The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy)

by Chris Strange

  Real fucking likely. I rode on.

  I figured Zhi was on her way straight to the AISOR offices, but then my figuring never has been good for much. She slowed down and turned into a quiet side street, too quiet for me to go lumbering down on my bike and remain inconspicuous. I rode past and pulled to the side of the road, switched the bike off and put out the kickstand. By the time I jogged back along to the road she’d gone down, I’d lost her.

  “Damn it,” I grumbled to myself. I shoved my hands in my pockets and made my way quickly down the road.

  What was she doing here? Everything was still being built; there was only a scattering of houses and no business. The only people around were construction workers.

  Then I spotted movement coming from a black sedan parked next to a phone booth. It was newer than Zhi’s car, and it stood out here. I approached from behind, using lamp posts and trash cans to cover me as best I could. The windows were darkened, but not completely tinted. Out of the sun’s glare I could make out shadows within. Two of them. Their arms were flying around. Must’ve been some discussion. The car rocked back and forth a little, like a heavyweight boxer was throwing himself around inside. I snuck closer.

  The driver’s side door opened, and I froze. I was in the open. Shit.

  But no one got out. A heavy arm unfolded from the car and dropped the butt of a cigarette to the roadside. A foot followed, crushing the smoking butt beneath a blue women’s shoe. I caught a flash of platinum blond hair before the door slammed shut again.

  I’d recognize that hair anywhere. Mayor Juliet White. My legal savior. The woman who’d pledged to drive organized crime out of Bluegate. I could feel a headache coming on. What the hell was going on here?

  I was still standing there stunned when someone moved to my right. I got the briefest glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye. He was big and kind of stretched, like he took a ride in one of those medieval racks they used to get confessions out of witches. His shadow fell across me. His black coat was still in the breezeless morning.

  Then his fingers wrapped around my throat.

  Not again.

  He drove his knee into my kidney, like a slow and unstoppable piston. The agony took hold of my heart, clamped down tight, and started gnawing. I went blind.

  My back was still burning when the pressure disappeared. Vision came back like someone poking holes in a black sheet. My heels were skidding along the concrete. He was dragging me by my neck. Each shallow breath took a gargantuan effort. My brain coughed once, twice, then came to life. My hands went to my pockets.

  There was nothing there. I hadn’t taken any Kemia with me last night. Son of a bitch.

  I grabbed at the hand around my throat. I might as well have tried to cut down a tree with a spork. The giant clubbed me over the head with his fist, and suddenly I didn't feel like fighting so much anymore.

  “Say,” I choked out, “you’re kinda big, anyone tell you that?”

  “Shut up.” His voice would’ve been just right for a baritone in a barbershop quartet.

  I tried to shout out, but all I managed was a squeak. The mayor’s car vanished behind a wall, and the ground beneath my feet changed from concrete to brown dust. Jesus Christ, where’s he taking me? Panicking, I tried to get my feet. If I could stand, maybe I could fight. But Stretch jerked his arm, damn near ripping my throat out in the process, and I lost what balance I had.

  Machinery. I heard power tools, the stomp of nail guns and the grumble of a cement mixer. Voices too. Risking another drubbing, I grabbed hold of Stretch’s wrist and twisted myself round to see. A dozen construction workers in orange vests and yellow hardhats grew quiet and still around us.

  “Help,” I said. It was worth a try. Stretch slammed me face-down into the ground. The wind went out of me along with the rest of my fight. My mouth tasted like rust.

  “Leave,” Stretch said.

  “I’d be glad to,” I mumbled into the dirt. A boot came to rest on my shoulder blades and pushed down. I groaned.

  “Leave,” he said again, and this time my short-circuiting brain figured out he wasn’t talking to me.

  I got my head out of the dirt in time to see him pull back his coat. The short-barreled shotgun he pulled out had no reflection in the sunlight. The construction workers stared at it, like they didn’t know what it was.

  Then he pumped it. There’s a special kind of silence that comes after a noise like that. Even the sounds of engines and car horns in the distance faded away.

  A few construction workers backed away. Then it turned into a flood. Some moved so fast they actually kicked up dust trails like on a Road Runner cartoon. Within twenty seconds, I was alone. Well, aside from the giant with the shotgun.

  “I got an idea,” I said. “How about we settle this over a game of Hide-and-Seek. Close your eyes and start counting.”

  He slammed the shotgun barrel into my spine. Lightning shot down my legs. I grunted.

  I felt my shirt tear as he lifted me up by it. One-handed. Tania was gonna kill me. “What?” I said. “Afraid you’ll lose?”

  He carried me across the construction site. My feet didn’t even touch the ground this time. For a minute he went back and forth, like he was looking for something. Then he stopped beside the foreman’s hut, grunted, and hurled me against the wall. I hit it face-first and a wave of pain broke through my nose.

  Next thing I knew I was on my back in the dirt. Something was dribbling out my nose and down the back of my throat. I spluttered. Stretch appeared above me, blocking out the sun. He had a different gun in his hand now. My gut clenched. No. Not a gun.

  A power drill.

