And our evening of fun wasn’t over yet. We made it back to the Metro. “Shall we go home home or do we want to find a club?”

I considered that. “I’m not really dressed for clubbing, but I’d be up for it.”

The train went past the airport and then ducked into the tunnel under Crystal City. That place always looked like a forest of skyscrapers to me, even though I knew they weren’t really skyscrapers. Just high rises. Expensive apartments, the kind of thing I might dream about now, but wouldn’t have before I took up modeling.

And then, halfway between Pentagon City and the Pentagon, the train stopped and the lights went out.

Several people screamed. I couldn’t blame them, not really. Sudden power failure on a Metro train will tell you whether you’re a claustrophobe or not real fast. I managed not to join them, but I was definitely startled.

We sat there in the dark. Power would probably come back in a moment.

It didn’t.

“Do we evacuate?” Kanesha asked.

“No. We stay put unless we smell smoke or something.” There had been an incident with somebody getting killed by smoke in a Metro tunnel. I wasn’t about to stick around if that happened.

We were in the worst possible spot for this section, too, if we had to evacuate. I wasn’t evacuating towards the Pentagon, either, unless the other direction was on fire. “If we do, we go Pentagon City direction.”
“Hrm. Unless…the army guys might get here first if we’re really stuck.”

She had a point.

“I don’t know how you girls are so calm,” came a voice from behind me.

I didn’t turn around. “It’s just a power failure. They happen.”

“Still, it’s dark down here.”

I felt myself grin. “Yeah, it is.” But if they were quiet, I could hear everything I needed to get out of here if I had to. There should be some light from the tunnel, though. “But we don’t evacuate unless there’s danger. The third rail might come back on any moment.”

“Good point,” said the woman behind us. “This sucks.”

I thought she was being pretty calm herself, of course.