Binding Foxgirls III

by Simon Archer

  “We all do,” I added. “So, where are we headed?”

  “Right down here,” Clem said, taking off in the direction of the train car. “We’ll take this to the station closest to the financial district tunnels.”

  “Wait, we’re taking a train?” I asked, getting excited. “It works for you?”

  The last time we’d tried to take one of the train cars down here, we’d been booted out by an AI and accosted by a group of Achilles’s goons. That’s how Clem got his nasty black eye and most of his bruises.

  “Yep.” Clem grinned back at me. “Isn’t it cool? Malthe was able to make it work for me using the idea you had that first night in the tunnels when we first found one of the train cars. He made a fake retina for me to get me past the AI. Works like a charm.”

  “Couldn’t you disable the AI?” Cindra asked. “Now that Achilles and his goons vanished, I mean. Who knows where they are now?”

  “Theoretically, yeah,” Clem said, nodding as he continued to lead the group, “but that could take some time, and we wanted to get right to work. Plus, we didn’t want to risk pissing off the AI and causing more headaches for ourselves.”

  “Oh, right, Malthe,” I said, remembering he was there. “You still there, man?”

  “Yeah, I’m still with you,” the hacker said in my ear. “I didn’t want to break your concentration earlier when you were helping the foxgirls. Plus, it gave me some time to do some more digging.”

  “Anything new?” I asked hopefully.

  “Nope,” he said, clearly disheartened by his sardonic tone. “Zip, nada, zero. I’m wondering if he’s even here at this point. Maybe he killed himself because he was so upset we bested him. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “Yeah, I doubt it,” I said darkly.

  “Yeah, but still, it’s a nice thought,” Malthe said. “A man can dream.”

  I chuckled under my breath at that. It certainly was.

  As we approached the train care, Clem turned to face us as he kept walking backward.

  “Okay, I’ll go first. Wait for me to get the all-clear and then join me real quick before it wants to scan you too.”

  Kinley gave Clem a skeptical look. “What will happen if we don’t move quickly enough?”

  “We… haven’t found that out yet,” Clem said, laughing nervously. “So, let’s not find out.”

  “Deal,” I said. “Everyone, just do what he says, right when he says it.”

  “Thanks, Joch, glad to hear you have some confidence in me for once,” Clem said, giving me a wry smile. I rolled my eyes at him. “Okay, let’s get going then.”

  Clem stepped up to the train car. It was long and a brownish silvery color, and there were three cars linked behind it. The surrounding area was just made of clean-cut concrete, with nothing else in sight. The area was clean and clear of debris or water or mold. Clem reached his hand up and waved at the front train car’s door.

  “Everyone else stay back,” he ordered us. “You don’t want it to read you.”

  Then, a clean, crisp female AI’s voice cut through, emanating from the train car. I remembered it as the same voice that had spoken to Clem and me when we were down in the tunnels the first time.

  “Please step forward for your retinal exam,” the voice said.

  Clem placed a small, clear cylindrical object in his eye and leaned his head forward as if taking an eye test. I supposed he was, in a way.

  A small panel opened on the side of the train car, and a laser came out and scanned Clem’s eye. Then, the door to the train car slid open.

  “Now!” Clem shouted, running at the thing.

  We all darted forward, though we had to go in twos since the door wasn’t very wide. I ushered the foxgirls ahead of me and then Semra, bringing up the rear, closely followed by Clem, who was waiting behind since the AI would recognize him.

  “Won’t it know we’re here?” Cindra hissed once we were all safely inside in hushed tones, as if afraid the thing would hear us. I didn’t blame her.

  “No,” Clem said in a normal voice, shaking his head and shrugging. “Honestly, she’s not all that smart.”

  “Figures.” Semra rolled her eyes. “How did these people control the city for so long when they reject even the most basic modern technologies?”

  “Fair question,” I said with a frown. I’d asked it myself many, many times, but had never found a satisfying answer.

