BAD DAY
A short story set in the universe of the Seryys Chronicles
Copyright © 2013 by Joseph Nicholson
Edited by Chelsea Pullano
Cover Copyright © 2013 by Clockwork Quills
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Disclaimer and Spoilers!
The events in this short story take place between book two (Of Nightmares) and three (Steel Alliance) of the Seryys Chronicles. If you have not read Death Wish (book one), or Of Nightmares you shouldn't read this story first! There are many spoilers if you do, so go read them (then come back)!
Bad Day
“Come on, mom!” Kay’Lah Kayward shouted to her mother, who was stuffing a suitcase full of belongings.
“We don’t have time for this! It’s a general evac! The shuttles are leaving with or without us!”
“Just a few more things!” Kay’s mother insisted.
The Net’Vyyd was showing the scariest thing she’d ever seen, and that was saying something, considering she’d seen firsthand the horrors of a Vyysarri feeding frenzy. Monsters were running rampant in her city. She knew what they were, of course. She’d tried to stop the Dah brothers from keeping them in the caves where they had come from, behind a door of Ti’tan’lium at the Dah Ore Extraction facility outside of Tanbarder. Though she wasn’t proud of what she was doing, she had no choice as a servant of the state, and the self-appointed Prime Minister Tran’Ri Trall was using her family as leverage against her.
That day, when she tried to dissuade the Dah brothers from keeping the monsters, was the first time she had encountered the living legend known throughout Seryysan and Vyysarri Space alike as Khai’Xander Khail. They fought once, gravely injuring each other. Later, they became friends and allies. Now, Prime Minister Pual’Kin Puar was calling for a general evacuation of Seryys City—the first in hundreds of years. Not since the war started with the Vyysarri had Seryys City—the capital of Seryysan Society—had she been evacuated. It appeared that Trall had finally gotten his wish. Seryys was going to fall. And where the hell were Khai, Dah and the others, she wondered?
“Okay,” Kay’s mother finally said. “I’m ready.”
“Finally!” one of Kay’s brothers, Jay, said.
They moved to the underground parking lot beneath their complex and got into their hover car, quickly taking to the sky. “Head to Aurora. The staging area is in a park at the northernmost tip by the cliff.”
“Okay,” Kay’s dad said.
The car gained altitude, and Kay breathed a sigh of relief. The relief was short-lived, however. With a hard jarring buck rightward, the car began to flail about wildly. Within the span of a few seconds, the view through the windshield spun from the ground, to the sky, to the cityscape, back to the ground, then back to the sky. The next thing they knew, they were plummeting to the streets below.
“The left hover bank is dead!” Kay’s dad reported. “Whatever clipped us, it clipped us good. We’re going down. Hang on!”
The street loomed up fast. They all braced for impact. The car crashed hard into the street, digging a deep gouge through the street and into the dirt below.
“Everyone okay?” Kay’s dad called out.
He got responses from his family. No one was hurt. The car was wrecked; wires hung from the overhead consoles and sparked periodically.
“We need to move,” Kay said. “We’re not safe here.”
“Agreed,” Kay’s dad said.
As they started unbuckling the crash restraints that had saved their lives, the ground beneath the car rumbled then stopped, rumbled then stopped, like impact tremors.
“What the hell is that?” Jay asked.
“Hey!” Kay snapped. “Watch your language!”
“Sorry,” Jay said, blushing.
“He had a good question, though. What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Kay answered honestly.
The next tremor caused the car to sink a little farther into the dirt. “Oh this just keeps getting better and better,” Kay’s dad grumbled.
Another tremor sent them deeper.
“Eveyone hang on to something!” Kay said, feeling uneasy about what was to come.
The tremors grew in intensity each time. Finally, a tremor sent the car crashing through the street down into the sewer. The wrecked car splashed down into a pool and then quickly began to fill with water. Kay’s family began to panic.
“Keep calm,” Kay said in a cool, commanding voice. “I’ll get us out of here.”
From the bag she had packed, she withdrew the only two items that really mattered to her. Her gun and her Kit’Ra: an insanely sharp, short sword designed to cut through almost anything. As the car dropped below the waterline, Kay pointed her gun at her window and yelled. “Everyone get in the back and take a deep breath!”
They all drew in breaths that they prayed would not be their last. As they clambered into the back of the car, Kay pulled the trigger. Fetid water enveloped them. Kay moved quickly, opening the side door and jerking her family members out one by one, so that they could swim to the surface.
Once they were all out of the car and standing at the side of the pool, a clawed red hand with fingers as big as legs thrashed down from the surface above, through the hole they had just fallen through.
