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Two more tours passed through, each one forcing us to scurry back to our shadowy hideout. I was beginning to feel like that traumatized spider I’d encountered earlier, trying to hide every time the humans passed through. When it was late in the afternoon, the tours stopped coming. There was no light coming through the glass sidewalk that made up sections of the ceiling. Evening had fallen upon Seattle. Laura and I huddled together on the dusty red sofa. We decided to wait a few hours longer in the Underground darkness, hoping that Dwight’s men would give up the downtown search.

“Plus, we’re probably locked in here. I really need to pee, Dev. What should I do? I can’t see that well.” Just then the security lights clicked on, such as they were. They were dim green lights lining the wall near the board walkway. At least we could see each other.

“Go pee behind the plywood. I’m never going to hide behind that thing again.” I was starting to get itchy. “There’s probably enough mold in here to crash my entire immune system. And I don’t even want to think of the rats.” I regretted saying the R-word the minute it came out of my mouth.

“Rats! That’s right. Oh, yuck. I hate rats, Dev. How can I go pee now?” She huddled close to me on the couch, as if I could protect her from underground vermin.

“C’mon, we’ll walk down the boardwalk a little ways, and you can pee off the edge. I’ll even join you.” We shuffled about a hundred feet down the walkway, pulled our pants down, and relieved ourselves. It was a refreshing moment.

Just as we’d returned to the red couch, music started playing. Both of us jumped and ran toward Laura’s bag where the music came from.

“Your phone’s on! Damn it, Dev. You left your phone on. They could track us.” Laura had a hand on her hip and was berating me like an ornery schoolteacher.

“Hey, it’s in your bag. You’re the one who lifted it from my bedroom.”

We stared down at the bag that sat innocently on the red sofa playing “Toxic” by Britney Spears. Laura looked at me in bewilderment. “‘Toxic’?”

I shrugged. “You expected klezmer music?”

*

The phone stopped playing “Toxic” before I could answer it. Laura and I looked at each other in silent question about whether I should return the call.

“I’ll just check and see if there’s a message,” I said. There was. Fitch.

“Who knew it snows in Colorado in October? My flight was postponed several times today, but I’m finally taking off in an hour. I’m turning this phone off now. Sorry about the delay. I won’t get home till late, late, late. Where are you, anyway? Call me. We got a busy day tomorrow, Devy.” I flinched at the “Devy” and closed my phone.

“That was Fitch. My researcher, the one who verified the bombing of the clinic in Colorado.”

“Can she come get us? I really don’t want to spend the night down here, Dev. Not with the natural inhabitants of this ecosystem and not with the ghosts probably lurking in corners.” Laura cast an edgy look around.

“I’m not sure we have any choice. Fitch is stuck in Denver, at least for a little while, and I’m not sure who we can trust at this point. The wormy fingers of a U.S. senator can reach into places unavailable to us mere civilians.” I turned my phone off, probably too late to avoid getting traced.

“Should we just go back to the entrance and try to break out? Maybe someone will hear us and let us out.”

“The street’s probably not safe. I think we should sit here for a few hours and wait. Just before morning, we’ll either bust down the locked Underground Tour entrance or punt and call the police.”

“You know the Stratton crowd has already weaseled its way into the Seattle Police Department. They are not a safe bet.” Laura sat next to me and cradled her wrist. I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close. She felt like the only stable and certain thing in the world.

She cuddled closer. “Will I ever be warm again?”

We leaned back into the sofa. “I’m getting a small hint of what it was like for my relatives as they hid in basements and crawlspaces, worried the Gestapo would find them. And my chances are better than theirs were.” Hopelessness started to crowd my enjoyment of Laura’s body next to mine.

“Hey, you’re right. Our chances are far better, sweetheart. Stratton’s party hasn’t the power of the Gestapo, even though it wishes it had. We’ll get out of this, and we’ll tell the world what we know. I have the proof of her abortion. Maybe there will be no direct connection between her and the clinic bombing, but with the other deaths, there is a compelling case for her and Greenfield’s culpability in this…this madness.” Laura started to gently cry.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Hey, you’re my rock. Don’t get all crumbly on me now.” I took her shoulders and looked into her eyes.

