by Ren Warom
He settles against the wall to wait, his body balanced as usual on the angular jut of a shoulder. The steady ripples of soreness on his back make him grin again, he feels so different already. He pulls a hot sandwich from his pocket, bought from some diseased-looking grill shop beside the River Head Zone gates. The greasy stench of bacon makes him feel a little sick, but one mouthful in, he’s overwhelmed with the flavours and begins to devour it, just like last night’s cow stew and the cinnamon roll Ebony sleepily shoved into his hand as he left her apartment. He’s not used to hunger taking him like this, whole and sensual, a derangement of the senses. He finishes the sandwich in four bites, balling up the greasy papers and tossing them aside. He’s usually way more mindful, but this place is all desolation and belching toxins; a little rubbish won’t make any difference.
It’s too early for the factories to be active, and the air is still. Into the silence chirrup the low, fluting calls of Establishment runners. Bone resists the urge to yell at them. There’s no guarantee they’re here because he is. The River Head has long since been Establishment territory, and the runners use it as a training ground. The dangerous heights and funnels of factories, the perilous walkways and bridges between, make it the perfect place to drill green runners, especially at this time of day. He pulls out his cell instead. There’s something he should do but he can’t for the life of him think what it might be. It’s driving him a little crazy now. He’s still striving to figure out what it is when Stark’s car skids down the bank and slides to a halt some twenty feet away. Bone lays his thumb over his cell’s activation pad, the light blinking out as Stark exits the car and makes his way over.
Two of his team are with him. A man built like a tank, the same width as Stark but almost as tall as Bone, with a rough-and-ready sort of face the colour of polished teak. He’s ex-military by the looks. Probably Suge. The other team member is a small, slender woman who barely reaches even Stark’s shoulder. She’s got the same demeanour as Spaz, and he knows she must have been raised gang without even asking. She’s got ruby red hair and direct brown eyes that hit harder than a bullet train. Behind her shoulder pokes the thick stock of an immense gun.
“This is Suge,” Stark announces as they reach Bone. “And this here is my right hand, Tress.”
“Hi.”
Suge nods his head and Tress says, “He’s prettier than I thought he’d be. Are you sure we want to get him all filthy?”
Bone snorts. “I could give a shit about keeping clean, I’m aiming for leaving alive.”
“Then you’ll fit in just fine,” Suge informs with a big, toothy grin. His teeth are like plasterboards, flat, white, and even, probably mods. Bone wouldn’t want to end up being bitten by this man. Fuck knows what those teeth are hiding.
Stark chuckles. “Tal, boot,” he yells and it pops out. He hands them each a long, thick torch and a pair of black rubber waders. “This is all we’ve got,” he says. “So don’t fucking wreck it.”
Bone hefts his torch. “This is it?”
“And that’s luckier than you know. I’m here on sufferance and so are you. We could’ve been told to bring our own torches and strap plastic around our legs. I’m the Notary’s least favourite person right about now––next to you, of course.”
“Me? What the hell did I ever do to them?”
Stark raises both brows. “Not a clue. But I tell you what, I got the distinct feeling in my oh-so-delightfully brief meeting with the Notary Board that if you weren’t who you are, you’d be in some hole somewhere, bound up in a strait jacket and summarily dismissed from their concern.”
“Interesting,” Bone says, for lack of anything else to say.
“Isn’t it?”
Stark taps the window. The boot snaps shut, disappearing seamlessly into the body of the car, and Tal drives off up the incline, spattering them with loose gravel. They pull the waders on over trousers and boots, and follow Stark into the outlet, setting a swift pace through the confusing muddle of the sewer. Moving in a tight knot, their torches on full beam. At this pace, it takes an hour and a half to reach the first wafts of sulphur. They pause to snap on their masks and continue at the same speed. Bone reckons that if Suge and Tress would countenance it, Stark would have them all sprinting.
Fifteen minutes or so later, Suge moves closer to Stark.
“Movement. Up ahead.”
“Rats?”
“No. Too big. Someone’s walking in the tunnels.”
“Sewer folk?”
