by Simon Archer
Cindra shivered again next to me, Kira continued to clutch herself, and Kinley clenched her fists as the foxgirls all looked around at where they used to be held. I looked at them each in turn, asking them with my eyes and through our bond if they were okay. They told me with their eyes, and with their own spirits, that they were and that I worried far too much about them.
Maybe I did. But worrying about them was one of my joys in life, I supposed.
I walked inside the cell and walked around the perimeter. It was small. And completely barren.
“Did he leave anything behind?” I asked when I finished, turning to face the warden again. “Anything at all?”
“No,” the man said, shaking his head. “None of them did, except maybe a few dirty dishes from their last meal. It’s as if they vanished into thin air.”
“How many escaped, exactly?” I asked.
“Twenty-five,” the warden said. “The rest died.”
“How many?” I asked, and the warden shook his head.
“We didn’t bother to count,” he said. “The number is in the thousands, I know that much.” I hung my head and stared down at the ground.
“It’s not like they weren’t all terrible people,” Kinley pointed out, shrugging.
“They were,” I agreed. “But they still died on our watch. And that’s a problem. They were put in here for a reason. Whatever they did, they didn’t deserve to die. They didn’t deserve this. And the guards and night warden certainly didn’t. No one asked for this. Except for Achilles.”
“You’ve checked the entire premises?” Clem asked. “No one’s hiding out here somewhere? It’s a pretty big place.”
“It is, but we’ve scoured it up and down, inside and out,” the warden said with a sigh. “And they’re nowhere to be found. You’re welcome to take a look around yourselves. Whatever you need.”
“Yes, we’ll do that,” I said with a nod, but the warden didn’t move.
“Where do you think they are?” he asked in hushed tones, leaning forward as if he was afraid someone unsavory would hear. “When will we find them?”
“I don’t know,” I said, setting my jaw in a firm line. “I really, really don’t. I wish we had more information to share with you.”
“You and me both,” the warden said, obviously deflated.
“But we’ve got some leads,” I said quickly, not wanting him to go to the press with some story about how incompetent we all were, not that I thought he would, considering that his neck was on the line, too. “Don’t worry. We’ll find them, one way or another.”
“Good, that’s good,” the man said, nodding quickly and looking a bit less concerned, if still rather manic.
“Do you need any more staff here?” I asked him. “Is there anything we can do to help you through this whole process?”
“Oh no, Mr. Joch,” he said, shaking his head. “We have more than enough staff as it is. It’s not like we have any prisoners left to supervise, after all. My men will keep scouring the place up and down until we find Achilles Tibor.”
“I hate to ask, Van,” Lin said tentatively. “But is there anyone here who you think could be a weak link? Who could have helped them do this?”
“I don’t think so,” the warden said. “Everyone on the night shift is dead now, so none of them did it. And I triple checked to make sure everyone else had alibis. I’ll submit them to you right after this, including my own. Everyone seems to have checked out pretty good, though I’m sure you’ll want your tech guy to take a look at it.”
“Yes, we’ll have him do one last check on everyone,” Lin said. “But I’m sure you’re right. I can’t think of anyone who would do something like this.”
After that, we scoured the entire building ourselves. And then we had Malthe send more drones to do one last check of the place themselves. But the warden had been right. The place was virtually empty except for the remaining guards and us, and there were no files or anything anywhere.
“Malthe’s gone through all the security footage that we do have,” Lin said when we came up empty-handed. “And he hasn’t found anything of note, either. Are you sure there wasn’t anything he said to you in your sessions with him, Nic, nothing you’re forgetting, or not remembering properly?”
“Nothing other than what I’ve already told you,” I said, shaking my head. “He was damn cocky, though, now that I think of it, always excited to see me and taunt me some more. It’s like he was never worried about himself or his situation.”
“I suppose that alone says something,” Kinley said darkly.
“Yeah, I guess it does,” I said. “I kind of wrote it off as him being a nut before. I mean, it certainly seemed like he was acting like one, anyway. Who would be glad they were in prison? And there was no sign that something like this was going to happen. None at all.”
“It’s okay, Nic, you’ve done the best you could,” Kira said, reaching out and squeezing my hand. “I know your sessions with him were very frustrating.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” I said with a humorless laugh, though I squeezed her hand back before releasing it. “I could just never crack him. And I’ve never met someone I couldn’t crack before. Never.”
“Yeah, that would be disheartening,” Clem said with a frown. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin in a situation like that. I mean, I’m a pretty damn good binder if I do say so myself, but this wasn’t anywhere in our training. People are supposed to fucking have souls. Even shitty ones like Achilles. And you’re an even better binder than me, Joch, though it pains me to admit it.”
“Can I get that in writing?” I asked, giving him a wry smile. “You know I’m never gonna let you live that one down.”
“Oh, I’m aware,” Clem sighed. “Just don’t tell anyone else I said that, you hear? Including Semra. Especially Semra, actually.”
“No problem,” I laughed for real this time, “but seriously, I do think he has a soul. I was able to scratch the surface of it, at least. I just… couldn’t access it, somehow.”
