Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  Ellie lay down on the floor and curled up into the foetus position.

  She did not cry. No one could have helped her if she did.

  Chapter 38: Drago

  The Station Masters Office: Union City

  Morning: Sunday 29th July

  The sign above the door was faded and peeling, but Jon Li could make out the words. They read: “Station Masters Office.”

  The Station Masters Office was at the top of a flight of metal stairs. There was a small viewing area which gave it a vista out over The Sump. The Sump was the nickname they all used, for the vast and cavernous main chamber, of Union City. The windows (which would once been made of glass) extended around the whole of the viewing area. They had long been blown out and replaced with thick plastic sheeting. Faint lights flickered through the dirty plastic.

  Jon Li could feel his legs giving way and his head pounded at the effort it took to climb the metal stairs. He had only been awake a few hours when the men had come to collect him from the cell. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious or where he was. Down in Union City there was no day or night. It was always the same.

  It hadn’t taken him long to realise that the key around his neck was gone. It had been taken by the men. He had tried calling out from behind the cell door, but had gotten no response. They had left him some water in a basin. It was muddied with dirt and was an unhealthy brown colour, but he had tried to drink it anyway. After an hour or two the cell door had opened and he had been escorted from his cell by two men. He had tried reasoning with them, but they wouldn’t reply, other than to tell him that he was going to see the boss. They had bound his hands tightly before they had escorted him to see Drago.

  The two men shoved him up the steps and forwards, into the musty smelling office. They slammed the door behind him. Drago was standing in the middle of the room in front of him, next to a wooden chair.

  Jon Li heard the grating sound of one of Drago’s knives being drawn.

  Please let it be quick, he thought.

  To his surprise, Drago cut through his bonds with practised ease. He groaned from the pain of having blood rush back into his hands and he rubbed them together frantically. Drago walked casually across the room, and crashed into a well-worn chair, which was behind a very large desk.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he said flatly, and gestured to the wooden chair.

  Jon Li sat down gingerly into the chair facing his executioner, Drago. His wrists were raw and bleeding from the tight ropes that had chaffed him. The pain in his head washed in and out, as did his focus on Drago. Drago was sitting with his boots up on the large mahogany desk. He lit up a cigar and poured himself a shot glass of liquor from a grubby bottle.

  Jon Li looked at the environment around him. His focus slowly stopped spinning. A string of bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling behind Drago. They faded in and out to the tunes of a generator somewhere far below. Several of the lights were blown. Faint sounds of industrious people, drifted up from the cavern below. The office stank of tobacco, alcohol and fear.

  Drago had kitted it out to suit his needs. There was a heavily used drinks cabinet on one side of the room. It was well stocked with various dusty bottles of alcohol. Next to the drinks cabinet, there was an old, four-drawer filing cabinet. It was being used to store Drago’s personal acquisitions. In one corner was a mountain of cheap cigarettes and to the other side of it was a mountain of empty packs. Jon Li guessed that Drago’s cigar must have been a rarity.

  It’s not every day he entertains a man in a suit, he thought.

  His suit was in a sorry state. It was covered in blood and dust. His shirt had been cut open down the middle, and his jacket had several tears in it, but it still looked better than he did.

  Jon Li imagined that they had looted everything for miles around following the Day of Reckoning, and that a considerable haul was now sitting in Drago’s office. There was an old notice board hanging on the wall behind Drago. It had a tattered pieces of paper tacked to it. One piece of paper drew Jon Li’s attention. It was the front page of a very early edition of the Daily Utopic. It featured a famous article about the formation of a new Government. There was a photograph accompanying the faded text. It was a picture of all the masons gathered together on the steps of the construction site of the Fen-Sen building. He noticed that Mason Katcher was missing. The photograph had been taken before he had been appointed.

  The original print would have been worth a fortune, but this specimen was tattered and yellowed. The title actually read: “The Daily Bullshit” because someone had applied a touch of ‘corrective’ editing. There were numerous bullet holes in the picture of the masons. They had been put there by Drago’s adept use of his twin revolvers, Mary, and Jane. In one corner of the room, there was a gun cabinet that was full of weapons. It had a huge chain around its middle. A large padlock hung from the chain. The keys to the padlock dangled from Drago’s leather belt.

