“Oh, a man of witty repartee. How nice. Something to keep me entertained. That and the screams,” she said. “The screams of the person who murdered my girlfriend. What a nice time I have before me. You’re not someone who enjoys pain, I hope.”
“I didn’t mean to kill her.”
Larsen’s amused expression hardened into a glare. “Her life has been snuffed out. You will pay.”
She didn’t seem to be in the mood to be reasoned with, and that glare sent shivers down my spine, so I grabbed the video screen, ripped it out, and threw it on floor. “It was your fault,” I told the screen. “You ordered her to spy on me.”
“Take responsibility for your sins,” Larsen said. “You pulled the trigger.”
I jumped as the voice came from the broken panel behind me. The audio was still working. I turned and gave the electronics a few heavy elbows. There was a satisfying crackling sound, and a wisp of smoke curled out of the top. Better.
I was only beginning to realize what an idiotic move escaping from Zirconia had been. I had thought to myself that there wouldn’t be much difference between being locked up by my mother or being locked up by the mibs. I guess I hadn’t realized that Larsen was going to make my life a living hell.
It was too late to go back. If I escaped the pod, I wouldn’t find anyone from Celeste in that workshop anymore. They had surely cleared out already. And most likely, Zirconia wasn’t too eager to kidnap me just to keep me safe again after what I had done. I’d possibly given up my only chance of staying out of Larsen’s clutches.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to give up yet. Studying the confines of the pod, my eyes were drawn toward a maintenance panel in the ceiling.
There would be no hope of escape when I reached the conveyor station outside the Bureau, so I had to get out before then. The limited options allowed me to focus on what I had to do—or at least attempt to do.
“Christina was an incredible person.” I jumped again as Larsen’s voice returned. “You were lucky enough to be married to her, and you never knew her in the slightest. She was just a pretty doll to you. You were blind to the true beauty within.”
I scowled at the smoldering electronics board that still somehow had a working audio channel. “She never let me see the true Christina. I thought I loved her.”
My gut twisted as I remembered looking into her dead eyes. I forced the feeling away; I couldn’t let Larsen distract me. I wedged one foot on a strip of metal that ran horizontally around the pod at waist height. Then I jumped up and grabbed at the square hollow section on the roof that held the maintenance panel. My fingers made contact, but unable to support myself, I fell down again.
“You thought you loved her? Love doesn’t work like that. You either love someone, or you don’t.”
Larsen wasn’t going to let it go. Probably not ever. “Love isn’t that simple,” I said as I continued trying to get at the panel. I had needed Christina so badly when I was recovering after my crash. Maybe I had mistaken that for love. Whatever feelings I had for her were still strong ones, and those feelings hadn’t been switched off when I’d discovered who she really was. Emotions didn’t work like that.
After several more hops, I managed to maintain a stable position, getting two feet onto the horizontal metal strip with my left hand pressed against the ledge just below the panel. It was a precarious perch, and from the splayed position, my rib and leg injuries reminded me they hadn’t completely gone away.
“You know what you did is wrong,” Larsen said. “You know that you deserve to be punished. Just let it happen.”
She wasn’t totally wrong there. Accident or not, I had killed someone I cared about. She hadn’t deserved to die. I was managing the festering guilt only by not thinking about it. I would have to deal with it at some stage.
But not yet. And ideally not under Larsen’s ministrations. I felt along the underside of the panel. Luckily, latches, rather than screws, held it in place. I opened the latches then lifted. The panel immediately disappeared, snatched off my hand by the surging air above. It clearly wasn’t meant to be opened while the pod was in motion.
Once I could see the ceiling rushing past and hear the wind whistling, I realized how fast I was going. I wasn’t sure how much room there was between the roof of the pod and the ceiling of the tubes, but it was tight.
“I’ll be seeing you very soon now, Mr. Roberts.”
