by Ric Beard
Stomping through the snow as he walked down the alley, he tried to staunch the bleeding in his grip. His SmartGlasses adjusted as the glow of the barrel fire painted his face in orange. Two women leaned over the orange-haired man who cradled his shoulder with one hand, rocking forward and back. He was muttering something Miles couldn’t make out.
“We don’t want any trouble!” The shorter of the two women yelled. Miles looked at her dirty face and felt a pang of guilt. She couldn’t be seventeen.
“I’m not going to hurt anybody,” Miles said, showing them his empty hands. He followed the flicker of her eyes to his bloody palm and sighed. “Please, let me help.”
The women looked at him in silent apprehension as the man rose carefully to his feet. Miles kept his palms raised as he approached the man, knowing his arm was dripping blood into the snow. The two women stepped back, but the man took a step forward, swinging his arms out to guide the woman behind him.
“There’s a clinic one block up and to the right,” Miles said. “A woman named Svetlana runs the place. Tell her Lucian sent you.”
That’s the first time I’ve ever uttered my real name in the city. Poetic that it comes on the last day I’ll spend here.
He gestured at the wound. “She can keep that from going rancid on you. She won’t charge you if you tell her I sent you.”
“Why are you helping me?” The man asked. “Why should I trust you?”
“Because you just saved my life, mister. And I put you in that situation. Do you have a chip?”
“What, you think streeters don’t have chips?”
“Of course not. Here.” He reached into his jacket and the man stepped back, again pushing his arms out to keep the women behind him. “It’s okay, I swear.” Miles pulled out his Tab and held out his left arm.
The man looked at Miles for a long moment before stepping out and extending his arm. Miles extended his wrist so it met with the man’s and tapped on his Tab. There was an audible beep and Miles held up the Tab so the man could read it.
Transfer in the amount of 134,000 credits complete.
The man stared at Miles in awe.
“It’s just a shoulder wound, man. I could buy—”
“A small house,” Miles said. “Do that. I can’t use it anymore, anyway.”
That would make Marie happy.
Before the man could reply, Miles was jogging back up the alley, clutching his elbow.
Chapter Three
Armed
Miles burst through the door to the cavernous studio apartment he’d carved out of the 120-year-old office building’s third floor on the unmonitored edge of Triangle City. The stale smell and cold floors underfoot were like home. Sparse furnishings and worn rugs sat atop dingy concrete planks. This was the place where he did his real business, away from the apartment he kept in town as part of his cover as a cyber investigator. For the last six years, it acted as a refuge for him to build The Underground from the state in which he’d found it to what it was today—a pain in the corrupt government’s ass. Miles thought he’d be here another couple of years, but recent pressure from the corrupt mayor and his crooked administration had pushed up his timeline. His anonymous tip drawing Abel out of the shadows hadn’t exactly been what he’d planned, but this day had to come sooner or later. A pang of loss swept over him as he took in the space. So much had been achieved between these walls.
He dropped his head and sighed.
Pain shot up his arm, jolting him out of his own head. He crossed the bare floor to a shelf in the corner and shrugged off his jacket, allowing it to crumple onto the floor. Grabbing a plastic pack off the wall, he sat and rummaged until finding antiseptic and a small metal gun with a wheel on its tip. He sucked air between his teeth as he swabbed the long cut above his elbow. After feeding a strip into the slot leading into the small wheel protruding from the device, he set it against the edge of the cut, clinched his teeth, and rolled it over his arm. Pressing the trigger every quarter inch or so clamped the skin together before inserting tiny staples, each eliciting a grunted curse.
The complacency of the people had finally forced his hand. Every time he thought he’d rile the masses with a new discovery of corruption hidden beneath the blanket of technology and city services, that bastard Vaughn had managed to dodge the accusations and paint The Underground as anarchists. Miles had come here with a mission and in some ways, had achieved it. Regrettably, they were small, insignificant dents in the larger machine that was Mayor Vaughn's reign. After the mayor’s daughter had disappeared from her military unit out in the badlands, Miles wondered if the mayor’s vile exterior might soften, but the man had doubled down, instead, pushing his ill-conceived agendas even harder down the city council’s throats.
