Sunfail

by Steven Savile

  It isn’t just the campus, or even the city, she reminded herself. It was worldwide. Which meant surely it had to be natural, didn’t it? Some kind of global phenomenon?

  Something stirred at the back of Finn’s mind; something she’d heard at a lecture a few years back. She sat with her head in her hands, trying to dredge through the memory. It had been a symposium on historical events and how they shaped language and other aspects of our culture. One of the speakers had been talking about significant natural events, things like the biblical flood and the formation of the Grand Canyon. She couldn’t remember his name, or the title of his talk, she wasn’t even sure of the name of the symposium, which didn’t help, but she knew where and when it had been held, give or take a month or two.

  It was a place to start. Turning to her computer, Finn typed in search terms. If she could identify the symposium she could dig up a full program, and then narrow it down from there until she’d identified the speaker. Assuming he wasn’t some whack job, she was willing to bet his talk, or the foundation of it at least, would be available in an academic journal somewhere. Everything was online somewhere. That was the modern world.

  She scanned the results her search returned, following a few of the links to dig deeper. It gave her something to focus on—a distraction from the man who’d just walked back into her life and then turned around and ran right back out of it as if his ass was on fire.

  Fuck you, Jake Carter . . . just . . . fuck you . . .

  Chapter seventeen

  JAKE REACHED THE CORNER.

  There was absolutely nothing remarkable about the building in front of him. It was a typical New York redbrick with retail space on the first floor and apartments up above. There was some stone at its base, offsetting the red brickwork, and art deco detailing around the windows, all stylized blades and notches and waves. The building stood away from others on the block. The view from here was mainly office buildings with very few vantage points high enough to look out over everything onto the water.

  Looks could be deceptive.

  When the Atlantic Telegraph Company installed their operation, they’d wanted something that looked dignified and prestigious, with plenty of space. Over the following century, Manhattan real estate would come at a premium. The land around the building had been bought and sold for ever-increasing profits over the years, but the relay station had remained.

  Part of his job with the MTA involved keeping track of underground tunnels and old access points. There were still a lot of fiber-optic transatlantic trunk lines that ran into the city. When they’d gone in, the companies—and the government—had recognized the need to monitor them, converting some of the old cow tunnels and other preexisting tunnels that weren’t part of the burgeoning subway network into maintenance tunnels so they could keep an eye on things. Since the old relay station had been in good shape at the time, they’d simply added to its functionality, coupling it into the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city. It made financial sense: why build a whole new office to do the same thing when you already had one available?

  The shadow of the stock exchange didn’t quite stretch this far, but it came close, creeping up the blacktop. If the trunk lines had been sabotaged, this was where it had happened.

  Jake froze in the middle of dismounting the stolen messenger bike: the relay center’s front door swung open and a group of men emerged. They were less than two hundred feet away. They hadn’t noticed him, and he wasn’t sticking around until they did. He ducked back out of direct line of sight. He counted nine men, all dressed in black. He couldn’t make out any details beyond the fact that they appeared to be carrying briefcases. No, he realized, not briefcases, toolboxes.

  They moved with the same kind of military precision as the group he’d seen entering the stock exchange. Not just entering, they died in the stock exchange, he amended, reminding himself of the stakes. There was no way he was ever going to forget those few cold-blooded seconds that had snuffed out their lives.

  The team walked in the opposite direction, away from him. Jake spat out a curse. He’d been right, but being right was no consolation prize; they’d beaten him here and done whatever it was they had to do. He was always at least one step behind them. Or three or four steps if he was being honest with himself.

  There was a pattern here, a grand scheme of things they were working toward, but all he could see were a couple of threads that he kept pulling at. They’d hit the stock exchange network and the relay station. There had to be a connection between the two. What did they stand to gain by disabling the trunk lines? How did that fit in with the financial exchanges? Time and money.

  The men turned and headed into the parking lot alongside the building. Jake rolled quickly down the sidewalk after them, stopping just shy of the portico that ran all the way to the building’s edge. He had a view of the parking lot. It wasn’t perfect, but it reduced the chance of them seeing him. Any closer and the risk of being spotted rose exponentially.

  The team clambered into the rear of a gray minivan parked on the outermost edge of the lot, next to a lamppost. The engine rumbled to life—obviously shielded just like the killer’s motorcycle had been. Two of the team held back, ushering the others inside. One of the two turned slightly, looking his way. Jake didn’t dare so much as flinch, knowing that any kind of movement would only draw the guy’s eye. There was a glint of metal on the guy’s shoulder, right near the collar. It was too far away to make out any kind of detail. The second guy shifted, following the direction of his partner’s stare.

  Jake tensed. There was no mistaking the killer’s face, even from a distance. He had his connection.

  Jake watched the man pull a pistol from a sheath behind his back tucked under his coat. He knew what was coming. The man beside him did the same. Both guns had the long silhouette of silencers on their barrels. They nodded to each other, finishing their visual sweep of the surrounding street, and turned as if to duck into the van with their team.

  The noise barely carried.