Larsen’s comment, plus the noticeable slowing of the pod, told me that I didn’t have much time. So, I squeezed my eyes shut and blindly stuck my head out through the panel. I wasn’t instantly decapitated, which was a relief, but I could sense that I was close to getting an unwanted haircut. The rushing air pummeled my face and roared into my ears.
Keeping as low as possible, I dragged myself onto the roof of the pod. At first, pushing against the air resistance was difficult, then by the time I got my whole torso onto the roof, the pressure had eased off. The pod was stopping. I hurried, knowing that if I didn’t, a troop of mibs would be looking at the comical sight of a pair of legs dangling out of the maintenance panel.
I snaked forward on my elbows, keeping my forehead pressed against the metal below. When I reached open air at the end of the pod, I pulled myself over the edge and tumbled to the ground. The pod had more or less stopped by then; the fall from a moving pod would have hurt worse, but even so, my back hit a metal railing hard.
I staggered to my feet and ran. When I reached the nearest junction, I sneaked a look over my shoulder. I could see the silhouette of a mib’s head sticking out of the pod’s roof; he didn’t seem inclined to follow. I thought back to the maps of Under Nyork that I had seen on Ray’s computer. I knew the Bureau headquarters weren’t too far from the mouth of the Shroud, and after a moment’s thought, I’d figured out which way to go.
I grabbed the side of the wall and swung myself into the tube going right. As my left foot touched the ground, a slight vibration ran up my leg. It was my only warning. I dived to the side, throwing myself into the nearest recess. An instant later, a pod sliced through the air behind me, accompanied by a sucking gale that fought to tear me away from the wall. I clung on for all my worth for what seemed to be forever yet was only an instant. Then the pod was gone, diving into the downward tube.
I allowed myself to breathe again. Traveling through the tubes in Harlem had lulled me into a false sense of security about the dangers of active tubes. It wasn’t that I hadn’t expected pods to pass by—I just hadn’t expected them to be so silent and fast and to want to kill me with an intensity that rivaled Mari Larsen’s. No wonder the mibs had opted not to follow. They had decided to allow the pods to kill me, and barring that, they could pick me up at whichever station I exited.
That meant I needed to get out of the conveyor system before they had a chance to guard all the nearby stations. I broke into a run. Every time my foot touched the ground, I concentrated on the sensations on the ground, making sure I didn’t miss any vibrations. Twice more, I had to throw myself against the wall, and both times, I made it with just a split second to spare. Each time, I braced hard as the pod tried to tear me from the wall. I was tiring and wasn’t sure how many more times I could cling on like that.
So the next station I reached, I decided I was close enough to the Shroud. I wrapped my fingers into the gap between the doors and pried them open, making sure to keep on alert for a coming train. I was out and the doors had almost closed when the next pod whooshed past. Even so, the draft shoved me against the far wall.
Chapter 6
The empty corridor was a huge relief; it meant I was ahead of any mibs sent to guard the nearby conveyor stations. After a moment to regather my breath and take stock of my exact location, I started running again. After several strange looks from passersby, I decided a fast walk was a wiser option. I lowered my gaze to the floor and fidgeted with my hair with one hand to prevent anyone from getting a good look.
When I reached the Shroud, I walked straight up t
o the protective barrier, a thrill running through me. There were no mibs waiting to arrest me. I made it. I leaned over the barrier and looked into the blackness below. The cavernous black heart of Under Nyork—if the secrets I was looking for were anywhere, they were down there.
How was I to find an entrance though? Tens of thousands visited the place every year. They wrote their wishes, desires, and hopes on pieces of paper and threw them into the darkness below. If there was an entrance, it wasn’t in plain view, and I couldn’t search for long without being noticed. Even if there was something there, trying to find it without further clues seemed foolhardy. Still, I had no choice but to keep going; I couldn’t wish myself back to Zirconia’s workshop and make a different decision.
The barrier was a chest-high sheet of translucent plastic with a black railing on top held in place by evenly spaced posts. Between the barrier and the edge of the chasm was a pace of uneven rock. A few people were clustered on the far side of the Shroud, but no one seemed to be paying me any attention, so I carefully climbed over the barrier. I kept my hand on the barrier railing and began to circle the Shroud. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to see from there, but at least it was a different perspective than the thousands of others who passed by.
