Free Tunnels 02, Deeper by Roderick Gordon, Brian Williams

toiled in the rough ground at the edges of town or by the local dump. She observed him digging some surprisingly deep holes with guidance and encouragement, she assumed, from Dr. Burrows. How very, very ironic , she thought. Having eluded the tyranny of the Colony, it was as though her son was trying to return to it, like a salmon swimming upstream to its spawning ground.
    But though his name had been changed, what had happened to Will? Like her and her brother, Tam, he had Macaulay blood in him; he was from one of the oldest founding families in the Colony. How could he have changed so much for the worse in those years on the surface? What could have done that to him? If the message in the dead mailbox was correct, then it was as though Will had gone insane, like some insubordinate cur that turns on its master.

    * * * * *

    A bird screeched somewhere above her and Sarah flinched, crouching defensively behind the low branches of a conifer. She listened, but there was just the wind sifting through the trees and a car alarm sounding intermittently several streets away. With a last check of the Common behind her, she edged cautiously along the end of the Burrowses' garden. She stopped abruptly, thinking she'd seen light coming from between the closed curtains of the living room. Satisfied that it was just a stray beam of early moonlight poking its way through the clouds, she peered at the upstairs windows, one of which she knew had been Will's bedroom. She was pretty sure the place was deserted.
    She slipped through the gap in the hedges where a garden gate had once hung and crossed the lawn to the back door. She paused again to listen, then kicked over a brick at the side of the doormat. She wasn't in the least bit surprised to find the spare key still there -- Dr. and Mrs. were a careless couple. She used it to enter the house.
    Closing the door behind her, she raised her head and sampled the air, which was fusty and undisturbed. No, nobody had been living there for months. She didn't turn on the lights, even though her sensitive eyes were struggling to make out anything in the shadowy interior. Lights were just too risky.
    She stole down the hall to the front of the house and entered the kitchen. Feeling around with her hands, she discovered the work surfaces were clear and the cupboards emptied. Then she backtracked into the hall again and went into the living room. Her foot knocked against something: a roll of Bubble Wrap. Everything had been removed. The house was completely empty.
    So it was true: The family had been broken up. She'd read how Dr. Burrows had stumbled upon the Colony under Highfield and been transported to the Deeps by the Styx. Most likely he would have perished by now. Nobody penetrated very far into the Interior and survived. Sarah had no idea where Mrs. Burrows or her daughter, Rebecca, had gone, and she didn't much care. Will was her concern, very much her concern.
    Something caught her eye on the floor by the front door, and she crouched down to feel around. She found a pile of letters scattered on the doormat and immediately began to gather them up and cram them into her shoulder bag. Halfway through doing so, she thought she heard noises... a car door slamming... a muted footfall... and then the faintest suggestion of a low voice.
    Her nerves fired like electrical short circuits. She held absolutely still. The sounds had been muffled -- she couldn't tell how far away they'd been. She strained to hear anything more, but now there was only silence. Telling herself that it must have been somebody passing the front of the house or maybe just one of the neighbors, she finished collecting the last of the letters. It was high time she left.
    She hurried back through the dark hall and, stepping through the back door, had just turned to pull it shut when a man's voice sounded not inches from her ear. It was confident and accusatory.
    "Gotcha!" it announced.
    A large hand clamped on her left shoulder and