Chapter 1
Brown hair, slightly curled around his ears, and a dusting of freckles over his nose and cheeks. Dirty, pale skin hiding beneath layers of worn jackets. Brown eyes. Shoes with missing shoelaces and with duct tape holding the soles in place. Chapped lips.
He goes by Parker. That's all you need to know about him. That's all he offers to the people above the ground.
Underground, though—below the streets, below the penthouses and businesses and expensive cars and people carrying things from locked suitcases to luxury purses to grocery bags to hats of coins—he offers more than a name; he also offers kindness and safety. Something he once offered those above ground before he slipped through their fingers like ash.
"It'll be as though you never existed."
"I know. Do it."
He found the underground tunnel communities—the mole people, as those who know of their existence call them—about year ago. He isn't sure exactly how long he'd been living in the abandoned tunnels under New York City since time doesn't hold much value to people who don't see the sun or have formal jobs, but he assumes it's been about that long since he does occasionally leave to stock up on supplies. And judging by the dirty slush in the roads and the Christmas decorations lining the streets, it's coming up on just over two years since everyone forgot, and a year since he retreated into the tunnels to keep from freezing to death and found the warmest people he had encountered in a long time.
Because it's winter again, the annual stomach bug is going around. He would've thought that being isolated from the rest of society would keep them from catching bugs, but you can never underestimate the power of the flu, he supposes. Or strep. He isn't really sure what's going around, just that everyone's coughing and blowing their noses and running fevers and that he doesn't have it.
That's why he's standing outside the tunnel for the first time in four weeks, eyes squinted, dry hands tucked into his pockets.
Head down.
The flu—or whatever illness that's going around—hit Sarah pretty hard. She's a five-year-old little girl who has the strength of a lion with a beautiful, curly mane to match. Her mother, Kelcey, woke Parker with a high, frantic voice. She slipped in and out of Spanish as she fretted about her daughter's coughing and unrelenting fever. A week had passed and she was only getting worse.
"We're all out of medicine," she said, eyebrows knitted together as she held her daughter close to her. "No sé qué hacer, she keeps getting worse."
Parker's not a doctor by any means. He's only seventeen. No, seventeen—he's seventeen now. He's also not an electrician, a carpenter, or an engineer, but he does what he can around the small community. Although the building and mechanical tasks come more natural to him, he has enough knowledge about medicine from a passed family member who was a nurse to help.
Parker had put his hand on the young woman's shoulder, looked her in the eye, and told her that he'd go get more medicine and that her daughter would be okay.
And she would be okay. If there's anything Parker's good at, it's keeping his word.
He leaves the tunnel and steps into the light.
•
The bubblegum flavored chewable tablets rattle around in their container as Parker sets it down on the counter for the CVS cashier to scan.
It's bright.
Parker squints against the buzzing fluorescents and looks down, but the light is reflected back up by the glossy linoleum. After spending the majority of his time underground with dim lighting, he's found his eyes—which had already grown overly sensitive after the spider bite—were almost comptroller intolerable of light. Even standing outside during the day made his eyes water.
He blinks away the tears that are in his eyes and hopes the cashier doesn't think he's crying. He seems pretty unaware of the world around him, so Parker thinks he'll pass without him noticing.
"Is this all for you today." The cashier's voice is monotone.
Parker nods and wipes under his cold nose. "Yeah, that's it."
A red flash and a beep. The cashier's fish eyes slide to the register. He reads, "Seven forty-seven."
Parker hands over all the coins in his pocket. The cashier looks annoyed, but counts it out anyways. Parker knows it's not enough, so he pockets the medicine and leaves before he's finished counting, slipping outside as the man shouts after him.
The cold whips against his clothes like they're trying to rip them from his bones. That's all he looks like now: bones. Gone are the lean muscles that once insulated his body. All that's left are brittle bones and tight flesh clinging to any fat they can salvage from his measly meals.
But it's fine. It's better than the alternative.
•
Here's the thing: Parker doesn't condone stealing. In another life, he fought thieves and brought them to justice. He was good.
He isn't sure when he stopped begging for forgiveness to a God he isn't sure he believes in every time he swipes items off a shelf of pickpockets a rich person strolling through an affluent neighborhood, and he isn't sure when he started to feel indifferent to it all.
•
The sun is getting low. Harsh shadows are rounded out by the orange glow seeping between buildings. With the sky going from a bright blue to a quiet lavender, he can finally go a few seconds without having to blink. However, the lights from passing cars and stoplights flash as bright as the sun had been.
Salt crunches under his thin sneakers. He can feel each grain ground against the concrete. Somewhere, blocks away, sirens wail.
In another life, the violent sounds of the city were his lullaby as he drifted to sleep. He couldn't sleep peacefully without car horns honking or sirens blaring in the distance, drunk men shouting.
