Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles)

by S. M. Stelmack

  “What’s that?”

  “I think I know now why you don’t have a phone. You were being spied on too, weren’t you?”

  He held her gaze for a long moment. They flashed with anger, and not a little anguish. He headed for the door, reaching it in a few strides. “I’ll call as soon as I got news,” he said, pulling on his coat and boots. “You can plug your phones back in. Disconnect them again if you get another one of those calls.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “No,” he said, and the door slammed shut behind him.

  Lindsay turned back to the living room. It was then that she saw it. Sprawled on his back, his head on the pillows was Leo, as she’d positioned him the previous night. Except now he wore the Santa boxers.

  Perhaps the old Jack wasn’t gone, just hidden beneath the surface.

  Jack walked the cold streets alone, his mood as dark as the alleys around him. He’d spent the day asking around for MacMurphy, whose habit it was to roam New York transit like some modern day nomad.

  He had gotten conflicting information. Rumor had it she’d knifed someone and been sent to Kirby, a hospital for the criminally insane. A call to the institution revealed that wasn’t the case. He’d heard that she was hanging around at Columbus Circle, and South Ferry, and Queens Plaza. He hadn’t found her at any of those places, either. Now it was nine in the evening, and his latest lead was taking him to a small coffee shop in the Bronx, a couple of blocks from the zoo, where MacMurphy was supposedly a regular.

  He shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets. All this day he’d been trudging around New York, but his mind had never left Lindsay.

  His Chelsea home from when they were kids had been nothing like her apartment. He remembered the one time he’d brought her there. They’d stopped to pick up money before they’d headed out to the movies. While he’d rooted through the top ten places where his wallet could be, she’d stood inside the entrance and stared about with a pained expression. It opened his eyes to the stack of unwashed dishes, the toppled cans of pop, his jockey shorts on the back of the couch, the dust. He’d hurried her out and never brought her back.

  The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. She’d turned up her nose at where he was living now, though it certainly wasn’t because of the mess. It was as empty as he was.

  One look at Lindsay’s place and it was clear that he was in the presence of a warm, energetic and self-possessed woman. A woman who wouldn't normally seek his company, who was repulsed by the mean outcast he’d become. Sure, she’d go for coffee with him. That was a hell of a long way from wanting him like he wanted her, had wanted her even when—.

  No. He wasn’t going there.

  It was a physical pain in his gut to know that he’d never be the man she’d want.

  Nearly punching her in the face hadn’t helped.

  Of all the people in the world, the last person he thought himself capable of hurting was Lindsay. And yet he’d done it. He’d become his worst fear. A prodigy of the Moles. An animal that acted on instinct, ready to tear apart whatever got in his way. All he wanted to do was run from her, and yet it now had become even more important to restore Seline to her. To redeem himself, if only a little, in her eyes. Those clear blue eyes that had looked up at him as he held her in a stranglehold. Eyes that held no fear, nor even disbelief. Eyes that sought understanding, connection. They had pierced through his feral fury, called upon his higher self and he’d managed to pull away. She’d tried to reach out to him afterwards, only he hadn’t trusted himself.

  He didn’t know what might happen if he touched her again.

  He didn’t know what might happen if he couldn’t touch her again.

  The softness of her hair and her cheek, the weight of her gloved hand in his, her knee tapping his—small incidents she would’ve thought ordinary but that had shaken him, awakened him to what it was to not feel caged and tormented.

  And, in one savage moment, he’d blown it.

  He pushed open the door of the tiny coffee house, and immediately registered the cool temperature. It felt almost as cold inside as it was on the streets. Aside from a couple of elderly men hunched over a chessboard at one table, and the bored-looking waitress padded in a sweater refilling their steaming coffees, there were only two other people in the place.

  One was a huge man, noticeably bigger than even Reggie, whose combination of height, muscle and fat seemed to shrink the tables and chairs to kid-sized. The man’s pale green eyes looked soft and bland, though from the prison tattoos on his neck and hands, Jack could tell this giant wasn’t of the gentle variety.

