Downsiders

by Neal Shusterman

  “Will I like this as much as The Time Machine?” he asked. Lindsay began to feel doubts creep in the moment he took the folder, but she bullied them away. Talon had to be exposed to the truth, and she had to believe it would help more than it would hurt. “Read it,” she said. “And we can talk about it afterward.”

  He looked at the closed folder, then turned to her, not ashamed to let a tear roll down his face. “Thank you, Lindsay.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead, but as she moved away and they caught each other’s eyes, they both knew that it simply wasn’t enough. And so once more they stole from each other a forbidden kiss. This time there were no exploding chambers, no plunging trucks, just the two of them in a dim, padded room two hundred feet beneath the city.

  The kiss seemed to be over the moment it started, and when they looked around they noticed they were the center of attention for a handful of crazy and not-so-crazy comrades. Lindsay left quickly, the thought of a long good-bye too painful to bear.

  She was led back to her point of entry by the same woman, who asked her no questions. Then Lindsay made her way up through the library much more quickly than she had descended. In a few minutes she was out in the waning revelry of the powerless predawn streets, trying to outrun the memory of those last few moments with Talon, and to deny that they had truly said good-bye.

  When she arrived home, Todd and her father were predictably absent. Todd was, no doubt, still on the roof, fanning the final embers of his party. Her father was probably out seeking solutions to the utility crisis.

  It was as she lay down on her bed, giving in to her exhaustion, that her bully of moral obligation began to lower its fists. In those half-lit moments on the High Perimeter of sleep, Lindsay began to doubt her own motives, and to suspect she had done something profoundly misguided.

  Once Lindsay was gone, Talon began counting to himself, trying to stave off as long as possible the opening of the folder. She had told him he had a lot of friends, and that frightened Talon more than anything. It made him feel glad to be sheltered from them here in this lonely place. Because who was he, really? Just a pain-in-the-ass kid with more nerve than sense. Who was he to be revered by anyone?

  But even here, his fellow lunatics whispered of how he walked into the Hall of Action and humbled the Advisors by his mere presence.

  But I didn’t return from the dead, he kept insisting to them, and to the people who came to peer at him through the door. The pipe broke, that’s all.

  One of his padded-room peers said the wisest thing of all: “Don’t be an imbecile,” he had said. “Of course they know you didn’t return from the dead...but you were on the Topside, and you did rattle the Advisors more than anyone ever has. Until you walked in, nobody realized how much the Advisors needed to be rattled, and now folks are longing to see them quiver again.”

  Perhaps he was right, but did anyone realize how rattled Talon was, too?

  Lindsay’s folder sat in his hands so tightly now that the sweat of his palms soaked through the cardboard, leaving damp shadows of his fingers. Then, when he could hold out no longer, he flipped open the folder, to impale himself on this truth that Lindsay had so kindly given him.

  Elsewhere, in too many locations to count, city workers burned the midnight oil trying to isolate the cause of the utility foul-up. When they exhausted all of the usual suspects—transformers, clogged junctions, and such—they had no choice but to go deeper still into crevices and crannies they never would have before dreamed of going. Deep in those unexpected places they found stone walls and impassable barriers that appeared to serve no purpose other than to seal off the corridors and chambers that lay beyond.

  “Perhaps,” some of the city workers mused, “it’s more of those subway-token rooms built by the sewer fairies.” That would always get a laugh, because few of them really believed the token-junction existed, in spite of reports, and those who did were convinced it was a single freak occurrence, and no other place like it would ever be found. So, as they began to drill, they had no clue they were about to break through into a world hung with diamonds and dreams.

  The Downside was aware of every potential point of invasion, and they steeled themselves for the upcoming battle with skin-piercing tin swords, eye-blinding high-beam flashlights, and bottle-shard arrows. They had heard that the Topside was already celebrating in the streets, and they took that to be a very bad omen. Railborn was sent from place to place to boost morale, which was fading fast, as the muffled sound of jackhammers grew louder around them.

  It was toward the brookward edge of the world that Rail-born found Gutta. She was stationed with a few other kids at one of the safer partitions, where drilling couldn’t be heard. When Railborn approached, she turned away.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she told him coldly. He had expected that and worse, but he was determined not to be brushed off.

  “I had to do what I did,” Railborn said. “Talon was about to ruin everything.”

  “So you decided to ruin everything yourself.”

  Behind them, Strut Mason and the other kids snickered, but Railborn threw them a glance that shut them up. Railborn turned back to Gutta, hardening his jaw in a display of his leadership qualities. “I don’t have to explain my actions to anyone.”

  He thought she might slug him then. His hands were ready to reach up and catch her arm in midswing, for he knew if she connected, it would hurt like a pole to the jaw. But Gutta was less predictable than she used to be. Instead, she spoke softly enough so the others wouldn’t hear. “You sound like your father, and he doesn’t impress me.”

  She walked away from him to the dead-end tunnel up ahead. Railborn followed. “All right then, what does impress you?” he asked, now far enough away from the others that their conversation could be private.

