The Outsiders

by L. J. LaBarthe

  "Pretty good," Matty said. "I remember most things. I don't lie awake at night cursing my brain for not giving me any information about myself. What amused the hell out of me, though, was that Dr. Andrews in the clinic, the shrink? He was totally against regression therapy or stuff like that, yet the exercises he gave me to do to help my memory were basic meditation ones, with some breathing and yoga thrown in."

  Nisha chuckled, the sound like a soft breath of air in the dank darkness through which they walked. "I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that was a bit of an oxymoron."

  "As I said. Old attitudes are new. I'm very glad you are both back to remembering everything. It took me some time."

  "It wasn't fun," Nisha said. "I was so frustrated by it all, I think I cried myself to sleep every night, just because I didn't know anything about myself."

  "Do you think it might have been a panacea? Like, the exercises he gave us, he gives them to anyone with difficult problems that he doesn't have any real experience in solving? Or maybe it was a placebo, like, when we woke up and the doctors were doing whatever the hell it was, they gave us something to block our memories so that we wouldn't panic?"

  "Oh, I do not like either of those suggestions at all," Arkady said. "Especially the last one."

  "I hope that's not true," Nisha said. "I'd hate to have to strangle someone."

  "I wouldn't, I've done it before. I'd hate to have to do it to Dr. Andrews, he was all right." Matty sighed. "I'm just wondering, that's all. Like you said before, we're all paranoid to some degree."

  "Let's hope that it's nothing more than that," Nisha said. "How much farther, Arkady?"

  "Not far."

  "Okay." Nisha was silent for a few moments and the only sounds were the distant noise of dripping water and the pitter-patter of what Matty thought were rats.

  "Pei Ling was a very good woman," Arkady said, breaking the silence. "And a brilliant spy."

  "She was. I miss her," Nisha said. "All our dead friends were."

  "God, me, too." Matty ran his free hand through his hair.

  "Let us remember our dear departed friends and colleagues when we have more time. I think we should do that to properly honor them," Arkady said. "I know I brought up Pei Ling. It just occurs to me that she and the others should be remembered by us properly, later." Several moments passed before he continued. "The door to enter the library is just ahead. It is a small door, an access way. I think that once upon a time, this particular subway line was used to transport books and documents and other things that the library would store."

  "Whatever the reason for it, that's not really important, is it? More important to get in and get to work. I like your idea about honoring our losses, Arkady. Like you said, though, it'll have to be later." Nisha's voice was calm now, firmer, and Matty realized that all three of them had been holding onto an awful lot of grief. He wondered if any of them had actually taken a moment to bury their dead—not physically, after all, as that wasn't possible now, but mentally and in their hearts. He made a note to himself to ask them about it later, when they next met with Paul.

  The door was closed, just as they'd left it. Once again, Arkady and Matty set their shoulders to it, grunting with the effort of shoving and pulling the heavy thing open. Once it was open enough, Nisha slid between the door and the frame and lent her weight to it, pushing as the men pulled and soon, with a heavy screech of rusting metal, the door opened enough to let them through comfortably.

  "We really need to bring some WD40 to fix those hinges," Matty said.

  Arkady stifled a laugh. "I will try to remember for next time. Meanwhile, we should try and close it enough in case anyone walks past."

  "That'll be fun." The three of them put all their might into it. Eventually, the door pulled closed, almost all the way, the only thing showing that it wasn't was the dim light that shone through the crack between the edge of the door and its frame.

  "Okay. Now we go to the library," Matty said.

  Nisha had drawn her gun and held it with her flashlight. "Roger."

  "It's not far, there are rats and spiders," Arkady said. "I know Matty hates spiders."

  "Great, I didn't really want to think about that," Matty said, as he drew his own gun. They began to walk, and Matty remembered this narrow, dark tunnel and how it had felt the first time he'd walked through it.