  Jake didn’t need to hear the suppressed shots, he heard the slump of bodies against the panels of the minivan, and the grunts of the dead as their lives were brutally silenced.

  It took two seconds flat to finish shooting and close the doors on the corpses.

  There was nothing Jake could have done to save any of them—and it wasn’t his place to. He wasn’t naïve enough to think the dead men were angels. They’d gone into the relay center with their eyes open, no doubt promised riches in return for their expertise. If they believed, maybe they’d get their reward in heaven.

  Jake tasted the bile in the back of his throat. He hunkered down, unable to look away, but not dumb enough to risk drawing attention to himself. At least not yet.

  Watching people being executed was becoming a bad habit. He was one guy, unarmed, against two killers. He’d bleed out in the street before he made it halfway across the no-man’s-land between the relay station and the minivan. Besides, there was no point in being a hero for a bunch of dead men.

  That was the cold hard truth.

  They were dead; Jake joining them wouldn’t help anyone. The only thing he could do now was watch. Whatever these guys were up to, it was worth killing their own people for. That made it something Jake wanted to know all about. He was contrary like that.

  The first man turned, and for a second he and Jake locked gazes. He could tell by the way the killer’s eyes widened then narrowed that he recognized Jake.

  The killer raised his gun.

  Jake spun back behind the building’s edge as brick chips spat from the wall.

  Three shots. Not that he was counting. He was too busy trying to stay alive.

  He heard running feet—the two shooters covering the parking lot in seconds. He didn’t have a lot of choices, or time to make a plan. He couldn’t retreat, the block was too long and he’d be offering them his back. The only thing he could do was tackle them head-on and hope the stupidity of it saved his life. Sp
eed and surprise were the only things he had going for him.

  Jake powered out of the alcove, pedaling frantically, eyes straight ahead, desperate to get to the other side of the street and disappear between the buildings before the devil knew he was dead. He passed within a few feet of the men, but the gamble paid off: they hadn’t counted on him being stupid enough to turn on them.

  They fired again. He didn’t feel anything so he didn’t slow down. It was as simple as that. If the bullet wasn’t punching him out of the saddle he wasn’t getting off the bike. He gritted his teeth and kept on pedaling hard, expecting a bullet to slam into his spine any second.

  It didn’t.

  He couldn’t hear them coming after him. Jake turned left, swerving around a half-parked UPS truck, then swiveled around to put himself between it and an abandoned station wagon, dismounting and ducking down to stay out of sight. He waited.

  It only took a couple of seconds, but then he heard it: the one sound that up until this morning was so ubiquitous with city life it was simply background noise, part of the lifeblood of New York like the steam venting from the sidewalk drains, but now stood out as brutally as a gunshot—the roar of a car engine.

  A small sports car turned into the street. It couldn’t go very fast because of the other vehicles littering the road like blood clots in the arteries of Manhattan.

  They were hunting him.

  Jake edged back a couple of steps as the car’s hood came into view opposite him, retreating behind the UPS truck. He kept the high-sided vehicle between him and the killers as he walked the bike around the back of the truck, which put him behind enemy lines.

  The absence of gunfire meant they hadn’t seen him.

  He was under no illusion as to how it would go down. No questions. He was a loose end, even if he didn’t know anything. He’d been seen at two of their engagements, which was enough to make it seem like he knew what the fuck was going on. Under the rules of engagement that was pretty much a death sentence.

  The noise of the engine grew gradually fainter as their search took them farther along Water Street.

  He was in the clear.

  * * *

  A flash of light saved his life.

  The glint reflected off the UPS truck’s side mirror. It was all the warning he needed.

  Jake threw himself off the bike, hitting the ground hard as the bullet that had been meant for his head shattered the mirror instead, detonating in a spray of metal and glass.

  He scrambled forward and looked up to see the killer from the stock exchange astride his motorbike. They’d faked him out. His partner in the sports car was nothing more than a decoy to lure him out as it passed. And he’d fallen for it.

  Jake abandoned all thoughts of the bike and dashed back around the corner of the truck, using it as a shield.

  He tried the door, praying it was unlocked. There was nothing obvious inside he could use as a weapon or a shield. There was an umbrella, a metal lunch box—admittedly built like a brick—and a handheld scanner the UPS guys used to record signatures. It wasn’t much, but Jake grabbed all three.

  The windshield shattered above him, raining glass down across his back. Jake pulled back out of the truck but there was nowhere to turn.

  The killer was there, waiting for him, the cold dead eye of his gun aimed squarely at his face.

  Instinctively, Jake hurled the scanner as hard as he could. It arced high, spinning in the air. It was a distraction, the sudden movement drawing the killer’s eyes for a split second. But the gun never wavered; so much for the fake-out.

  Jake threw the lunch box. It caught the gunman square in the forehead just as his eyes darted back to Jake. He staggered backward a single step but didn’t drop the gun.

  Jake stood there, a dead man, waiting for the hammer to fall.

  The gunman fired twice, blood in his eyes . . . and somehow missed.