  I tried to scramble up, but he dropped to his knees and slammed his palm into my face. I tasted blood and dirt and the sweat on the man’s hand. I got my first decent look at his face. It was expressionless. He lifted up the drill and pulled the trigger. The whir of the motor made my chest contract so tight it hurt.

  “Why?” I said. Or at least, that’s what I tried to say.

  He grabbed my jaw and forced it open. And with that same blank look on his face, he brought the spinning drill bit toward my teeth. Why did they always have to go for the face?

  “This is a message,” he said over the sound of the drill. “The only one you’ll get.”

  I was going to make a smartass comment, but speaking’s difficult when a giant’s got hold of your mouth.

  “Go,” he said. “Leave town. Find a nice girl, fuck her, marry her, fuck her best friend, get divorced. Become a sports fan. Learn to drive a tractor. Just never come back. Forget about dead women. Forget about your conspiracy theories. Do you understand, Miles Franco?”

  He let go of my jaw enough for me to talk. The drill was an inch from my front teeth. I was going cross-eyed looking at it.

  “Does it still count as a conspiracy theory when this is happening?” I said.

  “No,” he said, his voice as flat as his face. “I suppose not.”

  “Does this sort of thing really work?”

  He nodded. “Usually.”

  “And when it doesn’t, what do you do then?”

  He brought the drill so close I could feel the air moving against my upper lip. “What do you think?”

  I tried not to breathe.

  He backed the drill up an inch or two. “You get the picture, Franco?”

  “I got the whole goddamn picture gallery.”

  “And you’ll leave this alone?”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  A flicker of a smile. “You shouldn’t make jokes in a situation like this.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But you gotta leave ’em laughing.”

  He released the trigger, and the drill bit stopped spinning. I exhaled and turned into a puddle of warm honey.

  Without another word, Stretch tossed the power tool aside and stood up. I caught a glimpse of the shotgun hanging against his body as his coat flapped open. He gave me one final boot in the stomach to m
ake it official. A punctuation mark to end his message. Then he turned and strode away, his long legs eating up the distance.

  When I could breathe again, I got up onto my hands and knees and spat a glob of blood into the dirt. I was trembling all over.

  After another couple of minutes, I felt brave enough to try standing. Somehow, it worked. I brushed the dirt off my ripped shirt and shoved my hands in my pockets to stop them shaking.

  I reckoned I had time to go home and have a shower before I went to see AISOR. Some chump with a growth disorder wasn’t going to stop me that easily, not any more than a Vei with a knife and a dislike of ears. I still owed it to Claudia. I owed it to myself. Besides, this was getting interesting.

  They always said I was a bad listener.

  TEN

  The AISOR offices were something else. One whole exterior wall of the building consisted of a couple of hundred huge TV screens, showing a rotating image of the AISOR logo interspersed with pictures of grinning customers. The building wasn’t near the tallest around, but it was the only one on the street that looked like it was pulling a profit. A steady stream of young, well-dressed but not over-dressed businesspeople—and business-Vei—made their way in and out of the automatic doors, walking among the carefully manicured trees that shaded the entranceway. I whistled a long, low whistle. I figured they deserved that at least.

  I was a bit cleaner now. A shower had done me a few worlds worth of good. I’d even found some canned meals in my cupboard that hadn’t expired. My nose wasn’t broken, but it was a near thing. Parts of my face had taken on a jellyfish-purple hue, but I’d got rid of the blood. I’d even shaved. I rubbed my chin as I crossed the street, enjoying the weird sensation. A weight bumped against my hip with each step. A bottle of Kemia in my jacket pocket. I wasn’t going to get caught out again. My coins and a small pocket knife balanced the weight on the other side.

  The doors opened to accept me into the modern, glass-walled lobby. The security guard had a smile for me, which was so unusual it almost sent me running. I’d already passed him before I realized I should have given him one back. I did better when the string-thin guy behind the reception counter looked up from his keyboard and smiled.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  What the hell was with all the sirs lately? I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a friendly manner. “I’m a…a friend of Zhi Lu’s, one of your chemical analysts. She asked me to come by and help her with something.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, and he flashed his pearl-white teeth at me. “You must be Mr. Franco.”

  “I must be.”

  “I was told to expect you. You’ll find the elevators just down the hall there. You’ll need to swipe this before you press the floor button.” He handed me a lanyard with a swipe card attached. VISITOR was printed across it in big red letters. I shoved it in my jacket pocket.

  “Where am I going?” I said.

  “Basement four, sir.”

  “Four? How many do you need?”

  He smiled and made a noise that could’ve been a polite laugh. Maybe he just had something stuck in his throat. I thanked him and wandered over to the elevators.

  A pair of pretty young women in tight business skirts waited for the elevator with me. I wondered if they were native Bluegatians, or whether they came packaged with the rest of the company when it got shipped in. How had this place got a foothold here so fast? What was here that interested them so much?

