by Julian North
I stared at it all. The net images couldn’t capture the true presence of these constructions. Their scale, their ability to make fantasy real. At least on the outside. A new Rome. I heard Nythan’s voice echo in my head: Here is the tip of the iceberg. What are the rest of you planning to do?
We made quick time through the streets. We passed the occasional surface patrol vehicle, but that was it. There weren’t many people around either. The AT elite who populated these monstrosities mostly lived elsewhere in Manhattan—Soho, Downtown, Chelsea. Doc was right about the drones. The skies were clear.
“Can you take this car off the grid? Show that we stopped somewhere else?” she asked Chris-Chris.
“I’ll try. Should be able to show a stop. Then some kind of transmission error, going out of service. Fine so long as there are no drones around to cross-check the data.”
The U-cab turned a corner onto a street that was darker than the others. There were no architectural monuments near this road, just lots filled with hills of rubble where older, less amazing, buildings had once stood. Cranes, excavators, fabricators, and other equipment sat parked on several of the lots. We crossed an intersection. More rubble and half-constructed structures. A bore machine, larger than my apartment building in Bronx City, was parked just off the side of the road. I stared at its massive corkscrew-like drill, my mouth involuntarily open.
“What do they build with those?” I asked. “Another subway?”
Doc shook her head, a gesture mostly lost in the dark interior of the vehicle. “Magnetic Transportation System. The MTS will link many of the campuses together, along with some of the production facilities further north—so the tech babes don’t have to mix with the rabble on the subway. This system will replace the subway eventually. No more direct train links with the rest of the Five Cities. The new system is more secure, and it can move material. Built under government contract by RocketDyn, a key voting supporter of the Orderists, of course. The new extension will link up with the new dormitories they are building out here, as well as some new housing developments up north.”
“Of course, they don’t want the subway links between BC and Manhattan,” I said mostly to myself.
We passed more excavation, great mounds of dirt, concrete and steel accompanied by even greater-sized machinery, including two more bore machines of different configurations.
“They could rebuild Bronx City for what this must be costing,” I observed.
“Not a good investment,” Doc replied.
We finally slowed at the end of a dark, dead-end street. The U-cab’s headlights provided the only external illumination. The burning light of the high beams revealed a collection of squat brick facade towers, perhaps ten stories in height. They were encased in some sort of blue-tinted plastika film, like the kind used to seal up partially eaten food scraps. Portions of one of the structures had collapsed. The windows were either open holes or had been boarded up with fabricated wood.
“Stop here,” Doc told Chris-Chris.
She climbed into the front row of seats, fiddling with the wheel and the manual controls.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Used to be rent controlled housing. Way back. When the city went to tear it down, they found it was loaded with asbestos.”
“Ab…what?”
“Ancient stuff they used to insulate buildings with. Except it kills you if you inhale it. The corps nearby freaked when they found out, demanded a proper clean-up. The thing is, there’s hardly anyone left alive who knows how to handle the stuff, much less dispose of it. They sealed the buildings up in plastika till they figure it all out. RocketDyn still dug their transit tunnels, right up to where these buildings are. The bore machines are rather expensive to rent, and they don’t want to have to come back and dig later.”
“And that’s where you want to take us? Into a building made of stuff that kills us.”
Doc waved my concerns away. “Relax. Don’t touch the walls or ceilings, or anything that looks like cotton candy. Don’t bother the asbestos, it won’t bother you. Besides, the place we’re going to has been swept clean.”
I didn’t relax, but I stopped protesting.
“Switch it to manual,” she ordered Chris-Chris.
“Really?” Chris-Chris wondered. “I thought you richies didn’t bother learning to drive anymore.”
“Just do it.”
Chris-Chris flicked a few commands. The U-cab jerked forward awkwardly. I grabbed Mateo just before he rolled off the seat onto the floor.
“Be careful!” I scolded.
