by M. E. Thorne
Copyright © 2020 M.E. Thorne
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Wolfgang Nolt
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Copyright
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Afterward
Author’s Note
I imagine 2020 has been a crazy, hard year for a lot of us. After losing my job, I decided to take the leap and pursue my dream of being an author. This book represents a lot of hard work, sleepless nights, and long days in the word-mines.
I am very proud of how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it too! Even if you don’t get to the end of the adventure, if you liked my writing, please leave a positive review! Every bit helps me get established, and that means this dream can go on a little bit longer!
If you join my Facebook page or sign up for my newsletter, you’ll get updates as the series progresses, early chapter samples, and notifications when a new entry in the El Finito series becomes available!
Chapter 1
“It’s one more level down, I think." I brought up my tablet and double-checked the digital map.
We walked down the stairwell. Pausing by the bottom step, I took a moment to spray paint a glyph to mark the way we’d come.
“We better be done soon, Locke,” complained Gnasher as she leaped to an overhead pipe. “We’ve been down here all day, and my hair is starting to smell like mildew. I want to get a shower when we get done. A nice, hot one.”
“Unless we find something good,” I shook our empty bags, “we’re not going to have enough for even cold showers.”
I swung my sniffer around, making sure the hallway in front of us was safe. The scout who had been through the area earlier, Robert, had done his checks, but I wanted to be sure. In my mind, it was always better to be safe than sorry.
The sniffer indicated there were no gas leaks, radioactive fallout, or other hidden dangers ahead of us. I also didn’t see any damaged walls or weakened, sagging floors that could signal potential cave-ins.
“Clear,” I called. “Think it’s this way.”
Gnasher went first, climbing along the pipes. She was fast, nimble, and unlike me, she could see perfectly fine in the dark. In the event of structural collapse or an accident, she'd be much more likely than me to escape harm. Having her scout ahead had been our standard operating procedure since we’d started working together several months prior.
“Clear,” she called once she’d reached the end of the hall. “Think I found what Robert wanted us to check out. There’s a big-ass door.”
Hitching up the empty bags, I went and joined her, passing several side rooms that had fallen in on themselves, their doorways blocked by debris.
The hallway itself was mostly free of rubble and was easy to traverse. We were hundreds of stories down in The Stacks, so the area we were scavenging had escaped the Corporation War without complete destruction.
More promising, there weren’t any signs that another delver team or a freelance scavenger group had been there ahead of us. Outside of Robert’s footprints, there were no dust trails or errant graffiti marks on the walls.
The upper floors of The Stacks had been destroyed during the war, pulverized by heavy bombing, and the levels below them had collapsed and pancaked down onto one another. Navigation through them often involved crawling, climbing, and taking dangerous detours through ruins and rubble.
You only found clear, stable areas very deep in The Stacks. And these places tended to have the best loot.
I looked over the scout’s mark, which had been drawn on the concrete wall with white spray paint and a stencil. “Yeah, this is from Robert,” I used my lantern to highlight his ID number, which had been worked into the glyph.
Next to it was a large, secure, metal door, the only one left standing on that level. It featured thick, reinforced panels, recessed hinges, and a biometrics scanner built into the frame.
The damn thing has probably been locked tight for the last hundred years, I thought as I inspected it.
Gnasher coiled atop a nearby ventilation unit, her tail swishing back and forth. “You think you can get it open?”
I gave her a smile and a thumbs up. Without a word, I pulled out my tools, set down my lantern, and began to work.
The door was secured via the biometric panel. I removed the cover and checked its wiring.
The circuits are a fried mess, I noted as I poked around. No great surprise there. Even if there was power down here, it wouldn’t do me a lick of good.
I glanced over at the locking mechanism but discounted that as well. The whole thing is constructed out of thick, alloyed steel. I couldn’t take it apart with anything less than a plasma cutter. Even then, it’d take me at least a month to just cut open the housing. The bolts would be even worse.
“Stuck?” Gnasher joked from her perch.
“I haven’t even started." I countered, running a hand around the door frame.
