In the Shadow of London

by Chris Ward

  From time to time, when he felt brave enough, he asked for donations. A little here, a little there, it all added up.

  And then he took it to Benny.

  ‘How much have you brought me this time?’ Benny asked as David wearily climbed down the steps into the cabin.

  ‘Three hundred,’ David said, sinking into a chair. ‘How much more do I need?’

  Benny squeezed his eyes shut as if about to deliver bad news. ‘My contact said a thousand each for you and the girl, fifteen hundred for the baby.’

  ‘I thought you said eight hundred each?’

  Benny sighed. ‘The more you run around telling the world about the Tube Riders, the tighter the security gets. My contact wants more because of the risk.’

  David flapped a hand. ‘I can’t get that kind of money.’

  ‘Look. I’ll talk to my man again. See if I can get him to swing you a deal.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I don’t see why you can’t just let your new mates at the Tank help you out.’

  ‘They won’t. They’ve put Raine and Jake in a guarded safe house, but their leader tells me they’re no more deserving to leave than any of the thousands of other women and children in the Tank, and even more likely to be caught.’

  ‘Bastards. Always did serve their own interests. That’s the problem with this town. No one’s willing to do a favour.’

  David pushed himself back to his feet. He swayed a little and put a hand on the wall for support. ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus, man, when did you last sleep?’

  ‘Two days ago. I can’t.’

  ‘Airie?’

  ‘Whenever I close my eyes I see her face, and when I sleep my screams threaten to betray me. All I can think about is that elevator disappearing with Airie inside.’

  ‘You don’t think she could still be alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. I waited among the trees outside for a few hours, but no one came back out. She could have been alive, she could have been dead.’

  ‘There’s a chance they kept her alive.’

  David winced. ‘She got caught in an elevator with a fucking Huntsman,’ he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

  ‘But you said the DCA gunmen deliberately missed you,’ he said.

  ‘They deliberately missed me. Airie wasn’t part of the rescue mission.’

  Benny nodded. ‘Just don’t give up hope. Too many in London already have.’

  Raine was waiting for him by the footbridge where they usually met. A railway line stretched away underneath. She always arrived earlier than planned to stand and watch the trains for a while, remembering the feel of the board beneath her hands, the wind in her hair, the pungent scent of engine oil and the moist smell of the leaves that collected in the railings, fallen from the trees on the outer stretches of the line and washed into place by the rain.

  He came slinking out of the streets to the east. David, seemingly treading a fine line between revolutionary messenger and paranoia junkie, had spent the two weeks since they had rescued Jake on the move. He had taken it upon himself to spread the word of the Tube Riders’ return and the supposed death of Marta Banks, hoping it would rile the people. Tim Cold, whom Raine heard from only via occasional messages, had given him no official backing, but was secretly praying for his success.

  ‘How is he?’ David said by way of greeting as they broke into a walk side by side, continuing over the bridge and into the warren of streets on the far side.

  Raine shrugged. ‘Fine. Like a normal baby I guess. After what happened, I couldn’t have hoped for more.’

  ‘She didn’t hurt him, did she?’

  Raine thought of Sally a lot. David had seen the Huntsman die, but Raine had seen so much more. She had seen the humanity behind a visage of horror and death.

  ‘She treated him as if he were her own.’

  ‘The Huntsmen aren’t our true enemy. They’re just people who went London-gone. He’s the enemy. The Governor.’

  The tiredness in David’s anger was like a blanket wrapped around a snapping dog. ‘Why don’t you rest for a while?’ she said. ‘Ask Tim to find you a safe house. You look … terrible.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t. They have my trail. They could be tracking me now. Whenever I’m not on the move I’m at risk, and I put everyone around me at risk.’ His eyes flared. ‘Haven’t you figured that out by now?’

  No one she knew risked going London-gone more than David. He blamed himself for everything, from Jake’s capture to Airie’s likely death. She felt no safer than he did, but it had been two weeks and no one had come for them. Tim had stationed guards in a half-mile radius of her safe house, and the building itself—an old hospital—had a surprising level of security equipment, cameras and motion sensors and an alarm that would blare if anyone tried to force the doors.

  Yet no one had come. Whatever Dreggo and the government had planned, they were biding their time.

  ‘It will soon be over,’ David mumbled. ‘I have to go now. I have to keep spreading the word.’

  ‘She might not be dead,’ Raine said, putting a hand on his arm.

  He stopped and turned back towards her. His eyes were bloodshot and framed by heavy bags. He wouldn’t tell her where he slept. Probably wherever he was when his feet gave out.

  ‘It might be better if she is,’ he said.

  ‘David … stay with me a while. Please. I still need to talk to you.’

  He shook his head. ‘None of this would have happened to you if I hadn’t dragged you into it. The only reason I keep coming back here is because I can’t bear to know you’re not safe.’

  She reached up and ran a hand down the side of his face. ‘Part of me will always love you,’ she said. ‘Whatever you did, it doesn’t matter.’

  He cupped her hand with his. ‘If it’s the last thing I do I’ll see to it that you and Jake are safe.’

