by J N Chaney
“I’ll buy that.” She nodded. “Keep an eye on things.”
Veraldi nodded in response and wandered up front to get a better look at Hafidi’s entourage through the window at the front of the car. A few minutes later, he came back and went to the back window to see what was going on in there.
“Andrea, come look at this…”
He looked concerned, so she got up and joined him at the window. He pointed. “See? Those guys just changed cars, and now they’re trying to work their way up here to get to this car. Do you think they’re trying to get closer to Hafidi?”
“Maybe so. If they get through to this car, step in and talk to them. We shouldn’t let them get near Hafidi.”
She turned to me and patted her waist with an open palm, a signal to me that I should get ready to use my concealed sidearm if needed. I nodded in reply and checked the position of my weapon, making sure I could access it as quickly as possible.
As Veraldi had predicted, the door at the rear of the car opened and three men pushed their way in. They were all fairly large, wearing matching black sweatshirts with gold trim rather than the typical flowing robes and tunics of East Hellas. Veraldi held a hand up.
“Hold on there, friends. Can I ask what you’re doing?”
The man in the lead blinked a few times, like he wasn’t used to being questioned by anyone and he needed a minute to decide how he felt about it. Then he shrugged. “Yeah, okay. We’re trying to walk the whole length of the train before it gets to the end of the line. You know, visit every car?”
Now it was Vincenzo’s turn to look confused. “Why would you do that?”
“We’re East Hellas United supporters. You know, the black and gold?”
He tugged at his sweatshirt. East Hellas United, the traceball team. “Uh-huh.” Veraldi didn’t look like he was buying what they were selling. “And what does that have to do with my question?”
“You know.”
I didn’t know. I had never heard the phrase “you know” this many times in a single conversation before.
Veraldi still wasn’t budging. “Humor me.”
“We’re trying to get love points, you know? For the lady supporters.”
The other two were nodding, goofy grins on every face. I finally got it. If these guys could be believed, they were just a few rich kids doing a stupid dare as part of some fan club for their favorite team. Even in a place as gritty and dangerous as East Hellas, there were still people with nothing better to do than try to impress women.
“Well I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I can’t let you proceed any further.” Veraldi held one hand up, the universal gesture for stop.
The goofy grins disappeared, replaced with a weird combination of confused anxiety and belligerence. “Why? Are you StateSec?”
“There’s a sensitive situation in the next car, a party that can’t be disturbed. I can’t let you through, I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” The man pondered this for a moment with the same confused expression. Then the goofy grin returned. “A celebrity? Like Voyah maybe? Or an EHU player?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
The three men were overjoyed. They whispered and jostled each other excitedly. In just a few seconds, they had convinced themselves there was a player for their favorite team in the other car.
An idea suddenly wandered into their apparent spokesman’s mind. “Hey, could we maybe just get an autograph? You know, that’s a lot of love points. More than the train thing even.”
“A lot more,” said one of the other guys.
Veraldi didn’t know what to say to that. “I don’t care, I—”
“Hey look,” said the third guy, pointing toward the front of the car. “How come that kid is allowed to go in?”
I swiveled around, just in time to see the boy in robes disappearing through the door connecting us to the next car. Andrea ran over, and I was right behind her, but I could see through the window it was already too late. The kid ran down the aisle, slipping right past Jonathan’s outstretched hands. Before anyone could do anything, the boy flung himself into the center of the group around Bensouda Hafidi.
Then the boy exploded, and a fireball engulfed Hafidi and his entire entourage. Windows burst down the length of the train, and the sound of the detonation finally registered in my consciousness. The car ahead of us jumped, and the last glimpse I had of Thomas and Jonathan before the train derailed was of them turning away. Bray’s mouth and eyes were open wide in terror, a look I had never expected to see on his face.
Then everything was chaos, a shrieking of metal and glass, a kaleidoscope of random images. I can only remember a few vivid moments, things I happened to see as we plunged. A train car landing on a rooftop and crashing straight through into the building below. A burning body in midair, dropping with arms stretched out behind it. Andrea sliding along the floor.
I’m not even sure how much of this I really saw, and how much of it was just my brain’s attempt to reconstruct some order out of the chaos it had just experienced. Either way, I fell with the rest of the train until our car struck another rooftop, and then darkness hit me like the blow of a sledgehammer.
6
I don’t remember regaining consciousness. The first memory I have after the fall itself is of wiggling my way through something tight, then pulling at a jagged protrusion of either plastic or metal until it bent enough to let me through.
After that, I remember heat and light and dancing shadows across twisted metal. I managed to drag myself through the hole I’d made, but there was nothing for me to crawl onto, so I fell. It wasn’t far, just three or four feet, but I didn’t have the strength to get up right away. I just lay there with my eyes closed until my sluggish brain put two and two together. Heat and light meant there was a fire, and if I didn’t do something to save myself, I would burn alive.
I opened my eyes and saw the mangled wreck of the train car I had just escaped. The thing was gutted, nothing but sparking wires and bladelike shards of broken metal, almost unrecognizable as something that had been a train.
