by Simon Archer
“That’s one way to look at it, I guess,” I chuckled. “I wonder if they built stuff over all the old tunnel entrances.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Cindra mused. “Easier to cover up that way. Keep people out of their way.”
Clem’s eyes grew wide at the implication. “You think these people date back that far?”
“Who knows?” I said dryly. “They definitely date back to a few years before my dad died, given the map of burner phone calls Malthe made, but I bet they go back longer than that. They just weren’t ready to communicate with the outside world until then.”
“Or they didn’t have a reason to, until your dad came along and messed with their plans for us foxgirls,” Cindra said darkly. While it was conjecture on her part, it made logical sense, and I sure couldn’t refute it.
“That’s a happy thought,” Kinley remarked, sarcastic as ever.
I nodded at that before refocusing. “Right, so let’s get to that bottom floor.” I wanted to get this over with and get everyone back to the safety of Cindra’s family’s new home.
“Over here, I think,” Kinley said, gesturing at a nearby door. The whole building was even worse than Malthe’s office before we refurbished it, rusted, old, and even somewhat vaguely damp. The air smelled of mold and old sawdust like it’d been a mill of some kind. Still, despite the rust on the door’s hinges, Kinley pulled it open easily enough and slipped inside.
The rest of us followed Kinley through the door, and sure enough, it was a stairwell. Or at least I think it was supposed to be a stairwell. The stairs themselves were rotted old wood, and when I stepped on the first one, my foot nearly fell through, and my boot came back covered in mud and water, and I didn’t even want to know what else.
“Ewww,” I said, my face scrunched up in disgust.
“Awesome,” Kinley said sardonically as she peered down at the rest of the stairwell.
“How’re we supposed to get down?” Kira asked.
“Just jump them several at a time,” I suggested, “and don’t linger on any of the steps, don’t give your feet any time to breakthrough. That’s the only way I can think of.”
“Alright then,” Clem said, his own face wrinkled in distaste at the thought of what might be in that muck. “Does this place smell funky to any of you?”
“Yep,” the foxgirls and I all said in unison. The moldy, mildewy smell was even worse in the stairwell.
“Let’s just get it over with, then,” Clem said, though he didn’t look happy about it.
“Alright, after me,” I said and then leapt down several steps at once, just as I’d suggested.
I made sure to jump down more stairs immediately after reaching a new one, and not to keep more than one foot on a step at once. Sure enough, I never broke through, though I was pretty certain I would have if I’d lingered for even a second longer.
“Try to stay on different areas of the steps from the person in front of you,” I called back to my companions. “These things are about ready to break.”
Luckily, everyone else in the group was adept enough to make it down. I utilized my bonds with the foxgirls to help them along, make them make the right movements, and Clem was almost as physically skilled as me, so he didn’t have much trouble.
When we finally got to the bottom, I turned and looked back up the flight of stairs behind me. My friends were all clustered around me by now, safe and sound at the bottom on the concrete, but the stairs themselves were pretty much done for at that point. Several appeared on the verge of collapse, and the rest were already well past the point of no return.
“How will we get back up?” Clem asked, forlornly following my gaze up the stairwell.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess,” I said, wincing at the thought of trying to make it back up. It would be even harder on the way up even without the additional damage we had caused.
“I hope you mean that literally,” Kinley said flatly. “‘Cause the only way we’re getting up those things is if we’ve got an actual bridge leading us over them.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I said. “At worst, we can call back up to Malthe to arrange for some kind of assistance. Let’s just focus on finding the actual tunnel first. What does the map say?”
“I’m not sure I would call this sketch an actual map, but I think it’s supposed to be through this wall,” Kinley said, pointing at the bricks to my right. The paper Malthe had drawn on dangled between the tips of her fingers, and while it was a crude drawing, it had gotten us this far.
Kira eyed the wall with concern. “There’s no door, though.”
She was right. The entire basement was just a dark, dreary, wet slab of concrete surrounded by four brick walls. Though the walls themselves were standing, the bricks that made them up were almost as decayed as the stairwell.
“Looks like we’ll have to blast our way through,” Clem said, a wide grin spreading across his face.
“Try not to look so happy about it,” I said, though I allowed myself a small smile of my own. One excellent thing about my line of work was that, every once in a while, I got to do something like this for a good reason. It was a hell of a stress reliever, kind of like jumping across rooftops in the middle of the night.
What can I say? Binding attracts a very specific personality type.
“Well, this might solve the ‘how do we get out of here’ problem, at least,” Kinley remarked. “We can always blow up another wall if we have to.”
“That’s the spirit.” Clem, still grinning, clapped her on the shoulder.
“Alright, Clem, wanna do the honors?” I asked him. Suddenly, the grin disappeared from his face.
“I dunno, Nic. What do you think is gonna be waiting for us in there?” he asked, eyeing the wall with similar distaste as Kira had.
“I dunno,” I said, shaking my head, “but I do know that we need to find out.”
“Fair enough,” he said, taking a deep breath and then looking away from the wall to fiddle with his tool belt. He pulled out a small grenade.