  The elevator let out a sing-song noise while a down arrow flashed up on a screen. The doors slid open like they were floating in angels’ spit. Apparently the girls were going up, because I was the only one who got in. They watched, smiling politely, while I waved the visitor’s card in front of the panel. Finally, the blonde took pity on me and showed me the right place to swipe it. The panel beeped happily and let me press the button for B4. The blonde returned to her friend, and the doors slid closed, leaving me alone.

  At least until I blinked, and Claudia appeared beside me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’m working on it, okay?”

  The doors opened again. I didn’t even notice the elevator moving, but I guess it must have, because the room I was looking at was completely different from the lobby. Black marble lined the walls and the ceiling, and there was a sense of heaviness about it that made me decide it was no thin veneer.

  The room had more computers than people. Three rows of computer stations sat in front of me, sloping downward to an open space in the middle of the room, maybe ten foot by eight. It looked like some sort of theater that put on shows so obscure and arty they’d only command an audience of twelve. I counted nine people—six human and three Vei. Most pecked away at keyboards or stared blankly at the open space on the floor. They weren’t wearing white coats, but there’s some sort of geek aura that makes scientists instantly recognizable.

  I stepped out of the elevator, leaving Claudia behind. I watched her watching me until the doors closed and she disappeared from my sight. If there was something here that told me why she died, I’d find it.

  “Oh my God.” Zhi’s voice tickled the hairs on my neck. I turned back to the room of computers to find her coming toward me. “What happened to you?”

  “Sorry I’m late.” I wasn’t sorry.

  Zhi’s face was clouded with concern. Or a good replica, anyway. “Your face. You’ve been beaten up.”

  I shrugged. “It’s kinda my thing.”

  She raised a palm to my cheek. Her touch was warm, soft. My heart skipped a couple of beats. I pulled away before if it could skip any more. Don’t be an idiot, Miles. Stay on task.

  “What is this place?” I said. “Why so far underground?”

  She bit her lip and let her hand fall from my face. “It’s for shielding purposes.”

  “What?”

  “You need a doctor, Miles.”

  I shook my head. “Later.”

  She didn’t look pleased about that. “I’ll show you what we’re doing,” she said, “but then I’m taking you to Doc McCaffrey, the on-staff medic here.”

  “Yeah? This doctor any good?”

  “The best.” Zhi took my hand, and I didn’t have the strength to take it back. A few of the scientists glanced at me and offered a nod or a smile as she led me through the rows of computers. Fluorescent panels in the ceiling gave the place its only light. I saw now that there were a few glass doors leading off the main room—offices, maybe—and something that looked like it was full of giant flashing boxes. Probably the sort of computer thing Tania or Desmond would understand. To me, it might as well have been a post-modern art installation.

  We moved past the computer desks until I finally saw what was occupying center stage. Someone had painted a huge Tunneling circle on the floor in red paint. Standard Tunneling symbols filled the interior of the circle, but in an arrangement I’d never seen before. They were trying to get it open for five people and equipment, by the looks of it, but the coordinates were all screwy.

  “That’s not going to Heaven,” I said.

  “No.”

  I walked in a slow circle around the closed Tunnel. It was big enough that I could almost sense it even when it wasn’t open, like a noise on the edge of hearing. Something was off about it. Like a violin that’s not tuned quite right. Even if you don’t know exactly what it is, something grates inside you, makes you uncomfortable.

  “It’s not going to Limbus either,” I said when I got back to Zhi’s side.

  She smiled. “No.”

  A couple of the scientists had looked up from their computer screens. I didn’t like audiences. I resisted the urge to get into a staring contest with them.

  I put my hands in my pockets and tapped two Pin Hole coins against each other. “You going to tell me where the hell you’re going?”

  “A new world, Mr. Franco,” someone behind me said.

  I hadn’t noticed the elevator opening, but I recognized the voice from last night. Jozef Kowalski was so small it t
ook me a moment to spot the little man in his gold-rimmed spectacles. The scientists shuffled in their chairs to make room for the CEO to pass, not that he needed it. His pencil mustache was looking particularly fetching this morning.

  “Why?” I said. “Three ain’t enough?”

  “Not nearly.” He took off his glasses, polished them, and put them back on. I bet he did it just to look sophisticated. “Heaven is an old cow, and what milk she does have left goes into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats.”

  “I won’t argue with you there,” I said.

  “As for Limbus, the place is likely remarkable, but we have decided to abandon attempts to exploit the world for resources. Our people are important to us, and we will not have them torn apart by those creatures.”

  “That’s an attitude I like in a boss.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Is everything a joke with you, Mr. Franco?”

  Claudia’s face flashed in front of me. “No. Not everything.”

  He pursed his lips and walked around to inspect the Tunnel. The scientists were working hard at looking like they were working hard. All of them kept one ear pointed to us, though.

  “Our Tunneler is missing,” Kowalski said after a moment.

  I nodded. “Zhi told me. Did he design this Tunnel?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then you’re better off without him. This is a piece of crap.”

  He clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth. I glanced at Zhi, but she was inspecting the back wall for defects.

  “You believe you can do better, Mr. Franco?” Kowalski said.

  I studied the Tunnel. “I can’t do worse. You offering me a job?”

  “Perhaps. If you really can do what you claim.”