It would keep him out of sight and out of the wind until I could send my medics.

“I will be back,” I promised, pressing a spare magazine into his cold hand.

He closed his eyes and nodded once.

I took Eli’s hand and started moving down the dark utility pipe, away from the stairs.

The pipe led us deeper into the bowels of the city, away from the subway line.

We walked for twenty minutes in the freezing dark, guided only by the screen of my phone.

The air grew colder, smelling of salt and diesel fuel.

We finally emerged through a low concrete archway into an abandoned coal yard near the river.

The Chicago wind hit us like a physical blow, carrying heavy flakes of snow.

My phone vibrated violently in my pocket again.

I pulled it out and answered it, my fingers stiff with cold.

“Dante,” a voice crackled through the speaker.

It was Marco, my lead communications specialist back at the safehouse.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Marco said. “We lost your tracker in the tunnels.”