Tunnels 04, Closer

Burrows could see, but in a different way from other people.
    She stepped to the front door and opened it to the deserted street. Then she unleashed her ability. It was as if she was sending out invisible tendrils, and those tendrils could bring information back to her, as surely as if she was seeing or touching anything they encountered. They went in all directions, to the houses opposite, to the ends of the street and beyond, always probing and sensing. There were no people close by -- she could divine that -- and it was only when she stretched a tendril way out that she came across the packed hall where vespers was underway. From the massed group of people inside came mixed emotions -- ennui, fatigue and the frisson of fear -- the Styx preacher must be giving his usual fire and brimstone sermon. But as she quickly recalled this tendril, it picked up something.
    "No!" she exclaimed, stepping fully outside the house and moving swiftly down the garden path, her nose in the air. She couldn't help herself, drawn to the scent she'd discovered, like a moth to a flame. Colly meowed plaintively, as if she thought Mrs. Burrows was mistaken to leave the house.
    "It's okay," Mrs. Burrows assured the cat. "Look -- there's nobody around."
    Arriving at the end of the street, Mrs. Burrows turned the corner, then passed down several more roads until she spotted the place she'd sensed. It was a house in the middle of a terrace. Sniffing to make sure it was the right one, she went up to the front door and pushed on it. It was locked, so she tried the windows on either side of the door, finding she could push one of the casements up.
    Straddling the sill, she entered. She found she was in a sitting room where the remnants of a fire burnt in the hearth, and plates with half-eaten food had been left on the dining table. She ignored all this, raising her head to sample the air again. She went directly to the rear of the house. There, propped against the back door, was the object that had brought her here.
    "Will," she said, reaching out to touch her son's beloved spade. She couldn't comprehend how it had come to be there, but she had to have it. She snatched it up, running a hand over the stainless steel blade and remembering how much care Will had taken of it. At the end of each day after his digs in Highfield, he would never fail to clean and polish it before going to sleep.
    But it wasn't the feel of the blade and the wooden shaft that he brought her here. Even after all these months in the Colony, the scent that still lingered on the spade conjured up a vivid picture of her son in her mind's eye. She smiled, but her smile was short-lived. As her brain had gradually healed and rewired itself, she realized she'd detached herself from the very reason why she'd ended up in the Colony in the first place. She'd been trying to help Will in his struggle against the Styx, and at this very moment she had no idea where he was, or even if he was still alive. The last time she'd seen him was at the Little Chef on the was to Norfolk, and she wondered how he'd fared deep in the bowels of the Earth on the quest that Drake had set him.
    "I can't stay here much longer. I've got to leave the Colony," she mumbled to the cat, who had followed her in and was watching her intently. "But we've got to leave this house right now!" she said urgently, as one of her olfactory tendrils alerted her to a burst of activity from the church several streets away. Mrs. Burrows tore back to the window and scrambled out into the street, dropping the spade in the process. "Damn!" she swore as she retrieved it, then began to run.
    "Keep up, Colly!" she hissed. She could sense the presence of people all around as they began to filter into the streets again. She wasn't far from the Second Officer's house when she realized that someone was approaching too rapidly from the opposite direction and would head her off. She sensed a pair of Colonists. She couldn't allow herself to be seen. Pulling the Hunter with her, she sheltered in an alleyway between two houses. Although her lack of sight didn't allow her to know for certain, she just hoped that she was out of the illumination shed by the orb street lights. The approaching Colonists were merely two young children -- a boy and a girl -- and they ran straight past, laughing and shouting.
    As soon as they had gone, Mrs. Burrows emerged from the alleyway and sprinted down the pavement to the house. Once inside, she his the spade