I struggled to my feet, trying to get a sense of how badly I was hurt and where I was. I managed to get my feet underneath me somehow, with my hands on my knees, but that was all I could do before I had to close my eyes and wait out a wave of nausea and dizziness. A concussion? Okay. I could live with that, assuming I made it out of this place alive. When I could stand to do so, I opened my eyes and tried to take in the scene.
As far as I could tell, my section of the train had landed on the roof of an office building, obliterated the top floor, and settled on the floor below that. One car was in the building—the one I’d crawled out of—but another car was still affixed to it, dangling outside of the building. The only thing keeping both cars from falling was that the one I’d been in was still wedged against the ceiling and the floor inside. That couldn’t last, though. The weight of the other train car was slowly but relentlessly dragging both cars down, and the groan of metal against plasticrete told me that both cars would plunge to the street below within a matter of minutes.
Fire in the dangling train car was pouring black smoke. As I tried to clear my head, the raging flames started to spread up the wall of the building. It couldn’t be long before the blaze consumed the structure.
I had to get out, but I couldn’t seem to think clearly. Lying on the floor a few feet away from me, a woman dressed in business casual coughed up a lungful of blood and died. She must have been working late when the train crashed through the building. On a desk nearby, I saw what looked like the top half of a janitor’s torso, with no sign of what might have happened to the rest of him. He stared up at the ceiling, looking somehow ridiculous and horrifying at the same time.
Staring up at the wreckage, it was hard to believe I had made it out alive. I wouldn’t have believed anyone could still be alive there if not for the screams. I couldn’t tell if the person making those sounds was a man or a woman, an adult or a child. The
y didn’t even really sound human. This time I didn’t even try to fight the nausea. I just threw up, then I stumbled a few feet to lean against another desk, shaking.
Where were the others? They couldn’t possibly have made it out. It was only by freak chance that I had. As I stood there, I saw figures moving and writhing in the burning train car. I saw other figures outside the train, stumbling around as if in a daze. I couldn’t see them clearly; my eyesight was blurry and there was smoke in the air. Could the others have made it out somehow, crawling up through the rear door of the car? It hardly seemed plausible, but if anyone could do it then they probably could have.
And what about that shrieking? Could that be Andrea, or Vincenzo Veraldi maybe? If there was any chance of it, if there was the faintest hope that I could save my comrades, I had to try. Despite the waves of dizziness that kept passing through me, I managed to get moving somehow. It was an act of will to take a single step, then another act of will to take the other twenty all the way back to the wreckage. I got back to the train car but couldn’t see any way to pull myself back up to the hole I’d fallen out of.
The shrieking stopped. Whoever it was, they were probably dead now. Then I heard a voice, less horrific than that screaming but much more plaintive.
“Help me… please…”
The person was in the train car, and the voice didn’t sound like anyone I knew. A wounded civilian was trapped in the wreckage. There was a screech of metal, and the train slid forward at least two meters. The burning car was pulling it down.
“Please help! Please!”
They were starting to panic. So was I, truthfully. Flames were shooting up from the wall of the building now, and someone down at the far end started screaming in pain as they burned alive. Whoever was stuck in the train moaned.
The train jumped forward again and wedged against a broken pillar. It might hold for a few more minutes, but the weight of the other car was still pulling on it. The car had moved forward just far enough that the hole I had crawled out of was now directly over the desk with the half-janitor lying on it.
I hobbled over then pushed the man’s torso off onto the floor and dragged myself up on the desk. If I had to die, then I could at least die trying to help someone. I steadied myself on the desk then stretched as far as I could and poked my head into the hole in the train car.
“Hello?”
“Oh, thank God!”
It was a bearded man, not someone I recognized as having been in our car. He had a green scarf wrapped around his neck, a sign that he’d been one of Hafidi’s entourage. His whole body was burned, a red and black mess of blood and flesh. It was a horrific sight, but I took comfort in the knowledge that he’d escaped the other car. If one of Hafidi’s people had made it out, then Bray or Young could possibly have too. Unfortunately for him, a broken shard of bone was sticking out of his right leg and he couldn’t make it any further. He’d already performed something close to a miracle.
“Hold on,” I called. “I’ll try to get up there.”
“Tycho Barrett! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I turned to look behind me and saw Andrew Jones. His face was black from the smoke, which meant he’d been up front by the fire. His eyes looked unusually white with all the ash on his face, and he looked truly angry.
“There’s a civilian trapped up here. One of Hafidi’s people.”
“So the fuck what? Are we firefighters? Are we StateSec?”
“No, but I’m an Arbi—”
I wasn’t an Arbiter, not anymore. I was an agent of Section 9, and my mission didn’t include helping desperate people. That’s what Andrew Jones was trying to tell me, but I wasn’t interested in hearing him.
“Fuck you, Jones, I’m going in.”
