Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  Ellie retreated to her memories of the time she had spent in Arethusa. The violence that followed shortly after the Day of Reckoning and the poverty that had followed, resembled what she had walked into in Union City but her time in Arethusa had been replaced with Coney City. The difference for the people of Union City, was that they were still living the nightmare. Nothing had changed for them.

  Ellie walked alongside of Max. Lucian was out of earshot and Red was dawdling behind them.

  She put her hand on Max’s arm and whispered, ‘Did you hear what he said? “They would take care of Aya.” And Jon. He’s alive! They aren’t going to kill us.’

  It was too dark for Ellie to see Max’s expression, but his voice portrayed his anger.

  ‘Take care of her? It was partly their fault she’s in that mess. They scared her half to death. It’s a mess. The whole thing’s a fucking mess. What was Li thinking bringing us here to this hole in the ground? He still ain’t explained himself to me yet.’

  ‘He must have said something to convince them not to kill us, or we would be dead by now,’ she replied defensively.

  She was struggling to understand his motives for bringing them to Union City. How did he get that key? she thought. The faint sounds of a baby crying came from one of the tunnels and it reminded her of her own hopes for a child with Jon Li and the tiny picture of unborn ‘baby Irene’. It seemed out of place to her and the idea that anyone would choose to bring a baby into such an awful place seemed insane.

  They continued along the passages and at one point the stench of ammonia coming from the urine that ran down the gullies was so strong that it burnt her eyes. Max was muttering something about living in shit and piss as he stumbled in the darkness. She thought that perhaps that might suit Max just fine because he almost seemed at home in the huge rabbit warren.

  They walked towards a larger opening and a brighter light. There were sounds of clinking and fizzing coming from the opening and as they got closer, the narrow passage opened up and there was a draught of air. It carried the smell of burning metal. The noises got louder. They heard the distinct sound of metal being hammered and when they turned the corner their faces were illuminated by a forge. They had entered a large workshop and armoury. The room was a hive of industry and the heat from the forge was suffocating. There were two men hammering metal over the forge. The sweat ran down their blackened faces as they laboured over the hot metal. They had rigged up a pulley system above the forge to raise large metal pots of water over the fire.

  Hot water. What I wouldn’t give for a bath? Ellie thought.

  She noticed that the men were working on the rescued scrap from Jon Li’s car. They were using the car batteries to run a piece of equipment. The fizzing noise was coming from an area where metal was being welded into shape. A man wearing a full face-shield was holding a blowtorch on one hand. He stopped working when he noticed Lucian approaching him. Ellie watched the two of them clap hands and clasp them briefly together with a brisk shake. They laughed at each other and Lucian shouted over the noise from the forge.

  ‘Rust…You ugly son-of-a bitch. Finished working on my shotgun yet?’

  The man (whom Lucian had called Rust) raised his face-shield and quickly retorted.

  ‘Me - ugly? Have you looked in the mirror lately?’

  Rust reached for the shotgun (that he had filed the end off) and handed it to Lucian.

  ‘Here ya go pal,’ he stated proudly.

  ‘Fine job…Mighty fine job, thanks,’ Lucian said examining the weapon.

  Lucian fondled the sawn off shotgun with a relish that resembled someone stroking their favourite pet. Max noticed that there was an array of weapons in various states of repair stacked against the wall of the forge. He seethed at having his haul of weapons stolen from him. He hated the way that they had quickly adapted them for their own use. Lucian swung the other shotgun around that was on the leather strap over his shoulder and un-hooked it before replacing it with the new sawn off version. To Max’s utter surprise, Lucian turned and threw the old shotgun at him. It slapped into his waiting hands. Max looked shocked. Max ‘The Soldier’ began to emerge. He stood in the light of the burning fire bloody and battered. With a gun in his hand he looked different. Bigger. Stronger.

  Max smiled. It was the first smile that Ellie had seen on his serious face. Max ‘cocked’ the barrel and opened the gun. He looked dumbly at the empty cartridge chamber and looked at Lucian who was grinning.