The Underground decided it was time for a new approach. It was time to get the city’s attention with an event unlike anything they’d seen before. He’d laid the groundwork with the anonymous tip he sent to Security Services, revealing his identity as the illusive Tremor. The mayor and his people reacted predictably by surveilling him and checking out his digital accounts and his background—which went back only as far as his migration to the city six years earlier. The encounter with Abel had come sooner than expected and then had gone awry, but perhaps his death would lend even more weight to the display Miles had planned.
The Foundation, and by proxy, The Underground, had considered other options, but standing trial and using it as a platform for change in this city of halfwits was ruled out. If he could have counted on being expelled from the city, that would be one thing. Expulsion for capital crimes was commonplace under Mayor Vaughn, but the punishment for someone with Tremor’s reputation was more likely to be a nice, quiet death in the old world sectors of the city—a quiet disappearance followed by a quiet city devoid of unrest.
Apparently, by fusion pistol.
In Vaughn’s mind, Tremor was the kind of cockroach who never went away. The mayor knew if he didn’t smash Miles once and for all, he would regret it. Anarchists didn’t see the inside of the magistrate’s office.
After a few deep breaths, he dropped a variety of canned food into his backpack and retrieved a restored antique .45 with an extended clip from a rusted metal filing cabinet. He checked the clip, smacked it into place, and reached back into the drawer for a .22 he slipped into an ankle holster, securing its strap with the click of a button.
Miles pulled a lever underneath a plain-looking wooden table and yanked a Tab from inside the hidden slot. He swiped and tapped at the Tab before entering his security code. The screen flashed red:
Armed.
Light tubes tracing the upper corners of the walls transitioned from green to red and blinked three times.
Miles shrugged his jacket back on, careful not to offend the stitches on his arm, shoved his Tab into his pocket, and slung his backpack over his shoulder.
Eight steps, a slap on the panel next to the door, and three flights of stairs later, he was standing in the basement of the old building.
Chapter Four
Of Course
A beam of light peeked through a dirt-covered window at the top of the basement wall and shone down onto a round metal door as if indicating the way. The edges of rusted out holes in metal pipes overhead sparkled like scattered stars from end to end. Fungus flourishing on the south wall was one of many ecosystems Miles had seen in the building left behind by humans so long ago. Rust begot rust, but the hidden slots where the metal dogs attached to the frame and folded over the edge of the door had been meticulously oiled to keep his escape route accessible.
Miles turned the dogs one at a time while cradling his injured arm at his side. The watertight door squealed as metal rubbed metal and he had to lean all his weight into pulling it open. He waved as if he could push away the putrid odor that greeted him as he stepped in front of the opening. His SmartGlasses switched to night vision the moment he stepped into the dark, dank tunnel. Determining it was all clear, he turned and pull
ed the door closed behind him. His injured arm complained as he struggled to turn the wheel to reacquaint the dogs on the other side of the door, but he had to ensure the seal was airtight.
Miles walked alongside a trail of rust-colored water that lay stagnant in the bottom of the tunnel. Rusted out chunks of metal, all sorts of foul smelling biological waste, and the small but plump rats were all obstacles to be avoided. Miles thought it smelled like a three-year old’s diaper outside the tunnel. But he likened the scent inside to a seventy-year-old’s diaper with a healthy layer of hairy green mold. Pinching his nose only had the effect of making him taste the filth.
He leaned down, placed his hands on his knees, and retched into the rusty water, and the sound of his stomach contents splashing into the gross liquid ratcheted up the intensity of his vomiting. After a few good retches, he gathered his senses, finding that the smell of vomit masked the funk of the sludge.
That’s what I’m gonna tell myself, anyway.
