by Simon Archer
“Why didn’t you just bust it open?” Semra asked Clem with a shrug. “Then you get to blow shit up. That’s always a good time.”
“It is,” Clem laughed, “but we’ve already blown up half the city. No reason to blow up the other half, too. Aha! Here it is.” He pulled one of the keys out and jutted it in the lock. The lock clicked, and then he swung the door wide open.
“Here we are,” he said, stepping inside and then holding the door open for the rest of us.
Beyond was another hallway, this one slimmer. Doors lined both sides of the hall.
“What do we do?” Kira whispered, instinctively lowering her voice in case anyone else, namely Achilles, was here. “Just check them all?”
“Might as well,” I murmured.
Clem moved down the hallway, unlocking the first door so we could check inside. The room was definitely a residential space, a one-bedroom set up with a single twin bed and a small kitchen. It was kind of dreary, to be honest. Sure, living underground could be claustrophobic and depressing, but I envisioned all kinds of cool arrangements that could be made down there. This was just kind of sad. With nothing special to be found, we moved on as Clem locked the door behind us.
“Don’t want anyone slipping down here and setting up shop where they don’t belong,” Clem explained. “That could mess up our whole operation.”
I nodded, and with that, we moved down the hall, checking rooms one by one. The rooms were all residential spaces, but none of them were for families. They were all studio or one-bedroom setups, with the same single twin beds and small kitchen.
“It’s kind of depressing down here,” Kira remarked after we’d gone through about ten rooms like this. “I’d hate to live here.”
Cindra scowled distastefully. “Yeah, I know. Horrible. I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t try to get people to live down here after all.”
“Oh no, we can do all kinds of cool stuff,” Clem said, a spark in his eyes now. “We can break down the walls and make huge apartments, fill the other areas with moss gardens that can thrive underground. It’ll be gorgeous, way better than these dumps. This just feels… I don’t know, like some rooms built so you could sleep on the job every once in a while. Not a place you’d actually live full time.”
“I guess so,” Kira said, though she still sounded skeptical.
“Remember, the people who live down here after we do it up could still go back up to the surface and get some sun on the regular,” I reminded her. “They won’t waste away like these guys did.”
“It really is a shame.” Cindra shook her head and tsk-tsked at the dreary little room we were in now, which was just a dirty old mattress and a single cabinet. “Those guys deserved better. I mean, I know they attacked us and all, but still… it makes me wonder. How does a whole society exist like this?”
“Yeah, nothing’s quite adding up, is it?” I said, furrowing my brows together.
“No, it’s not,” Cindra murmured, shaking her head again.
I shrugged. “Either way, we should keep going. We can debrief about it later. Clem, did any of these apartments turn up anything of note when you went through them?”
“No,” Clem said, shaking his head. “Nothing. It’s like they weren’t even allowed to have their own possessions.”
I frowned. “Well, that tracks, doesn’t it? But what doesn’t track is how this all adds up. Anyway, I should take my own advice and think about it later. Let’s just keep going. You still see us on the map, Malthe?”
“Sure am,” he chirped over the communicator. “Can’t see exactly where you are since we don’t have the tunnels completely mapped out, but I’ve got a general idea. Good enough that if you need help, I can send it.”
“Good.” I turned to Clem as he opened up another door. “How much further to the debris, Clem?”
“Another hallway around this corner up here, and then we’re there.”
We followed Clem’s directions and opened every remaining door in that hallway and the next one with no real results. Still, we got a pretty good idea of how Achilles’s workers lived, and it wasn’t great. The whole thing just bugged me, and questions kept nagging at me as we slogged on and on. But I did my best to push them out of my mind. I’d sort through my thoughts later.
When we turned a second corner in the last hallway, we ran into a giant pile of debris in a collapsed tunnel. Right smack dab in the middle of the cave-in was a large pipe, and the ground was kind of wet, the air mildewy, which meant that it was probably a water pipe. While large, it would be a tight squeeze for most of us, and even a cursory examination showed me that it was partly collapsed itself.
“From what we can figure, this is from that big battle we had with the conglomerate binders in front of headquarters,” Clem said. “It was a huge fight, and shit was going down all over the place. It even reached all the way back here.”
“Where are we right now, exactly?” I asked him. “What’s going on above us?”
“We’re about four or five blocks north of the Parliament building,” he said.
I shook my head. “Damn, the battle reached that far?” That day, that whole week was such a blur. It was hard to sort out what I remembered and what actually happened.
“I guess it must’ve.” Clem shrugged. “I don’t remember much from that day, honestly, so much was going on all over the place.”
“Footage shows drone warfare going on pretty much everywhere that day, all day,” Malthe told me. “It was pretty crazy. The financial district, the foxgirl slums, and surrounding areas by the docks got hit the hardest obviously since that’s right where the battles were. But stuff was going on everywhere.”
“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “I really have been focused on Achilles, haven’t I?”
“As you should have been,” Semra said sharply. “He’s the most important thing as evidenced by what’s going on right now all over the city. It’s completely shut down over one man.”
“At least he’s an actually dangerous man.” Cindra shrugged. “Beats when the whole city shut down over little old me.”
