard in the shoulder.

“You’re only two years older than me, and you’ve been telling me what to do? What do you know?”

“I am an adult, technically. And can still get you in trouble for assaulting a police officer if you shove me again.”

“Well, I’m not going to call you Officer Tatum anymore.” She puts her hands on her hips and I snicker.

“Fine. Officer Tatum makes me sound like I have a wife, kids, and a mortgage.” She shoves me again. “What is that, your fourth time assaulting a police officer? Should I round that out to a couple years in jail and community service?”

“Don’t be a butt. Why are you such a young cop, anyway? Decided that college wasn’t for you or something?”

It takes me a moment to find the voice to answer. And when I speak I find the laughter in my voice completely gone. “My dad was a cop. It was the only thing that made sense to me.”

“Was?” she questions, probing, her eyebrows raised. I take such a sharp breath that she seems to immediately understand. “Sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to pry or whatever.”

We walk in the silence of the flickering lights, water beating down on our backs, the track curving toward somewhere unknown. We pass platforms and stations long since abandoned—even before the storm, with trash heaps of sawdust, empty cardboard boxes, and candy wrappers piled around corners. Cans of empty beans stand stacked, almost as if someone had sat here to drink them all. Though that’s not what startles me. What startles me are staircases that are much too dilapidated and boarded up to lead to the surface.

More hope, dashed away.

“He didn’t die,” I say, so long after the proposed topic that my voice seems out of place—distant. Sydney doesn’t say anything, she just waits and listens. “My dad was a cop, that’s true. He didn’t retire, either. He was shot. Right in the leg. He didn’t do any therapy or anything, he just quit the force that same day he was released from the hospital, came home, and sat on the couch. He’s been there ever since.” I feel hollowed, naked, and empty. The words had left my lips without a sense of direction, and from there they’d just kept going. I have to bite my lip to keep from saying any more—about his drinking, his yelling, the awful, startling truth about everything, including myself.

I hadn’t meant to say this much. I hadn’t even meant to speak, but the words rose out of me the way the rain had seemed to fall from the sky this evening—expected, but still somehow surprising. I suddenly feel uncomfortable, my legs feel too long, my arms uneven, my heart irregular, this uniform much, much too big. I look to Sydney to see if I’ve made her just as awkward and unbalanced. She’s looking right at me, with eyes a mix of chocolate and honey ablaze with understanding and the need to say something that I can’t quite decipher.

She parts her lips as if to speak and I find my heart swelling, completely and utterly out of my control. I find I’m looking forward to what she has to say, whether in agreement or in simple acknowledgment of everything I said but shouldn’t have. Someone to finally get what it is that’s on my mind.

“Will,” she says, her voice a low whisper. I move closer to her. “We should find a way to get some sleep. It’ll be morning soon.”

I deflate, but I don’t let her see. I don’t show my hand, I don’t give away my weaknesses. I don’t even clear my throat in awkwardness. I turn my face into the hard mask I learned from the academy and nod briskly.

We don’t speak as we make a bed of cardboard and rain jackets against the hard, wet floor of one of the platforms. Beneath the flickering yellow emergency lights, I curl my hands beneath my head to sleep, facing away from Sydney. I’m exhausted. I’ve been up for almost twenty-four hours, but sleep doesn’t seem to come.

I want to say something to her—the citizen I accosted, the young woman I reprimanded, the girl I’ve been walking alongside for ten hours—but I still feel uneven, uncomfortable in my skin. She breaks the silence.

“My dad’s not dead either,” I hear her whisper from behind me, so soft it hardly seems real. “It feels like he is though.” She bellows out a deep sigh that shakes the space between us. “Sometimes I feel like he left me just like this station.”

“What? Abandoned?” I still don’t turn to face her.

“No. Under construction.”

I try to take in what that means, both for her and the space around us. Everything starts to make sense. “Under construction? What do you mean?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer and I can tell she won’t say more, so I change the subject.

“We must be under Second Avenue. This line has been under construction for as long as I can remember.”

“Yeah, so?” she asks.

“That means somewhere, at some point, there’s some sort of exit, whether it’s a manhole or a construction ladder. There’s a way out.” I explain, but again she stays silent, our conversation from earlier seeming to echo back to us.

Because what this means for Sydney is that we won’t find her brother. I’ll drag her out if it means saving her life—it’s my duty, to her and to my badge. It means that her heart her father left broken won’t heal the way it’s supposed to. That the one person who is everything to her could be lost forever to this dark, empty tunnel.

“Will!” she shouts beside me and I finally turn toward her. She’s leaning up on her elbows, her eyes staring into the distance.

“Look!” she says. “Not at me, over there!” She points toward the right side of the platform, at the tracks. She jumps over me and runs toward the bumpy yellow edge of the platform. There are three different tracks on the right side, and it’s impossible to tell what she’s talking about, but then I see it, a flicker of something. Something flashy and purple.

Sydney jumps off the platform and races ahead. I follow, sprinting toward the flash of material, thinking that it might be our key to salvation.

“Hey!” Sydney screams as she trips over a rail, almost landing flat on her face before I catch her.

In my arms, she’s a panting, breathless thing, her eyes wide with excitement and fear.

“That was his purple jacket. That was Sammy. My Sammy!” she says.