I HEAR SYDNEY SCREAM AND I RUN AS FAST AS I can, my breath hitching in my throat as I assume the worst. It’s not because she’s seen a rat or something. We’ve seen about thirty of those down here and not once have I seen that girl flinch. She reminds me of Captain Gerri in the way that she doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything. But something, or maybe someone, has made her scream.

I think back to the baseball. Back to the sneaking suspicion I had of someone else being down here with us. Sydney had called me crazy and maybe I was—but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering from place to place. And now she is screaming and that was the only thought that went through my mind. Finally I see her and she’s running. And I’m right—and yet I’m so very wrong.

There is someone else down here. Someone in a purple rain jacket.

“Sammy!” Sydney screams again. She found him. She found her little brother. The one I’d so callously tried to pretend that I understood. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. No wonder she ran away from me—I was an idiot.

But now Sammy was here and the only thing we had to worry about was finding a way home.

“Sammy!” I scream with her and run faster, finally catching up to her. Together we run toward the little boy in the purple raincoat, our breaths coming out hard and fast and in unison.

The boy keeps running though, and even I can see the confusion on her face. This must not be like him. He wouldn’t have come when a stranger like me called him but he’s used to her. He knows her. He should come when she calls. Yet he’s not stopping, he’s moving almost faster, taking the curves of the tunnels like he’s done it a hundred times before.

“Sammy?” Sydney questions and I hear her voice break. The last thing I want is to see her cry, I realize, this brave girl who carried her brother and all his complexities on her thin shoulders. So I run even faster, faster than I think I’ve run in my entire life, and hook my arm around the boy’s shoulders. The boy and I tumble to the ground. Sydney catches up with me and helps me and the boy up. Together we stare down at a boy with brown hair, large, dark eyes, and rich, tawny skin.

“That’s not him. That’s not Sammy,” she says, and the boy looks up at her in fear and awe. But on the left breast of his jacket in small black lettering is the name “Sammy.”

“That’s his jacket,” she says, the tears spilling down her cheeks, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I turn to the boy in Sammy’s jacket and glower at him. My police officer mask is affixing itself onto my face, turning me stern and serious.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? Why do you have this jacket? What happened to the boy who was wearing it?”

Sydney doesn’t say a word; the tears falling down her face silently, her eyes blank.

The young boy looks between the two of us, his eyes wide and scared.

“I-I-I’m Jaime,” he says after a moment. “This is my jacket.”

“Listen, kid. I’m a cop, you don’t want to lie to me,” I say, trying my best to sound intimidating yet kind at the same time. I mean he’s just a kid. He’s what, maybe nine years old? What’s he doing down here in the middle of a storm in a place as hard to get to as this? Where are his parents?

“Don’t lie,” I repeat. “You don’t want to find out what happens if you do,” I say, and the kid looks so scared I almost feel guilty, but Sydney needs to find Sammy. I’m afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t.

“I found it,” he says. “On the ghost tracks.”

“The what?”

“The Fifty-Seventh Street stop,” the little boy—Jaime—says.

This time, Sydney cuts in. “You’re lying. We were just there. It’s completely submerged under water.” We’d barely escaped with our lives.

“Not that one. That’s the one everyone uses. I’m talking about the one no one knows about. The ghost tracks.”

There was that term again. The ghost tracks—as if there were such thing.

“And what were you doing down by these ghost tracks? What are you doing here?”

Jaime shrugs. “I live here.”

I want to laugh at the impossibility of it all. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Yet there’s something about the earnest way he talks that tells me he’s serious. That he actually believes he lives underground here in the subway.

I pull out the baseball from my pocket and show it to him. “And this—is this yours?” Before I can even think to ask him any more questions, he grabs it from my hands with a bright, childlike eagerness. He smiles, his fingers turning the ball over in his hand toward an exact location. Under the red stitching is his name etched out in blue ink, “Jaime.” I’d missed that. I’d missed that completely. I was trained to catch details like this. Grueling months at the academy taught me better than that, and yet I’d still missed it.

It must have been Sydney—her sneaking up on me this morning, completely disarming me with her caustic smile and ready laugh. The strange mention of that random guy Ezra, who was supposed to take her out to a Mets game. “Just some guy” who was probably, maybe, her boyfriend. I shake the thought of them together, and the strange emotion it provokes, out of my head. This girl is going to drive me insane.

“Hey, kiddo,” Sydney leans down next to the kid, her tears no longer flowing but still wet on her cheeks. “My friend Will and I have been looking everywhere for the boy who owns this jacket. His name is Sammy. Purple is his favorite color.”

“Mine, too!” The boy gives Sydney a soft smile and she beams back at him, radiant. She’s great at talking to kids. I, on the other hand, apparently suck at it.

“You should help us find him. You could be part of our team. It could be like an adventure. Then afterward, we can get you back to your mom and dad.” She smiles again, and it’s the brightest thing in this tunnel.

