The Prisoner by Carlos J. Cortes

and, refusing to think about what she was about to do, covered the distance to the hole in long strides and jumped feetfirst into the drain.
    When darkness swallowed her, Laurel braced for the impact, but it never came. She dropped for a long time, her mind feebly registering that Lukas must have lied. The chute must be hundreds of feet long, even thousands. Then something hard and slimy touched her shoulders and butt, pressing harder and harder until she had to release the breath she’d carefully held. Her legs and arms shot up the walls of a smooth cylinder, its surface racing under her touch. She surrendered to gravity and momentum, choking a gasp when sharp pain radiated from her left buttock. Then a pinprick of light below her pierced the gloom. The light grew, with it shesaw a rapidly approaching circle and, beyond, a figure with a striking likeness to Woody Allen. She almost laughed, but in the next instant she cannoned out of the tube, slammed down a couple of feet into a much larger cylinder, and climbed halfway up its wall before crumpling down into a heap in four inches of liquid flowing along the curved floor.
    “Who’s next?” Lukas sounded impressed.
    “Russo.”
    “We had better try to grab him as he exits. He’ll be much faster. Switch on your flashlight and aim it inside the drain.”
    She picked herself up and stumbled to the mouth of the tube, fingers fumbling at her flashlight.
    Lukas aimed his light into the drain, illuminating a ball form hurtling rapidly toward them. “Here he comes.”
    They stood on either side of the opening, one hand each stretched to catch him.
    In a flash, the bundle barreled from the drain, dragging them to the opposite side of the sewer. A loud thump echoed from the mouth of the drain. Laurel froze. It wasn’t a good sound.
    “That’s the valve closing,” Lukas said. “Within four or five minutes, the tank will be full again. An automatic security routine to prevent the inmates’ core temperature from rising.”
    Had Raul made it? She had no way of knowing. The seconds stretched. What could she do with Woody in the sewers? Despite Russo’s slight weight, neither she nor Lukas was strong enough to carry him any distance.
Do we leave him?
    An instant later, Raul followed, his light blazing around his neck. He slid sedately the last few feet to the point where the drain met the main sewer and stayed seated on its rim, surveying their tangle of arms and legs. “A hell of a ride.”
    Laurel reached to her left buttock, then checked her bloody fingers.
    Lukas trained his flashlight on her and she instinctively shrank back. “Let me have a look,” he said.
    She felt soft fingers, then pressure, then a sharp stab. “Ouch!”
    Lukas held something small between thumb and forefinger.“A toenail. They drop off the inmates.” He flicked it aside, stood, and checked his watch. “We have twenty-nine minutes to leave this tube and a mile and a half to cover. We’d better get going, fast.”
    Laurel darted a look to Raul.
    Although they didn’t know how they would get to the sewers, Shepherd had insisted it was “need to know” information; they had rehearsed a technique to carry Russo several miles through the sewer network. First they’d trained in a dark abandoned warehouse and later across open ground at night, always naked and barefoot. “You will need well-calloused soles,” Shepherd had said. Raul and Bastien had carried a net between them with one hundred pounds of rocks for up to three hours. Laurel marched point with a flashlight. Shepherd would follow with another light. They had repeated the exercise daily for two months, combining their night races with hard exercise during the day. The key to their results rested on the men’s similar height and arm reach, added to their excellent physical conditioning and strength. She couldn’t pair with Raul; her shorter frame meant he would carry most of the weight and hamper their mobility. Lukas would be even