Page 52 of So Insane

“Oh, thank God!” the girl said, weeping and throwing her arms around Faith. “Thank you!”

“What’s your name?” Faith asked.

“I’m Shawna,” she said. “Shawna Leavenworth. My girlfriend, Frankie, is still here somewhere. I’ve been trying to find her. He… he told us we had to find the way out. I don’t know where he is or if he’s still looking for us, but please, please help me find her.”

“I will find her,” Faith promised, “but you need to go back to the surface.”

“No,” she said, “not without Frankie.”

“You’ll just be in the way down here,” she said. “It’ll be easier for me to find Frankie if you’re safe up top.”

“No,” Shawna protested. “I can’t stop looking for her. I can’t leave her like that. She wouldn’t leave me.”

Faith put both hands on Shawna’s shoulders. “Listen, Shawna,” she said gently. “I will find Frankie. But you won’t be any help to me or to her down here. We need to get you back to the surface, then I will go find Frankie, do you understand?”

“No,” Shawna repeated, shaking her head. “I don’t know the way. He blindfolded us.”

“That’s okay,” Faith assured her. “I’ll lead you back.”

“No!” Shawna cried again, “We can’t waste that time! He’s looking for us. If he’s looking for her first, he might find her while we’re wasting time trying to get me back to the surface. We need to find her!”

Faith's heart broke for her, but she had a job to do. "We'll find her," she said, her reassurance hollow in her own ears, "but if I take you with me, it will slow me down. It's better to get you upstairs, and then I don't have to slow down so you can keep up with me."

“I won’t slow you down,” Shawna promised. “I’m not as hurt as I look. I can keep up.”

“I’m sorry,” Faith replied. “The answer’s no.”

“What if it was your girlfriend?” Shawna challenged. “Or your boyfriend? Would you leave them behind?”

Faith thought of the note West had left with Gordon’s body, the threats he’d made against David and Michael. It would be easy to use the excuse that Faith was a trained agent, but even if she wasn’t, she knew the answer would be the same.

“No,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t.”

“Then you can’t ask me to leave Frankie behind,” was, of course, Shawna’s immediate response.

Faith sighed and shook her head. She considered her options. If she took Shawna up top, then Shawna would certainly survive, but the time wasted would mean that Faith couldn’t find Frankie. However, Michael and Jones still had a chance to find her. On the other hand, if she took Shawna with her, she risked Shawna getting hurt or killed and might not even find Frankie anyway.

But then again, she might. And Frankie’s chances were much better with Turk’s nose helping. She supposed she could tell Turk to keep looking without her, but then she was banking on his nose being good enough to keep him from falling into a shaft with no light to warn him of dangers.

So if she went topside, Turk went topside, and Frankie's chances of survival dipped considerably. If Faith took Shawna with her, then Faith was relying on her and Turk's ability to subdue the suspect before he could harm Shawna, something that might be complicated if Shawna lost her cool and tried to fight the suspect herself.

So, did she endanger Shawna to increase Frankie's chance of survival? Well, Shawna had already indicated a willingness to make that choice, and Faith knew the feeling well enough to know Shawna meant what she said.

Faith sighed and shook her head. “You do exactly as I say without question. If we encounter the suspect, you don’t fight him. At all. Not for any reason. That’s my job, mine and Turk’s. You stay out of harm’s way, and you do exactly as I say. If you can promise me that you’ll do that, then I’ll take you with me.”

“I promise,” Shawna said, “I just can’t leave here without her. It’s… it’s my fault that we’re here.”

Faith knew guilt well enough to know that nothing she said would help alleviate Shawna’s. The only cure for that was finding Frankie.

“All right. Follow me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The dweller moved through the tunnels, his bare feet soft and quiet against the stone. Every so often, he clicked his teeth, judging his position by the resonance of the echo. He sniffed the air, his senses focused on his prey.

He was not blind, but sight was of little use in the darker parts of the tunnels. He navigated by memory and his other senses.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been underground. His memories of his time aboveground were foggy. He remembered his parents, of course. They were the reason he was here, the reason he killed. This mine was sacred, a shrine to their deaths and the deaths of their friends. Yet people continued to desecrate their graves as though they didn’t matter, as though this place was nothing more than a tourist attraction.

---