Suge shrugs. “Maybe. Not big enough to be Burneo, if reports hold true.”
“Okay, keep track. Let’s see what they do.”
From that point, it gets very weird, very fast. Every tunnel Stark leads them into, the figure is already there, in the distance, either waiting or already moving, as they’re being encouraged. Shown they’re on the right path so far. The pattern continues for almost an hour until their distant companion disappears down an unknown offshoot, reappearing a moment later only to stand, as if waiting. Expectant. As soon as Suge reports the change of tack, Stark calls a halt.
“Are we gonna follow?” Tress says, getting straight to business.
Stark nods slowly. “Wary as we go. Reckon Burneo’s expecting us. What say you?”
“Don’t disagree,” Tress replies. “I second on the wariness, though.”
“Agreed,” Suge says. “I don’t much like the way this character’s managed to stay at the edge of my range.”
Bone’s not really part of the team, but Stark looks at him next. Bone shrugs. “I guess we follow with caution,” he says.
“Suge, take point.”
They trail their enigmatic guide deep into parts of the sewer Stark says he’s never seen on the maps he’s had access to, ending up in tall, narrow tunnels that look far too old to be meant for the Spires’ use.
“These must be for the cities before New Detroit,” Stark says, awed, flitting his torch over the vaulted ceilings, riddled with mineral deposits building into thousands of tiny, sharp stalactites. “We’ve got to be close to the cavern again. Burneo’s close.”
“You sure?” Bone asks, through teeth beginning to chatter a little. He’s not fond of all this unrelenting dark and cold, even surrounded by Stark’s team, with their easy comraderie and confidence.
“Positive. Come on, we need to speed up.”
They move faster, into the necrotic shadows of an even narrower tunnel, startling a huge colony of rats gathered on the hissing length of a pipe. As the torchlight hits their eyes, the rats scream. They boil off the pipe in a panic, frantic to escape, straight over the small group in their way. Claws tangle in hair. Tails leave stinging red marks on skin as they scramble for freedom. Trapped in the narrow confine of constricting walls, the team form a tight scrum to protect each other from the worst, but Bone freezes in place, paralysed with shock. Seeing his distress, Suge grabs his jacket, yanking him to safety.
“Protect your eyes, dammit!” Stark yells through his mask. “These things’ll eat their way through, if they have to.”
“That’s about the last thing I ever wanted to hear,” Suge yells.
Stark laughs. “You’ll be all right, your eyes aren’t exactly edible.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better how exactly? I got plenty organic bits to chew through, thank you.”
“And here I was, counting on you chewing them first. Tell me, Suge, what the fuck use are those teeth if you don’t utilise them in these situations?”
“On rats?” Suge gives his boss the middle finger. “You want them chewed, you fucking chew them.”
“Without salt? Philistine.”
When the last rats have scrambled past, the four of them separate out, soaked and filthy, and check each other over for scratches that could putrefy in mere hours down here.
Stark whacks his hands swiftly through the mess of his hair. “Fuck knows what they’ve had their paws in,” he mutters.
“Next time you tell me you nee
d me on a special case, I’m telling you to go fuck yourself,” snaps Tress. She glares at him from under her fall of red hair, scrabbled to knotty tangles and larded with dirt.
“Ah, come on, you love this shit.”
Tress kicks water at his legs, chuckling as he leaps away. “He do this to you, too?” she asks Bone.
Bone’s shivering openly now, clutching his jacket closed with both hands, convinced a rat might appear and try to wriggle inside. “Last time I followed him down here,” he tells her, “I ended up face to face with Burneo, and then fell on a corpse.”
“Sounds about right,” she says dryly, making him laugh.
Suge briefly flicks his torch at Stark’s face to catch his attention. Stark squints and rumbles, “Put it down, Suge. Fuck’s sake, before I go blind.”
“I saw our guide before those rats swarmed.”
Back in business mode, Stark splashes over to his side. “Show me where.”
Suge leads them ten metres down the tunnel to a deep indent where a maintenance box could’ve been at some point, but now it lies empty and Suge flares his torch from the top to the bottom.