“Mom and Dad?” Jaime asks, tilting his head upward in confusion.

“Yeah,” I say. “Aren’t you lost? Don’t you want to find them?”

Jaime lets out a snicker. “I’m not lost. I told you, I live here. With both of them—my mom and my dad.”

Sydney and I share a look. This little kid is obviously not all together, but we don’t let our confusion show. This time we both smile at him, and I try to look as welcoming as possible.

“So what do you say, Jaime? Do you want to help find Sammy? My little brother?”

“Sure, but first I think I should take you to see my parents. They’re the ones who could probably help. I don’t know much about the ghost tracks.”

His parents? Ghost tracks? How long has this kid been trapped down here?

Before we can question him, a violent tremor rocks us backward and Sydney stumbles into me. I keep her steady and place her back on her feet. Jaime looks back and forth between the two of us.

“What’s going on up there?” he asks. His dark eyes question us, his eyebrow raised and his face a mask of confusion.

“What do you mean, hon?” asks Sydney.

“There’s been a lot of shaking and the lights keep going off. There’s water, too. So much water. It’s everywhere.”

He doesn’t know. How it is possible that this kid doesn’t know about the biggest hurricane to hit New York in more than a century? Sydney and I share another look before she leans down to talk to Jaime.

“Don’t worry about what’s up there. As long as you’re here with us, nothing can hurt you. My friend Will here is a cop and he’s basically my own personal bodyguard. So if you come with us and help us find Sammy, he can protect you too.”

Protect. The one thing I’d sworn to do since I finished the academy. Even before then. But could I? Yesterday was my first day on the job and I’d barely managed to protect Sydney.

Jaime considers this. His big eyes seem to take in everything about us, from our clothes to our hair and the tiredness on our faces. Eventually he gestures for us to follow him.

“Come on,” he says. “There’s a lot to show you.”

We follow him as he scurries ahead, just slightly out of earshot, giving us time to speak without him listening.

“What are we doing?”

“Is it not obvious?” Sydney responds, a smile bright on her lips. “Following some strange kid on some subway tracks to find another strange kid.”

I roll my eyes. “Let’s be serious,” I say, even though part of me wants to indulge in her giddiness and laugh too. How happy she must be, to be this close to finding her brother. Still, this is too strange. Something is not right.

“But why is he here? How can we trust him?” I ask.

“I don’t know, Will. But this is the only chance we have. Plus, aren’t you worried about this kid? I mean, he thinks he lives down here in the subway. You’re a cop. Isn’t it, like, your job to do something about this? Protect him?”

There’s that word again—protect. It’s like a hot knife to my stomach. I wince and Sydney raises an eyebrow, worry seeming to cloud her features.

“Will?” she asks. “Are you okay?”

I don’t know what to tell her. I’m not okay. I’m trapped here underground in this uniform and I feel powerless. Being down here makes me feel like I’ve failed to do the one thing I swore to do. A feeling that’s not at all unfamiliar.

“Will,” she says again as we continue to follow Jaime. “You know, you never finished telling me why you became a cop.”

I didn’t? I thought I had, but as I think back on it, I hadn’t. Just part of the story.

“I became an officer because of my dad,” I reiterate, not sure if I can let myself tell her as much as I did last time, or even the rest of it. But Sydney’s more intuitive than I’ve given her credit for.

“I know that’s not all. Your dad getting shot, it’s not the only reason why you’re a cop. If it was, when you spoke about him there’d be a sense of respect in your voice. Pride that you were following in his footsteps. Not this . . . ” She searches for a word.

“What? Not this what?” I dare her to say something. Anything.

Her honey-colored eyes meet mine, fierce and unyielding.

“Anguish,” she finishes and I release a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I should feel exposed, uncomfortable . . . afraid, even. Instead, quiet relief begins to fill my chest and I find myself moving my lips to speak.

“My dad, after he got shot, he wasn’t just lazy and not there, he was scary. He wouldn’t hit my mom, he wouldn’t hit us. But there was something in his eyes—this glint. As if any minute he could have done it. Any minute he could have let his self-loathing and anger take over and hurt us. He’d break chairs around the house, press cigarette butts into the walls, throw things around his room, almost as if he was getting ready to strike. And that’s why I became a cop, so if he ever did try anything, I’d be ready. So I’d be strong enough to handle it.”

I don’t know why I’m telling her all this—we just met. There’s just something about the darkness of this tunnel and the steadiness of her eyes that makes this feel natural. Safe.

I see her shake her head, her dark hair glittering in the dim light of the few emergency lamps above us. “You don’t need that uniform to make you strong, Will. You don’t.”

I breathe out.

I want to say something back to her—a refusal, a denial, or maybe even an expression of gratitude— but Jaime runs back to us, taking Sydney’s hand in his own, pulling her along.

“Come on, let’s hurry. We’ll be there soon.”