Tunnels 02, Deeper

began to stow it inside a pair of sizable rucksacks and two large bags with drawstring openings.
    Elliott suddenly fell silent. Will looked up from where he was kneeling. She was out of sight, behind one of the bunk beds, where she'd been yanking equipment out of Drake's locker. Whatever was in her hands, she carried it in such a way that Will could sense her reverence.
    "Drake's spare headset," she announced. Stopping before him, she held out her hands and offered it to him.
    Will regarded the leathery cap with its milky eyepiece and the cables trailing down to a small, flat, rectangular box, which swung gently in the air.
    "Huh?" he said, frowning.
    She didn't respond but held it farther toward him.
    "For me?" he asked as he took it. "Really?"
    She nodded.
    "Where did Drake get these things?" he said, examining the headset.
    "He made them. That was what he did in the Colony... The scientists took him in."
    "What do you mean, took him in? " Will asked quickly.
    "He was a Topsoiler, just like you."
    "I know -- he told me," Will said.
    "The Styx grabbed him. Every so often they go to the surface to snatch people with the skills they need."
    "No kidding," Will breathed in disbelief. "So what were Drake's skills? Was he in the army of something? Like a commando?"
    "He was a visual optics engineer," Elliott said, pronouncing the words carefully as if she was trying her tongue on an unfamiliar language. "He made these, too." She put her hand to the scope on the weapon hanging from her shoulder.
    "No kidding," Will said, weighing the handset in his hands. He recalled Elliott once mentioning that the Styx had abducted someone with the ability to develop devices that allowed them to see through the darkness. But Drake? Images of him flashed through Will's head: the scarred, lean man who inspired such respect next to stereotypical geeks wearing white lab coats with pocket protectors.
    "I really thought he'd been some sort of soldier," Will mumbled, shaking his head. "And that he'd gotten himself Banished from the Colony, like you."
    "I wasn't Banished!"
    Elliott responded with such passion that Will could only manage an apologetic grunt.
    "As for Drake... the Styx made him work on these. You know what I mean?"
    Will was hesitant in his reply. "They tortured him?"
    She nodded. "Until he did what they wanted. They'd haul him down here to the Deeps to field-test the devices, but the day came when he saw his chance and made a break for it. They must have thought they'd gotten all they could from him, because they didn't come looking."
    "That's so boss," Will said. "So he was a scientist, a researcher... a bit like my dad."
    Elliott made a face as if she had no idea what Will was talking about and had nothing more to add. She returned to the locker, where she continued to empty out its contents, every so often lobbing the odd item onto the bed.
    With bated breath, Will carefully put on the headset. Adjusting the strap so it was tight across his forehead, he made sure the lens was correctly positioned over his eye, testing it by hinging it up and down. As he tucked the rectangular box into a pocket, he realized how incredibly uneasy it made him to wear the contraption. He felt that the wasn't worthy of it.
    Maybe at the beginning, when he had first met Drake and wondered at the curious device, there would have been a thrill about wearing it, but not now. It had grown, in Will's mind, into an emblem of Drake's mastery of this underworld, a symbol of the man's standing, like a crown. It spoke of Drake's willingness to go up against the Styx and his supremacy over the motley pack of renegades who roamed the Deeps -- and, in Will's estimation, Drake was set apart from these. He was the epitome of all that Will would like to become: tough, practical, and answerable to no one.
    Elliott gathered up some further equipment and brought it over to the packs. Dropping it, she passed Will without so much as a glance and disappeared into the corridor. She was back a few moments later with a box of stove guns.
    "Pack these and then we're out of here."
    Will placed the guns in the backpacks, which, together with the other bags, he ferried over to the entrance of the base. He tied the end of the rope around the whole cargo and managed to lower it to the tunnel floor. He didn't relish the prospect of hauling it all across the causeway and back to the island -- it weighed a ton, and he suspected he'd be the one to bear the greater portion of it.
    As