The Sunken City Trilogy

by Phil Williams

  Sam Ward approached with a forced smile. The sharp businesswoman looked oddly chipper, considering this success was balanced by a simultaneous catastrophe elsewhere. She tugged at the lapels of her suit jacket as she reached them, getting her ensemble in line, then held out a hand. Pax regarded it suspiciously. What the hell. She shook, and from Ward’s smile she’d at least made someone’s day. Pax caught Casaria watching unhappily from a distance, sat with Landon in the side door of one of the vans. He looked away when she met his eyes.

  “The city owes you a great debt,” Ward said. “And, I believe, an apology.”

  Pax knew there were a hundred smart responses on both accounts, but wasn’t in the mood. She simply said, “Yeah.”

  “I’ll see that it’s not forgotten. The Ministry won’t detain you or harm you. We’d like to do a full debrief, with you and the Bartons, that’s all.”

  “I have no idea where they are,” Pax said, doubting she’d tell her anyway. She hoped they were okay, but given the results of Lightgate’s conquest it was probably an unsafe bet. “But thanks.”

  “Citizen be fine,” Rufaizu murmured, tiredly. The doping and his previous wounds were catching up to him. “Nothing holds Barton down.”

  “I’m sure,” Ward said. “And you can trust me. Barton, Dr Rimes – they were left alone before, they will be now. Whatever you think of us, the MEE are reasonable.”

  Pax gave her a sceptical look, then nodded to Casaria and Landon. “How are they?”

  “They’ll be fine. With time. It’s a miracle you all got out of there unharmed.”

  Pax hummed. She’d replayed the event over in her mind and agreed. With the force of the attack, and direct strikes on Landon and Casaria, it was remarkable they’d survived. None of the blows had come close to harming her. Almost like it was deliberate. The thought that she’d been allowed to live was linked to the feeling that the energy she’d felt hadn’t been concentrated on the grugulochs itself. She wasn’t quite ready to face her conclusions.

  Ward cleared her throat and confided something of her own: “They’re all we’ve got left.”

  Pax frowned, studying the two imperfect agents. “What happened with the Fae?”

  “Hard to say,” Ward said. “We’ve got a ceasefire, but I don’t know how long it will last. Lives were lost on both sides and it’s unclear if either side’s attacks were retaliatory or officially sanctioned. Confusion alone is preventing worse from coming. But...eight men.” She swallowed. “Eight of ours died out there.”

  Casaria had said it on the way here. That was everyone. The whole Ordshaw street team wiped out. Which, for their faults, left Ordshaw vulnerable to whatever was left after the grugulochs. Everything under the city. It would also leave the Ministry poised for war, if this ceasefire didn’t deliver satisfactory answers.

  “We managed to trace your friend’s phone, by the way.”

  Pax’s surprise turned to worry as she noticed Ward’s uneasy tone. “And?”

  “She was there when our people arrived at the FTC. It doesn’t look good.”

  Pax didn’t respond. Had they hurt her? “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “We couldn’t pinpoint the phone, exactly, and didn’t find her, but...”

  “How would you, she’s the size of a matchbox,” Pax said.

  “If she was the one –”

  “She’s not the fucking one,” Pax snapped. “I told you it was Lightgate, all Lightgate. No way Letty would’ve gone along with whatever happened out there. This” – she waved towards the church – “this is thanks to Letty. It would’ve been over years ago if people hadn’t kept screwing her around. Jesus.”

  “Gonna be okay,” Rufaizu said, quietly, a gentle hand patting Pax’s. “She’s gonna be okay.” His smile was disarming.

  Pax told Ward, “Find her and keep her safe. Promise me that.”

  Ward nodded. “I will, I promise. There’s something else, to start. We ran a trace on the phone’s usage and got two numbers that tried to call it. One was a payphone in Broadplain. The one you used? The other we traced to a coffee shop in New Thornton. We haven’t tried it yet.”

  Pax stared. Would it link them to more Fae? “Can I have the number?”

  Ward glanced at her men milling about the church, concerned they might be watching. She gave a slight, conciliatory nod, with a whisper: “If I can listen.”

  Pax nodded back, and Ward took out her mobile. She brought up the number and hit dial before handing it to Pax, who held it between them, speaker chiming.

  “Reny’s Bean Barrel,” a young man answered.

  “We had a call from this number,” Pax said. “Someone –”

  “Right you are, I’ll get her.” The young man raised his voice. “Ma’am, someone returning your call!”

  Pax held Ward’s gaze as they waited for the caller to take the phone.

  “Letty?” Holly Barton’s voice came on hopefully. “Is everything okay? We did what we could, but after half an hour on that wretched train it was –”

  “Holly,” Pax said. “It’s me.”

  Holly skipped a beat, before replying with relief, “Thank heavens. You’re with Letty? Are you both safe? Should we –”

  “Holly,” Pax cut in. “I’m with the Ministry.”

  A slight, icy gasp.

  “It’s okay. I think...Are you all alright? Are any of you hurt?”

  “We’re fine. Of course. We fled that awful shopping centre but we couldn’t stand to be underground too long. Diz wasn’t the only one getting antsy about it – we came up for air and have been waiting here – what do you mean you’re with the Ministry?”