“He was here,” he says. He swings the torch around, hunting for exits of any kind in the slick walls in the immediate vicinity. There are none. “Must’ve gone ahead when the rats swarmed.”
Stark huffs, clearly annoyed to have lost time, and Tress pipes up, “So let’s hustle before we lose the fucker.”
“Right on, sister.”
Bone envies their insouciance. His heart is still hammering away, aching in his chest. One more thing goes wrong and he’ll lose it like he did before Burneo found him last time. Burneo. It’s only now, when he’s already down here, looking, that he truly understands that he doesn’t want to find Burneo again, or be found by him. He does want answers, and he believes Burneo may know enough to give them a lead, if he can find enough sanity to convey it. But how can they trust him? The Gift was horribly mutilated, and Burneo did that just to get his attention. To get Stark’s. Whatever he might have to show them, whatever side he might think himself on now, he’s no less deranged, no less dangerous. They shouldn’t forget that. Bone won’t. But he’s not sure about Stark. He’s not sure Stark sees anything but what he wants to see. And that’s dangerous, too.
Chapter 25
As they set off again, nervous tension flares beneath Stark’s skin, a subcutaneous net of fire. He’s worried about leading his team into danger, as always. Determined that if anyone is to be lost or hurt, it’ll be him. That’s what he took from his experiences at the Wharf, the losses he caused going after Teya—better him in the line of fire than anyone else. He’s thrown himself into danger a hundred times and more, to save his team, and there isn’t a bone in his body that doesn’t hate him for it. How he’s alive is a mystery to him, but he keeps demanding it of himself because apathy is intolerable, it costs too much. Trudging on through freezing, calf-deep water and musty darkness, they come swiftly to a bolted steel door.
“Is this where he wants us to go? Through a locked door?” Stark’s thoroughly pissed off.
Suge looks worried. “Hope I wasn’t following an implant glitch this whole fucking time.”
Stark dismisses the notion with a snort. “Your eyes have never failed me yet.” He turns to Bone and Tress. “You two wait here. Stay vigilant. Suge and I will run a double-back and sweep.”
They take the tunnel two feet at a time, examining every last inch of the walls. On the right, multitudes of pipes, barely an arm’s thickness, cling flush to the slimy brick, no doors or exits to be seen, and on the left, the side of the indent, sheer walls drip with unnatural-looking, yellowish-white growths of sewer moss. Stark touches one and rears away, grimacing. The tunnel floor is smooth, slippery under foot and it’s unlikely anyone would happily submerge beneath the water, there’s no telling what chemicals might lurk in the yellow slew’s composition. So, where did their guide go? Reaching the section where the rats waylaid them, they peer at the pipes, but there’s no way out big enough for a human. Disappointed, they turn back, pointing their torches at the roof despite its height. Too high to be a likely escape route, even for an augment. About thirty paces on from the wall indentation, Stark spies something.
“Move your beam over to mine.”
In the roof of the tunnel, almost disguised by darkness, there’s an opening. A round portal, similar to those used to exit to the street, but there are no streets at this depth and no ladder or inset rungs, either up to or within the hole itself. If it’s a route to anything, it would be for maintenance, only there are no rungs up the brick, no way to reach it.
“How the hell does anyone climb that without a rope?” Suge says, frowning. “And where’s the rope, if they did?”
Shining the powerful beam of his torch right up into it, Stark shrugs. “Beats me.”
“I can’t see an end, even at full range,” Suge says. “If we’re being led somewhere, I’m pretty sure it’s not there.”
“I fucking hope not. Do me a favour,” Stark demands of his team member. “Access your recorder. Describe what you saw in the indent.”
Suge takes a deep breath. “I hate this; it hurts.”
Closing his eyes, he’s silent for a moment, his face contorted with discomfort and then he begins to speak, voice sing-song as memory reels out the imagery, seared in by his augments. “It was a snapshot. A glimpse. Light reflected on eyeballs. Wide eyes. The light reflected off a good portion. Too much sclera, very white, very clean. But he or she must have been wounded. I saw denuded flesh, bloodied muscle, a lot of it with no yellow of fat. So, a deep wound, catastrophic. Recent, too. No chance to heal as yet, or no money to buy medicare.” His eyes open, the glow of his augments flicking out a second or so later. “That’s it.”
