Relics
Page 6
For the first few seconds, as the freight elevator accelerated smoothly away from the platform, Marion had the distinct feeling that they were actually descending. Though he had prepared himself for the possibility that this shipment was headed to the Hamptons — or worse, the prison or the city — he couldn’t help but feel a surge of panic and disappointment as they fell. And then, among the rumbling boxes and crates, his stomach caught up with him, bringing the dizzy sense of motion along with it.
“We’re going up!” Marion knew he should keep his voice down, but he just couldn’t help himself.
“Yeah, we are,” Allison replied, her voice floating from the dark. “But where are we going, exactly?”
“What, you don’t know?”
“No, do you?”
Marion laughed, astonished that she would even ask. “Me? Before Friday, I’d never even left the city. Didn’t they teach you all about the Build in school?”
“Just how it was constructed, how the artificial biosystems work — stuff like that. They said that everything above the Garden is just, you know, servers and stuff.” Allison thought about it for a moment, trying to remember all of Joanne’s conspiracy theories about what else might be up there. “I think there’s supposed to be some sort of global financial complex or something — my roommate swore that they ran the entire world economy from a room on the top level. We probably should have asked Ian about that.”
Marion didn’t say anything for a while, but Allison could hear the steady tap of his foot as he mulled it over. “Well, whatever’s up there, they obviously need food, so it’s got to be something more than servers.”
“Unless the servers eat carrots,” Allison pointed out.
“Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that,” Marion replied thoughtfully. “We might just be headed into a huge den of killer robot rabbits.”
“Oh, I hope so. I love bunnies!”
They both laughed, but it felt more than a little forced. No matter how much they tried to laugh it off, it was still hugely disconcerting to be flying blind, moving so rapidly — and unstoppably — into the great unknown.
The lift suddenly began to shudder, gaining speed as it rose toward the sky. Allison’s pile of boxes swayed alarmingly beneath her, almost tossing her back to the elevator floor. She grabbed a shaky handhold, easing down a level closer to Marion, hoping that the crates wouldn’t collapse beneath her weight.
“Allison?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
Marion looked up, surprised to find her so close. “What do you think’s going to happen? To the city, I mean.”
“I don’t know, Marion, I really don’t. I mean, I’ve seen it get bad before — but never this bad. It’s like… like the entire city’s tearing itself apart.”
Marion thought for a minute, breathing in the thick, fruited air. “Are there others, do you think? I mean, people trying to leave?”
“Is that what we’re doing? Trying to leave?”
Her answer caught Marion by surprise. In all honesty, he hadn’t given much thought to what it was, exactly, they were doing. He had been running on pure adrenalin for the better part of three days, and he simply hadn’t had the time or desire to contemplate the ultimate outcome of their accidental adventure.
“Seriously? I don’t know,” Marion admitted. “But I’ll tell you something, Allison — I just can’t see myself going back down there. I don’t know where I’m going to end up after all of this is over — other than, you know, maybe prison — but I do know that it’s not going to be back in New York City. No matter what.”
“Well, amen to that.” Allison reached out in the blackness and found Marion’s hand, slipping her fingers through his. She sort of shocked herself by doing it, actually — she wasn’t normally so immediately intimate with guys she hardly knew, especially ones who looked like they might still be in high school. But it just felt right, somehow — like the chaste night they had spent together in the Moody mansion. She wasn’t sure if the feelings she had for this offbeat, disheveled orphan were romantic, exactly — but she felt hugely protective, and affectionate, and she wanted him to know it.
The lift gradually began to grumble and creak, shaking the precarious stacks of crates as it shifted into low gear, hiccuping as it slowed toward the next level.
“Looks like we’re almost there,” Marion said, gently tugging at Allison’s hand as he slipped from his perch onto a lower case of apples. Allison followed suit, climbing carefully toward the wooden floor. “Wherever there is.”
The lift stopped with a final shudder, the motor grinding to a stop. The wooden door slid back almost immediately, revealing a sudden, blinding wash of headlights. Marion barely had time to jump out of the way before the first forklift spiked its way into the lift.
“Incoming!” he yelled, jumping toward the open door. Allison leapfrogged past him, nimbly sidestepping a small dolly as it whisked by her skirt, the tires missing her feet by millimeters. The machines pivoted with graceful precision around her, an impressively choreographed pageant of shifting gears and sweeping lights.
Marion scooted around the forklift, watching it move in on a palette of boxed tomatoes. The metal prongs eased perfectly beneath the flat platform, lifting the wooden crates like children’s blocks.
“Whoa, heads up!” Allison reached out and grabbed his wrist, yanking his arm so hard that his shoulder emitted a faint pop. Marion stumbled out of the way just as the huge stack of tomatoes teetered and fell, sliding from the front of the lift like a collapsing building.
They exploded against the floor in a pulpy cascade, wooden crates splintering in all directions, the tomatoes turning into crimson pulp against the hard concrete. The forklift kept moving, even as the river of paste smeared like blood against its yellow cab. Marion ducked his head, trying to avoid the spray, hearing the wet crunch of wood and flesh beneath the heavy tires.
“What the hell happened?”
“Everything’s off-balance,” Allison said, glancing around nervously. “We must have screwed it up.”
Marion looked on with dismay, following Allison as she skirted the broken pile. A small cart passed them by, plowing methodically into the center of the spill. It whined loudly for a moment, trying to shove the mounds of shredded tomato to one side. Then its rear wheels began spinning in the slick gore, sending a greasy fan of skin and seeds into the air.
“This is gonna set off some sort of alarm,” Marion said, watching as a loader clipped the stranded cart, edging off in the wrong direction. He saw with horror that it was on a collision course with a trailer full of grapes.
“Well,” Allison replied, hastily threading her way through the turmoil, “we can’t do anything about it now.”
Marion turned and ran after her, trying to ignore the crunch of metal and jangle of broken glass echoing behind them.
Happy goddamn Easter. Ian was livid, so frustrated and angry that his arms were actually shaking. Yesterday had been a terrible day, and an even worse night — nothing but trouble since those kids had invaded his home. They had disrupted his life during the most important project of his life, stolen his clothing, and broken his phone. And now this. Crammed into the lift on Easter morning, when all decent people were home in bed, trying to avert a global financial collapse. Happy Easter, indeed.
Ian wiped his damp forehead, trying his best to keep calm. In my house, he thought. The fat schmuck had hidden them from the law in his house. Ian wanted desperately to move around, to pace out his frustration, but movement was impossible. People were stuffed solid into the ornate leather seats, crammed hip to thigh, just like the wretched subway. Just what I need, Ian fumed, pressing the glossy surface of his briefcase hard between his knees. What else could go wrong?
That was the real problem, right now. It seemed like everything was coming down at once. First there was the weather foul-up, and then the riot, which had easily spread from the city to the penitentiary. Sloppy, Ian thought. Another one of the mayor’s security fiascoe
s. Everyone was always talking about the fabled Chinese mind, but Ian didn’t buy it. If they were so organized, like people said, then why did Matsumoto sputter around like a dying bird? The man couldn’t control his own city — it was that simple. I can’t believe I donated money to that chump, Ian fumed.
And, to top it all off, he had to deal with his brother. Ian winced at the memory. Good ol’ Saint Bernard, who thought nothing of dragging criminals into his home. I gave him a place to stay. I took him when no one else would. That’s gratitude, Ian thought. That’s what you get for being nice.
One of the attendants pushed through the crowded aisle, struggling with her full cart of drinks. It was the short one, Ian couldn’t help but notice. The cute young girl with the ponytail. She looked frazzled and annoyed, pulling at her short skirt as she moved slowly around the post. Ian waved her past without speaking, staring out the lift window. Today, the world did not seem to be a good place at all.
The morning figures were, frankly, terrifying. Ian hadn’t really been prepared for the depth of the panic. Looking around the lift, on this bright Sunday morning, he could see that fear behind every pinched face and sour look. The sheer number of riders alone was disturbing, the rows of bodies neatly shoehorned into the flat wheel of the lift. And more waiting below, Ian guessed, scanning the crowd for faces he knew. It was a real testament to the size of the crisis, really. He could see that even some Managing Directors and VP’s had cut their long weekends short, riding nervously toward the Pit in the hopes that they could help make it all right.
