“It’s fine,” said Victor.
“Anyway, that’s not why I brought you up here today, Victor,” said Eli. “What I really want to ask you is where you see yourself in a year. Or five, ten years."
“Uh…” Victor hesitated. “I haven’t thought much about it. I guess I’d like to continue doing what I’m doing now, and helping people as much as I can.”
Eli took a sip of his drink while listening to his answer.
“That’s a depressingly short-sighted answer, Victor,” said Eli. “I invite you to dare to dream. Your father, despite our differences, is one of the few people that I recognized as a true genius. And you are of his blood.”
Eli waved a hand, gesturing to the room around them, and twitching his finger twice as it passed over the women.
“Imagine working out of a space like this, Victor,” he said. “Imagine having an entire floor in the tower to yourself, having assistants and a team working under you.”
Victor watched him steadily.
“What’s the catch?” he asked. “I only just turned 20 earlier this month. Why, exactly, would you choose to elevate someone like me to that kind of level?”
Eli chuckled to himself.
“I know all about you, Victor,” he said. “The nanites, on their own, give you a level of efficacy that I couldn’t achieve with a hundred employees. I don’t know if Lucy has explained to you how difficult they are to produce and administer reliably, but rest assured, it’s going to be at least another year before we run another experiment with them on a human subject.”
“And what about Kiara?” asked Victor. “She’s been here even longer than I have.”
“She is…” Eli frowned and clinked the ice cubes in his drink against the edge of the glass. “…very determined to continue working under her sister.”
Victor felt a strange flash of paranoia, which manifested itself in the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Is this why you asked me to meet with you today?” he asked.
Eli pulled a small remote control out of his pocket. There was an HD monitor across from the couch, and with a click, he turned it on.
“Ladies, if you would please excuse us?” He waved a hand, and the two women behind the bar left the room. Eli waited until the door was fully closed before turning and favoring Victor with a knowing look. He pressed another button, and a video began to play.
It was surveillance footage of the break room on the 13th floor, and more specifically, of Victor in the break room. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Victor felt a chill run down his spine as he realized what he was watching.
On the screen, Victor was talking and gesturing to the invisible air. In the room, Victor glanced over at Ella, who was standing next to the couch and sharing his reaction. Victor watched himself speaking and acting like someone with a shaky grip on reality, carrying on a seemingly complete conversation with nobody other than himself.
“What were you doing here, Victor?” Eli smirked at him. “Because it looks to me like you’re talking to something, or someone.”
“I-“
“There’s also the issue of the injuries you’ve sustained in your time here at Monteiro,” said Eli. “Or more specifically, the unnatural speed at which you’ve recovered from all of them. It’s quite remarkable.”
Victor just stared at the man, feeling flustered. Eli had managed to get under his skin, and now the ball was now in his court. He had to move fast.
I could use the onyx aura, if I had to. At least to see what his real intentions are.
Victor felt the burgeoning power in his chest as he felt for the aura, and saw the radiant purple glow forming around his body. And Eli began to laugh, as though he’d just told a silent, hilarious joke.
“Not so fast,” he said, wryly. “We’ve had countermeasures against all of the mind affecting auras for, well, almost as long as we’ve had auras. You didn’t honestly think I’d invite you up here to my office if that was something I was worried about, did you?”
Victor winced and let go of the energy he’d been gathering. "All I’m asking you to do is to consider it, Victor,” Eli said, in a soft voice. “I want to have you work directly under me, on a few special projects. I think it’s what your father would have wanted.”
Victor exhaled sharply.
“Are we done here?”
Eli Monteiro smiled and nodded.
“Think about what your options are,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
He didn’t offer to escort Victor back to the elevator, and Victor didn’t ask. He hurried out of the lounge, past the attractive assistants waiting outside, past the receptionist, and onto the elevator. He pressed the button for the 13th floor hard enough to make his thumb hurt, and then leaned his head back against the wall.
This is not good.
CHAPTER 6
“I’m sorry, Victor.”
Ella stood next to him in the elevator, one hand gently resting on his shoulder. Victor did his very best to not acknowledge her. After seeing the video, he couldn’t afford to.
“Do you want me to go?” Ella’s voice sounded sad and defeated. “I can stay inside your head, and stop appearing to you like this, if it’s what you want?”
Victor sighed.
It’s not what I want… But it might be what I need.
The elevator reached the 13th floor, and the doors slid open. Victor locked eyes with Ella for a moment, not saying anything, but trying to impart the conflict and indecision he felt through his expression.
Lucy was busy directing a group of employees, along with Kronenberg. Victor found Kiara in the small break room against the back wall of the office section. She frowned when she saw him.
“Jeez, did you get chewed out, or something?”
Victor shook his head and forced a smile onto his face.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Look, we should probably get to work.”
Kiara watched him for a moment, as though assessing his mental state, and then nodded.
“I double checked where we’re headed with Lucy,” she said. “The main entrance to the tunnels is on the eastern edge of the city. It shouldn’t take us that long to get there on the moped.”