I was studying the rocks at my feet, not really sure what I was looking for, when a hand grabbed my shoulder. I instinctively pulled away and almost stepped backward into the chasm before realizing where I was and grabbing the plastic barrier. At my feet, loose stones rolled into the chasm.
I looked up to see a large man in civilian clothes holding onto my shoulder with a meaty hand.
“My name is Fred Tompsin, and I am taking you in.”
“For what?”
“I’ve seen you on the news. You are a bad man. I’m taking you to the agents.”
The way he pronounced his words in a very slow, deliberate way suggested that he was simple, which gave me hope that I could talk my way out of trouble.
“That was all a mistake, Fred, what they said on the news. Leave me here and go find a mib. He’ll tell you the same.”
His brow furrowed, and skin at the corners of his eyes pinched up in thought. He shook his head. “No. You are a bad man. I bring you to the agents.”
He wasn’t for turning. I ducked hard. His forearm got caught on the railing, forcing him to release me.
“Hey. That hurt.” He leaned forward and punched down on the top of my head. I winced and scrabbled away from him, keeping low so he couldn’t grab me. He may have been simple, but he was as strong as a bull, and he had a mean streak.
He moved along the outside of the barrier, tracking my movements, and reached in for me whenever he was close. But by keeping low, I was able to evade him. I hoped Fred Tompsin would go for help and give me some time to figure out what to do next. Instead, he decided to climb over the railing after me. Goddamn idiot.
“What are you doing, Fred? You don’t have to get involved. This is dangerous.” I scrambled backward, keeping my fingers wrapped around the railing, checking behind me at intervals. In places, the ledge of rock was only wide enough for one foot.
The fear circuits in Fred’s brain either had been short-circuited or had just plain never worked. He took long strides without even looking down. Within moments, he had caught up with me. He punched me in the face twice then lifted me and tried to shove me over the top of the railing. I instinctively resisted, pushing with my feet and hands against the plastic barrier.
I felt a toppling sensation. I reached forward desperately and got my fingertips to the railing, but I couldn’t get a grip. Then we were both falling down into the chasm.
I screamed.
Moments later, my scream shut off as I realized we weren’t falling as fast as we should have been. I turned to see the same surprise reflected in the Fred Tompsin’s face as he fell alongside me. He recovered from the shock faster than I did, making use of the opportunity by trying to get ahold of me once again. I might have found his determination to capture a terrorist admirable if I weren’t the person he was so determined to catch.
I managed to twist out of his clumsy grab and pushed myself away from him. It almost felt like zero-gravity movement, which I had some experience of from military flight school. We continued downward, with the darkness closing in around us. Fred Tompsin angled himself toward me until he got close enough to throw a punch. He hit me a glancing blow, which pushed us away from each other.
Just when I thought it was going to get too dark to see anything, the ambient light began to increase. I could see a lit-up chamber at the bottom. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t seen it before; the lights should have been visible from the very top.
The chamber had smooth steel walls, and something about it didn’t seem right to me. Before I had time to figure out exactly what caused the uneasy feeling, Fred swooped in again. He had learned his lesson from the punch earlier and was trying to grab me. His fingernails scraped down the back of my hand as I fought him off. Because we were in midair, he wasn’t able to effectively use his strength; the harder he fought, the farther away I drifted. I made sure he didn’t get a firm grip on me.
Glancing downward, I saw we were about to fall into the chamber. I twisted my body around until my feet were facing Fred, and I kicked into his chest, using him as a springboard to launch myself toward the wall. He spiraled away from me, and I arrowed toward the side of the cavern. I wanted to reach the top of the chamber, where steel met rock, and for a moment, it looked like my arc was taking me too low. I stretched upward and just managed to snag the top ledge of the chamber with my fingers. Then, despite the smooth walls, I managed to pull myself fully onto a narrow ledge.