It was, as far as Ian could tell, only going to get worse. The FTSE had stabilized somewhat, which helped, but Shanghai kept plummeting, pulling a cornerstone out of the market. And there were rumors that Société Générale was about to halt redemptions, hoping to buy some time while it tried to recall some much-needed capital from the East. Holding companies, hedge funds, little old ladies with four-figure Schwab accounts — it was a total free-for-all, it really was. A desperate flood of indiscriminate selling the likes of which Ian had never seen.
I wonder if anyone here knows it’s my fault? Ian glanced around furtively, relieved to see that nobody seemed to be paying him much attention. He leaned back and closed his eyes, his mind once again dredging up the angry sentiment he had thought — and cursed, and shouted — at least a thousand times since yesterday: Damn you, Kathmandu!
The worst part was, he still couldn’t quite grasp the exact technical reasons the crash had even occurred. At first, everything had gone just fine with the VIGIL implementation — they had started the 24-hour rollout at noon, and the process had run smoothly until 21:44, when they had finished bringing Bombay online. To be honest, Ian hadn’t even been thinking about Kathmandu — he was firmly focused on the fat part of the snake coming up, the big four in China: Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei. But then, at exactly 21:45:00, everything went haywire.
His chief code monkey almost had a heart attack, watching as a system-wide failure started to cascade back toward Europe. The trigger, as far as Ian could figure out, had something to do with Nepal’s time zone, which was fifteen minutes ahead of India and a quarter-hour behind Bangladesh. The problem was that VIGIL was programmed to pre-compensate for the fact that Bangladesh was a half-hour behind New Burma, which in turn was an hour ahead of India. The Cocos Islands also figured in there somehow, but by that point Ian’s brain hurt so much that he told the programmer to please just shut up and focus on fixing the damn problem.
Whatever the cause, the results had been catastrophic. Not on the automated side so much — the extensive global army of trading programs had experienced a brief wave of irrational activity, but they were quickly taken offline by the multiple failsafes and kill switches set up for just such a situation.
No, the problem had been the inexperienced skeleton crew of human traders who were staffing the majority of the world’s exchanges that day. Even though they had been prepped in advance for VIGIL’s debut, the second they saw a sustained, inexplicable drop in equity and commodity prices, they completely lost it. By the time Ian’s team had finally gotten things stabilized six hours later, the unstoppable, mindless panic was in full flower.
Ian shuddered, again, his fear and anger mixing like sharp bile in the dark pit of his stomach. It was them, he thought, even then recognizing the idea as completely irrational. It was that girl, Allison, and her ratty-looking boyfriend. They were fugitives, for god’s sake. They were fugitives, and they had hidden in his house.
For a few irrational seconds, Ian felt nothing but confusion and rage. He allowed the events to flow together without reason, facts and emotions mixing freely inside his mind, a clear and burning fury slowly emerging out of that chaotic, inchoate stew.
They started the riot. The lift darkened as it left the open air, slipping quietly into the unlit shaft between levels. Ian felt the sudden gloom like a wet cloth against his skin. They caused the panic, he thought. They started this whole thing. It made no sense, but Ian couldn’t help but feel that it was true. It all seemed linked together, somehow: those two wretched convicts, the failure of VIGIL, the terrible riots raging below. He could feel the certainty of it surging through him like an electrical charge.
The world coming apart around him, the city crumbling like a rotten floorboard beneath his feet, and it was all their fault.
The leather binding of Ian’s briefcase cracked suddenly between his clenched knees, spilling a violent shower of paper across the tile floor.
Marion woke up with his head resting against the crumpled ball of his jacket, completely disoriented, feeling the smooth sensation of movement as if he were still dreaming. He rolled over in a flurry of paper, trying to focus, feeling groggy with motion and the hard floor beneath him.
“Allison?” Something cold and sharp needled his arm, and he felt the pain in a bright rush. He looked down automatically, still wondering why are we moving? Beneath him, the statue lay half-buried in trash, the spiked crown scraping against his pale skin. Marion stared at the tiny figure, seeing the cheap souvenir without knowing exactly what it was. The metal floor continued to rattle forward, the statue’s upraised torch trembling in time with the shaking steel.
It’s a dream, Marion thought. We’re not really moving at all. He could almost hear the cheerful slap of the ocean, the quiet whistle of the wind blowing over the guard rail. And then, as he closed his eyes once again, the hazy image of Poppy’s face; a tangled mass of beard and hair, his square face and round nose, leaning almost close enough to touch.
“Hey.” The paper rose up in an excited wave, swirling around Allison as she struggled to her knees. “Wake up, we’re moving.”
It was true. Marion sat up, grabbing the statue with a quick snap of his hand. It didn’t feel as solid as he remembered, for some reason — the torch arm was slightly bent, and the moss-green paint was starting to crack and peel from the base and crown. This wear and tear bothered him, although he wasn’t sure exactly why. It was just a cheap toy, after all — a tacky souvenir nearly a decade out of date. He dropped it back into the folds of his windbreaker, shrugging the jacket back onto his shoulders as he looked around the dumpster.
The recycling bin was, indeed, moving. Marion barely remembered climbing inside, late at night, after at least an hour of aimless wandering. They had found the level almost completely closed off; dark, winding hallways that ended in blank walls and locked gates. Finally, when there was nowhere left to go, they had discovered the rows of dumpsters, squatting like tanks in an unpainted concrete pen.
“Hey! Move it, why doncha? Outta the way!” The voice rang through the rusting length of the dumpster, stopping Marion’s mouth right on the cusp of speech. He saw Allison’s eyes jerk toward the metal wall, clearing from sleep to terror in an instant. The bin jolted roughly, and Marion heard a guttural grunt of effort from the other side.
They were being pushed. He sat stock-still, tracking the faint echo of footsteps, the irregular clat
ter of voices and machines, fading in and out with the rolling dumpster.
“Harv! Where you want this?” The voice echoed above them, like someone shouting in a cave. Out of the top of the bin, Marion could see a luminous grid of fluorescents far above them, crossing in squares against the distant ceiling.
“What is it?”
“Paper bin.”
There was an angry snort, followed by the firm scrape of a shoe. “I told you scrap, didn’t I?”
“No, Harv, you just said for a trash bin.” The voice shuffled closer, still huffing through clenched teeth. Someone hit the wall of the bin, above Marion’s head, rattling the dumpster like a church bell. Marion jerked, puppet-like, feeling sharp flakes of rust sifting down onto his forehead and neck. The dusty ore made his eyes tear and his nose run.
“Well, we need scrap — we gotta load aluminum.” Harv paused, clearing his throat with a violent rush of phlegm. He finally spat, hitting the dumpster flat and wet against the outside. Allison winced in disgust. “How much paper you got?”
“Hell, Harv, I don’t know. You want me to look?”
There was a pause, long enough to make Marion bite his inside lip until it bled. Finally someone kicked the bin sharply, rolling it a couple of centimeters across the floor.
“It’s pretty heavy.”
“Christ, Harv. It’s heavy, but it ain’t full. You want me to look, I’ll look, okay? It ain’t no big deal.”
Another pause. Marion was close to gnawing his lip off his face. Allison stared quietly at the paper beneath her, either listening intently or praying.
“Ah, screw it,” Harv finally said. Marion thought he had never heard two more beautiful words. “Just dump the thing before Benny shows up, so’s we can start the new load.”
The dumpster began to roll again, the neon trellis of the ceiling drifting slowly overhead. Marion could hear a faint humming outside, the rambling tune of a man at work.
“Yo! Number four!” The trash bin clanged hard against metal, knocking Marion against the inside wall. He pulled back, his hands smeared orange. “Harvey wants this dumped!”
The bin began to shake with a dull, mechanical frenzy, sending a steady shower of grime and rust into the air. Marion heard an agonized screech along the steel walls, like a fork scraped hard against a metal plate. The paper started trembling loosely around them, then began tumbling toward the far end of the dumpster as it was lifted into the air.
They both rolled forward across the slanted floor, too terrified to make a sound. Marion felt the whole cart moving up and over, a sensation that was sadly familiar by this point: his hands scraping for purchase, his legs bouncing crazily against the side wall. Allison made a grab for him, but missed, flipping onto her back in a crumpled flood of paper, unable to stop herself as she fell.
