Flight of Shadows: A Novel

by Brouwer, Sigmund

  It meant if she wanted to get beyond the city walls, to Billy and Theo, she would trust Razor to get her out of this tunnel.

  Then she’d be finished with him.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Leo, the security manager, had an office on the third level. No windows. Just a swivel chair facing a computer screen on a desk, surrounded by an array of half-eaten donuts. A tall filing cabinet, under more half-eaten donuts. And a row of video monitors, too much out of reach to be victimized by food litter.

  Pierce had introduced himself, shown identification. Now he was standing behind the swivel chair, focused on the monitors above. Seated in the chair was a large, large man in a security uniform barely able to contain the folds of flesh that spilled over his belt like meat from a sandwich. A guy named Leo. Sweat beads popped through sparse hair. The scramble out of the building during the fire alarm had not been kind to Leo. The forced march back to the office to meet Pierce had exacerbated the man’s wheezing.

  Pierce breathed through his mouth. Leo needed a few lessons in the basics of personal hygiene, and the large man’s body heat radiated not only the day’s sweat, but probably leftovers from the entire previous week.

  “Go back twenty-four minutes,” Pierce said. He’d cross-checked the time against the original footage shot from the wheelchair. That’s when Razor and Caitlyn first began running.

  “Lot of Influentials from this building going to be making calls about how you disrupted their lives,” Leo said smugly.

  “Twenty-four minutes.” Pierce needed results. Immediately. What he wanted was to see the movements of Razor and Caitlyn. Give him an idea of how and where they’d escaped. “Show the basement camera first.”

  “Whatever you’re looking for,” Leo said, “better be worth it.”

  Pierce dropped his hands on Leo’s shoulder. Pierce dug his fingers through a layer of fat and found a loop of muscle and pinched slightly.

  Leo spasmed as he screeched.

  “Need to see those fingers on the keyboard,” Pierce said, no heat.

  Leo didn’t need another prompt. He clicked at the keyboard, and within seconds the videoscreens went blank.

  “Huh?” Leo hunched forward and did some more keyboarding. He tilted his head upward again.

  The screens were still dark.

  “Explain ‘Huh?’” Pierce said.

  “Here’s a half hour ago,” Leo said. More keyboarding. The screens flickered with images again.

  “Here’s ten minutes ago.” Leo’s fingers flashed. “Look at the basement hallway. There you are.”

  Pierce saw an image of himself. Looking into the elevator. With Buzz Cut beside him, arms crossed.

  “Now,” Leo said. “Here’s twenty-four minutes ago. Correct that. Twenty-five minutes ago. The exact time you wanted.”

  Dark screens again.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Not what’s happening,” Leo said. “It’s what happened. Someone got into the system and shut everything down. Let me read some code here.”

  Leo craned his head at the computer screen. “Someone must have hacked in. Put a fifteen-minute timer on the shutdown.”

  “How?”

  Pierce didn’t have to ask who. Surveillance shuts down when Razor is trying to escape? Obviously the rich kid had done it. But learning how would tell him more about Razor. “Got a list of people who have access to administration on this?”

  “I’m just a flunky.”

  “A flunky who has access that lets him read code?”

  “I can read it. I can’t write it.”

  Fair enough, Pierce thought. “So it’s either someone who had access or has managed to hack this.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get me a list of administrators.”

  “Be a few minutes. I’ve got to make a call and get authorization.”

  “As long as you stay in this room,” Pierce said. Hopefully he’d start getting used to the smell. “I’ll be right beside you.”

  THIRTY

  That’s her,” Mason said.

  He’d been awed by the luxury of the penthouse suite. Fascinated by the urbane smoothness of the man who’d snapped at the bodyguards to stand in the hallway and had closed the door to appraise Mason openly, until introducing himself as Everett Tippler, then walking effeminately across the room to bring Mason to a flat screen that filled an entire wall.

  Now, however, Mason’s total focus was on the colored images moving across the wide flat screen. The scene was clearly a roof, and long shadows showed it was the end of the day. The man holding a wine glass was Everett, moving toward a girl with her back to him, who turned as if startled, with faint orange light across her face.

  Everett held a remote. The image froze.

  “An easy face to remember,” he said. “You told security she was your friend. I think you’re lying.”

  Mason was a new refugee in the outside world. Except for the cash he’d taken from Abe, he had nothing. Except something that Everett wanted.

  “Does it matter?” Mason said.

  “Extremely. The wrong answer means you’re a dead man.”

  Mason felt the vibration inside. Everett had killed before. And enjoyed it too.

  “Tell me why you think I’m lying,” Mason said.

  “She doesn’t strike me as the type to truly like a man who can eat rats. There’s an innocence to her. You, on the other hand…”

  “I want to drink her blood,” Mason said. “I want it spilling from her veins, and I want her watching me as I drink.”

  “That was the right answer.” Everett flicked the remote again. “Watch.”

  An unnecessary instruction. Mason absorbed every detail. The images moved soundlessly, although it was obvious that Everett and Caitlyn were carrying on a conversation.

