by Oisin McGann
Exactly, Ana affirmed. Listen to her, Sol.
‘The riot didn’t even make the news,’ Sol hissed. ‘It’s this city – it’s— It just uses you up and spits you out. You can’t change the whole system, and they’ll kill you for trying. We’re cogs; we don’t count for squat – all you can do is look out for yourself.’
‘Then you might as well just kill yourself now, if that’s what you think,’ Cleo grunted hoarsely, her voice wavering. ‘’Cos what hope have you got? You’re as bad as those goddamned DDF. As long as we let the Clockworkers run this city, they’ll get you eventually. But they can’t stop all of us. ’Cos yes, we’re cogs in a machine – but it’s our machine. It won’t work without us. All those grits sneaking around wrecking things, all the small-minded giants in their swanky offices . . . they need us – more than we need them.’
Damn straight, Ana shouted, punching the air. Don’t fight with each other! Get out there! Raise some hell!
‘Did you just see her fingers move?’ Sol said, looking over.
‘I think so . . . Do you think she can hear us?’ Cleo’s face was unreadable under the gas mask.
‘My coach always told us that hearing’s the last sense you lose when you’re knocked out.’
‘Did he get knocked out a lot?’
‘He’s a better coach than he was a boxer.’
‘We should tell somebody she’s here,’ Cleo mused. ‘Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?’
‘Yeah, Jude or something,’ Sol muttered.
Julio, Ana laughed. Julio. You’ll love him, Cleo; he’s a sweetie. I wish he were here. Would you call him for me?
Another man suddenly appeared on the hillside.
‘Sol? We need to go.’
Who’s this? Ana asked.
He looked like that detective, Mercier. Except he was more rugged now, less like a paper-shuffler.
‘I’ll walk up to the roof with you,’ Cleo said. ‘I need some air; my throat’s still killing me.’
And then they were gone. The hillside was very empty without them, and Ana felt herself sliding down the hill, as if the grass were steep and wet, sliding down into the onion-smelling clouds, and she was terribly lonely . . .
Leaving their comatose teacher with the four other patients in the cramped hospital room, Sol and Cleo walked out into the corridor. Maslow was already striding towards the stairwell. Cleo cast a lingering glance back at Ana, lying motionless in the bed. An oriental woman dressed in doctor’s scrubs crossed the hallway from one of the other rooms, intent on the medical palmtop in her hand. She gave them a perfunctory smile and brushed past into the room.
Cleo watched her check Ana’s chart, and then gauge her pupil response with a pen torch. The doctor shook her head gently and took out a syringe. Cleo saw the set expression on the woman’s pale face and found little hope there. Turning away, she hurried to catch up with Sol and Maslow. She had a nagging feeling that she knew the doctor from somewhere, but she couldn’t place where.
Sol and Cleo followed Maslow towards the stairwell. He opened the door, and froze. Carefully closing the door, he motioned them towards the elevators.
‘Someone’s coming up the stairs. Three people, in a hurry.’
He had his hand in his jacket pocket, and Cleo glanced at Sol to see he had done the same. Did they spend their whole day expecting a gunfight? How could anybody live like this? As if they could be shot dead at any moment.
And then Cleo remembered where she had seen the doctor’s face before. It was on the day she had gone to the Filipino District to buy some guitar strings from Cortez, when she had seen the three people disposing of a body in the sewage-treatment works. The pale-faced Oriental woman had been the one in charge.
‘Sol, wait!’ she cried, pulling on his sleeve.
‘We can’t wait,’ he said. ‘We have to get out of here. Now.’
The elevators were at the T-junction at the other end of the magnolia corridor; two sets of doors, flanked by fake giant rubber plants. As they reached them, Sol pressed the ‘up’ button and watched the displays to see which was going to be first to arrive. Maslow had his eyes trained on the door to the stairs.
‘No, listen!’ she insisted frantically. ‘We have to go back. That doctor’s a goddamned Clockworker! Sol!’ She started to drag him back. ‘She was doing something to Ana!’