We have no control, Marion thought bitterly. We’re completely helpless — all we can do is plummet from one absurd situation to the next.
His body spun heavily over the lip of the dumpster, twisting like a doll in the storm of paper. He saw Allison before him, her dress fluttering, her arms flailing into the darkness. As he plunged into the recycling room, the dismal reality of their situation became clear. If they couldn’t stop themselves from being thrown out with the trash, how could they possibly hope to escape? How could they even hope to survive?
Their bodies hit in a chaotic explosion of paper, sending a column of cardboard and newsprint flying meters into the air. Marion tried not to cry out, even then, rolling deep into the pile of paper beneath him. Allison surfaced near the wall, shielding her head from the steady rain of paper that filled the long, narrow pit they had landed in.
“Marion?” Her voice was a nervous whisper, muffled by the reams of cascading paper. Marion rolled over in the trash pile, thrashing his way clear of the wrinkled tide.
“Over here.” He was buried up to his armpits, unable to find any purchase on the bottom of the pile. After a prolonged struggle, he managed to fight his way across the width of the shaft, the heap of paper sucking at his legs like quicksand. Above them, the gaping mouth of the recycling door shone like a beacon, the square window of light dissolving into the blackness like a giant miner’s helmet. Dim shadows passed back and forth across it, and the faint echo of voices drifted through the stale air.
“Promise me something,” Allison said, blowing a piece of wrapping tissue from her face.
“What?”
“No more falling.”
Marion’s smile was tight, and not particularly joyful. “Promise.”
Allison watched him turn away, his smile fading back into a worried profile. He looked too young, she thought, to be so constantly serious.
“Well, at least we can still get out.” Marion was moving toward the far wall, where a row of welded ladder bars rose up to the square opening above them. A hacking cough passed by the entrance, fading in and out of their hearing like a moving train. It was followed by a thumbed-through newspaper, tossed carelessly through the mouth of the recycling bin, fluttering slowly to the ground like a wounded bird.
“Attention.” The loudspeaker made them both jump, rustling the loose paper around them. Even here, the automated speakers echoed with the same soothing, monotonous female voice. “All available personnel please report to loading dock fifteen oh three.”
Marion started to wiggle cautiously toward the ladder, looking up warily as a flurry of stamping feet passed overhead. Allison watched him uneasily.
“They’ll see us.”
“Not if we’re careful.”
He began climbing unsteadily from bar to bar, moving hand over hand up the side of the shaft. By the time Allison finally began to struggle forward, he was already halfway up the far wall, his upturned face glowing in the weak florescent light. Above them, the footsteps were gradually fading into silence.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Allison said, scanning the sea of crumpled trash around her, “wherever we are, the people up here must be either very rich, or incredibly old.”
“Why do you say that?” Marion swung out to look down at her, hanging off the ladder like an orangutan.
“I mean, just look at all of these newspapers. I mean, who reads a physical paper anymore? It’s weird.”
“Yeah, I was surprised that Ian had one, as well — it must be some sort of status thing.”
Allison began pushing toward the ladder again, her eyes still grazing across the top of the paper ocean. In her distracted state, she almost missed the photo, which lay half-buried by piles of newsprint, tissues, stationery and cardboard. In fact, she probably wouldn’t have caught it at all if it hadn’t been a picture that she absolutely hated. It was the yearbook shot from her first year at NYU, taken the week after a failed highlighting experiment had turned her hair into something resembling a cherry Slurpee-saturated mop.
That’s me. Allison stopped with one hand already on the ladder, trying to puzzle it out. For a brief second, she thought she might have dropped the picture herself, even though that made absolutely no sense. The grainy color photo was huge, ten times larger than it should have been, gazing out from the paper with a slightly bewildered stare. The giant headline that ran across her chest was ludicrous, seeming totally unrelated to the innocent-looking student it covered.
CALL GIRL!
PHONE POLLSTER STARTED PRISON RIOT, THEN FLED
Allison gaped, her hand slipping slowly from the rusty ladder rung. She stretched herself sideways, fighting mounds of paper as she tried to snag the paper from the top of the pile. She finally managed to pinch the front page, holding it carefully aloft as she pulled herself back against the wall.
The Post, she thought numbly. I’m on the front page of the goddamn Post. The picture was even worse than she remembered, clearly showing the foundation-covered spray of acne dotting her chin. Below the sensational headline, in smaller print, the teaser read “Mystery accomplice helped her escape.”
It was just too much. Allison scanned th
e first few paragraphs of the article, which seemed to say that she had shot and killed someone named Raymond on the prison lift. She stared at the photo again, caught in a complete state of disbelief.
“Allison!” Marion was at the top of the shaft, his whisper bouncing down the metal bin. “Hurry!”
Allison quickly folded the paper and shoved it into the baggy pockets of her dress, then started scrambling up the ladder. Above her, Marion was already halfway through the open window, his skinny butt in the air, his sneakers swinging away from the metal wall. She hoped that he had a plan, because there had to be people everywhere. People who knew who she was.
Allison scampered up the last few rungs and pulled herself over the top, where she found Marion already sliding down a huge metal lifting arm, gripping the machine’s rounded width with his spindly legs like a cowboy on a particularly fat horse. The space beneath him was filled with boxes, stacked haphazardly around the concrete floor. There were several hallways, leading off in all directions, and an assortment of carts and bins scattered aimlessly about.
On the opposite wall, recessed into industrial brick, a conveyer belt ran the length of the room, winding out of one dark curtain and into another. It looked like cafeteria tray carrier, Allison thought. But instead of food-smeared plastic platters, it carried an ongoing assortment of barrels and crates, a never-ending parade of detritus crawling from one end of the room to the other.
Marion was already jumping to the floor, motioning for her to follow. Allison quietly heaved herself over the lip of the recycling hatch, trying not to catch her dress on the grease-blackened bolts. At first, she couldn’t locate the foothold beneath her, her stomach pressed painfully across the edge of the opening, her legs dangling at least five meters above the stained concrete floor. Finally, her kicking feet found the metal arm beneath her, the cool steel sloping at an alarming angle away from her.
It picks up the trash, she thought nonsensically, trying desperately to keep her balance as she slid slowly toward the ground. It picks up the trash and puts it in the trash bin. It was a little song inside her head, keeping her thoughts away from the rock-hard floor below. Then, when she was barely halfway down, the sound of cursing and guttural laughter floated in from the far hallway, just close enough to speed her heart.
“Allison!” Marion hissed, looking nervously toward the hall. “Come on! I think they’re coming back.”
Allison squeezed her eyes shut and released her bear hug on the mechanical arm. It was like sliding down the world’s biggest banister, only with the added excitement of knowing that a simple tumble could leave her paralyzed for life.
The concrete smacked cold and gritty against her feet, so sudden and unexpected that her knees buckled and her body pitched backward like a parachutist falling out of a plane. She braced herself for the hard crack of the concrete floor against her coccyx. To her surprise, however, she slammed instead into Marion’s skinny chest, sending him staggering backward as he struggled to keep them both upright. When they finally stumbled to a stop, Allison looked down at Marion’s arms sticking out from her armpits and smiled.
“That was the worst game of trust ever.”
“The worst what?”
“You know, trust. That game you play at camp, where you fall backwards?” Allison sighed, knowing that it was hopeless. “Anyway, we should get out of here.”
They began walking instinctively away from the hallway with the voices, only to hear the growing rumble of heavy machinery crawling toward them from the larger corridor on the opposite side.
“Crap.” Marion looked over his shoulder, a thin sheen of sweat gleaming on his worried brow. “What now?
“How about the conveyer belt?”
“You think? What if it leads to a blast furnace or something?”
Allison studied the evenly spaced crates running the belt’s length, biting her lower lip. “I don’t know — it looks pretty organized. I don’t think they’d pack them like that if they were going somewhere to be destroyed.”
The rumbling motor was now loud enough to cover the constant whir of the conveyer belt. Marion took one last look down the corridor, then shot Allison a sly grin. “I guess we’re gonna have to play that Trust game after all.”
