Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Author’s Note
COPYRIGHT
Book Description
Jordi Roberts killed his wife. It was self-defense, but that doesn’t matter to the director of the Bureau, who wants his head. He is on the run and has been proclaimed as a murderer and a terrorist on the airwaves.
There are still so many unanswered questions, though, and Jordi needs to discover the truth before he is sent to jail for the rest of his life. After stripping through lie after lie to get this far, Jordi fears what he’ll ultimately find.
Finally, in one of the chasms of the undercity, Jordi finds answers—and it goes beyond the present struggles of the American Conference and leads to a conspiracy that has held the world in its thrall for over a thousand years.
Part 3 of a 5-part serial. Each part is around sixty pages long.
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Chapter 1
I went from being asleep to alert in an instant without passing through a drowsy phase. I looked around to see what had woken me but saw no one nearby. The walls and ceilings were crisscrossed with metal girders; I was inside an abandoned conveyor tube. I could have done with even just a few moments of blissful ignorance—instead, the horrible memories of everything that had happened were fully formed in my mind.
I had taken refuge here. With my mugshot splashed across every news broadcast, even the passageways around Harlem weren’t safe. I had been declared a terrorist and a murderer—public enemy number one. Or perhaps number two behind the Territories president who had invaded Under Norleans and was about to start bombing Under Nyork.
People down on their luck sometimes slept in the disused conveyor tubes, and I’d had enough wits about me to find my way into one. Thinking back, I was surprised I’d managed that. After I’d heard Larsen’s lies about me, a red mist of fury had clouded my vision. By the time I had reached the tunnels, the rage had given way to exhaustion, and I had collapsed into a deep sleep.
The pockets of my jacket were inside out. Not my doing. Since I’d dumped my ID card and the gun, the robbers hadn’t gotten anything. With that thought, my wife’s unseeing stare floated into my mind, but I forced away the memory. I couldn’t deal with that right now.
I stood up and took stock. My left ankle was swollen, but it took my weight well enough that I could walk with only a slight limp. Most of my torso was sore to the touch, and the right side of my rib cage hurt when I took a deep breath. My face was tender, though I imagined it looked worse than it felt. And the pain in my head was milder than most of my hangovers. As far as I could tell, I’d suffered no ill effects from the stun gun hit—only a fraction of the electricity had entered my body. Overall, my physical injuries were as good as could have been expected.
That didn’t take away from the fact that I was well and truly fucked. It was a miracle that I managed to escape the Bureau so far, but even miracles had limits. The Bureau didn’t actively police Harlem, but they did have an army of snitches and undercover agents. And even though it was a safe haven of sorts for the underbelly of society, that didn’t apply to me so much. The criminal element was as likely to capture me as the mibs were. If a mob caught me, then I would be lucky to avoid a lynching. And if the mibs handed me over to Larsen, I might regret missing the lynching.
And I couldn’t forget that the entire American Conference was about to be wiped out by its enemies, with Celeste a ticking time bomb in our midst.
What to do? Since I was going to be caught sooner or later, I saw only one sensible thing to do—drown my sorrows in a fiery bath of red whiskey. I hadn’t had a drink in over four days, much too long even in the best of times. Without my ID card, though, I had no access to any money.
After some thinking, I came up with a plan. I knew a small bar without a name run by a veteran called Three-Fingered Ray. It was in Harlem, and Ray had a soft spot for military and ex-military, especially those who had fallen on hard times. He also had a reputation for finding out things that no one else knew and for selling the information for the right price. I was already overloaded with illicit information, but I sure needed that free drink.
Because of its lack of conveyor pods, Harlem was one place where a decent sense of direction was essential, and it was the one place where I had a reasonable idea where different parts of it were located relative to each other. In most parts of Under Nyork, traveling around involved simply entering the destination into a conveyor pod. With a little thought, I was able to figure out roughly which direction would get me close to Three-Fingered Ray’s bar.
It was better to travel via the tubes and spend as little time as possible in the main corridors. The tubes themselves weren’t in terrible condition, given that they hadn’t been used in centuries. Unlike in the ancient tunnels above Under Nyork, the metal showed no evidence of rust. Piles of rubbish had been kicked down onto the tracks, so it was best to keep to the platform alongside the wall. It was only a pace wide, and I had to step carefully around the wrapped bundles of sleeping bodies.
A six-way junction opened up before me in an expanse of black space. Three openings faced me: one straight ahead, one to the left, and one right. I walked to the edge of the platform and looked down then up at the two other openings. A pod would be able to go left, right, up, or down from the junction; it couldn’t go directly straight ahead without falling into the tube below. I could take the left and right opening by skirting the corners; from there, I could hug the opposite corner to take the straight-ahead tube. Descending to a lower level would be more challenging, and more difficult again was ascending a level.
