In the Shadow of London

by Chris Ward

  In the next, a group of men were sitting in the middle of their bunks, playing cards on a small table. They looked up as she peered in. One gave her a sneer but the others ignored her.

  The next held a single occupant, a man heavily bandaged, sitting on the edge of a bunk. Airie was just about to pass on, when a gasp escaping the man’s throat made her pause.

  ‘Airie?’

  She waited, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘Airie? Is that you?’

  No no no no, it couldn’t be. Airie started to back away, but found the opposite wall far closer than she realised. Sebastian, his face bruised and cut, pressed against the bars, bandaged hands reaching for her.

  ‘Be a good girl and go get the key off that man at the end, wouldn’t you? If you ask him nicely I’m sure he’d let you. You remember what to do, don’t you? Come on, help your brother out. Didn’t I always take care of you?’

  Airie’s heart was pounding, her hands shaking as nervous blood pulsed through her. She looked up at the sleeping guard, imagined dropping to her knees in front of him, unzipping the fly of his jeans. She knew what to do. The key would be hers in no time and Sebastian would be free.

  ‘I don’t know….’

  The hand that grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her close against the bars was bandaged like a mitten. His other hand snaked behind her neck and pressed her face against the bars. This close, she saw how his pupils dilated and sweat beads dotted his forehead as if pain was a person he had been sleeping alongside for too long.

  ‘I came here for help after your mate jumped me, you fucking bitch,’ he hissed into her ear. ‘Look at me. They stabbed me, broke my fucking hands, and beat the shit out of me, but why? Because I tried to protect my little sister? I should have got a knighthood, shouldn’t I?’

  Airie tried to form words through her sobbing. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the single guard was still sleeping, and none of the other prisoners could see them. She wanted to rip herself out of her brother’s grip but her muscles felt made of sponge.

  ‘I didn’t do anything, Seb, I promise you.’

  ‘You’re nothing, you know that? You know Mother said she wished they’d taken you, not Mika. Taken the worthless one, the whore, not the one with the brain. You know she’s here, don’t you? After all that effort she ended up living in a city of common thieves. I never let you end up like that, did I? I looked after you. Now let me out and I’ll look after you again.’

  ‘Seb, I’m sorry….’

  ‘You little slut, I’ll give you to every man in London unless you let me out—’

  Airie felt Sebastian’s grip go slack. Sebastian was no longer looking at her, but at someone standing at her shoulder. She turned as a muscular arm slowly bent her brother’s arm back on itself. Another hand reached through the bars and pulled Sebastian forward, thick fingers clamping on his mouth.

  With a hard jerk, Sebastian’s arm cracked. Airie looked up and saw Lindon standing behind her, his chiseled face a picture of concentration as he held one hand over Sebastian’s mouth to stifle the screaming.

  ‘Do you want me to kill him?’ Lindon asked her. ‘Tim stopped me last time, but Tim isn’t here now.’

  Airie wanted Sebastian to die more than anything, but ordering his death, even after everything he had done to her, was a level too high. Reluctantly she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not … yet.’

  Lindon nodded. He pushed Sebastian away, jerking his broken arm one last time before releasing it. As Sebastian began to howl with pain, Lindon strolled up to the guard and kicked the man awake.

  ‘Sleep at your post one more time and you’ll be exiled into the field of wolves,’ he said. ‘You have a man with a broken arm down there. Get a doctor to his cell and get it treated. Remain on duty until someone comes to relieve you.’

  The man gave a nervous nod. Lindon turned to Airie. ‘They’re looking for you, you know.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘My orders are to find you and bring you back.’

  ‘Go on then. I’m ready.’

  ‘How about we walk for a while?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere else.’

  Airie shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

  As Lindon led her back up the stairs, he told her she had stumbled on the prison level. Even what the government considered a warren of villainous rats had a code of honour. Those who toed the line were treated with kindness and respect. Those who didn’t were offered no mercy.

  ‘It was me that broke your brother’s hands,’ Lindon said. ‘I used a hammer. When they heal I will break them again.’

  Airie winced. ‘Please don’t hurt him any more.’

  ‘Why not? He confessed to what he did to you. Family deserves the greatest level of respect.’

  ‘He’s my brother. After my sister left and my parents died … what he said, was that true? Is my sister really here?’

  Lindon’s expression tightened. He wasn’t naturally attractive like David, she thought, all hard edges and a demeanour like unpolished glass, but there was a central thread to him that if not strictly good was at least ruled by honour.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  Mika flicked the switch. She held the board out in her hands and pressed it against the metal filing cabinet. It connected with a comforting click and stuck there, immovable, until she flicked the switch off and the board came away easily, as if it had never been stuck at all.

  She gave a little grunt of satisfaction. Around her, several old computers sat on the tables in the room Tim Cold had given her to continue her work, while the floor was littered with discarded electronic components and silvery pieces of solder.

  She turned the board over in her hands and stared at the barely noticeable swirl in the metal where the electromagnetic pads were embedded. All she perhaps needed to do was refine the activation. Perhaps a voice-activated command would speed up the process? Mika frowned, deep in thought, just as the door opened and Lindon stepped inside, followed by a frail young girl with dyed blond hair.