“Everyone down!” Kay shouted as the claw came dangerously close to her brothers.
After a dozen wild swipes by the claw, Kay took a swing with her sword, severing two fingers. The hand withdrew rapidly from the hole and, as it did, the ceiling began to collapse. The family ran through the sewers as the cave-in cut off their escape.
“What the hell was that?” Jay asked.
Kay ignored the profanity and slumped back against the wall. “I think we just met what knocked us out of the sky. But…”
“But what?” her dad asked.
“That hand looked like it belonged to a Reaper.”
“A what?” he asked again.
“The things outside, Dad!”
“How do you know that—actually, strike that. I don’t want to know how you know that.”
“Trust me,” Kay said, her voice wrought with guilt. “It’s better that you don’t.”
“I believe you,” he responded, then looked around. “Where are we?”
“In the sewer, Dad!” Ray, Kay’s other brother said.
“I see that,” he growled, “but where?”
“I don’t know,” Kay admitted. “We were spinning pretty badly there for a while. Got turned around.”
“Well these intersections must have markings on them,” her dad said.
“Not likely,” Kay countered. “These aqueducts were built thousands of years ago. Some of the streets above us didn’t even exist. There are only a handful of access points in this part of the city. We could be down her for days and not find a hatch.”
“So what do we do?” her mom asked.
“We start walking and hope we get lucky,” Kay answered. “On the bright side, for the same reason we’ll have difficulty finding a way out, it’s unlikely that the Reapers will have found their way down into the sewer.”
“That’s only mildly comforting,” Kay’s dad growled.
“It’s all I can offer, Dad,” she said. “But I can promise that I’ll die before anything happens to any of you. Let’s get a move on.”
“Which way?” Jay asked.
“We need to head north,” Kay answered. “We’ll either reach Aurora or the cliff side facing the Great Rush. So…” she looked down at the compass on her watch. “Shit!”
“What?” her mom asked.
“My compass function on my watch broke in the crash! I have no idea which way is north!”
“Then we start walking until we find a hatch,” Kay’s dad said definitively.
So they walked, and walked, and walked. It was becoming apparent that the likelihood of finding a way out was growing smaller and smaller. They spent the rest of the day looking for a way out. The only positive thing about their situation was that they hadn’t encountered any Reapers. The sound of running water began echoing louder off of the walls as they went; the current was quickening. They picked up their pace, hoping that they were going to find a way out. Then, suddenly, the sewer opened into a large chamber.
“Where are we?” Ray asked.
“Not sure,” Kay answered.
Her light couldn’t reach the edge of the chamber, so she knew it was big. She motioned for everyone to stay put while she ventured forward. There was rubble strewn about the floor, but it was definitely a floor, not a tunnel. There was tile work under all the dust and debris. What is this? Kay asked herself inwardly. The further in she got, the more puzzled she became. It was a facility of some kind, but one that hadn’t been used in quite some time. She had ventured so deep into the chamber that when she looked back at her family, their light was nothing more than a small dot on a huge black canvass.
Another hundred feet or so into the chamber, she began to see telltale signs of where she was. Benches in waiting areas, ticket booths, and a levi-track with a train still sitting on it told her that she had found an old subterranean train station. The train no longer hovered above the tracks; it simply sat on the long-dead magnetic rails. This was place was old! Seryysans had abandoned subterranean modes of travel when hover cars were invented, and that was literally thousands of years ago!
“It’s an old sub-train station!” she shouted to her family.
Her father responded. “Does that mean we know where we are?”
“Don’t know yet!” she shouted back. “Give me a few minutes! I’m going to have a look around!”
She knew that there should be an exit up to the surface, and she found it within a hundred feet. Above the exit was a large sign that read “STS 4” in big letters. She didn’t know for sure what that meant, but she assumed it meant Subterranean Train Station Four. Just as she suspected, the exit had been closed up around the same time as the station was abandoned, to keep squatters from taking up residence in the old underbelly. She fleetingly thought about how much further she’d need to go down in order to the hit the plate of Ti’tan’lium that ran beneath the city. She still wasn’t as deep as the foundation for the hotel/casino that Khai was working to build when he found that plate.
She returned to her family, defeated and frustrated. “No way out.”
“Maybe we should stay here for the night and get some rest,” her dad suggested. “It’s getting late, and the boys are getting tired.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Kay agreed. “We can bunk up on the levi-train. It’s the most secure place, with only two ways in or out.”
“Okay,” her dad said. “Come on, boys. Let’s stake our claim.”