  It wasn't so bad this time, thanks to the flashlights, although it still wasn't pleasant. It felt as if walking were taking a very long time. He heard Nisha curse beside him. He wondered how she felt, how Arkady felt, but he was too tightly wound up to ask. If anything were to go wrong, if they were to encounter anyone from the underground city, this would be one of the worst places to have a fight, the tight quarters and the darkness would be quite restrictive. Not impossible, no, but restrictive enough.

  "There is the library," Arkady said in a hushed tone, Matty saw that he was right. Light was ahead, from the door they'd left half-open the previous day which was exactly as they'd left it.

  "I hope like hell that no one checked the library between now and yesterday," Matty said. "Or we could be in some deep shit."

  "Let us cross that bridge if and when we come to it," Arkady said.

  They went into the library and turned off their flashlights. Matty put his in his backpack, and looked around. So far, it looked exactly as they'd left the place, empty and silent, lit only by the fluorescent lights that he'd left on.

  Nisha let out a low whistle as she looked around. "Amazing. Teenage me would never have wanted to leave this place."

  "This is just the basement, all the archives," Matty said.

  "You borrowed books from here, yes? How did you manage that if the borrowing section is on the same level as the street?"

  Matty sighed, remembering the bricked-up windows. "Everything's been closed off. It was done some time ago, to judge by the bricks. Windows are sealed, doors are sealed, no light gets through. It might as well be underground for all that you can see."

  "Damn." Nisha looked around again. "I thought for a minute that might be a good way to get out into the city above the subway."

  "I think it was done pretty soon after the people who came down here got settled," Matty said.

  Arkady had already started walking and Matty hurried to catch him up, Nisha bringing up the rear. As they went, he looked around, his gun still in his hand. It felt good, holding a weapon, knowing that he was armed and ready for any sort of attack. He felt more secure than he had for a while. When they reached the place where he'd hidden the book, Matty stopped and dug it out, handed it to Nisha who tucked it beneath one arm. She still held her weapon too, he noted, as did Arkady.

  "Got it?" Arkady asked.

  "Yep."

  "Good."

  They covered the short distance in a matter of moments. Arkady opened the door to the map room and felt for the light switch. Light swam out of the room a second later, and they entered. Nisha let out another low whistle.

  "This is absolutely incredible," she said. Her eyes were wide as she looked this way and that.

  "That's what we thought when we first came in here," Matty said. "I'm going to try out the computer, you guys do map things."

  "Map things?" Arkady sounded amused.

  "That's my very specific term of the day," Matty said, shooting him a quick grin. He went to the computer and sat down, putting his gun on the table close to hand. "So here we go," he said to himself as he accessed Windows once again. The computer obliged him and soon he was absorbed in his task, Nisha and Arkady's conversation behind him a murmur in his ears.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Matty was surprised that the Internet still seemed to exist. Or at least a connection to it on this computer did. Matty accessed the wireless icon and was astonished to see that yes, there were indeed connections and that they were strong. His suspicions about the whole situation were growing by the minute.

  He opened the internet and sat back, waiting as the ancient comput
er ticked along. He didn't expect it to work as quickly as it once had, and he also didn't expect Google to still exist. On that, at least, he was right, for he immediately got a 'web page cannot be displayed' error. He thought about it and tried some other search engines, all of them coming up with the same message. All right, it was off to the darker, more anonymous parts of the Internet instead.

  Matty was concerned, though. He didn't have a VPN and he had no software to hide himself and his tracks. He didn't imagine that any of the old sites that could camouflage a person's IP address would still exist, so he decided to try a few out that he could remember the URLs of. The first one he tried returned an error, the second one, after several moments, came back working. Forums existed there, and Matty logged onto the guest bar and settled in.

  As he waited for the forum main page to load, he heard the unmistakable sound of laughter coming from beyond the map room. He tensed immediately, grabbing his gun and swiveling around in his seat. Nisha and Arkady had frozen, staring at the door.

