True to his word, Brian is familiar enough with the organization of the pipes that descending them is a possibility, if only a terrifyingly slim one.  The longest portion of our night is spent placing one foot and hand at a time on the next slippery rung.  Some are ice cold and numb our skin with rushing water beneath their surfaces, while others are hot enough that we can’t risk standing on them for more than a few seconds without risking a burn on our already substantially abused bodies.  Mercifully, some are wound tightly together like the bars of a jungle gym, to allow us to take brief rests, but still others are broad and too smooth to have any kind of trustworthy handhold, so we have to rely exclusively on feeling for each other’s ankles in the dark.

                Brian leads the way, warning us of the temperature on each new pipe, or of tricky maneuvers for step placement.  I know Kelly once held a summer job at a rock climbing gym.  The task’s different now, to say the least, and exponentially more dangerous, but it’s something we can use.  In spite of the hellish nightmare of our lives in the last day, Kelly’s voice remains steady and calm all the way: probably the nursing student in her.

                “Just one limb at a time.  Find a home for it, and then switch to another one,” she says, paraphrasing softly at the occasional interval when Brian or I have slowed up.  The words are indirect, and little help for someone like me with limited coordination, but she manages to be a comfort all the same.  I still wish Gina was here to hang onto.

                The descent takes longer even than I would’ve thought, and each time I put my foot down another step of the pipes, only to nearly hit blank space and an untimely demise, I marvel at how much further I would’ve fallen if I had slipped up any higher than this.  Of course, the effect only expounds the lower we go.  My stomach is knotted so tightly I eventually put it out of mind, as though my head is inflated with helium, and I’m just deflating slowly into the blackness.

                Reaching the floor unscathed is particularly unexpected and I can’t help but cringe when I press my foot against the cold, unmoving earth that won’t threaten to betray me to gravity if I lean too far in one direction.  Security is something I’m unfamiliar with in general at this precarious stage of life.  I think all three of us are surprised to not have become a meager splatter on the floor already as we check up on one another for injury, as if the borrowed time we’re living on just got a second extension.  For us, that time has already become a meaningless construct, and perhaps just as troubling, my weary muscles have become string cheese.

                Once we’ve hit the sacred, dusty ground, we’re drenched in grease from the pipes and our own anxious sweat, and however afraid we are to try it, we’re all wiped out enough that sleep is an option.  After thoroughly searching this stretch of the inner wall, punching into pink insulation and powdery exterior layers to test their resolve, we reach the conclusion that Julia wouldn’t be able to reach us in our exposed states unless she bulldozed directly through the barrier with heavy construction hardware.

                Which, knowing our rapacious sixteen-year-old foe as well as we and especially I do, isn’t quite outside the realm of possibility.

                Unfortunately, we’re tired enough to accept those odds.

                We sleep in shifts as though we’re huddled in the muddy trenches of a major battlefield from those school textbooks I haven’t had the privilege of reading on a normal scale in more than two years.  Temporary safety is seemingly ours, but rationality isn’t enough now to confirm it.  This is just the paranoia we’ve inherited from our former owner at work again.  Frankly, no amount of bulletproof steel or walls of towering flame would be enough to convince us that we can afford to make ourselves vulnerable so long as Julia is on the warpath.

                So Brian takes the first watch in front of the wall, still too enraged and mournful and a bunch of other stinging sensations to be able to fall asleep unless on the verge of collapse.  Which, luckily for the continued functioning of our central nervous systems, all three of us are.

                After his roughest estimation of two hours, Brian starts to pull me awake, but Kelly, apparently only lightly sleeping herself, stops him and volunteers to take the next watch instead.  Gratefully, I fall back into fitful sleep almost immediately, sucking up as much of this power nap as I can.  It may be the last chance we have to sleep before whatever undoubtedly insane rescue plan we’re about to enact.

                And depending on how successful we are, it may be the last chance we have for a nap any shorter than eternity.

                I can tell Kelly doesn’t want to have to wake me up after her two hours that I strongly suspect added up more to three.  Still, fair’s fair, and I have a responsibility to do my part and ignore how loudly my sore body is screaming for more life-giving rest.  It’s lonesome work just sitting in one spot and glaring into the void, but there’s a certain calm to it, even with all the worry I feel for Gina and the baby.  I can’t allow myself to get too caught up in terror for them or my judgment and decision-making will be severely impaired, and that’s really all it’ll take for Julia to win.  She’s already holding all the cards.  A single flinch from one of us and the game is over.

                Midway through my shift, I feel a firm hand on my shoulder jolting me from my iron-sight stupor, and we’re off again down the dark path without another word.  There are far fewer pipes this low to the ground now, so our journey is much quicker.  Even with as little sleep as all of us got, it’s done wonders to help us recover from the climb, and I can feel the shared energy as we march into the dank and horrifyingly unknown future.  It’s do or die now, literally.

                “We need to get into one of those grates,” Kelly comments after a lengthy silence, vaulting over a low-hanging plank.

                “What do you mean?” Brain says.

                “You know.  The ones we saw when she showed us the video feed.  The panels near the floor,” she says.

                “Weren’t those air vents?” I ask.

                “No.  The house is old.  Practically a museum.  Those are maintenance access.  Not like you could fit a person through them, but-”

                “I think we might be the exception,” Brian says with a nod.  “We can’t be far from one.  I think we’re in the front now, near the living room.  Where she…”

                “You’re right,” Kelly says before Brian can think too deeply about being so close to where his sister died between Julia’s treacherous lips.  “Anyone remember seeing one there?”

                “I think I do,” I say.  “Maybe ten feet away from the fireplace.”

                “Great.  Let’s get moving,” Kelly says.  She takes each of us by the hand and continues leading forward through the barren murkiness.

                Another twenty minutes of trekking brings us into what we can only assume to be the living room.  The air in the wall is warmer now, which comes as welcome news to three naked people who’d look pretty pathetic standing next to a classroom ruler.

                Freedom, sleep, and now heat.  All we need now is the means to send Julia on a one-way trip to hell and I think we’ll be more or less satisfied.  I also wouldn’t mind some clothes, real food, and an eternal embrace from Gina, but there’s no sense in getting selfish when we’re still firmly on the losing side.

                Brian spots the streaks of light first spooled out in triplets on the wall as we turn a corner, indicating a possible way out, no more than a foot ahead of us.  “C’mon.  Let’s-”

                “Shhh,” Kelly hisses suddenly, clasping her hand over Brian’s mouth.  Stunned, he freezes, failing to understand.  Then he hears it, and so do I.  Our synced heartbeats are thrust into sickening overdrive.

                Footsteps.  Bare feet padding across hardwood.  Delicate and purposeful, but sending seismic rumblings through the walls all the same.

                “I wonder where my pretty little pets all got off to?” a feminine voice croons merrily, ringing in our ears like some demonic backwards song.

                There’s a clattering in the panel: fingernails tapping against the edge, followed by metal twisting on metal.  With the scratching of rusty screws and a leaden groan, the grate is ripped away and spills light into our tunneled hovel.  I feel Brian’s arm around my neck, yanking me forcibly backward, along with Kelly, who’s snatched my arm and done the same, stumbling silently into the relative safety of the dark again.

                “I hope they’re not scared of little old me and what I’m going to do to them once I get my hands on them…” Julia whispers a little too kindly.

                Shadows dance angrily over our small source of inherited morning light as a hand, slender, white, and full of terrible promise unfurls into our path, fingers dancing back and forth in the air as though beckoning us into the greedy palm.

                “…even though they probably should be.”