Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  Always one for keeping up appearances, Duran thought.

  “Yes, I understand,” Duran said.

  “I always liked you, Alec. That’s why I brought you back and gave you another chance. Don’t go and lose your head now when I need you.”

  Duran was adamant. “Commissioner, I need to follow through on this thing with Oberend. The facial recognition came up with a very close match for someone entering the Reach today. I believe Oberend may have survived after all.”

  Prazor chewed his lip. “Very well. Look into it if you must, but I can’t give you more men. Those I gave you for Deimona have already been reassigned, and I can’t have them chasing ghosts and spectres on a whim.” He gathered up the holophone again and began heading for the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to head up to Administration.”

  “You don’t think he’s really alive, do you?”

  “No, Alec. I don’t.”

  “You remember what he did, right?” Duran said, and Prazor paused at the door to look back at him. “You remember the explosion, what happened in the Atrium?”

  Prazor seemed to blanch, although his expression did not change.

  “I remember.”

  “And what happens if it’s really him, and he makes it up there once more?” Duran said. “What happens if he does it again?”

  Prazor’s mouth compressed into a thin line. “Then God help us, Alec. God help us all.”

  19

  Knile led Ursie through the corridors of Gaslight at a brisk pace. At times the place was nothing but pokey little corridors and avenues, inhabited by shady characters leaning against walls and staring out from under hoodies and caps as they scrutinised those passing by. Other levels opened up considerably with much taller ceilings and open spaces, the preferred abodes of law-abiding men and women and their families.

  Higher up in Gaslight, Knile knew that the largest of these spaces, the cavernous habitat of Juncture Nine, offered a tantalising network of dark streets and alleyways that were perfect for sneaking about undetected. Today, however, that was not the route that Knile wished to take. The pathway that he had created up through the Reach all those years ago deviated to another place entirely.

  “Hey, buddy,” a skinny man with slicked-back hair said, stepping in front of Knile. His eyes were twitchy and his feet restless, as if the world wasn’t moving quite as fast as he wanted and he was eager for it to catch up. “You lookin’ to fly?”

  “No, I’m good,” Knile said, barely breaking stride as he pushed past the man.

  “What about you, little lady?” the man called after them. “Looks like you could use some fresh air.”

  “We don’t want what you’re selling, creep,” Ursie said. “Get lost.”

  The man stopped, already scanning the thoroughfare for his next target.

  “You change your mind, you know where to find me,” he said over the din of the crowd.

  “Yeah, lying dead in a ditch,” Knile muttered.

  “I swear, every second guy on the street is pushing something lately,” Ursie said.

  “Man’s gotta make a living,” Knile said, his voice filled with irony. “What’s the flavour of the week these days?”

  “You name it. Crank, Tranq, Trash–”

  “Trash?” Knile said. “They’re selling something called Trash?”

  “Yup.”

  Knile pretended to weigh this up. “Any good?”

  Ursie rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Really hits the spot.” She rubbed the tips of her fingers together. “If you’ve got the cash, Breeze is what you really want.”

  “Haven’t heard of it. Must be a recent invention.”

  “It’s kinda the shiny new toy for the wealthy. Harder to get, though. There’s only one cook, from what I hear.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. I don’t touch any of that shit.”

  They came to a stairwell and Knile stopped abruptly, thrusting out a hand to bar Ursie’s progress. She opened her mouth to complain, then saw the Enforcer standing at the top of the stairs, his face buried in a holophone. He glanced up as a young woman in a tight black skirt sauntered past, then went back to the phone.

  “Problem?” Ursie said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know if these guys are looking for me yet. Better to assume they are, I guess.” He surveyed the close confines of the stairwell uneasily. “And that means I don’t want to get too close to any of them.”

  “So where to?”

  He nodded behind them. “Back this way.”

  They moved back along through the crowd in the direction from which they had come. Knile watched the inhabitants with increasing bleariness, his fatigue becoming more pronounced with each step. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes as those around him began to blur into one. He distantly wondered how they put themselves through this routine every day, these insignificant cogs in the great mechanism of the Reach. They all played their part, he supposed, feeding the economy and paying their taxes, but those working here were too poor to ever earn their way off-world. They would live and die in these dim corridors without any hope of ever moving on to someplace better.

  Maybe that was all many of them wanted, he supposed. Maybe their aspirations reached no higher than this insipid existence. And that was why, he figured, he had never felt as though he was one of them. He knew he was destined for something more.

  The crowd thinned as Knile led Ursie through the less frequented areas of the level. They came to an alcove that housed a grey fire door that was covered in scratches and a single splattered stain, as if someone had hurled a rotten tomato against it, the guts of which had slid all the way to the floor after the initial impact. Three youths lounged against the curved spaces of the alcove like grubs nestled in a hollow log, their conversation coming to an abrupt halt, laughter replaced by unwelcome glares.

  “The fuck do you want?” one of them said to Knile. He wore a baseball cap backward on his head and his faded blue jeans seemed to be several sizes too big.

