The Block

by Ben Oliver

  Suddenly, Akimi’s arms are wrapped around me, hugging me tightly.

  “Luka, thank the Final Gods,” she whispers, her Region 70 accent turning thank into think. “We thought we’d be too late, we thought they’d take you away like Malachai and Woods.”

  “It’s great to see you too, Akimi,” I say, feeling my heart swell as my old friend holds me close.

  She releases her grip and then hugs Kina.

  “Come on,” she says, letting go and wiping tears from her eyes, “we have to move.”

  She walks behind the counter of the old café and lifts open a trapdoor that leads to a basement level. There is no ladder or staircase, so she lowers herself down until she is hanging by the arms and then drops into the darkness.

  A few seconds later a flashlight comes on and Igby follows her down. Pod lowers Wren into the basement; Akimi and Igby guide her to the floor and then help Pod down.

  Kina and I are alone now in this dark and dusty old place.

  “I can’t believe we’re out of the Block,” she says, her voice hoarse.

  “I know,” I reply. “I keep waiting for the simulation to end, to wake up in my cell.”

  “It is real, isn’t it?” she asks, a look of anxiety in her eyes.

  “I think so,” I tell her.

  She nods and then lowers herself into the basement.

  It is real, I tell myself, it is real.

  I grab hold of the edge of the opening, and then drop down.

  In the glow of the flashlight I can see the smallish room is maybe twenty by twenty feet. Boxes of old stock are piled up and a small desk sits in the corner. There is a hole hammered through one of the brick walls.

  Igby walks to the desk and I see a contraption with loose wires hanging out of it. He flips the device open and a light comes from a screen within.

  “Is that a laptop?” I ask, staring at the obsolete piece of machinery.

  “Yeah,” Igby says. “Can you believe—?” He swears and yells as his hand brushes one of the loose wires, shocking him.

  “You okay?” Pod asks.

  “Fine, fine. Let’s go.” Igby picks up the laptop and walks toward the hole in the wall. He steps through and we all follow.

  We find ourselves in a small gap between two walls. Ahead there is a second hole big enough to enter; we climb through and now we’re standing on an ancient subway platform with an ancient subway train sitting on the tracks.

  “What the hell?” Kina breathes, looking at the antiquated red-and-white train, covered in old, dull graffiti.

  “Just wait,” Pod says, smiling as he moves with Igby toward the driver’s cab.

  Igby climbs into the cab while Pod climbs down in front of the train.

  I move up the platform until I can see what Igby’s doing. Inside the cab is a mess of wires coming out of the dashboard, and Igby works fast to connect them to the laptop’s circuitry.

  I crouch down to see Pod feeling around under one of the rails. He too produces a wire, this one thick and covered in rubber tubing that has been torn away. He pulls the inner wire into two cables and connects one side to a series of solar-cell car batteries that have been placed in a dugout in the far wall.

  Unbelievable, I think, marveling at my friend’s dexterity and special awareness. The fact that he’s blind and yet can maneuver in such intricate ways amazes me.

  “How are you doing down there, Pod?” Igby calls.

  “Ready to go. You?”

  “Let’s do this,” Igby calls back, and then leans out of the driver’s cab and calls: “All a-fucking-board!”

  Pod connects the second part of the wire to the series of batteries, there’s a loud pop sound, and the train’s lights come on, followed by the electric engine rattling to life in an ascending wheeze.

  There’s a whooshing sound and the train’s doors crash open. Pander drags Wren on board and leaves her sprawled in the aisle before sitting down on one of the old seats, sending a plume of dust into the air. Akimi sits down opposite her.

  Again, Kina and I are left dazed by the bizarre events that seem to be unfolding at breakneck pace. We stare, dumbfounded, at the ancient piece of machinery until Igby and Pod lean out of the driver’s cab and Pod explains that the batteries should give us nine minutes of drive time.

  “In other words,” Igby adds, “get on the train!”

