Sunfail

by Steven Savile

  “Got it,” the shorter of the pair replied. He was a bull of a man with a notable absence of neck.

  The taller cop, a woman with close-cropped blond hair and angular cheekbones, frowned as her radio picked up nothing but static on the airwaves. “Any idea what’s up with the radios?” she asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” The police radios worked on the same transponders as the MTA’s equipment, which should have made them rock-solid down here. “Someone will be working on it, though. They won’t like us being incommunicado. People get antsy when they feel stranded down here.”

  The cops nodded.

  Jake parted ways with them, continuing on down the length of the train.

  He found another MTA worker, the secondary conductor, midway down, and another set of cops in the final car. Between the six of them they were able to get everyone moving in an orderly fashion and keep the panic down to a bare minimum. Most of the commuters, once they were told it was just an electrical problem, settled into the usual monotony of gripes about the MTA screwing up yet again. Jake was cool with that. Better to bitch and moan than panic in the confined space of the tunnels. What he didn’t want was them putting two and two together (one of those twos being Fort Hamilton and the other being the words terror attack) and coming up with a disabling strike on the subway system. The thought had already crossed his mind. How could it not?

  He’d seen the same thing the day of the big blackout, back in the summer of 2003—as soon as people realized it wasn’t another terrorist attack, just a Con Ed issue, the atmosphere changed. The entire city relaxed. You could feel it ripple through the air. The fear dissipated. In its place there was mild annoyance and surprisingly open amusement at just how paranoid they’d all become.

  He hoped the mood would hold. It’d be a lot easier to guide everyone out if they weren’t jumping at every sound and shadow. Not that there were any sounds to jump at.

  There were, however, plenty of shadows.

  Jake brought up the rear, sweeping the beam of his Maglite back and forth to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone. When he reached the front car again he saw Luis standing in the open doorway, waiting for him.

  “Leave no man behind,” the conductor said, slapping Jake on the back as he approached. He waved his key.

  Jake stepped out, using the handholds to lower himself to the track. He moved to one side and hovered his light over the doors so Luis could lock them. The last thing they wanted was the power to come back on with an open and empty train waiting for some idiots to take it for a joy ride.

  Once that was done the pair followed everyone else doing the zombie walk through the dark toward the platform. Its lights were out as well, adding to the overall sense of eeriness. There were MTA workers with emergency flares standing by the edge, waving people along.

  “We’re the last ones,” Jake told them.

  “Got it,” the nearest flare-holder replied, and nodded sideways. “Go on. We were told to clear the station and stick around to guide any stray rats home.”

  Jake hauled himself up the ladder onto the service end of the platform.

  He pushed through the MTA Employees Only barrier to the public area. A few people still milled about, making their way slowly toward the tunnels and unmoving escalators that would eventually lead up to the fresh air. Most of the commuters had already cleared out, leaving this whole underground world with an unfamiliar feeling of abandonment.

  As Jake waited for Luis to catch up he caught movement off to one side and aimed his Maglite beam that way. The light picked out a pair of guys lurking near the exit stairs.

  They were dressed all in black. One of them had something shiny in his hand. A paint can?

  Fresh paint adorned the yellow tiles beside the stairs. It was some sort of scrawl, one of those weird old Egyptian hieroglyphs that had started appearing across the city. It wasn’t a gang tag. At least he didn’t think it was.

  As Jake focused on them, both men twisted their heads away from his light. But not before he caught a glint of green. It was something he’d seen way too often, back in the service. He recognized it instantly. They were wearing NODs—night optical devices. What the fucking fuck? NODs?

  Two thoughts rushed through his mind: The only reason you’d have NODs on hand was if you knew there was going to be a blackout. And the only way you’d know was if you’d caused it.

  “Hey! You! What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” Jake shouted at their backs, then took off after them.

  They were already scrambling up stairs worn down by the relentless trudge of city life and broken dreams, sure-footed as they ducked around the last lingering people. Their night-vision goggles gave them an advantage over Jake’s flashlight, but he was fast. He closed the gap quickly, moving others out of his way with his bulk and strength. He offered a litany of apologies as he pushed through the crowd, never once looking away from the two black-clad men in front of him.

  Halfway up the stairs he saw another mark, much like the first: big and swirling and more like a picture than writing. There was another, this one a weird cross between the two, at the top of the stairs from the N/Q/R platform. It was like some hidden communication was being scrawled out across the city, messages hidden in plain sight. What were they? A call to arms? A warning?

  He checked left first, but didn’t see them.

  Glancing right, heading for the stairs up to the S shuttle, the two men bolted up the final few steps and cut left, toward the 1 train.

  Jake raced after them, caught out as they bypassed the stairs down to the trains and headed for the turnstiles instead. “Fuck,” he cursed, gritting his teeth, and picked up the pace. If they made it through those turnstiles, they’d be in Times Square in a few seconds and there was no way he’d find them in the busiest couple hundred yards in the world.

  He pushed himself hard, powering on through the pain as he chased the pair of terrorists. That’s what they were, he realized. That’s what the night-vision goggles meant.

  It hit him then.

