We immediately found a bank of computers with instructions on how to surf the Net. All we had to do was sign in at the desk. I signed “Ella Martinez” with a flourish, and the clerk smiled at me.
That was the last cheerful thing that happened for the next hour and a half. Fang and I searched in every way we could think of and found a million institutes of one kind or another, in Manhattan and throughout New York state, but none of them seemed promising. My favorite? The Institute for Realizing Your Pet’s Inner Potential. Anyone who can explain that to me, drop a line.
Angel was lying under the desk at our feet, murmuring quietly to herself. Nudge and the Gasman were playing hangman on a piece of scrap paper. Violence occasionally broke out, since neither of them could spell their way out of a paper bag.
Iggy was sitting motionless in a chair, and I knew he was listening to every whisper, every scraped chair, every rustle of fabric in the room, creating an invisible map of what was happening all around him.
I typed in another search command, then watched in dismay as the computer screen blurred and crashed. A string of orange words, fail, fail, fail, scrolled across the screen before it finally went black and winked out.
“It’s almost closing time, anyway,” Fang said.
“Can we sleep here?” Iggy said softly. “It’s so quiet. I like it in here.”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” I said, looking around. I hadn’t realized that most people had left—we were the only ones in the room. Except for a guard, in uniform, who had just spotted us. She started walking toward us, and something about her, her tightly controlled pace, made my inner alarms go off.
“Let’s split,” I muttered, pulling Iggy out of his chair.
We skittered out of there, found the stairs, and raced down as fast as we could. I was expecting Erasers at any moment. But we burst out into the dim late-afternoon light and ran down the stone steps without anyone following us.
82
“Can we take the subway back to the park?” Nudge asked tiredly.
It was late. We’d decided to sleep in Central Park again. It was huge, dark, and full of trees.
“It’s only about eighteen blocks to walk,” I said. But Angel was starting to fade too—she wasn’t back to a hundred percent by a long shot. “Let’s see how much it would cost.”
Five steps down the subway entrance, I was already tense. Nudge, Angel, and the Gasman were too tired to hate being in an enclosed space, but Fang, Iggy, and I were twitching.
The fare was two dollars a person, except kids under forty-four inches, who were free. I looked at Angel. Even though she was only six, she was already over four feet tall. So that was twelve dollars.
Except the fare booth was empty. So we’d have to use the automatic fare machine. That is, if we were going to be troubled about a small thing like hopping over the turnstile when no one was looking.
Once we were inside, ten minutes went by with no train. Ten loooong minutes with me feeling like I was about to start screaming and climbing the walls. If we’d been followed, if Erasers came . . .
I saw Iggy turn his head, listening to something from inside the dark tunnel.
“What?” I asked.
“People,” he answered. “In there.”
“Workers?”
“I don’t think so.”
I peered into the blackness. Now that I concentrated, I could hear voices too. And way down the line, I saw what looked like the flickering of a fire—its reflected glow from around a bend in the tunnel.
I made a snap decision, which always makes the flock feel so safe and comfortable.
“Let’s go,” I said, and I jumped off the platform and onto the tracks leading into the darkness.
83
“What does that mean?” the Gasman asked, pointing at a small metal plaque that said Stay off the third rail!
“It means the third rail has seven hundred volts of direct current running through it,” Fang said. “Touch it and you’re human popcorn.”
“Okay,” I said. “Good tip. Everyone stay off the third rail.”