Sol’s face dropped. He hesitated, frozen by indecision. The left elevator opened with a chiming sound, just as the door to the stairs swung open. Maslow’s gun was out of his pocket, coming level as the first person out of the stairwell saw him and started to raise his own gun.
Maslow’s silenced shot took him in the shoulder and he fell back against the woman behind him. Cleo let out a shrieking gasp and swivelled to leap into the lift for cover. She stopped short when she saw the face of the white-haired man in front of her; an instant of recognition passed between them. It was the man who had chased her in the sub-levels, after she had seen them dumping the body. One of the Clockworkers. For one absurd moment she felt relief that he was alive, but that was erased by fright.
Sol, his hands stuck in the pockets of his jacket, saw the expression on her face and turned in time to face a punch curling towards his head. With no time to block it, he met the fist with his forehead, the pale man’s knuckles cracking against it with a satisfying crunch. Sol’s reflexes took over; pulling his hands free, he laid into the man with two hooks and a cross, sending the Clockworker crashing back into the lift. The other two men in there were drawing their weapons. Sol’s right hand was back in his pocket but, as he pulled out the gun, one of the other men grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the elevator. Sol squeezed off a shot but it went straight into the wall. The gun was knocked from his hand, and a fist hit him across the face. But the small space put him at an advantage – they couldn’t all get at him. He ducked his head down and spun up with a barrage of jabs, elbows and knees. It gave him the split second he needed to get back out through the door, slapping the CLOSE button on his way out.
Cleo seized Sol’s fallen gun, and fired three shots into the ceiling of the elevator, flinching with each report. It was enough to keep the Clockworkers’ heads down. Maslow put four more bullets through the stairs door, which was jammed open on the fallen man’s body. Then he spun and fired two more into the elevator before the doors slid closed.
‘Get out of here!’ he bellowed as he took up a position on the corner of the corridor, gun aimed at the stairs door.
Grabbing Cleo’s arm, Sol sprinted away from the stairs along the perpendicular hallway.
‘We have to help Ana!’ she cried.
He didn’t reply, but his face was set in stony resolve.
‘Sol!’
‘We can’t!’ he gasped, with despair in his voice. ‘Don’t you think I want to? They’ll kill us if we go back.’
They turned another corner, slamming through a set of double doors.
‘Where’s the fire escape?’ he barked at her. He and Maslow had come in from the roof.
‘Over . . . the other side,’ she panted. ‘Left, and left.’
Barging past an orderly pushing a trolley of laundry, they heard more muffled shots behind them. The corridor branched off to the left, and they careered down it, Sol still holding onto Cleo’s arm. Racing past a row of recycling chutes, they dodged round some kind of wheeled medical apparatus left standing in the hallway, and took another left. The corridor ended in a solid wall. Cleo stared at it in disbelief.
‘I came out from a different floor,’ she wheezed. ‘I thought they were all the same . . .’
Sol swore under his breath, looking round for another way out. They didn’t dare go back the way they’d come. Stepping cautiously out into the previous corridor, he quickly checked one door after another. Rooms without windows; dialysis machines, ultrasound scanners. Surprised patients looking up from their beds, nurses asking his business, windows with no fire escapes. His gun was back in his pocket, his palm sweaty against the
grip.
‘Sol.’ Cleo put a hand on his arm. ‘We can use this.’ She was indicating the six recycling chutes in the corridor wall. ‘The one for fabric, it’s big enough.’
‘It’s a long drop into a locked bin.’ He shook his head, his eyes warily watching the end of the corridor. They heard the dull thumps of five more shots.
‘Not to go down. To go up,’ she prompted him.
She went first. The chute was less than a metre square but, by climbing in backwards, she was able to stand on the lip of the hatch, push her back against the far wall, and wedge her hands and then her feet against the opposite corners. Jammed in like this, she worked her way up the vertical shaft, her body straining with the tension. She had once been a keen gymnast, but she’d quit a couple of years back – she was too busy being cool to be competitive – and Cleo wondered if she’d bitten off more than she could chew here. She guessed it must be at least three metres up to the next hatch . . . assuming the floor above had one.