  A thousand angry responses at the sudden interruption fluttered towards her tongue then vanished. She stared dumbly at the girl who—blond hair not withstanding—was a teenage version of herself.

  ‘I didn’t know you rode,’ Airie said, nodding towards the board Mika still held in her hands. ‘Perhaps we could try it together some time….’

  38

  Picture

  Frank peered through a window that had once been broken by a rampaging Huntsman. The Department of Civil Affairs was posing again. A shiny black truck was meandering down the street, picking its way carefully around bollards of junked televisions and smashed chairs, a loudspeaker on the front spouting propaganda that Frank could barely understand from the echo. The presence of a vehicle in such working order was cause enough for his anger. In a city so starved of oil that people had taken to their basements to try to make bio-fuel out of food waste in crude and sometimes dangerous operations that rarely worked, it was troubling that the Governor could always find oil when he needed.

  There had been no spacecraft since the one in the autumn. Perhaps the stock of resources the Governor was wasting on his worthless space program had finally run out. It was only a matter of time before someone had to make a stand. While he ripped on the boy, part of him hoped it would be Lindon. What a way to make a grandfather proud, Frank thought with a wry smile. But despite the anger that surged in his veins, Lindon was too conservative. He protected first. Frank would patch up anyone with money, and he had never seen the kind of fighting pit injuries on Lindon that he had seen on others. He had sewn faces half back on, replaced remains of noses with plastic inserts, removed the bloody remnants of eyes. But Lindon never had more than a few cuts and bruises, and the reason was simple.

  He kept his guard up.

  Sometimes, though, it was necessary to step out of your corner and take a swing.

  The girl upstairs whose name Lindon said was Cah didn’t see
m to appreciate his tinned fruit pies, so Frank had made her some soup this morning. It was quite the irony that an old man like him should be cooking for a young girl like her, but there was something in her eyes that told him it wouldn’t be for much longer.

  Lindon was convinced the girl was on some kind of drug she hid in the little box she never let out of her sight, rarely even out of her hands. Yet since she had arrived she had only left the room to use the bathroom, so whatever she was using was stretching pretty far. It wasn’t her thin, failing body that worried Frank though. It was her eyes.

  Cah was a lost soul, one of too many in London these days. Lindon still fought, as Frank still fought in his way, because he remembered what life had been like before the walls went up, but the girl, she was young. She had known nothing other than a gradual, creeping misery, one person she cared about after another going London-gone.

  He was just about to check on her when he heard movement at the top of the stairs. He looked up. For the briefest of instants the silhouette of the girl against the skylight above the landing reminded him too much of that Huntsman, and he shrank back against the door before she stepped down into the shadow and he remembered where he was.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I wondered what they were doing. The car outside.’

  ‘They’re spreading lies,’ he said. ‘As always. Are you feeling better?’

  ‘No. I just wondered….’

  Frank noticed the way her hands were clutching something. The box. It was the kind that had once held sugary fruit drops, but the picture on the top had been scratched and scored away to just hints of colour.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, nodding at the box. ‘What’s inside?’

  Cah shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I’m an old man,’ he said. ‘I’m not young and stupid like my grandson. I tell him he’s a worthless lump of meat to keep him sharp, but he’s a good boy inside. He cares for you. He’d never hurt you. This is the safest place he knows, yet the bastard rarely even comes round for a cup of crap coffee. If he bothered to bring you here, it means he really must love you.’

  Cah looked uncertain. She turned the box over in her hands. ‘Lindon … must never know. I can’t let it destroy him too.’

  Frank stared at her. ‘I have my own secrets from that boy,’ he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper, as decades old memories so bad they made him shudder came rushing back. ‘Trust me, I know how to keep one.’

  Cah nodded. Her fingers trembled on the box. One hand shook the lid loose. It came off with a scrape, and she held it out for Frank to look inside.

  At first he didn’t understand what he was seeing, because it was something he hadn’t seen in forty years, a grainy image of a black triangle inside a blurry white sphere. In the centre of the triangle was a small white shape. He couldn’t imagine where she had found someone with a machine that could take one of these pictures. Even among the piles of junk in his house he didn’t have one, but he figured that if you went far enough underground, anything was possible.

  He raised an expectant eyebrow, but Cah shook her head.

  ‘Oh, girl….’ Frank felt like a part of his heart had just died. He wondered how many parts he had left.

  Cah touched the white spot on the picture, then moved the same hand to her stomach, just above her navel. She gave it a little pat.

  ‘He was here for a while,’ she said. ‘Then he wasn’t here. London-gone.’

  Frank said nothing. He just leaned his head back against the door and closed his eyes.

  39

  Rescue

  ‘Marta is alive?’

  ‘Her and two others, that I know of. And I believe they are back in England, gone underground.’

  ‘In London?’

  Tim Cold shook his head. ‘I’m told only a fraction of the truth,’ he said. ‘I know that they live, and that Marta leads them. There have long been rumours that the Governor … can hear things. My contact passes on only enough information for me to do my job. That way, if I’m ever caught….’

