Sitting up violently, I had to take a second to just remember why I had woken up in the middle of the night. The beginnings of a sunrise were already spreading through the sky..so were the beginnings of a horrible storm. Looking behind, the red digital letters of my alarm clock read 5:32..jeez..
Still struggling to remember why I'd been jarred out of sleep, I figured I might as well get out of bed. Pulling on jeans, I trudged upstairs to start on some paperwork that was buried somewhere in the mess on my desk. Seeing the missing girl posters, my dream slammed into focus. I had dreamt the same dream from the night before but woken up before coming through the grate in the bathroom. No matter, the connection was made. The was right- I had seen that necklace before. There was no way that Renshu's daughter having the same necklace was a coincidence. Something bigger was happening.
Thankful that there was no one awake to question my actions, I flicked on the light to the girls bathroom. Sure enough, there was a grate under the sink- and it was askew. Tying my dreads back, I realized how hot the bathroom was. I really had to get that AC fixed. But for now, I pushed a window open to let in some already stormy, but cold, air.
Turning back to the grate, I admitted to myself that I was crazy, and pushed it aside. Peering down, I expected to find some sort of piping that led to the sewers but instead found..handles? This was starting to look more and more like what you would find under the cover of a manhole in the middle of the street, not a drain in the middle of a girl's bathroom. Glad that I had bought a new pair of cheap converse the other day after realizing all of my left shoes had disappeared, I began climbing down the "manhole". A few handles later, I reached out of the hole to close the grate above me to discourage any curious little girls from falling in later.
After I put about 15 or 20 feet between me and the surface, I finally felt ground past the next rung. Carefully stepping of the ladder, I praised myself again for remembering to charge my ipod. A couple of taps later, I had a flashlight in app form to shed some light on the otherwise pitch dark cavern? tunnel? Sweeping my ipod in a circle, I realized it was a sort of tunnel. High enough for me to stand up without stooping and just wide enough for me to stretch my arms and touch both sides. Looking behind me, I saw that the tunnel stretched out of sight in both directions. My pause was long enough that my ipod went dark. Before I woke it back up, I spotted a tiny speck of light. If my iPod had stayed on I would never have seen it. Turning my flashlight back on, I set off towards the light.
A few strides forward, I realized that there were other passageways branching off of the one that I was on. In the silence, I began to pick out the bubbling laughter of a stream of some sort. Listening closer, I heard the sound of actual laughter too. Taking a couple of steps into the nearest tunnel, the sound of laughter faded. After trying a couple other tunnels I finally walked into one where the noises grew louder. Shouting out a hello, my voice rang off of the compacted dirt walls, amplifying it. The giggles silenced abruptly then became hushed whispers. A couple steps farther I came around a bend in the tunnel and another light blinded me.
Time stopped as my eyes snapped closed to try and readjust. From somewhere above me I heard the siren of a firetruck. In a different direction a distorted shout reached my ears..something about 99 percent? I knew by this time that the orphanage would be awake and bustling. It was a Thursday so Ms. Fernandez would be here to cook breakfast. Her and Annie never seemed to leave. But all I could focus on was the two girls standing in front of me, equally surprised.
How did this happen?