  “I found it,” Pax said. “The source of this energy. Kind of. They helped me, and they’re...look, things are winding down. It’s going to be okay. But – I’m not with Letty. What happened to her?”

  “I thought...” Holly slowed down, and her voice said this was bad news. “Have you been back to Broadplain?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Holly paused again, appreciating this meant Letty hadn’t been there. “She said the other one wanted to kill us. She stayed...to...well...where do you think she is?”

  Pax didn’t answer right away, wary of Sam Ward listening in. “We’ll find her, don’t worry. I’m going to sort everything out. Stay there for a bit, can you? I’ll finish up here and get back to you.”

  “Are you sure? Shouldn’t we keep moving –”

  “You’re safe,” Pax said. Even if the MEE had ill intentions towards the Bartons, they had no manpower left to do anything about it right now. “Wait for my call.”

  She ended the call and handed the phone back to Ward, whose concerned look suggested it had done some good for her to hear Holly’s voice. Now she appreciated they were real, normal people, all of them. Ward said, “We will find her. And things are going to change. This has brought the praelucente into question. The very figures that demonstrate its benefits might have been manipulated. The Sunken City itself will be reassessed. It’s a huge step and you will all be commended for your part in it.”

  “Listen,” Pax sighed, not meeting Ward’s eyes for this. It was time, wasn’t it? Her voice came out edgy with the truth. “There’s something you need to know and you’re not gonna like it. But before I tell you anything, I want assurances.”

  “As I said,” Ward replied slowly, “you’re safe. I guarantee it.”

  “I want more than that. Protection and damages for all of us. Him” – she patted Rufaizu – “especially. And that family, they deserve to go back to exactly the life they left four days ago – this was thrust on them, they’re nothing to do with it. And you have to make sure I’ve got a home to go back to. I want my money back and the rest of the money Casaria stole from me.”

  Ward frowned. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “So find out,” Pax sighed, thinking of all else she’d left behind. Where had she been that night Rufaizu first happened upon her? Her hopes for the next few day
s had been so much simpler. She said, “I want a ticket, too. Get me a ticket into the World Poker Tour. You can blatantly pull strings and I reckon I’ve earned that, at the very least.”

  The confusion on Ward’s face doubled, but she didn’t question it. “I’ll make it happen. But you’ll tell me everything, won’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Pax still hesitated. With the Bartons accounted for, and at least some assurances from the MEE, she needed to share her final suspicions, didn’t she? Everyone else could walk away, but she couldn’t, not with this weighing on her. She pointed at the church and said, “That thing in there, it wasn’t what we hoped it would be.”

  Ward took a moment. “The grugulochs was diverting novisan, wasn’t it?”

  “You should’ve seen that idiot monster. You wouldn’t believe something that dense could hide itself so well, playing everyone against each other.”

  “Well,” Ward said. She certainly wanted to believe it. “A chameleon doesn’t need intelligence to change colour, does it?”

  “You shouldn’t believe it.” Pax turned to Rufaizu. “What’d your dad tell you about the grugulochs?”

  “Huh?” Rufaizu’s face was caught between eagerness at being asked and uncertainty at the question. “Papa never said nothing.”

  “Never wrote it, either, did he?”

  “Not that I saw,” Rufaizu said.

  “You know why?”

  Rufaizu ventured, “Didn’t know it?”

  Ward’s deepening frown looked in danger of leaving permanent creases. She said, “It was in the book. The only word in the chapel –”

  “I never saw that word in Apothel’s book,” Pax said. “And it wasn’t Apothel that defaced the chapel, or left that word there. Here’s another one: you ever see a creature like we encountered in that chapel? That acid slug.”

  Ward shook her head.

  “No, and if you’d seen what I encountered getting some glo, you wouldn’t have recognised that either. I bet you no one” – Pax pointed to the church – “no one has seen that creature before.”

  “Blue Angel keeps hidden,” Rufaizu said, “that’s what he does best.”

  “The Blue Angel doesn’t exist,” Pax said. She let the pair of them stew on that for a moment. “Not in the sense we’ve been chasing. You’re right, though, hiding is definitely what it does best. What better way than this?”

  Their eyes all ran back to the church. Two men were carrying some big lump wrapped in black plastic between them, part of the monster for studying.

  Pax explained, “I think I sensed it before we got here. It was too easy, us finding the creature like this. I hoped it was that the Angel got cocky, or sloppy. But when I looked that thing in the eye, and I felt the energy of that room, there was no denying it. We found that thing because we were supposed to. It wasn’t the Blue Angel – but the blue screens were there. And they can do a hell of a lot more than write on walls. More than transporting things like glo and creatures, too. These creatures weren’t there before, weren’t anywhere...”

  Pax took a breath. Now she’d said it, she knew in her gut it was right. “The blue screens can change the shapes of walls. They defaced that chapel themselves, and changed the writing on the paper in your office, too. Your faxes, Apothel’s Miscellany even. They planted the word grugulochs. They sent out the sound this thing was making through their screens. They put all this out there to make you think you’d found them. But what we found was another distraction they’d designed. A totem.”

