Tunnels 02, Deeper

repeated, slightly ashamed that he hadn't known better.
    "I can show you places where there's gold, places where you can fill your boots," Drake said as he surveyed the walls. "But what's the point if there's nowhere to spend it?" The coldness had returned to his voice. "Sort out your kit" -- he pointed at their rucksacks -- "we need to get going."
    Once the boys were ready, Drake turned and was off again, an imperious figure taking powerful, long strides down the exquisitely golden gallery.
    Marching briskly through a confusing maze of rock passages, they eventually came to a ramp leading up to a rough archway. Drake reached through the opening and felt to one side. He pulled out a knotted rope.
    "Up," he said, holding the rope toward them.
    Will and Chester hauled themselves up the thirty feet of so to the top and waited there, panting from the exertion. Drake followed up with no more effort than it would take a normal person to open a door. The boys found themselves in a sort of octagonal atrium, from which they could see openings leading to other faintly lit spaces. The floor was even and covered with silt, and as Will scuffed his boot on it, he could tell from the echoes that the adjoining rooms were of a reasonable size.
    "This'll be home for a while," Drake said, unbuckling the bulky belt around his waist. Slipping off his jacket, he slung it over his shoulder. Then he reached to the contraption in front of his eye and lifted it upward. It was hinged, revealing that his other eye was, in fact, quite normal.
    As he stood before them, the boys took in the musculature of his bare arms and how exceptionally lean and honed he was. His cheekbones were prominent, and his face so thin that the muscle groups composing it were almost visible through his skin. And every inch of his flesh, ingrained with dirt and the color of tanned leather, was lined by a mesh of scars. Some were large, bleached-white hyphens that stood proud, while others where much smaller, as if pale filaments had been trailed around his neck and the sides of his face.
    But his eyes, overhung by his prominent brow, were intensely blue, and simmered with such an awe-inspiring ferociousness that both Will and Chester found it hard to bear their scrutiny. It was as though their depths divulged a glimpse of some terrifying place, a place neither of the boys wanted to know anything about.
    "Right, wait in there."
    The boys began to shuffle toward the room Drake was pointing to.
    "But leave your rucksacks here," he ordered and, still facing the boys, added, "Everything OK, Elliott?"
    Will and Chester couldn't stop themselves from peering past Drake. By the top of the rope, the small girl was poised, stock-still. It was evident that she had never been very far behind, all the time they'd been walking but neither of the boys had noticed her presence until now.
    "You are going to restrain them, aren't you?" she asked in a cold, unfriendly voice.
    "Not necessary, is it, Chester?" Drake said.
    "No," the boy answered so readily that Will looked at him with barely concealed astonishment.
    "And you?"
    "Uh... no," Will muttered less enthusiastically.

    * * * * *

    Once inside, they sat unspeaking in the gloom on some rudimentary beds they'd found in there -- the only items of furniture in the room. Just long enough to accommodate the bys, there was little width to them, and their surfaces were barely padded at all -- like a couple of narrow tables with blankets thrown over them.
    As they waited, clueless as to what was going to happen next, the room reverberated with sounds from the corridor outside. There were the muffled tones of a conversation between Drake and Elliott, and then they listened as their rucksacks were upended and the contents tipped out onto the floor. Finally they heard retreating footfalls, then nothing.
    Will took a luminescent orb from his pocket and began to absentmindedly roll it back and forth across the top of his sleeve. Now that his jacket had dried, the action dislodged glittering grains of iron pyrite, which scattered to the ground in a small sparkling shower. "Looks like I've been to a disco," he muttered, and then, without missing a beat, he addressed his friend. "What's the deal, Chester?"
    "What do you mean?"
    "You seem to have thrown your lot in with these people, for some reason. Why do you trust them?" Will demanded. "You do realize they're just going to steal all our food and then ditch us somewhere? In fact, they'll probably