Doc got the hang of it after that. We glided forward, then off the street, onto uneven, rocky ground. The U-cab bumped up and down. So did Mateo. I held him tight. He stirred, but only a bit. The fresh dressing Doc had put on looked clean.
Doc drove us to the back of one of the wrapped buildings, then down a ramp into what I supposed was an underground parking garage of some kind. Pitch-dark surrounded the area except for the area illuminated by the U-cab’s headlights. A mixture of ruined concrete, food wrapping, and unidentifiable detritus littered the slice of ground that was visible. Beyond the rubble was a battered, dented but otherwise intact metal door.
“Okay, we are on foot from here,” Doc told us. “Since I’m the only one who knows the way, you two should carry the patient. Carefully please. Once he’s settled, Chris-Chris, you are going to go take this car someplace very far from here. Can you handle that?”
We both nodded.
“Let’s finish saving your brother.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
The building’s elevators hadn’t functioned in half a century, so Chris-Chris and I carried Mateo upstairs to Doc’s second floor hideaway. Our visers provided enough light to reveal portions of the building’s apocalyptic interior. The concrete walls had turned partially to dust and the ceilings dropped downward at random intervals, occasionally bending so low that I had to duck to pass through. Sections of the stairs had collapsed, with fabricated traction boards put in to act as ramps. The rats, cockroaches and other creatures made little attempt to conceal their presence. It made Kortilla’s squatter-clogged stairway seem downright cozy.
Entering the safe house was like waking from a nightmare. Behind boarded-up windows and a false front door was a tidy two-bedroom apartment. It was furnished with expensive-looking machinery: terminals, a portable generator, what looked like an elaborate fabricator, and two other refrigerator-sized machines I couldn’t identify. Another device that looked like a telescope was pressed up against a slit of one of the boarded windows. There were beds in each of the other rooms, a kitchen table, four badly fabricated chairs, and a couple of dim desk lights to keep the darkness at bay. We laid Mateo on one of the beds. Doc took his vitals, examined the wound, and changed his dressing.
“Let him rest,” she said, leading us out of the room to the kitchen table and its rickety chairs.
She told Chris-Chris to get rid of the car, carefully, and not to come back. To forget he’d ever been here. “Go back to Bronx City, stay low.”
“You think I’m just goin’ ta’ leave Mateo here, with some bleached-skinned richie?”
Doc stared at him as she might an ignorant, pestering child. “If you come stumbling back here and get seen by the corp security, what do you think will happen to him?”
“You think you know more about lurkin’ and snoopin’ than me, lady?”
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not leaving Mateo until he’s better,” I assured Chris-Chris. “We need to get rid of that car, or someone is going to come looking. Only you know the deal with that thing, and what you and Mateo have been up to. So unless you want to take us into your confidence, you’ve got to get rid of it. I’ll red ping you when Mateo is out of here.”
“On your blood, princess?”
“On the heart.”
He took another lingering look at Doc, then nodded.
After Chris-Chris left, she ask
ed me, “Can he really drive?”
“I think so. Mateo said they drove a bunch of vehicles into Manhattan a few weeks ago, so he’s had some kind of practice.”
Doc stepped over to one of the terminals, waving her viser till the devices linked up with each other. A picture of the U-cab driving away appeared after a few moments. Another car, a two-seater, followed a short time later. It didn’t have any headlights on.
“Is someone following him?”
“To make sure he doesn’t screw up,” Doc told me after a moment. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“You’ve got surveillance around here,” I observed.
“Sort of. It’s ancient optical stuff. The corporate counter-measures don’t bother screening for primitive devices.”
“Why? What are you doing here?”
She pursed her lips. “Headmaster Havelock must trust you to risk sending me out like this, and letting me bring you here, but that’s need to know only. And for now, you don’t need to know.”
I studied her face. The apartment was better lit than the U-cab. I’d been right about her age. She was young. Barely old enough to be done with her medical residency. Tough, confident, but not necessarily experienced. Then there was the matter of her words. They told me something as well.
