CHAPTER TEN

Marco bounced off the wall as an enormous kid pushed past him.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” called Marco, rubbing his shoulder. He caught a glimpse of Max, the hulking Team Fennekin kid, barreling down the tunnel ahead.

Stella brushed by next, giving Maddy a sickly sweet smile. “Good luck finding Zubat,” she said. “I’ll bet there’s a whole colony of bats in here, just waiting for you.” She snickered and ran off after Max.

“I’m not even scared of bats!” Maddy called down the hall after Stella. Then she added, “Maybe Stella is, but I’m not!”

“I know you’re not,” said Marco. “Don’t listen to her. Let’s keep going.”

A camera flash from the end of the tunnel told him that they were on the right track. Grimer, or some other Pokémon, was waiting for them down there. But Team Fennekin is there, too, Marco remembered. Then he heard footsteps running back down the tunnel toward them.

“If it’s Stella, don’t say anything to her,” he whispered to Maddy. “Don’t even look at her.”

He couldn’t help himself from looking at Max, though. The kid looked like a bull lumbering toward them. Marco stepped aside and flattened himself against the wall, pulling Maddy back with him.

Max jogged by without a word, but Stella made a face as she passed. She hissed her favorite line: “See ya, losers.”

Marco didn’t give her the satisfaction of reacting. Instead, he tugged on Maddy’s hand and kept moving toward the cave.

“Eww,” said Maddy. “Something stinks in there.” She held her nose as they entered the small cave.

“Must be the trash can,” said Marco. “What a weird place for one!”

He avoided it at first because of the smell. But after searching the cracks and crevices all around the cave, they still hadn’t found a Pokémon. Then something caught Marco’s eye—a Poké Ball dangling from the trash can.

“Look!” he said. A poster of Grimer was hanging on the back side of the can, almost out of view. “See, Maddy? He’s not slimy at all.”

“Well, he sure is stinky,” said Maddy, who stayed on the other side of the room. “I told you he would be.”

“You were right,” said Marco, chuckling. “I wish we had our camera so we wouldn’t have to come back here with Professor Birch and smell him all over again.”

He expected Maddy to laugh at that. When she didn’t, he straightened up to look for her. But the cave was totally empty.

“Maddy?”

His voice echoed off the walls and bounced right back to him, making the hair stand up on his arms.

“Maddy?” he called, louder this time. He hurried back toward the tunnel.

“Down here!” came a muffled response. Maddy was on her hands and knees on the floor of the tunnel.

When he saw her, he felt a wave of cool relief. “What are you doing?” he cried.

“Looking for Zubat!” she said happily. “See the picture? I told you Zubat would be here.”

Marco scanned the wall looking for another Pokémon poster. What he saw instead was chalk art of a purplish bat. He reached out to touch it and felt the chalk smear beneath his fingers.

This art was different from the other art on the walls—brighter somehow. But it was definitely a Pokémon. And an arrow beneath Zubat pointed straight down.

Maddy’s feet were now sticking out of the wall. She was crawling into some sort of tunnel. “Maddy!” Marco cried, squatting to get a better look.

The tunnel was a few feet high and the same distance wide. Maddy fit into it easily, but Marco wasn’t so sure he wanted to follow.

“Don’t go too far,” he said. “You don’t know where that leads.”

But she was already gone, scurrying ahead of him like a speedy little mouse.

Marco’s palms started to sweat. But he couldn’t let Maddy crawl off into some weird tunnel all by herself. So he crouched down and started after her.

Tiny rocks dug into his knees as he crawled. His head kept brushing against the ceiling, which made him feel claustrophobic. As he bent his head and shoulders down lower, something dropped out of his pocket and clattered to the ground.

The compass!

Marco patted around in the dark with his hand, but he couldn’t find it. “Maddy, I dropped the compass!” he called to her. “Bring back your Night Goggles!”

He could see a faint light from the tunnel ahead, but Maddy didn’t respond. So he kept crawling after her in the darkness, with panic rising in his chest. “Maddy!” he called again.

Finally he caught up to her—his hand bumped against her sandal. “There you are!”

“That’s the end,” she said simply.

“What?”

“The tunnel ended. We have to go back.”

Maddy sounded so matter of fact, but the panic in Marco’s chest swelled. “I … I don’t think I can turn around,” he said.

“Crawl backwards, then!” Maddy said.

He tried—one knee scraping backwards, and then the other. He shut his eyes and focused on staying calm.

Maddy’s sandals kept bumping into his hands. She was moving quickly, but he couldn’t. Left knee, right knee, left knee, right … he chanted in his mind so that he wouldn’t have to think about where he was or how much farther he had to go.

Then his knee hit something hard. Something painful. Something that crunched beneath him.

Marco knew with sick certainty exactly what it was.

“I found the compass,” he said into the darkness, swallowing hard.