Convergence

by Michael Patrick Hicks

  I had my gun in hand. I checked to make sure a round was chambered and that the magazine was full. The spare magazines in my coat pocket were a reassuring weight.

  “Lob some frags downwind,” Kaften said. “No more peaceful bullshit.”

  Bullets shattered the window at the rear of the cab, coating us in small shards of glass. The munitions went high, and we were low. We had little in the way of shelter other than the walls surrounding us. The seating was club style, so the benches lining each side of the cab faced each other across the aisle. Nothing to hide behind or use as cover. We were less exposed than we had been outside, but it was a fairly even trade-off on which was worse.

  Andersson remained crouched low to the floor as he went toward the back of the cab to lob good old-fashioned grenades toward the new clump of bad guys waiting outside to kill us. He peeked out over the edge, trying to get a head count in the darkness, then ducked back inside quickly, just before the explosions.

  “I counted five,” he said.

  Kaften nodded. “Mitchell took out a few, maybe? That’s good.”

  I remembered Mitchell saying he thought there were half a dozen. I was dubious as to how well his efforts had paid off, but Kaften was struggling to keep our morale up. I didn’t think we would make it out alive. Three against six, maybe more. It seemed too overwhelming. Then again, I was nearly as blind as a bat. Kaften and Andersson could at least see what was happening, thanks to their optics. Still, it all reminded me a bit of the Alamo. Not exactly how I wanted to go out.

  In gun battles, time slows down. Sometimes, reflexes go superhuman, or people become subconsciously aware of elements around them—subtle changes in the air, noises that would have normally gone unheard, and small rhythms pulsing in the world that they would otherwise never be cognizant of. Reflexes take over and drive that person forward, forcing him to do things he wasn’t even aware needed doing. Evolution spent millions of years honing the mind and body’s instinct for survival, and sometimes, it does what it wants.

  I had no conscious reason for it but, already crouched, I dropped to one knee and spun ninety degrees to face the door I’d come through. In one fluid move, my arm raised the gun of its own accord and snapped onto an emerging face. Before I even recognized him as an enemy, I pulled the trigger. Once. Twice. In the muzzle flashes, I saw the bullets hit him, tearing apart his lower jaw then his left eye as he turned to face me. Then he fell back and out of sight.

  Kaften and Andersson stared at me, but neither said anything. Kaften clapped me on the shoulder once, and I could make out the sureness of his approval.

  Time caught up in fast-forward, bringing more bullets with it. We dropped to our bellies as the bullets got closer. I pictured a team of military shock troopers marching down the tunnel, fanned out across the rails, firing their rifles in a continuous, unyielding spread straight out of some old holovid. I didn’t know how close to reality that was, but they were certainly moving closer and trying hard to keep us quelled, making us an easier kill.

  From his prone position, Andersson lobbed a few more grenades out the window, letting them land uncomfortably close to the train car. I sat facing the door, watching the side windows, looking for signs of the approaching enemy. Kaften was across from me and over a bit, his head swiveling back and forth, waiting for the doors opposite us to be forced open and for bodies to appear. Both of us scanned back and forth, over to Andersson then back to the gaping hole that we expected soldiers to climb through any minute.

  In a moment of surreal calm, Andersson risked a quick peek over the ledge, found a target, and fired. I wondered if his grenades had taken any of them out and how many were left.

  Outside the door, close to me, something shuffled quickly. Then an object landed lightly against the rubber floor and rolled. It touched my shoes, and I kicked at it, sending it spinning away from me, where it smacked into the doorframe. The grenade rolled outside, but the force of the confined explosion lifted the car and deformed the doorway. I had a moment of weightlessness, and my stomach lurched as though I were in a fast-moving elevator. Then the car resettled, half off the track. The floor was canted, and I had to brace my feet ahead and beneath me to keep from sliding. I fired at the wall, hoping the bullets would pierce the metal siding. Maybe I would get lucky and kill a fucker out there.