“Alright, everybody step way, way back,” I instructed, and ushered Cindra, Kinley, and Kira along with me to the back of the basement. In the process, I stepped in something wet that I didn’t even want to think about.
“On the count of three,” Clem warned, swinging the grenade back and forth with his arm in a pendulum motion to prepare. “One… two… three…”
And then he pulled the clip and threw the grenade before darting back to take refuge with the rest of us. The grenade landed in the center of the brick wall, and then, after a short series of beeps, it exploded, taking a sizable segment of the wall along with it. Fortunately, Clem had picked a small-yield explosive, and to my surprise, nothing else collapsed, leaving the structure largely intact aside from the gaping hole in the wall.
“Well, so much for fixing the stairwell problem,” Kinley said, also flatly.
“Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from,” Clem grinned and ran his fingers across the top of his tool belt.
“I’m surprised it didn’t topple the whole thing,” Kira said, looking around at the other walls, which seemed largely unaffected but for a loose brick here and there.
“Destruction is an art form,” Clem said, kissing the tips of his fingers as if he’d performed some kind of miracle. “You’ve gotta hit it just right.”
“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “At least no one’s come running out to kill us yet. Now, let’s try to get inside. You there, Malthe?” I pressed the pod in my ear, and Malthe came online.
“I’m here, boss,” he assured me. “Make it down there okay?”
“I don’t know about okay, but we’re here.” I eyed the stairwell again. “Any advice? Any idea what we’re gonna find? You can’t see anything with all that tech of yours, can you?”
“Nope, but I’m looking,” he assured me. “No signals for anything down there, other than you five, of course.”
“Any
burner calls?” I asked.
“Nah, not that I’d be able to see their origin anyway,” he explained, “but there haven’t been any calls placed anywhere in the city since this afternoon. These people tend to use this method sparingly, I think.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I sighed. “That would just make it easier on us, wouldn’t it?”
“That it would, boss,” Malthe lamented. “Anyway, I’ll be with you the whole time. I’ve got a map of the old tunnels up here with me, so I’ll try to guide you through. Though there’s no guarantee it’s the same now that it was then.”
“Or that the map was even accurate in the first place,” I added. “Who knows with these people?”
Kira looked between me and the hole in the wall nervously. “So, what should we do?”
“Just stay here,” I told her and Kinley before pulling a couple of grenades out of my own tool belt. I handed one to each of them. “If anything happens, and I mean anything, pull on the clip, throw it at the opposite wall, and run away, just like we did just now. Get the hell out of here.”
“Okay….” Kira said slowly. “How will we know if something goes wrong?”
“I think if it goes wrong enough for you to need to get out of here, you’ll know it when you see it,” Clem offered.
“Fair enough,” Cindra said.
“And if we’re not back within the hour, get the hell out of here and regroup with Malthe and Lin,” I told them. They all opened their mouths to protest, but I held up my hands to stop them. “Look, you’ll be more of a help to us safe and trying to track us down than hanging out in this dump. With our soul bond, you’re each almost as dangerous and skilled as I am, and Cindra might be a match now for any binder.”
“Also fair,” Kinley shrugged. “Though I don’t have to like it.”
“I definitely don’t like it,” Cindra crossed her arms and frowned, “but I’ll do it.”
“Good.” I nodded curtly and turned to Clem. “Okay, let’s scram. Might as well see whether we’re on to anything here.”
“Okay, then,” Clem took a sharp intake of breath, shaking his head as he stared at the hole. “Now or never, I suppose.”
“That’s the spirit.” I clapped him on the shoulder and moved past him to stand right in front of the hole. I could only see a few feet into the darkness, and there was nothing there that I could see except some more wet concrete.
“Please tell me you have some kind of flashlight,” Kira said.
“C’mon, you know us better than that,” I chided, pulling a laser light out of my tool belt and shining it into the hole. “TelCorp binders always come prepared.”
“Always,” Clem echoed, pulling out his own laser light and shining it in the same direction. It was just more of the same, slick concrete walls of a passageway going forward.
“Well, at least it doesn’t lead outside, so we know we’re going in the right direction,” I remarked. “Theoretically, anyway.”
“You have more of these, right?” Kinley asked, holding up the grenade in her hand.
“Plenty,” Clem assured her. “Bigger and scarier ones, too, plus our holoknives.”
“Well, let’s hope we don’t need to use them,” I said. Tentatively at first and then more assuredly, I stepped over what remained of the brick wall and onto the cement beyond it.
“Are you in?” Malthe asked in my ear after a few moments.
“Yeah, we’re in.” I exchanged a look with Clem to let him know I was talking to Malthe again.
“Okay, good, what d’you see?” he asked.
I shone my laser light in several directions, illuminating the surrounding area with a red glow. Clem followed suit with his own laser light.
“Nothing, really, just some concrete.”
“I don’t know, I was expecting more,” Clem said, and apparently Malthe could hear him from the device because he immediately responded.
“Well, maybe we’re on the wrong track, then,” he said carefully, almost hopefully even.