  * * *

  We hop on and the doors shut. We take off, slow at first but gathering speed. The sound is immense, a shrieking whistle accompanied by the clatter of the archaic vehicle, which I’m certain is about to disintegrate all around us.

  A feeling of excitement rushes through me. This is really happening, I really am free from the Block, and I’m here, alive with my friends.

  I sit and smile, and feel enormous relief wash over me until there are tears in my eyes.

  Don’t, a scared voice inside me begs. Not yet. Do not let hope kill you.

  But this is different; you can’t fake reality, not to this level, I’m certain of it … but still, that voice.

  The train hits a fast corner and rocks violently. Wren—still lying on the floor where Pander left her—begins to shake. She sits up, looks at each of us individually, and it’s as though she’s seeing us for the first time all over again. She backs away, shuffling on her hands and feet until she is pressed against the far side of the carriage. She pushes her one remaining hand against an ear to try and block out the noise.

  “Get away from me!” she screams, her matted blonde hair falling from beneath her hat and into her face. “Get away from me, get away, get away!”

  “Wren,” I say, moving quickly through the rocking carriage and kneeling beside her, “it’s me, it’s Luka.”

  “Don’t you come near me! Don’t you come near me! I won’t go with you! I won’t, I won’t!”

  “Wren, no one’s trying to hurt you, no one’s trying to do anything that isn’t in your best interests. We want to help you; we want to get you far away from the Block, that’s all.”

  “I don’t know you,” she hisses, and then spits in my face.

  I sit back, in a state of shock that my friend would do such a thing. I wipe the wetness from my cheek. “Wren, it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  The electric sound of the train begins to fade out and we start to slow down. The lights inside the carriage begin to flicker.

  “What’s going on?” Kina asks.

  “The geniuses up front must’ve got their calculations wrong. We’ve run out of power,” Pander explains.

  The train rumbles to a stop, the clicks and clacks—that I’m sure must be audible aboveground—begin to slow, and the lights go out completely. We jerk to a halt.

  “What now?” I ask.

  Seconds later the doors are being hauled open by Pod and Igby.

  Igby shines his flashlight into the carriage. “Right, so I misjudged that a bit, but we’re close, maybe only a ten- or fifteen-minute walk, so let’s get moving.”

  Pander leads Wren onto the tracks, shuffling between the tunnel walls and the train’s exterior. Kina follows, and then Akimi.

  I stand in the doorway of the train, looking into the blackness, and I can feel my hands begin to shake as flashbacks of the last time I was in a train tunnel spark inside my mind. I remember the rats so vividly that I can almost feel their teeth sinking into my skin once again; I can almost smell their damp rotting stink and hear their shrill squawks.

  “Luka, come on,” Kina says, stopping to look back at me.

  I nod and jump shakily down onto the tracks. I squeeze myself between the train and the wall until I’m in front, standing between the two rails. I want to walk forward, I want to follow my friends into the darkness, but I can’t make my legs move. My heart is racing, I can hear blood rushing in my ears, and I feel as though I can’t breathe. The air down here is so old and stale that it must be toxic. I can feel sweat beading on my forehead. What if something bad happens inside these tunnels? Wha
t if I die in this darkness? What if …

  A hand grabs mine. I look down at the fingers interlaced in mine, and then up at Kina’s face. Her eyes look deep into mine and she smiles. Her smile only ever takes over one side of her face, and she’s so beautiful.

  My heart slows to its normal pace and I can breathe again.

  “Feel like going for a walk?” Kina asks, and her smile broadens.

  I take a breath and let it out slowly. “Yes,” I tell her. “Yeah, I do.”

  And we move into the darkness together.

  * * *

  Igby’s estimation of ten or fifteen minutes turned out to be off the mark. Half an hour later we’re still walking through the darkness.

  But I’m feeling calmer now, more in control of myself.

  I look around. Wren’s shoulder touches the tunnel wall as her scared eyes dart around. Pander stays close to Wren, making sure she’s okay. Pod is a few yards ahead, and the rest of the group leads the way.