  As much presence as the brute had, however, it was to the woman beside him that Jack was pulled. She was thin, almost painfully so, with close-cropped red hair that made her sharp, weasel-like features seem even more severe. Her dark eyes contrasted with her pale, deadpan face, and were disturbingly wide. There was something in the stillness of her body, the watchfulness of her aspect that set her apart. She took in Jack’s approach, no trace of emotion registering on her features.

  The massive man rose before Jack like a human barricade. “It’s all right, Hugo,” said the woman, her voice carrying a strange sing-song lilt to it. “This man’s a hero. You don’t want to be getting in his way.”

  “MacMurphy?” Jack asked.

  “Sit,” she replied. It wasn’t a request.

  Jack wished he could refuse her, except she was his only hope and apparently she knew it. He was at the disadvantage, and he hated, really hated, the feeling of being cornered. But he’d given his word to Lindsay, and he’d hate himself even more if he couldn’t keep his promise.

  He took the seat across from the woman, pulling it away from the table, well beyond arm’s reach of Hugo.

  MacMurphy tilted her head. “You’ve been looking for me.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I need to find a topsider named Seline Sterling. She went missing in the underground about a week and a half ago.”

  The woman gave him a blank stare, then picked up her cup and sipped gingerly from it, as if it were scalding hot. When she set it down, Jack saw that it was empty.

  “I understand,” he pressed on, “that she made friends with some of your people at Grand Central. I was hoping you might be able to tell me what happened to her.”

  She flipped open the lid on her small metal teapot and swirled the teabag string. “Why are you still in New York, Cole?”

  Jack wasn’t surprised by the change of subject—one had to expect such things from APs—but he was irked that it had changed to him. “I live here.”

  “Why? A man like you could live anywhere. What keeps you in this city?”

  “I’m not here to get psychoanalyzed. Can you help me or not?”

  The trace of a smile nudged at the corner of MacMurphy’s mouth. It wasn’t a pleasant one. “You’re in the dark, Cole. It’s been a year since you clawed your way out of the tunnels yet you still can’t see a thing. So, let me turn on a light for you. What is it that keeps you in this city?” She lifted out the teabag. It was dry.

  He didn’t want to answer her question, because to do so would only sink him further into his quagmire of churning emotions. “I’m not playing games here, MacMurphy.”

  “Neither am I,” she answered.

  For a long time there was cold silence between the two, each eyeing the other like predators standing over a kill.

  “The tunnels,” Jack said at last, spitting out his admission as if it were blood from a fistfight. “The tunnels keep me here.”

  The woman inclined her head. “That’s right. You only thought you escaped. Really you’re still down there, and you know why? Because that’s where you belong.”

  Jack felt his muscles tighten, his hands twitch inside his coat pockets. He wanted to strangle her, make her wide, rodent eyes see that he was not what she’d reduced him to. Yet even in his anger he knew that what he really wanted was to strangle that tiny voice in him that forev
er whispered the same thing.

  He forced himself to hold it together. “Where’s Seline?”

  “Connect the dots, Cole,” MacMurphy answered, her lyrical voice quickening. “You know where she is.” She tipped the teapot over her cup. Nothing came out. “You’re a smart man,” she continued. “A very smart man. You know what happened to the girl, so the only question left is the biggest one. Why?”

  “Are you saying,” Jack had to push the words past his anger, “that you helped them?”

  “Helped them? Well, I figured out who your ‘fantasy girl’ was. It was a bit confusing… Lindsay, Tasha… but hey, ten years of being psychoanalyzed taught me how to unravel a few mental knots. We couldn’t actually get Ms. Sterling underground, then what do you know? Her only flesh-and-blood turned out to be a bleeding heart, so anxious to help us poor downtrodden street people. All it took was a few sob stories and she was within their reach. No, no, I wouldn’t say that we helped them.”

