He was lying on a narrow bed. Above him, a bright white stripe flickered on and off in time with the buzzing sound – a fluorescent light. Duran reeled back against the brightness of it, dropping a forearm across his eyes and turning his head to the side.
“Sorry,” a voice said nearby. “I’ll turn it off.”
Duran turned toward the voice, but the sharp movement caused his shoulder to flare painfully. He moaned and clutched at it with his hand.
“Easy,” the voice said, taking his hand and easing it back to the side. “No sudden movements, please.”
There was a click and the buzzing stopped. Duran opened his eyes and saw the outline of a woman sitting beside him in the gloom.
“I just wanted to get a better look at that shoulder,” she said. “Damn light is on the fritz. Sorry if I woke you up.”
Duran recognised her voice. It was the woman who had grabbed him up at the Atrium.
He suddenly remembered what had happened. Knile escaping up the elevator, his own flight down the wall, the Redmen giving chase. The woman. Then what?
“Where am I?” he said, trying to get up again, but the woman placed a hand on his chest and guided him back down again.
“You’re in a little corner of Juncture Nine. You’re safe here,” she added.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Zoe. Do you remember what happened, Alec?”
She edged closer and now he could see her features again. Those amber-brown eyes looked him up and down, full of concern.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Up to what point?”
Duran thought back to what had happened, scrubbing at his face as he tried to shrug off the drowsiness that still clung to him. He stopped, sensing something was different, and saw a drip attached to the back of his hand. He reached up but Zoe stopped him before he could touch it.
“Leave it,” she said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You need to keep that in for a while longer.” Duran acquiesced, too weak to resist her even if he wanted to. “Tell me what you remember.”
“We were running from the Redmen. You got the outer door open and dragged me inside. You were calling someone, but I don’t remember what you said.”
“Yeah, that’s about when your lights went out.”
“How did you get me all the way down to Gaslight?”
“It wasn’t easy. Luckily I have a friend who can open doors around here.”
Duran looked about at his surroundings. They were in a small room with a dome-shaped roof, set into which were a network of copper pipes and cables of varying colours and lengths. The fluoro, now dark and silent, hung from the roof suspended by chain mounts on either end, and over by the corner a naked bulb splashed faint light across the room.
“What’s happening? Why have you brought me here?”
Zoe leaned back and crossed her legs, linking her fingers together across her waist as she regarded him.
“I’ve been watching you, Alec. I’ve been watching you with a great deal of interest.”
“Why? And for who?”
She shrugged. “For myself. Because you interest me.”
Duran pushed himself up onto his elbow, and this time she made no attempt to stop him.
“Are you going to keep talking in circles, or are you actually going to tell me something here?”
Zoe smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want to rest first, before we get down to business? You took a nice shot there.”
Duran glanced down at his shoulder. “How bad?”
“You’ll live. Our patch-up was a bit of a mess, since we only have a rudimentary setup here. The sutures are pretty rough. You probably won’t want to wear a bikini again any time soon.”
“Uh… I’ll keep that in mind.” He drew himself up further and swung his legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the pain. Zoe watched him carefully, evaluating him as a doctor would evaluate her patient.
“You up to that?” she said doubtfully.
“Yeah,” Duran said, his features bunched up as he fought to control the pain. “Let’s talk. Tell me what’s going on. Why have you been watching me?”
“Okay.” Zoe got up and checked the IV bag that was attached to a rusted metal pole by the bed. “I hope that didn’t sound creepy, by the way. When I said I’d been watching you.”
“It was a little creepy, yeah.”
“It’s how we do our recruitment around here.” She turned back to him. “I’m part of a small team who operates outside the law here in the Reach. You could say that we’re trying to bring justice to the place. Trying to make up for the shortcomings of the Enforcers. Doing the jobs that they can’t or won’t do.”
“You’re a vigilante.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“There’s no other way to put it. You’re a vigilante.”
“Yeah, okay,” Zoe said. “We’re vigilantes. Why does that sound like a dirty word when you say it?”
Duran shrugged. “I’m just calling it like it is. If it sounds like a dirty word, then that’s probably what it is.”
“Oh, really? You’re judging us and you don’t know the first thing about us yet.”
“So let’s see,” Duran said, shifting his weight on the side of the bed as he attempted to find a comfortable position. “You take the law into your own hands. You take action against those you believe deserve it, spare those you believe are innocent. Stop me when I get something wrong here.”
Zoe chewed her lip thoughtfully. “That’s a simplification of it, but yeah, that’s the general gist.”
“Do you kill people?”
Zoe gave him a direct stare. “Yes. We kill people.”
“So what makes you any different from every other thug out there who kills when it’s convenient?”
“That’s an unfair comparison.”
“Is it? Who exactly made you judge, jury and executioner?”
“Necessity.”