“Weird…” Clem said, his voice trailing off in an odd mixture of disgust and wonder. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. Never.”
“Yeah, me neither,” I said. “But anyway, I think we’ve gotten everything we can out of this place. It’s just an empty shell now. We should go check on how Malthe and Semra are doing.”
“Agreed,” Cindra said, giving the nearest cell a particularly dirty look. “Let’s get out of this fucking place.”
We bid our goodbyes to the still frazzled warden and headed back out to the shoreline where we’d left the other two members of our team. As we walked, Lin’s E-pad pinged in her side bag.
“Oh,” she said, pulling it out and reading the notification. “It’s the warden’s list of alibis for everyone who works here. I’ll have Malthe check them all out later.”
“Sure thing, thanks,” I said. “The guy seemed genuine to me, though. I don’t think anyone there was involved, but then again, who knows?”
“Your wild theory about the rest of the world is looking more and more likely, Joch,” Clem said, and he did not sound happy about it. Neither was I, for that matter. If I was right, everything we thought we knew was out the window. And probably a lot of things we didn’t even realize we thought we knew, for that matter.
Semra and Malthe were still where we left them, huddled around his E-pad amidst long stretches of sandy beach.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked them as we approached, and somewhat predictably, Malthe just about jumped out of his skin.
“Oh, it’s just you guys,” he said, covering his obviously pounding heart with his hand that wasn’t occupied by the E-pad. Semra rolled her eyes at him.
“Who else would it be, Achilles Tibor?” she asked him.
“Well, that’s who we’re looking for, isn’t it?” Malthe asked, giving her a strange look.
“Sure, but he’s clearly not here,” she said. “So we have to come up with somet
hing else. What was it you were saying yesterday, Joch, before you wanted us to shut up because of the cameras at the hospital?”
“Let’s backtrack first,” I said, holding up my hands to slow my friends down. “What have you guys found? We found zilch in there, except a very concerned prison warden. Did you manage to find the tunnels’ entrance?”
“Oh yeah, it was right where I thought it was,” Malthe said, walking over to me and holding out his E-pad for me to look. “Here, come look, I can back up the feed to when the drones were down there.”
“They’re not down there anymore?” I asked, looking at him.
“No, they’re on their way back to us here,” he said. “We found nothing. Well, we found something, we just didn’t find Achilles.”
“Okay, so what did you find?” I asked him.
“Look,” he said, shaking his E-pad in front of my face again for emphasis.
I looked down at it and watched as the drones entered the tunnels at an accelerated speed. The rest of my team other than Semra clustered behind Malthe and me so they could watch, too.
“They’re going pretty fast,” I remarked.
“Yeah, I sped up the video,” Malthe explained. “There’s no need to watch the whole thing as it happened, it’s too long with too little to show for it.”
“Well, that’s inspiring,” Kinley said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Well, we found something, even if it wasn’t much,” Malthe said, a little annoyed. “Just keep watching.”
And so we did. We watched as the drones made their way through the tunnels. And sure enough, these tunnels had been altered since they were just regular old train tunnels. In contrast to the small, depressing dorm-like rooms we’d found in the tunnels on the north side, these tunnels were full of what seemed like luxury apartments, vast and sprawling and chock full of fancy furniture.
“Well, this is different,” Cindra said flatly, furrowing her brows together as she watched. “How many are there like this?”
“Not many, but they’re huge,” Malthe said, as the video kept going. “I’d say there were three, but one was the biggest. I’d bet it belonged to Achilles. They must’ve worked up on the north side and lived down here, where things were less condensed.”
“Is there anything of interest in there?” I asked, suddenly excited.
“No, not really,” Malthe said glumly. “They seemed to have tried to clear these apartments out, too. See?”
He pointed down at the E-pad, and I saw what he meant. It seemed like the place had been hastily cleared out.
“And then, there’s this,” he continued, pointing again, and we watched as the E-pad panned to a new frame, away from the apartments.
The drones took the frame into a wide-open space that looked like the edge of one of the many train stations I’d already seen in the tunnels before. But it wasn’t empty like the other train stations. It was full. Full of possessions, possibly record filing cabinets and other items. All of them burned to a crisp.
“Oh my!” Kira exclaimed, pressing a hand to her lips as the scene was revealed. “That looks like that room I found, where the files were. And the burned cabinets. Except… way bigger.”
“How do they manage to have fires down there?” Clem asked, shaking his head. “It’s just such an enclosed space. You’d think it would cause problems.”
“They must’ve had some means of burning shit that we don’t have or some special way to contain it,” Malthe said with a shrug. “Or they’re just lucky. Either way, I guess.”
“Yeah…” I said, narrowing my eyes at the scene. “Have we been able to check the cabinets or anything? Are there any more files that were missed?”
“I sent a service drone down there to look,” Malthe said. “They have those spindly arms tucked inside them. But yeah, it was pretty much empty. There were some fragments, but nothing I could make out.”
“Would it be worth going down there to check ourselves?” Cindra asked.