“That was something, wasn’t it?” I laughed, then I took another look at the wreckage in front of us. “So, how’re we getting through this shit?”
“Good question,” Clem said, narrowing his eyes at it. “I was thinking Kira?”
“Me?” Kira asked with a cute little yelp.
“You can’t be serious,” Semra said, her voice flat.
Cindra crossed her muscular arms and leveled a serious gaze at Clem. “Why?”
“Well, she’s the smallest of us,” Clem said. “And see that pipe there? No one’s been able to fit through there, and while we might be able to cut it into chunks or blow it away, we’re afraid it will just lead to a further, larger collapse.”
That’s when I saw what he was driving at. “But Kira might just be able to fit through.”
“So you want me,” Kira said slowly, pointing at herself, “to climb through there.” She pointed at the pipe then, her hands dangling in the air haphazardly, her eyes wide with fear.
I stepped up next to her, placing a hand gently on the small of her back. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“Could it work?” she asked, her voice starting to shake a bit again.
“It might,” I said, giving the wreckage another look. If she could just slip right in there…. but no, it was too dangerous.
And right when I had that thought, a giant slab of concrete plummeted down into the already large pile of other debris. Kira and I both flinched noticeably, and the surrounding wreckage creaked and groaned.
“No way.” Kinley shook her head vigorously, her tone sharp. “There’s no fucking way she’s going in there. I’ll do it. I’m the second smallest.”
Kira gave a long, shallow sigh. “Yes, Kinley, but I’m still significantly smaller than you are.” As she talked, her still wide eyes never left the wreckage. “I don’t want to do it any more than you wan
t me to do it, but I don’t see how there’s any other option.”
“We could just turn back!” Kinley cried, pointing with both her arms back the way we came, her muscles all tensed up. “It’s not worth it. And if you couldn’t get through, how could Achilles? He’s fucking huge.”
“He might have another way,” Clem rightly pointed out. “We don’t know as much about the tunnels yet as we should. Even if he’s not in there, we might find something important that leads us to him.”
“Okay,” Kira said, nodding quickly and shifting nervously on her feet. “Okay. I can do this. Let’s go.”
“Okay…” My voice trailed off as I watched her in concern.
“You were with me every step of the way on the way down, right?” she asked, looking between me, the pipe, and back again. “It’s the same with this, too. It’ll just be a bit… trickier, is all.”
“If you’re sure…” I said, my voice trailing off again. When I felt the resolution in Kira’s heart through the nerves, I shook my head to clear it. “Okay, you’re sure. I’ll be with you every step of the way.” I reached down and squeezed her hand. It was sweaty… or mine was, I couldn’t really tell. Maybe both.
“I’m ready,” Kira said with as much sureness as she could muster. “What should I do?”
“Just try to slip in through the crack under the pipe,” Clem said, pointing to indicate where he was talking about.
Kira leaned forward and peered closely so she could see what he was looking at. “Down there?” she asked, her voice squeaking.
I nodded. It was a very small opening, and only Kira amongst us could even try.
“Yes,” I continued. “Do you think you can do that?”
She nodded and answered, her voice coming out a little steadier and lower this time, “Yes. I mean, I’ll try my best.”
“You’ll damn well do it, or you’ll come straight back if you can’t,” Kinley said stubbornly. “You won’t get stuck under there, you hear me?”
“Yes,” Kira said with all certainty. “I’ll do it or come straight back, okay.”
“And you’re going to need to go as fast as you can,” Clem said. “No hesitating. The ceiling or whatever it is could crack at any moment, as you already saw.”
She nodded one final time and stepped forward.
“You’d better not let her get hurt,” Kinley growled in my ear.
“I’ll be with her every step of the way,” I recited, more to reassure myself than anyone else. With that, I closed my eyes and concentrated on Kira, her spirit, her light, her determination. I did everything I could to get as firm a grip on her situation as I could. But I wasn’t as small as she was. My guess was only a little better than hers. She’d need more than just my help to get through this properly.
“What should I do when I’m on the other side?” she asked, looking back at us.
“Here, take this,” Clem said, pulling a small, cylindrical object out of his tool belt and handing it to her. “It’s a laser. We avoided using them before, as a misaimed beam could destabilize the whole operation with how messed up it is down here right now. There’s a door on the other side leading to the room we want to see inside.”
“That’s right, binder, just put all that pressure on her,” Kinley said, her arms crossed and her voice dripping with sarcasm as she peered down her nose at Clem. “See how well that goes. Go ahead.”
“I don’t mean to psych you out,” Clem said sympathetically, speaking to Kira instead of Kinley. “Just to tell you what could happen.”
“No, I understand,” she said, shaking her head and taking the laser from him. “I want to know, but you couldn’t get the locksmith in there to do the key, so I’ll need the laser for any doors on the other side. I get it.”
“Exactly,” Clem said, giving her a warm smile. “So I need you to try it. The good thing is you’re small. You don’t need as much of an opening. You could even try to cut a small one and unlock it from the other side.”
“All right,” she said. “I think I’m ready. Can I go now?”