With that, they both took off running. Marion rocketed over a low stack of boxes and rolled onto the conveyer belt, tucking in his feet to fit between two hefty crates. Allison hopped up after him, avoiding the dangerous-looking edge of the moving, industrial-strength mat. She crouched quickly, dropping her head to avoid the top of the heavy exit curtain. The rough rubber strips slid slowly across her, scraping her shoulders and pulling painfully at her hair as she was once again pulled into darkness.
The Pit was a chaotic battlefield, overflowing with manic traders, a boiling cauldron of shouting faces lit red by the constant negative returns scrolling across the digital ticker. It was dismal, Ian thought, looking down from his fifth-floor office. He had never seen it like this, not even on the heaviest trading days. Sure, there had probably been a similar pandemonium during the fabled Macro Crash, and the ensuing digital currency crisis, but that was all well before his time.
The ironic thing, Ian thought, was that the crazed throng of sharp-suited anarchists below him had been put in place specifically to restore confidence to the system. Back in the automated days, Wall Street’s physical trading pits had basically disappeared. Sure, the big players still employed a few market makers, but the positions were largely ceremonial, and everyone knew it. The traders all left at five and spent their weekends at home, knowing full well that the systems would keep trading, the legally constrained spread would hold firm, and the piles of money would still be there when they returned.
But after the global meltdown, there was an enraged, worldwide clamor to get the humans back into the loop, even if it was only to hold sledgehammers over the servers and smash them to smithereens when they started acting up.
Thus was born the International Trading Authority, along with its expansive New York headquarters and five-acre trading floor, carved out of an underutilized corner of the shipping, sanitation and recycling level. It was one of only four in the world — a quartet of market guardians whose existence and locations were loosely guarded secrets: known to many, but confirmed by none.
Of course, the Pit — as it was affectionately called by its multi-national occupants — was a far cry from the low-rent mercantile exchanges of yesteryear. A perfectly round sunken circle, the massive black carbon-magnesite floor was constantly buffed and polished by a roaming autoclear until it shone like a pool of oil. The trading and compliance terminals were spaced in even rows, grouped by continent, then sub-grouped by region. Every working exchange on the planet, no matter how small, was represented — each terminal monitored by a rotating staff of native financiers, keeping a careful eye on the hundreds of servers, thousands of traders, and millions of transactions being processed through their home country every day. It was a regular high finance league of nations — a global consortium of bean-counters and technocrats who usually got along quite well, operating smoothly and with a minimum of conflict.
But not today. Today, the gatekeepers had run screaming into the asylum, and the normally staid and unflappable cadre of ITA officials had been transformed into a berserk mob of lunatics.
The most infuriating part of the current sell-off, for Ian, was the fact that it had nothing to do with the VIGIL system failure. The first wave of selling had largely abated by late Sunday night, when it became obvious that Ian’s networking disaster wasn’t going to spread like a contagion through the client exchanges. But then, just before dawn, some fat-fingered frog at Euronext Paris accidentally dropped an extra zero onto the end of a sizable sale, immediately dumping over a million shares of China Construction into an already volatile market.
And just like that, it was off to the races again. Only this time, this panic was widespread enough to overwhelm the stop-loss trading curbs, prompting a despera
te scramble for capital that had revealed all sorts of nasty liquidity issues at dozens of holding companies and sovereign wealth funds, while simultaneously inducing a general credit freeze that was taking an already ugly situation and making it infinitely worse.
Ian pressed his upper body into the office’s bubble-shaped window, gazing down at the Pit through the bottom of the curving, charcoal-tinted glass. He squinted through the gloom, trying to read the flashing tally boards as they scrolled over the restless crowd.
The dismal figures slid across the board at a funereal pace, getting worse and worse with each instantaneous update. The trade managers below seemed frantic, punch-drunk, their faces gaping and slack beneath the shimmering crimson light. Ian stood perhaps twenty-five meters above the floor, observing the hysteria with a growing sense of alarm. The Pit swirled like a drain, filled to capacity from the center to the stairs. The most desperate-looking officials stuck close to their stations, bellowing into their squawk boxes and beating the glowing, flat-topped terminals with furious fists. Others had given up on oversight altogether and now wandered in an agitated circle, pacing the edge of the sunken trading floor, trying to avoid the growing frenzy.
It’s Easter, Ian fumed. These people should be resting at home. I should be home.
But that was the central problem, right now: it never stops. The global market was a perpetual motion machine; a financial orgy that operated across all twenty-four time zones, every hour of the day. Just twelve hours ago, that fact had seemed to present the biggest opportunity of Ian’s career. But now, he just wanted it all to stop. He longed desperately for a colossal circuit breaker he could throw — a market-freezing switch that he could jump up and down on until it snapped into the “off” position, halting all of this insanity in its tracks.
Ian turned back to the empty office, knowing that he should return to his desk. His mediascreen sat glowing atop his mahogany desk, a luminous brick floating next to his constantly ringing phone.
He had given his entire staff the morning off — a small gesture of kindness, considering that they had been here until five in the morning disentangling VIGIL from each and every affected exchange.
Twenty years, Ian thought angrily, dropping into his caramel-colored, calfskin leather office chair and rolling toward his desk. Twenty years of conceptualizing, designing, testing and refining — not to mention convincing a calcified and system-phobic financial world to accept his proposal — and this is how it ends. Hell, after this brilliant performance, it’ll probably be another half-century before anyone dares to update these horrible, antiquated trading systems again.
Ian’s phone buzzed loudly again, startling him out of his depressive reverie. He glared at it with undisguised fury, resisting the impulse to smash it against the wall. He hadn’t opened his mail account or picked up the phone receiver all morning, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. Unfortunately, there was one communiqué that he couldn’t reasonably ignore: The doc.
How they had gotten it to him so quickly, Ian would never know. But he had found it waiting for him, perfectly centered in the middle of his desk blotter, when he walked in the door this morning. It was a thick, gray recycled stock envelope, and the second that Ian saw it he knew exactly what it was.
To be honest, they could have simply sent a blank sheet of SEC letterhead, and Ian would have gotten the message. As it was, the missive was short and sweet — it simply requested that he, Ian Fallon Moody III, present himself to the head of the SEC and the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Network Security at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. To help facilitate the meeting, the agency had helpfully included a ticket for a dedicated maglev to Washington, D.C. — which, he was advised, departed from Newark Station at exactly noon — as well as a DNS visitor laminate and a vellum card printed with a map to 935 Pennsylvania Ave, NW.
Ian had scrutinized the package at least a dozen times now, and he still had no idea what it meant. There was no return address, no contact information of any kind, and the doc had been signed by the Assistant to the Undersecretary of the Division of Electronic Transaction Oversight. But Ian knew one thing for certain: this meeting was going to go very badly. And the fact that they were summoning him to D.C., instead of simply mediaconferencing from the New York office, increased his sense of foreboding a thousandfold.
Outside, the general commotion grew gradually louder, beginning to sound more like a street brawl than a securities exchange. Suddenly the roar from the Pit swelled alarmingly, and then broke like a sob, rising weakly through the floor of the trading room.
Ian rose warily from his chair and walked over to peer out of the rounded window, seeing the heaving mass of bodies swell beneath him. Société Générale must have pulled the trigger, he thought grimly, watching as a violent scuffle broke out near the Bourse terminal.
Then, as if in a particularly horrible dream, he saw a five-meter mediascreen tumble quietly from its heavy stand, falling into the thrashing crowd with a thin, powdery flash, followed by a brief strobe of blue and white. A small cloud of fulfillment slips, probably representing hundreds of millions of dollars, drifted above the growing swirl of disheveled bespoke suits and flying fists, scattering across the wild confusion of the Pit.
Ian backed quickly away from the convex window, both sickened and frightened by the growing riot below. It’s spread, he realized. Five levels up, and still it grows. For as long as Ian had worked within the sleek confines of this obsidian-black building, it had felt like a sanctuary — a hidden fortress virtually impregnable from attack.
Well, no more. It was over. For everyone in the trading rooms, the securities firms, the screaming hordes of the Pit, and especially for the executive suites that rose a hundred stories over their heads.
