by Pavel Kornev
"Oh no!" I groaned when the trail of dried footprints led us further down.
The steep narrow stairs led into the darkness and, under it, there was dangerously sagging uneven stone cladding. Thomas Smith managed to get through the steps sideways, while I had to get down on my haunches.
On the next level, the ceilings were sufficiently high, the walls impressed with their solid stone masonry. Sometimes, I saw collapsed doorways. Meanwhile, at the intersection of two passages, I got the sensation that this was a now buried street of the ancient city.
"Well, where to now?" I asked softly, looking from side to side.
I seemed to hear falling water down one of the passages and, there was a slight waft of fresh air that way as well, but the investigator expectedly headed in the opposite direction. Soon, the ground was fully covered in cloudy dirty slime, and it had to be crossed on boards thrown from stone to stone, rotten and slippery. My mood was improved by that one bit.
Anyway, why did I care about dirt? I remembered the ghastly flayed body with black holes for eyes and shivered. I had no desire at all for a reunion with the earthly incarnation of the Aztec god.
"It's here," Thomas whispered suddenly, hurriedly turning his torch down.
I looked closely and made out a door bound with iron strips. However, the mortar around the doorframe was dried out, so the masonry wasn’t too resilient.
Smith pressed himself to the door, listened, sniffed, took a step back toward me and said:
"There's someone inside. It's heaving with tobacco."
"The tracks lead right here?"
"Yes, there's blood on the doorstep."
"Then let's go in," I decided, holding the carbine at the ready. Due to the magazine inside the pistol handle and the heavy electric jar in the stock, the gun was balanced toward the back, and the wires on the barrel only partially rectified the situation. When shooting bursts, kickback flung the bullets quite high up.
Thomas leaned against the door, cautiously touched the handle and turned to me.
"Locked," he said. "What are we gonna do?"
I chuckled and took a hand grenade from my bag.
"What do you think?"
The grenade fit perfectly in the gap between the stones; I carefully removed the pin barbell and turned the investigator.
"You follow me," he warned.
Remembering his talent of quick movement, I nodded, removed the pin and ran behind a stone ledge. A moment later, the explosion blew away the unstable masonry, and the door flew off its hinges collapsing to the ground. Streams of dust and small stones came down from the ceiling, but the thick dome of the underground bore the blow, and it didn't collapse.
"Lucky," flickered in my head, then I hopped out from the cover and headed out after the investigator to the smashed doorway.
Naturally, at a slower pace. It was as if Thomas dissolved into a stripe of fog and was gone in an instant. And immediately, shooting!
As soon as I jumped into the spacious room, I jerked up my carbine in a sharp motion. The bright beam of the torch lit up a bullet-riddled body on the floor, then slid over the writhing wounded man at the wall, and immediately hit upon someone's bare back. My green dot was blinking between the stranger's shoulder blades, and I quickly pulled down on the trigger. A short burst trilled out, and the boy was knocked off its feet before he managed to shoot at the investigator, who was running for a far door.
Thomas Smith slipped into the next room, and I heard many frequent shots. Meanwhile, a side passage caught my eye. As I ran, I took down the wounded bird reaching for his shotgun, and jumped into the next room, blinding an enemy I had caught off guard. He was firing blind and trying to cover his eye with a hand but didn't manage to do anything more. Not losing an instant to aim, I shot him with a couple short bursts. Coughing up blood, the boy slid down the wall to the floor; his shirt, marked with a green dot, instantly changed from white to crimson.
Done.
And immediately, a grenade blew up nearby. I hopped out of the room headlong, but the investigator didn't need my help.
"Clear!" he shouted, leaving the far corridor.
"Me too!" I answered, shining my light on the dead bodies and cursing vexingly: "Devil! Those were no Aztecs!"
And in fact, the boys we shot didn't look one bit like red-skinned natives of the New World. One of them was a fully blue-eyed blond.