Below me, Fred landed on the floor of the chamber with a slight thud. He thundered to his feet and glared up at me. Even if there had been nothing to worry about in the chamber itself, I was damn glad I wasn’t in the cage with Fred Tompsin.
Then I realized what was wrong about the chamber—there were no windows or doors. It was a cage.
The floor was littered with pieces of paper, wishes that had been thrown in. There weren’t as many as I would have expected, though, a few weeks’ worth at most. Fred didn’t realize anything was wrong until a glass ceiling emerged from the top of the walls on one side of the circular chamber. It expanded across the chamber with a quiet buzzing sound. Fred began to look for an exit. He strode around the perimeter, stopping in places to run his palms up and down the walls, apparently hoping for a trigger that would open a door.
I leaned against the cold rock behind me. I didn’t know what was going to happen when the ceiling sealed shut, but I was very glad it was below my feet and not above my head. Fred ran to the part of the chamber that was still uncovered and tried to climb up the wall. It was hopeless. There was nothing to grip on the walls, and the ceiling was far above his head. After several frantic attempts, he stopped trying and just watched as the ceiling sealed him in.
An eerie silence replaced the buzzing of the ceiling motors. Both Fred and I held our breaths as we waited to find out what would happen next. Just when I was beginning to think nothing else was going to happen, a white wisp of smoke crept toward the floor. Vents along the top of the walls had opened, and white gas billowed out. Fred just stood there as, around him, the gas thickened.
He started coughing. A few moments later, I could no longer see Fred through the dense white gas. The coughing got hoarser and hoarser until it turned into a retching sound. Then it stopped.
I held my hand to my mouth, unable to do anything except watch. After a few minutes, the cloud of gas began to disperse, leaving Fred curled up on the floor in a fetal position—dead as far as I could tell. With a soft sucking sound, machinery cleared the air of all gas. Then the floor parted in the middle and hinged downward. Fred’s body, along with all the pieces of paper and loose stones, slid downward and fell into the blackness below. The floor returned to its original position, and the ceiling retracted. The trap was reset.
<
br /> Chapter 7
I forced my clenched jaw to relax and tried to figure out what to do next. There was nothing to suggest that anyone knew I was here. Either the trap was automatic, or whoever was operating it hadn’t noticed me. I could try to climb back up to the top of the Shroud; there were plenty of handholds on the rocky wall of the chasm, and the low gravity might even make it possible. Most likely, though, I would fall from either exhaustion or from making a mistake before I reached the top. Plus, if I got up, what then? It would just be a matter of time before the mibs caught me.
No, I had to keep going, even if it meant risking falling into the chamber of death below and joining Fred Tompsin’s corpse. I hadn’t liked Fred a whole lot, but he hadn’t deserved what had happened to him. He’d just been doing what he’d thought was right.
Holding tightly to the rocks with my left hand, I began to circle the chamber. The ledge of metal was narrow, only the width of a foot in most places, and disappeared entirely in others. When I reached a spot where a rock overhung the wall of the chamber for several paces, I stopped to consider my options before deciding that there were enough handholds that I could crab along the wall for that section.
It turned out to be easier than I’d expected due to the low gravity. I could almost float across, but I didn’t take any risks. Back on the ledge again, I continued circling until I came across a black grate. I fumbled with the screws then pulled it loose. I placed it on the ledge to the side, leaning it against the rocks so it wasn’t in any danger of falling.
The grate had been protecting a vent of some sort. Entering the vent didn’t look too appealing, but it was just about wide enough to allow me to enter, and I didn’t have any better options. I crawled in. The darkness was absolute and thick with dust and cloying air. I remembered having the flashback in the vent when I went to investigate the ancient tunnels, and I tried to put it out of my mind. Of course, that only registered the memories more firmly in my thoughts. At least my brain didn’t seem inclined to panic. I crawled onward, into the darkness.
World War 97 Part 3 Page 4