  The person had hurried down, though, to the next car ahead of us. They were forcing the door open, piling in quickly.

  Andersson glanced up over the ledge again.

  “That’s it.” He nodded toward the front of the car. “Those are the last two then.”

  Kaften marched forward, his gun extended, and fired at the small windows in the door separating our two cars. They were not shy about firing back and did so liberally. Kaften went back into a crouch but had nowhere to hide. Kneeling on the hard rubberized floor, Andersson and I shot over him. We were all shooting in a chaotic exchange of gunfire, making it impossible to tell who got whom, but in quick succession, one tango went down followed by Kaften and Andersson and the second tango, almost simultaneously.

  I didn’t even know I’d been hit until I tried to stand and felt a sharp jolt of pain in my leg. The bullet had grazed me. Nothing serious, but still messy.

  Andersson was closest, so I checked him first. My fingers went to his neck to find a pulse, but I found a thick, slippery sheen instead. He was gone. The wound was too large, and the blood was pumping out of him too quickly for the medichines to do him any good.

  Kaften was in better shape, but unable to stand. He’d been hit in the leg full-on and in the upper chest, near his shoulder.

  “Just need a minute or two,” he said, “to collect myself. Let the nanos do their job.”

  He was going to need more than a minute or two, but I didn’t bother correcting him. The medichines would be breaking down the bullets into tiny little atoms, mapping the wound’s channels, and working to figure out the best ways to stitch him back up and save his life. They would do a quick triage for his vitals, but it would be a few days before he was a hundred percent again. We had to get moving, but I didn’t think giving him the minute he’d asked for would be too detrimental. I was surprised we’d lived that long.

  Over their chests, both Andersson and Kaften wore nylon webbing, which held pouches filled with field-emergency medical supplies and spare magazines. I popped open the medic pouch and dug out gauze and a packet of Quik-Clot. I doused his wounds with the powder and wrapped his leg tight enough to staunch the bleeding then did the same for his shoulder.

  “Wait here,” I said. “Stay off the leg.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I was on my feet and out the door quickly. I thumbed the flashlight on, holding it and the gun out in front of me. If we still had hostiles out there, I was as much of a target with the light as I was without. Being crammed between the walls of the subway car and the station tube, I was as good as dead if anyone was out there.

  The lamp’s normally wide arc was stunted by my surroundings. Once I had edged my way to the front of the train, my field of view opened. My light fell on a dead man with bullet holes in his face. The darkness carried a soft whimper down to me. Then, closer, a wet smack hit the concrete as somebody threw up. I turned quickly, splashing my light over him, and saw the gun in his lap, his arm limp and still. He was sitting on the ground, his torso twisted to the right so he could spit up. He was in no shape to use the gun, and I took it without resistance. He glared at me lamely; chunks of his partially digested supper were spit-glued to his lower lip and chin, and the vomit was a bib against his shirt. A bit farther down the line, his partner retched again.

  “C’mon, stand up,” I said.

  He refused with a weak shake of his head, and I had to haul him to his feet. When I grabbed his arm, his shirt was sodden with sweat, and a feverish heat wafted off his body. I pushed him toward his ill friend, and after a few steps, he fell back to the ground, dazed and tired.

  Neither man was chipped, so a direct downloa
d of their memory cores was impossible. We’d planned on that contingency. We had our two prisoners, but we needed an answer from one of them. I explained this to them slowly so they could absorb my words through the sickness the peacefuls had left behind.

  I shined my light on one. His pale skin looked slick, and the harsh beam of light did him no favors. His body seized, his head twisting to the side to eject a long stream of vomit. The side of his body lifted under the violence, and he passed gas. When he resettled, his body slid on the seat of his pants, and he made a loud squishy sound. Then the smell hit me. My stomach lurched, and I kept myself from puking. The other tango wasn’t so lucky, however, and he threw up in his lap.