Clem and I both nodded, and just like that, she charged forward. I jerked my head up, surprised by the quickness of her movements. But then again, that was what Clem had asked her to do, and she was part fox, after all. It was too bad Cindra, the strongest foxgirl, wasn’t also the smallest and the fastest.
But here we were.
That thought jarred me for a moment, and I lost track of Kira’s spirit. It only took a moment to latched back on to her, though. She was scared, I could tell, but she was also determined. And was there also a hint of… exhilaration? Like she was enjoying herself, relishing the adrenaline rush. I smiled to myself. We were more alike than I gave her credit for, it seemed.
With my help, guiding her over the obstacles I could see, and her own dexterity around the ones that she could see, Kira made it to the pipe without incident.
I grinned, and Kinley pumped her fist in the air.
“Yeah,” she screamed, and then clamped a hand over her mouth, remembering that we had to stay quiet. “Sorry.”
“Okay, Kira, now just try to get under the pipe,” Clem instructed. “Quickly. Really, really quickly. There’s no time to spare, here.”
“Got it,” she said, and I saw the back of her head bob like she was nodding. As she stepped closer to the pipe, my pulse quickened, and I felt and even heard my heart pounding in my chest. I didn’t want anything to happen to her. I couldn’t let anything happen to her.
But soon, she disappeared down the other side of the pipe.
“I can’t see her,” Kinley said, more than a little panicked. “I can’t see her anymore. Why can’t I see her?” She bounced up and down, stepping back and forth and from side to side, trying to get a glimpse of her closest friend.
“It’s okay,” I said, taking hold of her elbow to settle her down. “She’s okay. I can feel it. She’s on the other side and making her way to the door.” We heard some rustling noises as Kira scurried as fast as she could over the remaining debris.
There was a very long, agonizing moment of silence. Then, Kira’s small, beautiful voice carried back to us over the debris, and somehow my heart pounded even harder in my chest at the sound of it, more with relief than anything else.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here. I made it. I’m going to use the laser thing now.”
“Okay, just make sure you point it in the right direction,” Clem said, laughing a bit nervously.
Kinley’s eyes widened as she bristled. “Did you tell her which side is the right one?”
“I’m not an idiot, Kinley, I know which side it is,” Kira said, and I smiled. “I’m just waiting for my hands to stop shaking first.”
“Probably a good idea,” I called back to her, exchanging a look with Clem.
“What’s going on down there? Is she okay?” Malthe asked in my ear. “I can kind of hear someone talking in the background, but I can’t make much of it out.”
“Yeah, she’s okay,” I began, but I didn’t want to jinx it., “For now. She’s gonna be fine. She’s working on the laser part now.”
“Make sure she doesn’t take off her own hand,” Malthe said, in a tone that was only half-joking.
“Yeah, we just about covered that already,” I said flatly, giving both Kinley and Clem another sharp look. Their bickering did not help diffuse the tension in the whole situation.
“Okay, I think I’m going to give it a try now,” Kira called back, her voice shaking a bit again but still steadier than it was. She would be okay. I could feel that she was still nervous, but a cool sense of calm was washing over her. That happened to me sometimes, too, when I was in a particularly tense situation. At a certain point, the adrenaline kicked in, and instinct just took over. Kira had good instincts, if nothing else.
“Excellent,” Clem said. “Just make it as small a cut as you can manage.”
I heard a clunking noise, and my whole body tensed up.
“What’s going
on?” Kinley asked sharply. “Kira, what’s going on? Talk to us?”
“It’s just the door,” she managed, her voice strained. “More of it came off than I thought it would. But it’s fine, it’s fine. I’ve got it.” I could feel her pulse quickening and the panic starting to set in again, overriding that calmness she’d had just a moment before.
“Don’t strain yourself,” I called out to her then cast another look at Clem and Kinley. “Don’t talk to us if you don’t have to, just deal with the situation.”
Though I couldn’t see what was going on, I could get a general sensation of her surroundings and motions. With that information, I did my best to help guide her as she moved the piece of the door gingerly back to where she wanted it to be.
“Okay, I think I’ve got it,” she called back after another agonizing silence.
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the whole place to cave in all over again. But it didn’t.
There was another clunking noise, slightly softer this time, and I visibly flinched this time.
“What’s going on, Kira?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“I’m in!” she said, and I could both feel and hear her excitement. “I’m--” But then her voice came to an abrupt halt. The silence was deafening.
I exchanged yet another look with Kinley, this one panicked. I had visions that somehow, Clem’s horrible theory had been true, and Achilles had found some way inside this area, waiting for Kira.
“Fuck,” Kinley cursed, kicking the ground. Worry clutched at my spine. Clem and Semra both froze and stared open-mouthed at the wreckage, waiting for news from Kira, waiting for her to speak again.
“What? What’s going on?” an equally panicked Malthe kept asking in my ear. “Keep me in the loop, Nic!”
“Kira, are you okay?” Cindra asked, coming to the rescue and not for the first time. “Give us a sign of life here!”
“I… I’m okay,” she stammered. “I’m okay. It’s just… I’m… it’s so strange…”