The Engine What Runs the World

by Quinn Buckland

  “Do you really think Smoke would abandon his mission to find Blue if he knew?”

  Blaze hung his head, “I don’t know for sure, but I’m not willing to take the chance. Smoke is a man of his own convictions and moral authority that he made himself. If he decides something is more important he will change his mind and go after it.”

  “Smoke didn’t strike me as that kind of person,” Constance said as she thought about her interactions with Smoke.

  “Thing is,” Blaze continued, “Smoke really is a wild card. We don’t actually know what his thoughts would be about our plan. He could very well be all for it, but since we don’t know we are not going to be taking any chances. We keep Smoke from knowing and that will inevitably lead to our victory. There is always the possibility that I’m wrong and I’d owe him a decent bottle of whiskey for it, but I’d rather be wrong about him and take the chance he’d ruin it than be right and do nothing.”

  “Interesting,” Constance said.

  “Do you love him?” Blaze asked with a raised eyebrow.

  It was a question Constance hadn’t really considered. The fact that it had been completely out of the blue, the mere asking of it had taken her aback. It didn’t take her long though to regain her composure and answer. “No,” she said with utmost certainty. “He’s a great man and a good friend… I guess. But his heart belongs to another, and mine certainly does not belong to him or to anyone else. He helped me into the underground and I owe him for it. My choice to be down in the underground is not as selfless as you may think.”

  “Your mission,” Blaze said with a grin, “I’d like to hear about it if you’re willing to tell it.”

  Constance gave him a look, “I don’t know,” she said with hesitation in her voice.

  “There’s a good chance I may be able to help you,” Blaze said with a slight smirk.

  Constance looked up at the Nagara. He’d be ruggedly handsome, gorgeous even if he were a couple decades younger. He looked to have more age on him than Smoke, though he wore it much better than Smoke ever would. His skin was darker than any that she had ever seen and it was interesting to see just how well the man blended in with the rest of the underground. The fourth below wasn’t dark by any means, but when the two of them walked beneath a shadow the man seemed to almost disappear. She could see why the Nagara were excellent slavers, the potential slaves would never see them coming.

  She ran her fingers through her hair and scratched an itch she didn’t knew she had until doing so, “I’m looking for the man who killed my parents. He’s someone from the underground and I don’t know who he is. That’s been the whole problem. Nobody on the surface got a good look at him. All they saw was a shadowy figure running away and that was it. Nobody saw who it was and I have been trying ever since to avenge their deaths.”

  “A noble cause,” the Nagara said, emotionless.

  “My only cause,” she replied.

  “What’s your plan for after you find him? Or better yet, after you’ve killed the man. Providing you do kill this man.”

  “Honestly? I think my world will open up. I may try to save up enough to get to Red City. I hear there’s a lot there in the way of opportunity that I could never find here.”

  “And once you’re in Red City?” Blaze asked.

  “Who knows?” Constance said.

  The truth was she already had enough skins to make it to Red City and continue to live a slightly comfortable life, if she could get herself a menial job. If she got something that paid she’d be able to do as she pleased. Letting the Nagara know she had the skins was not an option under any circumstance though. That was just a fact.

  “What did you say your family name was?” Blaze asked.

  Constance narrowed her eyes and gave Blaze a dirty look, “Why?”

  “I’ll be honest,” the Nagara said, “my memory is not what it used to be, but I do remember quite a lot. It’s one of the many reasons how I came to be a great slaver. I am one of the few who have the most white dots on his face. It’s a sign of pride and dignity - what was I talking about again? Oh yes, my memory may not be what it used to be, but I have spent a lot of time studying people of the tower - you said you used to live in the tower - don’t give me that look. There are not many families who live within the tower in our area. I’m actually amazed any live here at all. I guess they have to live spread apart to protect their own pompousness.

  Anyway, I remember the majority of the families and some of the dealings they’ve had. Get a few drinks into many of them and they open up like a woman… Woops, sorry. So, if I had your family name, I may be able to help determine who killed your folks.”

  Constance had to think for a second to weigh the pros and cons of telling the man. She soon shook her head and said, “You should know. You have such a great memory. It was mentioned at the meeting during the introductions.”

  The Nagara man named Blaze grinned a wide toothy grin. His teeth were all perfectly white, something Constance found oddly unsettling, “I knew you were smart Miss Ibot,” Blaze said, “But I didn’t think you’d actually catch on.”

  “Sometimes I amaze myself,” Constance said doing her best to hide her unease.

  “Well I have some good news for you,” he said as his face changed from a wide grin to a perfectly straight face devoid of any emotion or feeling. “I know who killed your parents… Better yet, I know who hired them.”

  12

  Once the lift made contact with the seventh below Smoke looked around the dark floor. To his surprise the place was empty. Not a soul or building could be seen as far as his eyes could see, not that he could see very far with the light so low. The smell of smoke filled the air.

  “You’ll be wanting to get off this floor as quick as you can,” the lift driver said.

  “Why’s that?” Smoke asked as he continued to look around.