  Knile glanced over his shoulder. “An Enforcer’s headed this way. Doing inspections by the looks of it. Saw him haul someone off.” Knile shrugged. “Thought you’d like to know.”

  “Who cares?” the boy said, waving dismissively.

  “Nah, man,” the girl next to him. “I got pinched last month. I don’t need this shit.”

  She stepped past the boy and made a hasty exit down the adjoining corridor. The two boys who were left looked at each other, then decided that they might as well follow her. They pushed off the wall and ambled past Knile and Ursie, attempting to appear cool and casual. Their nervous glances up the corridor betrayed them, however, and after a few steps they fell into a kind of shuffling jog as they pursued the girl.

  “Stand watch,” Knile instructed urgently, stepping over to the door and pulling out the holophone Giroux had given him, as well as the grey cable he had purchased downstairs.

  “What for?” Ursie said. “I thought you made up that story about the Enforcer.”

  “I did, but I don’t want anyone to see what I’m about to do.”

  He attached one end of the cable to the holophone and the other to the access panel on the door, then proceeded to tap away busily on the phone’s display.

  “What are we doing in this place?” Ursie said.

  “Taking a detour through a maintenance shaft. I’d prefer to use the main passageways usually. This way is slower, and I don’t like jacking more systems than necessary in case of alarms. But with that Enforcer hanging around, this will have to do.”

  Ursie glanced up and down the corridor. It was empty.

  “How do you know so much about this place, man?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “The Reach. How do you know so much about how it works?”

  “Because I devoted my life to figuring it all out,” he said, only half paying attention to her as his fingers danced on the phone. “While everyone else was trying to earn an honest living I was squirming through undiscovered p
assageways, studying the systems, figuring out the most important people… whatever it took.”

  “Where’d you learn the tech?”

  “Hung out with some hackers. Did favours for them, got favours in return. Had them show me the basics and figured out the rest myself.”

  There was a sound down the corridor and Ursie held up a hand to Knile, indicating that he should stop. A man in a grey maintenance uniform appeared toting a toolkit. He stopped a little way along and shoved a key into a door, hocking noisily as he went inside. The door slammed shut behind him and the corridor was quiet again.

  “Okay, go,” Ursie said.

  “Already done,” Knile said, and the door clicked open as Knile pulled the handle. “After you.”

  Inside was a narrow passageway that led away into darkness. Knile carefully closed the door and then activated the LED flashlight on his belt. There was a steel ladder leading upward not far away.

  “Going up,” he said cheerily. He strode over to the ladder and swung himself onto it, climbing a few steps before looking back at Ursie. “Are you okay with heights?”

  “Kinda,” she said unconvincingly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Knile said. “This ladder is nothing.”

  They moved up the ladder and into a tight shaft. The flashlight bounced as Knile moved around, sending shadows cavorting about the tight space. He realised that this was probably making life difficult for Ursie following behind, and as he looked down he could see her fumbling one hand after the next as she white-knuckled the rungs. The shaft opened up again into a wider space as they reached the next level, but to Ursie’s dismay he continued up the ladder.

  “This will actually work out okay for us,” Knile said. “This shaft comes out not far from the destination I had in mind.”

  “How far up does it go?” Ursie said, but it was evident from her tone of voice that there was another more pressing question in her mind: How soon can we get off?

  “A couple more levels. Nothing too crazy.”

  They passed into another shaft and then another after that, their boots echoing and scraping in the confined space. As they were about to reach the next level there was suddenly another noise – a metallic scratching sound, and Knile came to an abrupt stop.

  “Pshhh,” Knile hissed, and Ursie froze. A moment later a light came on in the level below them, splashing them with white fluorescence like a spotlight on a couple of burglars making their escape. There was the sound of footsteps and a heavy thump, like something large being dumped on a table, and then the visitor seemed to pause.

  Knile looked beneath his legs and locked eyes with Ursie staring up at him. They were concealed somewhat within the shaft, but the slightest noise would likely give them away.

  They waited breathlessly for whoever it was to make their next move. After several excruciating seconds there was more noise as tools were rummaged through and something was dragged across wood, and then the footsteps resumed. The sound receded and then the light clicked off as the visitor left, plunging the shaft into gloom again.

  “Damn,” Ursie breathed. “Close.”

  “Yeah, probably just a maintenance guy, but we don’t want to run across anyone who could raise the alarm right now.”

  They continued to climb, and a few minutes later they had made it to the desired location. Knile gripped Ursie’s arm and helped her up the last few rungs, and as she planted her feet she sighed shakily.

  “Not so bad,” Knile grinned.

  “Yeah. Not so bad.”

  They found themselves in a room with copper pipes coated in sweat running up the wall, and a dripping sound echoed dully from an adjoining area. It was humid and uncomfortably warm and there was a decidedly musty odour in the air.

  “Plant room,” Knile informed her. “The place we’re looking for isn’t far from here.”

  They exited cautiously, keeping an eye out for more maintenance staff as they followed another series of corridors. Soon they could hear voices up ahead and slowed as Knile took stock of the situation.