  “So, what’ve we got? What’s going on? Are you guys in okay?” Malthe asked frantically in my ear.

  “Yeah, we’re in okay,” I said, looking around the train car. “At least I think we are. I don’t wanna jinx it.”

  The train car was small, quite a bit smaller than the high-speed rail trains that ran throughout the north side of Termina. If TelCorp had its way, those trains would run through the rest of the city someday soon, too. This car was narrower and shorter, and I imagined it could probably fit about twenty to twenty-five people if they were packed in tightly enough.

  The car itself was a brighter silver on the inside than it was on the outside, and the seats were the same color. They had no cushions and were entirely made of metal, an almost aluminum material. It smelled kind of metallic, too, like it was regularly cleaned and kept in top shape.

  It wouldn’t surprise me. Achilles seemed the type to obsess over small details like that.

  There was a door at the end of the train car, supposedly leading to the next car. It was a darker shade of silver than the rest of the train car, almost charcoal.

  “Please enter your destination,” the AI instructed.

  “How do we do that?” Semra asked, looking at Clem.

  “Like so,” he announced before crossing over to the front of the car where a conductor’s chair sat empty. He sat down in it and pushed a few buttons on a rusty old panel at the front. Then, he got back up, came over to sit in one of the regular seats, and motioned for us to do the same.

  Tentatively, we did so. Then, almost out of nowhere, the train lurched forward.

  “There are all kinds of stations and stuff down here,” Clem explained. “It’s totally cool. We can go anywhere we want in the city and be there in a matter of minutes. Beats air traffic any day.”

  “And the high-speed rail trains,” Semra added. “This could be a less luxurious option, more accessible to everyday people.”

  “Maybe we should bring it back as public transportation, like it used to be a long time ago, before Achilles and Tibor Enterprises,” Kira mused. “We talked about that before. It’s not a bad idea.”

  “No, it’s not,” I agreed. “But I don’t know, something about it all just… bugs me. I don’t know. Like you said, Semra, something just feels off about this whole thing, this whole organization of his. We have a lot of questions that still aren’t answered. What else have you found down here, Clem? How many people lived here, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure,” Clem admitted. “It’s hard to say. Since so many of the tunnels collapsed, we can’t access a lot of the areas down here, and one of those blocked-off regions, the one in the financial district, was bound to be the most populated one. The closer we get to the center, the more residential tunnels we found, so it’s likely the theory holds, but anything is possible.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” I said, nodding along. “What have you found in the residential areas?”

  “We’ll be near one when we stop,” Clem said. “I can show you.”

  “Cool, thanks,” I said, looking out one of the long, thin windows paneling the train car. I’d barely noticed them before because they were so slim, and the concrete outside looked a lot like the inside of the car, but now that we were moving, I saw black and occasional lights whirring past us. It was a pretty smooth ride, smoother than I would have expected.

  “They classed these things up a bit, didn’t they?” Semra asked, echoing my own thoughts. “Pictures in my textbooks growing up made them seem all dirty, gross, and bumpy.”

  “Yeah, I w
as thinking the same thing,” I agreed. “Achilles sure does like a clean house.”

  “Well, the good news is that the parts we can’t get to, he probably can’t either,” Clem noted. “So, we’ll be able to find him if he is down here.”

  “He’ll probably try to get somewhere he knows,” I mused. “As he doesn’t know how bad the damage is yet, he’ll probably be closer to the financial district, trying to get through the debris and figure out what’s going on. He’s probably frustrated, too. This guy likes a clean house, and we messed it up.”

  “How do you know that about him?” Kinley asked. “I mean, you can’t perform a soul gaze on him, right?”

  “No,” I confirmed, “but I’m still good at reading people, even if I can’t tell exactly what they’re thinking. And from what I’ve seen, I can tell Achilles is anal-retentive, likes to have his way, but gregarious at the same time. He inspired loyalty in his followers, though he didn’t truly value them, based on how willing he was to let them die for him while he cowered away in his bunker.”