  You wouldn’t want the Nagara to find you. They’d think they missed someone. You know how they hide in the dark for someone.”

  “And you help them bring people back,” Smoke shot back.

  “Jobs a job,” the lift driver said looking offended at the insinuation.

  Smoke nodded, “Yeah, it is.”

  Sometimes Smoke forgot he had been the kind of person, not all that long ago, to track down and return slaves to their owners. A job was a job. He slapped the lift driver on the back and apologized for the venom he had spit. The lift driver didn’t show any sign of amusement or happiness, though he didn’t have the same offended look as before.

  “So what happened here?” Smoke asked, “Did the Nagara really take everyone away?”

  “Some fled below,” the lift driver said with a raised chin. “Though yeah, the majority of the people were taken by the Nagara. Shitty deal for them, can’t say as I envy them at all.”

  “Well,” Smoke said with a look of serious annoyance, “I’m not sure what to make of that. I never thought the slavers would ever take everyone away. It didn’t look that way when I was up there. It was crowded sure, but the cages weren’t any fuller than they’d ever have been.”

  “A lot of them are probably still in training,” The lift driver said, “damn shame.”

  “I should be off,” Smoke said as he began to walk away, “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  Smoke continued through the seventh below looking for the town. As he approached he could see the ruins of what had once been the homes of several hundred people. They had been burnt down and smashed to pieces, likely killing any who had escaped the Nagara. His heart dropped as he remembered having his drink with Blaze. He had fraternized with a man who trapped, tortured, indoctrinated and sold living humans.

  His thoughts soon shifted to Blue. She had last been seen going down to this floor. It was hard to say just how long the place had been like this, though he hoped beyond all hope she had missed this forced exodus. If she had been captured there’d be no finding her. He tried to calm his mind. B
laze had said he hadn’t seen her which means she hadn’t been in the training camps. He had no reason to not trust Blaze and that was how he would continue thinking until he knew differently.

  Smoke let out a depressed sigh and continued on. He wanted to get to the lift before he had the chance to see more of this floor. It was not the sort of place he ever wanted to be again. The dim lighting made the place seem more of a graveyard than a place any living person had once lived. He could see the smashed bulbs that had once illuminated the place enough for people to see and to prevent the Nagara from taking everyone in the streets.

  Something clicked in his brain. The Nagara would typically nab people when they ventured out of the town. It was the best way to prevent being seen. On top of that the town was defended against the Nagara. Smoke had been to this town a few times and had seen the sentry towers where men with revolving pistols would shoot any approaching Nagara on sight. They wouldn’t even give them a chance to speak before shooting. That said, if the lights had started going out around the town suspicions would rise and everyone would bring out their weapons. There’d be dead bodies everywhere. Since arriving on the seventh he hadn’t seen one body.

  Things looked exactly as if the Nagara had rushed the town and stolen everyone. It was all perfect… too perfect. He entered one of the burnt houses and looked around. Heavily charred furniture was seen as well as several charred petty personal effects. There had been something missing though. Something he couldn’t quite place, something that should have been there.

  He entered another burnt house and saw the exact same thing and the same sense that something was missing. He did the same with several other houses before it finally hit him. Memorables. Images, toys, anything a family or a person would want to keep had been missing from the blaze. It had been true that the majority of those effects would have burned away without a trace, but in every house? No traces at all? It seemed a little too odd for his liking.

  There was something that was being kept from him. Did this have anything to do with it? He knew how to find out.

  He made his way to the lift and looked at the young woman. She didn’t look as if she was a capable lift driver. She had olive coloured skin, black curled hair and dark eyes. “What happened here?” Smoke asked.

  “The Nagara came and took everything away,” she said casually.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” he said with a grin.

  The more he thought about it the more he realized all the lift drivers had been horrible liars. He didn’t see a reason to look into anything due to his dedication towards his own mission and the fact that he just hadn’t been looking for lies. The only one who had gotten away without any notice had been Zombie because she had tried to use sex as a distraction. Clever.

  “Excuse me?” the lift driver asked angrily.

  “Lying, you’re bad at it. Look at this floor; did anyone think this would fool me? It’s all too perfect. How things look to have happened don’t make any sense and the sake there’s no bodies anywhere was a major red flag.

  And on top of all of that, why would the Nagara want to take everyone? They’d need their ‘breeding stock’. It doesn’t make any sense, at least no more than there being no dead bodies. So I’ll ask you again,” Smoke said, pulling out his revolving pistol and pointing it at her head. “What happened here?”

  The lift driver gave him a sudden look of shock which quickly changed to a look of sheer annoyance. “Put that away before you get yourself hurt. I’ll tell you, but come on, resorting to violence almost immediately?”

  Smoke couldn’t help but feel bad as the woman scolded him. He could have shot her at any minute and attempt to lower himself to the eighth below; it wasn’t something he wanted to do. “First off,” the lift driver continued, “we should be introduced; I’m Penelope.”