  ‘You didn’t expect it to be loaded did you?’ Lucian quipped.

  Max clapped the gun closed.

  ‘You mean all this time it wasn’t even loaded?’

  Lucian shrugged, ‘Only had the one shell and the door got that. But hey, you didn’t ask.’

  Max grinned at Lucian. All of the anger had disappeared from his face and Ellie watched the two men as they forged their new relationship. It would be one of an understanding that they were no different and that Lucian was a soldier too, but for a different cause.

  Red stayed behind with the other man in the forge and Lucian left with Ellie and Max. The atmosphere between them all had changed from that one action alone. They continued past the forge until the sounds of hammering faded into the background.

  After a while they came to a place that was the underground of a shopping mall. An escalator led down into another level below them. It had jammed and stuck in place. They walked down the broken elevator. Ellie felt disorientated as they descended down to the lower level. The air turned dank and stale and the temperature dropped significantly.

  It was very dark.

  Lucian led them to a small alcove which opened into another section of the ruined underground. They could hear a faint spluttering sound of machinery which appeared to be coming from ahead of them. It sounded like a badly tuned car engine. Lucian brought them to a halt behind a makeshift door that covered a large hole in the wall. A decaying poster covered the rotten wood underneath: “DND-Genius at work” had been written on it and the words were accompanied by a comical picture of glasses and exploding test tubes. The strange noise emanated from behind the door along with hushed voices. Multi-coloured lights spilled out into the passage from the ill-fitting door. The particles of dust that were in the air around them were illuminated by the strip of pulsing light that was coming from the doorway.

  Lucian pushed the door open and ushered Ellie and Max inside. Ellie glanced around at the long and narrow room that they were in. The lights dazzled her. They hid dark corners and shadowy figures. It was difficult to tell what the room had originally been, but now it was a makeshift technician’s room. There was an array of old electrical components covering the long benches, which dominated both sides of the room. The walls and ceilings were covered in fairy lights. They ran across the walls like writhing electrical snakes. They were interwoven with hundreds of wires and cables linking them into ageing circuitry. It looked to Ellie as though someone had wallpapered the room with a computer’s innards.

  Across the back bench there were boxes of spares and shelves. They were loaded with leads, disks and other components which had been meticulously salvaged and stored. Everything had been carefully labelled. The place was more akin to a nest than a room or a nest that had been built by a huge, robotic rat. In the corner there was large petrol generator which purred and spluttered intermittently. It was providing power in irregular jerks. The lights flickered in time with the jerks of the generator. The snakes of light waxed and waned in time with their fat parent. Next to the generator, there was an array of different sized bottles. They were half-filled with petrol of varying shades. They vibrated along with the generator that they sat next to. They were clinking together in a random, but almost joyful, tune. A cloud of smoke poured from the back of the vibrating device and drifted off down a distant duct in the wall to be pulled in by an unseen fan.

  A yellowed monitor and keyboard dominated the centre of the main bench and an old fashioned computer mouse dangled its tail over t
he bench. The monitor screen was blank. The bench was littered with equipment. Ellie did not recognise most of it.

  Off to one side of the bench were a large set of goggles with a thick strap. They were sitting on top of a pile of computer disks. Two, small computer screens were built into them. Next to them were three small wrist watches. They were in various states of repair. One of them had a small blade sticking out of it where the clock should have been. Ellie gasped in surprise when she recognised it. It was an exact copy of the weapon that Kirstoff’s impersonator had tried to use on Mason Henson in the Genie reactor. It seemed to her that the incident had happened a lifetime ago.

  The tiny man who was sitting in front of the monitor turned to Ellie in surprise. He was wearing a stained laboratory coat (under which) he was wearing a thread-bare jumper. The pockets of the off-white coat, trailed leads like rats tails. The coat had a neat, hand written label on the top pocket.

  It read: “SPARKS.”

