What Lies Below

by Glynn James

  “And you found tools?” asked FirstMan.

  “Pristine tools,” said Jack. “Boxes and boxes of the damn things. I dug where he pointed and opened up a stairwell that nearly collapsed under me. Three cellars deep the place was, and full of cobwebs and spiders and all kinds of nasty stuff. He made me build a wheel cart from scratch just to haul the stuff back to The Crossing. Never lifted a hand to help with any of it, either.”

  “Harsh,” said FirstMan.

  “Yeah, but I learned a lot,” said Jack. “I learned a lot and I learned it fast. I was his slave, and I got paid with food and little else, but the talent I learned from him was worth that price. You know, he could stand still in a room while talking to you and just vanish. Still talking, just somehow not visible, and yet not leave the room. It took me a long time to realise that most of it was about what was in your own mind. He had this theory that he went on about a lot. He thought that people used to be able to do many more things that were forgotten and that you just had to remember how to do it.”

  “Sounds strange, but amazing still,” said FirstMan.

  Jack laughed. “Yeah, it does. He said his ability to vanish was just a matter of making someone else forget he was there. The old guy was pretty screwed up.”

  They arrived at a wide, open ground across from the target building. The huge space appeared to have been some sort of plaza. The ground was covered in broken slabs that still bore faded colours and patterns that Jack couldn’t make out clearly. Across the other side of the plaza was the rusted carcass of a tank, with its gun long collapsed to the ground.

  The group of armoured troops that FirstMan had brought with them, all geared out in Hunter combat armour, the origin of which was still a puzzle to Jack and a question he was itching to ask, started forward, heading towards the tall building. But Jack felt something uneasy in his stomach, something urgent, and it wasn’t the need to relieve himself.

  Something was not right here, but he couldn’t place what it was.

  “Wait,” he said, lifting his hand and signalling the men back. A few stared at him questioningly, and then looked to FirstMan for orders. But FirstMan waved them back.

  “Problem?” asked FirstMan.

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “Something odd. Something makes me nervous.”

  Jack turned to Ryan. “Buddy, get back over there near the building and keep out of the way.” Then he turned back to FirstMan. “Just in case.”

  Ryan didn’t wait to question, and jogged back to the building opposite the taller spire, and stood peering around the edge of a crumbling wall, the curiosity too much to just hunker down and hide.

  Jack stared at the front of the building, and at the junk strewn around it. There was a very definite area, maybe fifty feet wide, in front of the building that was completely clear of junk. The ground was still dusty, and dirty, but there was a section up on the dais in front of the building that was…

  That was it. That was what was wrong.

  “Everybody get back under cover,” Jack said as he peered at the patch of ground and stooped to pick up a stone. He waited until they were all behind cover, took a dozen steps forward, and threw the rock. He waited two seconds to confirm that the stone had fallen inside the open space, and stepped to the side, putting the ruined tank in between him and the clear spot.

  There was a click, a series of beeping sounds echoing across the plaza, then a grating sound, followed by a continuous tick, tick, tick that didn’t seem to stop. Eventually he edged forward and peered around the edge of the tank. In the middle of the dais, where the clear spot had been, was a gun turret sticking up from the ground. It was pointing directly at where the stone had landed and was furiously attempting to shoot it.

  But it was out of ammunition.

  FirstMan arrived next to him, the other troopers following. The leader peered at the angry gun as it shifted and tried to track anything else in the locality, again repeatedly firing nothing at whatever it had decided was a target.

  “Well, that could have been messy,” said FirstMan, turning to Jack. “I think maybe I’ll just trust whatever strange talent you have from now on,” he said.

  Jack peered at the man who led the Junkers. There was something unusual about him. “Who are you, anyway?” he asked.

  FirstMan frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not like the rest of the people out here,” said Jack. “You and your men.”

  FirstMan smiled. “So not just good at finding things, then,” he said. “You spot far more than I’m comfortable with, Jack.”