He doesn't miss it anymore. The layers of dirt and concrete muffle the surface activities better than any noise cancelling headphones could. Just a sneeze from a nearby sleeper jolts him awake nowadays. It's another reason why he hasn't returned to live on the surface after a year.
Parker pulls his hoodie over his head, his ears stinging in the brisk air, and shoves his hands deep into his pockets. The wind cuts through the fabric, but it provides a semblance of warmth on some level.
He's looking both ways to cross the street when a faint aroma of smoke twitches his nose. He inhales. His lungs feel heavy.
Turning, he zeroes-in on a cloud of dark smoke billowing behind a building. Glass shatters. Someone shouts. The hand in his left pocket tightens over the bottle of medicine. He turns back around, moving to cross the street and get the medicine to Sarah, but then a baby's piercing, fearful cries reach his ears.
And he turns. And he jogs through the alley and around the block to where the brick apartment building is burning.
Flames explode out of one window and lick up the brick to the window above. The air is thicker and darker, and Parker itches to leave—he doesn't do this hero stuff, this isn't who is he anymore—but then hears that baby's cries again, and they're definitely coming from inside the building.
Ignoring the sparse spectators' shouted protests, Parker runs towards the flames. The cries are getting louder. He cranes his neck and strains to listen beyond the fire crackling and the wood moaning. His eyes land on a window seven stories up. The fire escape doesn't reach that window.
He glances at the front lobby doors, the back at the window. He'd never make it in time if he climbed the stairs.
He curses under his breath and tugs at his hood to better shield his face. One at a time, he places his palms against the rough brick. Takes a deep breath. For the first time in a long time, he climbs.
It doesn't take long to reach the window the cries were closest to. He lifts the glass pane and slid inside, eyes instantly tearing up from all the smoke and heat.
"Hello?" he shouts, covering his nose and mouth with an elbow as he moves around the living room.
He crosses the room and enters the hallway, then hears the cry that lured him all the way across the block. The doorknob burns his hand, so he kicks it in. Despite losing much of his muscle mass, it's an easy feat.
He scoops the wiggling, crying baby from the crib pushed against the wall. Half of him wonders about the parents, so he pauses and shouts, "Anyone else in here?"
No response.
Dread sinks in his stomach and something akin to guilt seeps in as he moves to the window, but he assures himself that he'll come back after he gets the baby out.
He cradles her close to his chest and tries to open the window with one hand, but for some reason, it doesn't budge. Instead of going at it a second time, he kicks his foot through it. Glass shards rain down like the snow falling outside.
"I got you," he whispers to the crying baby as he crawls out of the window and climbs back down. About halfway to the ground, he leaps off and lands steady on his feet.
A man rushes up to them and Parker shoves the baby in his arms. He spots an ambulance pulling up and instructs the man, "Take her to the EMTs."
He nods, gaping, but Parker doesn't linger. He goes right back into the building.
He finds the father sleeping in his bedroom. Parker gets him out. He finds the elderly neighbor sleeping. He gets her out. He finds a family trapped in their apartment, surrounded by flames. He gets them out. He finds a dog barking to escape. He gets him out. He finds a teenaged girl that looks too similar to a teenaged girl from his past life that he freezes but then picks up and gets out of the building. He finds charred, burning bodies. He gets them out.
As he runs in and out, wheezing, he passes firefighters doing the same. At first they escort him out, but when they see Parker scaling the walls to get faster access to civilians, they allow him to help.
When everyone's out, Parker climbs the neighboring building and hides on the roof. His chest aches, his lungs are heavy, his legs are sore, and his skin is boiling. The cold congeals the sweat coating his body.
He allows himself two minutes of heavy breathing, then peels himself off the roof.
He heads back to the tunnels.
•
"Dios mío," Kelcey whispers when Parker hands her the medicine. She reaches out to lift his chin for a better look at his pale, ash-covered face, but he turns his head away.
Worry pinches her features. "What happened? Dime."
"Burning building," he says, his voice thick from all the smoke he had inhaled. He coughs into a fist. "But I'm fine, don't worry."
"Are you burned?"
"Kelce, I'm fine." He nods to where Sarah sleeps. "Give her the medicine."
Kelcey doesn't look happy, but she drops it. She levels Parker with a sincere look and says, "Gracias."
"'Course." He offers a small smile before turning and walking back to his tent.
•
Parker spends the next few hours like this: He pours some of the rainwater he collected in a jug in a small bowl. He closes the thin bedsheet curtains around the structure built from wood scraps he calls his home. He sits against the cool, dirt-crusted wall, and peels his layers off even though it's probably below freezing. He dips a rag into the water and gently dabs it onto his burns. He wipes the soot from his cheeks, the sweat from his forehead and upper lip. He wrings the rag and dips it into the water, wrings it out, dips it in.