Sol climbed in behind her and, as he took his feet off the lip, the hatch swung shut, cutting off the light. But Sol had anticipated this, and strapped to his head was a bright but tiny torch. Cleo was reminded of the man who had come after her along the ventilation duct in the sub-levels – the man who had just shown up in the elevator. He had used exactly the same kind of light. Sol had started to act like a Clockworker, and now it seemed he was equipped like one too – she wondered where the transformation would stop.
She was careful not to look down. There was just enough of the chute visible below her to send her heart into her throat, and Sol’s light dazzled her eyes. Instead, she edged her way slowly upwards, conscious that if she relaxed her hold, it was a long fall, and she would take Solomon with her. They could only hope that they didn’t get hit by a bundle of bedsheets or a load of soiled underwear on its way down to the laundry room. Her breathing was loud in the plastex chute, and she imagined the Clockworkers passing the hatches and hearing their breathing, the scraping of their hands and feet against the corridor wall. Her calves started to cramp, and her shoulders and neck ached with tension.
‘Can’t you go any faster?’ Sol whispered up to her through gritted teeth.
The tops of her thighs started to knot up now as well. Cleo’s fingers touched the edge of the next floor’s hatch just as her legs began to shake uncontrollably. Thankfully, the hospital did not have latches on their hatches and she pushed it open, peering out. The way was clear; straightening her legs to shove herself out of the chute, she moaned and crumpled to the floor as the cramps screamed pain at her. Lying there, she tried to stretch out her knotting muscles. Moments later, Sol followed, his face twisted in discomfort, but he was still able to stand up once he was out. Cleo swore that if she lived through this, she was going to stay in better shape. She swallowed her pride and let him help her to her feet.
They turned to find a stunned doctor gazing at them with his mouth open.
‘Hi,’ Cleo told him as she wiped sweat from her forehead. ‘Just . . . just, eh, checking for blockages.’
This floor had access to the fire escape. Once up on the roof, Sol led her across a utility frame full of cables and pipes to the roof of the salt refinery. From there, there were numerous routes of escape across the rooftops.
‘How will you find Maslow?’ she asked him.
‘If he makes it out, there’s a place we arranged to meet if we got separated,’ he replied. ‘But that won’t be until tomorrow. We need to find somewhere to hide out until then.’
‘That woman was giving Ana an injection of something. What do you think it was?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sol said, shaking his head.
He didn’t want to think about it – there was nothing they could do now anyway. He felt empty, hollowed out. They had failed Ana and lost Maslow. But there was no time for recriminations. For now, he had to concentrate on keeping them alive.
Cleo looked out across the tops of the buildings before them. So the Clockworkers had come for Ana. And now they would be looking for her too. The city had taken on a different air; stretching out in front of them, it was a crazed warren of mechanical works, architecture and anonymous faces, a million dark paths and shadowy corners. Too many places to conceal watching eyes, or waiting killers. She shivered in the chilly evening air.
Sol grinned sheepishly at her.
‘Welcome to the other side.’
Solomon led Cleo across the deserted floor of a textiles mill. Rolls of patterned fabric were stacked up all around them; huge sheets hung on racks, their dyes drying, or on machines, waiting to be printed or embroidered. There was a stale, chemistry-set smell from the dyes and, from a bin at the end of the design workshop, the scent of rotting vegetable matter, used to make some of the colours.
‘I need to call my parents,’ Cleo was saying. Her jacket was too thin for this environment, and hunger was making her colder.
‘They’ll expect that,’ he responded, shaking his head. ‘If you call the hospital, they’ll trace the call. The same goes if you contact anybody who’s known to be friends with you or your parents.’
‘I can’t just disappear on them! They have to know I’m okay.’
‘We’ll get a message to them somehow . . . but later, all right?’