Laura wiped her tears. “Maybe Elizabeth and I happened a decade ago, but I did love her. And even though the relationship is long over, some of that love is still there. It exists within me. Once I love someone, I always love that person. I’m not ashamed of that. It’s how my heart works.” She looked to me as if she needed understanding. “I don’t want to hurt Elizabeth, but I have to remind myself that she’s different now. And…my heart…it’s looking in a different direction.” Laura and her capacity for love, she was marvelous.

“Laura, maybe on some level, your love for Elizabeth will be what saves her. I truly believe she does not want to be the monster she’s become. She was programmed early on for power, but her emotions have sometimes thwarted her programming. Witness her unplanned relationship with you. She may not know it consciously, but she wants to be stopped. I felt her ambivalence the night I did that reading for her. The night I first saw you.” I pulled Laura into me, feeling the preciousness and mystery of our connection.

We lay quietly for a while.

Then Laura sat up and straddled my lap. “My wrist hurts and I’m trapped with thousands of rats,” she said, “but I can only think of one thing to do to pass the time.” She leaned in and kissed me, her mouth open and searching. No buildup or fumbling around, only a furnace of raw desire. I was surprised, but I wasn’t going to fight her off.

Like when we made love at Tranquility, she worked the band out of my hair as if threading her hand through my locks was a crucial pleasure ingredient. She moaned into my mouth, making my belly grip and quiver. My center began throbbing, insistent in its craze to make me wet and ready for her.

“How do you do this to me?” I was gasping, mindless of our appalling surroundings.

“I should ask you the same question.” Her voice caught as small tremors began shuddering through her. She took nips and sucks beneath my ear and moved down my neck to my shoulders. Then she licked her way back up to my ear where her lips made me lose all control when she whispered, “I want it. I want you. Now, Dev.”

If I ever had any illusion that attorneys were tight and staid, it disappeared when Laura pushed me onto my back on that dusty sofa and ordered, “Pants down.”

I kicked off my shoes, pledging to myself that my feet would not touch that gritty floor. Then I worked off my yoga pants and settled back, waiting for her direction. Laura, on her knees and straddling my legs, gazed at my panties for a long moment.

“I have a secret,” she said. Her voice was husky. “I fantasize about sex in strange places.”

“Let’s make it more than a fantasy.” I fought to catch my breath. I was in flagrant need of her. “Do what you want to me.”

She hooked her finger into the waistband of my panties and took her time pulling them down. She studied me and ran her hand along my belly. “Touch yourself. The way you like it.”

Touching myself is something I happen to be pretty good at. I obliged her. As she watched my gradual loss of control, her breathing became ragged. Her hand dipped under her own waistband, and her rhythm matched mine.

I managed to demand, “Show me.”

She removed her hand and pushed her sweats down so the string top pushed against my legs. She wore light coral bikinis with a narrow edge of lace. She fingered the band for a few moments and watched me crave to see more. She pulled the panties low enough so I could see her fingers enter her. That sight was so sexy, I came in gripping fury. My head and ears pounded with the rhythmic rush kneading my body. When the waves of passion subsided, I turned my attention to Laura.

“Take those off and come here.” I have no idea how she removed her pants so quickly. It seemed only a few seconds before her wet center hovered over my face and then lowered to my mouth. It was the sweetest drink I ever had. And it took only a few strokes of my tongue before she came in my mouth, full and hard. Her nectar trickled from my lips.

The aroma of Laura’s climax didn’t sate me. I needed more. So I held her in place and tasted her until she came again. This time her legs quivered so violently that I allowed her to ease herself down and lie atop me. I wrapped my legs around her to keep her warm. We dozed, gorged and spent.

Later, we awoke and made love another tender time. Then we clothed ourselves to ward off the cool damp of the Underground.

“Laura, you know I don’t want to leave you after this is all over, don’t you?” I said, hoping she wouldn’t be frightened by my second, albeit indirect, declaration of love.