  Smoke blinked absently for a moment as her words sunk into his brain. He couldn’t get over how brazen she was or how plucky she acted while staring down the barrel of a revolving pistol. “Smoke. I’m Smoke Callahan.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Penelope said with a sly smile. “Hop on, I’ll tell you everything as we go deeper. But first, you have to tell me why you’re going down.”

  Smoke didn’t want to waste any more time. He opened up and told her about his mission to collect Blue as well as showing her the image of her.

  “I’ve seen her,” Penelope said. “I don’t see many people going to the eighth below so I tend to remember a bunch of them. She was with some woman. Couldn’t tell you her name or anything though.”

  “She went to the eighth?”

  “Hop on,” Penelope said with a nod. “It’s a long ride down, and I’m not afraid to talk while I work.”

  13

  Smoke’s head was reeling from the information Penelope had given him. “So why don’t they want me to know about what’s going on?” Smoke asked as Penelope continued to turn the crank that allowed the lift to travel to the eighth below.

  She took a moment to look at him, “They don’t want to have to shoot you. They fear you’ll get in their way and try and stop the towers from coming down.”

  “But that’s stupid,” Smoke said feeling mildly offended. “I’m not in support of the system we have; if people are wanting to band together and take down the towers I’m all for it. We’d have to evacuate them first, or at least make an honest attempt at it, but I do agree the towers should come down.”

  Smoke took a moment to realize what he was saying. If he managed to live long enough to get the two million skins he’d have been able to live in the tower. He’d have a lavish life of luxury the likes he could have only dreamed about. If the towers were to come down he wouldn’t be able to live there and he’d have to spend the majority of the skins to build any sort of life for himself, at least one where he could continue to live well.

  It hit him; it could be possible they were unsure due to his job… But how did they know? He knew news travelled fast in the underground. Much faster than a person could move. It would have taken only a few days for news to reach as far as the ninth below. The question still remained though, how did anyone know how much he stood to make? It was information he kept pretty close to his chest. The only person he’d told since coming to the underground that had any sort of influence had been Fulcrum, and even then the amount was a lie.

  Fulcrum.

  Smoke placed his face in his palm and shook his head. Fulcrum had a mouth on him; he should have known the man would have been the type to brag to others about what he stood to make. Fulcrum would have also known Smoke would try and tell him a lower number than what he truly stood to make.

  No, this would have been going on too long for his job to have had any bearing on whether or not they disclosed any information to him. No, they kept the plan from him intentionally. He’d have found out sooner than later, the job would have been what had kept them from saying anything before everyone began exiting the underground.

  “I get it,” Smoke said lightly. “So what’s your story? You don’t look like a lift driver. Shit, you don’t even look like someone from the underground, surface or the towers. You don’t really look like you’re from anywhere.”

  Penelope smiled, “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s in the way you carry yourself,” Smoke said. “You don’t look like you’re having any trouble with that crank, but it doesn’t seem natural to you. You don’t hold yourself like a person from the underground, you don’t have that look of worry that seems to be branded to everyone’s face from the point they realize how bad off we really have it. You look like you’ve seen a lot, but you don’t have the underground look.

  “People from the towers look down on everyone from the underground, even if they lose everything and have to come down here. It’s just the way they are. And people from the surface are somewhere in-between. Honestly, I can’t quite place you.”

  “My story is pretty long,” Penelope said as she watched for a depth marker. “Hone
stly, we could sit here for a week and you still wouldn’t have gotten half of it.”

  “Really?” Smoke said with a sceptical amazement. “Forgive me, but I find it difficult to believe anyone has a story that expansive.”

  “I try to stay away from excitement if I can,” Penelope said with a sigh, “but The Writer seems to enjoy throwing me in those situations.”

  “The Writer?” Smoke asked in disbelief.

  Penelope nodded, “It’s a faith from-”

  “I know what The Writer is?” Smoke asked. “I thought that old religion died a long time ago.”

  “To many it did,” she said with a frown, “but with everything I’ve seen and the way history panned out I can’t help but believe it’s out there.”

  “Do you think other gods are out there as well?”

  Penelope cocked her head to the side as a means of shrugging while continuing to descend the lift platform. “It’s possible, but they’d be constructs of The Writer as well.”

  Smoke shook his head, “Your entire religion is just loopy.”

  The two of them continued their journey downward in silence. Something about the crazy woman with the outdated religion didn’t sit right with him. He had been truthful when he said he hadn’t been able to place her. She looked as if she had spent her entire life in the underground while also spending it on the surface.

  It was her eyes that really threw him off. He had seen inside the eyes of killers, victims, average people and psychopaths. He had never seen a gaze like hers before. Her eyes looked timeless, as if she had seen things he couldn’t begin to imagine. It was possible she had been from another area originally, possibly Red City.

  “So why’d you become a private investigator?” Penelope asked.

  Smoke leaned back and sat down on the platform, “Pardon?” he said, pretending he hadn’t heard her question.

  “Why’d you become a private investigator?”

  “It’s a long story,” Smoke said, trying not to grin as he threw her excuse back at her.