Moonlight condensed into sinuous mercury trails on the asphalt as Allison's wheels crushed the reflection, and in the rearview mirror three black RVs were tearing the night to shreds. The metal box in Ethan's lap smelled of rust, and the ledger inside was labeled with the gas station receipt from the night Sarah disappeared- eighteen gallons of 92 gasoline, enough to burn a body in a lime kiln for six hours.
"Turn into the junkyard!" Ethan yanked on the steering wheel, and the rusty steel doors shrieked and swallowed the car. The rows of junked vehicles looked like a forest of rotting steel, and vines hung from the window openings, entangled in the tattered uniforms of miners who had disappeared twenty years ago.
Alison's fingers sink into the sticky cracks of the driver's seat, and she touches the half-rusted license plate - 0472 - that matches the crossed-out name on page three of the ledger. By the time the pursuers' headlights pierced the tin fence, Ethan had pried open the lid of the underground waterway, and the fetid wind rushed up, carrying with it the distinctive sulfurous whine of an underground river.
"They're hiding more in the vein," Ethan said, biting the flashlight between his teeth, the kestrel emblem flashing from the belt buckle at his waist, identical to the family crest at the bottom of Jackson's study drawer. "After the collapse that year, the mayor sealed the east wing tunnels with concrete."
As the water rose above her knees, Allison heard the beat of boot heels on iron plates overhead. Jackson's voice resonated through the pipes through a loudspeaker, "You should know what happens when you betray your family, old friend." The wall suddenly shuddered, the shockwave of the blast overturning the standing water, and Ethan pressed her against the moss-covered wall, the smoke of nitro and the sandalwood scent of his cuffs lingering on his nose.
In the emergency supply cabinet at the end of the switchback, they find a first aid kit from 1978. Between the bandages are yellowed newspaper clippings, the headline photo of a young Ethan's father shaking hands with Jackson's grandfather, and behind them, a mine with strike signs. Ethan cuts open the lining with his dagger and removes the microfilm negatives-hundreds of skeletons radiating in the flash like crushed moonflowers.
As the footsteps of his pursuers echo staggered through the tunnels, Ethan unlocked his necklace, and inside the pendant lay a half-piece of a bronze key. "Behind the blue door is the family confessional," he pressed the key into her palm, the blood of a bullet graze lingering on his fingers, "but confession has never belonged to the Jacksons."
As Allison crawled through the air ducts, she heard the muffled sounds of broken bones and Ethan's grunts of suppressed pain from below. As she huddled in the exhaust vent, trembling, she watched through the wire mesh as Jackson stepped on Ethan's bloodstained right hand, the heel of his boot slowly grinding down on the falcon emblem. "That's the same look your father had on his face when he hid the evidence," Jackson said, lifting the rusty log, "but concrete doesn't bleed."
Allison bit her lip and swallowed a scream at the dull thud of the log's tip into her flesh. Ethan's final gaze traveled through the iron mesh and over twenty years to coincide with the key in her palm. Cold air from the end of the ventilation ducts mingled with the stench of decay from behind the blue door of the confessional-the truth, marinated in lies for years, waiting to rip her soul apart.