“It’s like you said, Dev. We are
bashert
.” She nuzzled her head on my shoulder and settled onto my frame to make herself as comfortable as possible. “Now, love, I need to drift away for a while.”

“Be my guest, Laura.” Her breathing deepened. She twitched a few times, then fell into sound sleep.

*

“Damsel, you have had coitus?” Pento was gazing down at me while I lay on the beach in the squeaky sand.

“Do I ever get to enter this place on my feet?” I struggled to standing. “And what makes you think I’ve had coitus, uh, sex?”

“I can feel your satisfaction, but you have an empty stomach. It growls.” He was right about that. I hadn’t eaten since the flank steak, whenever that was. Days? Hours? I was losing track of time.

“Tell me about Laura, Pento.”

“She is an innocent.” He cocked his helmeted head to the side as if I should know what he was talking about.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” If he knew about the past hour I’d spent with Laura, I wondered if he would still call her “innocent.”

“Her line carries the love that the Lady wishes to bestow on the world. Her line does not deal in power, subterfuge, or politics. The line of innocents is charged with compassion. It is an unfortunate line.” He looked so sad.

“Wait, you lost me there. You just said they carry compassion and love. What could be so unfortunate about that?”

“Oh, the innocents are mostly misunderstood. Some are blamed for others’ mistakes. I think your word is scapegoated. Some are great teachers, but their teachings eventually become distorted by their students. Innocents are philanthropists who become reviled by the very people they help. Innocents like your Laura work for justice and often see their efforts sour with the human desire for retribution.

“However, damsel, innocents make the small changes, the changes that make the biggest difference. A single act of love has far-ranging effects that we cannot predict.”

“What about an act of violence or cruelty? Don’t those have far-ranging effects too?” Pento was making sense to me for once.

“Yes, if they are not responded to by an act of love. An act of cruelty must have a loving response or the act will have a life of its own. The kinds of loving responses that neutralize cruelty most humans are capable of choosing, but the innocent cannot choose. The innocent has only one response, determined love.”

“Does Laura know about this? Has she been groomed too?”

“She is called innocent for a good reason. She only knows that she loves inordinately. It frightens her sometimes, her enormous capacity for compassion. And other humans assume it is a weakness, a failing of character. But there is one thing that should not be forgotten about the innocents: their love makes them ferocious. It is the paradox of the innocent. They can fight cruelty with a ferocity that can frighten even the strongest opponent.”

“What is my role in all this, Pento?”

“To remain true to what you know and your purpose. And to assist Laura, the innocent. Your skills will complement her, making your union a powerful antidote to the Malignity. Together, you have already restored some balance to the world. Your current task is nearly complete. Look around.” He swept his hand, directing my attention to the Theater.

At first, everything had its usual facsimile characteristic. But as I watched, the sand dunes started to wither, almost curl into themselves. The sea stopped abruptly its wave action and crackled as it too withered. Sea birds folded like paper and drifted into the diminishing water.

“So I’ll not see the Theater anymore, or you, Pento?” Something in me was cracking too, but it felt like grief.

“Damsel, I never leave you. Why do you think you are so good at meddling? Will we meet like this again, in the Theater? I cannot say. The Lady may need to deter the Malignity again in your lifetime.” He paused and smiled his false teeth smile. “Have you noticed? The Priestess has stopped calling you. You are her champion, but she can never show gratitude. It does not exist within her. She is a mystery. In the meantime, the Malignity will continue to exert its will wherever humans choose to delude themselves.”

“Wait, they help the Malignity with their delusions? Why must they continue? Can’t they be stopped permanently?” Every time I thought I understood Pento, he would say something to refute that impression.

“It is as I said before. The Malignity is necessary, but it also needs balance. Humans make choices. Embracing compassion is a choice, but so is embracing delusion in all its manifestations. The very nature of human experience is choice. But you need to have the variety of choices apparent to you. When the Malignity gets too powerful, humans lose choices, compassionate choices among others. That cannot be allowed.

“I and the others like me are tasked with keeping choice balanced for humans, but sometimes we fight amongst ourselves. We do not always agree on how much is too much. Do you see, damsel?”