  Mason felt more internal vibrations. The body language of each showed Everett was predator. Caitlyn was prey. The eeriness was in the silence, the silhouettes and shadows.

  Then the images slowed, as if their movements were choreographed, with Everett beginning to pull at Caitlyn’s clothing, with Caitlyn apparently helpless.

  Mason felt a possessiveness and more than a trace of anger. He leaned forward, half in anticipation of where the violence would lead, half wanting to know that she was still alive, that he could still hunt.

  The silhouettes broke apart. Everett falling backward. Caitlyn still upright.

  Everett stopped the sequencing.

  “That was last evening. As you can see, at dusk. If there were more light, you’d also see that she put a knife into my gut. Fortunately for me, it missed anything vital. I released myself from the hospital a few hours ago.”

  Mason turned slowly and stared at Everett. The man hadn’t moved effeminately. Simply gingerly.

  “Why would she have a knife?” Everett asked.

  Mason didn’t answer. He looked back at the flat screen. This told him something new about Caitlyn. She now carried a weapon.

  “Who is she?” Everett asked. “For that matter, who are you?”

  “What do you want?” Mason countered.

  Everett hit the remote. “She moves to the edge of the roof. There. See? Most of the sun is gone, but the roof lights are enough to show the next few seconds.”

  He stopped it again. “I’m prepared to pay you well to find her. But only if I trust that you know her well enough. Tell me, rat man, before I advance the frames, what happens next?”

  Mason only had to remember the last moments he’d spent with Caitlyn before she abandoned him to die in the cave. His disbelief.

  He spoke two flat words to Everett.

  “She flies.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Seventy years ago,” Razor said, “this was a subway tunnel. Farther down, you’ll see where other tunnels have been carved out over the generations since. This is a city beneath the city.”

  Caitlyn had been silent ever since dropping down the ladder. That self-possession irritated Razor as much
as he found it intriguing. It was like her soul was shrouded in mystery. He wanted to sweep aside the shroud, find a way to make her vulnerable to him, as vulnerable as he wanted to be to her.

  After going only about a hundred yards, they had stopped at a gradual bend. Razor didn’t explain why. He kept waiting for her to ask why, but she refused.

  “Subway,” Razor repeated. “Mass transit. Trains. Moving beneath the city. Used to be steel tracks here, on this gravel bed. Been a long time since the steel was scavenged though.”

  “Somebody keeps the lights on,” she said.

  Her voice was a deep whisper. From anyone else, it would have seemed an affectation, a clumsy attempt at allure. From her, utterly without pretense, it only added to the mystery of her existence.

  “Scavengers,” he answered. “That’s the entirety of this world. Illegals who scavenge for survival. Everybody knows the stories of life beneath the city. They just haven’t seen it for themselves. It’s not worth the risk.”

  He expected a reaction. Of any kind. It didn’t come.

  “We steal the electricity,” he said, choosing we over they, pushing hard to force her curiosity.

  Again, she said nothing. She simply watched her surroundings with an eerie detachment.

  He wanted her to want something from him. He should have found the hump on Caitlyn’s back repulsive. And her long, unnaturally skinny fingers. Was it the secret behind her appearance that made her so attractive that he looked beyond those superficialities?

  No doubt he was fascinated. Caitlyn could fly. He’d seen it. When he’d first witnessed it, he’d believed, naturally, that it was a magic trick he could take for himself. That’s why he’d been waiting for her in the alley.

  But now, obviously, there was much more to her ability than a complex magic trick. The swiftness of the events of the last twelve hours was enough proof of that.

  “You’re not afraid?” he finally asked. “You do know what happens to people who go beneath the city. The urban legends are not just legend.”

  “Pretend I don’t,” she said.

  “You haven’t heard about the cannibalism?”

  “Cannibals?”

  “Some of the Illegals who live down here have never seen sunlight. Some of their parents haven’t seen sunlight. Those are the lucky ones. The ones who go to the surface have no legal status. They do what it takes to bring back food and necessities and anything of value they can steal from Influentials, or even the Invisibles, inside the city walls.”

  “So far you’re only telling me about the Illegals down here. What happens to people who go into the tunnels?”

  “There are places on the street,” Razor said, “where the Illegals from below the city know to go to offer themselves for service. Any service. All service. Influentials pick and choose. Some Influentials prefer…”

  Razor spoke more slowly, determined not to let any emotion sneak into his voice. “Some Influentials want children. What they are willing to pay makes it possible for two dozen families of Illegals to survive.”

  “Parents give up their children.”

  “The poverty here is desperate. It’s how their children can eat well and sleep safely and perhaps someday be permanently lifted out of all of this.” Razor snorted. “I read constantly. Knowledge is power. I can tell you it’s no different than five hundred years ago, when parents volunteered their boys to the rich, and the rich would make them become castrati in the opera. Then and now, the boys were no more than playthings.”

  “Castrati?”

  “Boys neutered before reaching puberty,” he answered. “So their voices would not change. Didn’t matter that, without growth hormones, it affected everything else about them. Even the shape of their bones.”