How long before they stormed the office tower? Ian leaned against his desk, resisting the urge to return to the window. And once they’re in the tower, what’s going to keep them from flooding the mall? The thought gave him a momentary lift, even in the midst of abject despair. The image of that angry mob, packed into the executive lift, ready to vent their fury on Matsumoto himself… Ian couldn’t help but smile.
But I know these people. The thought caused Ian real pain. I know them well. Sure, they came from different countries, and held vastly different goals and allegiances, but underneath it all they were still financiers and pragmatists — men very much like himself. He tried to match that knowledge against the pitched and furious battle below, but could not. They were no longer people he recognized, Ian realized. They were not individuals, but a single mass swarming outside of this sacred refuge, the blood of savages circling in their once-tranquil veins.
Ian grabbed the ridiculous tabloid from his desk, spreading the headline before him for perhaps the twentieth time that day. The face looking back at him could have been his own daughter, but he felt no sympathy. She has killed someone. There was no doubt in Ian’s mind that it was true. Two days ago, perhaps, he would have been skeptical, but no longer. Today, every deception seemed revealed, every truth overturned.
Ian felt justified, nearly elated with the news. His anger had become far more potent, now that it was based on fact. She had started the prison riot, and perhaps the one in the city, as well. She, as much as anyone, was the cause and creator of this whole deplorable situation, the true center of the fiasco. She had shot a man, sparked the prison riot, and, in the process, single-handedly ruined Ian’s life.
And yet there was hardly any mention of the boy. That much Ian could not understand. He had told the detective everything, right down to the kid’s sissified name. He had literally fought Bernard to do it, ultimately reporting both Allison and her scrawny boyfriend to the NYPD. But there was no reference to Marion in either the Times or the Post. He was, for reasons Ian could not fathom, referred to only as an “unnamed co-conspirator” or “mystery accomplice.”
But the boy was unimportant, for the time being. It was Allison that was at the center, Ian was sure
of it. He tossed the paper onto his desk and stood silent for a moment, twisting his class ring around his finger, feeling a growing wave of venom and despair building slowly inside him.
Without warning, the Pit erupted in a pure animal howl of anguish — a roar so sudden and prolonged that it could not be effectively tuned out. Ian stood for a moment longer, waiting to see if the caterwauling would fade. When it did not, he turned with a sigh and strode purposefully toward the oversized window, glaring as though he intended to quell the disturbance with his bare hands.
His first thought, from halfway across the room, was why is it raining? The rounded half-sphere of the window was streaked with rivulets of shining water, blurring Ian’s view of the Pit below. As he got closer, swinging his muscular legs toward the wall, he discerned a smoldering glow spread across the distant recycling complex.
A fire. Ian stopped, watching the drops splash like tiny bombing runs against the outside glass. A fire had set off the sprinkler system. He leaned into the curved glass, looking down over the black well of the Pit. What little order had existed was quickly dissolving, with the huge mass of traders clawing wildly toward the office tower, stampeding over each other in their frenzied race for shelter. Ian jerked back, without thinking, his mind already zeroing in on the fading star of those far-away flames. It’s them. It has to be.
With instant and complete certainty, he began sweeping his gaze across the bleak metal horizon. Then his eyes froze, locked on the far edge of the dying blaze, and the dark bile of his anger surged hot against the back of his throat. He saw the two figures limping hand in hand, almost hidden beneath the torrent of rain, making a beeline for the base of the tower.
Ian spun around, barely coherent as he charged toward his office door. As he passed his desk he scooped up the thick gray envelope and threw it angrily into the brushed pewter wastebasket.
The outside hallway was filled with confused and panicked employees — some of them heading toward the fire exit, others pushing toward the cafeteria in order to look out the window and see what was going on. Ian ignored them all, smashing an analyst against the wall as he pushed his squash-sculpted shoulders through the crowded hall.
“Get out of my way!” The bankers jumped from him as if shot, falling back in a confused line as he charged through their midst. Halfway to the elevator, the fire alarm suddenly kicked in — a piercing, high-volume bleat that exactly echoed the furious pounding of Ian’s heart.
Marion found the matches, wedged in between the toilet paper dispenser and the dirty beige dividing wall, almost by accident. He was squatting with one foot on either side of a toilet seat, his back pressed against the cracked concrete wall, keeping as quiet as possible. Allison was two booths over, closer to the urinals, presumably doing the same. Just outside the stall door, by the row of sinks and soap bottles, the reverberating strains of the disgruntled workmen’s conversation filled the bathroom.
“What a stinkin’ mess, huh?” The voices were muddy and hollow, their words overlapping in the cavernous restroom.
“Yeah. And on freakin’ Easter.” One of the workers sighed. “I don’t care if we are pullin’ triple-time — this crap’s not worth it.” Marion heard the angry hiss of a faucet, muffling the conversation, followed by the jet-engine roar of the hand dryer.
“…sure it was them?” The first guy was saying as the machine shut off.
“Whadya, you think it just happened?” Marion leaned forward on his seat, his calves cramped against the back of his ropy thighs.
“Machines ain’t perfect, is all I’m sayin’. Ya know, one little thing goes wrong…”
“Look, I’ll tell you what went wrong.” The men moved away from the sinks, their shoes squealing against the tile floor. Marion almost tumbled off the low toilet, straining to catch the tail end of the conversation as the bathroom door creaked open. “Somebody came up with that load, is what happened — coulda been those killer kids, f’all I know. Anyways, they got everything outta balance, and now we gotta clean it up.”
The door swung closed, and for a long moment there was nothing but the quiet hum of the restroom. Marion slowly unwound from his perch until he was sitting on the toilet seat, and then gratefully stretched his long legs beneath the stall door.
“You there?” He slid the door latch back, trying to stifle the echoing click of the steel bolt as it cleared the frame.
“Hold on a sec. I’ve still gotta pee.”
Marion pushed the door closed again, humming as Allison tinkled away, both surprised and secretly pleased by her complete lack of inhibition. He had never been part of couple before, romantic or otherwise, and he was still constantly amazed at how comforting it was to have a partner, even in the midst of chaos. Especially in the midst of chaos.
He pressed one foot against the door to keep it closed and leaned back against the lemon-yellow concrete block, his eyes wandering aimlessly around the narrow stall.
The matchbook was glossy white, half-hidden behind an extra roll of toilet tissue. Marion fished it out without thinking, not even certain what it was. He stared at the cover — a kicking elk surrounded by an ornate thicket — then turned it over to read the back. Tavern on the Green. It seemed wrong, somehow — an artifact from a forgotten city, completely out of place in the remote confines of this grimy men’s room. Marion snapped open the stiff cover and looked inside, finding the book still half-full of matches.
Why is this here? He considered it for a second, then decided that someone must be sneaking smokes in the bathroom — he just couldn’t imagine that sanitation workers cared enough to use them as sulfur-scented air fresheners. Shrugging, he slipped the cover closed and dropped the matchbook into his inside jacket pocket alongside the keychain statuette.
The toilet flush sounded uncommonly loud, and Marion cringed as water gurgled behind the bathroom wall. He stood up and carefully opened his door. Two stalls down, Allison popped her head out nervously.
“Are we clear?”
Marion stepped out of his stall, watching the bathroom door closely. “For now.”
They had been lucky so far, Marion knew. Lucky beyond belief. But there were so many people around, and they had so little idea of where, exactly, they were — or where the hell they were going.
The ride on the conveyor belt hadn’t been too bad — at least they had managed to remain undiscovered. The trip had taken them through several open rooms, moving at an agonizing crawl past workers and guards alike. The only thing they could do was to pin their bodies between the stacked crates and the wall, hoping that nobody would get close enough to spot their trembling limbs. They had rolled off the belt as soon as possible, landing in an empty room stacked almost solid with crated oranges, the sweet-smelling aroma of citrus spreading through the cracks and alleys created by the boxes. Marion had to squeeze sideways between towering boxes of fruit, and Allison had it even worse — she cursed every crate as she scraped through behind him, the cloying odor of oranges filling their lungs like a sweet mist.
Marion didn’t realize until he saw the bathroom just how full his bladder really was. It was halfway down a long white hallway, the navy blue sign beckoning like an azure oasis. He stared at the door through a crack in the produce, holding up a hand to keep Allison at bay, waiting for a good ten minutes before daring to venture inside.
