by Liam Clay
The tunnel entrance is now a smoking hole, and of the beam itself, nothing remains. I struggle to work through the potential repercussions. The objective half of my brain - the one so adept at killing - is whispering that it was just a stray rocket, and that the others probably retreated to safety in time. And since the emotional half is just screaming fuck! over and over again, I decide to go with the ‘still alive’ theory. But climbing back up isn’t an option, so there is no way to know for sure. Which means I’m on my own. Unwillingly, I turn back to face the lake.
The drop is intense, but so is my need to reach Kalana and Sophie. It would just be so unfair, having them come back into my life only to depart again so abruptly. A scenario runs through my head: me saving them from the Topsiders; Kalana falling in love with me again; the three of us starting a new life Topside with Anex as our ticket. As delusions go it’s pretty enticing, so I pull my mask down around my neck and jump.
Halfway down, I realize that the rifle is going to throw off my entry. I am just able to shrug it off my shoulders before impact. The dive takes me deep, and I swim easily under the crane’s broken arm, its struts edged in red by the conflagration above.
Resurfacing, I am immediately confronted with another hard choice. Should I swim for the Perfumed Lock and join the fighting there, or try to find my family inside the casino? There are arguments against both options. On the one hand my rifle is nowhere to be seen, which renders me useless to the lock’s defenders unless they have some spare guns lying around. But a retreat might be construed as cowardly, and that could affect my half-formed plan to win Kalana back.
Fate ends up taking the decision off my hands. This explosion is much larger than the last. It rolls over the lake like a tropical storm, and although a timely duck saves me from a fried face, my body still gets a mild parboiling. Given the way things are going, I would like nothing better than to stay underwater until my lungs burst. But curiosity makes me swim up to see what’s happened.
A section of the Perfumed Lock is simply gone, and what remains is a smoldering ruin of crushed gears, melted rebar and rubble. Torpid canal runoff is already pouring through, creating an oil and vinegar effect where it mixes with the treated lake water. Shock holds me in place until the first skiffs appear in the gap. Then I execute a rapid about face and start swimming like hell.
I’m halfway to the central island when the first shots ring out. A stolen breath and I’m diving again, barely avoiding the tentacles of a passing jellyfish. More bullets cleave the blue, and the creature explodes in a double mushroom of lurid neon ink. I cut left and downward. The next shots go well wide, leaving vectored bubble tracers in their wake.
A minute later my chest is ironbanded and black spots obscure my vision. Thankfully, a wedgelike shadow is spreading its darkness overhead. The island. I come up, hacking and coughing, near its eastern dock. Sculling the last few meters, I haul myself up a steel runged ladder that has been welded to a stanchion. But about three feet from the top, it dawns on me that waltzing right up on deck might not be such a great idea. Someone might think I’m the enemy and try to kill me. Or they might know who I am, and try to kill me anyway. (I’m really not very popular around here.)
“Anybody home?” I call out. No one answers, just like I wouldn’t if it was me up there waiting to murder me. Oh well, fuck it. I scale the last few rungs and roll onto the dock. No one’s around, thank god, but a backward glance reveals a whole convoy of skiffs sitting two hundred meters offshore. Strangely though, the Topsiders seem to have halted their advance. I make a break for the glass spire.
I am fully expecting to get mowed down by gunfire. Instead, a suffocating quiet settles over the lake - like a courtroom just before the verdict comes down. I reach the entrance portal and press my hand to its pale surface. The door doesn’t open, but a holo of Tariq’s face spreads across it.
“I’ve lost eyes on the Perfumed Lock!” He barks when he recognizes me. “What’s their status?”
“Breached! Let me in, will you?”
Before Tariq can reply, a red light splashes across his face. He looks down.
“Oh shit, they’ve got a sonic sidewind-”
He is interrupted by a truly awful sound, like a god is dragging fingernails over the chalkboard of reality. Then the glass spire shatters into sheets of sparkling grit. Freed of its moorings, the portal tumbles into the corkscrew elevator shaft. And since I happen to be leaning against it, so do I.
