by Simon Archer
“Make a run for it,” I instructed Clem. “I’ll be close behind.”
He nodded and took off at a sprint, his head pointed behind him to keep tabs on me. I closed my eyes, made the decision, and pulled on the grenade, promptly tossing it at the wall before taking off after Clem as fast as I could. Clem turned back around when he saw me coming, and we both shielded our eyes from the impending explosion, hoping beyond hope that nothing above us would cave in on us, or that if it did, we’d be able to beat the destruction back to where the foxgirls were waiting for us.
But it didn’t. If there was a ceiling, and there had to be, somewhere up there, it was too high up to be reached even by the grenade. The wall, however, was a different story. The whole section of it came tumbling down, and even that destruction didn’t cause a structural fault to collapse the roof.
“No wonder we couldn’t see to the top,” Clem marveled, staring open-mouthed as the wall continued to crumble across the long stretch of concrete between us and it. A half a brick even rolled all the way to us, touching and coming to a halt at the toe of my right boot.
“Okay,” I said, once the last rumbling of the falling wall seemed to have come and gone. “Let’s go take a look.”
12
Together, Clem and I approached the wall and maneuvered our way around its fallen pieces, which was no small feat, mind you. Clem nearly took a tumble about halfway through, but we made it eventually. And on the other side, there it was: the train tracks, at long last.
“Okay, good,” Clem said, seemingly relieved to have found something, anything out in this vast expanse of nothingness. “That’s something, at least.”
The tracks were clearly old and rusted like they’d been abandoned so long ago that no one had even laid eyes on them in a century or two. But for some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. Still, we kept walking, tentatively putting one foot in front of the other and shining our laser lights forward to pierce the darkness.
It seemed to me like the inside of a train station. There were walls, at least, and we could see the end on either side of us. A few yards in, I squinted hard and thought I saw something up ahead at the edge of my laser light.
“Hey, shine your beam up there,” I told Clem, pointing ahead of me. He obliged, and within a few steps, the outline of a train car became clear on the horizon, which was only a few feet away since we couldn’t see that far ahead.
“It’s a train,” Clem said. “Sort of, at least. It doesn’t look much like the trains I know.”
It was true. The high-speed rails were sleek and fine, if covered in graffiti. This train looked… clunky, and it was definitely dusty, though it was hard to know if that was because we’d just toppled a giant wall nearby it. When we approached it, I reached out and touched its side. It creaked and groaned just at the touch, but when I walked in front of the doors, to my shock, they slid open. Clem gave a start and stepped backward.
“Weird--” I started to say, but I was interrupted by an automated woman’s voice.
“Step onto the platform and then take your seat,” it said in a monotone voice. “Make sure to hold on to a railing at all times. Please input your destination on the keypad to your right and present your retina to the scanner for identification.”
“Huh?” Clem asked. “This thing is still operational?”
“I dunno,” I said cautiously. “Something tells me this thing didn’t do retina scans of passengers when it was under widespread use.”
“Yeah, probably not,” Clem agreed.
“That’s… weird,” Malthe said in my ear, and I gave a start myself now. I’d almost forgotten he was there.
“You heard all that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “According to my research, there’s not supposed to be anything like that on the train cars. How many cars are there, by the way?”
“Just the one,” I reported back. “Is that not normal?”
“It’s not,” Malthe said. “There are supposed to be whole trains, and cars didn’t operate on their own. That wouldn’t make any sense.”
“So, someone else is using them…” I postulated. “Malthe, if I step on one of these things, can you give me Beaufort’s retinal scan from the data you have on him?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I can’t send it to you from up here,” Malthe said. “We’d have to outfit you with something here, give you a fake contact, and then send you back down.”
“I suppose that could work,” I mused, “although by then they may have figured out we were down here.”
“Wel… and… lat… tak…” Malthe tried to say, but his voice was breaking up through the earpiece.
“Malthe?” I pressed the pod further into my ear in the hopes that it would improve the connection. “Can you hear me?”
“Can… just… fine…” he tried again, but I still couldn’t make anything out.
“You’re breaking up,” I told him. “Can you try to improve the signal somehow?” But this time, I only heard the crackle of static on the other end.
“What’s going on?” Clem asked, looking at me with a slightly panicked expression on his face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve lost him somehow. Maybe we’re in too deep.”
“I think we should just turn around,” Clem suggested. “Come back later with more tech.”
“Tech won’t help you down here, boys,” a low, gravelly male voice called from beyond the train car. “That shit just doesn’t exist underground.”
I spun on my heel to face the source of the voice. Out of the inky gloom, goons swarmed forth from all sides, tough-looking ones with calloused hands and broad shoulders. If they were above-ground, I would’ve thought them to be brawlers, but they were fully clothed in long brown trench coats and skin-tight muscle shirts, with none of the usual tattoos associated with the brawlers that I could see. They were everywhere. In front of us, behind us, and on either side of us.
“Who are you?” I asked, trying to make my voice as loud as I could, to show them that we weren’t intimidated by them.