Hands still on his knees, he perked up at the sounds of rippling water and saw some motion ahead. Something round floated to the surface ten feet away. No, it hadn’t floated to the surface, it had come up for air. Yellow eyes and wet scales were reflected by the pigmentation of his SmartGlasses’ lenses.
Of course, there has to be a snake. It’s not enough I have to go brave the wilds until…well, whenever…
This shitty day wouldn’t have been complete without it.
The snake twitched, causing the water to vibrate the length of its body and Miles understood why all the rats were so small: because the snake was so big. It looked more like one of the long, thickly-shielded electrical cables running down from the windmills atop the city wall than a reptile. He wasn’t going to be able to go around and the snake certainly wasn’t going to go around him.
As if challenging him, the snake raised its head a few inches above the water and made it hover there.
Can snakes see in the dark? Is it sniffing me out?
Miles stood perfectly still except for the hand working to unfasten the button on his holster.
The snake lunged forward, covering the distance to Miles in mere seconds. Miles’s hand jerked as he tried to slide out of the way. He banged his head where the concrete curved toward the top of the tunnel, sending his SmartGlasses flying away and splashing into the putrid water. His .45 followed suit.
In the sudden, inky darkness, he heard the snake splashing at his feet.
Miles had a fleeting thought that he’d encountered the one python within 300 square miles, as the weight of the massive snake drove him into the curve of the tunnel and forced his back to slide down the wall. He grabbed the sickeningly slick surface of the snake’s neck —
Do snakes have necks?
—and dug his fingernails into the flesh as he tried to hold it off. But he could feel the animal’s lower half trying to wrap around his legs and gain purchase so it could squeeze the life out of him as its smacking lips chomped the air in front of his face. The .45 was gone. There was no way he was reaching for his ankle holster when he needed to keep his leg pinned to the concrete in order to keep the snake from wrapping underneath him. The snake pushed hard, forcing its face toward Miles’s, its yellow eyes gleaming in the otherwise dark tunnel.
Wait…Why am seeing its eyes? It’s pitch—
The light from the Tab! The Tab!
He looked around desperately as he leaned his head to the side to keep it from the snake’s gaping jaws and two wide rows of teeth. He spied the Tab sticking out of his pocket.
The sudden motion must have activated it.
He gathered his breath and pushed up hard on what he thought was the snake’s throat, forcing it briefly into the air. Then he released one hand and grabbed for the Tab. The snake adjusted and opened wide. Miles shoved the Tab deep into the snake’s mouth, shivering as he struggled to push it deeper and deeper as his hand crossed into the animal’s jowls. A popping sound emitted from the reptile as it tried to unhinge its jaw and either swallow or purge the Tab. It drew back and Miles released the device, using the free moment to scoot away and grab for his ankle holster. Ripping the .22 out of the leather pocket, he aimed it at the snake.
His Tab popped out of the snake’s mouth and onto the floor, casting its light on the ceiling. The snake turned toward him and hesitated.
“Are you smiling at me, mother fucker?”
Miles aimed for the center of its chattering mouth and fired. In the space of the tunnel, the noise of the .22 report echoed off the cylindrical walls, causing Miles’s ears to ring and his eyes to blink.
The shot pinged harmlessly off the concrete behind the cylindrical beast.
The snake shot toward him at blinding speed and its head snapped forward. Miles screamed in pain and out of disgust as the monster clamped down on his shoulder. Pressure consumed his legs as the snake’s lower half wrapped around them. He cringed and dropped the pistol.
“Shit!” He yelled. He dropped to his butt and bore his legs down on the snake, but it had little effect—a tingling sensation indicated the loss of blood flow to his legs. He knew punching it wasn’t going to do any good.
Think!
He leaned against the tunnel wall and tried to scoot backward, hoping to scrape the snake against the concrete under his legs. The cut in his left arm caused him to howl as he slammed it into the wall. Then he remembered the source of the cut.