  “Very true,” Kira said. “He was a real piece of work. Some of those guys looked so scared when they died. I felt bad for them, really, even though they were trying to kill us. I mean, they didn’t know anything else, really. They grew up down here, taught to see us as the enemy.”

  I gave the foxgirl a small smile. “I love that you care so much, it’s one of the many qualities I love about you. But they got what was coming to them. They still knew who they were taking on and how many people they were hurting. Still, they’re not nearly as bad as their boss, I’ll give you that.”

  “How long is this supposed to take?” Semra asked Clem, impatient as always.

  He shrugged. “About a half-hour, if we head to the south side. I suppose he’d be more likely to find an entrance down there considering he was on the Void.”

  We sat there in silence for a while after that, looking out the dim windows, until the train began to slow down. It was cool, honestly, watching the darkness whir by me on the sidelines.

  “Arriving at your destination,” the AI announced, and I noticed the train car beginning to slow its speed gradually. Finally, it came to a halt.

  “Awesome,” Clem said, rising to his feet when the train car was at long last completely still. “Watch out. This station looks a bit different from the others.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked him, shooting the other binder a wary look. We needed as few surprises as possible, to put it mildly.

  “Just that it’s denser, the walls are packed tighter together,” Clem said. “The AI’s an idiot, but she’s even more of an idiot down here. She doesn’t pay attention to much of anyone. Honestly, she seems to just expect it to be crowded and not bother beyond that.

  “Well, that’s odd,” Cindra said. “Though I guess it sort of makes sense if more people live down here…”

  “And the stations are harder to get to in this area,” I added. “Not that the ones we have found were easy to find, mind you, they weren’t. Far from it. They were tucked away in random places. But that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? Someday, someone was bound to stumble upon one of them. But it’s not exactly the same over here, where they’ve walled up all the entrances, and they’re more dense, difficult to come by….”

  “Difficult to come by up there,” Clem reminded me, pointing up to the ground above our heads. “Down here, it’s pretty much impossible to get around without those stations. It’s not like there aren’t entrances for them. They’re just collapsed or very, very well hidden.”

  “I’d imagine it’s a lot easier for a kid or some random worker or exec to come across an entry in the financial district than on the edge of the south side,” I agreed. “Have you guys used the maps at all or just found what you found?”

  “A bit of both, but guided by instinct,” Malthe said, answering for Clem. “I defer to him on whatever that means, but anyway, yeah, it all pretty much lines up with what I have on my map location-wise. It’s literally everything else that’s totally fucked up.”

  “I know the feeling,” I muttered.

  “Hey, are you guys talkin’ about me?” Clem called to me, putting on a show of false bravado and defensiveness. “I thought I heard you talkin’ about me.”

  “We weren’t talking about you.” I sighed and shook my head, knowing that my sometimes-insecure friend was more than just putting on a show. “Stop worrying about it. I was just talking with Malthe about the maps and tunnels system.

  “Yeah, cool, isn’t it?” Clem asked, his eyes lighting up with the fire of interest as he looked out the nearest window at yet another concrete wall. “I’d say I could live down here if that didn’t make me one of them.” He looked away from me then, and I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Stop worrying, Clem,” I ordered him, looking him in the eyes, blue in blue. “Stop worrying and stop second-guessing yourself. It’s not helping anyone. Honestly, I’m glad you like the tunnels. I wish I’d been paying a bit more attention the last week and a half, so I knew more about it all, but here we are.”

  “Stop beating yourself up, mate,” Clem said, responding in kind. “You’ve been more than busy.”

  Just then, the doors creaked open to reveal a smaller open space on the tracks, lined with more concrete. We all filed out and down the steps of the train car, led by Clem as always.

  “Cool,” Kinley mused when we stepped down onto the metal-plated platform. “Looks like an old coffee shop.”

  “Yeah, it does,” I said, following her gaze.