The entrance was labeled with the traditional stick-legged, round-headed pictogram of a man, but the bottom of the sign had been covered with a hand-written card that said Unisex: please knock before entering. Marion had found that amusing, although he wasn’t really sure why. He ignored the sign and pushed the door open, praying that no one was inside to greet him.
They had barely made it into their separate stalls when the two workers barged in, not bothering to knock or call out, and then proceeded to talk incessantly as they relieved themselves.
Once again, they had come within a breath of being caught. Marion couldn’t help but think that they were a couple of s
tray cats who were getting perilously close to the last of their nine lives. He tried not to think about it as he walked over and cracked the bathroom door open, peeking out into the white corridor with a single roving eye.
“Anyone there?”
“Not right now.”
He looked back and caught Allison standing in front of the mirror, dragging her fingers through her matted hair.
“God, I’m a total mess.”
“What? No way. You look great — totally rugged and tough, like an action hero or something.”
Allison laughed and shook her head, pulling her hair into a ponytail behind her neck. “Marion, let me give you a word of advice: when you’re trying to compliment a woman, the words ‘rugged’ and ‘tough’ should not be the first thing out of your mouth.”
Marion blushed and begin to stammer out an apology, but Allison saved him from himself. “But thank you anyway — it’s the thought that counts.”
She turned back to the mirror, and Marion couldn’t help but notice that, with her hair pulled back, her delicate seashell ears moved when she smiled, as if to make way for her oversized grin. She looks so familiar, he thought. For the first time in years, Marion realized, he could look at someone and truly feel like he knew them.
“Did you hear them talking?”
Marion nodded unhappily. “Yeah. They know we’re here.”
Allison crossed to the door, reaching past Marion to crack it open again.
“They must be looking everywhere.” She stuck her head out into the hallway. It was still empty, although she could clearly hear someone yelling orders in the distance.
“Well, they haven’t found us yet.” Marion put his hand over hers and pulled the door wide, deciding that anything was better than sitting in a dirty bathroom all day, waiting to be caught. They exchanged one last nervous look, and then padded out into the hallway, a pair of unkempt urchins heading nowhere in particular.
They were finally discovered outside of the main pulping station, at the far end of the recycling complex. Marion was frantically pulling on locked doors, looking for shelter, while Allison stood lookout, searching the hallway for signs of life. Neither of them saw the janitor until he popped out of a supply closet, and immediately began shouting.
“Hey you kiss!”
Marion nearly keeled over right there. He hadn’t even realized his stress level until it broke, leaving him shaking and pale, his hand still clamped tightly around a doorknob.
“You kiss, you don’t go there!” Marion turned slowly, expecting to find a barrage of pistols and stun guns, a posse of at least fifty men filling the narrow hall.
“You no supposed to be here.” The janitor was carrying a large, twine-bound bundle of folded cardboard, his round face squeezed into a rumpled scowl. He couldn’t have weighed more than fifty kilos, if that, and the most imposing thing about him was a huge set of keys dangling from one hand, attached to a gold ring that looked like it belonged on a carousel.
“You kiss supposed to stay in rec room,” he scolded. “You supposed to watch movies.”
Allison stepped away from the wall, bunching the front of her skirt into a wrinkled ball between her hands. “We can’t find it,” she said. Her voice was suddenly a trembling whine, almost on the verge of tears. “My stupid brother made me leave, and now we’re lost.”
“Did not!” Marion shouted.
“Shut up! You did too.”
“You wanted to.”
“I didn’t!”
The janitor shifted impatiently on his feet, his keyring rattling loudly. “You kiss be quiet!” He glanced back and forth, his frown dissolving into an annoyed look of concern. “You should no be here. They looking for a killer here, you know that?”
“A killer?” Allison feigned terror, and Marion tried not to laugh at her transparent fakery.
“Yes. What you mother say if she know you here?”
Allison lowered her eyes to the floor. Marion played embarrassed. The janitor sighed deeply, shaking his head back and forth on his sagging, leathery neck.
“Okay. I take you back. You hold on.” He dipped down for a second, almost dropping his load of cardboard as he scooted toward them. He stopped next to Allison, jiggling the keyring.
“You take my keys.”
Allison blinked. “What?”
“You open door for me. I show you.”
Allison took the keyring from his hand, glancing at Marion with the barest flick of her emerald eyes.
“Number six-oh-three. That side there.”
Allison found the key, holding it out for inspection. The janitor nodded his approval, guiding her to the door.
“You hold it open. It lock automatic.”
Allison turned the heavy spring lock, holding the key in place as she swung the thick steel weight of the door back on its hinges. The janitor was still adjusting his load as Marion slipped quietly into the room.
“Hey! You wait here!” Allison jerked the key out of the lock, almost dropping the giant ring as she swung it around the open door. The janitor stood foolishly in place, his face a puzzled mass of wrinkles. “Hey!” he yelled, his voice sounding a bit more feeble. “You no go in there!”
Allison slammed the door behind her, feeling the solid snap of the lock as it shot into place. She dropped the heavy ring of keys, taking a small chip out of the concrete floor. Marion was already moving away from the entrance, searching for another exit. She ran after him, scanning the crowded floor in front of them, ignoring the muffled pounding on the other side of the metal door.
The warehouse was filled, from one end to the other, with mountains of paper and paper products. The stacks reached close to the ceiling, distant peaks of discarded printouts, magazines and grocery bags spreading into a voluminous paper carpet across the floor. Above them, a couple of suspended cranes hung lifeless from their ceiling tracks, ragged jaws filled with fluttering clumps of refuse. As they watched, a single sheet of paper spiraled down through the air, finding the ground with a slow and lazy certainty.
“Is there another way out?”
Marion gazed at the enormous dump, his eyes jumping from pile to pile. “I hope so.”
They kept walking briskly, kicking loose newsprint out of their way, heading toward the back wall. Allison attempted a cheerful whistle, but it sounded like a dying teakettle inside the huge space. The only real sound was the steady rustle of trash, sliding in small avalanches down steep paper cliffs.
The rear wall, once they reached it, was not very promising. It had several small doors, but they were all locked solid, without so much as a keyhole to fool with. From outside the warehouse, like some sort of ghostly soundtrack, Marion thought he discerned a distant cheering, fading in and out behind the building’s reinforced walls. Were they playing some sort of game out there? It made no sense — but then, nothing really did these days.
He turned to ask Allison if she could hear it, but found her with her head cocked in an entirely different direction. And then, across the rolling slopes of paper, he heard it too: a faint, insistent buzzing, barely audible through the mounds of trash and steel walls.
“Crap,” Marion said, kicking at the immobile steel door. “They’re coming,”
“We have to get out.”
“We can’t.” Marion stared at the sealed exit, its glossy gray surface completely devoid of latches, knobs, or trim. Behind them, he heard an oily metallic clang, the throaty rumble of an approaching vehicle.
They were on their way in.
Allison scowled, looking at Marion with silent consternation. He gazed back at her, feeling shame and defeat, wanting to do something.
“I’m sorry.” It was all he could manage.
Then Allison did something totally unexpected. She threw her arms around his chest, almost bowling him over, her pale hands squeezing his back in a furious grip. Marion stood fixed in place, overwhelmed by her emotional fury, unsure how to respond. Finally, he wrapped his arms gingerly arou
nd her and leaned his head across her shoulder — smelling the slightly floral musk of her hair, feeling the startling drop of a tear against his neck. Allison sniffed angrily, rubbing Marion’s back, seeming suddenly drained and resigned to failure.
“You’re poking me,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Your jacket.” Allison pulled back, smearing a tear from her face. “It’s poking me.”
Marion looked down, lightly patting his chest and stomach.
“It’s the statue.” He reached into his inside pocket and jerked it free, barely noticing the matchbook as it spiraled to the ground. “It’s funny — I was starting to think of it as my lucky statue. But I guess its luck ran out.”
When he looked up from his useless talisman, he was confused to discover that Allison had somehow disappeared. Then he glanced down again and found her on her knees, the matchbook held tightly in front of her face, her cloudy green eyes clearing to a hard jade shine. She swiped one arm across her damp cheek and flashed a devilish smile, flipping the pack open with her free hand.
