The Sunken City Trilogy

by Phil Williams

  “The bullet was a millimetre wide.”

  Pax tried to picture her wall, back home. The bullet hole. How big had that been? The window was hardly shattered, it was definitely possible it had been a tiny shot. Her thoughts were interrupted when she noticed how Barton’s face had fallen. She hovered a hand over his for a second, not sure if this was the appropriate move. She braced herself and took the plunge – placed that hand on top of his. He didn’t react. She was left unsure, and after a consolatory pat she took the hand back. She said, quietly, “Thank you, Darren. I know it’s not easy.”

  “I’ve got a daughter,” he replied. Pax hummed appreciation. It was explanation enough. He turned his sad dog eyes to her. “I prayed Rufaizu had escaped it all, and ended up in a normal city, with a good life. But wherever he’s been, he’s stepped right back into his dad’s footsteps. Maybe it’s a blessing the Ministry took him, though. That’s what I’m telling myself. If they lock him away, at least they’ll keep him from getting hurt.”

  Pax nodded, for his sake, but she knew it was nonsense. There were at least two sides to this thing, and if Rufaizu had picked up where his father left off, then he was in danger from both of them.

  3

  Letty woke with a dull pain in her back, face buried in material. She pushed herself up with a groan and felt behind her for the source of the pain. The groan turned to cursing when she felt the uneven stump where her wing was supposed to be. She blinked a few times to clear her eyes. It didn’t help. The shards of light coming through the holes in the wall barely lit the room. With effort, she moved off the soft bedding, getting momentarily tangled in its folds, and kicked back at it as she broke free. The ground felt soft. Card. The walls, she now saw, looking at the holes, were card too.

  There was good news and bad news, she decided. Somehow, the Ministry hadn’t got her. They wouldn’t have put her in a shoebox. The bad news was that she didn’t know where the fuck she was.

  She strained to see anything through one of the holes. The box was near a wall. In a closet, perhaps, barely lit outside. She tugged the hole; the card was thick, too strong to rip. Cursing again, she checked the rest of her surroundings.

  A small thimble of water. That might work.

  She threw the water at the card around one of the holes. It soaked in, a splatter perhaps an inch wide, and she tried to get a fresh grip on the soggy surface. It wasn’t enough – the card held firm. She looked at the thimble and considered her other options. She needed a piss, but if that didn’t work she’d be stuck in here with the stench of urine.

  Huffing, Letty threw the thimble down and looked to the ceiling. The lid. Way out of reach and probably hard to shift. She tried her remaining wing, which flapped, still functioning, but when she tried to fly it spun her out, like stumbling on a bad leg. She hit the wall and rested. Cursed one more time.

  Pax resisted the urge to give Barton a hug when they parted ways. The large man spoke with great sadness, and looked at her with such kindness, that she felt an affinity towards him. She could tell by the way he talked that he had lost a dear friend in Apothel and he missed going into what he’d called the Sunken City. But she could also see that he had forcibly put it behind him. The rest of the answers lay with Rufaizu or the Blue Angel. He was done.

  The address he had given her for one of these blue screens was on her way home, but she didn’t feel ready to engage with that weirdness. If the thing was even still active. Barton and his friends might have drunkenly trusted the anonymous stranger’s wall messages, but it hardly sounded like the best contact to her, and the last thing she needed was a third (or fourth? she was losing count) party mixing up matters. Besides, she already had a potentially better source of information in her apartment.

  Wary of using the Underground, she rode the bus home, a journey that took twice as long but gave her a rare glimpse of the city during the day. People dressed for the weekend, dipping in and out of shops with bags of junk. Pub tables overflowing into the streets, even this early, with young people laughing over pints. Market stalls with loud vendors offering deals on bananas. She reached her flat with the feeling that she wasn’t missing much. Ordshaw was still a vacuous hole of pointless lives, like everywhere else, but it was her vacuous hole, all the same. And she liked to believe that she wasn’t the only one here who’d step up and do something if they discovered an intangible minotaur was draining the city’s energy, or that demonic creatures threatened to rise to the surface if left unchecked.