“I don’t think so,” Malthe said. “Not after what happened the last time, anyway. The service drone did a good job, and no matter how well contained the fire was, it must’ve done some kind of damage to the place. I don’t want to be involved in another cave-in.”
“Good call,” I agreed, shuddering at the thought of ending back up in the fucking hospital. And it would probably be a south side hospital, too, if something happened down here, and though TelCorp and the government were both working on building infrastructure and quality of life down there, the development didn’t happen fast enough for me to be comfortable turning to them for medical care quite yet.
“So, what now?” Semra asked, clearly frustrated. “He’s obviously not down here. Or anywhere that we can find. So what are we supposed to do to find him? He has to be in the city somewhere, right?”
“Well, remember what I suggested back in the hospital?” I asked her. She gave me a confused look before realization dawned on her.
“You can’t be serious, Joch,” she said, her voice flat. “He was just taunting you, trying to get you off your game, that’s all. We already decided that, right? Right?” She looked around at all of us, trying to find some semblance of sanity in our faces.
“We talked about it some more last night in my apartment after you three went home,” I explained, nodding to Semra, Clem, and Lin. “We’ve pretty much decided that we think this is a good possibility. If we didn’t find him here or any kind of hint as to where he is, we should maybe try… looking elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Semra repeated. “What’s elsewhere? There is no elsewhere! Termina’s the center of the whole world. No one goes anywhere else, except maybe the shippers.”
“That’s an idea,” Clem said with a shrug. “We can try to talk to some shippers. Can’t hurt, right?”
“I guess not,” Malthe reasoned.
“That’s not a bad idea,” I agreed. “The docks are right down here on the south side. I’ll call Gunnar to come to get us, and then we’ll head over there. Maybe they’ll be able to give us a better idea as to what this all means and where Achilles could be hiding.”
I pulled out my E-pad to message Gunnar. He responded immediately, telling me he was right there waiting by the docks, and he’d be there to pick us up in no time.
“Gunnar’s on his way,” I said when I finished, tucking my E-pad away in my jacket pocket. “He shouldn’t be long. Then we’ll head over there.”
“I called my own air car,” Semra said, her nose in her own E-pad. “He’s not far. We all won’t fit in Gunnar’s.”
“Oh right,” I said, realizing that she was right. Then I turned to the foxgirls, “Good. You guys know some of the shippers, right?” Cindra, Kira, and Kinley had all grown up not far from the docks. They would know at least a few of the guys who worked there, and Kira and Kinley used to spend a lot of time hanging out down there, I knew.
“Yeah, there are a few guys I have in mind,” Kinley said. “One guy, Iggy, in particular. We should try to talk to him first. He’s usually down there pretty early in the day.”
“Awesome,” I said. “Sounds like a plan. Now when we get there, don’t say anything about wanting to go anywhere else or what Achilles said to me when I arrested him. Just kind of… feel them out, if that makes any sense. We don’t want to tip anyone who might be working for him off, and we definitely don’t want people to think we’re even crazier than they already do.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good plan,” Malthe said with a smirk. “If this gets out to the holonews… Well, I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Me neither,” I said. “Though if we leave, we’ll have to explain it to them somehow. It’s not like they won’t notice we’re missing.”
“These are good guys, though, Nic,” Kinley said. “They wouldn’t work with Achilles. They might think we’re nuts, though, that’s entirely possible.”
“We might actually be nuts,” Semra said, raising her eyebrows.
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said as I watched Gunnar’s air car sweep down from the sky, closely followed by another driver. “Let’s go, then.”
11
Gunnar deposited Malthe, the foxgirls, and me on the docks, while the other driver dropped off Semra, Clem, and Lin close behind us. It was a crisp morning, with a light, refreshing drizzle brushing down against my face. I took a deep breath and stared out at the softly rippling water right off the shore, enjoying a moment of peace amidst all the chaos I’d been experiencing lately.
“Alright, so where is this Iggy guy?” Semra asked, coming up behind us. “Weird name, isn’t it?”
“Lots of people have weird names,” Kinley said, rolling her eyes. “Come on, follow me.” She gestured for us to come after her, and we did, walking along the paved path lining the docks.
Men, and a few women as well, worked out in the water, anchoring ships to shore, cleaning them, and preparing goods for shipment. There was a calmness amidst all the clanking and shouting noises, and no one sounded unhappy, or like they weren’t enjoying their work.
“Interesting that they’re still out when the rest of the city has shut down,” I remarked, turning to speak with Cindra next to me. “Why do you think that is?”
“The shippers never stop,” she said with a shrug. “They enjoy their work. Plus, the whole city doesn’t respond to stuff like this the way the north side does. They’re a bunch of pansies. Down here, we keep going. TelCorp problems don’t concern us much.”
“I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” I said darkly. “I mean, it could be good because they won’t care that everyone else thinks we’re crazy, but it could be bad if Achilles actually is here, or coming here, and people on the south side aren’t taking the necessary precautions to keep themselves safe from an attack.”