  "Hide," hissed Nisha. As if her word had released them from stasis, they all moved.

  Matty turned the sound down on the computer then switched off the monitor. He grabbed his backpack, holding his gun in his right hand, he darted behind a tall bookshelf just beyond the table.

  He felt a prickling sensation between his shoulder blades, a sense that Matty knew all too well from too many years working in the field in a highly dangerous and secretive job. He had loved his job, he still loved it. He relied now on his instincts that had gotten him through more than one risky situation. He peered through a gap between books in the shelf and noted that Nisha and Arkady had disappeared as well, probably hiding just as he was doing.

  Voices grew louder and he could hear two of them, both male. Matty tensed, gun at the ready. He didn't want to have to kill anyone—they'd be missed and there'd be questions—however he also didn't want anyone to know what he and his friends were doing or where they were.

  "I hate this, you know?" One man said. His voice sounded almost rusty, as if he'd spent too many years drinking cheap alcohol and smoking harsh cigarettes.

  "Bert, you hate everything here. You hate this whole stinking place, you know I ain't much fond of it either."

  The man who had been identified as Bert growled. "This part though, Mark, the basement, it gives me the creeps. It's like some ghost is gonna leap out at any time. I dunno why the bosses don't turn the generator off and let the place just die."

  "'Cause they wanna keep the computers," Mark said. "They wanna use 'em in agriculture."

  "So they keep saying, they haven't done anything about that yet. The guy who runs that, Mr. Paul, he says they don't need anything new there. Everything's good to last. He'd know, wouldn't he? He's one of those cryos, he knows stuff no one else knows."

  "I s'pose you think he's creepy too?"

  "Nah, Mr. Paul's all right. Mrs. Paul's a nice lady and she comes from a good family, if there were anything wrong with her man, well, she wouldn't be allowed to be his wife, would she? No, no, she wouldn't."

  "Whatever. Let's just check this shit out and go home."

  "After we report to the bosses. Don't forget we gotta do that."

  "Now you talking about being creepy? Those guys, they're the ones who're really creepy."

  "Amen to that," Bert said. The sound of keys jangling was loud and included some colorful swearing as Bert went through the keys to find the one to fit the door of the maps room. "Here it is. So many damn keys."

  "I once heard they used to have like, pin number code doors. Like, you punch a number into a keypad and that opens the door? How bizarre is that?"

  "Mark, you talking about stuff of legend. That isn't real. It's a story, that's all."

  "Says you. I bet it was real in some parts of the world."

  They continued to bicker as Matty listened and the door swung open.

  "Right, there it is. As we left it three months ago."

  "You don't wanna go in and check it thorough?" Mark asked.

  "Nah. Who'd be down here?"

  "What about those other cryos? They ain't got a great reputation."

  "Mark, think. Two of 'em, they haven't been awake for long to get a reputation, and Miss Linda, she likes one of the men real good. The boss, her father, he's not sure about the guy, though he doesn't think he's going to be a problem. The lady, she'll be all right too. I mean, what trouble could a nice-looking lady like her be?"

  Matty had to grin at that. If they knew what Nisha was capable of, nice looking though she was, they'd be rethinking just how much trouble she could be.

  "All right, let's go. I'm getting hungry anyway."

  The door was closed and locked, and Matty heard them continue to talk.

  "Think they'll burn everything in here and turn it into a new agriculture unit?" Mark asked.

  "I dunno. They might. Everything but the computers, maybe some of the furniture. The wood can be reused for other things, yeah. The books and all this paper crap? That's useless."

  "I hope they do," Mark said, his voice growing fainter, so Matty thought he was walking away from the door. "I'd like to see this place be used for something productive, not sit here rotting away and ignored forever. It's a good, big building, it'd be a good space to expand."

  "Tell the bosses what you think."

  "Uh-uh, not me, man. I ain't doin' that."

  Bert laughed. "C'mon, let's go back to the Concourse. Then we can go to the Mezzanine and make our report."

