Sunfail

by Steven Savile

  She scanned the area. Most of the buildings were new, functionalist, with wide, flat roofs. The architecture meant her hunter could have eyes up there too: a sniper with a high-powered rifle. They didn’t need to be running and leaping from rooftop to rooftop like some kind of parkour freak. A skilled shooter with a decent sniper rifle could take out a target from a mile away with the high ground—even maintain a good hit probability from a mile and a half. She was a sitting duck down there in the wide street. Sophie resisted the urge to check for a red dot in the middle of her chest. If it was there, then it was too late do anything about it. Fatalistic, but 100 percent accurate.

  She couldn’t see anyone up there. That didn’t mean they weren’t there; the angles made it easy to hide. There was no telltale glint of sunlight on the sight to give them away. All she could do was keep moving.

  Breathing slowly and steadily Sophie continued down the avenue. She had a finite time out here. She knew that. Her pursuer would grow tired of the game sooner rather than later and, if he was good, pick his moment to move in for the kill. She had to assume he was good. Better than her. That was the only way to stay alive. Underestimating the enemy was a good way to die young.

  She needed to get off the street.

  She scanned the rows of buildings and doorways as she moved, thinking how much easier it would have been a week ago to just jack one of the parked cars. It wasn’t an option now. Even if she could get one of the engines started she couldn’t move fast enough. The city was jammed hood to tail to hood. Any sudden moves would only escalate the problem faster than she wanted. She was already in enough trouble. She didn’t need the gendarmerie hunting her as well; The Hidden’s killers were more than enough to contend with.

  She kept looking for another out.

  A couple of minutes later, a possible solution moved toward her: a small gang of students, male and female, all walking together, all chatting loudly and gesturing wildly. Deep in conversation, laughing, arguing, with all the passion of youth trying to one-up each other as they impressed their way into whichever pair of pants it was they had their eyes on. A couple carried small canvases and sketchbooks. They were budding Space Invaders and Zevs or whoever the new cool street artist du jour happened to be, on their way down to Montmartre. They took up the entire sidewalk—and were heading right for her.

  She could use them.

  Through the trees and buildings opposite her, Sophie noticed a brightly lit lantern beside an open doorway, the stairs down into the metro barely visible beyond the threshold.

  Again, she could use them.

  All she had to do was put the two together and she had the makings of a plan.

  Keep it simple, she thought, and stumbled, deliberately colliding with one of the boys. She hit him with the force of a linebacker slamming into a test dummy and the pair of them hit the ground in a tangle of limbs. It wasn’t graceful, but it was effective. The others reached down, trying to help them as Sophie waved them off and pulled herself to her feet.

  “Je suis bien,” she said, straightening her clothes. A small crowd had already gathered, drawn by the commotion. Sophie needed to judge the moment carefully. As she turned, she deliberately knocked one of the student’s sketchbooks with her hip. The artist’s block was overflowing with loose sketches. As it fell out of the girl’s hands, it opened and the loose leaves of paper teased up, flew into the air, and blew across the sidewalk.

  “Mes dessins!” The sketchbook’s owner—short, average height, average weight, messy red-brown hair—scrambled about, trying desperately to rescue the pages before they were ruined. Her friends forgot all about Sophie and joined in the rush to gather up the pages.

  Sophie ducked out of the group, careful to turn toward the metro entrance. She could only hope her watcher was having trouble following her through the chaos she’d just conjured. If luck was on her side, the students had blocked his view completely. If it wasn’t she’d know soon enough.

  She broke into a run, head down, arms and legs pumping furiously, straight for the metro. She ran ten miles a day, every day. Pounding the pavement helped her stay clear, helped her focus. Not that it would help if the watcher was going to take her down. She gritted her teeth expecting to feel the bite of the bullet.

  Or maybe she wouldn’t feel it if he was a good enough shot? Maybe her head would just explode and she’d cease to be between steps?

  She didn’t slow down.