I decided on left. At the corner, the platform narrowed, and I hooked my hand behind an iron girder on the wall for support, faced the wall, and shuffled my feet sideways until I was close enough to jump across. I climbed down onto the central groove and waded through the rubbish, kicking up all sorts of unpleasant smells. Then I scaled the other side and went right at the next junction. The amount of rubbish decreased as I got farther from the lived-in areas of the tubes, though I did see shadows disappearing around the junction corners. I imagined that anyone living in the depths of the tubes must have been really distrustful of company or involved in the blackest of black-market activities. Either way, I hoped that no one took much notice of my passing through.
When my inner compass told me I needed to go down a few levels, I had to decide whether it was better to risk that part of the journey inside the tubes or out in the open corridors. Examining the walls, I decided that it wouldn’t be too hard to climb down a level. The crisscrossed metal girders left plenty of handholds and footholds, and the ridges on the edges gave a firm grip. None of my injuries had complained since I’d started—it seemed that they weren’t as bad as I had thought the day before.
So at the next junction, I chose down. After a few paces, I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder and into the darkness below. I didn’t have a fear of heights exactly—I didn’t get vertigo—I just had a healthy fear of being smashed to a pulp when I hit the ground. That mental picture didn’t exactly help, either. By concentrating on what was in front of me, I was able to get into a reasonably quick rhythm as I continued down.
When my left foot found nothing but air, my stomach lurched and my fingers dug into the metal girders. I pulled my leg b
ack up to its previous location then looked down. I had reached the junction below. I crab-walked sideways until I reached the corner, then I swung my left foot onto one of the girders on the side wall. I then lowered my left hand and twisted my body so that my right foot found purchase.
That left me slung awkwardly across the corner, with my upper body still facing one way and my lower body twisted at ninety degrees while gravity pulled down on my core. The pain in my ribs asserted itself again. I hadn’t thought this far ahead, and making the next move was going to be tricky. But going back was equally difficult, so I didn’t have much choice.
I changed my grip until I was as close as possible to the wall of the lower tube then swung across with my left hand, but it couldn’t reach. Shit. There wasn’t much point delaying; I needed to just act. I reached out as far as I could with my left hand, braced both legs, then pushed off with my right hand. For an awful split second, both my hands were in midair. I was sure I was going to fall, then the fingers on my left hand snagged hold of a girder, and my right hand swung around and got a grip on some metal. I climbed down and decided to take the next exit out of the conveyor tubes. I would take my chances in the open corridors.
At least the journey through the tubes hadn’t given me much time to think. Trying to process my feelings about everything that had happened was like sifting through hydrogen atoms in an explosion. Christina had said that all the psychs in the Conference weren’t enough to fix my mental state after the plane crash, and that was nothing compared to the new upheavals I had to deal with.
At the next set of doors, I dug my fingers into the gap between them and tried to wrench them apart. They were stuck. I searched the garbage until I found a metal bar, which I used to pry the doors open, and snuck my hands into the gap. I dropped the metal bar and prized the doors apart enough to slide my body through. They snapped shut behind me.
None of the passersby took any notice of my emergence. The destitute commonly entered and exited the conveyor pods in Harlem, so it was no surprise that no one tried to make eye contact.
The corridors of Harlem were much busier than the rest of Under Nyork, both because it was one of the most populous areas and because walking was the only way to get around. I joined in with the stream of people, keeping my head down and trying to blend in as much as possible.
Chapter 2
I arrived at the bar without incident. There was no sign outside the door, nothing to distinguish it from the housing modules on either side. Only those who knew about it found Three-Fingered Ray’s bar. I opened the door and entered.
Inside, the bar was more compact than most drinking establishments. Rusted machine guns hung on the wall, alongside a rocket launcher with a broken handle, a few old motherboards, and half a dozen dusty old monitors. I didn’t understand the obsession some people had with the world before the Third World War.
The pride of the bar was a real mahogany counter. It was the only thing I had ever seen made of wood, and the only reason I knew it was mahogany was because Three-Fingered Ray had told me all about it the only time I’d talked to him. It was probably the only time the barman serving me had been drunker than I was.
The man himself had his head on the bar, snoring. Ray was well past sixty, with only a few tufts of gray hair on his head. His left hand rested beside his head, the three fingers touching his check and a reddened scar showing where his forefinger and thumb were missing.
“Hey,” I called out. Then louder, “How about a drink?”
My shout didn’t even break the rhythm of his snores. I had to shake him to get him to wake up.
“What’s the emergency?” He wiped the sleep from his eyes.
“I need a drink.”
“And that’s an emergency?”
“You better believe it.”
Ray looked around the empty bar. “It’s morning. We’re closed. How did you even get in?”
I gestured behind. “Through the door.”
Ray groaned. “Must have forgotten again. Would you mind backing out again? I can lock the door behind you, and we can pretend this never happened.”
“I really do need that drink.”
“Do I know you?”
