Tunnels 01, Tunnels

are you doing?" Will demanded, thinking his brother had taken leave of his senses.
    "The Division uses stalker dogs -- bloodhounds -- around here. Any whiff of Colony on us and we're as good as dead. This slime will help cover our scent," he said, scooping up fresh handfuls of the brackish vegetation. "Your turn." Will braced himself as Cal doused the fetid weed over his hair, chest, and shoulders and then down each of his legs.
    "How can you smell anything over this?" Will asked irately, looking at the oily patches on his clothes. The reek was overpowering. "Those dogs must have some sense of smell!" It was all he could do to stop himself from being sick.
    "Oh, they do," Cal said as he shook his hands to rid them of the tendrils, then wiped them on his jacket. "We need to get out of sight."
    Crossing one by one, they passed swiftly over a stretch of boggy ground and into the city. They went under a tall stone arch with two malevolent gargoyle faces glaring down contemptuously at them, and then into an alley with high walls on either side. The dimensions of the buildings, the gaping windows, arches, and doorways, were huge, as if they'd been built for incredibly tall beings. At Cal's suggestion, they slipped through one of these openings, at the base of a square tower.
    Now out of the green light, Will needed his orb to study the map. As he pulled it out from under his coat, it illuminated the room, a stone chamber with a high ceiling and several inches of water on the floor. Bartleby scampered into one corner and, finding a heap of something rotten, he investigated it briefly before lifting a leg over it.
    "Hey," Cal said abruptly. "Just look at the walls."
    They saw skulls -- row upon row of carved death's heads covered the walls, all with toothy grins and hollow, shadowy eyes. As Will moved the orb, the shadows shifted and the skulls appeared to be turning to face them.
    "My dad would've loved this. I bet this was a--"
    "It's grisly," Cal interrupted, shivering.
    "These people were pretty spooky, weren't they?" Will said, unable to suppress a wide grin.
    "The ancestors of the Styx."
    "What?" Will looked at him questioningly.
    "Their forebears. People believe a group escaped from this city at the time of the Plague."
    "Where to?"
    "Topsoil," Cal replied. "They formed some sort of secret society there. It's said that the Styx gave Sir Gabriel the idea for the Colony."
    Will didn't have the chance to question Cal any further because suddenly Bartleby's ears pricked up and his unblinking eyes fixed on the doorway. Although neither of the boys had heard anything, Cal became agitated.
    "Come on, quick, check the map, Will."
    They left the chamber, cautiously picking their way through the ancient streets. It gave Will an opportunity to inspect the buildings at close range. Everywhere around them the stone was decorated with carvings and inscriptions. And he saw the decay; the masonry was crumbling and fractured. It cried out with abandonment and neglect. Yet the buildings still sat proudly in all their magnificence -- they had an aura of immense power to them. Power, and something else -- an ancient and decadent menace. Will was relieved that the city's inhabitants weren't still in residence.
    As they jogged down lanes of ancient stone, their boots scattered the murky water on the ground and churned up the algae, leaving faintly glowing blotches in their wake like luminous stepping stones. Bartleby was agitated by the water and pranced through it with the precision of a performing pony, trying not to splash himself.
    Crossing a narrow stone bridge, Will stopped briefly and looked over the eroded marble balustrade at the slow-moving river below. Slick and greasy, it snaked lazily through the city, crossed here and there with other small bridges, its waters lapping turgidly against the massive sections of masonry that formed its banks. On these, classical statues stood watch like water sentinels; old men with wavy hair and impossibly long beards, and women in flowing gowns, held out shells and orbs -- or just the broken stumps of their arms -- toward the water, as if offering up sacrifices to gods that no longer existed.
    They came to a large square surrounded by towering buildings but held back from entering it, taking refuge behind a low parapet.
    "What is that?" Will whispered. In the middle of the square was a raised platform supported by an array of thick columns. On top of the platform were human forms: chalky