  MacMurphy’s smile grew into a wide, maniacal grin.

  “Don’t you see, Cole? We helped you.”

  * * *

  Lindsay crawled through Manhattan’s rush hour, her hands gripped on the steering wheel, her body rigid with frustration. It had been almost two days since Jack had walked out of her apartment, and not a word from him.

  On the first day she reasoned that he was busy pounding the pavement, looking for MacMurphy. She’d gone to the office, met with clients, contemplated cabinets and fixtures.

  She’d slept last night, comforted by the thought that he’d probably call in the morning. Today had come and nearly gone in silence. Again she’d gone in to the office, except this time she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything. She was frustrated, she was angry, but more than anything, she was scared. Scared that the underground had swallowed up another person she cared about.

  And she did care about Jack, something she wouldn’t have thought possible a mere three days ago. Her teenage crush had turned into a brooding stranger, yet he still fascinated her, filling her heart with a cacophony of emotions.

  “I must be going crazy,” she muttered, and the fact that she was talking to herself proved it. “At this rate I’ll be ready to join the APs myself.”

  Her cell rang, and in a fraction of a second it was at her ear.

  “It's me.”

  Relief washed over her so hard and fast her every muscle turned to jelly. She hadn’t realized how tightly she was wound, how much she had feared for him.

  “You there?” He sounded annoyed. Her cranky Jack was back.

  “Jack! I’ve been worried about you. Where have you—”

  We have to talk, Lindsay,” he interrupted her. “I need you to meet me.”

  He didn’t sound well.

  “Where?”

  “I’m about a block from your apartment. A coffee shop called ‘Big Cup’. You know it?”

  “One of my favorite places,” she replied. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  She was there in less than half an hour. The establishment was large and colorful, both its staff and customers trendy and upbeat. As a result, Jack stood out like a sore thumb, even though he’d consigned himself to the back of the room, nursing his coffee below the sign for the washrooms.

  He sat slouched, his face shadowed by a couple days’ worth of stubble, and now had dark rings to go with his bloodshot eyes. He looked even worse than he had sounded on the phone.

  He must’ve learned something terrible. Her heart contracted. She took wooden steps across the floor and slid into the seat opposite him.

  “I found MacMurphy,” he said, his voice raw. “The APs lured Seline into the tunnels. They were the ones that told her about Reggie’s door and about the communities. They set her up to go down there.”

  “Is she—?” Lindsay stopped. She could not breathe.

  “She’s alive. That’s the good news.”

  Lindsay closed her eyes and let Jack’s words flow through her. For the second time in an hour sweet relief softened her limbs. “Thank God.” Seline was alive. She hadn’t been searching in vain. She opened her eyes. “What’s the bad news?”

  He glanced away. “The situation isn’t as clear-cut as we thought it was.”

  “Talk to me, Jack.” That’s what she’d asked two nights ago and it hadn’t ended well.

  He locked his gaze on hers, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. His bloodshot eyes were full of anguish and desperation. “I will, Lindsay, but you have to believe what I tell you. I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want you thinking I’m crazy, only now you have to know what we’re really dealing with. You have to believe. If not for me, than for Seline.”

  She didn’t even blink. “Okay, Jack.”

  He leaned forward in his chair and she followed suit, their faces inches from each other. His voice lowered to a near whisper.

  “I’ve spent my whole life exploring tunnels, Linds. Beneath London and Paris. Rome and Moscow. I’ve gone deep beneath all those cities, and I’ve found…things. Things I never wrote about. Things nobody at the universities would ever have accepted.

  “The symbols in New York’s tunnels, like the ones embroidered on Mrs. Moore’s jacket—they’re under all those cities, too. I took pictures of them to show linguists and cryptographers, but they’re not related to any known language. They’re unique, and they represent a global subterranean culture.”

  He hesitated for a moment, his eyes boring into hers.