  The voices were gruff and raucous, a group of men sharing a few jokes by the sounds of it. Knile checked his wristwatch before leaning around the corner to see what lay in the next corridor.

  “What is it?” Ursie whispered.

  “I’m not sure what time these guys clock off,” Knile said. “And I don’t really have time to wait. We’ll head in around the back. They won’t notice us if we’re quiet.”

  Knile followed the corridor with Ursie close behind, and they came to the rear of the room from which the workers’ voices emanated. They were so close that Knile and Ursie could see their shadows through the open doorway.

  “And so she goes down on me, right?” one of the men was saying in a brash tone of voice. “And my wife is asleep in the next room” – he said amid more gouts of laughter – “and then she asks if I mind if she takes her false teeth out!”

  The man continued with his delightful anecdote amid the cheers and guffaws of his captive audience. The intruders crept about in silence only a few metres away. Knile collected a pair of grey coveralls and measured them against himself briefly, then did the same with Ursie. There was nothing that looked as though it would fit her particularly well, so he simply chose the smallest size available. He then grasped two climbing harnesses and a handful of metal clips that were on one of the shelves, then pointed to the exit to indicate they should leave.

  The two of them slunk back out the way they had come as another of the workmen launched into a new story. Knile winced as his boots squeaked on the concrete, but he needn’t have worried – the men were oblivious to their presence, caught up in laughter and stories.

  Knile and Ursie continued through homogenous, grey-walled corridors on a path that snaked and twisted back and forth. Eventually he stopped at what looked like a dead end, but which in fact contained a barely visible security door recessed into the wall.

  “What are we doing?” she said.

  “Time for a wardrobe change,” he replied, slipping the coveralls on over his clothes and pulling at the zipper in one long fluid movement.

  “Really?” Ursie said, looking disdainfully at her woefully oversized coveralls. “Is that necessary?”

  “Only if you want to look like a maintenance guy and not like some trespasser going places they shouldn’t.”

  She rolled her eyes but acquiesced, pulling the garment over her shoulders with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. She watched Knile step into one of the harnesses and pull the straps tight around his midsection. Then he began to fiddle with one of the metal clips he’d taken from the storeroom.

  “What’s that?” Ursie said. The sleeves of her coveralls extended well past her hands, the ends of them drooping as if she were some prankster about to go around pretending to be a ghost and scaring little kids.

  “This is a carabiner,” Knile said. “A very necessary part of our swag of climbing gear.”

  “Climbing?” Ursie said worriedly, tugging at her sleeve to free her hand. “What are we climbing now?”

  “It’s probably better if I just show you.”

  Ursie groaned. “This just sounds better and better every second. I guess I should have told you I don’t like hanging off tall, precarious things.”

  “Well, the good news is, we’re not going up straight away,” Knile said, placing his fingers on the handle of the door behind him. “First we’re going out.”

  20

  Alton stood quietly before the five men, a polite little smile on his face as they watched him warily. They were dressed in black two-piece suits with single-breasted jackets and plain cotton shirts that were open at the collar. Five more men stood behind Alton with the same air of respect and the same attire, forming a loose ring around both him and Tucker.

  This must have been one of the more opulent apartments in Juncture Nine, Alton decided. The carpet was really quite lovely, he thought, clean and plush and well maintained, qualities that were hard to come by
out in Link. The furniture was respectable, the easy chairs and matching sofa a rich, dark brown, and tasteful canvases hung on the wall, abstract depictions whose dark tones accentuated the rest of the decor. A large glass frame in the far wall looked out upon the ever-gloomy confines of Juncture Nine.

  Alton regarded each man before him in turn. They were rough sorts, no doubt about it. There was a certain glint in their eyes, a steel that could only come from many hard years working the streets. He imagined that every single one of them had done bad things in their time – broken the bones of debtors who had been late on their payments, carried out hits at the whim of their bosses. They were thieves, murderers, men without conscience.

  Those jackets that hung from their shoulders did not sit well, Alton decided, not a single one. At first he hadn’t been sure what irked him about their appearance so much, but then he realised that was it. They did not belong in such clothes, he thought. Wearing the suits went against their nature. It amounted to a poor attempt at respectability, and in the end only cheapened their appearance instead of enhancing it. They looked foolishly out of place, like chimpanzees in tuxedos.

  He’d hoped for better, but he supposed he would have to settle for the tools that were at his disposal.

  “Where is he?” Alton asked no one in particular.

  The men in suits glanced at each other uncertainly.

  “He’ll be along when he’s ready,” one of them said.

  Alton sighed and inclined his head toward Tucker beside him.

  “Is no one punctual anymore?” he said with resignation.

  “Good help is hard to find, boss,” Tucker said.

  Alton lifted his holophone and checked it impatiently.

  “Time is wasting away,” he said.

  “He’ll be along soon,” the man in the suit insisted.

  “Well, he’ll just have to catch up when he arrives,” Alton said. “I’ve waited long enough.”

  The men in suits looked at each other again, alarmed at this break in protocol.