“Barrett, you listen—”
There was a rush of air and heat, and flames suddenly engulfed the lower half of the car. The injured man started screaming, but I was still trying to pull myself up into that hole to go help him. I heard a sound behind me, and then Andrew’s arms wrapped around my legs and pulled me out of the car. The last thing I saw, as he was dragging me out of the car, was the injured man burning. His arms flailed, and his red flesh turned completely black.
I landed on the desk, and the whole thing toppled over. Jones hit the floor with me, but he was dragging me to my feet before I could even react. I was trying to fight him, but there was nothing left to fight him about.
“Let me help him!”
“Fuck you, Tycho. We have a job to do. If I hadn’t pulled you out, you’d be burning alive right now just like that poor bastard in there.”
Then there was more horrific screaming, this time even worse than the last time. I was in hell, and the only way out was to die.
“You listen to me,” snarled Jones, with no hint of his usual sarcasm. “You’re not an Arbiter, you’re a Section 9 intelligence agent. Collateral damage is not our concern. Get your ass moving, or I’ll save your life just to make sure they prosecute you. MOVE!”
He shoved me ahead of him, and we stumbled in the direction of a nearby stairwell. All that time when I was disoriented, I was never more than about ten feet away from the stairs. We could make it out of the building, as long as we moved quickly.
“Are the others dead?” I asked.
We went through the door and started down the stairs. He didn’t answer me at first; he just kept prodding me. A few flights down, he sighed out loud. “I don’t know about everyone, just Veraldi. He made it out with Ivanovich then sent me back up for you assholes. I checked up front, but I couldn’t see much because of the smoke. If Bray and Young made it out, I couldn’t find them.”
“What about Andrea?”
“No idea.”
He still sounded angry, but maybe that was just because he hadn’t been able to find anyone else. He was a difficult guy to get along with, but he had just run back into a burning building to get me out. We reached the ground floor, and I turned to look at him. “Thanks for coming back for me, Jones.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I don’t even really know you yet. I did it for them. I—”
He closed his eyes, and it was only then I realized how badly this was affecting him. I put a hand on his arm, and he knocked it roughly away. Then he held one hand up with his eyes still closed, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay. Sorry for being an asshole, and you’re welcome. You owe me one. Now let’s get moving.”
I went through the door and out to the street, where a ring of firefighters and other first responders were staring in horror at the scene above them. There was no way to stop it; the burning train was about to fall. Someone pointed up at it and yelled, “Everybody get back!”
Jones ran across the street, and I followed him into a dark little alley. I spun around, just in time to see the burning train cars plummet from the building and land in the street in a burst of flame.
“It’s a bad night in East Hellas.” Sasha’s voice was awestruck, but everything the man said had a way of irritating me.
“Come on.” Veraldi grabbed me, and I winced at the touch. My arm was bleeding, something I hadn’t noticed before. He dragged me down the alleyway, while the first responders of East Hellas dealt with the bloody, burning aftermath.
7
We were moving deeper into the city, trying to get out of sight, and fast. We didn’t know if we were being chased by anyone, but we had to assume. We had a top East Hellan scientist and were trying to extract him so he could defect and testify. Ares Terrestrial might not know it—between the riots and the bombing, they had more than enough to deal with as it was—but then again, they might. There were cameras everywhere, especially on the trains. If any of them had picked us up, some piece of software could already have sent an alert up to the highest levels of corporate security. Rogue scientist, in the company of unauthorized individuals. For all we knew, the chaos of the bombing was the only reason they hadn’t moved on us already. So we fled, moving deeper into the back s
treets.
Alleys in East Hellas are narrow and winding, and a big part of how the syndicates have been able to build and maintain so much power. Even if East Hellas StateSec was a lot bigger and better funded than it was and they decided to do a crackdown to capture the crime lords that rule so much of the city, the best they could do is establish control over the main intersections. and make life difficult for the residents. They’d never get their hands on a single crime lord.
They’d be forced to do a building-to-building search. The syndicate informants would spot them coming, and the gang members would move anyone important out of the building and into the bewildering maze of back alleys. If StateSec tried to pursue them into that labyrinth, the gangsters would let them get just far enough for it to be hard to get out again. That’s when the snipers would go to work, and the hit and run shooters, and the people dropping fire bombs from rooftops. If there were any survivors among the security forces, they’d think long and hard before making another attempt to clean up crime in East Hellas.
Back when Ares Terrestrial had any priorities other than shareholder payouts, there were a few attempts to assert control over the streets. They all ended exactly the way I’ve just described, and back then the syndicates were nowhere near as well-entrenched and powerful as they are now. A movement of religious fanatics could possibly take on the gangs, but Ares Terrestrial could never do it.
Retreating into the back alleys like we did just about guaranteed StateSec wouldn’t follow, but it didn’t guarantee we’d make it out alive. Quite the opposite, in fact. Whenever I glanced up at the buildings above us, dark faces peered out from the shadows.
There were people watching us, and some of those people must have already called their gang contacts. Some of them were probably syndicate members themselves. One of the people I saw up there was holding a rifle, and I could see the silhouette of a grenade-launcher attachment. I decided not to look up anymore.