Now I’m sliding down the spiral, gaining speed with every revolution, sharing space with a two-ton door, assorted mechanical debris and a shitload of broken glass. My thoughts are still fractured by the sonic attack, but one thing I do know: if I fall all the way to Sanctum level, I’m dead.
When gravity brings me level with the seventh floor portal, I drive my knife between two of its irised panels. The serrated edge catches and holds. But then the door cycles open, snapping the Prison-forged steel and carving a chunk out of my shoulder in the process. I reach for the doorframe with my good arm, miss, and have given myself up for dead when someone hauls me onto the Shit Show floor.
CHAPTER 11
For the foreseeable future, all I want is to enjoy the sensation of having a level surface under my back. But someone - an intimidating someone - is shouting into my face, really giving me the gears, you know? I try to ignore him, but the gist filters through despite my best efforts.
“Hey buddy, I need you to snap out of it! The Topsiders are rappelling down the elevator shaft as we speak.”
My eyes wander back into focus. Tariq is standing over me, backlit by the Shit Show’s distinctive brand of garish casino game holo. He appears to be punching commands into a small handheld. A group of his fellow guards flank the elevator door, watching as steel cables are fed down the shaft from above.
“Okay, okay.” I climb painfully to my feet. “Do we have a plan?”
“Until a few seconds ago we did.” Tariq replies without taking his eyes off the handheld. “I had the elevator programmed to stop automatically when it reached this floor. Would’ve been like shooting fish in a barrel, but now they’ve gone and blown the damn thing up.”
“How unfortunate. Is there a plan B?”
“Yes.”
Before I can press for details, Tariq jumps into the elevator shaft, grabs one of the cables and climbs down out of sight. I turn to one of his subordinates: an improbably short black woman with close-cropped plutonium green hair.
“Is he for real?”
Without a word, she hands me a loaded pistol and follows her boss down the rabbit hole. I shake my head and follow suit.
The first Kamikaze hits us somewhere near the fourth floor. She comes ripping around the corkscrew at about Mach 3, head first, twin semis already firing. It seems almost too cool not to work - until green hair lights her up with some kind of industrial laser. Preoccupied with the smoking hole in her chest, the soldier smashes into one of our guys. He goes down in a heap and they both vanish around the next bend.
By the time we reach the Sanctum lobby, there are only four of us left: Tariq, green hair, yours truly and a pretty boy nursing a bullet wound to the gut. The room is filled halfway to the roof with elevator apparatus, surplus cable and seven dead bodies - four of theirs, three of ours.
“What now?” I ask Tariq.
“You’re with me.” He replies evenly. And then to the other two, “Brin, David, try to hold them here until we get back.” Neither of them looks happy about this arrangement, but no arguments are offered. Tariq and I start to scramble over the wreckage. I expect our destination to be the control room, but the tattooed man points toward engineering instead. He’s picked up a limp during the descent though, and so I get there first.
This door is actually an airlock which will be sealed by a code that I definitely don’t know. Just for shits and giggles I give it a push, and the entire business - frame and all - collapses inward. I step into a dark corridor, Tariq hobbling along behind me. It’s hot a
nd close, claustrophobic in the extreme. A quick dash brings me to another door, this one unsealed and ajar. The chamber beyond is packed with bulky machinery, rendered nefarious by the jellyfish glow filtering through the pyramid’s outer shell.
Tariq pushes past me to a free-standing control panel. Twenty seconds of aggressive typing later, he points to a row of iron pipes on the far side of the room.
“You see the red toggle on that pump over there?”
I nod.
“Get ready to trip it when I tell you.”
I do as I’m told. Up close, I can hear water navigating the pipes like blood through jugular veins. Tariq taps out another sequence of commands, and blue light floods the room.
“Now!”
I trip the toggle. The pump kicks and groans. The flow of water briefly ceases, and then increases in bursts until it becomes a raging torrent. I experience a moment of elation even though I have no idea what we just did. Tariq is already motioning me back over, but something is wrong. A slight change in the light, or a muffled footfall, maybe. I duck behind a boiler and wait, eyes trained on the door we entered through.