  She returned to the apartment, scanning the surrounding windows. There was no one watching her. It was safe, it had to be. She climbed the stairs, entered her flat and went to the curtains. She stopped there with her hands on the material.

  Maybe it was better not to tempt fate.

  Leaving the curtains drawn, she went to the cupboard instead. With her hands on the doors, she told herself things were about to get better. She had Apothel’s book, and possibly the thing he’d been killed for. She hadn’t heard from Casaria today, so he was giving her space. Rufaizu was taken in because he knew about this device, not for knowing about the Sunken City itself, so Pax wasn’t necessarily in danger from the Ministry, as long as Casaria thought he was in control of what she learnt. She had enough money to repair the window, as icing on the cake. There was every chance the only serious threat in this whole affair was trapped in that shoebox.

  All considered, she was ready to take control.

  Letty stirred at the sound of a door slamming. The box shook with the thumps of footfalls. A female sigh. Letty pictured it: a bedroom, a closet.

  No prizes for figuring out where she was now.

  With the girl not approaching, Letty quickly became impatient. She shouted, “Hey! How about some water! You fucking lummox!”

  It took a few more shouts before the footfalls came tentatively closer. Letty got louder, roaring, “Yeah, get down here you giant fucker, I got something for you!”

  The cupboard creaked open, and the floorboards flexed as the girl crouched in front of the box. The shoebox walls relaxed from a strain, puffing out as a weight was removed from above. Then stillness, as the girl hesitated.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” Letty shouted. “The dumpy tomboy?”

  “You the one who acts tough on the phone?” Pax’s voice rumbled through the shoebox.

  “Open up and I’ll show you an act!”

  “You’ve lost a wing,” Pax reminded her. “I’ve got your gun. And you’re two inches tall. What are you going to do?”

  “Fuck you up!” Letty snapped.

  The ceiling creaked as a weight rested on it. The girl’s hand, staying there a moment, not sure what to do. Letty crouched in preparation.

  “Don’t try anything, okay?” Pax said. “I want to talk.”

  The lid opened, slowly, light pouring in, and Letty shot up for the gap. Her single wing was not enough. It buzzed and spun her out, sending her rolling across the floor, unable to steer, let alone fly. She buzzed it again, flapping from one side to another, as the lid was completely removed and Pax stared down at her. Letty came to a halt, punching both fists into the floor with an angry shout. She sat up and swore at the top of her voice.

  “It wasn’t me,” Pax told her. “Before you start.”

  Letty looked up at her hatefully. Her giant captor’s face filled the sky, dark hair brushed back over her shoulder to stop it falling in the way. Letty held up a hand, extended her middle finger. Pax’s expression remained blank. She sat back slightly, then her hand descended into the box. Letty rolled aside, yelling, “Oh hell no!”, and she tried to crawl away. There was nowhere to go, and no time to get there. Enormous fingers fell around her and as she lunged to escape Pax rolled her into a fist. Feeling the ascent in her gut, Letty kept fighting as the grip tightened.

  Pax sat back onto her heels, bringing her hand up in front of her as the fairy used her last remaining weapon, clamping her teeth down onto an exposed bit of flesh. Pax flinched and opened her hand
. Letty dropped and started flapping the wing again. She spiralled gracelessly to the floor, hitting the carpet hard and bouncing. Winded, she saw the shadow of the hand descending again and tried to run. Pax closed her thumb and forefinger over her waist and lifted her back up, kicking and screaming.

  Letty thrashed violently, but she could no longer get the angle to do any damage. Pax held her in front of her face, staring with fascination, as Letty swung fists in the direction of her nose and demanded, “Put me down, you prick! You’ve got no idea the pain you’re gonna be in!”

  “Right,” Pax answered. “You need to stop. Calm down.”

  “Go to hell! You want calm? I’ll rip out your heart, show you calm when that stops beating!”

  “Jesus,” Pax said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Where’s my gun? Where’s my fucking gun?”

