Sharpe End

by James David Victor

  ‘What’s that? ’ Kyra asked, trying to not sound as irritated as she felt.

  ‘I have been analyzing the topography of the city and the surrounding areas, ’ Silvanus began, ‘and have compared it against other known locations of a similar nature, above and below ground. I have isolated two areas that seem the most likely to have entrances, and thus exits, from a potential cave system below. ’

  Kyra stopped walking and sat down in the middle of yet another dank, disgusting alley.

  ‘Two… ’ Two wasn’t very many, but at the same time, she worried about how long Raven and Blake might have down there. She wanted to get to them. ‘Any idea which one would be more likely? ’

  ‘I have been trying to run such calculations and make an educated guess, as it were, and I think I have one marginally more likely to be successful than the other. It’s not much but as Raven would say, it’s better than nothing. ’

  Kyra smiled in that way that cats could, which wasn’t really much like the human expression, but it was still an expression.

  ‘I’ll take it, ’ she said. ‘Have you informed Nyx and Axel? Perhaps he can head to the second location. ’

  ‘I am doing so now. I am sure he will be amenable. Nyx says he is very distraught with Blake being missing. ’ There was a long pause. ‘Although, I am not certain I was supposed to tell you that. ’

  If Kyra could have laughed, she would have. As it was, she pushed herself back to her feet and got ready to move.

  ‘Tell me where I’m going. ’

  14

  “What?” Blake asked, visibly going taut with concern. “What is it?”

  Raven didn’t mean to be dramatic, but she also knew that just showing him would do better than telling him. She felt her own nerves a little frayed as she led him to the window, which was just a square hole in the stone exterior of the building. She held her finger to her lips for him to be quiet while she leaned closer to the window and pointed.

  On the other side of the large gorge, Greyson—the man whose hunt had gotten them here—was standing inside one of the buildings. It looked a lot like the one they were in, which was how they could see him through the not-window windows. It was hard to tell what he was doing, but he was covered in plenty of dirt and she thought she saw blood on the side of his face.

  Raven couldn’t help but feel a small sense of pleasure that he had been sucked down along with them, although she wasn’t sure why they hadn’t seen him when they’d woken up. If he’d woken before them, why hadn’t he killed them?

  It wasn’t like he had a problem with killing people, after all.

  “As if we didn’t have enough problems,” Blake mumbled, just loud enough for her to hear as the two of them leaned to either side of the window and watched Greyson on the other side of the big ditch. “Was he armed when we were chasing him?”

  “He didn’t shoot at us,” she replied, “but I would assume he had something on him. I can’t guess if he still does.”

  “I’m not going to risk assuming he doesn’t,” he went on after a moment.

  “No,” she agreed with a sigh.

  They both moved back from the window. Raven leaned against the wall and held her injured foot off the ground, keeping it from touching down as much as possible despite the strain she was already feeling on her other leg.

  She was trying to think, but her mind felt clouded. Not hearing from Kyra or Silvanus made it hard, and the pain had been distracting and exhausting. Yet, she couldn’t afford to be either of those things. They had to find their way out of there, or die trying…which she was growing increasingly worried might be the case.

  “We can’t stay here,” she said quietly.

  “No, we can’t,” he agreed. “But how do we get out of here without getting his attention and possibly attacked?” He rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, a gesture she had seen a lot in times of tension (which had been frequent toward the end of their marriage). “We could try going on the offensive, finish the job…but I’m still not sure how to get out of here without him seeing us and getting the advantage.”

  Raven stared at him for a moment, a little surprised that he would suggest trying to finish the job, given their current situation. Sticking with things had never been his strong suit in the past, hence the divorce, and in this case, no one would have blamed them for not continuing to try to catch the man.

  “I think it’s better to be on the offensive,” Raven said. She had never been a woman who liked to be directed. She wanted to call her own shots. “Of course, that doesn’t mean I have a plan…but I’d rather be trying to go after him than worry about him coming after us.”

  Blake nodded. “I don’t think he’s seen us, at least.” he said. “So we’ve got the element of surprise for the moment.” He shifted, taking a quick look back out the window. “I also have no idea how to get across that big space between the streets. I don’t know what’s down there either.”

  Raven snorted a mirthless laugh. “Knowing our luck today? Lava.”

  Moving back against the wall, Blake laughed soundlessly.

  “What was there out back?” she asked, knowing that’s what he’d been checking out before she interrupted to show him that their current nemesis was down here with them.

  “Not much,” he sighed. “It was like a really small courtyard with short walls to either side. The back looked like it was part of the cave, either intentionally or when whatever happened to this place happened.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Did you have much time to look past the walls before I came out?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. Thinking there might be something there?”

  Raven shrugged a little. “It’s worth looking at.”

  They eased away from the window, hoping that they couldn’t as easily be seen as they had spotted Greyson, and then made their way back through the two rooms to the back door into the ‘courtyard.’

