"Down," he said, and they did—settled—hands ready to lunge the second the hinge made a different sound.
The pin thought about it. Metal crowded metal, paint flaked. Gavin kept the saber's guard under the strap and levered patient, not hard. Madison held the sag of the gate with two fingers under the cross-rail. The woman stayed a shadow at Gavin's shoulder, weight forward. The crouched man put his palms to stucco and didn't steal space.
On the other side of the wood, Theo breathed like a man saving lines.
"Up another grain," Gavin whispered to the hinge. The pin lifted a hair and stalled. He reset the guard a thumb-width. The squeal stayed inside his bones.
Behind them, the utility gap grated—shoulders through slats, hips following. Leaves hissed. In the planter, something found its knees and forgot how knees worked.
"Time," Theo murmured through the wood. "Twenty."
"Don't gift him your ears," Gavin said. He felt the pin blink, then climb another flake. "There you go."
The strap rose a millimeter. The gate slackened in Madison's hands the way a stubborn linebacker shifts when cleats slip.
"Weight to me," Madison breathed.
"Now," Gavin said.
Madison stole the hinge relief. The pin cleared. Gavin slid the guard free and eased the gate an inch. Wood whispered.
From the rear, the utility gap exhaled a body onto the service walk. Elbows scraped stucco. A heel thumped concrete. The sound had hunger, not language.
"Through," Gavin said, voice the size of the hole. "One at a time."
The woman poured first—sideways, no scrape. The crouched man followed, hands up. Madison eased his mass through on an exhale.
Air at Gavin's back cooled as the gap-finder stood. He didn't look. He put his hip to the gate, made room, and came last—blade across, feet small.
Theo didn't tug the door. He let it breathe and said, pleasant as weather, "Fifteen."
Gavin let hinge and hasp kiss without latching, wood to wood, so a hand wouldn't get satisfaction.
"Inside rail," he said. Service walk tighter here—fence right, block left, gravel in seams. A round vent hummed above with the sleeping breath of a house [CHECK: power state at neighboring house].
They slid. Ahead, the walk bent left toward darker dark. To the right, a storage alcove stacked with planters. Wet paper and rosemary in the air.
"Hands away from slats," Gavin said. "Splinters talk."
"Ten," Theo said, closer where maps said he shouldn't be.
Maps lie, Gavin thought. Feet don't. He checked his people by sound—Madison's quiet engine, the woman's measured sips, the crouched man's careful nothing. The thing behind brushed the wood with its cheek.
At the bend the walk pinched—two bricks narrower. The fence showed a low gap where soil had settled; cold lives in low gaps. Beyond, lane light made a letter slot.
"Down and through," Gavin said. "Angle left. No knees on concrete."
The woman slid; the fence accepted her. The crouched man followed with practiced grace. Madison knelt, put one hand flat, and found the angle where physics nodded. The poker whispered and fell quiet.
Gavin pressed shoulder to fence belly, pushed earth until it agreed. Cold bit his cheek. Sky glow returned. He pulled through and let gravel take a beat.
"Left," he said. "Cold."
Right said light, people, language. Left offered hedge shadow and a low retaining wall, then a narrow run that smelled like damp rock. Theo didn't light either path.
They took left. Hedge brushed shoulders; wall sandpapered fingertips. The run bottlenecked where landscaping had given up: a glazed pot like a helmet, a ceramic rabbit, then a two-step drop to gravel and a wood gate with horizontal slats and a black hasp without a lock.
"Gate," Madison said. "Your side."
Two fingers under the tongue; wood yielded. The hinge sang; Gavin killed the note with his palm. Beyond, side yard, hose snare, a trash tote blocking the far third.
"Clear hose," he said. The woman toe-tested and stepped. Madison lifted the tote a hair and slid it quiet. The crouched man closed the gate without letting the hasp bite. Don't give locks work.
At the corner: another gate, taller, decorative iron pretending to help. Latch far side; old domed hinge pins their side.
"Over," the crouched man breathed. "Low drop other side."
Gavin tried height—fingers to scroll, foot to strap. "Too loud." Under-show: four fingers of black. Dirt bermed there, cat-made. Four can be five.
"We dig," he said. "Heels and fingers. Dirt stays our side."
Theo let the road breathe. "You don't have long," he observed, sanding nerve.
They knelt. Madison's huge hand became a trowel. The woman scooped with fingertips. The crouched man used the saber's flat as a spade. Gavin kept watch, blade crosswise, ear to fence and air.