Embarrassing myself in front of Gnasher was not an option. I loved my girlfriend, but she could be a merciless tease sometimes.
There’s some rust and corrosion along the surface, I observed, but not enough for me to exploit. The hinges are recessed, so can’t just knock them out or blow them off. But maybe I can work a saw into the crack between the door and the frame and try and cut through them instead?
Pulling out a repeating saw, I sorted through the various blades available. One of the things I loved about being in the Delvers’ Guild was that I always had the tools I needed for any job.
Gnasher, never one to stay still for long, leaped down and hunched on her knees as she sat next to me. Her tail rhythmically thumped into my back. “What do you think is behind here?”
“No clue,” I answered.
I knew it did us no good to daydream about the contents of a room before we even knew if we could get inside.
“There’s no directory or registry for this area of The Stacks. Nobody even knows who owned what before the bombs started dropping. Could have been a major technology firm, could have been an accountant renting office space.”
I hammered a wedge into the gap, giving myself a tiny opening to work with before I slotted in my thinnest blade.
Gnasher unclipped her tablet from her chest. When we were on the job, the back panel lit up and acted as a badge, identifying us as members of the Delvers’ Guild and displaying our State ID number. Everyone who lived in the Metrocomplex had one, courtesy of the State. It contained every app its citizens needed to perform their jobs. It also had software to track our location and record our general health.
As long as you were in range, the State could use it to monitor you and make
sure you were safe.
It vaguely reminded me of an ancient, bootleg movie I’d seen a while back, called 1984. The ability to find anyone if they were in danger was great, but I felt less than enthused about the rest of the monitoring tools. Privacy was not one of the State’s top considerations.
“Robert did some scanning,” Gnasher held up the screen of her tablet. “Looks like there’s a decent-sized room behind that door, but there is at least a meter of concrete in the way.”
“Probably why this room survived when its neighbors didn’t,” I grunted, working the blade into the gap. “The walls around it were too damn thick.”
Gnasher twitched one of her tufted ears, then turned her head. “I think I heard something." Her ear flicked again. “I’m going to check it out.”
“Stay in comm range,” I said. “When I break in, I’ll ping you. If you find something scary, try and let me know before it sneaks up and eats me.”
Comm range between tablets was short within the depths of The Stacks; with the thick walls, metal pipes, and the occasional, still functional power conduits, you could quickly find yourself being unable to locate or talk to your partner. Even the State couldn’t track a delver when they were far out in the field.
Gnasher gave me a wink, then loped off into the dark.
Maybe she’s hunting a rat or something, I thought as I turned on the battery-powered saw. The food budget has been a bit tight this month, and she always says a big tasty rat is way better than eating a ration bar. I’ll just have to remind her to brush her teeth when we get back home.
The first saw blade snapped almost immediately, pinched by the tight seam. The second one made a few shallow cuts but broke in less than a minute. Cursing, I stopped to think about my options.
Explosives won’t do me any good here, I realized as I returned the small blasting charge to its protective case. I don’t have enough to breach the door or the walls.
I tried a few drops of various corrosives and acids on the doorframe, but none of them left a significant mark.
Jamming a crowbar into the concrete seam between the frame and the wall, I tried to see if I could force a gap that way. But all I got for that effort was a slightly bent crowbar and some new blisters on my hands.
Feeling frustrated, I began to pace.
Pacing was my way of dealing with anxiety. Gnasher joked she could always tell when I had a bad day by the number of holes I’d worn into my socks.
I walked up and down the hall, listening to the distant sound of dripping water and the walls groaning under the unbearable weight of the ruined world above my head. Small, chilly gusts of air occasionally blew by, carrying the smell of dust and ancient rot.
My introspective quiet was broken by a rat screeching.
Well, at least Gnasher is eating well tonight, I thought sourly.
I resisted the urge to simply kick the door as hard as I could.
Walking back towards the stairwell, I pulled off my tablet and tilted it back and forth, looking at the scans Robert had made.