“Necessity?” Duran scoffed. “There’s already a law enforcement presence in the Reach–”
“The Enforcers?” Zoe said hotly. “Don’t make me laugh. They’ve failed in every possible way. They’re worse than useless. They’re so corrupt that we’d all be better off without them.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Why am I even explaining this to you?” Zoe said, exasperated. “You despise the Enforcers. I know you do. And I’ve seen how they treat you. You’re practically the only one who has any integrity. That’s why I chose you, because you’re different.”
“That doesn’t mean I’d willingly betray them.”
“So you’d just go back to the way things were? Working in a system you know is wrong?”
“How else am I supposed to make a difference, to change things for the better?”
“Simple,” she said, stepping forward and gripping his arms fervently. “You need to step outside of it, see it for what it really is. Understand its true nature. Only then can you hope to change it.”
“So what is this about?” Duran said as she leaned in close. Those luminous eyes of hers were captivating, he thought. He realised that her proximity was not an accident. She was using her physicality to try to sway him. “You want to destroy the Enforcers?”
“I told you, it’s about justice. We’re trying to take away the negative forces that are operating inside the Reach, a job the Enforcers won’t do.”
“Are you killing Enforcers?”
Zoe straightened uncomfortably. “If they’re part of those negative forces, then yes.”
“Thought so.” He began to get up.
“Wait,” she said, placing a hand on his chest again. It was a gentle touch, little more than fingertips resting on the thin fabric of his shirt. “I used to be an Enforcer.”
Duran stared up at her. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. I know what it’s like to work for them. I know the depth of their corruption. I know what you’ve been through, Alec, because once I w
as there too. So were the others.”
“What others?”
She glanced over her shoulder, where a circular corridor like a large length of pipe led off into the gloom.
“The others who are helping me. We’re all ex-Enforcers.”
“Where are they?” Duran said, and this time he slipped off the bed and pushed past her. His legs wobbled and he almost fell. He felt disorientated and weak.
“Hey!” Zoe cried out. “Careful! You’re in no condition to start running around the place.”
Duran had no choice but to accept her assistance as the world spun around him. She pressed tightly against his side, one hand steadying his arm and the other linked around his waist, and together they slowly rose back to a standing position.
“I want to see them,” Duran insisted. “I can walk. If they aren’t more convincing than you, I’m going to keep walking right out of this place and back to where I belong.”
Zoe sighed and shook her head, and then Duran felt the warmth of her body leave his side. She guided his hand to the IV pole and wrapped his fingers around it.
“You’ll need to take this,” she said.
Duran shakily drew the pole toward himself and took a moment to regain his equilibrium.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“There’s time to do this later if you want,” Zoe said, making one last attempt to dissuade him. “They aren’t going anywhere.”
“I said I’m ready.”
Without waiting for her, he began to shuffle toward the corridor that led out of the room and into the cramped little network of passageways Zoe seemed to call home.
7
Talia lay strapped to a table in a damp and dingy room that was thick with the sharp, acrid odour of chemicals and stale water. She was inside an old factory, she decided, judging by the red brick walls and the rusted hulks of several machines that had been left to decay within. They jutted from puddles of brown liquid that ran along cracks in the concrete floor, their gears and pulleys corroded and coated in reddish dust.
Her head was pounding, and it had been for hours. They’d given her a good shot out in the alley, enough to knock her out cold, and whenever she turned her head to the right, a jolt of pure agony coursed through her temple. She could only imagine the size of the lump they’d left there.
She tried to figure out how long she’d been held captive, but it wasn’t an easy task. There was no way of knowing how long she’d been out, for a start. Inside this decrepit cesspit there was a distinct lack of windows to the outside world, so it was hard for her to judge the time of day. All that she knew was that the light filtering through from adjoining rooms had lessened for a considerable time before returning again, so she decided that she had probably been here overnight, possibly as long as twenty-four hours.
She was scared. She couldn’t deny that. If Crumb had gone as far as kidnapping, it wasn’t a huge leap for him to move on to rape and murder as well. She knew that there was a good chance that she would never see the world outside this room again, and that terrified her.
In addition to that, she was all too aware that every second that crept by was, for Roman, one tick closer to danger. Despite the fact that she herself had landed in a bad predicament, she knew that the boy still needed her help. She had to get out of here, not just to save her own hide, but to help Roman as well.
Straining at the tight leather belts Crumb had used to strap her down, she could only despair at the fact that it seemed unlikely she would be helping Roman, herself, or anyone else in the near future.
She turned her neck stiffly and looked across at Crumb. The man had been watching her for some time with an odd, bug-eyed intensity that had initially been disquieting, but which now she only found to be annoying. He was like an irritating little cur waiting for a scrap to be thrown his way, eyes shining with feverish anticipation.
“Got somethin’ to say, darlin’?” he drawled.
“Screw you.”
His smile widened. “You should be careful what you wish for.”