  Caitlyn had no response and didn’t seem to want to discuss it more. As they walked on the chunks of stone that had once served as bedrock for tracks, few stones shifted. Loose stones had found their place a generation earlier.

  A low, eerie whistling sound filled the tunnel. It was impossible to determine where it came from—in front or behind.

  Razor stopped. “They found us. The Illegals.”

  He saw that Caitlyn glanced behind, forward, around. Looking for escape.

  “No sense running,” Razor said. “They know this world. You don’t.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Listen.” The whistling grew in volume. “Up and down the tunnels, they’re signaling that we are here. When enough are gathered, they’ll appear.”

  “Then what?” She was standing rigid, unblinking. Her chest rose and fell. Fear, Razor thought, cloaked by a determination to remain dignified.

  “Can you understand, even a little, how much it destroys a family when a child among them loses the lottery? How much they all hate Influentials for putting them in that position? How much they hate themselves for choosing survival over the hell a child must go through to pay for it?”

  Caitlyn nodded slowly.

  “Then you’ll understand why they inflict what they do on anyone from above who enters their world. But I promise you’ll be safe among them.”

  “Safe? How do you know? How can you make a promise like that?”

  She was looking up and down the tunnel again. The eerie whistling was growing louder.

  “Trust me.” Razor had been using the conversation to distract her. That was one of an illusionist’s foundations.

  He allowed a flashball to roll into his palm.

  He dropped it.

  He was prepared. His eyes were closed and shielded behind his hands.

  Hers were not. While she was paralyzed, he knelt down beside her.

  From a sealed plastic bag, he pulled out a damp cloth and pressed it against her face. She breathed in the fumes and sagged into unconsciousness.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Tell me what you know about Timothy Ray Zornenbach. Penthouse suite. Floor thirty-five.”

  Leo snorted. “Nut case. Recluse. Rich. Owns the building. Nobody sees him.”

  “Owns it?” Pierce juxtaposed that thought against the image of Razor’s face. “Inheritance from his old man?”

  “He is the old man.”

  “What about his son. Legally adopted. Same name.”

  “You need me working for NI,” Leo said. “Whoever is giving you information is a quack job. If the old man had a son, I’d know. I promise, any boy you’d ever see with the old man is anything but a son.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Just rumor,” Leo said. “But we’re talking kink.”

  “What kind of kink?” Pierce asked.

  “Hang on,” Leo said. Right hand up, cutting Pierce off.

  “Not smart.” Pierce gently rested his fingers on Leo’s shoulder again. He thought the first attitude adjustment had been successful, but maybe not.

  “No!” Leo said, jerking his shoulder way. “I meant wait, someone’s back in the system again.”

  “Doing what?”

  “If I’m right,” Leo said, “it’s someone from a remote location. Retrieving surveillance footage from the last half hour. Every hallway. Every entry.”

  Which meant someone was now in a position to review the entire operation.

  “Shut it down,” Pierce snapped. “Now.”

  “Can’t,” Leo said. “Whoever is in has put the computer on override.”

  Pierce shoved the swivel chair aside, dropped to his knees, reached for the power bar behind the computer.

  “Hey!” Leo said. “Don’t you want to be able to backtrack this guy, see where the stuff is headed?”

  Pierce now had a choice between looking stupid for unplugging it or looking stupid for not thinking it through. And he’d just lost the moral high ground to Leo, who could have let Pierce make the situation even worse. But Pierce cared more about results than appearance.

  Pierce backed out slowly. He stood and dusted his knees.

  “Good call,” Pierce said. “Going to need your cooperation. I’
m going to call in some techies, and they’ll need your office for the rest of the day.”

  “No problem,” Leo said. “I got somewhere to go anyway. Lunch break and an important meeting. You cool with that?”

  “Go,” Pierce said. “Make sure you come back. We’ll have questions.”

  “No problem. I’m good. I can tell you all you need to know.” Leo spun around in the swivel chair. “How does someone apply for a job in NI anyway?”

  THIRTY-THREE

  At his permanent suite in the Pavilion, Razor flipped through images on a computer screen. Using Trojans long in place, he zipped past the firewalls. He was scanning footage from the building’s security cameras to see what had happened after their escape.

  He was disturbed by how quickly the agency had found the Zornenbach suite. The footage showed that a secondary search had not been random. There had been agents with thermal radar on only one level, not all of them. And in the hallway on level thirty-five, the agents had moved with purpose directly to the suite.

  Other footage had shown a muscular blondish-haired agent—no suit, but a black shirt—staring thoughtfully at the refrigerator Razor had left behind on the elevator. It was one thing to deduce how and why Razor and Caitlyn had used it to escape thermal radar. It was another thing to have pinpointed Razor’s home base.

  Next they’d find out the suite was registered to Timothy Raymond Zornenbach. That, at least, would send them in a different direction. Looking for Timothy Raymond. Excellent distraction.

  Razor flipped through more images. His main focus was the calm, black-shirted agent who seemed to be in charge.

  Interesting.