“You said ‘Headmaster Havelock’…you were a Tuck student, weren’t you?”
She thought about denying it, then shrugged. “The good old days.”
“And Havelock helped you, in some way? He does that for people like you, me, Alissa…”
“Need to know,” Doc told me.
“How many people like you and Alissa are there?” I already knew she wouldn’t answer. I chewed my lip as I considered the question I had been asking myself since Havelock’s man had shown up at my track meet at PS 62: What did he want from me?
“Done asking questions I’m not going to answer?” Doc asked.
“For now,” I said. “How’s Mateo?”
She stared at her viser. “Okay,” she pronounced. But her reply took too long. “Force weapons are nasty. But those Lenox nanites are the best available. If he’s strong, he’ll make it.”
Lenox nanites. That meant she worked near Tuck, at the Lenox Life Center. That was why she was able to get to the corner so quickly. I bit harder on my lip. “What if he isn’t strong?”
Doc put a hand under her chin. It made her look very doctorly. I wondered if they taught that in medical school. “What do you mean?”
“You know the Waste? Have you heard of it in Manhattan?”
“I’ve heard of it,” Doc said, each word slow, wary.
“He’s got it. I can see it around the edges of his eyes. His skin. I’ve seen it coming for years.” I cursed the emotion in my voice. “It kills everyone who gets it. No one with the Waste makes it much past twenty. No one knows what it is. The doctors in Bronx City are useless. Just pill pushers. They always blame something else. Drugs, or Resister-H…but never the Waste.”
She kept the hand under her chin, but looked less doctorly now, less certain. “I’ll take some samples. I don’t have the equipment I need here. But I can run some tests at work. Then I can tell you more. Perhaps.”
“Can you cure it? Those richie medical places, they can cure anything, can’t they?”
Doc looked uncomfortable. No more hand on her chin. She was standing. She wanted to get away.
“Let me get those samples, then I need to go. I’ll come back tomorrow if I can. If not me, then someone else. There’s some packaged food in the kitchen, and a jug of clean water. Don’t use the fabricator unless you have to. Keep energy use low. The corps spend most of their time spying on each other, but we don’t want to attract attention.”
“How do I get in touch if I need you?”
Doc looked me up and down. “Your friend Nythan. Tell him you need a handshake from Doctor Willis. He’ll know how to get in touch with me.”
“Nythan?”
“I do some lab work with him. Bright kid, that one.”
“So they are all a part of this,” I said, mostly to myself. Dr. Willis had gone into Mateo’s room to get whatever blood and tissue she needed from him.
We are all part of Headmaster Havelock’s scheme. Whatever it is.
It didn’t take Dr. Willis long to get her samples. She stood at the doorway, facing me, her expression focused. “He’s going to be fine,” she said, though there was no feeling in her tone. It was just something she was supposed to say. “I’ll be back, hopefully with some more answers.”
As soon as the door shut, I searched the place. There wasn’t much to see beyond what I had already found. I couldn’t figure out what the other machines did without switching them on and experimenting, and I wasn’t willing to risk that. Not till Dr. Willis had done all she could for Mateo. There were four strange charcoal uniforms with unusually high collars stored in the closet of the other bedroom. On the back of the neck of each of the outfits was writing, but not in English. I ran the image through my viser. The writing was Korean: Daehan. But the word had no proper meaning according to the net.
Finding nothing else, I went to sit next to my brother, dragging one of the flimsy chairs with me. I stayed there until a few intrepid strands of light slipped through the fabricated sheeting covering the bedroom window. The soft illumination brought me back from the half-sleep I had lingered in through the night. My eyes opened to find the worrying pallor of my brother’s face had gone. His breathing was steady. I tried to stretch the stiffness in my back away. Mateo let out a loud snore that brought a smile to my face. Like old times.