  Holy fucking Christ, what if they’ve left something down there? And then once it was in his head, it wouldn’t get out. Saran, maybe. Letting off something like that here . . . it’d take out thousands of people . . . and the trains would spread it far and wide. Fuck. Just fuck. Jake crossed himself, hoping to every god, devil, and deity he could think of right then that he was wrong about that.

  “Stop them!” he yelled to everyone and no one.

  Nobody paid the least bit of attention.

  He slammed into the turnstile, pushing through it.

  The two men were already beyond the ticket booth and the banks of machines, a couple of steps from the base of the stairs that led out, when the world exploded behind him.

  The force of the blast threw Jake forward, taking him off his feet. He flew onto the backs of two women who went sprawling across the ground.

  Lots of people were down.

  There was no smoke, so it hadn’t been a bomb, or if it had been it had been so far down the smoke hadn’t risen yet. Still, the blast had been forceful enough to shake the foundations of the old station.

  What the fuck was going on?

  Jake couldn’t hear anything. His head rang with the aftershocks of the explosion. His vision was blurry. His breath came in jagged gasps. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. But he was still breathing. That was all that mattered. His hearing would return, the shakes would stop, and his sight would sharpen.

  He stumbled forward, trying to see his quarry within the chaos, but they were gone. Ghosts with concussion grenades. He’d run head-on into the blast as they dropped them over their shoulders.

  Night-vision goggles, concussion grenades. This was a military maneuver.

  Jake hauled himself up the stairs and out onto 42nd Street. He stopped and stared.

  The two big theaters, the E-walk and the Empire 25, were just down the street to his right. On the far side of the square, NASDAQ covered i
n screens and displays. Bright lights, big city—yet for one of the brightest places on the planet, constant lights and motion that was enough to blind most people, it was utterly dark. There were no garish ads, no commercials, no scrolling movie trailers. There were no flashing lights at all.

  All the lights in Times Square were dead.

  It was all connected, wasn’t it?

  It had to be.

  Fort Hamilton, the subway tunnels, the blackout.

  It had to be.

  He heard a shout off to his left. It was the first thing he’d heard since the grenade. It came to him through a fuzz of distortion: “Where are the warriors?”

  He couldn’t be sure he’d heard it right until the answer came from somewhere within the press of frightened people: “We are the warriors!”

  He moved toward the source of the shouts, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.

  Chapter Five

  “IT HAS BEGUN, MR. ALOM.”

  “Are our pieces in place, Miss Kinch Ahau?”

  “They are. And the children are playing their part, adding to the confusion, as you predicted.”

  “Money well spent.”

  “Indeed. Paying the cattle to cause a stampede—genius. The iconography, particularly, I thought was a nice touch.”

  “It gives the illusion of some greater force at work, older superstitions coming to play, which is exactly what we want.”

  “Feed their anxieties.”

  “They can never have enough to worry about. Even with the polar shift causing havoc with the earth’s magnetic fields, we have a very limited window of opportunity. The stars are aligned, so to speak, and now we must act. Has there been word from our man in Paris?”

  “The assassin, Cabrakan, has matters in hand, Mr. Alom. Sophie Keane—” She no longer used the operative’s call sign. She was burned. Dead to them. Now she was merely an obstacle. “Rest assured, our friend will not be allowed to interfere with our plans.”

  “See that she doesn’t. Perhaps it would be wise to dispatch Ah Puch,” he invoked the name of the god of death, “to make sure the job is done?”

  “Xbalanque is in Berlin. She is closer.”

  “And she’s good?”

  “Very.”

  “Then make the call. Miss Keane’s hours among us are spent. I will not tolerate her betrayal. An example needs to be made of her.”

  “And it will be.”

  “Has Hunhau made contact?” The prince of the devils was in Manhattan, downtown, overseeing the crew infiltrating the finance district. It was a delicate dance, this rite of theirs. So many intricate strands of cause-and-effect that needed to be teased out and pulled very gently if they were going to succeed. But the rewards went beyond wealth. They went to the very root of society. Everything that had been lost was there to be won again. And now was the time. It was foretold.

  “His team is in place.”

  “And he knows what he has to do?”

  “He knows.”

  “Ixtab, Kauil, Cum Hau, and Huracan?”

  “All teams are in place, Mr. Alom.”

  “We have been hidden for a long time, Miss Kinch Ahau,” he said, invoking the old goddess’ name again.

  “Yes, yes we have.”

  “Now it is time to reveal ourselves.”

  “We shall be hidden no more,” she agreed. “We shall rise.”

  “Into the light,” Mr. Alom said, as though making a toast.

  Chapter Six

  SOPHIE DIDN’T SEE ANYONE.

  She didn’t have much time.

  She’d caught sight of the assassin. She recognized him: Cabrakan. The assassin was one of the new generation of killers she’d trained. That put him at an advantage, in that he knew her, how she moved and thought. She’d instilled her patterns in him. But she had no idea how he’d changed them to match his own personality. Every killer was unique. She could safely assume that if he didn’t have them already, he’d soon know her address, bank details, card numbers, passport, and every other bit of her life that was out in the public domain, and all her secrets a matter of hours after that. She needed to get out of the city. She should already be gone, dust in the Parisian wind, but she’d made a mistake. She hadn’t planned her exit strategy carefully enough. So she was stuck in the 10th arrondissement, back against the wall, watching the door to her apartment building through the glass of a patisserie window across the street, thinking about doing something really dumb.

