Once she had stumbled across the killjoy’s hideout on her search for a desert shelter, Luna had little choice but to follow the young killjoy who had found her to meet the person who was obviously their leader; the one she only knew as ‘Wolf’.
She expected to be led to the second hut in the rocky alcove, but instead the boy started to follow the faintest of paths around the base of the giant rock, heading towards the side of the slab that faced the sun most directly.
Luna’s confusion must have shown, for her guide stopped and smiled at her obvious incomprehension.
“There’s a trapdoor on the other side of the rock,” he explained, ducking into the last semblance of shade under a rocky overhang. “We figured Blind would look at the sheds and not search too far on this side – which so far has been right.”

Luna just nodded her head slowly, trying to take in everything to stay prepared, and give away as little about herself as possible in case anything happened.
Looking around, she finally noticed the wild appearance of the boy himself; blending in with the surrounding red and gold hues, the boy had a mop of spiky red-brown hair, held in place with a red bandana.
He wore a reddish-purple leather jacket over a long black T-shirt, all strapped on over skinny grey jeans and tall, scuffed maroon boots by a chain-link belt.
In other words, he was the complete opposite of anyone from Battery City, and the wash of energetic colour was a welcome change from the clinical whites and greys of the medical centre Luna had been living in.

Emerging from her thoughts, Luna realised that the boy had moved on, and was now kneeling behind a boulder, scraping sand away from a neatly hidden hatch in the ground.
“Come on,” he said finally, not looking up before dropping down into the hole beneath the door. “It’s not far down, I promise,” he called back up as Luna hesitated.
Edging herself to the edge of the hole, she gritted her teeth and prepared to jump – as much a matter of getting over a long-held fear of dark, enclosed spaces, as it was about her being unsure of the drop below.
With a final sharp breath in, Luna let go of the edge of the hole and dropped down, falling only about six feet into a space filled with inky blackness.

“…hello?” she called out nervously, no idea where the boy might be beyond the dim circle of light beneath the trapdoor.
“I’m right here,” the killjoy’s voice sounded right behind her ear, making her jump, and flinch around – still seeing nothing in the blank nothingness.
With a resounding bang, the hatch fell back down to seal the entrance -- obviously attached to a rope, and the darkness grew even more blinding for a second.
Then a match struck, and the flaring light revealed the boy standing not two feet away, holding a lamp to light the way.
“Sorry,” he shrugged, starting to walk down what felt like, in the darkness, a long corridor. “I forgot to warn you about the dark.”

Still Luna didn’t say anything, out of her comfort zone and in the midst of a place and people she didn’t know at all – but thankfully, the tunnel soon widened out, and began to be lit with globes at odd intervals, the light easing some of the tension and anxiety.
Suddenly the killjoy stopped, handing Luna the lamp and standing by a tiny offshoot of the tunnel that she hadn’t even noticed.
“Wait here,” he said simply, ducking inside the passageway with a practised movement.
Less than a minute later, his head reappeared, and he beckoned her to follow him.

Luna eyed the miniscule passageway uneasily, but followed him quickly to avoid the alternative of getting lost in the lightless labyrinth.
As it turned out, manoeuvring the tight passage wasn’t as much of an ordeal as she had expected; within a few metres the walls diverged dramatically, and an entire room opened up, lit at the side with dim globes and a few lamps.
“This is the trespasser?” A man’s voice boomed suddenly from the centre of the room, startling Luna, who hadn’t noticed anyone else in the room yet.
“Yes,” the killjoy who had first found her answered deferentially, “a nurse from a remote outpost, apparently. Says the dracs blew it up and she escaped here.”
There was a silence, made all the more uncomfortable for Luna by the fact that she knew she was being studied by the man she couldn’t see.
“You’re a nurse?” the voice repeated, suddenly enough to make her jump again.
“Uh,” Luna cleared her throat and tried again. “Yeah, I worked for the neutral aid hospital outposts for a few years.”

“Shadow,” the disembodied voice turned its attention to the young killjoy by her side. “I’ve decided – take her to the infirmary and see if she can tend to Missy. Once she’s done what she can, then get her some food. Now go.”
Abruptly, the voice seemed to turn away, not even bothering to explain to Luna what she was supposed to be doing to her face.
“Come on,” The young killjoy she now knew as Shadow said again, leading her back out into the large corridor and towards another side passage.
“Sorry for Wolf,” he went on, not embellishing the statement, but changing topics entirely. “I’m glad you turned up, though – Missy really does need medical help…” his voice trailed off as he entered the sickbay, Luna behind with no idea what she would find in the room.