  Letty continued to thrash, searching the room for a weapon, even with no chance of reaching one. Pax’s apartment was untidy, books across the floor and on the shelves, clothing on the floor. There it was – the pistol barely visible on top of a wooden crate that passed for a bedside table. Pax saw the fairy spy it and lifted her to the side, drawing her attention back to her face.

  “You’re not getting it,” Pax told her. “And you’re not going anywhere till we talk.”

  Letty slumped, at last, energy spent, arms and legs hanging loosely from Pax’s grip. She used her last reserves to look furiously into Pax’s eye.

  “Put me down,” Letty said, calmer. “And I’ll maybe go easier on you.”

  Pax twisted on the floor, turning to the bed and sweeping Letty through the air with her. She lowered the fairy onto the bed and let her go. Letty fell onto the duvet with a huff, stood up and patted her clothes down to remove the filth of Pax’s grip. She was a long distance from the end of the bed where the pistol was, and there was a big jump if she was going to get it. But fuck it, why not.

  Letty sprinted headlong into Pax’s palm. She fell back on her arse and rolled aside, tried again, moving to skirt the hand that had fallen in front of her. The hand shifted in an instant and blocked her again, this time joined by the other hand, cupping over her like a dome. Letty punched at Pax, shouting in frustration, but it was no use.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  Letty roared.

  4

  Cano Casaria had had a long night. His arm needed stitches, his hand was bandaged and painful to use, and the Roma boy was barely clinging to life. He was angry at himself for not having slaughtered all his attackers and that made waiting in the Ministry infirmary harder. He was in no mood to be confronted by two fellow agents this early in the morning. Landon was a portly man who looked like he spent more time eating than breathing. Wisps of grey hair highlighted the unkempt black mop on his head, and the bags under his eyes had folded into bags of their own. The other man was slighter, younger, with patchwork facial hair and pale, blotchy skin that had seen little sun. He wore a leather jacket and a shirt; Landon, a suit, faded, loose around the shoulders and tight at the belly, probably from a charity store. In their own unique ways, the pair of them had tried and failed to comprehend the concept of respectable clothes.

  These were the sort of people that gave field agents a bad name. Though Landon had been with the Ministry for decades, Casaria had reached the same level within a year of arriving in Ordshaw. This leather-jacket whelp was Landon’s protégé. And they were Casaria’s supposed backup.

  “Got word from Deputy Director Mathers,” Landon said. “You’re to stay put, keep an eye on the boy.”

  “If he needs babysitting, that’s a job for you,” Casaria said. “I’ve got real work to do.”

  “He said you’d say that,” Landon replied blandly. “And said to tell you that’s why you need to stay here and keep watch.”

  Casaria imagined Mathers saying it. Another dry husk in this vast bureaucratic machine.

  “We’ve got our best people looking for the suspects,” the younger man said. He’d introduced himself earlier. Gum, Gung, Gong maybe? Casaria actively tried to forget his name and gave him the least favourable option.

  “The Ministry’s best people, Gumg,” Casaria replied, “are clerks who skim online databases all day. Not fighters. Not me.”

  “The decision’s been made,” Landon said. “You’re grounded.”

  “They shot at me,” Casaria said, standing and wincing as the pain from his shoulder cut through him. He closed his eyes and swallowed. “The Fae are dangerous. We need to act.”

  He hated himself for letting them get the drop on him. He hated himself for letting the prisoner get hurt and he hated himself for letting them get away. He was fairly sure he had hurt at least one of the monsters, but they hadn’t confirmed a single kill.

  “What were you doing there, Cano? Your IO-3 was still pending.”

  Casaria cringed at the mention of the permission slip required to interrogate their prisoner. “Call it a hunch. I thought Rufaizu might have friends looking for him and I wanted to check everything was okay. Rightly so, considering what I found.”