“Do you want us to meet a dead end?” I asked.
“Not particularly,” Malthe said, “but I also don’t want anything to happen to you guys.”
“I think we’ll be fine,” I said dryly, but I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a sense of foreboding in the air like something was lying in wait for us up ahead. Maybe it was just because we hadn’t found anything yet that I felt like the whole thing must be some kind of trick. It just didn’t meet my expectations, not that I really knew what I expected in the first place. Maybe, like Clem, I’d just been expecting to find something waiting for us, even just an old train station or something.
“Does it seem like we’re going down to you?” Clem asked after several more moments of walking along with nothing notable coming across our path.
“Going down?” I repeated, not sure in what way he meant this phrase.
“Literally, I mean,” he clarified, gesturing at the ground. I stopped in my tracks, considered this for a moment, then took a few steps forward again. Then back, and then forward, and then back again.
“I think maybe you’re right,” I said. “It’s a slight decline, but I think it’s there. Do you see our location, Malthe?”
“Yep, we’re watching,” Malthe said, referring to himself and Lin. “We’ve got you up on my computer. It just looks like you’re traveling down the block from the building you were in.”
“Do you see we’re going up or down?” I asked.
“Naw,” Malthe said. “We just see where you are. I imagine you’ll disappear at some point.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” I said, and Clem and I continued our trek downward.
Eventually, I could tell we were far lower than we had been when we’d started out, though the change was gradual enough that wouldn’t have been able to tell had I not been paying attention. The air had grown cold and clammy, and it felt… heavier, all signs of our descent. But still, there was nothing to be seen or found as far as we could see. Admittedly, that wasn’t all that far.
“Does this place even end on any side?” Clem asked, shining his laser light in all directions to no avail. There was just a seemingly endless stretch of concrete on all sides.
“Well, we know it ends back thataway,” I said, pointing behind us. “So I imagine it must end elsewhere, too, though I didn’t expect it to be so wide to our sides.”
“Is it supposed to be like this?” Clem asked, throwing his hands up in the air.
“Is it?” I echoed, directing the question at Malthe.
“I don’t know…” he said, and I could tell he was studying the map. “I think you’re supposed to have arrived at a train station a while back.”
“I don’t see any tracks,” I said, shaking my head. “They didn’t rip ‘em out, did they?”
“Not officially,” Malthe reported. “Not that I could find, anyway, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t.”
“Right,” I said unsteadily, growing a bit nervous. “Can you still see us on the monitor?”
“Yes, we can see you,” Malthe said, sounding more confident now. “Still looks like you’re just traveling on the surface, though.”
“Okay,” I said, relieved. “Any idea where this tunnel’s supposed to go, if it were a tunnel, that is?”
“Up ahead,” he said. “And to the right, toward the financial district.”
“There’s supposed to be another branch off to the left at some point, too, down toward the docks,” Lin’s voice, slightly muffled from the distance from Malthe’s ear, called through the pod.
“Alright, well, any idea how long until that’s supposed to happen?” I asked, a little annoyed at the situation.
“Should be in the next block or two,” Malthe said. “Though our reading of exactly where you are could be a bit off since you’re lower than the tech thinks you are.”
“Okay, thanks.” I turned to Clem. “Should be another block or two, but who knows?”
“Great,” he sa
id, kicking at the concrete beneath his feet. “So if this isn’t it, what’s the next plan? Big theory?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I echoed what I’d said earlier. “Let’s just keep looking.”
And so we did, and in another half mile or so, we actually did hit a dead end. Literally.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a great big wall emerged in front of us, stopping us in our tracks. And since we couldn’t see very far even with our laser lights, we were almost upon it before we even realized that it was there.
“Oookay,” Clem said slowly, craning his neck to look up at the thing. I shined my light up, and so did he, but it stretched further than our lights shone, which admittedly wasn’t saying much.
“It’s weird we can’t see that far, isn’t it?” I asked, looking quizzically at my laser light. “On the surface, they usually stretch farther than this.”
“What isn’t weird about any of this, really?” Clem asked, and I shrugged. That was fair.
“What’s going on?” Malthe asked. “Why did you stop?”
“There’s a giant wall in front of us. Brick like the other one, though it looks sturdier,” I explained, describing the sight in front of us.
“It’s gotta end somewhere, doesn’t it?” Clem asked.
“We’re gonna explore a bit, see if we can find a way around it,” I told Malthe and Lin.
Clem and I walked up and down the length of the wall for a while, but it got to a point where I didn’t see it as worth it to continue.
“This doesn’t end, and if it does, we’re not gonna be able to find it,” I told Clem after some time. “Let’s just go back to where we started and see if we can blast through it like we did the first one.”
“That’ll take a bigger grenade,” Clem said, a worried expression on his face.
“All the more fun then,” I said, forcing a grin, but I felt Clem’s trepidation. I had a bad feeling about what was waiting for us beyond that wall, too, but we had to know. We’d come all this way, so we might as well make something of it. When we were roughly back where we’d started, I pulled a larger grenade out of my tool belt and got ready to throw it.