  Jon Li looked around the musty old room and pined for the comfort of his luxurious executive office in Fin-Sen headquarters. He contrasted the filthy hole (which Drago seemed so proud to occupy) to what he once had. The difference was too vast to comprehend. He longed to be sitting in his own sumptuous chair, instead of the wooden relic that he was being forced to occupy. Jon Li’s life had gone from one of immense promise to total desolation in the space of a few days.

  He looked longingly at the glass of liquor that Drago was sipping. Its tawny colour reminded him of his favourite tipple, Yoichi, and he yearned to taste it again before the inevitable happened. Drago caught his longing gaze.

  ‘Drink?’ he offered.

  He met Drago’s eyes once more, but said nothing in return. Drago shoved a tarnished shot-glass across his desk in Jon Li’s direction. The liquid sloshed over the edge of the glass. It spilled on to the desk and removed some of the grime that was caked on it. Jon Li took the glass in one hand. Jon Li’s eyes were fixed on Drago’s, as he shakily raised the glass to his mouth.

  ‘I trust you won’t try anything stupid or Mary might not like it. When Mary does not like things…well…they tend to die,’ Drago said, putting one of his pistols on the desk and pointing it at Jon Li.

  There were marks on the desk where Mary had rested her metal body many times before. Jon Li nodded his head slowly and forced the shot-glass back. He swallowed some of the liquid and gasped. The whiskey burned all the way down and lit a fire in his stomach. For one special moment, he was back in the bar at Eden sipping Yoichi and talking to the delectable Marcia.

  Before things turned decidedly bad, he thought.

  Jon Li’s mind went into overdrive when it tried to recall the sequence of events that had landed him in front of Drago.

  I could have been a Mason. All I had to do was play her game. I could have had everything, he thought. If only I could ignore the truth.

  ‘Where is Ellie?’ he asked.

  Drago leaned back on the chair and took a deep drag on the cigar. He fixed his brown eyes firmly on Jon Li’s and blew the smoke out slowly.

  ‘Who?’ Drago said, dismissively.

  ‘The blonde woman. The one who was in the room with me. What have you done with her?’ Jon Li pressed.

  Drago hesitated for a moment before answering, ‘She’s Safe. For now. You and me,’ Drago paused. ‘We need to have a little talk.’

  Drago drew another long breath in and held the smoke, before ‘puffing’ it out in little hoops.

  Jon Li swallowed hard several times, trying to get rid of the taste of the whiskey that had tasted like battery acid to him. His heart started to beat faster. The increased blood-flow made the swelling on his head throb harder. He was having difficulty focusing on anything. His vision blurred and cleared, alternately.

  ‘I know you aren’t a Mason,’ Drago stated.

  Jon Li looked across the desk at him, his eyes betraying a fleeting glimmer of hope. Drago gestured to the door of the Station Masters Office where the crowds mingled outside.

/>   ‘But they don’t know that…so start talking. Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  Drago put his hand in his trouser pocket and took something out of it. He slammed his hand down hard on the desk next to Mary and Jon Li jumped. When Drago took his hand away, it revealed the silver mason’s key with its broken chain.

  ‘With that?’ Drago said, pushing the key a few inches across the desk with the nozzle of Mary.

  Jon Li’s expression was one of fierce determination.

  Last chance, he thought.

  ‘My name is Jon Li. I came here with the others for help,’ he said simply.

  Drago paused for a few seconds. He looked stupefied and then he erupted into a brash, barking, laughter.

  ‘Help? You came out here in a fucking Limo – carrying guns? Killing my friends! You had a Masons’ key hanging round your neck…and you come for help!?’ he shouted furiously.

  Jon Li screwed up his eyes and waited for the bullet. He heard the door open behind him. He opened one eye to see Lucian enter the room.