  They didn’t need to know about Pax. Definitely not that he had taken her there to ease her nerves. Looking at these two made him all the more confident that he needed to persist with her. Amateurs and sociopaths, the lot of them. Whatever else had come of the abortive evening, it had felt good to let himself believe, even for a short while, that someone as bright and normal as her might join him. Someone he could talk to without wanting to shoot his own brains out. Someone who wouldn’t gravitate naturally to hiding in this office following the whims of stuffy Mathers.

  But Pax was hesitant. And possibly crazy. And the Roma boy had got to her, somehow, without Casaria realising. His gut still said she knew more than she’d let on. Casaria asked Landon, “Is it possible Apothel spoke to people we don’t know about?”

  Landon gave Casaria a disapproving look, then shook his head as slowly as humanly possible. He said, “This was the Fae, and we are on it. You need to stay here, okay?”

  The younger man chimed in, in some twisted way hoping to lighten the tension. “I’m sure we’ll find a peaceful resolution to all this.”

  Casaria locked on him, and told him sincerely, “I don’t like you.”

  Gumg’s face fell and Landon stepped in front of him. The big guy said, “Take a break, Cano. You obviously need it.”

  “Shove it up your arse, Landon,” Casaria replied frankly. “I think you need that.”

  Landon chose not to respond, and led Gumg away. Casaria watched them go and looked up at the security cameras. If he so much as stepped out for a cigarette he’d probably get a call from Mathers.

  It was three hours before the doctors announced that Rufaizu was stable, another hour before Casaria got a call from Landon saying he was being relieved and it was time to go home. Preliminary reports from the Fae Transitional City were saying that the attack had not been sanctioned. It was a group of rogue Fae, acting without orders. It was unclear what they wanted; the Ministry’s Fae contacts denied all knowledge of the group. Casaria left the building sullenly. Just the thought that the Ministry had Fae contacts made him miserable. His initial passion had waned, though, replaced by nagging anger at the thought that Deputy Director Mathers had deliberately trapped him there to cool him off. Had Mathers consulted with Sam Ward on that? It was the sort of dirty trick she would endorse. The sort of information and suggestions she’d fed them in her field reports.

  Cowards. We don’t need cool. We need results.

  The Fae would deny it, of course. And the Ministry would buy their denial. The cowards in charge would use any excuse not to get into a fight with the FTC. A few lightning balls and a canister of gas and they could exterminate the lot of them, if they were only willing to commit. The inactivity made Casaria sick. As he told them, again and again. But there were fears that the fairies had devastation technology, comparable to nuclear warheads, which no one had ever proven.

  It was n
early 8am when he got out of the infirmary, making it too late for his usual recreations. He would have to wait to properly vent his frustrations. Instead, he drove for hours staring at the city, his monitor checking for any hint of the Fae. It was fruitless, though; the insects knew well enough how to avoid people like him. Finally, he went home and sat in the car, hands clenched over the steering wheel as he stared at the parking garage wall.

  He considered calling Pax.

  The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that she had actually swallowed that bug. He wanted to believe it. It meant she’d be willing to do whatever it took to get this job done. That she was better than sane. She was like him.

  He could imagine the pair of them hunting together. He’d make a comment and she’d reply with something witty. Funny. He wouldn’t laugh at first; he’d say they had a job to do. But it would lighten the mood. Make it enjoyable, as it should be. After they tracked and killed some fiend, he would take her to a cocktail bar and they’d share stories about their misshapen backgrounds. How he’d been too busy staying up at nights to ace his exams, though he knew he could’ve, and how he’d been asked to leave Southampton Uni after hurting that yuppie who’d made fun of his mother. He hadn’t wanted to be there anyway; who ever changed the world after graduating from Southampton? Maybe he could open up to Pax about school, too, and how he played trumpet. She’d joke, sarcastically, but deep down she’d understand.

  Maybe their hands would touch over the table.

  Not straight away. They’d be very professional, they’d make an excellent team, and raise the whole standard of the Ministry. He’d put her off, because he could do better.

  But eventually she’d wear him down.

  Their hands would touch and she’d tell him everything was okay.

  He was okay.

  Casaria did not smile at his imagined future. He picked up the phone to make it happen. He caught himself and stopped. This was wrong.