  She jumped when he gawped at her with his four, huge staring eyes. It took her a second to realise that he was wearing a workman’s light around his head. It had a large magnifying glass strapped in front of it. Behind the magnifier there was a pair of huge, ill-fitting glasses. The lenses made his eyes look like large, black discs. The tiny man looked as though he had never seen the light of day. His skin was white and his hunched shoulder bones stuck out through his thread-bare jumper. His mousy brown hair was shedding a cascade of dandruff. In his hands, he held two small tools that resembled screwdrivers. A small whiff of smoke drifted from the end of one of them. She couldn’t see what he was working on. His gawp of surprise was lost on her. She was fixated on the figure that was standing behind him.

  Max grunted behind her.

  ‘Li,’ he breathed.

  ‘Jon. Is that you?’ Ellie asked, hesitantly.

  She leaned across Sparks and strained to see the man who was walking out of the shadows towards her and cried out loud when Jon Li got close. His broken nose had developed a serious blue bruise and it looked a different shape. The sight of it made her feel queasy.

  ‘Jon. Oh Jon. I thought you were dead!’ she cried and hugged him tightly.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, looking over her shoulder at Max.

  Max was staring back at him.

  ‘Are you okay Ell?’ he asked gently, whilst looking her over for signs of a beating.

  Ellie cried into his shoulder: her tears wetted his tattered shirt.

  ‘I’m fine...but…’ she faltered.

  She looked back at Max who was standing behind her, next to Lucian. Jon Li caught the hint.

  ‘Where’s the other girl? What have you done to her?’ he demanded to know from Lucian.

  ‘Her name’s Aya,’ Max cut in harshly, glaring at Jon Li.

  ‘Nothin…We didn’t do nothin'…she’s sick. We’re takin' care of her,’ Lucian replied hastily.

  Jon Li glanced sceptically at Ellie who confirmed Lucian’s story with a short nod. Max became agitated and started to step forward. He had recognised the man who was sitting in an old car seat behind Jon Li.

  It was Drago.

  Lucian put his arm across him and stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘That’s far enough ‘Soldier-Boy. Save it,’ he warned.

  Drago eyed the shotgun that Max was holding and stared hard at Lucian.

  ‘Not loaded boss,’ Lucian acknowledged.

  Drago had his hand resting on Mary. The gun was resting in his lap. He stroked her gently and stared at Max.

  ‘We’re not going to have any trouble are we?’ he said in a low voice.

  Max eased back and ruffled his shoulders. He looked at the gun resting comfortably in Drago’s lap and then he glanced at Lucian whose expression told him “screw up here and he’ll shoot you soon as look at you.”

  ‘No,’ Max grunted and looked down at the floor.

  The testosterone fuelled tension between the men hummed along in time with the generator. Drago ground his dying cigarette into a silver trophy cup. The words on the cup (which had been awarded, so prestigiously, to its previous owner) read: “To Mary - For Outstanding Service.”

  The tiny man was still gawping at Ellie with his huge black eyes. Drago nudged him with his boot.

  ‘Get back to it Sparks. We ain’t got all day,’ Drago urged.

  Sparks turned back to his bench and leaned in close: working with the two tools. A burning smell drifted upwards from where he was working.

  ‘I still need the other equipment,’ Sparks pleaded.

  ‘She’s on her way,’ Drago replied.

  Ellie turned around to see what Sparks was working on. Sparks appeared to be assembling a tiny clockwork machine. There were tiny jeweller’s tools and screwdrivers littered by the side of the keyboard and, in front of it, there was a selection of pins and tiny circuits. A small jewellers vice was attached to the side of the desk. Held tightly in its tiny jaws (under yet another magnifying glass) was the platinum key which Jon Li had worn around his neck. Sparks was carefully soldering a tiny wire to one of the teeth on the key. She winced as a tiny drop of solder fell onto its platinum surface. She was sure that she could hear it scream at the violation. She couldn’t bear to look at it and pushed herself away from Jon Li.