They all worked their way into the station and found a train that was in fairly decent shape. The bench seats were all intact, and some even still had some padding left. The place was incredibly dirty, but Kay’s mom produced several blankets after a quick rummaging through her suitcase.
“Not so silly now, am I?” Kay’s mom asked with an accomplished smile.
“No,” Kay said. “Good thinking. Now, you all get some rest. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
“What about you?” her mom asked, her voice full of concern.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ve been trained to go five or six days without sleep.” Before her run-in with Khai she was an Agent; a highly skilled, incredibly intelligent, extensively trained killer who worked for the government as an assassin. She was kidnapped at a young age, forced into servitude, and trained to kill through physical and emotional conditioning. Four years ago, when she met Khai, Dah, Sibrex and the others, Prime Minister Puar had dissolved the Agency. He never liked the idea of using kids as killers, but some things couldn’t be undone unless something drastic happened. And it did, in the form of a mass revolt of a majority of Agents. The senate finally sided with Puar, and did away with the program.
Morning came. Her brothers were the first to stir, followed shortly after by her mom and dad. They had a little to eat from what Kay’s mom had packed, and then got underway. They continued in the same direction; no sense backtracking and possibly wasting time exploring an area they had already explored. At every intersection, Kay used her Kit’Ra to cut a deep “X” into the wall, to ensure that they wouldn't end up backtracking.
They walked most of the day with no luck. This is crazy! Kay thought angrily. Statistically speaking, they should have found a hatch by accident by now! They walked into the night and into the next morning without encountering either a way out or an “X” on the wall. By that point, Kay was beginning to wonder if they were even in Seryys City anymore. The fifty-eighth hour into their adventure through the sewers under Seryys City was an eventful one. Kay thought she heard something up ahead, and she signaled for her family to stop so she could scout ahead.
What she found was the happiest sight she’d seen in three days. A crew of sewer workers had taken up refuge in the sewers. They were talking amongst themselves, whispering. They sounded scared. She silently raced back to her family.
“What’s the word?” her dad asked.
“Sewer workers!” she said, not hiding the excitement in her voice. “They can get us to the surface, so we can get our bearings!”
They all approached the workers, who stood huddled around a small lantern.
“Uh,” Kay broke the silence, “hi there.” They all jumped high enough off the ground to hit their heads on the low ceiling. Two of the five men pulled out large guns and pointed them at her and her family. “Whoa! The guns aren’t necessary. We come in peace!” Kay said.
“Who are you? What’re you doing down here?” one of them demanded.
“My family and I crashed through the street into the sewers three days ago and have been trying to find a way out ever since. Would you happen to have a map that I could look at to get my bearings, and lead my family to safety?”
“What safety is there topside?” another asked. “Those things are everywhere!”
“We’re trying to get to the evacuation site in Aurora,” she answered.
“Ha!” another said. “Good luck with that! They all left! Why do you think we’re down here?”
“So they have left,” she said, sadly. It wasn’t a question.
“
Uh, yeah,” the first one said scornfully. “Whether we were there or not.”
“And we were,” the second said. “They just didn’t have room!”
“So we went home to hole up until another wave of shuttles left, and found our homes destroyed. So we took refuge down here.”
“Maybe we could work together to find another way out of the city,” Kay offered.
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” one of them said.
“We’re headed south,” another said. “The aqueduct ends two miles south of the RLD.”
“Are we heading south?” Kay asked, alarm filling her voice.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re under the RLD right now. Another mile that way and you’ll hit the foundation for that giant casino.”
“Oh no,” Jay whined. “We’ve been going the wrong direction?”
“It would seem so,” one of the gun wielders said. “And it gets worse.”
“Why?” Kay asked.
“You’re about to have a bad day,” he said, pulling the hammer back on his gun. “Empty the suitcase, your pockets and hand over any weapons you may be carrying.”
“You have got to be kidding me!” Kay growled.
“Nope,” he said. “Hand it over.”
Her mom started to open the suitcase. “Mom, what’re doing?”
“I’m doing what the man says,” she replied.
“Stop,” Kay said. “We’re not giving them anything.”
“Is that a fact?” the man asked.
“It is,” Kay said, taking a defiant step forward. “I’m giving you one chance to change you minds, or you won’t live long enough to regret it.”
“Big words from a little girl leading a scared family.”
“You’d do well to listen to her,” her dad said. “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”
“We’re desperate,” he said. “That makes us dangerous.”
“Your funeral,” Kay said with a shrug.
“No,” the man said, pointing the gun at her father, “his!”
Bad Day (The Seryys Chronicles) Page 1