There are two of them. They arrive silently, the perfect team, masks scorched black from earlier fighting. One has lost his rifle. In its place he carries a gloc held at shoulder level, arms partially extended before him. The other has injured her leg. But she limps along gamely, using her rifle as a cane, paying no attention to the blood leaking down her calf. And it occurs to me, all at once, that nothing about this assault feels like mop up duty. These soldiers have a goal, a mission, a target.
Probably the Constant, now that I think about it.
This pisses me off. The woman may have stolen my girlfriend, but that’s between her and me, not her and some faceless jarheads from god knows where. All of this runs through my head in the time required to raise my gun and fire twice. Both are headshots. Tariq turns to contemplate the bodies.
“Maybe the Constant was right to keep you alive.” He says.
“So you do know who I am.”
It’s hard to tell, but I imagine that he looks slightly apologetic. “It’s my job to. Alright, time to move.”
I nod and trail him back into the corridor. But a gunshot explodes in the enclosed space, and then he’s lurching to one side, neck and right collarbone a bloody ruin. Cold instinct takes over, and I use his body for cover as I return fire. Our assailant drops to the ground, but so does Tariq, a line of fresh bullet wounds spread across his chest.
Back in the lobby now. Brin and David are dead, but they’ve sold their lives for top dollar. Seven more Topsiders lie crumpled around them. There is no one else present, but noises are coming from the stairwell that leads to the pyramid’s mysterious bottom level. I creep over the elevator wreckage to take a look. A lone soldier is crouched at the bottom of the stairs facing another airlock, this one still intact. He fixes a cylindrical device to the door, whirls, and pelts back up the stairs.
He’s almost to the top when he sees me, and his surprise is enough to bring him up short. Then an invisible giant punches me in the face. Flame spews from the stairwell, followed closely by two hundred pounds of screaming soldier. He lands hard on a bed of twisted metal, fully ablaze, bellowing for all he’s worth. It is nearly unbearable to listen to, but it’s time I got some answers out of these fuckers, so I crawl over and hold my pistol in front of his goggled eyes.
“Answer two questions and the pain goes away!” Our eyes meet, and there is a pop as a camera mounted to his helmet succumbs to the flames.
“Ask.” He moans through his respirator.
“What were your orders?”
“Orders - oh god - orders were to capture as many Underworlders as possible, especially the ones who can fight.” Another moan. “And children too! I swear that’s all I know.”
I want to ask about the kids, but I promised two questions and the guy is on fire, for fuck’s sake.
“And where do you come from, you and the other soldiers?”
“Mer - mercenaries from the Thresh, contract job! Please...” His voice fades as spasms wrack him.
Ignoring the flames, I put a bullet through the poor bastard’s forehead. He jerks once and goes still. Then I roll over onto my back, breathing hard. (The madness of all this is not lost on me, by the way. But what am I supposed to do? When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. And when lemons are extinct and foreigners are out to steal your kid, you try to roll with these - often literal - punches too.)
Presently I feel ready to move again. Rising in stages to my feet, I claim the burnt Thresher’s rifle and sling it over one shoulder. Somewhere higher up in the pyramid, a deep rumbling begins, ominous and insistent. (Tariq’s dead hand at work, I would imagine.) The floor has developed a slant as well - barely noticeable for now, but increasing in gradation all the time. I start down the stairs.
Rumors abound about what the Kaleidoscope’s lowest floor may hold, and so beneath the fear, the residual high and the pain, I feel a twinge of curiosity as I approach the ruined airlock door. A strange smell reaches me as I descend. It is not unlike that of Girders, but more nuanced and complex.
I become convinced, upon stepping through the door, that I have begun to hallucinate. A dense swathe of jungle surrounds me: a place of palm trees, vibrant flowers, creeping vines and trickling water. To my left, black flies circle over a pond teeming with orange coy. And to find all of this here, just a floor below a place I have visited many times, is... inconceivable.
Sitting beside the pond is a young boy. He is considering his rippled reflection in the water, hands thrust into the pockets of an old blue hoodie. His hair is almost the exact same shade of orange as the coy.