  Stepping out into the small space, Raven looked at it with as critical and observant an eye as possible. The back wall she figured for a loss, since it was just a wall of rock, so she turned to each side with the low walls. She moved to the right, but there wasn’t much to see there. There was just a little extra space before hitting another rock wall.

  So she moved to the other side, where Blake was standing. “This is promising,” he said, pointing.

  She could see that just over this low rock wall there was a separation before another low rock wall, which seemed to be one side of a courtyard just like the one they were in, attached to a building much like theirs. When she squinted to try to peer through the dim light, she thought it looked like several of the buildings with attached rock yards were lining the road.

  “So, you think we can just go over these walls to get to a building further down and out of his line of sight?” she suggested with a small smile.

  “I think we may be able to do just that,” he agreed with a matching smile, although the expression fell just a moment later as he looked down at her legs. “Are you going to be able to do that?” he asked, concern clear in his voice.

  Raven appreciated that he was worried about her. It had been a while since she felt the concern of another person for her well-being. For nearly two years now, it had really just been her and her cat and her AI… They worried about her like family, but there was still just a different feeling to have it come from another person. Especially one she had once loved…

  One she might still love on some level, if she was honest with herself.

  “I can make it,” she said with a soft, wry smile. “It won’t be fun, but you can bet I’ll make it.”

  15

  She hadn’t lied.

  Raven made it over the low walls of about four different courtyards before they decided they were far enough down the street. She looked worse for wear by the time they got there, but she made it. Of course, Blake wasn’t stupid enough to say that, but he couldn’t stop from thinking it as he looked her over.
He couldn’t stop himself from being concerned as well.

  “I’m fine,” she said, panting softly as she lowered herself to a seat on one of the walls. He also noticed that she was answering a question he hadn’t actually asked, perhaps heading off his question and his concern.

  “I can see that,” he said dryly, leaning back against the exterior wall and crossing his arms.

  She glared at him, but her exhaustion dimmed its intensity. “My leg hurts, okay? Going over those little walls should have been easy, but the splint weighs a bit and the pain is transferring up to my hip.”

  Blake frowned with concern, his feeling of discomfort growing the longer it went and the worse she got. He just wasn’t used to it. He knew that he had to step up and do better than he had been, for her sake, and that worried him.

  What if he couldn’t? What if he just kept screwing stuff up?

  “Rest for a few minutes,” he said. “We’re going to need to find some water soon. There must be water somewhere, if a human colony lived here. We just have to find it. I’m not sure if any of the appliances in these houses will put out water. I don’t recognize what most of them are.”

  She was wiping sweat off her forehead. “Yeah, water would be…good.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the open door behind him. “I’m going to look through the house, and maybe see if I can still spot Greyson from here. Why don’t you rest a bit longer while I check it out.”

  It wasn’t hard to see her pride flash through her eyes. She didn’t want to have to do that, but her practicality won out and she just nodded.

  Blake paused, feeling an urge to say something else, but he didn’t actually have a clue about what that was. He looked at her, and she looked at him. He waited to figure out what he wanted to say, and she waited to see if he was going to say anything.

  “What, Blake?” she finally asked impatiently.

  He shook himself. “Nothing,” he said, turning and walking into the house.

  This one was different than the first house they had gone into. There seemed to be multiple smaller rooms filling the bottom floor, and there was an actual doorway with one of those press-pads like the cabinet had. He pressed the button and the door slid up into the ceiling, revealing stone stairs that led down.

  The stairs seemed to descend straight into darkness, but after taking a couple of tentative steps, he saw there was a dim light below.

  He pulled his gun. As far as he could tell, it was still in working order, but he couldn’t be sure without trying to fire it, and he couldn’t do that unless there was something to shoot at, which likely meant him being under attack. So basically, he couldn’t be sure his gun was working until he was being attacked, and then it would really suck to learn it had been broken beyond use.

  Pushing that thought as far to the side as he could, he walked slowly down the steps.

  Some of the light was coming from the first landing where the steps took a sharp left turn and went down another length of steps with more lights at the bottom. He felt his chest squeezing a little tighter with every step, wondering what he was going to find when he reached the bottom. Of the various scenarios running through his mind, he couldn’t pick which he liked the least.

  He wondered if there would be living people, ready to attack him for invading their home…or maybe it would be some sort of alien life form or monster that would just rush for his throat. If not that, it might be some dead bodies of people who hadn’t survived whatever it was that had happened to this city.

  Blake didn’t like seeing dead bodies, but he didn’t like being attacked either.

  He tried not to think about all that, but then he wondered what would happen to Raven if he died in this place. If there was something or someone waiting at the bottom of the stairs, ready to kill him, would Raven come down here to find out what had happened to him and die as well? Would she come down and survive? Or would she just leave?