  Everything looked quiet, but if anyone knew looks could be deceptive, it was Sophie.

  She returned her Vélib’ bike to the same corner rack she always used—she was a creature of habit, not necessarily wise for an assassin, she knew—then ducked around the corner. She stayed close to the little patisserie, her face turned toward its plate-glass windows. Anyone watching from across the street would have a hard time identifying her.

  She made it to her building’s front door without being hit, slipped her key into the lock, and eased it open.

  Looking back over her shoulder, Sophie stepped gratefully into the cool shadows inside. The inner door required a different key. That extra layer of French paranoia was one of the things that had attracted her to the old building. It would buy her a few extra seconds if someone came in after her.

  She closed the door securely behind her.

  Every second counted. Simple as that.

  A rickety old wire-cage elevator in the center of the marble foyer serviced the building. She never used it.

  There was a wide staircase that wrapped around the elevator shaft. She took the steps three at a time, running all the way up to the fourth floor.

  Her apartment door was closed. Sunlight crept beneath its bottom edge.

  Sophie waited outside the door, watching the line of light. It remained unbroken. If anyone was in there, they knew better than to pace impatiently in front of the door. Hopefully, though, she’d beaten them here. She wasn’t about to assume anything. Assumptions didn’t make an ass out of you, they got you killed.

  She drew her knife from the sheath at her calf, reversing the hilt so it pointed down.

  Given a choice she’d rather have a gun, but France didn’t allow civilians automatic firearms. A concealed carry just wasn’t worth the risk.

  She held the blade flat against her forearm as she eased her key into the lock, then turned it. The lock was oiled. It was an old habit. She wanted it to turn silently.

  The tumblers glided into place with a soft click. Again, she waited a second. Nothing changed behind the door: no footfalls, no shadows, no sounds.

  She threw the heavy door open and surged through, rolling to come up several feet beyond the threshold, back to the wall, knife in hand ready to cut out the heart of any lurking threat.

  Nothing.

  Heart hammering, she scanned the lounge/bedroom and the adjoining kitchen for intruders, quickly marking off the areas before finally checking that the tiny bathroom was clear.

  The only advantage of living in a five-hundred-square-foot apartment was that it was easy to search. It only took her a few seconds to be sure the place was empty.

  Sophie kicked the door shut again. Locking it wouldn’t slow anyone down, it wasn’t a heavy-duty security door like some of her neighbors had. Leaving it open might, conversely, buy her an extra second or two if they assumed it was locked.

  She headed into the bathroom. The toilet was an antique gravity-flush model with a porcelain tank overhead. She stood on the toilet seat and reached up, pushing back the tank’s lid. A strap had been taped to its underside. Yanking on the strap, she pulled a watertight bag out of the tank. She eased the lid back into place.

  She stepped back onto the tiled floor, and checked the bag’s contents.

  It was her escape kit: passport, cards, money, and most importantly, weapon. Keeping a “go bag” ready was a throwback to her military days. Back then, it would have included staples like power bars and water, a change of clothes, anything she m
ight need for deployment. This was different. She’d been burned. When she left this apartment the woman who had been Sophie Keane would be dead.

  Assuming she survived long enough, she’d be born again as Monica Guerra. That was the name on the passport and cards.

  It was going to be hard to say goodbye to Sophie. She liked who she was. But it was better to be born again than simply die.

  Slinging the bag over her shoulder, Sophie headed for the door.

  She stopped on the threshold.

  She didn’t know how close behind her they were, but she had to assume Cabrakan was near. She needed to change the most obvious things about her appearance to throw him off. No point in making it easy for the assassin. She kicked off her trainers, and shoved her feet into her hiking boots, lacing them tight. Better. Her leather jacket hung in the closet beside the bathroom. She shrugged into it.

  Next she went for her computer. This was the part she didn’t have time for, but it needed to be done. She grabbed the thumb drive sticking out of the computer’s USB port and pocketed it, then picked up what looked like a car alarm remote sitting beside it and hit the Lock button.

  There was a small pop from the computer, followed by a flash of smoke. She’d detonated a small charge inside the case, mangling the hard drive.

  It was crude but effective. They wouldn’t learn anything from the machine. The acrid scent of burning wire and metal fused with the curls of smoke.

  Turning to go, Sophie saw the only thing in the entire apartment she’d truly miss: a picture hanging on the lounge wall. It was a beautiful landscape, an Impressionist-style watercolor of Notre Dame at sunset, painted on a hand-woven paper scroll. She’d picked it up from a stall on the Brocante des Abbesses the day after she’d landed in Paris.

  On a whim, she stepped over to it and lifted it from the hook, broke the glass frame, and pulled it out. Sophie rolled the scroll up and tied it with the attached ribbon before thrusting it into her go bag. It was a silly thing to cling onto, and those couple of seconds of sentimentality cost her.