He goes to sleep. Wakes up to coughing—his own, for once—checks on his burns by shining a flashlight on them, then falls back asleep.
•
Parker wasn't known as Parker when he showed up a year ago. He wasn't known as anything; he wasn't a person.
His eyes glistened with fear when, out of the infinite darkness of the tunnel system, a light was shone on him. He begged them to let him stay. To not hurt him.
On the other end of the flashlight was an old woman with deep wrinkles and thin white hair that framed her narrow face in wisps. Several teeth were missing, others black and rotten. But she had a kindness in her face that felt so foreign to him after he went through the past few months he was running from.
Her name was Cynthia, and she was the leader of sorts of the community in the abandoned tunnels. The forty-or-so people living there listened to her. She made sure no one was stealing from each other, no one was being violent, and no one was dying. She later told Parker that when she saw him, she saw her son. And she swore that she'd help him if it was the one good thing she did.
And Cynthia did help him. She tutted at his thin, tattered clothes that were no match for the brutal New York winter and clothed him. She gave him food.
That first night, as he was huddled around her fire, gripping a blanket close to his battered body, she asked for his name.
Parker opened his mouth, but hesitated. He hadn't been called that name in a while. It was attached to his past self, his old life.
Cynthia read his hesitation and said, "You can make a new name. Most of us come down here to start new." She leaned forward. "Who are you?"
He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. After a few minutes of deliberation, he said, "Parker."
She grinned. "It's nice to meet you, Parker."
Parker was wary around Cynthia—only sleeping when she was asleep, not letting her get too close—despite the fact that she didn't make any alarm bells go off in his head. Scrambled brains, he explained to himself. His brain was like scrambled eggs. He was messed up.
He's pretty sure she caught on to that quickly. But he could see that, part of her at least, was also messed up. She had long, jagged scars down her forearms. There seemed to be a permanent bruise on her neck just below her ear. She trembled in her sleep. Sometimes she hit herself in the head with her fists.
Everyone was messed up, Parker found. Kelcey was beaten and raped by her ex-boyfriend before she left him to live down there, and she'd later tearfully confess to Parker about how she hated Sarah at first because she was her ex-boyfriend's baby that she didn't want, but now she couldn't live without her. Sarah had never seen the sun. She wasn't getting an education beyond what her mother, and occasionally Parker, were teaching her. Alex was kicked out of the house when they were fourteen because they came out to their parents as non-binary and was trafficked while they were homeless before finding the tunnels. Now, at twenty-four, they still have PTSD from it all. Raymond's a veteran. PTSD. Drug addiction. Dante's an ex-gang member. Ginny was an addict and lost her kids to CPS.
Loss, addictions, violence, and trauma all led everyone that is a part of that community to come there, Parker included. Once he realized that, he started to let his guard down. He started to belong.
Cynthia passed away in her sleep about three months after Parker arrived. He expected everyone to digress into chaos, but instead, they unanimously looked to him for guidance.
Him. A then sixteen-year-old kid.
Now, seven months after Cynthia's passing, Parker still wouldn't call himself their leader. If anything, he's just a supervisor of sorts. A helper. He does their supply runs every three or four weeks or so, he helps them fix their tents, and he helps them fix whatever other issues they come across. He's only ever mediated and broke up one fight before.
They're good people. Messed up, but good.
•
"You sure there are people down here?"
Parker's eyes bolt open. He sits up, heart racing, and holds his breath to keep from coughing.
He glanced around it's pitch-black. His tent is far enough away from the others that their constant shuffling and murmuring doesn't keep him awake but close enough to hear if something's wrong. He's also at a corner, out of sight of the people—two, according to the footsteps. At least one woman, going off of the higher voice.
A lengthy pause. No footsteps. Then: "We're getting close." A man.
The footsteps continue, faster. One set jogs to catch up to the other.
"Can you...smell him or something?"
"Shh." Another pause. Parker's heart feels like it's about to burst out of his rib cage. "He knows we're here."
Parker pushes himself off the makeshift bed and carefully steps closer to the edge of the corner. A phone flashlight grazes the opposite wall.
There's no hiding. They know he's there, and, somehow, they know he knows they're there.
Parker grabs the knife from his jeans pocket and grips it tight. He takes a calming breath. Then, he steps out, immediately being dowsed with the painfully bright light.
He squeezes his eyes shut and looks away, shielding his eyes. Holding the other one out, knife aimed at the pair, he says, "What do you want?"
They freeze. The man nudges the woman beside him, and she moves the light down so it isn't shining in his face.
Parker blinks and squints at the pair. His heart stutters.
Matt Murdock stands before him, Karen Page by his side. They're dressed professionally—when are they not?—and Matt's without the walking stick.
Karen shifts her weight between her feet, something flickering in her eyes as she takes Parker in, and Matt forces a tight smile.
"Hi. We just want to talk."