“I was in here a few times. We talked once, but maybe you don’t remember.” There was a good chance that if Ray recognized me, it was because he’d seen me on the news in the last few days. Unusually, Ray’s bar had no news screens on the walls, so maybe I had gotten lucky. “I’m a fighter pilot. Served in Gamma Squadron. And I really need that drink.”
“Okay, okay.” Ray stood up. “Save the sob story. I’ve heard it before.”
I shook my head. “Not this one.”
“What you having?”
“Invernes Red.” I pulled up a stool and sat down.
“Good liquor. The choice of hard drinkers.” Ray chose a bottle from under the counter and poured a drink, then he stopped and looked me up and down. “You got the funds?”
A lie was on my lips, then I changed my mind and decided to be truthful. “I’ve funds on my ID card but can’t access them right now.”
“And you heard I was a soft touch for the fighting men of our country. Is that it? The only ones who come to my bar are those looking for a free drink.”
“It’s not like that.” It kind of was like that. Ray stared at me for a moment then sighed and slid the drink across the counter, pushing it with the three remaining fingers of his left hand.
“How come they didn’t grow your fingers back for you?” I asked. With the drink finally in front of me, I was unusually hesitant to pick it up. I touched my finger to the top of the glass and traced it silently around the rim.
“Medical complications.”
I frowned, confused. My body had been in awful shape after my crash, and that hadn’t stopped the doctors from fixing me up. Good as new, they’d said. “What kind of complications?”
Ray shrugged. “I haven’t lost much. I can grip just as well with three.” He plucked the whiskey away from me, his three fingers gripping the rim, then returned it. “You going to drink that or just play with it?”
“I’m not sure. All I could think about for days was getting this drink, and now that it’s in front of me…” I snorted. “It feels like a moment, you know, a big-decision moment. Tell me it’s just a drink.”
“Can’t do that. Sometimes a drink is just a drink. Sometimes it’s more.”
My finger circled the rim of the glass faster, making a slight whirring sound. The fumes of Invernes Red filled my nostrils, twisting my gut. Half of me wanted it with a deep-down need; the other half was close to puking just from the smell.
I knew I would drink it—I couldn’t kid myself about that. I always drank it. And one drink would lead to another, which would lead directly to a cell in Bureau headquarters. Of course, there were no paths I could take that didn’t lead to the same cell in Larsen’s dungeon, at least none that I could see. I might at least enjoy one last drinking session before I was taken.
“Tell me I shouldn’t do it,” I said.
Ray shrugged. “A barman never knows what you should do. He only knows what you should not do. And only after the event. Those who solve the crises in their lives usually don’t hang around for long in places like mine. I only see what happens after a wrong turn.”
“Then surely you’ve heard enough stories to know a right turn from a wrong one.”
“Everyone’s different. That’s one thing I’ve learned. Psychs would have you confront your feelings. Priests think you should trust in God to be saved. Some go to support meetings; others get drunk with their friends. One man’s poison is another man’s cure. Some people can deal with anything life throws at them without fuss. They don’t need alcohol, religion, or psychs.” He laughed. “Of course, I never meet those guys.”
“So you have no answers for me. No pearls of wisdom.”
“Drinking alone is rarely the answer to anything. But I think you already know that.” Ray nodded at the
glass in front of me. “In my experience, those who wait that long, taking that first sip is always a big mistake.”
“And does anyone ever not take that first sip?”
“Not in my experience. One person stared at his glass for a full hour. Didn’t speak a word. Then it was gone in a single mouthful. Half an hour later, he’d knocked back ten, and I had to kick him out.”
That was pretty much what I expected to happen to me. My finger continued to whirr around the rim. A deep-red glow emanated from the bottom of the glass. “I haven’t had a drink in four days now,” I said.
“And how do you feel?”
I touched a bruise on my face. “I’ve been in the wars lately, as you can probably tell. Other than that, though, I have more energy.” Traversing the conveyor tubes hadn’t taken that much out of me. And I hadn’t had the usual nightmares—in fact, despite sleeping rough, I’d slept more soundly than I had in a long time. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, or perhaps it was because I hadn’t had time to overthink. “Perhaps the psychs have it all wrong. Maybe it’s better not to sludge through past experiences.”
Ray shrugged. “You tell me.”
What if my recent problems—nightmares, depression, and alcohol—hadn’t come directly from the injuries from the crash, but rather from all the forced inactivity and psych visits? Maybe Darius had suspected that. That would partly explain why he had set me on the path to finding the projector where he admitted he was part of Celeste, but had left it upon me to discover more. “I reckon that I think too much. I need to act more and think less.”
“Action? Would that mean drinking from that glass?” Ray asked. “Not to be unsympathetic, but you did interrupt my sleep. Could you hurry up the reflection process?”
There wouldn’t be any chance of action if I ended up in a cell. What if that wasn’t completely inevitable? And even if it was, better to go down fighting. I stood up. Suddenly, the rage from the night before was back, but it was more focused. “I don’t want to give up. I want to get angry.”
World War 97 Part 3 Page 1