Remembering the moped was enough to lift Victor’s spirits, albeit only slightly. He rubbed his hands together and glanced around the break room. True to her word, Ella was no longer hovering anywhere nearby. It made him feel a little lonely, though he didn’t admit it to himself.
“Let’s get going, then,” he said.
Kiara let Victor drive again and served as the navigator on their trip through town, signaling for him to turn left or right by tapping on his shoulders. They rode out of the city’s gentrified economic center and into the rougher outskirts, where the streets were alive with activity of all sorts.
There wasn’t as much traffic in the section of the city they were headed into, but there were plenty of pedestrians. Victor took a right turn and almost crashed into a crowd of people that he might have mistaken for a block party if it wasn’t for the lack of music and the fact that it was midmorning. A ragged, toothless man waved a hand at him and shouted something. Victor nodded to him but didn’t stop.
“It should be just up ahead!” shouted Kiara. She leaned closer into Victor, wrapping one arm tightly around his stomach so she could point out where they were headed with the other.
The entrance to the Labyrinth was near the eastern city limits. Victor slowed the pink moped to a stop next to a rusted chain link fence. On the other side and about fifty feet below them was an old subway car service and maintenance center, which was itself, rather poorly maintained.
“This is it,” said Kiara. “Let’s head on down and take a look.”
A set of stairs littered with empty beer bottles led down the maintenance building and the platform next to it. The tunnel was directly underneath where Victor had parked the bike above. It looked like a gigantic mouth, pitch black on the inside, with a faint musty scent
. The air coming from within was a little warmer than the outdoor ambient temperature.
“This is the main entrance?” asked Victor. “Didn’t you say people live down here?”
“They do. According to Lucy, there’s an entire shanty town within the tunnels.”
Victor raised an eyebrow. The tunnel looked abandoned, but after listening for a moment, he thought he could hear the faint noise of human activity from within.
“Did you bring a flashlight?” asked Victor.
Kiara rolled her eyes.
“Use your onyx aura,” she said. “It should be enough. And yes, I brought a flashlight, in case we do end up needing one.”
She walked past of him, and the darkness seemed to swallow her as she stepped over the threshold into the tunnel. Victor followed behind, focusing his awareness and binding his onyx aura to his senses.
The tunnel was filled with trash, beer bottles, old mattresses, rotting furniture, and a number of other things that Victor couldn’t readily identify. It continued on into the distance, slowly curving around a bend several hundred yards ahead of them.
He walked beside Kiara at an even pace. The air stank of wet concrete and mildew and the deeper in they went, the warmer it became, as though they were heading into the mouth of a gigantic beast.
That’s an appropriately morbid thought.
“Do you hear that?” asked Kiara. “From up ahead.”
They made their way around the curve, and the track split off in two different directions. One of them led deeper into the darkness while the other had a couple of faint lights in it about a hundred yards off.
Victor and Kiara headed toward the lights. The sounds grew louder, and as they came around another curve, they began to see more lights, along with tiny, roughly constructed shacks made of discarded metal, wood, and in some cases, cardboard.
“Wow,” said Kiara. “I… wasn’t expecting anything like this.”
It was a shanty town within the subway tunnel, stretching out at least to the next bend. There were several dozen buildings of various sizes, each one with its own unique style. People milled about amidst them and around small trashcan fires, and for the most part, they didn’t look as dirty or disheveled as Victor had expected, though they were all clearly homeless.
“This is… incredible,” said Victor. A man stood to his feet from a tiny building near the edge of the town that looked to be a repurposed gazebo overcropping.
“Welcome to Labyrinth,” said the man.
CHAPTER 7
It wasn’t until Victor and Kiara walked deeper into the shanty town that he began to notice the eyes watching him. Practically all of the nearby denizens of Labyrinth were poking their heads out of their domiciles to get a look at him, and for the most part, their expressions were laced with suspicion.
“The name’s Johnathon,” said the man. “I’ve been down here in these tunnels for longer than most, less than some.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Johnathon,” said Victor. “My friend and I are here to-“
“Doesn’t matter why you’re here,” said Johnathon. “Don’t ask, don’t tell. See Willum down that way if you be needing to buy something that don’t come easy up above.”
Johnathon pointed to an offshoot tunnel where another few buildings stood after a stretch of darkness. Victor slowed to a stop and took a closer look at their surroundings.
This is incredible. It’s like we’ve entered another world.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your town?” asked Kiara.
“Not at all, ma’am,” said Johnathon.
Kiara nodded and shot Victor a curious look.
“Where does the electricity come from down here?” she asked. “I can’t imagine that it was easy to get all these lights set up.”
Johnathon smiled.
“We have a couple of lines running from spots where the old subway workers must have plugged in their repair equipment,” he said. “Works well enough, though sometimes folks fight a bit over which stuff gets priority for each outlet.”