  Jack shook his head and smiled back. “I’m no threat, you know that,” he said. “But you didn’t take that armour from dead Inner Zone troopers, did you?”

  FirstMan grinned back. “No, it was issued to me,” he said, deciding that he liked this man, Jack, and considering that the man would have just saved their lives if the defence gun had been packing ammunition, he thought he could trust him. “I’m Ranold. Previously Corporal Ranold, of the Inner Zone RAD. Though I prefer the Junker term FirstMan, if you wouldn’t mind sticking to that in front of other Junkers. All of my men are ex-RAD as well. But we’re all Junkers now, and we’ve worked hard to unite the tribes into one.”

  Jack looked puzzled. “Then why are you out here?”

  “It’s a very long story,” said FirstMan. “And one that we should tell another time. When we have what we came for.”

  “It will be below ground level,” said Jack, indicating the building with a nod. “Probably in some kind of storage. I think there was a battle in this area, a long time ago, and the tech was moved and secured.” He turned and started towards the front of the building.

  “So a bunker, you think?” replied FirstMan, following him.

  “A bunker,” replied Jack. “Though I doubt it’s locked. Just well hidden.”

  “Then let’s go find it, shall we?” said FirstMan.

  Into The Old World

  Jack stepped carefully over the pile of rubble that blocked most of the entrance to the building. Once, he thought, the entrance hall had been a grand affair, a sprawling and large open space with huge panel windows surrounding it that providing a stunning view out into the plaza that he also thought would once have been beautiful. He’d seen the tiled floor in the centre of the plaza, and although it was now broken, and overgrown with weeds and even a few trees poking up from the cracks, the tiles were still colourful.

  He glanced back, as he stepped down onto hard ground, and looked out of the gaping holes that must have held single, massive panes of glass. How anyone could have made such things was puzzling to him. There had been a man at The Crossing that made glass, but it took a lot of recycled bottles and scavenged broken pieces from the ruins for him to smelt anything of size, let alone something to fill the huge holes in the side of this building.

  Such were the losses of history, Jack thought. But maybe they can still make it in the Inner Zone, maybe someone still has the knowledge. They have to. He’d seen the glass panes on the Trans, and in the windows of the large buildings in the compound where he had been sorted with the rest of the captives.

  But there was no one to replace these out here, he thought. He glanced towards FirstMan, who stood just a few feet away and was searching the ground and the room ahead of them, and then he looked into the once plush foyer of the building.

  There was an abundance of broken wood and cracked plaster covering the floor, and as he glanced around he saw other things – bones, rags, and bits of metal. A fight had taken place here at some point, and much of the debris had been left untouched since then. Jack frowned. There were two sets of stairs and two open shafts where lifts had once been, and there were a set of doors beyond that, but no sign of a way down.

  “Search the upper floors,” ordered FirstMan, and Jack looked up to see RightHand heading up the left set of stairs, followed by one of the other troopers. Another pair headed up the other stairs, while the rest remained at the op
en entrance, looking out into the junk and ruins beyond the plaza.

  “Where do we look?” asked Ryan. The boy was picking at a pile of broken wood and plastic a few feet away, where Jack imagined a desk of some sort would once have been. Ryan picked out a long pole of plastic, turned it over and then dropped it back into the pile. He stood up and frowned at Jack.

  “We need to go down,” Jack said.

  Ryan glanced around, checking first the lack of a way down the stairs and then at the few doors that lined the back of the hall. “Through there?” he asked.

  Jack nodded. “Has to be,” he said. “I don’t see any other way.”

  Ryan didn’t look convinced. “Are you even sure there is a down? Doesn’t look like one to me. No stairs.”

  Jack walked over to the nearest lift shaft and peered down. Darkness below and more rubble. He could vaguely see what he thought was the bottom, some thirty feet below, and what looked like the top of the lift itself. There was a large pile of metal cable collapsed on top of it and a small hatch that was already open, revealing darkness inside.