  I let go of Kina’s hand and walk quicker to catch up with Pod. Something has occurred to me, a way of making sure, beyond all doubt, that this is reality.

  “Hey, Pod,” I say, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “Luka,” he says. “Hey, man, I’m sorry that it took so long to get you out of there. We’ve been on the move and trying to plan this breakout. It must’ve been … I can’t imagine.”

  “Hey, you came for me, you got me out of there, that’s what matters,” I tell him. “Pod, this is going to sound strange, but—can you tell me where you and Akimi were during the Battle of Midway Park?”

  “Doesn’t sound weird at all,” Pod replies, smiling.

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Nope. Happy ran simulations on you, right? Tried to extract information by tricking you into thinking certain scenarios were reality?”

  “That’s right!” I tell him.

  “And you figure if I can give you the information that Happy was digging for, it will confirm that this is all real?”

  “That’s right!” I say again.

  Pod laughs. “Man, they must have some crazy tech to sim reality to that level, and they must have exploited your own memories to re-create circumstances and people you know.”

  “That’s right,” I say, quietly this time.

  “I don’t suppose it matters if Happy is listening, seeing as we’ve all left those hiding places now anyway. Me and Akimi, we were in the diner on the edge of town. Your sister and the rest of the clones were in an old bank underground in the financial district; the rest of the inmates were … well, I can’t tell you that until we arrive.”

  And that’s it, the final piece of proof I needed to confirm that I am truly free. I try to say thank you, but the words catch in my throat.

  Pod puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’re out of there, brother, I promise.”

  I nod and swallow back the tears. There’s something else that’s been bothering me.

  “Hey, how did you manage to grab me?”

  “Sorry?”

  “When I jumped for the car and I missed?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I got shot, in the Block, while jumping for the car, and you grabbed me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I have grabbed you?”

  “Well, you know, because …” Suddenly, I don’t want to mention the fact that Pod is blind; it seems somehow rude. “It’s just that … you’re …”

  “Slow?” Pod suggests.

  “No, you’re not slow. It’s …”

  “I’m big and clumsy?”

  “No, not that …”

  “I can’t think of anything else,” Pod says, shrugging his big shoulders.

  “Nah, it’s nothing,” I say, conceding.

  “Oh, wait,” Pod says, holding a finger up, “because I’m blind?”

  “Yes!” I reply, a little too enthusiastically.

  “Right, I get it, because I can’t see, you think I’m incapable of saving your life?”

  “No, no, no, that’s not it—”

  “You think that because I’m blind, I’m not a valuable member of the team?”

  “Not at all, I would never think …”

  Pod starts laughing and slaps a massive hand on my back. I almost face-plant into the rails. “You are too easy to wind up, Luka,” he says through bouts of laughter. “Of course I shouldn’t have been able to grab you; I’m blind, for crying out loud. I mean, in perfect silence I might have been able to gauge where you are by your movements, but come on!”

  I laugh too, a little less enthusiastically than Pod.

  “So, how did you manage it?”

  “My eyes are fixing themselves,” Pod says. “Slowly, very slowly, but I can see shadows, and—if it’s really bright—I can see the outlines of shapes. Pretty soon I’ll be able to see faces, and trees, and the ocean. Don’t get me wrong, Luka, I hate Happy for what it did to us, to the world, but that last Delay is giving me my sight back.”

  Of course, I think, that’s why Pander doesn’t have her hearing aids or glasses either. I smile up at my friend. “I’m happy for you, Pod.”

  And my happiness for Pod only reminds me that I’m free. I’m free, I’m fucking free!

  My good mood lasts about four seconds before it is evaporated by a sound like the crack of a whip echoing through the corridor, followed by another and another and another.

  “What the hell is that?” Akimi asks from ahead of us.

  Igby comes sprinting back toward the group as the sounds grow closer, almost booming now. And the darkness of the tunnels seems to withdraw as the sound grows. I turn to face the source, and see, far in the distance, sets of bright lights on the ceiling coming on, one after the other. Some are missing, the ancient bulbs blown, some explode in a shower of embers as electricity flows through them for the first time in decades, but most still work.