Victor nodded and examined the lights more closely. Many of the bulbs were dimmed or flickering from age, and in a couple of spots, salvaged Christmas lights were strung up for illumination, rather than decoration.
“My friend and I are here to investigate some reports we’ve been getting of people disappearing,” said Kiara. “Do you know anything about that?”
Johnathon’s smile faded.
“Too much,” he said. “It hasn’t been pretty down here, for the past few weeks.”
Has it ever been pretty down here?
“What can you tell us?” asked Kiara.
Someone shouted something from another building to the side. Victor turned his attention back to the shanty town and realized, for the first time, that several large, disheveled men had moved into position around them. He gently elbowed Kiara in the ribs and nodded to the closest one of them, but she didn’t pay the situation much mind.
“I can’t tell you anything,” said Johnathon.
“Can’t, or won’t?” asked Victor.
“I can’t and I won’t.” Johnathon inhaled sharply through his nose and then wiped a dirty hand across his brow. “But… if you’re here for the reason you claim, I can at least point you toward someone who can.”
“Thank you,” said Kiara.
Johnathon waved a hand at the tunnel behind him, the main stretch leading further into the depths that they had yet to explore.
“Head down until you reach the area near the end of the lights,” he said. “And then look for the door against the wall. It’s Cassandra’s office.”
“Cassandra?” asked Victor.
“She’s a good soul, that one,” he said. “She came down here to help treat some of the sick folk. Ended up doing so much good that we gave her one of the proper rooms, so she didn’t have to drag her stuff back up and down each time she came and went.”
“And she’s down here now?” asked Kiara.
“She lives down here, mostly,” said Johnathon. “Least I think she does. Only heads up to the surface a couple times a month.”
“Thank you,” said Kiara. She looked up and briefly met the eyes of the men who were still watching them. “Will your people give us safe passage, or do we have to worry about some of them?”
“We aren’t savages, despite how this may look to you,” said Johnathon. “You don’t have to worry about being hurt long as you keep to yourself and use a polite tongue.”
“That’s good to know,” said Victor.
Though we aren’t the ones who would end up hurt if a confrontation broke out.
Johnathon turned away from them, and Victor and Kiara headed off in the direction he’d previously indicated. The door was easily missable, tucked away in between a cardboard condo and a medium sized sheet metal hovel. Victor approached it and began to knock.
The sound of a chair sliding back came from behind it, followed by a few cautious footsteps. The door opened inward a few inches, pulling taut against a safety chain mechanism. Victor glanced at Kiara, and then at the sliver of a woman’s face in the opening, and put on his friendliest smile.
“Hello,” he said. “Are you Cassandra? Johnathon sent us to-“
“I’m not giving any interviews, and I’ve advised all of the underfolk not to, either,” said the woman. “Take your politicized journalism elsewhere. These people need real help, not a puff piece, feel good editorial.”
“Uh, we aren’t journalists,” said Kiara.
“We’re here investigating the disappearances,” said Victor. “Can we talk to you for a few minutes.”
The woman’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. The door closed slightly, and Victor thought that she was unhooking the safety chain. And then it slammed shut.
“I’m not interested in talking about that,” said the woman, her voice muffled by the door. “I think you both should leave.”
Victor looked over at Kiara, who had a mean glare on h
er face.
“Open this door up this instant!” Kiara slammed her fist forward, punching more than knocking. “We don’t have time to waste on convincing you! Open up!”
“Go away!” shouted the woman. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“Yes you do!” screamed Kiara. She started to knock again, when Victor took her by the shoulders and gently pulled her back and away.
“Why don’t you let me handle this one?” he asked.
“I’ll knock the door down if I have to!” snarled Kiara.
Victor frowned and shook his head.
“Easy, tiger,” he said. “We aren’t here to bully anyone. Just let me talk to her for a bit.”
Kiara glared at him for a moment, and then folded her arms and turned away. Victor paid her no mind and walked over to the door.
“Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Victor Anders. I’m here to investigate the disappearances and potentially save people’s lives.”
The woman was silent, but it was a more galvanized response than any of the others she’d given.
“Cassandra, please,” said Victor. “Johnathon can vouch for us. We don’t have an ulterior motive, or any sinister intentions.”
The sound of movement came from behind the door, and a few seconds later, it opened. A rather attractive woman wearing a pair of thin, rectangular glasses appeared in the doorway.
“Fine,” she said. “You can come in. But only you. The bitch stays outside.”
Kiara looked like she was about to explode, but Victor shot her a look with enough caution and urgency in it to keep her quiet.
“Alright,” he said.
CHAPTER 8
Cassandra’s office, if it could really be called that, reminded Victor of a place he didn’t like to remember. Night Angel, the masked woman who was either a vigilante or terrorist, depending on how much of her background a person knew, had made her base of operations out of a similar subway chamber.
The walls were lined with old pipes and thick insulated electrical lines. It was about the size of a small bedroom, and judging from the futon and blankets in the corner, Cassandra had being using it as one somewhat regularly.
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