“Sounds like one of Burneo’s people to me,” says Stark. “So, we’re definitely on the right track. Reckon we’re supposed go through that door, then, so let’s get on with it.”
Back at the bolted door, her facial expression a textbook for anyone seeking to convey disgust, Tress is tapping a foot. Quite a feat, considering she’s submerged to the calves. “I think you need to take a close look at our exit, here.”
Stark steps up to examine it. A quick check of the bolt, almost as thick as Stark’s thumb and fully the length of his forearm, finds it choked with rust and sulphurous deposits.
Bone, standing beside Stark as he surveys the blockage, raises a brow. “So? We didn’t bring equipment for this kind of shit.”
Stark makes a face. “Like I said, my permission to come down here was on sufferance. I’m lucky I was given leave to sign out torches and waders. Had to pay for ration bars out of my own fucking pocket.” He blows out, frustrated, and taps at the rust with the butt end of his torch. “If I’m willing to break one of these fucking lights, we could bash the stuff off. It’s rotten.”
“So, what’s stopping you?” Tress inquires from behind.
Stark turns to look at her, hefting his torch at the door. “We have no map for what’s behind there, and our guide’s gone AWOL. Losing a torch would be a bad idea. I’ve been down here with a broken torch already. Not fun.”
“Hell no,” agrees Bone wholeheartedly, shivering in his jacket. He worries Stark. He’s too vulnerable, too fragile. If he had any option to leave him behind, Stark would have, but time is not their ally. Whilst they stumble about, more victims are dying, he’s sure of it. There’s no time to be careful.
“Gun?” Tress asks, reaching back to clasp the butt of the massive firearm at her shoulder. It’s an antique, found down here in the sewers generations back and passed to Tress from her father. A Smith and Wesson magnum, reworked to take the type of bullets that reduce human bodies to pasta sauce.
“Leave that relic be, you fuckwit,” Stark snaps, too irritated by this setback, the Notary’s parsimony, and just about every damn thing else in his way to keep his temper. “Add explosions to this sulphur, and we’re looking at third degree burn
s.” He stares at the door furiously, until something occurs. “You didn’t happen to bring all your ancient shit with you, did you, Tress? That old cosh maybe?”
Tress takes a step back. “Oh, no you don’t,” she says to him. “You’re not wrecking my cosh.”
Stark holds out his hand. “C’mon, one for the team.”
Grumbling, she wrestles it out of her pocket and shoves it into his hand. “Don’t you dare destroy it,” she snaps, as he slaps his torch into her hand in exchange.
“Of course not, sister, it’s the bolt I’m going to destroy,” he says, hoping that’s true, because she’ll have his hide if not. “Now give me some light on this bastard.”
Wielding the cosh in a way that makes Tress wince, Stark pounds the bolt until his hands are covered with a fine dusting of damp, brownish muck that seeps into his sleeves, staining his shirt cuffs. When clean steel finally begins to gleam through the murk, he stops and wraps the meaty strength of his hand about the whole protruding end, pulling with all his strength. There’s a deep, squealing grind of noise and the bolt moves back a clear inch. Stark hands Tress the cosh, snorting at her immediate scrutiny of its surface, and takes the bolt again, this time with both hands.
“Brace me up, Suge.”
Suge stands behind Stark and wraps his arms about his chest, his torch held across like a bar. “Go.”
Stark bares his teeth, bunches his muscles, and yanks. The bolt makes a loud skree of metal on metal as it shoots backwards, sending Stark’s arms flying. Suge stumbles, struggling to keep himself and Stark upright as the squeal of the bolt echoes back through the tunnel into silence, eerie as a rat’s scream. The two men wobble for a moment before finding their feet.
“Get those torches up,” Stark says, and holds out a hand to Tress for his. Shoving it into the crook of his shoulder, he faces the door. “I want all those beams in there the second it opens, understood?”