"Perhaps the Aztecs hired bandits," Thomas Smith suggested none-too-confidently and asked: "Keep watch, I'll walk through the rooms."
The investigator hid in the far corridor for a few minutes, then returned with a wooden box and threw it forcefully at the wall.
"Do you know what that is?" he asked, picking up a bag of white powder from the broken box. Then, cutting it open with his pen knife, he said: "Cocaine!"
"So maybe we did find the right place?" My spirits perked up, because all of this contraband narcotic came from lands under the control of Tenochtitlan. "But what if it's just drug dealers?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders and started searching more carefully. I stood watch for some time, then couldn't hold back and joined him.
"What have you found, Thomas?"
"There are a few more people living here than we just caught," the investigator said and threw me a jar filled with leaves. "And here, look!"
"What is that?" I asked in surprise, catching the glass container with my left hand.
"Coca leaves. Aztec priests chew them to increase their concentration and reduce fatigue."
I removed the tightened lid with difficulty, pulled one of the leaves out and wanted to stick it in my mouth, but Thomas stopped me:
"Come off it, Lev. It's a ghastly filth."
"I’m trying not to fall asleep."
"Then you need quinoa ash, it’s from some local plant," the investigator warned me, digging around and pulling out an envelope of some kind. "Here. And don't chew the leaves, just set them between your teeth and cheek."
I did just that and very quickly felt numbing like from an injection of anesthetic. The quinoa ash smelled strongly of anise, and it had little bits of cane sugar in it, which at least somewhat mitigated the bitterness of the leaves.
"Lev!" Thomas suddenly called out to me, not stopping his digging through the room. "Help!"
Together, we dragged a wooden shield from a room small room and discovered a hatch under it with powerful iron latches. We didn't have to break it: the padlock was sitting next to it, unattached.
"Open it!" Smith ordered, then stood to the side with the carbine in his hands.
I threw back the massive lid with strain and immediately took a step to the side, pulling a fragmentation grenade from my bag. But there was no one alive in the small rectangular basement, just a body lying on a stone slab with its rib cage split open. Its heart was sitting in a ritual goblet; the improvised sacrifice and floor was dotted with dried blood. The smell of death and damp turned my stomach.
I do not know for certain if the deceased was an Aztec, but he was certainly a native of the New World. His pitch-black hair and swarthy reddish skin tone bore clear witness of that.
"Cover me!" the investigator ordered, going down the wooden ladder propped against the wall.
He didn't spend long in the cellar and came back out looking gloomier than a stormcloud.
"Bad news," he told me. "There are women's things in the cage. They were keeping a sixth prisoner."
"They kidnapped someone in advance!" I realized.
"We have to stop them!" Thomas announced and walked decisively toward the exit. "Let's go, Lev!"
I stayed back to bring the jar of coca leaves with me and caught up to Smith, who was now in the doorway we'd blasted open with a grenade.
"Wait, Thomas! What are you going to do?"
"We know the place–the catacombs under Palace Square. We know the time as well–right now. We need to hurry!"
I spit a wad of the softened leaves angrily underfoot and stopped the investigator, grabbing h
im by the shoulder.
"Are you joking?!" I inquired, looking him grimly from top to bottom. "Do you have any idea how long it will take us to get from here to the Imperial Palace? Underground? Not knowing the way?"
"I have a great sense of direction!" Thomas Smith answered, turning his hand and confidently stepping down the passage. But he immediately turned back. "Alright, let's get up top and catch a cab. Sound good?"
"Sure."
"Then let's go, we don't have much time!"
But if the investigator had a great sense of direction, I had a good nose for trouble; in particular, for the horrors of the supernatural.
So, when a wave of chill ran over my back, I didn't curse at the breeze, I sharply turned and threw up my carbine. The Aztec with exposed ribcage jumped out of the dark and ran on the attack. But the Gauss caster instantly spat a half a dozen bullets at him, and his head spattered with brains. He took a few more wobbly steps after that, pulled out an obsidian blade and fell to the floor.
