Tunnels 03, Freefall

it out and then slumped down on the ground, slapping the flat of the blade against his palm as he contemplated the situation.
    It didn't look very promising.
    It may have been because of this, or because the adrenaline was wearing off, but he found he was overwhelmed by intense feelings of hopelessness and futility. Even if it was possible to get to the main tunnel again, he didn't feel very confident that he'd be able to find his way back to the WolfCaves. He knew that was where Martha would expect him to go. Then he thought about the shack. He shook his head. No, he'd never be able to remember the route, and in any case, the food would have run out long before they reached it.
    He thought about Chester. He should have listened to his friend and not allowed himself to be won over by Rebecca One. He kicked himself for having been taken in by her. Maybe Rebecca Two had been right when she said he was weak -- maybe the twins would always triumph over him.
    Will's roll call of self-recriminations didn't end there; he shouldn't have doubted Martha as he had. Yes, she had withheld information from them that proved vital in saving Elliott, but it was through a misguided desire to protect both him and Chester. And as for Bartleby... even Will's faithful companion had turned on him.
    Then there was Elliott. She was half Styx! He should have seen that one coming -- the girl had all the skills and stealth of a Limiter. The more he thought about it, the more obvious it had been. She'd never actually said why she'd left the Colony, and though she'd talked about her mother, her father had never been mentioned. And she bore such a striking physical resemblance to the Styx. She was sinew-thin, and yet so strong. Of course she had Styx blood in her.
    Somehow these deceits and revelations didn't touch him as much as they should. Maybe nothing could really touch him any more -- not after all the things he'd endured.
    But, as he reflected further, there was something which had shaken him to the core, making him feel like he should just give up. The day he'd long dreamt of, then had come to believe would never arrive, was finally here.
    He'd been reunited with his father... and it couldn't have been more of an anticlimax.
    His father was just another stupid, bumbling grown-up who had no idea what was going on around him, like all the others.
    "What's the bloody point?" Will murmured, fighting back the tears as he sunk lower into his despondency.
    Dr. Burrows cleared his throat to let Will know he was there. "I've got this," he said, tugging a small package wrapped in grease-stained paper from his pocket. "It's meat. I managed to tuck some of it away when nobody was looking -- in case of emergencies." He made a big show of adding it to the pile of food, but Will didn't say anything. In the ensuing silence, Dr. Burrows hovered there, making clicking noises with his tongue.
    "Was that really a submarine?" he finally asked.
    Will didn't look up as he answered. "A modern one... Russian and nuclear powered, but there was no sign of the crew."
    Dr. Burrows whistled. "How did--?"
    "It must have been sucked down one of the voids... maybe it was drawn in as a plate shifted in the sea bed somewhere. Who knows?"
    "Voids?"
    "There are seven of them... called the Seven Sisters. We fell down the one known as the Pore," Will informed him, his voice flat. "Martha took us to another she called Puffing Mary."
    "Puffing Mary," Dr. Burrows repeated, nodding. "And those flying creatures?"
    "The Brights. They're insects or arachnids, or something," Will said, his head still bowed as he jabbed the point of his cutlass into a slab.
    "Do you know," Dr. Burrows began hesitantly, then took a breath. "Do you know when it just appeared from nowhere like that, I actually thought it was an angel ," he admitted, giving an embarrassed laugh. "The suggestion just popped into my head... and I call myself educated."
    "An angel?" Will mumbled.
    "Yes, I suppose because of its white coloration and its wings, and most of all because the light above its head looked uncannily like a halo."
    Will nodded, drawing the blade of his cutlass from the fungus with a slurping sound. "Martha said they were around on the surface long before people were."
    "How very interesting," Dr. Burrows said as he found himself a small boulder to perch on. "Imagine... imagine if everything we associate with the archetypal image of an angel derives from a prehistoric insect... and if the remote memory