  He heard the car turning, drawn by the gunfire.

  Two against one, without a pot to piss in, he wasn’t exactly writing himself a glowing epitaph. Still, there were worse ways to die.

  He faced his killer.

  Ready.

  “Do it,” he challenged the man. “Kill me. Because if you don’t I will kill you.” They were hollow words from a hollow man.

  “If you insist,” the man said, taking his time to aim square at the center of Jake’s chest.

  He fired again. The trigger clicked on an empty clip as he squeezed it again and again.

  “Looks like it’s your lucky day,” the killer said, reaching into his pocket for a spare ammo clip.

  Jake grabbed the handlebar of his messenger bike and whipped it around, straddling it. Head down, he pedaled away fast, heart slamming against his chest. He couldn’t believe he was still alive—even as another shot tore into the bodywork of the car beside him. Whatever gods, devils, or angels saddled with watching over him were working overtime. He wasn’t about to make their job any harder than it already was. He wove between the stalled cars, keeping as much metal between him and the killer as he could.

  There was a towering office building across the street, one of those metal-and-glass monstrosities, with a huge portico that left the sidewalk completely in shadow. The portico was supported by a dozen pillars. Jake aimed for them, jumping off the bike just before it slammed into the glass doors, then ditched it where it wouldn’t be immediately noticeable from the street. He hunkered down and hid behind one of the wide metal pillars, expecting to hear the killer’s voice goad, Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  He barely dared to breathe in the silence. He hated that the city was so utterly bereft of life. Even the slightest sound would betray his hiding place.

  The car drove past a few seconds later, moving at full speed this time. There were two men in the front seats.

  He wasn’t falling for the same trick twice. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice and I’m as dumb a fuck as George Dubya.

  He didn’t move. A minute passed. Two. Three. Four. Time was dragging desperately slowly. Five. And he still hadn’t heard a sound. He risked a glance around the pillar. There was no sign of either of them.

  He stepped out of the shadows, looking back down the street, and saw the gleam of the killer’s abandoned motorcycle lying in the middle of the road. It confirmed what he knew—the killers were in the car. Whether they were hunting him or not, he didn’t know. Right now, he didn’t care. He needed to keep operating under the assumption that they were. Which meant moving fast, thinking two, maybe three steps ahead if he could.

  The old motorcycle was a step up from the bike, and given the complete clusterfuck that was modern electronics right now, the odds of them having GPS or some other tracking device on it were next to none. He walked across to the motorcycle, lifting it upright, ready to kick-start it, only to change his mind. Do unto them as they would do unto you, he thought, grinning for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long.

  He had a plan. It was a stupid plan, which meant it might just work.

  He wheeled the motorcycle toward the relay station’s doors.

  The killers would assume he’d run. It was the obvious thing to do. What wasn’t obvious was breaking into the relay station they’d just abandoned. It was counterintuitive. Instead of running away from trouble he was running into the heart of it. Sure, they’d done whatever it was they’d set out to do in there, just like they had in the stock exchange, and they’d murdered their team to make sure there was no gingerbread trail for anyone to follow, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something back there that would help him make sense out of what was happening.

  There was safety in the unexpected. Given that he was onto his second life now, he didn’t want to waste it by being predictable.

  They hadn’t bothered locking the door behind them. That was the kind of arrogance these people were operating with. It was a solid steel fire door, no windows or panels of any sort. If they’d taken a second to be sure it had latched behind th
em he’d have been shit out of luck.

  He wheeled the motorcycle inside, hoping its absence would complete the illusion, and closed the door behind him. If they thought he’d taken it they would assume he was miles away by now, even if they hadn’t heard its engine roar. The brain would make its own connections, buying into the smoke and mirrors.

  He had no idea what to expect inside, but it couldn’t be any worse than what was outside—seven dead men in the back of a minivan—could it?

  Chapter eighteen

  FINN STRETCHED. HER MUSCLES PROTESTED, each vertebrae cracking audibly as she arched her back. She’d lost track of how long she’d been hunched over the computer. She always ended up working in the same unnaturally cramped position with her legs curled up under the chair and crossed at the ankles, leaning so far forward her breath could have fogged the monitor if it got any colder in the office.

  She pushed herself up out of the chair and made her way toward the door. It was still daylight, but not for much longer. She was hungry. She hadn’t realized just how hungry until she’d stopped working. She got like that when she went into the zone, obsessed with what she was doing. She’d only stopped now because her head was banging and her vision was starting to blur with that premigraine darkening around the edges. She needed to eat, so she ventured down to the break room.

  One of her colleagues was fiddling with coffee pods when she walked in.

  “Hey, you. The rumor is you landed some cushy new gig. Did I hear scuba diving?” Elise Bennington handled early Mesopotamian research for the department. She was ferociously intelligent and wore Velma glasses to hide the fact that she was a definite Daphne on the Scooby scale of hotness. She was, of course, Tom’s favorite, mainly because she humored him and played the game every bit as well as he did when it came to inappropriate comments in the workplace.