At that very moment, the emanation of an infernal spirit burned my soul with an unseen fire, and it was as if I could physically feel an otherworldly creature quickly approaching.
"We're too late!" Thomas Smith gasped, not in the mood to talk.
The underground passage filled with fog. The haze started to sting with cold and drain my energy. My legs and arms were bound by an incomprehensible dread. In flickers, I saw the bodies of the bandits come back from the dead, but I couldn’t make anything out properly. The electric light of the torches was drowned out in the impenetrable whiteness, not having the power to fight back its unnatural essence.
I shot a few short bursts at random and stepped back, my left hand pulling at the flap of my bag.
"Thomas, cover me!" I shouted to the investigator, feeling for an incendiary grenade.
With a quiet clank, the pin leapt out, the aluminum cylinder flew into the fog and, a moment later, splashed out a burning flame of white phosphorus. Their magical defense was burned through in an instant, and the walking dead fell, embraced by the fire. But there were other beasts stealing up behind them. Agile, leaping and fanged, they were reminiscent of a dog and a monkey at the same time. Demons with jaws full of sharp fangs.
We opened fire on them from the Gauss casters, and the titanium-jacketed bullets started piercing their hoary semi-transparent bodies, leaving ghastly wounds. The demons didn't have time to fully acquire flesh, but it wasn’t a lack of imagination on the part of the malefic who had brought this nightmare to life. The infernal beasts required human blood and flesh.
Our flesh and our blood!
"Let's get out of here!" Thomas commanded, and as soon as I stepped back, the investigator tossed a fragmentation grenade at the horde of pursuers.
I added another incendiary bomb to that, and we ran away as fast as we could. With a flash and a clap, the chemical flame hissed to life and wafted a fierce rage that could dissolve human flesh like concentrated acid.
Another demon jumped out from the side, but Thomas's torch caught it, and our heavy bullets sent the beast back.
"Here!" Smith shouted, hopping over the melting body of a demon and ducking into a side passage.
I turned after him. A moment later, a dense cloud of fog raced with the speed of a cannonball down the corridor. The wave of cold came unraveled on the walls like a stinging sleet. The investigator had to throw an incendiary grenade behind his back, blocking the fog with its chemical flame.
Slipping with our shrapnel-sprayed feet, we ran up the stairs and turned around, riddling the demons chasing us with a few long bursts. After that, we ran further, but in the next room, Thomas stumbled on some rubble and rolled over the earth. That little bit was enough for our infernal pursuers to catch us and throw themselves on the attack from two corridors at once. Without torches, this would have been the end of us, but the beams of the electric bulbs didn't only blind the demons, they allowed us to shoot without wasting time on aiming.
Burst! Burst! Another!
The whitish semitransparent beasts fell dead at our feet. The green spot of the target marker jumped from one hairless creature to another, freezing for a moment on their fanged jaws or between their red eyes and immediately jumping onward as soon as a quiet shot rang out.
On my carbine, the electric jar low-charge light started blinking treacherously, but I kept pushing down ceaselessly on the trigger. Thomas Smith, meanwhile, used his buttstock to break the lock off a rusty grate in the corner the demons had backed us into.
A ghastly cold was drifting up from a hole in the floor. I threw one of the last incendiary bombs down, and Thomas Smith immediately yanked me after him. He didn't have time to deal with the lock, though he did manage to break two iron bars out of the masonry. And we slipped through that gap.
The passage went down at a slope. The ceiling gradually lowered, filth flowed in the gutters underfoot and it became clear that we had managed to turn up in the storm drain system. All that remained was to hope it didn't lead to a waste collector...
"The fresh air is drawing me!" the investigator exhaled hoarsely and threw an incendiary grenade back to meet the demons. The electric jars in our carbines had already nearly died once and for all by that time, and the weapon ceased to fire bursts. They could only get off single shots every other time, in fact.