  There, lining the wall to our left, was the old cutout in the wall of some kind of bar or restaurant or coffee shop, as Kinley suggested. There were tables and chairs built into the walls of the restaurant that had somehow withstood the test of time, and there was no roof or front wall, to allow the customers to watch the passing trains and feel the wind in their hair. For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to stand next to a running train like that.

  Thrilling, no doubt, almost as thrilling as hopping buildings like I loved to do on the streets of Termina.

  “So, what’s going on? Where are we going?” Semra asked, seemingly uninterested in the restaurant. Shocker.

  “Wait.” I turned to Clem. “Did Achilles’s people use this place?” I asked Clem. “You know, before we scared them out of the tunnels.”

  “I don’t think so,” Clem said, biting his lip as he thought this over. “I mean, think about it. We never saw women or children down here, just men. Working men. They weren’t a community, really. They just lived at work.”

  “How did they reproduce, then?” Cindra cut in, as always asking the real questions here. “They must’ve had kids at some point. I mean, they grew up down here, right? Or did their skin just go all translucent like that in adulthood after being down here too long?”

  Every other person in the group opened his or her mouth to ask another question, and I had just about a million boiling down beneath the surface in me, too, but I held both my hands up in the air to shut them up before this got any more out of hand.

  “Look, these are all great questions,” I said first, qualifying myself. “And I have them, too. Trust me, I do, but we won’t get any answers unless we go looking for them unless Clem has any more information to add from his studies.”

  “I don’t really ‘study,’” Clem said, scrunching up his face in distaste. “I was investigating.” Every single one of us rolled our eyes in unison.

  “Okay, Clem,” Kira said shortly. “Get to the point.”

  “Right…” Clem took a moment, clearly wracking his brain for everything he knew. “I… I can’t think of something off the top of my head.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Let’s go find some answers. Lead the way, Clem.”

  7

  And so Clem led the group around behind the old coffee shop and took us out onto a concrete path away from the station. It was open like the tunnels leading to the station on t
he south side, but not quite as wide. We could actually see the walls on either side of us this time.

  “We’re headed to the closest area to the financial district that we have access to,” Clem explained as we walked. “It’s a little way to go, but it won’t take nearly as long as the south side tunnels.”

  “What kind of tunnels are they?” Semra asked. “Corporate? Residential?”

  “Residential,” Clem said. “They look like little apartments on the inside. Plus, we think there are some records down here somewhere in a hidden room, but we haven’t been able to get there yet because of the debris. Maybe we’ll be able to break through this time since we have the best team we’ve got here.”

  “You sorry lot!” Malthe cried in my ear. “That can’t be. We’re screwed if you’re the best we’ve got. Now I’m the one you should be sending down there. I’d bust through that wreckage in no time.”

  I laughed, and the rest of my team all stared at me.

  “Malthe’s making fun of us,” I explained, chuckling again. “That may be, Malthe, but then you’d end up piled beneath it all with your coordination.”

  Malthe laughed too, then, and so did Cindra, who loved to make fun of her future brother-in-law.

  “You’re probably right,” he admitted with a chuckle.

  “I sure am,” I assured him, “but you’re a great help from afar.”

  The tunnel narrowed as we walked until it was the size of a normal hallway. It wasn’t long before we reached the end of the wider tunnel to where a door was set in the wall.

  “This is it,” Clem said, pulling out several keys on a keychain.

  “Where’d that come from?” Semra asked, pointing at it.

  “We had a locksmith come down and make keys for all the doors, so we didn’t have to bust through ourselves,” Clem explained as he searched for the right one. “He’s good, able to use tech to map out the right ridges and shape for the keyhole.”

  “That’s… kind of frightening,” I said, silently glad that we operated on a keycard system up on the surface.

  “That’s why we switched to a keycard system,” Malthe said, echoing my own thoughts. “It’s way easier to bust through a manual keyhole like this. Though, digital has its downsides as well, especially when there’s someone like me around.”