  "Best plan of the morning."

  Matty listened hard, straining to hear them. After several minutes, he was sure they'd left and returned to their employers. He lowered his weapon and stepped out from behind the bookcase. "Nisha? Arkady?"

  They stepped out from behind a pair of shelves near the door.

  "That was interesting, wasn't it?" Nisha said.

  "And curious," Arkady said. "We had better find what we need quickly. If they are indeed going to destroy everything in here, we may not have another chance. Not to mention Paul being involved somehow."

  Matty sighed. "All those books. What a terrible waste."

  "I know." Nisha shook her head. "I think that actually hurts me, like the death of a loved one. How can people not care about books, about history and knowledge, entertainment, the life inside the covers of the books, magazines and papers?"

  "Because they have been taught to see it as wasteful and a relic of a time of great danger," Arkady said. His voice was sad. "It does not make it right, no. It is a reason."

  "A shitty one." Nisha returned to the table. "I'd better get back to making my notes, like the nice young lady I am."

  Matty and Arkady burst out laughing at that. "I thought that'd have you rolling your eyes," Matty said.

  "It really did." Nisha shook her head as she pulled a map towards her. "If only they knew what I'm capable of."

  "I had that exact thought." Matty grinned at her and then changed the subject. "What language are you using for your notes?" Matty asked as he sat down in the chair facing the computer again.

  "Tamil. I think it's unlikely that anyone here could read it."

  "Good plan." Matty turned on the monitor and gazed at it for several seconds before he realized what he was seeing. "Oh my God," he breathed.

  "What is it?" Arkady asked.

  "I logged onto—actually, never mind, the where doesn't matter. What does matter is that there's a forum and it's very active. The topics are about surviving above ground and not getting killed by the undergrounders, as they call people who live like we currently do. The front page has a huge warning for readers to be careful when they're out foraging."

  Arkady came to join him, and stood behind him, reading over Matty's shoulder. His breath tickled Matty's ear and sent a shiver down Matty's spine. "Interesting," Arkady mused. "Click on that forum there." He pointed to one titled New York.

  Matty did and the list of relevant subjects were revealed to them. He scanned the list
, looking at the subject lines, marveling at this evidence of life beyond the subway. "I don't think there are many people living up there," he said after a moment. "The board only has fifty-five posters."

  "Open another tab using the IP camouflage," Arkady said. "I want to see if you can access the site we had before all this began. When we started to act out our plan."

  Matty did, and slowly, the computer obligingly complied. The page came up gradually, Matty tapping his foot with impatience. There wasn't anything to do except wait, and thank the gods of technology for this working machine, modem, satellite and the Internet still existing. The site he and Arkady were watching had been made by Pei Ling, and was run through so many backdoor servers and IPs that it would make it very difficult to find. It was a place where they could leave messages for each other, when all other forms of communication might fail.

  Finally, the page loaded, and one message was on it. Matty began to curse and he clenched both his fists, even as Arkady swore loudly in Russian and stomped over to kick at a steel bookshelf.

  "What the hell is wrong with you two?" Nisha asked, coming to join them.

  Matty merely pointed at the screen. He was still furious.

  Nisha read the words. "Oh my," she said. "What a dickhead."

  "You don't say," Matty said, sarcasm dripping from his every word.

  "'I wondered how long it would take you to find me online," the message read. "'I'm not always here, though, so you might have to wait for me to return. It doesn't really matter, as I've got what I wanted—a nice little war that set off a wonderful chain of events that evolved into this decimation of humanity.

  "'Tell Paul that he's a load of old bollocks. I hope he's happy, he wanted to destabilize everything, well, he's got that now, in spades. I hope most of you are dead, for those of you who aren't, welcome to MY world now. I really hope Arkady and Nisha are alive at least, maybe Matty, too. Ah, the irony of it. I'm angry at America and thinking fondly of Russia, India, and Australia.