A blinding white flame flickered behind us. It devoured the transparent flesh of the demons, and they were caught in soundless writhing, melting and dissolving, not powerful enough to resist the fury of the chemical flame.
Thomas and I were rushing, using up the last of our energy. Then the investigator suddenly threw up his hands and fell out of the tube. Not having managed to stop, I jumped after him into the darkness. But, fortunately, there was a stone ledge a meter and a half under the tube where my partner had fallen, his strengthnow drained. We were actually lucky–from there, I could see the leaden surface of the Yarden.
Standing to my feet, I ripped the bag from Thomas, pulled out the pin of the first grenade I came upon and threw it as hard as I could into the drainage hole together with one of my own.
"Let's run!"
We hurried away. Behind us came a dull clap, and a long pillar of white smoke shot outside. Another somewhat more powerful explosion followed; a burning flame spit out of the pipe as if from the top of a volcano, and fragments of stone flew. A moment later, the sewage pipe was totally blocked by collapsed masonry.
We got out!
7
WE RAN DOWN a narrow projection off the granite facing of the embankment until we reached a jetty and threw both carbines far into the river, having removed their torches in advance.
The investigator stopped a cabby. He looked at us with unhidden doubt but, for double the pay, still agreed to take us to the port. There, I got myself more or less in order in the washroom of a small café. Thomas Smith, meanwhile went to send another telegram to the Pinkerton Detective Agency. I ordered a mug of strong black coffee and stood on the terrace watching the brightly illuminated decks of the ocean liners.
I heard echoes of music and frequent bursts of laughter coming from them. I wanted unbearably to forget about all my problems, steal Lily from her parents' house and set off with her on a round-the-world cruise. Or at least go to the continent.
Now, something that small was all I needed to be happy. Too bad it wasn't my fate.
I even got the idea to call Liliana. But before I managed, the disheveled Thomas Smith returned. The investigator ordered a mug of light beer, paid up and stood next to me.
"Lev, are you certain the ritual has already been performed?" he asked, taking a few greedy gulps of beer.
"Did the demons not convince you of that?" I answered with a question. "Really?"
The investigator sighed and wiped some foam from his mustache.
"Well, what now?"
"I have no idea."
"And your contacts in the Imperial Guard?"
I chuckled.
"After today's
fiasco?"
"Any other suggestions?"
I finished the coffee and placed the empty mug on the nearest table, then sighed heavily.
"I need to have a talk with Moran."
Thomas frowned and raised his hand with the bandaged finger stubs.
"Are you sure? What if he's somehow connected with all this?"
"Well, this way we'll know for sure." I shivered from a piercing gust of wind blowing off the water and called the investigator after me: "Let's go, there's nothing else to do anyhow."
Smith hesitated for a bit, then gave in and walked after me. But it was obvious that I wouldn't be able to convince him once and for all. While the cabby took us to the self-propelled carriage we'd left near Riverfort, the investigator sat in agitated silence, then started nervously walking from side to side as he waited for the powder engine to warm up.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he couldn't hold back.
"I'm not," I admitted, putting on my jacket. "But what options do we have? If we can come to an agreement, Moran will solve all our problems."
"And if we cannot?"
I just smiled. Such an outcome was much less to my liking, but I was ready for it as well.
"Devil!" Thomas Smith had his own interpretation of my smile. "I don't want to know!"
"Don't you worry, I'll do it all by myself."
"And the demons? What will happen if they get out of the catacombs?"
"Their path into the city is closed," I assured the investigator. "No matter what ritual the Aztecs performed, they have to stay underground."
New Babylon, like the majority of the Empire, was protected against the otherworldly by a series of powerful electromagnetic transmitters. I had no reason to doubt that they were still functioning. Science is stronger than magic.
"Alright, Lev!" Thomas sighed, rubbing the bandage on his neck. "Alright! How will we do it?"