  Breathing hard, she raced down the steps two and three at a time, and hurdled the turnstile. She couldn’t relax. Not yet. Evasive maneuvers. She needed to get on the next available train, double back, switch lines. She looked up at the security cameras as she rushed down the escalator to the platform just as a train rumbled out of the tunnel mouth ahead of her.

  The doors hissed as they opened.

  There were people all around her.

  She took a seat in the corner, back to the metal wall, giving her a full view of the train car and making it impossible for anyone to sneak up on her. Never leave your back exposed.

  She was safe, even if that safety was temporary.

  The doors slammed after some unintelligible mumble from the public address system.

  As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t disappear.

  Not yet. She needed to get to Jake.

  And that meant stepping out of the shadows and into the light, both physically and metaphorically.

  Chapter Three

  “FINN! WAIT UP!”

  Finlay Walsh sighed. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with Tom. The guy was a creep. All hands and roving eyes, reveling in his thinly veiled misogynism, ludicrously attempting to hit on her with shitty one-liners. The last one had been the worst. He’d been drinking at the time. She could smell the whiskey sour on his breath, but even so that was no excuse: The only reason I’d kick you out of bed would be to fuck you on the floor. Classy. Yeah, the guy was a shoe-in for Boss of the Year with a mouth like that; in fact he was her boss, and that meant she couldn’t ignore him as much as she’d like to, even if he was about to come out with another peach like, Nice shoes, wanna fuck?

  She turned and waited for him to catch up to her.

  Tom Campbell had been a good-looking guy, once upon a time. He hadn’t aged with that George Clooney kind of salt-and-pepper grace, though, so the last of his youthful beauty lay in his blue-gray eyes. The years had turned the rest of him soft and rounded and left him with a dark Dracula peak of thinning hair, slicked back with gel to complete his seedy charm. His eyes were buried in a morass of wrinkles, bags, and extra flesh, which dimmed them. It was his father’s face struggling to come out from behind his own, Finn thought. She’d met Thomas Sr. a few times, and the irascible old man was proof that the genetic apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Maybe it was just a case of people becoming their jobs, because with his usual jeans, button-down shirt, and blazer, he looked every inch the department chair.

  Scratch that, she thought as he approached, he looked every inch the alcoholic, sexist department chair. She didn’t let any of this show in her face or her voice.

  “What’s up, Tom?” Polite. Friendly but in no way too friendly. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of being shouted down as a cock tease the next time he was loaded.

  “I just got off the phone with someone down in Cuba,” he answered, and Finn’s first thought was, How does this get turned around into another attempt to sleep with me? “A marine biologist. He’s sitting on something pretty interesting, I think.”

  “On a scale of one to ten, just how interesting? I mean, we’re not exactly the go-to team for marine biologists.”

  He considered this for a second. “I’d say this one goes all the way up to eleven.”

  She inclined her head doubtfully.

  “We’re not talking a new species of fish,” he added.

  “Don’t make me drag it out of you.”

  “His team have found a city. Well, the ruins of one.”

  “Okay, you�
��ve got my attention. An underwater ruin off Cuba? That’d be, what, Olmec maybe? Did they make it down that far? Who else was in the area? How old is it? How extensive? What kind of shape is it in? Do we have images yet?” The questions came tumbling out. This was the sort of stuff she lived for. They all did. That’s why they were here—Columbia University had one of the best archaeology departments in the country.

  “Slow down,” her boss told her, chuckling and managing to make those two words sound deeply condescending. She forced a smile. “We don’t know much yet, but what is interesting is that whatever the nature of these ruins, they’re covered in symbols. Could be decoration, could be writing, or both. That’s where you come in. We all know how important the Rosetta stone was to our understanding of language. They’ve got funding to do a proper study. They need an archaeologist on-site, specifically one capable of deciphering those markings.” He looked at her more closely, then offered that slightly uncomfortable grin of his that he thought was so charming. It took her a moment to realize he was beaming with pride. “I promised I’d put our very best on it. That’d be you.”