  Then he was gone, limping off into the streets, the clawboard bouncing on a strap over his shoulder. She felt an overwhelming urge to run after him, to seal their fates to each other, but Jake was waiting back at the safe house, cared for by two nannies Tim had provided.

  She walked back slowly, her mind churning with indecision. She hadn’t yet told David, even though Mika had guessed he was Jake’s father. Airie had known also, and Raine often wondered if she would have the nerve to tell him before the rest of London knew. Would it change him? Would it make him end his crusade?

  A high-rise tenement building to the west had stolen the afternoon’s sunlight, leaving the abandoned hospital building that acted as a Tank safe house shrouded in shadow. She had long since got used to the perennial grey skies of London GUA, but there were days when she even found herself praying for rain just to break the monotony. She thought of Jake to cheer herself up, and felt that pang of relief as a guard she recognised appeared from a doorway to welcome her.

  Today though, the guard wasn’t alone.

  Tim Cold stood at his shoulder, his face set into a blank expression that suggested neither hope nor despair.

  ‘Did you see him?’ Tim asked.

  ‘David? Yes. But he’s gone now.’

  Tim swore under his breath. ‘Goddamn it. I’ll have to wait for him to show up again.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Governor has made an official announcement. This is big, Raine. This isn’t through a spokesman, this has come from the Governor himself. Broadcast vans have been crawling the streets all morning.’

  Raine felt a lump in her throat. Part of her wished she could grab Jake and go with David. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he will make a public address in Parliament Tower Plaza one week from now. He will speak to the people regarding the ongoing unrest in the city, and in return for their cooperation he will offer a pardon for the captured Tube Rider, Marta Banks.’

  Raine gave a small shake of her head, thinking she had misheard. ‘What? How could he have captured Marta?’

 
Tim shook his head. ‘It’s not Marta. They’ve got Airie.’

  ‘Then she’s not dead? Airie’s alive?’

  Tim nodded. He smiled, but it was mirthless. ‘She is for now,’ he said.

  47

  Betrayal

  A light rain was falling as dusk settled over the city. Lindon stood beneath the porch of the abandoned townhouse across the street from Frank’s home, watching his grandfather’s upper floor windows. He crossed his arms against the biting cold that had come in from nowhere, waiting for the hint of light to appear behind the shutters.

  He barely dared to blink. All he wanted was to see that glow for a couple of seconds that would tell him Frank was in the top bedroom where Cah lay, which in turn would surely mean Cah was alive.

  A niggling frustration bit at Lindon’s insides. He should just go over there, knock on the door and ask to see her. Frank would let him in without a moment’s hesitation, because Frank wouldn’t understand what was wrong.

  Was it really a betrayal that his grandfather had known the Tank was infiltrated by revolutionaries, that their presence threatened the lives of thousands of people? Had Frank ever pretended to have anything other than an open hatred for the government?

  Frank had sent messengers to the Tank to find him, but Lindon had waved them away. Not right now. Tim’s words still shrieked in his ears like the scraping of crows’ talons across his eardrums.

  Betrayal betrayal betrayal.

  His anger tasted like salt. Bitter. Dry. He had thought all he cared about was Cah until Tim had told him about the UMF. Now he realised that his family wasn’t just the old man who lived in the fortified house across the street and the girl dying from a drug Lindon couldn’t understand, but the thousands of innocent men, women, and children who relied on the Tank for their safety.

  ‘Goddamn you, Tim,’ he muttered, spitting on to the paving stones at his feet.

  A light came on behind the shutters. Lindon let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. She was alive. He watched for a few minutes as shadows fell across the lines glimmering through the metal shutter. Frank moving about, tending her.

  Almost without realising it, Lindon’s feet began to move, taking him out into the middle of the street until he stood open and revealed beneath his grandfather’s windows. Every fibre in his body ached to go to her, to hold her, to tell her everything would be all right. He lifted a hand, making a dumb wave at the unresponsive house, then forced himself to turn away.

  He couldn’t lie to her like so many people had lied to him. It wasn’t fair.

  Further down the street, Lindon watched a woman stooping over a shopping cart with one wheel missing, pushing it in short jerks across the street while a baby watched her from the cart’s child seat and another small child ran back and forth around her ankles. Halfway across the road the woman just stopped, slumping to her knees. The older child cried out, then began tugging on her arm until the woman forced herself back to her feet.

  Too many. The Tank couldn’t protect them all.

  Shaking his head, Lindon turned and walked away, wanting only to be alone.

  It was dark when he reached his old apartment building. He still came back here often, mostly for the solitude, whenever he needed time to think.

  Tim Cold thought he knew everything, but there was more than one way to win a war. Sometimes it required a blaze of violence, other times simple patience. Waiting for the right time, waiting for things to work themselves out.

  As he stepped into the darkness of the flat, he immediately sensed the presence of someone else. The air felt wrong, less stale than usual, as though someone had opened a window or hung out the bedclothes. He knew the DCA had come here after Spacewell had helped the scientist escape, ransacking the place for incriminating evidence, but no one had been back since then. He returned almost every day, and nothing was ever disturbed any more than it had been the first time.

