Mytro

Chapter 16: Theatergoers

enough that Turtle was sure someone would notice. He pulled up to what looked like a blank, brick wall and slowly edged the car forward, inch by meticulous inch, giving it a little gas and then letting go. The front bumper touched the brick, and the wall started to move and fold up on itself on invisible hinges like a garage door. The bricks, which looked heavy, then tipped up enough to let the Jeep through and then slowly fell back down, grinding into place with a sound of gravel on gravel. Turtle turned around to watch the wall fall back into place, but by the time he craned his neck enough to see, the wall had already closed with a thump.

The Jeep's front lights shot bright beams into the Mytro station. In the harsh halogen, the Mytro looked much more real, much less like something out of a museum. Wisps of dust floated in the beams and there was dirt in between the tiles, grime that seemed pressed into the cracks by whatever forces propelled the trains along the tracks and into the dark.

There was a crack in the crazed green wall tile, and there was a spot on the wall where one had fallen off. Behind the tile—as far as Turtle could tell—was packed dirt. It looked darker than normal dirt, and smooth, and none of it had fallen out, suggesting that it was packed tightly into the space behind the wall.

This Mytro platform was marked "Bay Ridge Fifth Avenue Theatre." A pair of masks, comedy and tragedy, were arrayed over the main door. The larger door they came through was now nowhere to be seen. All that remained was a small, human-sized door, made of wood and bands of iron with a simple knob that shone as if it had just been polished. Turtle looked up and down the wall to see how the door had grown so large, but there was no evidence of it ever having moved. Even the dust at the edge of the floor was undisturbed except where the Jeep's tire tracks ground it away now and, Turtle assumed, when Mr. Kincaid drove through to get them.

"So we could bring anything in here?" asked Turtle.

"A truck, probably, yes. Anything bigger and I doubt it would fit. We also got lucky with that door. When I heard the gate screech like that, I was sure we'd be spotted."

"What would happen then?" asked Agata.

"The problem with the Mytro is that if it thinks it's been seen, it

will shut the door faster than you can blink," said Mr. Kincaid. "I've seen people get knocked out of the way with a gust of wind and sometimes the Mytro just won't open."

Turtle gulped as he imagined the door slamming shut on them as they rolled through.

"They built this one behind a theater. They actually used to use it to transport heavy scenery from Broadway out to this area," said Mr. Kincaid, pointing to the masks. "It's one of the few Mytro stations that was used by more than just experts for a long time. The owners of this theater knew all about it, and they had a side business, during Prohibition, running whiskey from the pier out here over to Manhattan."

"So people used these tunnels? Regularly?" asked Turtle.

"Absolutely, probably a hundred years ago. Then something happened that stopped all that. That's one of the things we were researching. We're trying to figure out what happened."

The wind suddenly picked up. A train was coming. Turtle took a deep breath and smelled the polished, dusty closeness of the small station, smaller than the ones Turtle had seen so far. It looked like an afterthought, the way some subway stations looked lonely in the outskirts of the Bronx and Queens.

This station was a little less ornate than the Central Park station. A wide platform was made of red brick and there were large, plain letters above the track bed with arrows pointing to Staten Island to the south and Green-Wood to the north. Green-Wood was the cemetery that took up most of the adjoining neighborhood, so it must have been another stop on this particular line.

Mr. Kincaid pointed toward the signs. "They put up those signs to make people feel comfortable, but in fact, the Mytro is nonlinear. There are no 'lines,'" he said.

"Not to be rude, Mr. Kincaid, but where are we going? And how are we getting there by Jeep?" asked Turtle.

"The Mytro adapts. That's what Agata's father was studying, and that's what I studied, for a while. The way it's adapting now is to protect itself from an outside enemy. That enemy is after the Mytro and they're trying to control it. That's what Agata's father and mother ran afoul of."

"And that's who was after me?" asked Agata.

"They're on the Mytro already?" Mr. Kincaid asked.

"There were men—two of them—with guns. I think they were trying to grab me in Barcelona. They shot at my uncle. I need to know if he's OK."

"This is all pointing to one thing, Agata. Did your uncle tell you about the Conductor's Key?"

"No," she said.

Suddenly, out of the dark, came the Mytro. It consisted of three cars, two passenger cars on the front and the back and a large, flatbed carrier made of filigreed iron in the middle, its bed made of roughly hewn wood. A wisp of straw peeked out from between two edge boards and fluttered into the air as the train approached the station.

"Then hang on. We're going somewhere they can't find us to think this whole thing out."

"Where?" asked Turtle.

"You're going to love this, Turtle."

The carrier came up just to the edge of the platform, which

meant the entire car was far lower than the passenger cars flanking it. Mr. Kincaid maneuvered the Jeep alongside the flatbed and then onto it, parking it and pulling the handbrake for safety. Suddenly, the Mytro began to move, rattling into the darkness again, which soon overtook them. Sparks began to shoot up from the wheels as they picked up speed, and the Mytro veered to the left wildly, shaking back and forth for a moment and then righting itself and continuing on into the darkness.

"Where are we going?" yelled Agata over the screaming wind, her words ripped from her mouth.

"To Barcelona," yelled Mr. Kincaid.

The train roared on through the tunnel, and Turtle tried to count how long they were in the dark. He made it to 60 before the silence hit, a wall of total silence and space that seemed to be crystalline, the lights of the front car refracting into the darkness. Wherever they were, Turtle couldn't count anymore.