  “The lift goes down further,” he said, and then noticed that Ryan and FirstMan were already next to him, also looking into the darkness. “But why would they build a level that only the lift accessed?

  FirstMan shrugged. “I’ve seen worse designs,” he said. “You should see the conversion facility over at the RAD grounds.” He shook his head and looked puzzled. “Utter mad chaos.”

  Jack turned to face him. “I saw that place, or at least the entrance to it, when I was captured,” he said. “What do they do there?”

  FirstMan looked back down the shaft and then upwards. “You really want to know?”

  “I’m just curious,” said Jack. “I saw someone causing trouble and they got dragged off that way.”

  FirstMan smiled, but there was no joy in it. “Well that person is about the unluckiest you ever met,” he said. “They…recondition people who are a problem, mostly violent criminals and troublesome captives from the Outer Zone. Brainwashing, or should I say, Resetting.”

  “They actually do that?” asked Ryan.

  FirstMan turned to the boy, seemed to consider whether he should be telling the youngster such things, but then continued. “They do indeed. And if you ever happen to be unlucky enough to bump into the HAC – that’s Heavy Assault Corps, then you’ll be looking at the results of that…facility. They stew up their minds. They don’t get rid of violent tendencies, in fact I’d say they increase those, but they make them like obedient dogs.”

  “Nice,” said Jack.

  “Absolutely,” said FirstMan. “I had the unfortunate pleasure of having to escort a detachment to a drop off at a clearance zone, once. Not a single one of them spoke, the whole two hour journey. They just sat there, looking straight ahead into empty space.”

  Jack looked back down the shaft and finally noticed the set of rungs studding the wall at one foot intervals. They seemed to lead both up and down, and he could see that they went all the way to the bottom.

  “That’s our way down,” he said, pointing.

  FirstMan frowned, but then saw what Jack was pointing at. “You want me to send my guys down there?” he asked.

  Jack shook his head. “No, me and Ryan can handle this. Better off without a lot of heavy boots stomping around down there. Also, I don’t know if those rungs will take the weight of that armour you guys are wearing.”

  FirstMan nodded, reached to his waist and pulled away a radio handset. “Well this is my spare, if you know how to use it? Yell if you need us.”

  Jack took the radio, clipped it onto his belt and then turned to Ryan. “Want me to go first?”

  “No way,” Ryan said as he sat down, swung his legs over the edge of the shaft, and shuffled towards the ladder. “I’m gonna find the loot way before you can sniff it out.”

  What Lies Beneath

  Jack followed the boy down the shaft, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the darkness below. He could just make out Ryan, about fifteen feet below him, as the boy dropped down onto the top of the lift. A quiet, dull thud echoed faintly up the shaft as he landed. Jack thought he heard something else, a clattering noise of some sort from far above them, and wondered what RightHand and the others were doing up there.

  He glanced upwards to see that the shaft rose high into the building and then darkness, and thought for a moment that now would not be a good time for something to drop down from that height. With this he sped up, taking the rungs two at a time and hoping none of them would break. Finally he hopped onto the top of the lift and looked down the hole that he had just seen Ryan disappear into.

  “It’s okay down here,” said Ryan, looking up at him from inside the lift. “There’s…ah…the remains of someone down here in the corner, at least I think it was a person, but it’s really old and dusty, so try not to step on it. I nearly did.”

  Jack started to lower himself and then peered down into the hole once more. He saw the boy kneeling on the ground, and a moment later there was a spark and a flicker of flame as Ryan lit a makeshift torch made from a scrap of wood with some cloth tied to it.

  Good lad, Jack thought. You haven’t forgotten the things I taught you, even if you haven’t gotten rid of that reckless adventurer streak. Not a bad thing, really.