“Allison!” Marion could tell exactly what she was thinking, but he simply couldn’t believe that she would actually do it. She paused, for the briefest of moments, and then yanked out a match, scratching it angrily across the striking strip. It flared white, then gold, still spitting brightly as she touched it to the rest of the book, creating a miniature torch between her fingers.
“Trust me.” She held the small fire close to her face, the shadow of her delicate nose flickering across her forehead. She tossed the matchbook suddenly, the bright flame tumbling into the tinder-dry canyons of paper.
The fire spread with an alarming speed, consuming the first large pile in a matter of minutes. Marion thought that he heard angry voices on the far side of the room, but they were soon obscured beneath the crackle and roar of the flames. The heat backed them up against the rear wall, the searing, expanding edge of the fire rippling the air like an open broiler. It was a massive, uncontrollable blaze now, rising up on all sides with a shifting, indiscriminate fury.
Marion grabbed Allison’s arm and pulled her to the ground, dropping his head as close to the concrete floor as possible, shielding his eyes from the flames as he gulped the dwindling supply of breathable air. It became more and more difficult as the fire advanced, each breath a blast of burning air inside of his aching lungs.
The fire alarm finally exploded in a symphony of screaming sirens and flashing red lights — even as he covered his ears, Marion thought that he had never heard anything quite so beautiful. The four steel doors along the back wall instantly cracked open with a resounding clang, and the sudden rush of oxygen roared through the warehouse like a hurricane. The fire blasted even higher — first exploding away from them, then returning to shoot glowing tendrils of flame out of the warehouse and into the open air.
Allison was the first one out, barely avoiding the fire as it swirled around the open door. Marion crawled out right behind her, half-expecting his clothing to burst into flames from the intense heat. The fresh air felt like ice against their skin, bringing on a frenzied spasm of coughing as they cleared the smoke and dust from their lungs.
“How…” Marion paused for another fit of coughing, spitting the taste of burnt paper from his mouth. “How did you know that would happen?”
“Know what would happen?”
“You know — the alarm going off, the doors opening, all that.”
“Oh, that?” Allison glanced over her shoulder, her face shining and ruddy as a toddler in a tanning booth. “I had no idea that would happen. I was just trying to create a distraction, so we could get back around to the front door. Guess I misjudged how fast it would spread, huh?”
“Gee, you think?”
Allison reached out and grabbed Marion’s sooty hand, laughing. He stumbled to his feet and followed her away from the spreading fire, tripping repeatedly over his own shaking legs as he ran. The spreading inferno waned behind them, the warm glow fading gradually from their skin.
As they left the warehouse behind, Marion could now clearly hear a low and constant shouting somewhere up ahead — an echoing chorus of voices that climbed periodically into a chaotic cheer. He squinted through the drifting smoke, his eyes bone-dry, his vision streaked with phantom flames.
And there, rising over that inexplicable ruckus like a black and ominous castle, stood the single largest building that he had ever seen.
The sprinklers came on with a sudden and chilling force, a stinging deluge of rain that drenched them completely without warning. In the distance, the constant screaming heightened to a manic peak, barely muffled by the loud spray of rain. Underfoot, the floor shook with a slow rumble, sounding like a faint roll of thunder.
Through the streaming mist of water and smoke, Marion could just discern the hazy ceiling above. It was slate-gray and bleak, unadorned except for rows of dull amber lights that radiated out from the top of that black obelisk like the rays of a cartoon sun.
“Over there!” he yelled, gesturing through the downpour.
Allison turned her head, water streaking down her still-pink face. Marion pointed toward the dark monolith ahead, huge and indistinct behind sheets of artificial rain. Allison looked up at the gargantuan tower, which seemed to rise for at least a thousand meters, tapering to an almost delicate peak. At the very pinnacle, where the building’s crown met the ceiling, a pair of beacons flashed randomly into the darkness, one answering the other, like safety lights on a landing field.
“Good lord — it’s huge!”
Marion nodded, glancing over his shoulder as he ran. Behind them, he saw the low cluster of buildings wrapped in dense rolls of smoke, flowing off the flat roofs in a grimy waterfall. Out of that gray fog, in fits and bursts, sharp blades of fire shot into the air, only to be quelled again by the heavy rain. He returned his eyes to the looming tower, its imposing bulk seeming to rise farther and farther above them with each step.
As they approached the building’s sprawling glass base, it became obvious just how expansive the structure really was. The base looked like an oversized solarium — a billowing skirt of rounded steel and smoked glass, shining a deep rainbow black, as if soaked in gasoline. The rest of the structure rose out of the glass like a rocket, tapering gradually to a delicate and distant peak, its tip just touching the riveted ceiling above.
Marion slowed down a bit, staring up at the tower’s imposing facade. The three sides he could see were covered with rounded window, glass boils set in neat rows along the front of the tower, making it look as if the entire thing had been covered in a huge sheet of bubble wrap. He couldn’t help but wonder how many of those windows contained people, and how many of those people were staring right at them.
“Hold on!” Allison put a hand on his chest, pointing toward the tower’s base. “Look — people.”
Marion lowered his eyes, still feeling the eerie gaze of those bug-eyed windows following him. A hundred meters ahead, he could make out a crowd of wet bodies splashing frantically about, crawling over each other like a litter of newborn puppies. From this distance, it was hard to discern individual forms; it was just a single writhing, wild mass lost in the shadow of that sinister tower.
“What is that,” Allison wondered, craning her neck, “a swimming pool?”
For a second, Marion thought that maybe she was right. It was certainly a deep well if some sort, extending in a sweeping circle from the base of that ceiling-scraper. The building could be a hotel, for all he knew, or perhaps a resort. He considered the possibility for a second, but then threw it out. The building was too austere, the atmosphere too clinical and bare. Everything was stripped and unadorned, and the view out the windows was unrelentingly dark and depressing.
Then what? Marion grabbed Allison’s hand and began moving forward again, trying to figure it out. At first he was worried that somebody in the crowd would recognize them — but then, as they got closer, he realized that nobody was f
ocused on much of anything except getting out of that torrential downpour. The entire mob seemed to be surging toward the steep pyramid of stairs that lead to the building’s front entrance, indiscriminately grabbing and punching their way forward in a mad scramble for asylum. He gradually picked up the pace, following the rioting crowd as they stormed the castle.
And then, as they arrived at the edge of the Pit, it all hit him at once. These men were fully clothed — an improbably well-dressed menagerie sloshing through the pool in a variety of charcoal suits and power ties. They were businessmen, he realized. But what are they doing up here?
“It’s an exchange!” Allison yelled in his ear, her hands wrapped tightly around his upper arm.
“A what?”
“A stock exchange, like on Wall Street — only a hundred times bigger. My roommate must’ve been right — they do run the economy from up here!”
Marion scanned the banks of sodden workstations mired in that deepening pool of water, then looked up at the huge, blacked-out mediascreens hanging overhead and realized that she was right. That would explain the cheering he’d heard, and the building’s inexplicable location.
Ahead of them, Marion could see that the sunken exchange floor was rimmed with three rows of broad black steps, making it resemble a shallow coliseum. The rounded pool was slowly filling with water, its greasy surface littered with thousands of white and green index cards, floating like so many paper boats.
As they reached the first step, Marion could see that the floor drains were clogged with sodden mounds of paper and discarded jackets, and that the water was already at least half a meter deep. Everywhere he looked, bodies were floundering in the rising tide, slipping on the slick wet floor and splashing across the length of the pool.
“Should we wade across?”
Marion looked uneasily across the dark basin, trying to judge its width. The water was certainly shallow enough — but a few mediascreens continued to crackle brightly inside the falling cloud of rain, and the server stations were all flickering darkly, the dead gray screens sparking with occasional bursts of electricity.
“I dunno. Looks like it’s a pretty long walk around, but it might be better…”
“Hold on there! I gotcha!” The voice floated out of nowhere, its owner initially obscured by a curtain of water. But then, before either Marion or Allison could think to flee, a floating hulk drifted unexpectedly out of the deluge.
“Doncha move!” The stooped man shouted at them in a cheerful, friendly baritone, freezing Marion somewhere between confusion and fear.