  ‘Need any help with this one boss?’ he asked, looking down at Jon Li.

  Drago stood up and walked around to the front of the desk. He clapped Lucian hard on the back. Jon Li opened his eyes in the disbelief that he was not already dead.

  ‘We got us a comedian here,’ Drago said.

  He approached Jon Li and waved the lighted cigar in his eyes. The idea of having a cigar stubbed out in his eyes was terrifying to him. Drago was so close to him that he could smell the crude whiskey on his breath. It smelled almost as bad to him as it had tasted.

  He could see all of the detail on the dragon earring that Drago was wearing. It had been hand forged and was heavily patterned and made from scrap gold. It had a green jewels for its eyes. He imagined that if it could ‘hiss’ fire from its golden mouth, then it would have burned his hair. His thoughts raced somewhere between being tortured to death or possible release.

  Think fast, very fast, he thought.

  Drago leaned in very close holding the glowing cigar close to his cheek. He blew a mouthful of smoke into Jon Li’s eyes. Jon Li shut his eyes tight and moved back into the chair as far away from the instrument of torture as possible. The smoke from the cigar had left a stinging sensation in his eyeballs.

  ‘You got about ten seconds to make sense...if I’m feeling generous. Where did you get that key?’ Drago demanded.

  Jon Li spoke with his eyes remained closed.

  ‘From Mason Royale. It’s Royale’s key. I took it from her,’ he paused. Jon Li spoke quickly: his voice rose up an octave.

  ‘You have no idea – no idea what the Masons are capable of. You can kill me. But it won’t save you,’ he finished.

  Drago pulled back.

  ‘Nobody could just take a Mason’s key!’ he snarled. ‘Keys are only gifted: gifted to the new fuckers. Fuckers like you!’

  Drago drew his other pistol (whom he had named ‘Jane’) and stuck it up Jon Li’s battered nose. Jon Li opened his eyes and wriggled.

  ‘Think what you like,’ he said, in a voice that sounded nasal.

  Drago eased the gun out of his nostril and he continued, ‘Ask yourself what would a ‘newly-enlisted Mason’ be doing in driving through this place, with two battered women and a psychopathic ex-soldier?’ he said rubbing his nose.

  Drago paused. He was seething, but he looked confused.

  ‘Ex-Soldier? You said “Ex-Soldier?” That guy we brought in with you was TALOS!’ Drago insisted.

  Jon Li could see that his temper was rising to tipping point.

  Got to convince him, he thought desperately.

  ‘He’s not TALOS. He killed one of them and stole his uniform. He worked in the Port of Utopiana. Or did - until he crossed the law. Now he’s a fugitive just like the rest of us,’ Jon Li retorted.

  Lucian looked at Drago.

  ‘Could be,’ he said and shrugged his shoulders. ‘That guy was missing the stick up his arse most TALOS have,’ Lucian added.

  ‘Don’t you want the truth? Have you gone past caring? Don’t you want to know what the Masons do?’ Jon Li insisted and blinked up at Drago. ‘If you harm us I won’t tell you anything. We aren’t here to harm you. We came here to find you.’

  Drago turned away sharply.

  ‘The Masons? What the Masons do? I know what the Masons do!’ he said, staring into the corner.

  Drago stormed back around his desk and slammed both of his guns down hard and adding another indentation to the pock-marked surface.

  ‘The Masons kill people! MY people!’ Drago yelled.

  Lucian was staring down at the floor too afraid to intervene.

  Drago slumped back in his chair, suddenly deflated.

  ‘You city folk. You Utopians - in your ‘oh-so perfect’ society! You think you can come here and lecture me on the Masons?’

  Jon Li remained quiet as Drago began to explain.

  ‘I remember the beginning. After that big cluster-fuck there weren’t no law. Just the law of the gun,’ Drago said.

  He stroked the barrel of his gun fondly.

  ‘Food ran out in weeks. Most of it went rotten fast. Nobody came out here. No news, nothing! We were living in a war-zone. You thought the disaster was bad? The aftermath was worse. Man turned on man. People became animals. Every day was a fight for survival out here in The Wastelands.’