  She thought about her answer—and the fact that it was well-considered made it all the harder to hear. “The way Talon walked into that crowd—that impresses me,” she said, “because he wasn’t just doing it for himself.”

  Railborn felt like screaming. He felt like pounding his fist against the wall until it hurt so much, he could stop thinking of Talon. But he didn’t. Instead, he stood there and took a deep breath.

  “I can be that way,” he told her. “I can be that way when I’m Most-Beloved...,” but she cut him off with laughter that stung even worse than her words. And just when he thought his frustration was more than he could bear, she reached out and gently touched his face. He wasn’t expecting it. He didn’t know how to respond. So unpredictable.

  “You won’t be Most-Beloved, Railborn,” she told him with such certainty, hearing it was like swallowing ice. “No one will be.”

  “Wh-What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Railborn only shook his head.

  And so she told him. “Your war didn’t work, Railborn,” she said. “And now the World is coming to an end.”

  And then a second later...it did.

  Silence is not always a good thing. There is silence before a tornado, and the winds are fiercest just outside the tranquil eye of a hurricane. And just because a tunnel is quiet, it doesn’t mean that it’s safe...because unlike jackhammers or drills, explosives make no noise before they do their damage.

  The blast came without warning and blew Railborn back through the tunnel, where he landed hard against the other kids. There was no way for him to know or really understand what had happened—not in the brief time he had to piece together the tattered moment. All he knew was that there was a tremendous ringing in his ears, and blood on his face. Then reality struck him with such force, it made everything else seem insignificant.

  Gutta—where was Gutta?

  Vessels of the Soul

  What dim light there had been in the tunnel had been blown out by the blast, and now a heavy fog of pulverized stone filled the air, making breathing a burden. Railborn pushed his way through the thick dust, stumbling over the
rubble, until he fell over something soft that lay unmoving on the ground.

  “Gutta? Gutta!”

  He found her face in the dark and touched her lips, searching for the moist feel of her breath. He put his ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat, but his own labored breathing made it impossible to hear. When he pulled his ear away, he realized it had become warm and wet, covered with what could only be blood.

  Then came the lights—sharp, violating flashlight beams poking and prodding through the huge hole at the end of the tunnel. As the light hit Gutta, he could see the blood that bloomed from her abdomen. Then he heard the voices of men as they moved toward the breach from the other side. The men who had done this to Gutta, babbling to one another of unimportant Topside things—and that’s when Railborn snapped.

  In that moment, Railborn ceased to be human. No one is quite sure what he became. Perhaps he was suddenly filled with the spirits of all the gators his father had killed, or perhaps he dredged up something even darker, and angrier. It is said that Railborn’s war cry could be heard from one end of the Downside to the other, and that if you listened on quiet days, you could hear it echoing still. He lunged through the hole at the invaders, bellowing a cry of rage and anguish beyond the measure of either world. When those workers on the other side heard it, their blood chilled, and their courage turned to cowardice. An instant later, Railborn came through the cloud of dust, a beast covered in gray powder, hurling bricks and stones. The Topside workers turned and ran, dropping their flashlights, stumbling over one another to escape from the beast that wailed.

  When they were gone, Railborn crossed back through the breach and returned to Gutta. The fury was released from him, leaving behind panic and desperation. He knelt beside her and, in the light of the fallen flashlights, he saw the sharp wedge of stone that had punctured her belly like a stake—but now he could see her eyes fluttering with the faintest sign of life. She was still alive...but barely.

  The others stood around her, too frightened of the sight to get close. “We’ll get her to the healers,” Strut Mason weakly suggested.

  Railborn knew that would be useless. The healers had herbs for many things, and they were skilled in the sewing of wounds—but those were always surface wounds...and there was a saying among healers: A wound that touches the Downside of the flesh breaks the vessel of the soul.

  “Hurry,” insisted Strut. “My uncle is healer to the Advisors—there’s no one better!”

  But Railborn already knew what the healer would tell him. Let her soul spill free from its broken vessel, the healer would say. Accept that which cannot be mended—you have no choice.

  But he did have a choice. It was an unthinkable choice that he never thought he’d consider...but he forced himself to consider it now. As every Downsider knew, Topsiders were cheaters of the highest order. They lived their ignoble Surface ways, and were so skilled at deception that they had learned to cheat death itself. Sometimes with potions and pills, and other times with brazen sleight of hand in Top-side hospitals. Of course, those were all stories—but Railborn was wise enough to know that at least some of the stories must have been true.

  Railborn lifted Gutta in arms that had grown strong from a lifetime of the rough play of a hunter’s son. Then he turned toward the hole.

  “Where are you going?” shouted Strut. “That’s the wrong way!”

  But Railborn didn’t answer him and didn’t turn back, for fear that he might change his mind. With Gutta pressed tightly against him to stem off her flow of blood, Railborn stepped over the breach and into the world he so despised.