  She smiled genuinely now. No need to act humble. She really was the best when it came to ancient languages, ideograms, and pictograms. They all knew it—she had an entire wall of articles and presentation plaques and awards to prove she was an asset to the department. “Thanks. But . . . Cuba? I mean . . . Cuba?” It wasn’t all cigars, smoky rooms, and danzón, mambo, and salsa. It was fine to say women’s rights had progressed since the revolution, but it was still a country founded on machismo, domestic violence, and tourist-fueled prostitution. In other words, no country for a woman like her.

  But Tom surprised her for the second time in as many minutes: “Yes and no. It’s Cuba, obviously, but remember, this thing’s underwater. They can’t exactly drain the ocean. The only people actually on-site are going to be the divers. They’ll be shooting video the whole time, and taking digital images. They’ll upload those to a shared server you’ll have access to. You can work on the whole thing right from the comfort of your own office . . . Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” and she really didn’t. An undiscovered underwater ruin off the coast of Cuba? What an incredible find. It was the kind of thing immortality was built on. Everyone remembered Howard Carter’s name. Something like this could see her name listed beside Arthur Evans, who uncovered the remains of the Minoan civilization, and Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated Jericho and proved it to be the oldest known continuously occupied human settlement. It could be that important.

  Could be.

  That was the thing.

  She couldn’t let herself get carried away before she’d had a chance to set eyes on those markings. They’d give her a clue to its history. But just hearing that it was there made it impossible not to wonder about who the inhabitants of this drowned city were, how it had got there in the first place, how civilization in that area had evolved and finally migrated as the ocean reclaimed their home.

  “Try thanks, it’s an all-purpose way of saying, You did good, boss, and I’ll say it’s my pleasure.” He threw a meaty arm over her shoulder. “I know you’ll do us proud, kiddo. Just think about it for a second. What a find . . .”

  And then he had to go and ruin it.

  He leaned in, and lowered his voice a little. Not exactly husky-sexy, but far from formal. “We should celebrate. How about dinner? Or at least a drink? Or maybe . . .” his voice dropped another half-octave, turning raspy as his arm tightened slightly around her shoulder. She couldn’t help but think of it as a noose. “We should just skip the drinks?”

  “We should definitely skip the drinks,” Finn agreed, wriggling out from under his arm. She’d clenched her fist and was about to drive an elbow into his ribs as his arm slithered free. She stepped clear of him, a fake grin plastered across her face. “Thanks. Not for the invitation, for the project. The rest, that’s so far over the line it might as well be in Mexico. Let’s not go there.”

  “I never . . . that’s not what . . .”

  She turned and walked away, not bothering to listen to his denials.

  She’d heard them all before. Tom Campbell didn’t understand subtle hints or gentle brush-offs. He had the hide of a rhino. The only way to get through to him was ego-piercing bullets. Direct. Firm. No trying to ease the blow. He wouldn’t take offense at a blatant refusal, she’d discovered. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t take it to heart either, and soon enough they’d be doing this whole sexually inappropriate dance all over again.

  Chapter Four

  THEY WERE ALMOST IN SIGHT OF THE TIMES SQUARE PLATFORM when the train died. The lights went out.

  “Fucking trains,” a fellow straphanger moaned, looking at Jake for affirmation that indeed the train cars were having a ten-minute conjugal coupling-uncoupling before pulling into the next stop. Jake just nodded. The nod meant: That’s life. Nothing more profound than that. He eased his way forward, muttering an occasional “Excuse me,” before shoving someone out of the way. It wasn’t graceful, but it was effective. He was a big man. It wasn’t exactly irresistible force meets immovable object. He worked his way to the front of the car.

  “Hey!” He banged on the driver’s door at the front of the packed car. A second later a flashlight shone in his face. It stayed there for a moment, blindingly bright. The glass door muffled the worst of the driver’s cursing, then there was a moment of silence on the other side and the bolt ratcheted open. The flashlight lowered to settle on the MTA logo on Jake’s vest. A second later the door opened.