  Jack dropped down into the lift, felt the structure shudder and then settle once more, and watched as Ryan stepped out into the opening outside the lift. Jack stepped forward, moving beyond where the boy stood. “Okay, now I go first,” he said, grinning as Ryan frowned with annoyance. “Just in case something is down here.”

  In answer to that, Ryan flashed his knife in the torchlight. He held it tightly in his other hand and smiled back. “I’m ready for that too,” he said.

  Jack nodded and took out his own knife, thinking again that he was glad the FirstMan had put his gear aside instead of sharing it out among the Junkers. He knelt down next to the lift. “Can you shine that over here?” he asked.

  Ryan knelt beside him and lowered the torch to the bottom of the lift, peering and trying to spot whatever it was that had caught Jack’s interest. The torchlight was dim, maybe lighting up twenty feet from the spot with a yellow, flickering glow, but it was enough for the two of them to see underneath the lift, and to see there was nothing underneath it but a concrete floor, half a foot lower than the floor inside the lift.

  “What?” asked Ryan.

  “Bottom floor,” said Jack, standing back up and looking around the room outside the lift. “Means unless we find a stairway or something, this is the lowest level and we don’t need to search any lower down. Also means that with the open shaft and decent ventilation its ok to leave that flame lit.”

  Ryan looked confused for a moment, looked at his torch burning in the darkness, then he seemed to realise what Jack meant. Gas below ground. His mouth turned to a silent oh and he nodded.

  Jack already suspected that what they were looking for was not far away. Glancing around the large room, he saw piles and piles of boxes and crates, all seemingly filled with cables and rusted gadgets, some of which looked similar to the thing that FirstMan had described. But he knew it had to be a sealed package that he took back up with him, or the circuit board would be useless after so many years exposed to the elements.

  He stood in the darkness, watching as Ryan walked around the room, uncovering more boxes as the light from the torch explored the unknown. There was a set of double doors at the other end of the room, a single corridor with three doors leading off it, and another door in the far corner.

  But which of them leads to what we want? he thought. Where does the trail lead us?

  Jack looked at the smaller corner door, thinking. That it was probably a storage room for cleaning materials. Seemed to be the obvious choice. He glanced at the three doors. One of those, maybe? But, no. The double doors led somewhere else, maybe into a larger storage room. He judged a direct line from the lift opening to the double door, envisionin
g someone wheeling a trolley out of the lift and directly across the room. He glanced at the floor, peering through the scattered pieces of debris and broken plaster that had fallen from the ceiling and onto the worn concrete. The paint marks had worn away over the centuries, but there was still a trace of them. Deep lines crossing the gap between the lift and double doors, those painted in yellow. The other lines, three of them and much thinner, heading to the corridor and the three doors, and then a blue line weaving its way across the floor towards the smaller door.

  He tried to twist his brain around the image on the floor and closed his eyes for a second. In the darkness inside his mind he saw an image of the Sorting Room, where he had been sent down one corridor along with some of the other captives, and others had been sent down different corridors. Coloured lights marked the different destinations and this was somehow similar to that. Then the image was gone, and he saw an automated factory, with small metal robots making their way around the different machines, delivering parts and picking up new ones. This was an image of the Picking Factory, he thought, but one from long ago. Where the image had come from he didn’t know, maybe one of his old magazines, but as he opened his eyes he saw, just for a moment, a ghost superimposed on the cluttered and dusty room in front of him. A large robot with a trolley following behind it moved out of the lift and drifted forward, its wheels skittering over the flat, unobstructed floor and ignoring the real debris that was there now. It rolled forwards, heading across the room towards the double doors, following the painted line. It slowed until the doors opened and then sped through them into the interior of the next room. Then the ghost was gone.

  “That way,” Jack said, pointing to the double doors, and Ryan turned from the box over by the smaller door, which he was peering into, and looked towards the doors. The boy’s mouth opened a little, and Jack waited for the questions, but then Ryan just nodded, accepting Jack’s intuition. He dropped the box and started forward, holding the torch aloft to light the way.