The Stacks were composed of hundreds of millions of kilometers of hallways, tunnels, atriums, and chambers. Not a single square meter of El Finito’s original surface remained exposed or unexploited. The corporations’ skyscrapers, factories, and offices had bunched up so tightly together that they had eventually merged into one, singular superstructure.
The planet had become a giant labyrinth, one full of treasure and danger after the war.
Robert was a scout employed by the Delvers’ Guild. Scouts were tasked with mapping and exploring The Stacks, searching for areas of potential treasure or trouble. They’d mark claims and highlight areas they felt were worth further investigation. They’d get a cut of anything a delver team, like me and Gnasher, retrieved from the area. Supplies, technology, manufactured goods, data, and records; it was all fair game.
Pacing back to the stairs, I looked to the left and saw there was a narrow service passage, little more than a meter-square shaft. The scans indicated it hadn’t collapsed as the nearby rooms had. It was meant for utility lines, plumbing, and network cabling. I checked the map one more time and had a eureka moment.
“Locke? Locke, where did you go?”
I wiggled around a bit, so I could look back down the passage. “Down here!”
A pair of tabby striped feet appeared at the mouth of the passage. Gnasher’s bemused face came into view a moment later. “What the hell are you doing in there?”
“Breaking into the room,” I answered as I squirmed back into position. “How was the rat?”
“Tasty,” she said without a hint of remorse. “It had six legs. I’m really going to need a shower after chasing that thing through an air vent.”
“Why not just lick yourself clean,” I joked.
She kicked one of the nearby pipes, sending the whole passage rattling.
“I swear I’m still hearing something around here. I’m going to keep looking,” she said. “You just be careful, okay?”
“If you find another rat, save it for me?” but she was already gone.
I was using my torch to cut through several water pipes, which by my best guess had fed into the rooms along that side of the hallway. Thankfully they were bone dry. Once cut apart, I shoved them back towards the hallway, giving me just enough space to slowly crawl towards the room we cared about.
Once close enough, I hacked away the remaining pipes and exposed the junction point where they had fed into the room. I then began attacking the hole left behind with my crowbar, hammer, and chisel.
It was a bit awkward, lying on my side while widening a hole only half a meter from my face, but I got it to work. Within thirty minutes, I had managed to enlarge it enough so that I could stick my head and arm through.
I wiggled halfway into a dim space. I checked it quickly with the sniffer, but everything came back clear. Bringing my lantern through, it only took me a glance to reveal I was in some sort of bathroom. There were white tiles, porcelain fixtures, and a mirror over a sink.
Not a vault full of gold, I realized. But hopefully, there will be enough loot to pay our rent and get us a decent dinner.
I widened the hole so I could get my shoulders through, then crawled inside.
Bouncing the light off the mirror, I took a moment to shake the concrete dust and grime out of my hair. I was slightly above average height, with a ropey, muscular build and close-cropped brown hair. I flashed my reflection a quick smile, I didn’t sport any of the fangs or mandibles like some other hybrids. I looked like a baseline human; no fur, claws, horns, or even a tail.
Doing a quick sweep of the bathroom, I found nothing of note. There was just a sink, shower, and toilet. The medicine cabinet behind the mirror contained nothing but a few empty and long-since expired pill bottles. Under the sink, there were just a few towels.
Walking out into the main room, I saw it was a small apartment suite; it featured cheap blue carpet and pale, tan wallpaper. I was happy to see there was a large flatscreen hanging on the one wall, a computer workstation against the other, and a small kitchenette with a tiled island across from me. The door at the back of the room led to a spartan bedroom. Inside was a double bed, a nightstand, and a smaller, wall-mounted display.
Back in the main room, I realized the only thing I needed to do from that side to unlock the door was to disengage the deadbolts via a knob. Swinging the door open revealed an impatient-looking Gnasher.
Like most hybrids she was shorter than me, standing only a bit over five feet. Tufts of calico-colored hair covered her bare arms and legs, which matched the wild mane that ran down her back. The furry, rounded ears that sat atop her head and the prehensile tail that swung behind her gave her the appearance of a woman crossed with a monkey and a cougar. Which is probably a pretty accurate description of a Jinx.