He’s got a boat. Somehow, the idea didn’t seem half as strange as it should have. Marion watched the figure paddle steadily toward them, pushing his craft forward with a shiny wooden pole. It’s a cane, Marion realized. We’re being apprehended by an old man on a boat with a cane.
“Need a ride?” Marion glanced over at Allison, who was staring at the man with a look of utter disbelief, her mouth parted, her green eyes flicking around as if caught in the midst of a dream.
“Excuse me?”
The man smiled expansively, leaning over to push himself closer to the stairs. As he drifted closer, Marion saw that he was floating on a broken chunk of debris, a flat, wood-framed floor that rode the muddy pond like a raft.
“Hop on, why doncha? I’ll ride ya over.” The man was, Marion decided, certifiably insane. He was skeleton-thin, except for his puffy jowls, his body wasting away beneath the soggy remains of his Brooks Brothers suit. His bald spot gleamed beneath rivulets of rain, bobbing excitedly to and fro as he pushed his cane through the dirty water. Beneath his folded knees, Marion could see an oversized I, rendered in thick vertical stripes, and the top half of a B.
It’s a billboard, he realized. The crazy man was rowing around on a broken chunk of billboard.
Marion’s first impulse was to get as far away from this freakish yachtsman as possible. But the old man seemed fixated on them now, and it was possible that ignoring him would create more trouble than simply playing along. Trying to act nonchalant, Marion reached out to test the floating edge of the raft with the palm of his hand.
“It’s fine,” the man barked, thrashing the water with his cane. “I made it myself.”
Marion pulled back, shooting Allison a questioning look with his eyes.
“Your call.”
Marion leaned back against the board, feeling it dip beneath his weight. The old man waved him on impatiently, wringing his crimson tie with one liver-spotted hand. With a slight hop, Marion slid across the slick wood, nearly tumbling over the other end. Allison alighted far more gracefully, balancing her weight on the craft’s jagged edge, making a perfect triangle.
“We’re off!” the man shouted, pushing them away from the stairs with a surprising amount of speed. With every spastic push, the billboard rolled and pitched, constantly on the verge of capsizing in the shallow water.
“I used to sail all the time,” the old man wheezed, his eyes bulging from his pasty skull. “I used to do a lotta things.”
Marion met his blank stare, wondering if he dared ask. “Like what?”
“Lookit me,” the man yelled, yanking at his dripping lapel with one bony hand. “You see this suit? That’s all I own.”
Through it all, he continued to stab at the rippling water, his thin arms looking as if they might shatter with the strain. His eyes were fixed on the burnt-out and empty tally board, stretching in a dark, even strip over the ruined trading floor. He glared at it as if it were alive, an electronic snake twisting out above him.
“This day is not over!” He jammed his cane down so hard that it snapped, shooting the makeshift boat across the surface in a final, violent spray. The broken billboard scooted past a dozen flailing bodies, barely missing the thrashing whirl of limbs.
“Let’s go,” Allison whispered, already sliding into the choppy pool. Marion jumped after her, landing in dirty water up to his knees. The old man tumbled backwards, still furiously cursing the blank machines, his broken shard of a cane disappearing beneath white peaks of water.
Allison was already charging through the middle of the melee, her skirt floating behind her like a fat gingham tail. Marion momentarily lost her inside of the heaving crowd, but then spotted her again as she reappeared at the trading floor steps.
“Wait up!” He plowed past a pudgy frat-boy type, sending him sprawling back into the water (which, he had to admit, was surprisingly satisfying). Allison waved him forward, standing high on the front steps, a general leading a pitched battle. Marion forced his way through, bowling people out of the way as he rushed toward the tower.
The front of the building was a yawning cavern of glass, the immense bevel-edged doors thrown wide by the stampeding swarm. A constant rush of water spilled from the lobby in a galloping flow, turning the steeply angled stairs into a treacherous waterfall.
Allison was already halfway up the black marble staircase before Marion had fought his way to the bottom step. He paused for a moment, looking up at the shining ebony turret above him, waiting for the dizziness to come. The window-dimpled surface stretched into the infinite, the edges converging like a pair of railroad ties at some impossible vanishing point. The water fell in silver needles toward his upturned face, and still Marion did not succumb. He imagined his body tumbling, floating in a lazy arc from the tip of that spire to the slimy depths of the pit below, but the image failed to daunt him.
He felt stronger at that moment than at any other time in his life. He tasted the cold rain, heard the garbled, cursing voices around him, and felt, for once, as if he had nothing to fear.
“Allison!” He bounded forward, searching the crowd for her grinning face. He finally found her near the very top, hopscotching from step to step. She turned toward him, walking backwards toward the open doors, beckoning impatiently for him to follow.
It was then, at his moment of triumph, that Marion saw Ian, looming over Allison like an enraged bear, a hateful glare filling
his slitted eyes. He had her in an instant, his powerful arms shaking with rage as he snapped her shoulders back. Allison yelped, still staring at Marion, her eyes wide with confusion and fear.
“You little bitch!” Ian let out a harsh, triumphant grunt, pulling Allison’s kicking legs up and over the final step. “Thought you got away, huh?”
Marion watched helplessly as Allison struggled, saw the sudden force of recognition in her eyes. She writhed sideways, looking back into Ian’s grinning face.
“You!” Allison stopped moving, dropping her body limp against the stairs, making Ian strain to hold her aloft. All around them, the crush of bodies jostled and moaned, pushing from the driving rain into the lobby.
“Stand up!” he yelled, shaking her violently against the marble floor. From where Marion stood, Ian looked positively gigantic, his broad shoulders framed against the vast glass portico. Allison looked like a puppet dancing between his hands, her body agitated into a limp frenzy over the rain-slicked stairs.
“Ian!” Marion began running toward them, his sneakers sliding across the wet marble. He clenched his hands tight, making a pair of fists, realizing even then that they would be useless against such an imposing adversary. As he charged forward, he felt a sharp point digging into the flesh of his palm, and realized that it was the keychain, still wrapped improbably inside his right hand. How long have I been carrying this? The thought filled his buzzing brain, bringing with it the faintest memory of the statue itself, of the boat ride and the dream, all mixed up together.
“Hold it!” Ian shouted, glaring at Marion as if he couldn’t figure out exactly who he was. Marion halted about five meters away, his scrawny frame shivering beneath the downpour. Ian squinted down at him with contempt, holding Allison against his chest as if trying her on for size. “You just hold it right there.”
Marion looked directly into Ian’s angry eyes, and said the first thing that came into his head.
“You can’t stop us.”
“Wrong,” Ian said. “I just did.” He regarded Marion with the bored disdain of a mall cop, holding Allison even tighter as he spoke. “Everything stops right here.”
“That’s not for you to say!” Marion was shouting now, straining his soft voice until it tore at his throat. He screamed through the mass of rain, over the growling chaos of the crowd. “You don’t have that power! Nobody does!”
Ian jerked Allison to one side, clamping his meaty arm around her neck. His grim smile turned to an arrogant sneer, and he spat out a guttural laugh.
“I have stopped it, Mary-Anne. You can bet on that.”
Marion closed his eyes, feeling the growing, intense pain of a migraine clawing through his skull. He felt a sudden, fluid warmth spread between the fingers of his right hand, and he recognized the sticky flow of blood, oozing around the sharp points of the statue’s crown as they spiked deep into his flesh.
“Ian.” Marion’s voice was softer now, muted and rumbling with anger. Ian leaned forward to catch it.
“What?”
“Bet on this.”
The statue came out of nowhere, smashing into his mouth with surprising and destructive force. Ian felt his bridgework crumble behind the shredded remains of his upper lip, followed by a sharp pain as his front teeth scraped the roof of his mouth. He tried to step backwards, desperate to avoid the memory of the blow, but Allison’s dead weight pulled him forward. He yanked his arm away from her, feeling the soles of his Ferragamos slide sideways along the slick marble, skidding neatly into the dead space between steps.
I’m falling. It was his last conscious thought as his feet flew out from under him, sending his body plummeting to the ground like a broken sail against the wind. His head rebounded off the edge of the top stair, shooting his toupee through the air like some sort of flying rodent. All around him, the crowd on the stairs began to thin, the last of the stragglers hopping quickly over his limp body in their mad rush for the office tower.
Six: The Bunker