  He trailed off. David looked around at the charts and pictures on the walls. If the government discovered this command centre, the Tank would be razed.

  ‘The Underground Movement for Freedom.’ David nodded. ‘I would never, ever have guessed.’

  Tim Cold shook his head. ‘The Tank is not a UMF base,’ he said. ‘Few know, just a handful of trusted men. Even Lindon, my official second, suspects nothing.’

  ‘If the government discovers the Tube Riders have returned, they’ll be hunted.’

  Tim nodded. ‘Only the knowledge that they survive has been passed on to me. I know that in Europe they managed to broadcast incriminating evidence against the Governor, and that several EC countries are posturing for war. What happened after that, I don’t know. I have my suspicions, of course.’

  ‘Why say anything at all?’

  ‘For the very reason that you tried to reassemble the old gang. If there is a war to be fought, the greatest army must come from within. The people need inspiration, and what greater inspiration than that of a group of young people who spat in the Governor’s eyes? You’ve stirred them, David. You and Airie. They think Marta Banks has returned. They’re ready.’

  David’s heart was hammering. After all his mistakes, something was going right. The people were going to make a stand. ‘When?’

  ‘We must be patient. Wait for our opportunity. The people of the Tank trust me, and when I ask, they will unite. In the great scheme of things, just a few thousand people will not be enough. We must spread the word through the city, encourage the people to band together. When the time comes, the Tank will arm them.’

  David’s voice trembled as he said, ‘Can we win?’

  ‘If the people come together … we can try.’

  ‘What about Raine’s baby?’

  Tim let out a long breath. ‘We have to assume it’s a trap. It’s not safe. I can send some men to the location, but for Raine or yourself to go, it’s too dangerous.’

  David felt his anger rising. He slammed a palm down on the table. ‘We can’t just do nothing. Is that what a Tube Rider would do?’

  ‘David, you put me in a difficult situation….’

  ‘You said the people want a hero, a talisman. What greater talisman could they want than someone who saves a baby from a Huntsman?’

  ‘This isn’t a game.’

  ‘I never said it was.’

  ‘You risk the lives of everyone here if our involvement is discovered.’

  ‘Then stay undercover! Raine and I will go. All we need is guns and perhaps a vehicle to get away. I’ll act as bait to draw it out. Raine can grab the child. I’ll lead it off, then circle around and pick her up. You have no need to be there.’

  ‘You’re as impetuous as Raine said.’

  ‘Raine won’t stay unless you help her, and if she leaves, Airie and me will leave with her.’

  Tim’s eyes turned as cold as his name. ‘I have the power to make you a prisoner here.’

  David smiled. ‘But you won’t. You still believe in a free world, and as a man who believes in that, you know I’m right.’

  ‘You are,’ he said. ‘And if it’s what you want, I’ll let you go. Our involvement will be distant, some snipers and help in escape. But in the event that it is a trap … you’re on your own. I cannot risk all the lives of the people of the Tank over a rescue mission for one child.’

  ‘Give me guns,’ David said.

  Tim gave a grim smile. ‘I can do better than guns,’ he said.

  Westminster was a working London Underground station, but Tim Cold had told Mika that the trains no longer stopped due to its location inside the Tank. In the station, however, the lighting still worked and the old air-conditioning units still rumbled to freshen the air. Mika sat on an old bench in the shadows as Airie crouched down near the platform edge, the metal board held around her wrists by the rubber straps Mika had added.

  As
she had all afternoon, Mika winced at the sound of the train approaching the station, the roar building to a deafening crescendo as the twin headlights appeared back in the dark. As it burst out of the tunnel, Airie kicked into a run, angling in towards the train, leaping up with the board angled side-on to the blurring windows. Mika swallowed down a lump of terror in her throat, then the board stuck, and the train rushed away with Airie clinging to the side, a blur of colour and windswept hair.

  At the far end of the platform, a pile of mattresses brought down by some of Tim Cold’s men made a safe dismounting area. As the darkness began to swallow the head of the train, Airie kicked back and landed neatly, springing right back up to her feet. Mika went to meet her as the girl came running back.

  ‘This time I want to try a spin and operate the grapnel,’ Airie said, wiping sweat off her forehead. ‘I’ll aim for that coolant pipe in the ceiling. I want to try to land on my feet without using the mats.’

  And she was gone, heading back towards the platform edge to take up her crouching position.

  There had been barely an acknowledgement of their status as long lost sisters. Airie had given Mika a terse hug, thanked her for calling off the Huntsmen, then flat-out refused to answer any questions about the years since Mika left, beyond that their parents were dead, something Mika had long assumed anyway. A mention that their brother was a prisoner down in the Tank’s holding cells had brought daggers to Airie’s eyes, and Mika had dropped the subject, despite a burning desire to know the truth.

  The train rushed into the station. Airie, as nimble and light as a fly, caught the side of the train with barely a sound. When she reached the end of the platform though, as she released the electromagnet and spun away from the train, her attempted grapnel launch failed, with the wire crashing into the wall some way below the coolant pipes. Airie was lucky to land on the first of the breakfall mats instead of the hard platform, but she landed face down, and rolled off them to the platform floor before gingerly rising to her feet.