  I looked down on the grown men. Their skin was shiny with sweat and yellowed by sickness. Covered in puke and stinking of shit, they wallowed in their own excrement. The military’s approach to peaceful measures of suppressing enemy forces was steeped heavily in irony. Law enforcement and military were always caught in a quandary when it came to protecting and defending. The politicians thumped their chests and whined about how badly the civil rights of terrorists in the Middle East were violated when the US military killed them. Then they complained that mere detainment violated prisoners’ rights. To appease the politicians and the ACLU, the military devised the peaceful sonic grenades—and were then berated for violating the basic premises of human dignity and using measures akin to torture. There was certainly nothing dignified about Jaime’s men in their current state, but I had no sympathy for them. A few minutes ago, they’d been trying to kill me.

  “One of you is going to tell me where Jaime Kristoff is.”

  Neither man did. I asked again. Silence.

  “I know you guys are feeling shitty. Now, you can answer me, or I can make you feel worse.”

  They gave me some slight attention then stared at the ground, at the vomit around them, or in their laps. Neither of them traded glances with the other, and neither of them would look me in the eye.

  “Better or worse,” I said. “I’m running out of patience.”

  Silence.

  “Okay.” I raised my gun and fired two rounds into the man on the right. The shots echoed in the chamber. He sat there with his mouth open, his brains a smear on the wall behind him. I waited for the man on the left to finish evacuating himself then gave him my full attention.

  “How much worse do you want to make things for yourself?” I asked him. “Because now I can go real slow on you. Drag it out. And you don’t seem to be feeling up for it too much. Am I right?”

  A thick rope of saliva dangled from his filthy lower lip. The sockets of his eyes were dark pools against his pale skin. Flecks of red in his cheeks, around the bridge of his nose, and around his eyes told me he’d been vomiting so hard that he’d burst blood vessels in his face.

  “A hatch, maybe a few hundred feet ahead.” He stopped to cough up a thick wad of phlegm. The goo dislodged itself from deep inside his chest with the noise of ice cracking. “Some stairs. You’ll find him there,” he said, spit hanging from his chin.

  Killing him would be easy. A bullet to his sweaty head, no resistance. No fight in him at all.

  I left him and went back to the subway car where I had left Kaften. The cracks and ribs of the thick rubber floor inside were filled with blood, and the harshness of the light I carried showed the battle damage in stark contrast. The doorframe was warped and blackened, and the car creaked and wobbled slightly under my weight as I hauled myself back up.

  Kaften was pale, but his mood was still strong. He got his good leg and good arm under him and pushed up while I helped lift. He was strong, his grip good and sure. The medichines must have been putting in overtime.

  “Learn anything?” he asked.

  I told Kaften about my conversation with the one I’d left and that we could come back for him if we found out he was lying.

  “So let’s go then.” He shoved past me to gingerly lower himself to the tracks. Even with both feet on the ground, he was unsteady and moved slowly, limping forward. I stayed behind him, throwing the light toward the rear every few paces and checking to make sure our six was clear.

  We followed the sound of coughing, which was more violent hacking than anything else, and Kaften paid the wretched man a cursory glance before trudging past. I checked a few times to make sure he was staying still as we moved farther down the tunnel, until my beam of light could no longer find him in the darkness.

  After about four hundred feet, we came to a tunnel that bridged the Red and Purple Lines and was used in case of evacuations to connect the stations. We stopped before a steel door with an ancient, rusty sign that said MAINTENANCE. I reached for the handle, but Kaften grabbed my wrist surprisingly quickly.

  “We gotta check it first,” he said. “Make sure it’s not rigged to blow.”

  I’d seen enough vids to know that the handle on the other side could have a trip wire looped around it. If we opened the door, the wire would come with it, yanking out the pin of a grenade that would take off our heads. I shined the light around the doorframe, finding mostly rust. With a nod from Kaften, I gripped the handle and slowly parted the door until he waved for me to stop. The door was open less than an inch, and if a wire were on the other side, the line was still slack, and we were still breathing.