A kind of hissing, whining noise emitted from the snake’s head as it clamped down hard. Chills surged up and down Miles’s body as he shoved his hand inside his coat pocket while fighting to keep his weight on the snake. His hands grazed the knife, and he felt his finger slice open on the sharp edge.
“Shit!” he repeated. “God-fucking-dammit!”
In spite of the screaming next to its head, the snake showed no signs of letting up.
Miles pushed through the pain, gripped the lower end of the throwing knife, and yanked it out of his pocket. He didn’t know if he’d cut himself again pulling out the knife nor did he care as he raised his hand high and plunged it across his body and downward.
“Die!”
He yanked it out and plunged again as he yelled, “Die!” Again and again, he stabbed shallow holes in the snake’s head. “Die! Die! Die-you-mother-fucker-die!”
He withdrew the knife and plunged it again, thankful the snake was so fat, or he might be stabbing himself. The snake’s jaws released their clamp on his shoulder and he felt the warmth of its blood—or his own—rolling down his arm.
The snake jerked one final time before a hiss like a door lift compressor escaped its mouth and it flopped dead to the putrid water below with a splash.
Chapter Five
You're Welcome, Rats
Repulsed by the idea of touching the hideous beast now that the conflict was over, Miles opted to crawl along the curved wall until he felt the last of the slithery beast fall free. It slinked down into the water, making Miles wonder for a fleeting moment if it had survived. He scurried backwards on his hands and feet, but the monster settled into the water, bobbing in the ripples caused by Miles’s spider walk.
His chest rose and fell as the heart beat thumping his ribs began to slow. Ignoring the foul stench of the tunnel, he breathed deeply into his nose and released the air slowly through his mouth. Beyond the light emitting from his tab a few feet past the snake corpse, Miles saw one of the chubby little rats circle past the snake, high on the incline of the wall. Another gave it the same wide berth, then another. Miles watched as they scurried past him and continued on their merry way.
You’re welcome, rats.
Everything ached by the time he managed to struggle to his feet. Everything except for his shoulder, which had turned into a collection of screaming nerve endings. Blood dripped slowly down his arm from under the sleeve of his soaked wool coat and onto the floor. His left knee felt scuffed up, too.
Miles took his pack out of the muck, pulled out a small gel disc and pinched it repeatedly,
manipulating its surface so it was flat. A brightening aqua glow surrounded his fingers and thumb as he pushed the disk against the concrete wall of the tunnel. The soft glow reached down the tunnel in both directions, and shimmering waves reflected from the water onto the tunnel walls. Shivering violently in his cold, wet pants, he reached out for his Tab. Filth from the water covered about half its screen, but it was still active.
These damn things are indestructible.
He shook a chunk of something off the display, gagged, rubbed the glass on the hip of his already disgusting jeans and looked at it again. Seeing little improvement, he slapped his Tab against the magnetic holster opposite the empty one that usually held his gun, and began the arduous task of kicking his boots through the filthy water in search of his .45.
Something crunched.
“Oh, God-fucking-dammit!” Knowing what he’d find, Miles still reached into the murky water and retrieved both pieces of his SmartGlasses. He looked from hand to hand at one half of the glasses, then the other and shook his head in disbelief. “Guess you’re not indestructible, huh? Dammit!”
Rat corpses plunked in the water as he continued to kick. The gun was a few feet further away than he’d guessed. He picked it up and shook water from the barrel before slapping it back into its holster. After limping back over to it, he could clearly see the snake in the light of the gel pack.
Wow. It’s a python all right. That thing’s got to be twenty feet long if it’s an inch.
Miles’s brain was wired to think about how there were thousands of Burmese Pythons released into the Florida Everglades in the old world, discarded pets of people who didn’t know what they were getting into when they’d purchased the beasts. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think some of them migrated north over more than a hundred years and many generations. Without human beings to get in the way of their evolution, it was reasonable to believe they could grow and work their ways north over 120 years.