The trench darkened. A palm fits a shoulder. "Test."
The woman slid, cheek taking scrape, braid rescued with two fingers. The crouched man folded and went. Madison exhaled pride and became less, chest sticking once, then forgetting to be chest.
Gavin turned shoulders into coins. The gate belly wanted the saber; he slid it flat and starved the idea. On the far side, air smelled of cut grass—last week, not tonight—and crawled his neck.
"Hold," he said. Ahead, a pocket cul-de-sac that had lived today: sprinklers wet everything; a sedan nose-out, door ajar; a porch light across the pocket glowed dumbly with a moth punishing itself [CHECK: motion/porch light state]. A sprinkler head clicked with no water.
"Road?" Madison asked, not convinced.
"Cold," Gavin said. The porch light made people into cutouts.
Theo's voice came from behind the far wall, unbothered. "That car runs," plausible. "Keys are in it. Lights make space."
"Lights make aim," Gavin said to the grass.
They hugged shrub shadow. The sedan made a dark triangle; the glow staged the front door. A WELCOME mat lied. Air conditioning breathed through the seam [CHECK: power state at this house].
"Don't," the woman whispered, eyes on the open door.
"I won't," Gavin said.
At the back wall, a drainage strip—concrete gutter, shallow flow, a culvert mouth big enough if you crouched and loved spiders. Past it, chain-link, then the honest dark of slope.
"Culvert?" Madison asked.
"Cold," Gavin said. "We can move under the street if it buys—"
Theo clicked his tongue too close. "Underground is panic's invention. You lose time there."
"Time's a lie," Gavin said, and levered the capstone. Sand-grit hiss. Enough belly-first.
"Order," he said. "Woman, then you—" to the crouched man, "—then Madison. I'm rear."
The woman slid—belly to cool concrete, hands catching moss, boots finding purchase. The crouched man followed; cut grass fell off him, mildew took over.
Madison made himself small and went. Gavin checked the pocket—the sedan, the door, the moth, the shine—and slid into bad-luck concrete.
Air changed. Sound changed. World went from sky map to tunnel math—echo small; neighborhood hum like a shell line. He saw backs as negatives against lighter concrete. He heard Theo where Theo liked to be: distant, patient, counting other breaths.
"Go low," Gavin said. "Hands on side wall. Feet soft."
They moved. Water that wasn't water slicked palms. Spiders held conventions and let them pass. The culvert turned left under the pocket toward the street.
At the street grate, a shape waited—fingers through rust, face pressed to smell. It made a sound that remembered language's shape without vocabulary.
"Knees," Gavin said.
Madison tapped fingers—two quick raps. The hand recoiled, then tried again. The woman hugged wall and slid; the crouched man turned paper and went. Gavin set the guard through the slot and lifted the hand's idea away. The grate shuddered and forgot to complain.
Beyond, a root found a seam; they ducked and let it comb hair. The air tasted older.
"Left branch," the crouched man whispered. "Smaller but darker."
"Dark," Gavin said.
Left carried them under lawn and hydrangea and someone's koi idea. A muffled splash above tried to be a clue. The tunnel kinked. Knees paid. Breaths counted.
The branch ended in a maintenance grate with four bolts and no new air. Not a door; a diagram. The night pressed like a hand.
"Back," Gavin said. "Right branch."
They reversed without talking. The main line returned. The right curved and breathed colder.
Ahead, light made an idea—blue-white, stuttering, not street. The sound with it wasn't voice or footfall. A pop-pop climbing and dying. Generator? Transformer? [CHECK: electrical source of blue-white stutter]
"Hold," Gavin whispered.
The woman stilled. Madison's mass vanished. The crouched man put his head to concrete like ear to a door.
The light flickered again, painting the next mouth of the culvert as a rectangle of ribs. The sound rode over it like somebody making a tired machine pretend.
"Through?" Madison asked.
"Through," Gavin said, and they moved toward the rectangle—out of tunnel math toward a question with light on it, while behind them the cul-de-sac kept its porch glow, the road its quiet, and Theo's patience rearranged itself.
At the rim: gravel beyond, and a small vibration above, human, like a skipped breath. Gavin raised two fingers; three bodies stopped. The light strobed. The vibration became words crushed into a fist: "Help—"
He didn't look back. He set the guard on the lip, and as the blue-white strobed again, he lifted his eyes into whatever it meant to show.
"On me," he breathed, and they went up into it.