On the other side of the room another man sat quietly, his youthful face tinged with an odd sort of disquiet. He hadn’t said a word in the hours he had been there, preferring to fiddle with a large bolt in his hands, turning it over endlessly as he cast uncertain glances at both the doorway and at Talia herself. He didn’t seem to quite fit the mould of one who would be hanging out with the likes of Crumb, she thought to herself. She’d caught him looking at her several times, and each time their eyes had met he’d looked away awkwardly, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
She wriggled again. The bonds that had been wrapped around her and which bound her to the table were uncomfortably tight. She needed to be free of them, to be out of this room, but despite her mounting desperation, that was no closer to happening now than it had been several hours ago.
“What the hell do you want with me, man?” Talia said to Crumb, forcing anger into her voice to hide the despair. Her throat was parched and her voice cracked as she spoke. “What am I doing here?”
“You keep askin’ that.”
“So give me the answer and I’ll stop.”
“You’ll find out,” Crumb said, unblinking. The corners of his mouth twitched with a little smile. “Just you wait.”
“Can I at least get some water?”
“You ain’t dyin’ of thirst just yet,” Crumb said. “You’ll keep.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“Boss man.”
“Who’s that?”
“Boss man is coming,” Crumb said ominously.
Talia turned away, vexed. “Yeah, so is the end of the world. I’m just not sure which one is going to get here first.” She craned her neck so that she could see the younger man over by the door. “What about you? You got any answers?”
The young man looked startled, as if he wasn’t really sure how to respond.
“You just hold your tongue, Winny,” Crumb said to him. “You leave the talkin’ to old Crumb.”
“Or maybe I should just scream,” Talia said. “See if some Enforcers come running.”
Crumb made a wheezing kind of laugh. “I ain’t seen no Enforcer come investigate no screamin’ around these parts in about twenty years. You better come up with somethin’ more creative than that, darlin’. Maybe if you yelled ‘free pussy’, that might get their interest.”
She gritted her teeth and wrenched her body from side to side, but she had been bound too tightly to have any hope of escape. Crumb’s smile widened as he watched her.
“Like a fox in a bear trap, ain’tcha?”
“Look, if you’ll just–”
Talia was interrupted by the sound of a door closing deeper within the factory, and Crumb finally dragged his eyes away from her. He looked toward the doorway. Winny also responded immediately, getting to his feet, placing the bolt in his pocket and assuming a somewhat stiff and formal posture.
“Well, that should be the boss man now,” Crumb said. “We’re finally gonna hear an end to your yappin’.”
Talia stuck out her neck so that she could view the doorway, ignoring the stabs of pain the movement caused in her head. She waited and listened, staring intently. The two men holding her captive did the same.
Another door opened and closed, closer than before. Crumb gave a nervous little laugh.
There were footsteps in the corridor outside, the heavy sound of boots crunching on gravel. They sounded in a rhythmic, unhurried fashion, as whoever it was took their time with their approach. Shadows shifted in the doorway, and Winny gave one last nervous glance at Crumb.
Then the newcomer came into view. His appearance was almost theatrical as he took one last exaggerated step into the threshold, sliding his trailing foot along the concrete until the heels of his boots clicked together audibly. Then, with his arrival complete, he stood motionless before them. He wore a dusty black trench coat and charcoal-grey gloves and carried a worn leather tool bag at his s
ide. The fingers of his free hand wriggled distractedly at his waist as he peered into the room.
Winny and Crumb might as well have not existed. The man’s eyes fell upon Talia lying on the table, and there they stayed. Although Crumb’s insistent gaze before had been disconcerting, it was mere child’s play compared to this. This man had a fierceness about him that chilled Talia to the bone.
Despite her discomfort, she kept her gaze steady and glared back at him defiantly.
There was silence for what seemed an age, then finally the man’s intensity broke and he relaxed his posture.
“So this is her?” he said.
“Sure thing, Cap,” Crumb said.
The man began to walk into the room. He smoothed a glove over his closely cropped jet-black hair and pressed his thin lips together into a line.
“What have you found out?” he said, staring down at Talia.
“Uh…” Crumb shifted awkwardly behind him. “I thought you was wantin’ to talk to her yourself, Capper.”
Capper’s eyes narrowed. “So you’ve had her here all this time and found out nothing.”
“Uh, she’s a tough nut, Cap,” Crumb stammered. “She won’t tell me nothin’.”
“That’s bullshit, I don’t even know why I’m here,” Talia spat.
Capper held up one gloved hand for silence.
“Let’s not bicker,” he said. “I despise bickering. Not to fear, Crumb. I’ll do this myself.”
He turned and moved over to a bench by the wall, placing the tool bag down and tugging at the fingers of his gloves as he carefully began to remove them from his hands.
“What’s your name?” he said over his shoulder.
“Talia.” She saw no reason to lie at this point. “Talia Anders.”
“Good. Now listen, Talia, and listen well. I’m going to ask you some questions. It’s in your best interests to answer those questions honestly. I won’t take kindly to anything less.”
“Yeah, okay. What do you want to know?”
Capper placed the gloves down neatly on the bench, then turned and began to walk back toward her.
“My friend Crumb here saw something very interesting several days ago. He said he saw you walking through Link with a man over toward Grove.”
Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) Page 4