  Finally, the lights above us burst into thunderous life and then move on ahead, illuminating the once-pitch-black tunnel.

  “How?” Igby asks. “We’re inside the radius of the scrambler; they shouldn’t be able to find us …” Igby’s eyes grow wide as they settle on Wren. “Where is her hat?” he asks quietly, and then, louder, “When did she take it off?”

  We all turn to face Wren, who looks back at us defiantly.

  “I don’t know,” Pander says.

  And now there’s a new sound in the tunnel, the familiar, high-pitched wail of the subway train.

  At once I put all the information together: Happy has tracked us to these tunnels using Wren’s Panoptic and has rerouted power back to this old subway system. The train that we were riding on is now racing toward us. The AI has either decided that we are no longer worth the hassle of keeping alive, or they’re going to rely on our ability to heal and hope that at least some of us survive being hit by a train.

  Pod’s head tilts to the side and then he turns to us. “Run!”

  I take five steps forward, sprinting on legs that have almost forgotten how to run. And then I notice that Wren isn’t moving.

  “Wren, move. Come on!”

  The tunnel is just wide enough for the train to fit through, there is no room to wait and let the enormous vehicle pass us by, we have to move, and we have to move now.

  “Stay away from me, stay away from me!” she screams, her voice rising as the train’s screech grows ever louder.

  I approach her slowly, not wanting to scare her. “Wren, listen to me. You don’t have to like me, you don’t have to remember me, but right now you have to trust me. If we don’t run, we’re going to die. I won’t leave without you.”

  Her eyes dart toward the sound of the oncoming train and then back to me. “I don’t know you,” she says.

  “Yes, you do, Wren. You know me, we’re friends, we’ve been friends for a long time. You looked after me when I needed it the most, and I’m going to look after you now. Please, come with me.”

  Again, she looks toward the now almost deafening sound, and the
n back to me. Finally, she nods her head, and we run.

  My legs feel leaden and the tunnel feels hot. Running feels the way it does in a dream, like nothing is working the way you want it to. Wren, despite her MOR system where her lungs used to be and her APM where her heart used to be, is slower than me. Weeks of the energy harvest and the paralysis needle have atrophied her muscles to the point that she is stumbling and shuffling along at an agonizingly slow pace.

  Up ahead I see that Kina has stopped and is waiting for us, panic in her eyes as she looks behind us to the approaching train.

  I keep pace with Wren, encouraging her, trying to ignore the blasting hot air being pushed forward by the approaching vehicle.

  We catch up with Kina, who runs alongside us.

  “Thirty yards,” Kina says, “just thirty yards to the platform.”

  I can hear the rattle and clatter of the train now, hear the metal wheels rushing along the metal tracks. It must be close, it must be so close.

  The air is rushing around us and the squeal and rumble of the train is so loud that I can’t hear anything except the approaching death from behind me.

  And then the platform is there.

  Akimi grabs Wren and drags her up. Pander pulls Kina onto the platform and Igby’s surprisingly strong hands grip my forearms and wrench me away from the train, which screams past less than a second later.

  Kina and I lie on the platform, gasping for breath. Wren’s eyes stare up at the ceiling in shock.

  “Holy shit,” Kina whispers once the train’s thunderous sound has dissipated.

  “I hate tunnels,” I say, and Kina laughs. Pod joins in, followed by Pander, Igby, and Akimi.

  “Pander,” Igby says, “you got a spare hat in that bag of yours?”

  Pander digs in her bag and produces a new hat. Once again she pulls it low over Wren’s head until it covers the camera.

  “Hey,” I say, asking the question that’s been on my mind since Pander told me to cover my Panoptic camera. “Where are your hats?”

  “We don’t need them,” Akimi says, smiling.

  “Why not?” Kina asks.

  “You’ll see,” Pod replies.