  The sentry who guarded the Chamber of Soft Walls did not know what the Topside girl had left for Talon—only that it brought Talon to the very state of madness he had been accused of. The guard watched through the little window in the door as Talon buried his head in his hands and wept, then hurled the pages across the room only to gather them back again, on his hands and knees, chasing away any other inmates who tried to look at them. Finally, with the papers collected, Talon stood and strode to the door.

  The guard, who had never been intimidated by anyone, felt a wave of fear ricochet through him and settle in his knees, which began to shake.

  “I wish to be released now,” was all Talon said.

  The guard stammered, grasping for a way to answer him. How do you say “no” to the one whom the Fates had deemed worthy to survive an execution? How do you refuse the one whom even the Wise Advisors feared?

  “I can’t do that,” the guard said apologetically.

  Talon waited, his eyes bloodshot and worn. Then he said again, “I wish to be released now.”

  As much as the guard wanted to go down in history as being the one who set Talon Angler free, his sense of duty was strong. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  Talon was unrelenting. This time he asked, “Is the war going as expected?”

  The guard looked away. There was no denying that the Topside was much more formidable an enemy than expected. They had forces amassed all around the Downside now. It was only a matter of time until they broke through, and presumably enslaved them all. “No,” the guard told him. “It is not.”

  “And do the Advisors have a plan for when the walls fall?” Talon asked.

  Again, the guard could not look him in the eye. Word was that the Advisors were collecting their belongings, preparing for an escape, as if there were somewhere they could run. “No,” he told Talon. “They have no plan.”

  Talon nodded, and said again, “I wish to be released now.”

  This time the guard swung the door open wide, and left it that way as he ran off to join his family in these last hours of the World.

  In the city high above, the morning sun shone through a cloudless winter sky, assaulting streets that were eerily vacant. Last night the spirit of the city had risen like a bullet shot into the air, but now that bullet had reached its peak, hanging there in the silence of the morning, ready to fall with lethal gravity. No power, no water, no gas. Nothing to do but wait.

  There was, however, a building on First Avenue that existed like an island in the city. It had its own generator and massive cisterns that still flowed long after most others in the city had run dry. The place functioned because it simply had to function.

  It was to this place that Railborn carried Gutta, for although he liked to deny any knowledge of the Topside, he knew from his Catching rotation that Topsiders brought their dying in screaming white cars to this place—this “hospital”—although he couldn’t fathom why it would be called that, as it was as inhospitable a place as he had ever seen.

  He had risen from a forgotten cellar onto the early morning street, Gutta a limp weight in his arms. Ignoring his terror of the open sky, he forged through the sunlight and the midwinter chill that seeped through the pores of his skin like a disease. With his eyes locked straight ahead of him, he ran toward his destination.

  Once through the hospital’s doors, action had been quick. Gutta was taken from him and spirited off on a rolling table while a healer asked him what had happened.

  “It was the war,” Railborn told him, but the healer had looked at him with uncomprehending eyes.

  “What war?”

  It was then Railborn finally began to realize how very different this world’s perceptions were from his own.

  Through a slit in a swinging door, Railborn watched in unblinking terror as a gaggle of green-clad healers worked on Gutta, prodding her with pins and tubes, bringing sacks of blood, hooking her up to inconceivable devices, and performing acts on her that seemed more like torture than healing. Railborn held his tongue, for he knew that the cheating of death must be a complicated matter.

  Then they questioned him—but he was careful only to tell them what they needed to know: that he and Gutta were here on their own and completely alone in this world; that they had no money, no belongings; that they came from “another place,” which he refused to identify; and that their very existence would not h
ave been recorded.

  That was hours ago.

  Now he stood at the threshold of the room where they had placed her, afraid to see what they had done to her. He ventured into the room to find Gutta asleep on an elaborate mechanical bed, still beneath a siege of tubes and strange devices. It made Railborn think of the old fairy tale: the beauty asleep in a deep cavern of thorns. Only the kiss of a Most-Beloved would awaken her—but he didn’t dare kiss her for fear that she might slap him silly, even in this state.

  As he stood there, a woman entered and identified herself as a social worker. “I’ve been assigned your case,” she told him, and Railborn nodded, neither understanding nor caring what she was talking about.

  “Will she live?” Railborn asked—a question he had asked everyone, and which no one was willing to answer.

  “I’m not a doctor,” the woman said. “But her condition is stable. I think she’ll be okay.”

  Railborn heaved his relief so heavily from his shoulders that he became light-headed and needed to grab the wall for support. Then, with that burden finally lifted, he dared to ask himself the question he had been avoiding since first setting foot on the Topside: So what happens now?

  The woman looked at his Downside clothes, heavily stained with Gutta’s blood, and held out to him a set of the green garments the healers had worn. “You’ll have to take those clothes off,” she said.

  Railborn raised his chin and looked into this woman’s eyes, realizing what she was requesting. Railborn accepted it as a call to duty.

  “I understand,” he told her. Then, taking the clothes from her, he stepped into the small bathroom, closing the door behind him.