I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. When I returned, Mateo was staring at me, his hands rubbing the bandage clinging to his ribs.
“Didn’t think those jack-A’s could shoot that well.”
I took a sip of the water then sat next to him again. “Sit up and drink this.”
Mateo pulled himself up, wincing as he did. He took the glass and finished it in three long, deep swallows.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “And where are we?”
“I get to go first. How did you get yourself roasted by a force rifle blast?”
He stroked his bandage, as if proud. “The Authority raided the building we were holed up in. We got onto the roof, ran across a couple of buildings, got down into an alley. We were haulin’ it to the garage where we had our U-cab parked. Thought we got clear of them. Guess not. One of ’em must’ve snagged me from the roof or something. Chris-Chris got me the rest of the way, then I blacked out. Where is he?”
“Went to ditch the car. It’s still my turn to ask questions,” I said curtly. “Why were you holed up in Manhattan, in a building the Authority was raiding?”
Mateo closed his eyes, as if in pain. But that wasn’t it. He was stalling.
“I’m sick of people not telling me the whole damn story,” I said, fire in every word. “People put their lives on the line to bail you out. Including me, and Kortilla. So if you don’t ’fess up, I’m going to reopen that gash, and give you a matching one on the other side.”
“Dee, it’s…You got a good thing…I don’t want you involved. It’s to protect you.”
“Look where you are, genius. This ain’t a hospital. You’re in a safe house near the Vision Quad, and those nanites that healed your injury didn’t come out of some back-alley fabricator. I’m in it too now. You helped put me here. Worse, you put Kortilla and some of my other friends in it as well. Start talking big brother, or blood or not, I’ll see you finished.”
“Your temper always scared the hell out of me,” he said, trying to lighten my mood.
I put my hand on his wound.
“What the hell…”
I pressed my thumb inward. Not too hard, but enough.
Mateo screamed.
“Finally getting to feel some of the pain you cause others?” My hand was poised.
“You’re loca,” he accused. “I always knew it—”
“I a
lready know you’re involved with some heavy crap. The equipment in that car, the hacking, it took serious hardware. Way beyond what Chris-Chris, you, or any of your little Corazones could manage. And I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that you’re holed up in Manhattan at the same time there’s an attack on Landrew Foster-Rose-Hart, which also used some serious hardware. So I’ve already guessed a lot of it.”
He stared at me: Mateo, my brother, a reflection of my soul.
“Deuces,” he muttered, surrendering.
“Talk. Did you try to kill Landrew Fart?”
“Fart? I like that. No, I had nothing to do with it.”
I was surprised by how much relief I felt. My brother hadn’t tried to kill Alexander’s dad. That was something.
“But you know about it? It has something to do with you?”
“The people who did that…They were…misled, I think.” He shook his head. “Gatta, Kally, a couple of others…I don’t know…”
“What?” I stood, knocking over the chair. “Kally was on that roof? With drones and rocket launchers? That boy can barely get his shoes on without someone helping him. What the hell is going on, Mateo? Why were you in Manhattan?”
“The allocator thing, their party,” he confessed, finally. “We were going to hit it, hard.”
“You mean kill people?” I couldn’t believe this was my brother. Mateo, a terrorist.
“Richies,” he declared, as if speaking of insects. “They don’t consider us people, Dee. We’re nothing to them…We’re—”
“Below the iceberg,” I whispered.
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Keep talking. What was the plan?”
“This guy, Kelvin, was our contact. Got us the equipment, schematics of the event space. Knew their defenses. Everything.”
My eyes narrowed. “Where did you meet him?”
“One of my boys, Nacho, set up a meet. Says there’s a guy, a Californian, that needed help. Had some big dollars. That I should meet him.”
I could picture it. Greedy little Nacho, who Mateo trusted, but never should have. Introducing my brother to a man with cash, a man with promises and stories. Mateo always did love a good story.