  He was pretty sure she wouldn’t just leave. Blake knew he probably flattered himself to say it was some affection for him, instead of just her being a decent human being, but he thought it was.

  After all, she had come to find him when he called for help. No matter what, he’d always be grateful that she had. He knew they were only divorced because he’d been, well, an idiot. He regretted that now, but it was too little too late. And yet, here they were. She hadn’t just ditched him after everything.

  …why was he thinking like he was about to die?

  Blake chastised himself when he realized that he had stopped walking down the stairs so he could lose himself in rambling, pessimistic thoughts. Acting like he was getting his affairs in order.

  “You have a job to do,” he reminded himself. With that in his mind now, he started down the stairs again. He moved toward the dull, vaguely yellow light that was coming up toward him from whatever was at the bottom of the stairs.

  His foot touched down on another plain, stone landing, but this time, he didn’t see any more stairs. He had to go around a corner to see anything at all, but he had gotten this far without having anything jump out at him. He considered that a positive.

  He could see more light coming from around the corner, so he cautious made his way around the stone wall to see what was on the other side.

  No bodies, living or otherwise, but he still stopped dead in his tracks.

  “What the…”

  16

  Raven was not, by nature, a patient woman.

  She could be patient, but only when it was her choice. Like how she could choose to patiently out-wait a target, or she could choose to not wring Kyra’s neck for saying something particularly snarky, but it was her failed ankle choosing to keep her in place now, and she didn’t handle that with much grace.

  Everything was so…quiet, too. There was nothing to distract her thoughts. All she could do was sit there and think, and none of her thoughts were particularly cheerful.

  Finally, she just couldn’t take it anymore.

  She pushed herself to her feet and paused to wait for the lancing pain to subside, and then she limped into the house. She moved carefully, peering this way and that. This building was different than the other one, she noticed immediately, and then she saw an open door with a faint light coming from it.

  Moving closer, she stopped just at the top. “Blake?” she called hesitantly. She didn’t hear any noise, so there was no fight. Either he was down there alive, or already dead. That latter thought caused something inside her to seize up, but she ignored it.

  And when he called back to her, she relaxed.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” she heard his voice. He sounded a ways down. “Got something weird down here.”

  “Should I come down?” Immediately, she dreaded if he said yes.

  “Well, you might want to see it…but can you make it down?”

  She didn’t answer immediately. Looking down the stairs, her ankle started hurting just at the thought.

  “Why don’t I come up and get you?” he called.

  Her eyes widened with incredulity. “And what, carry me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh uh, no way! I’m not going to be carried down the stairs like some little kid. I’ll get down there myself.”

  There was a long moment of silence. “You are the stubbornest woman in the galaxy. What do they say? ‘Pride goeth before a fall?’”

  She wrinkled her nose and sat down, moving down the step one by one on her butt. It still hurt, but it hurt less, and she didn’t get carried. Not to mention, she had a better chance of them both falling down and breaking their necks with his plan.

  By the time she reached the bottom, tired and sweating, Blake was standing with his arms crossed, lips pursed, and a judgmental stare.

  “Shut up,” she hissed as she pushed herself to her feet.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he replied.

  “You were thinking really loudly.”

  He didn’t bother to hide his eye-roll, then he came forw
ard to offer his arm. This time, she didn’t shirk it and wrapped her arm over his shoulders. He helped her forward into…

  “What the heck?” she asked, staring at everything.

  Although there had been obvious signs of technology in the buildings they had gone through, in the cabinets and interior doors, this room was something else altogether. She could see consoles and screens, panels and access hatches covering every single inch, and all made out of a shiny black composite metal.

  There were lights of nearly every color blinking from every direction.

  Even her own AI controlled ship didn’t have technology like this. Narrowing her eyes, she moved closer to look at everything, although not touching anything.

  “This looks like…” Her mind raced. “It looks like some sort of surveillance center?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed thoughtfully, “but without the screens being active, we can’t tell just what they, whoever they are, have been watching.”

  “And no idea who they are,” Raven said, sounding distracted even to her own ears. “If only we could get in touch with Silvanus and Nyx. They might be able to analyze the systems or remotely access them through our implants.” She sighed. The silence in her head was getting loud, to the point that her head was nearly throbbing with the absence of her companions.

  He just grunted softly in response.

  After a few more moments of studying, she said, “I don’t think this is natural.” He gave her an ‘are you an idiot’ look and she sighed. “I mean… I don’t think that this was created with this city. I think it was added later. Likely after whatever happened to it had happened.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “This doesn’t look anything like the other technology we’ve seen, which has been limited at best. Even what we’ve seen has been…doors and such. This is very advanced, and it’s also in the basement.” She scrunched her nose as she thought. “If this place suffered some sort of…earthquake or such, this would have been damaged in some way. It looks perfect, pristine even.”