I didn’t notice the wind on my neck until I was nearly on the stairs. Although it was warm and faint and smelled of summer trees, it affected me like a blast of icy Arctic air. My head snapped back. My body froze as if someone were holding a gun to me. I knew that the air must be coming from the escape hatch, which had never been sealed properly, but even with this rational explanation I panicked.
Then I stumbled, and the darkness swallowed the flashlight, which fell out of my hand, and old childhood demons rushed to surround me.
Suddenly Kazz’s warning leapt to my mind. “You are now the first target of bad spirits.”
I sloshed madly through the water, smashed into a concrete wall, groped my way around it, and then dashed up the stairs. I bid my mother a hasty, breathless goodbye and left for the Lab.

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