  He took my light and shined it inside. Then he snaked a few fingers into the crack, feeling around the exposed edge of the frame. Slowly, he opened the door farther and reached inside.

  The door opened under its own weight, and I realized that Kaften had let it. Then I realized I had been holding my breath and let it out. He shined the light across the floor on the other side of the threshold then along the walls and ceiling. The doorway led into a slightly larger tunnel that went forward maybe three feet to a stairway that led up. An electrical utility box was just inside the door, but nothing else.

  “C’mon.” Kaften nodded me forward. Going up the stairs would be slow and tricky for him. “Batter up.”

  My path of light blazed a graffiti-ridden trail up the metal steps. Dead bulbs were trapped in rusty cages, where the ribs of metal were filled by cobwebs and grime. Our footsteps echoed in the cavern as we made our way up, and the darkness surrounding our small cone of illumination and Kaften’s awkward pace—thud, pause, thud, pause—up the steps behind me made me claustrophobic.

  We climbed the stairs through a square opening and into an attic. We were still fifty or sixty feet below ground, but the room was expansive and easily spanned the width between the two tunnels. The ceiling was far above us; at the sides, ladders led off to ventilation shafts. Rows and rows of old electronics were stacked in heaps that looked like shoddy pyramids built of ancient computer towers and bulky CRT monitors, relics that I’d seen in computer history books and old magazines archived in cloud storage. Office desks and chairs cluttered the space, too. Wrinkled, yellowed calendars curled away from their desktop blotters. A few other calendars were still in their plastic shrink wrap, and those, as with everything else, were covered in a thick gray-brown coat of dust.

  I shined my light between the aisles of computer equipment, then Kaften nudged me and pointed downward. In the dust were the perfect impressions of shoe prints. The confusing trails of steps and shuffles, some overlapping one another and others so clear I could count the treads, almost resembled an old dance pattern.

  Although the prints were muddled, they all came from the same direction, and we followed the trail back, through a long row of manila-colored filing cabinets, steel-gray shelving units, and scarred wooden desks. At the end, we found a heap of sleeping bags and an old barrel with a still-fresh fire burning inside. A man sat beside it in a battered swivel chair, warming his hands over the flame. He made no movements for the gun that sat in his lap. Kaften had him dead to rights, his gun sights lined up squarely, even though it would have been a point-blank kill.

  “Hey there, Jonah,” he said.

  “Hi there, Jaime.”

  Chapt
er 16

  “Why don’t you pull up a chair then?” Jaime pointed to the cluster of office chairs nearby, and I pulled two over to the fire.

  “It’s all right,” I told Kaften. “Take a seat.”

  He slowly lowered himself, never taking his eyes off the other man. I had my gun pointed at Jaime, ready to put a bullet into his belly if he made any sudden moves or said the wrong thing.

  “Thanks for the welcoming party,” Kaften said.

  “No hard feelings,” Jaime said. “You boys set off a hell of a lot of my early-warning systems, tell you that much.”

  I raised my eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

  He stretched his leg and rubbed his knee, where the arthritis was bad. “Place is wired with thermals. Knew you were here the minute you got down to the subway platform. Figured you guys split off into two groups, heavily armed, meant you were trespassing.”

  “Where’s my daughter?” I asked, getting down to business.

  Jaime was surprised, but it slowly dissolved as he understood our roles. He had his secrets, and I had mine, but they had rarely ever conflicted as badly as they did in that moment. He appeared to be honestly confused. His eyes shifted from me to Kaften then to our guns, and something inside him squared away and settled. He grew pensive.

  “Now wait, Jonah. You think…” He looked around at the nothingness of the room surrounding us then held up empty hands, surrendering everything. “She’s not here.”

  “What did you do with her?” My voice was drawn and ragged, my mouth a dry well where my tongue was too thick. A hot fuse of anger was rushing up, and I forced myself to tamp it down. I wanted to shoot him right then and there.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jaime,” I said, “I’m begging you. I have a mind to do some awful things here. Please tell me what I want to know.”