  “I was fascinated by the idea that a world-spanning culture of tunnel dwellers might exist. In each city, Lindsay, there are legends, some going back hundreds of years, about people who live far underground. In Italy they’re called Latente. In France they’re Ombres. In England, the Rawheads. That’s what brought me back to New York. Here they’re known as Moles, and every tunnel person knows about them.”

  She, too, was now leaning forward. “And you found them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. In the deep tunnels. I wound up getting captured by them.” Strain lined his face at the memory. “They dragged me into the dark, and I didn’t see light again until I escaped almost two years later. When I made it to the surface I was practically blind, and when I went home….”

  He trailed off, his mouth pressed into a thin line of sorrow. Lindsay ached to touch him. He would hate her for it, though.

  “What?” she prompted softly.

  “Never mind…the thing is, Lindsay, the Moles exist. The whole world might think I’m crazy, but it’s a fact. It’s them that are holding Seline. They’re the ones that kidnapped her.”

  “Why?”

  His gaze shifted slightly upwards. Her hair. “Because of you,” he answered quietly. “I told them about you, Lindsay, and they wanted you, but settled for Seline. They’re trying to lure me back down, and your niece is the bait.”

  Lindsay was in shock. “I don’t….” She already had so many questions for Jack before this meeting, and now that he’d finally told her something, her mind was ready to explode. She tugged free one question from the mess. “Why did you tell them about me?”

  He looked at her bleakly. “Linds, I went half-insane down there. I lost all sense of time, of place. My memories were like a deck of cards. They became shuffled and after a while, a few went missing, others got bent out of shape.” He gave a quick, bitter smile. “I wasn’t playing with a full deck.

  “I don’t know exactly what all I told them, Linds. I do know that I told them about you and me going together into the tunnels when we were kids. I probably told them what you looked like—though the description would match Seline now more than you. We…we only went down that once, right?”

  Lindsay nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. And…and what exactly happened that time, Lindsay?”

  She tried not to appear alarmed at Jack’s confusion. His face was dangerously pale. "You were going to take me to meet some homeless guy you knew. When we got to his place, it had been
trashed…and there was blood on the wall and floor.”

  “Was there…was there anybody there?”

  “No, not that we saw. We got out as fast as we could. We told your dad, only he—"

  “—didn’t believe us.” Jack finished flatly. “Still doesn’t. Still wants me to forget about it all and get on with my life.”

  “Oh.” Lindsay wasn’t sure what to say. She knew that Jack and his father had been close.

  “He remarried, my dad. A few years back. To a French woman, I can’t even remember her name. She didn’t understand English very well and he doesn’t know French. I don’t know how they got married.”

  “Maybe it was a mistake,” Lindsay said. “Maybe he was only asking her out to the movies.”

  Jack’s mouth crooked into a smile, and Lindsay felt good that for one moment she’d taken away a little of his pain. It was only for one moment. His face fell back into its drawn lines. “The thing is, Lindsay, is that what you said happened down there is not what I told them. Not after a while, at least. In my mind it seemed as if we went down there an awful lot, that we had all these bizarre adventures. We were down there for a week at a time, we painted murals, we discovered unheard-of communities, you name it, we did it.

  “It was only when I came up that I realized that it couldn’t have happened that way. It was like coming out of a dream. This is the thing, Linds, the Moles must’ve known that I was making up stories. The underground is their world, so they would’ve known when I was lying. Yet they encouraged my delusions, built on them. Why? Because they were trying to make me into a new person. They were feeding me new memories.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You saw my brand.”

  “Yes, did they—?”

  “Yes. They marked me as theirs. It’s a symbol found in all the undergrounds that I’ve been to. It’s linked their race together for centuries, maybe millennia. We topsiders never realized it. No one had made a study of it the way I did. In me, they’d finally found someone to carry their messages from one underground to another.

  “I was supposed to become that spider, spinning a web between them all. They were going to make me anew, make me into a hybrid of the surface world and theirs. They slowly recreated my past to make it seem that I was more and more like them. Did it to make me sympathetic to their cause.”