  She looked into his tired eyes and said, ‘Okay Jon. Now you tell me. What happened? Where did you get that key?’

  Max folded his arms and waited.

  ‘It’s Royale’s key,’ Jon Li answered.

  Ellie searched his face. Not you and her, she thought.

  ‘It’s not what you think…’ he began, but then stopped. It was what she thought, he reminded himself.

  Max grunted impatiently and Jon Li slumped down in one of the chairs, away from the lights. It was easier for him to tell the story when he did not have to look at Ellie.

  ‘I went back to Fin-Sen. You were right. You were both right about everything.’

  ‘You stole it…You did steal it didn’t you? Not given to you?’ Ellie begged.

  Jon Li avoided giving her a direct answer. He looked at Drago, Lucian, and Max and ‘sighed.’

  ‘Go on. Tell them what you told me,’ Drago coaxed.

  ‘Mason Royale. She took me to the vault.’

  ‘And?’ Max interrupted: sounding annoyed.

  Jon Li’s expression changed from despair to fear as he recalled the dreadful viewing of the experiment in the vault.

  ‘It was terrifying. It’s on the key: all of it. I’ll show you if we can get into it,’ he said gesturing towards sparks who was working on the key.

  ‘It will show you everything that I saw in the vault. It was terrible. What they’re doing: the Masons. That’s why I did it. I stole the key from Mason Royale and ran. You have to see it for yourself.’

  Ellie looked stunned.

  ‘You stole the key from Mason Royale?’ she queried.

  Jon Li nodded.

  ‘She was going to give me my own Mason’s key. She wanted me to join them, but after what I saw - what you’re going to see…’ he said wavering.

  Ellie closed her eyes and her lip started to tremble.

  Max shifted uncomfortably in the background.

  Another whiff of smoke, and a small ‘hiss’, rose up from the tortured key.

  ‘You stole it,’ Ellie said, with a sense of finality.

  She put her hands to her face.

  Max piped up angrily, ‘You expect me to believe that you lifted Mason Royale’s key from right under her nose? What do you take me for, a fool?!’

  Jon Li held up his hands instinctively and began to tell them the same story that he had told Drago and Lucian earlier. He told them about Royale’s intention to get rid of Mason Katcher and put him in his place. He explained how Mason Royale had taken him to the vault to show him his obligations and the hellish pact that he would be joining. He deliberately omitted any description of the night of passion that he had spent with Royale. He described how he had returned to Royale’s suite after t
hey had been to the vault, and how he had given her a cocktail into which he had slipped Ellie’s unused tranquilisers. He explained that he had taken them along with him at the morning of the conference because he had been worried that Ellie might do something stupid with them. He told them how he had taken Royale’s key from around her sleeping body, and how he had then fled from the building. He explained how he had known that there were people living in The Wastelands and where the masons had been searching for them. He explained why he had blindly led them into The Wastelands in the hope that they might find what the masons could not.

  Max scowled.

  ‘We’ve only got your word for it Li,’ he spat.

  Jon Li looked up at him.

  ‘I know. But they believe me,’ Jon Li said, gesturing at Drago and Lucian. ‘And soon. You will too. The Masons know there are people living in The Wastelands. It’s in the Fin-Sen files. It’s deep, but it’s there. They know all about the people outside the cities. This is the only place we could have gone. When Royale comes to, they’re going to know that I took the key and that I know too much. I’m a dead man back there.’

  Max stamped his foot angrily.

  ‘So you just drove us out here knowing they’d probably lynch us?’

  Jon Li flinched back into the chair.

  ‘It’s was either that…or we stayed in Coney City until they caught us, and then we’d have got…’ his voice trailed off.

  Max snarled in his face.

  ‘Then we’d get what?’

  Jon Li met his gaze.

  ‘It’s on the key. See for yourself.’

  Ellie looked despairingly at Jon Li. She wanted to hold him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Royale’s key! How close were they? She thought and bit her tongue. Jon Li put his head in his hands.

  They all heard the polite knock on the door.