Page 95 of Only a Monster

Joan exchanged a glance with Aaron. The last thing Ruth looked right now was quick.

Ruth guided them away from Tower Bridge to a round brick structure, filthy with caked dirt. Tufts of grass sprouted from cracked concrete around the brick.

‘Lavatory?’ Aaron said dubiously.

‘Ventilation shaft,’ Ruth said. With two fingers, she mimed walking up onto the roof of the shaft, and then climbing down and down and down.

Joan could feel Ruth shaking with exhaustion as she and Tom boosted her up. Tom hoisted himself up next, one-handed, his muscles shifting with the effort. He’d tucked Frankie under one arm, and she craned inquisitively over his shoulder.

‘I’m fine,’ Ruth mumbled. ‘I’m fine.’ But she seemed to be saying it to herself, hoping to make it true.

They climbed down—three levels at least. Ruth’s gasping breaths got louder and louder. By the time they got to the bottom, her arms were shaking so much that Tom had to help her down the last rungs of the ladder.

‘Are you all right?’ Joan whispered.

Ruth nodded. ‘Listen for trains,’ she managed.

They were in an underground tunnel with a high, curving ceiling. Strips of metal arched overhead at regular intervals. Down the tunnel, the effect was of concentric arches. The wall was lit with old-fashioned swan-necked lamps. Train tracks ran along the ground.

‘Don’t touch the tracks,’ Ruth warned. ‘They’re electrified.’

‘What happens if a train comes?’ Joan asked.

Ruth gestured ahead. Between each pair of lamps, there was a recessed archway. There wasn’t one tunnel, but two, Joan realised, with the archways connecting them.

There was a glint of something bright near Joan’s foot. She wiped at the ground with her shoe. Under the dirt, between the tracks, there were tiles: white and blue, with a winding floral pattern.

‘There used to be a market down here in the 1800s,’ Aaron said. ‘People sold souvenirs in these archways. There were fortune-tellers. Monkeys.’

‘Don’t tell me you came slumming down here,’ Ruth said.

‘Tourists and slum dwellers are the best people to steal time from,’ Aaron said. When Joan looked over at him, he shrugged. ‘What?’

You know this is wrong, Nick had said. Joan thought about standing among all those gifts to the King. Those marvels, those horrors. She was struck with a sudden and intense yearning—so strong that, for a moment, she was afraid she was trying to travel. But it wasn’t a yearning for a different time. It was for Nick—for the Nick she’d known before all this.

She remembered again the time he’d rescued the wasp. It had been stuck in the Gilt Room, rattling behind a curtain. Kill it, one of the tourists had said, but Nick had captured it in a cup and released it outside. It’s just in the wrong place, he’d said.

Joan had trusted Nick’s judgment: his moral compass. Just being near him had made her feel like the person she’d wanted to be. And now . . . She folded her arms around herself.

She was so morally compromised now. It had been at the back of her mind all the time since the Pit. She remembered telling Gran all those years ago that she wanted to be Superman. You’re a monster, Gran had said.

As they walked down the tunnel, Joan became aware of a humming sound getting louder and louder. ‘What’s that noise?’ It didn’t sound like a train.

‘The pumps,’ Ruth said.

‘We must be under the river,’ Aaron said.

Joan looked up at the ceiling. The air smelled of damp concrete. It was scary to think that the Thames was roaring over them. It reminded Joan of the wave of power that had engulfed them as they’d fled Whitehall.

‘What exactly happened to us outside Whitehall?’ she said. ‘What did that man do?’

‘He hit us with the Patel family power,’ Aaron said. ‘He mired us in time. We won’t be able to travel again until the strike wears off.’

‘It wears off?’ Joan said.

The was a pause before Aaron answered, as if he’d heard something strange in her voice. ‘Eventually,’ he said.

‘Difficult to say how long we’ll be stuck in this time,’ Tom said. ‘Could be a day. Could be months.’

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