  The feeling came from the living room. Rather than fear, Lindon felt a deep sense of personal invasion; he found his fists clenching, turning into wrecking balls as he channeled his anger. It could be one of Cah’s dealers, those shady figures he had never seen, come to find out where she had gone.

  As he stepped through the door, a lithe figure sitting in the glow of a portable paraffin lamp crossed one leg over the other and sat up straight. Long fingers tossed a ragged paperback book to the floor.

  ‘You’re late,’ Dreggo said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon. Look what you made me do? I actually had to read something.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Dreggo propped one elbow up on her chair’s armrest and cupped her chin under her hand. ‘What do you think? I want to talk to you, but you took so fucking long to show up I was just about to leave.’ She smirked. ‘But that last chapter was kind of interesting.’

  ‘How did you know I would come back here?’

  Dreggo tapped the side of her nose. The DCA couldn’t detect their way out of a paper bag, but I have a dog.’

  Lindon spun, searching the shadows behind him, looking for something evil crouching, ready to pounce, but if she had brought a Huntsman with her it was keeping out of sight.

  Perhaps guessing his thoughts, she said, ‘You are not a threat to me.’

  Lindon stood watching her a few seconds longer. How much the government had modified her, he couldn’t fathom. Part of her face was covered in a metal plate, and the rest was a mess of scar tissue, but how deep did their modifications go? He had met no man who could match him in a fair fight.

  ‘Sit down, you look tired. I didn’t come here to kill you. If I did, you would already be dead.’

  Lindon took an old armchair, facing her. ‘What do you want?’

  Dreggo smiled. The robotic eye was dead machinery, but the human eye seemed to stare straight into his soul.

  ‘I won’t ask why your scent and that of Richard Spacewell are found in the same room. I won’t ask why a prominent member of the Tank shares a living space with a government traitor. All I want to ask you, Lindon—Cross Jumper to Cross Jumper—is where do your loyalties lie?’

  ‘They lie with those closest to me. To my family and friends. Those who look to me for protection.’

  ‘Said like a people’s champion. It should be you running around riling people up against the government, not these pseudo-Tube Riders.’

  ‘I don’t care about starting a war. I just want peace.’

  ‘That’s what the Governor wants too.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  Dreggo sighed. ‘It’s rather difficult when everyone is fighting on different sides. Wouldn’t you say that was what the problem with this country is? Too many agendas.’

  ‘And what’s yours? Six months ago you were jumping in front of trains. Now you’ve got a junkyard for a face and you’re strong-arming people for the government.’

  Dreggo smiled as she stood up. There was something seductive in the way she came across the room towards him. Lindon looked away as she knelt in front of him. Her hand rested on his knee as if to steady herself. He wanted to knock her hand away and rip her head from her body, yet at the same time the sensation was closer to pleasant than any he had felt in some time.

  ‘Where is she?’ Dreggo said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl. Your girl. The one who’s dying.’

  Lindon stared at her. ‘How could you know?’

  Again Dreggo tapped the side of her nose. ‘A scent is like a face, it can tell you many things. You would do anything I ask in order to save her, wouldn’t you?’

  Lindon stared at her, afraid to either nod or shake his head. If he was going to make a deal with the devil he wanted to know the terms first.

  ‘I was a lost girl too,’ Dreggo said. ‘If you think you’ve had life hard, you have no idea. I went London-gone like few others have. Then one day a man offered me a way to end my pain. All he wanted in return was my loyalty.’

  ‘The Go
vernor.’

  Dreggo nodded. ‘The man few have even seen I consider a close friend. He took me under his wing, and more than anything else he gave me back the greatest thing London had taken away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My dignity.’

  Lindon watched her. One hand was stroking his knee. She was monstrous, but at the same time he recognised in her many of the same traits he saw in Cah: the weakness, the insecurity, the resentment towards life’s sparse handouts. Outwardly she might claim to be an agent of the Governor, but behind her eyes she was one of Lindon’s kind, a street girl fighting for a place in the world.

  ‘He made you human again.’

  ‘More than that, he brought me back to life.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  Dreggo gave an ugly smirk. ‘I’m a work in progress.’ Her nails traced a line down the inside of his knee. ‘Are you willing to make a deal?’

  Lindon leaned forward, studying her face as the shadows cast by the lamp flickered across it. ‘What are the terms?’ he said.

  ‘I want you to be my little friend on the inside,’ Dreggo said. ‘The Tank has more power than the Governor is comfortable with, and my good friend Farrell Soars from the DCA is keen to snuff it out. All I want is information about the Tube Riders.’

  ‘I know nothing.’ The lie was out before he could help himself, and he immediately hated himself for it.

  ‘So you say. But let’s say you decide that you actually know something … then I would be most pleased to hear all about it.’

  ‘And in return?’

  Dreggo smiled. ‘You mean, other than your continued survival?’

  ‘You won’t kill me and you know it.’

  ‘It would be wise not to test me on that, but … yes. I have another incentive for you. This little girlfriend of yours … perhaps you would appreciate seeing her healed?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The Governor has the power to heal anyone. Trust me on this. He can restore the dead, return the lost, mend the broken. Act as my informant and I’ll ensure her survival.’