“Get some rest, Gabriel. You’ve been awake much longer than you think.” She picked up her lantern and headed back to the main tunnel. “When I come back down, we’ll try the twenty-seventh path. That one is quite old, thought up in the twelfth century by a German nun named Hildegard of Bingen.”

Furious, Gabriel tossed the penny away and followed her. “How long have I been underground?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“I’m not worried. I just want to know. How long have I been here and how many more days do I have left?”

“Go to sleep. And don’t forget to dream.”

GABRIEL THOUGHT ABOUT leaving, then decided against it. If he left early, he would have to explain his decision to Maya. If he stayed for a few more days and failed, no one would care what happened to him.

Sleep. Another dream. When Gabriel raised his eyes, he was standing in the courtyard of a large brick building. It appeared to be some kind of monastery or school, but no one was there. Pieces of paper were scattered across the floor and the wind blew them up into the air.

Gabriel turned, stepped through an open doorway, and entered a long corridor with smashed windows on the right side. There were no dead bodies or bloodstains, but he knew immediately that people had been fighting here. Wind pushed through the empty window frames. A sheet of lined notebook paper skittered across the floor. He went to the end of the corridor, turned the corner, and saw a woman with black hair sitting on the floor holding a man in her lap. As he came closer, he saw that it was his own body. His eyes were closed and he didn’t appear to be breathing.

The woman looked up and brushed her long hair away from her face. It was Maya. Her clothes were covered with blood and her broken sword lay on the floor beside her leg. She held his body tightly, rocking back and forth. But the most terrifying thing was that the Harlequin was crying.

GABRIEL WOKE UP in a darkness so absolute that he found it difficult to know if he was dead or alive. “Hello!” he shouted and the sound of his voice echoed off the concrete walls of the room. Something must have happened to the electric cord or the power generator. All the lightbulbs had gone out and he was a captive of the darkness. Trying not to panic, he reached beneath the folding cot and found his lantern and a box of wooden matches. The match flame startled him with its sudden brightness. He lit the wick and the room was filled with light.

As he adjusted the lantern’s glass chimney, he heard a harsh buzzing sound. Gabriel turned slightly to the left just as a rattlesnake rose up two feet away from his leg. Somehow the viper had entered the silo and had been drawn to Gabriel’s warm body. The snake’s tail vibrated quickly and he moved his head back, ready to strike.

Without warning, an enormous king snake came out of the shadows like a straight black line and bit the rattlesnake just behind its head. The two snakes fell together onto the concrete floor as the king snake wrapped its body around its prey.

Gabriel grabbed the lantern and stumbled from the room. The lights were out down the length of the main tunnel and it took him five minutes to find the emergency staircase that led back to the surface. His boots made a hollow thumping sound as he climbed up the stairs to the hatch cover. He reached the landing, pushed hard, and realized that he was locked in.

“Sophia!” he shouted. “Sophia!” But no one answered. Gabriel returned to the main tunnel and stood beside the line of dead lightbulbs. He had failed at all his attempts to become a Traveler. It seemed pointless to continue. If Sophia was going to keep the hatch locked, then he would have to enter the launch silos and find another way out.

Gabriel hurried north down the main tunnel and entered the maze of passageways. The silos were designed to deflect the explosion of flame when the missiles took off and he kept encountering ventilation shafts that went nowhere. Finally he stopped moving and stared at the lantern in his hand. Every few seconds the flame trembled as if touched by a slight breeze. He moved slowly in that direction until he felt cool air flowing down the tunnel. Slipping between a heavy steel door and a bent door frame, he found himself on a platform jutting out of the wall of the center launch silo.

The silo was a massive vertical cave with concrete walls. Years ago, the government had removed the weapons aimed at the Soviet Union, but he could see the shadowy outline of a missile platform about three hundred feet below him. A stairway spiraled around the silo from the base to the opening. And yes, there it was-a shaft of sunlight pushing through a gap in the silo cover.

Something splattered on his cheek. Groundwater was oozing through cracks in the concrete wall. Holding the lantern, Gabriel began climbing the staircase to the light. The stairs trembled each time he took a step. Fifty years of water had rusted the steel bolts that held the structure to the wall.

Slow down, he told himself. Got to be careful. But the stairs began to shiver like a living creature. Suddenly a bolt was ripped out of the wall and fell through the air to the shadows below. Gabriel stopped and listened to the bolt ricochet off the platform. And then, sounding like bullets from a machine gun, a line of bolts snapped out of the concrete, and the stairs began to peel away from the wall.

He let go of the lantern and held on to the railing with both hands as the upper part of the staircase fell toward him. The weight of the collapsing structure pulled out more bolts and then he was falling outward, only to slam back into the concrete, about twenty feet below the entrance ledge. Only one of the support brackets still held the railing.

Gabriel hung from the railing for a moment, overcome by fear. The silo yawned below him like a portal into endless darkness. Slowly, he began to climb up the railing, and then he heard a roaring sound in his ears. Something was wrong with the right side of his body. It felt paralyzed. As he tried to hold on, he saw a shadow arm composed of small points of light emerge from his body while his right arm fell motionless to his side. He was holding on with one hand, but all he could do was stare at the light.

“Hold on!” Sophia shouted. “I’m right above you!”

The sound of the Pathfinder’s voice made the shadow arm disappear. Gabriel couldn’t see where Sophia was standing, but a length of knotted nylon rope fell down and slapped against the concrete wall. He was just able to reach out and grab the rope as the support bracket ripped away from the concrete. The railing fell past him, smashing onto the launchpad.

Gabriel pulled himself up to the ledge, and then lay there for a while, gasping for breath. Sophia stood over him, holding her lantern.

“You all right?”

“No.”

“I was up on the surface when the generator shorted out. I got it going again and came down immediately.”

“You-you locked me in.”

“That’s right. There was only one more day to go.”

He stood up and headed back down the passageway. Sophia followed him.

“I saw what happened, Gabriel.”

“Yeah. I almost got killed.”

“I’m not talking about that. Your right arm went limp for a few seconds. I couldn’t see it, but I know that the Light came out of your body.”

“I’m not sure if it’s day or night, if I’m dreaming or awake.”

“You’re a Traveler like your father. Don’t you realize that?”

“Forget it. I don’t like any of this. I just want to have a normal life.”

Without another word, Sophia took a quick step toward Gabriel. She reached out, grabbed the back of his belt, and jerked hard. Gabriel felt as if something was ripping, tearing inside him. And then he felt the Light break out of its cage and float upward while his body collapsed facedown onto the floor. He was terrified, desperately wanting to return to what was familiar.