“Who are you?” He asks without looking up.
“I’m a friend of the Constant’s.” I reply, aware that I’m covered in blood, some guts, and even a fair bit of vomit - I don’t know whose. He contemplates my response.
“Do you mean Sally?”
It occurs to me, suddenly, that I don’t know the Constant’s first name. Or last, for that matter. “Um... does Sally own this place?”
“No, the forest belongs to me and my friends. But she made it for us.”
“I see. You, ah, wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you? With your parents, maybe?”
The boy puffs out his chest. “I don’t have parents. I’m an orphan.” He over-enunciates this last word, like he’s proud of himself for knowing it. Then he points at the ground with a stubby finger. “But Sally is down on the beach with my friends and some other people I don’t know.”
My skin prickles. “Did you see a pretty woman and her daughter, both with honey colored hair? The girl would be about your age. Her name is Sophie.”
He smiles shyly. “Sophie was nice. She held my hand.”
“Can you take me to them?”
“No.” He says, as though surprised I would even ask. “I have to keep the fish company. They get lonely when I’m not around.”
Kid’s got me over a barrel here. Without his help, I could wander around for hours trying to find this beach he’s talking about. But if he won’t leave his damn fish, what can I do, threaten him? That sort of thing is frowned upon no matter the situation. If only I had more practice with children. Then inspiration strikes.
“What’s your name?”
“Jimmy.”
“Okay Jimmy, do you like candy?”
“Obviously.”
“Well if you take me to Sally, I promise to give you so much candy that your teeth will fall right out of your head.”
“What about the fish?”
“They can have some too.”
“Oh. And what about their teeth, will they also fall out?”
“I’m not sure if fish have teeth.”
“What about sharks?”
“Well obviously sharks are diff - look, do we have a deal or what?”
Jimmy ponders the merits of my offer. Then he nods and stands up, completely igno
ring the state of my clothes and the gun I’m carrying.
“Follow me.” He says, and heads into the underbrush.
As we push through the dense foliage, I can’t help but sense the falseness of this place. The soil under my feet feels genuine enough, and the sky - what I can see of it - is a picturesque blue. But there is something off about it nonetheless. Everything is just a little too perfect, like an architect’s rendition of a place that exists only in humanity’s collective unconscious. This isn’t a jungle - this is what we think a jungle should be. The reality would likely be far less appealing to the senses.
My intuition is soon validated by the appearance of an escalator, plunked down right there in the middle of the forest. We step onto it, an aperture in the ground swallows us, and then we’re being spit out onto a frozen lake mantled in featherlight virgin snow. A toothed mountain sweeps up from the lake’s far side, its upper reaches cloaked in swirling mist. I am blown away. This is some seriously first-rate holo on display, fully the equal of anything I’ve seen Topside.
A timber longhouse stands between lake and mountain, lights glowing merrily from its many windows. I half expect to see Santa Claus waving from the doorway. Which isn’t actually as farfetched as it sounds, because this is a stage. Only instead of filming fake adventures in pursuit of profit, the Constant has been letting West End street kids have real ones of their own. What a lovely, eccentric, dare I say saintly thing to do. The bitch.
“Come on.” Jimmy says. We trudge past the lodge to another escalator, which delivers us onto the shores of an endless beach. A rambling summer house stands just back from the surf, and watching us from its deck is a crowd composed of both adults and children.
But before we go any further, I should probably come clean about what happened during my last trip to the Kaleidoscope seven years ago. It’s a pretty embarrassing story, but I have a feeling someone is going to bring it up in a minute anyway, so here goes.
After Kalana broke up with me, I sort of went off the rails for a while. Like way off, actually. Stopped sleeping, started getting high on the job, burning bridges all over the Underworld as I called in favors in return for drug money. Until one night it all came to a head. I’d been pushing hard, mixing product, letting my subconscious call the shots. And somehow I ended up on the Shit Show floor with a bunch of grenades, shouting about how I was going to blow myself up. I don’t remember a second of it, but apparently almost everyone was for shooting me. Except for Kalana and the Constant. It took hours, I’m told, but together they managed to talk me down.