  “No...” Ward said.

  “No way!” Rufaizu said, decidedly more enthusiastic. “The hunt’s still on.”

  “No, that’s not what this is,” Ward persisted. “The Fae weapon weakened it and it let out these noises in pain, it –”

  “The Fae weapon,” Pax said, “hurt the minotaur, but it wasn’t drawing energy to recover. These things used that energy more acutely. These random bursts have occurred when these new creatures have appeared. I felt it, trust me.”

  “How?”

  “This thing got me, alright?” Pax said. “I’m hooked into their network, whatever – what’s important is they were doing something with that energy. They might have been transporting stuff through those blue screens – but I think it’s worse than that. I think they created those creatures you’d never seen.”

  “Created?” Ward almost laughed, but Pax kept a serious face, to impose this tough conclusion on her. It was unreal, but it made sense, considering the ill-formed nature of the slug creature, and that glutinous mass on Chaucer Crescent. Especially when considering the grugulochs itself.

  Pax continued, “Who knows what they’re capable of, or what they even are. But I’m getting an idea, and it’s not one mastermind you’re dealing with. It’s a whole host of these things. I’ve felt them, moving in the walls, part of the blue screens themselves. They were throwing every trick they had at me because they knew I saw them, suckling at that light monster’s teat. They scrambled to give us an answer that would draw attention away from the fact that they were right there, on display. The blue screens themselves.”

  “And we chased their clues to a totem?” Ward sounded more impressed than upset.

  “Towards the truth,” Pax said. “You have an advantage right now. The grugulochs is dead – if it takes the blame, they’ll think they got away with it. You can find them without them actively trying to throw you off the scent.”

  Ward looked towards her men. Casaria was saying something to Landon, who was leaning stiffly away, trying to ignore the man’s existence. “Clearly, Pax, you’re better equipped to deal with this than most of my staff. You’ll work with us, won’t you?”

  “I’ve done my bit,” Pax replied. “I only want Letty back – the rest of this is on you.”

  “You’d leave this hanging over our city? Where would we start? You at least have some insight –”

  “You start,” Pax said, exhausted by it even needing to be said, “by talking to each other. Open a real dialogue with the Fae, share what you know, and figure out how to obliterate these fuckers together.”

  Ward hesitated. “It’s not that simple, and we’re on a knife-edge after today. You know them. I don’t believe you’ll just walk away.”

  Pax held Ward’s gaze, trying to implore her to back off just by looking at her.

  Ward stared straight back.

  Rufaizu beamed happily, drawing his own conclusion: “Barfly’s gonna kick Blue Angel’s arse.”

  Epilogue

  Bright, blinding light.

  Dull shapes moving. The taste of plastic, an ache around it. Jaw wide open, wide as it would go. Something in it. All the way down. A long, loud puff of air. A whirring, expanding apparatus.

  No other pain than the jaw ache. Head swimming. Body bloated.

  “She’s coming around.” A man’s voice. Factual.

  “Let me past, come on.” Another man. Familiar. A pillar of darkness sliding into the centre of the light. Fuzzy. Vibrating. “Can you hear me? Letty, can you hear me?”

  A thinner shape moving from side to side before it. Pendulum motion, testing her vision.

  “You expect her to say yes?” The first voice again.

  “Letty. You know who I am?” The dolt actually waiting for an answer. “We met earlier today. Very briefly. I’ve taken a big interest in what you’ve been up to. I want you to know we didn’t agree to any of this.”

  She tried to grunt, to work the words around the horrendous tube.

  “What’s she saying?”

  She tried louder. Tried to lift her chest to get the words out. Couldn’t move.

  “You’re agitating her. Give her some space.”

  “Letty. Do you know where you are? A lot’s changed since you left, and after – well – now, there’s no going back. We need you. We need to build on what you started.”

  Trying again, louder, but still muffled.

  “Can we let her speak? Get that out of her mouth? Letty, we’re going to do
everything we can to help you. We can do great things together.”

  One more time. Getting her lips wide of the pipe.

  Making it clear, even if it was muffled.

  Fuck.

  Off.

  With the satisfying silence it brought, she sank back into the bed and closed her eyes. Let the machine breathe for her.

  Enjoyed Reading?

  You’re two thirds of the way there, now – time for another brief intermission. If you’re still enjoying this series, please consider reviewing Blue Angel online; it’s up on Amazon here, or on GoodReads here. Then, the trilogy concludes shortly with The Violent Fae!

  Blue Angel

  Copyright © 2019 by Phil Williams

  The moral right of Phil Williams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by P. Williams

  Published by Rumian Publishing

  The Violent Fae

  Part 1

  1

  Letty had a simple plan.

  When the physician returned to take her vitals, she’d jam the plastic fork in his eye. Well, near the eye, close enough for him to hand over the keys and whatever information she needed. The guard, a young one-eyed guy with a half-melted face, would get it, too. She’d recovered enough energy now. Her chest barely hurt, she was breathing freely. All good, considering the last thing she remembered was getting shot in the chest. There was a bruise, but no bullet hole, no scar.