  “Need a hand?” Jake asked. Without the light in his face he could see the conductor was around his age, give or take a couple of years depending how hard he’d been living, Latino, missing out on muscles, with slicked-back hair and a neat Freddie Prinze mustache. There wasn’t even a two-pack under his shirt.

  He held out a callused hand. “Luis Trujillo, captain of this here sinking ship.”

  They clasped hands. “Jake Carter. Tunnel crew and all-round floatation expert.”

  He caught the other MTA employee’s raised eyebrow. Working on the trains themselves was the top of the heap, the job everyone wanted. Handling platform trash and clearing track fires were the worst. But tunnel crew, that was some serious stuff—they did the actual repair work on the lines, skilled labor, and more often than not mission-critical. There were a lot of former Army engineers scouring the tunnels. It was good work.

  “So, talk to me, Luis. Why are we sinking?”

  Luis shook his head. “No idea, man. We were going along fine, then all of a sudden, no power. Nothing.” He stepped back and opened the door wider. “You wanna take a look?”

  “Sure.” Jake slid into the tiny front booth beside him. He studied the small console. It looked fine, there were no obvious alarm bells. He pulled the voltmeter from his tool belt, and hooked its leads into a plug on the dash. He checked the meter’s display with his own small Maglite. Nothing; the needle was flat. The train was as dead as Tupac and Biggie, and just as beyond resurrection.

  “Zed’s dead, baby,” he agreed. Luis showed no sign of recognizing the Tarantino line, which knocked him down a peg or two in Jake’s estimation. He packed away the voltmeter. “Let me call it in.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Jake pulled out his radio. The control room wasn’t there. The only response he got was a burst of static.

  “Mine’s dead too. I was trying to call it in when you showed up.”

  “Makes no sense,” Jake said, more to himself than the conductor. And it didn’t. Even if something had cut the power to the subway, if there’d been some colossal clusterfuck in the control room or the entire grid had gone down, their radios should have been okay. They were battery-operated. He tried to think. Cell phone signals were mostly a myth down in the subway tunnels, but the MTA radios ran through transponders that were set up throughout the system. They were specifically designed to work down here. But what worr
ied him most was that if the transponders weren’t connecting then they had a much bigger problem than just a blown fuse.

  “We can’t sit here with our thumbs up our asses. We’re going nowhere, so we’ve got to ship everyone out,” Luis stated the obvious. Sometimes you had to help yourself. It was standard protocol for a stalled train, and they were almost at the next station anyway. Even so, it took balls to insist on evacuating the train and traipsing through the dark tunnel to the platform. No one was going to be happy.

  “Right,” Jake nodded. “I’ll work my way back, let people know.”

  Luis followed him into the car’s main compartment, pushing through the commuters to the first set of doors. He unlocked them manually. Jake helped him tug the doors open, then turned toward the far end, ready to do the same thing in the next car.

  Behind him, he heard Luis call out above the miasma of grunts and complaints, “Okay, people, listen up! We’re going to evacuate the train. I need everyone to proceed toward me in an orderly fashion, nice and steady. There’s no rush, no one’s in danger. We’re maybe fifty feet from the platform. No need to push and shove. Just start walking toward me, take your time, and we’ll all be out before you know it. Sorry for the inconvenience, but let’s not make this any more difficult than it needs to be, okay?”

  Jake left the other man to it, moving through the narrow connection point from one car to the next. When the subway was in motion there was a certain thrill to it, being literally outside the train while it was hurtling down the tracks. Now it was a lot less exciting, but considerably spookier with the lights off in both directions and no distant rumbles of other trains moving through the tunnels nearby. That was odd.

  There was always noise down here.

  The silence was the eeriest thing of all.

  Jake entered the next car. A couple of cops were trying to keep everyone calm. He pushed his way through to them. It was already getting sweaty in there. Cramped bodies, uncomfortably hot conditions. “We’re evacuating the train,” he said. “If you guys could guide everybody through to the front car, we’ve got the first set of doors open. The conductor’s leading the short walk to the Times Square platform.”