He stopped at a grate in the floor and pulled it open. Underneath, metal rungs set into the ferro-concrete formed a ladder that led down a dark vertical shaft. He strapped on the torch and led the way down.
‘Pull the grate closed after you,’ he said, from beneath her feet.
Sol had explained to her that Maslow had been a Clockworker, that he knew what they could do. He had shown her how she had to avoid streets with surveillance cameras, stay clear of public places, and how to read the grid system that allowed them to find their way through the sub-levels, far from the more inhabited parts of the city.
In the under-city, among the enormous engineering works that supported Ash Harbour’s structure, most of the space was taken up by factories, or the cheapest, most cramped tenement housing. Grey-skinned homeless and some delirious drunks huddled under blankets, hoping for handouts. The noise of the city was louder, more thunderous down here, carried through the walls and along the twisting streets and narrow alleyways. They passed factories where human bodies laboured over clanking machines, oblivious to the time of day, struggling to make quotas and finish their long, punishing shifts.
This place gave Cleo the creeps; every face she saw was an imagined assassin, or an informant who would wait for them to pass and then report them. But Sol was savouring his new role as guide and mentor. On his own, he would have been nervous down here without Maslow; having to look after Cleo, though, gave him a renewed confidence. He felt more at home, now that he didn’t have Maslow babysitting him.
At the bottom of the shaft, beneath the textiles mill, there was a huge room being used for storage; it had two other exits, which he knew led out to a sewer on one side and a utility tunnel on the other. With three escape routes, it was a good place to hide. During the day the factory staff only ever came down to dump reject rolls of material for storage until they were recycled. He climbed up a stack of rolls and walked along the top to a grille in a ventilation duct. Cleo watched as he pulled out the grille, reached in and dragged out a holdall. In it were two blankets, some packs of food and a large flask of water.
‘Maslow has a few stashes like this around,’ he said softly. ‘We can hole up here until morning; the factory’s shift starts at nine. They can’t see us here from down on the floor anyway.’
Cleo was trembling with the cold, and she quickly took one of the blankets and wrapped it around her.
‘What’ve you got to eat?’ she asked.
‘Dried stuff,’ Sol said. ‘Not sure what it is. It’s supposed to be full of vitamins and all that. Tastes like salted carpet.’
‘It’ll do.’ Cleo grabbed a packet and unwrapped the waxed rice paper.
Munching into it, she made a face
, but persevered.
‘Told you.’ He shrugged as he sat down beside her.
Cleo watched him as she ate. She could see he was enjoying this . . . this adventure. All she could think about was that her family would be going out of their minds with worry. She was uncomfortable and cold; Sol was hardly a fountain of entertaining conversation and she had no music and, most importantly, no stem. The craving for a smoke was made worse by anxiety and boredom. And she needed something to help get her mind off Ana, and what might have happened to her. Cleo’s thoughts went back to the hospital, to her family and all the other people she had left behind. She remembered the doctors’ vain attempts to resuscitate Faisal and she felt a dull pain in her chest. The food was little comfort: it quelled her hunger, but left her thirsty. Taking a drink from the flask of water, she began to contrive ways of getting hold of some stem.
‘I could really do with talking to Ube,’ she said. ‘He could help us – his uncle’s a cop. Maybe find out who we can trust in the police—’
‘You’re here because I got you mixed up in this,’ Sol replied. ‘You want to do the same to Ube?’
‘We need help . . . What about going to Cortez? He’s this Pinoy mob boss—’
‘I know who he is. He won’t do anything for free, and we don’t have any money. He might even be working with them.’
‘I don’t think he’d turn us in,’ Cleo tried again. ‘He . . . he likes me.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘I get my guitar strings from him. And stem, sometimes.’
‘Ah.’ Sol finished his food and took a swig of water.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing. You were saying something with that “Ah”.’
‘I was just saying “Ah”, that’s all.’ Sol rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t read into it. I’m turning off the torch – the light could attract attention.’
‘Don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s no windows, and nobody’s in the factory, right? I don’t want to be in the dark.’