  Drago closed his eyes and recanted the horrors that had forever scarred his body and soul.

  ‘People died. So many people. We tried to live as best as we could.’

  Jon Li listened. He could only remember vague references to “scraps” or “dregs” when he had dug around in the Fin-Sen computer records. They had been referred to as “Fringe elements” to be rounded up. Drago’s voice was full of bitterness and sorrow, the like of which Jon Li had never heard before.

  ‘One day word came. It was word of re-building a magnificent new city.’

  His sorry words were forced from his clenched teeth.

  ‘Your city. Coney City. It was supposed to be good: supposed to be a new beginning. Help at last for our forgotten people. We were told that a new Government had been formed to care for the people and start a new beginning. They gave us hope. Soon the buses came with men. They were a free ticket to the new city. They promised to take us away to a new life.’

  Jon Li could see the tortuous pain in Drago’s eyes.

  ‘Many of us went. My brother and my friends went. The children too. So many…’

  Drago stopped and took a swig from the whiskey bottle and Lucian picked up from where Drago had left off.

  ‘We didn’t all go. Some didn’t believe it. Some would rather stick with what they knew and trusted,’ he said.

  Jon Li listened to the two of them recount the events that had brought them to where they were. He remembered what he knew of the situation. Hardly anyone had ever been brought in and integrated from The Wastelands. It had been understood by the citizens of Coney City, that the carnage in the aftermath of the Day of Reckoning had killed nearly everyone outside of the controlled zones. At least, that was what Utopian’s had been told. Those who hadn’t relocated were assumed to have died. It had been years since anyone new had come in from The Wastelands.

  ‘We went looking after a while,’ continued Lucian. ‘We sent some folks to these so-called safe-zones to search for our friends. The ones that came back…There weren’t many. They...they found nothing. Our friends never made it to the promised city.’

  Drago turned on Jon Li angrily.

  ‘These days, the Mason’s slaves don’t come in buses with warm, welcoming messages. They come in armoured transports with guns looking for us and taking us back with them. TALOS is looking for this place. We are a hunted people.’

  Jon Li tried to hold his composure while watching Drago crumble. It was a humbling sight for him, but also, a great relief. He had thought that Drago’s mentality was forged from cast iron, but he realised that he was human after all. It�
��s now or never, he thought.

  ‘I know where your kinsmen are,’ Jon Li said quietly.

  ‘They disappear down an underground tunnel, dead or alive, on some kind of monorail system,’ Lucian said. We’ve followed some of the transports,’ Lucian elaborated.

  ‘To the Genie Reactor,’ whispered Jon Li. ‘I DIDN’T KNOW!’ Jon Li said assertively. ‘I swear to you. I DID NOT KNOW.’

  Drago looked shocked.

  ‘The power station!?’ he gasped.

  The awful truth was beginning to sink into Drago’s mind. It was like an incurable infection that ate at the souls of all who contracted it.

  Lucian recoiled. He had gone a deathly shade of white.

  Jon Li pointed to the key on the desk and said.

  ‘Everything you need to know is on there. The Masons use you people as FUEL.’

  He looked back at Jon Li with disbelief in his fear-stricken eyes. The horrendous realisation had registered.

  ‘Fuel!? – We thought it was just cleaning garbage for them. Dirt in their eyes,’ he said in a low and steady voice.

  ‘It’s not just you people. They’ve started on their own now as well. People are disappearing from the cities. Anyone who finds out enough gets taken too. Only those loyal to the Masons are spared,’ Jon Li continued.

  Jon Li held Drago’s eyes with his own his self-determination welled again. He felt a rush of power, surge through his shattered limbs.

  ‘Drago? We must stop this. All this death. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to help you. But first - you must release Ellie and the others. They are not your enemies. The Masons know you people are out here somewhere. They won’t stop hunting you. It’s in their files. That’s how I knew where to come. It’s only a matter of time before they find you under here. That’s why I’ve brought the key. Please! We must work together!’ Jon Li begged.