“Why, we’re your worst nightmare, Joch,” the same man who had spoken before said, a tall, muscular individual with a scar over his left eye and particularly large calluses on his hands. A cynical grin spread across his sharp features. “We’re someone you don’t know, and you can’t control, after all. Isn’t that a shocker?”
They clustered tightly around us, pounding their fists into the palms of their hands and cracking their knuckles, flexing their muscles, all the usual things goons like this did to try to be intimidating. There was something off about them, too. Not a single one of them was sporting any kind of tech.
That wasn’t just strange in the modern world. It was unheard of, and yet here they were. Unexplainable, and unknowable as a result, just like the head goon had said.
“So you don’t use tech,” I said dismissively, trying to shrug it off like it was nothing. “Big deal. For every movement, there’s a counter-movement. You’re not special.”
To my surprise, the man threw back his head and laughed, the sound low and deep and menacing. “Oh, how little you understand, boy,” he cackled.
I clenched my fists. Elias had done that, too. I was nearly thirty years old, not that much younger than this guy. How did these people get off on talking down to me like that?
“Enlighten me, then,” I said, and the man’s eyes drifted down to my clenched fists. I unfurled my fingers, spreading them out and flexing them, trying to keep from repeating the gesture. The man just laughed again, and several of the others joined him, creating a chorus of low, gruff cackles that echoed throughout the train station.
“I’m afraid you know as much as you’ll ever know about this place, Joch,” the man said. “Get ‘em, boys.” He snapped his fingers, and he and the rest of the goons all zeroed in on Clem and me, their fists raised and ready. More than a smattering of them wore brass knuckles, and we were surrounded on all sides.
/>
Not fun.
I ducked and rolled on the ground to avoid the goons coming at me, knocking a couple of them off their feet in the process. A quick glance told me that Clem was fighting back as well, but having a rougher time of it. One of the goons’ fists must have made contact with his face, and his right eye appeared blackened and swollen already. It must’ve been one of the brass knuckles dudes.
Safely out of the way of the nearest goons, I rolled right back onto my feet in one quick motion and pulled my holo knife out of my tool belt. The red blade blazed to life, and I slashed the weapon across an incoming goon’s chest. The laser blade cut a long, dark maroon gash, and he fell to the ground screaming and writhing in pain.
Well, that was one advantage we had over these primitive assholes: when it came to hand-to-hand combat, we didn’t just have to rely on our hands. Still, I had to admit these guys were damn good at what they did.
Five more guys swarmed me by then, and I had to continue hacking at them with my holo knife with one arm and blocking their incoming blows with my other, keeping me from reaching anything else in my tool belt.
Meanwhile, Clem had gone for a grenade instead of his own knife, but before he could arm and throw it, the main goon had knocked it out of Clem’s hand. The grenade skittered off into the darkness.
I looked around, trying to see where the grenade had gone. I didn’t want one of the goons getting their hands on it. My laser light was still on, but dangling from my belt where I’d left it when the goons showed up, so I couldn’t aim it properly. Clem had followed a similar tactic with his laser light and seemed to have given up the pursuit of the grenade in favor of focusing on the guys who were trying to kill him.
I decided to do the same.
Another one lunged at me, and I slipped the blow. As I grabbed him by the neck, I drove another away from me with a few slashes of my holo knife. I was a match for them on-on-one, but there were just so damn many of them that I couldn’t catch my bearings to try to get away. By the time I’d knocked down three of them, the three I’d dealt with previously were already back on their feet. With so many attackers, I almost never had the time or opening to land a killing blow or clean shot, even with a weapon as lethal as a holo knife. I might have killed a few, but for even those seemed to be replaced by more attackers from the shadows.
The static from Malthe and Lin’s feed was still cracking in my ear, and I thought that every once in a while, they were trying to get us to hear them, but it wasn’t working. The signal simply didn’t reach far enough down here to be reliable, or something was interfering with the signal.
Clem looked over at me with a helpless expression on his face. He was faring worse than I was, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t able to see out of his right eye at all at this point. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek like a tear from the wound, and I visibly winced just at the sight of it.
We had to distract them somehow. And just as I realized that, I knew that Clem had too, because he started hollering at the top of his lungs.
“Incoming!” he screamed. “They’re over here! They’re over here! Just blow ‘em into oblivion!”
I realized what he was up to immediately. These people didn’t use technology. Who knew what they knew about it? Some of these guys might not even live above the surface like Beaufort and his friend did. Those clients didn’t seem like goons, after all, more like white-collar criminals.
Playing on their fear of technology was the smart card to play.
I pressed against the earpiece Malthe had made with my fingers, exaggerating the movement so that the nearby goons were sure to notice it. “Do not shoot the TelCorp binders, I repeat, do not shoot the TelCorp binders,” I instructed an invisible entity on the other side that did not exist. “The brown trench coats are the enemy. I repeat, the brown trench coats are the enemy, not the binders in leather. You will see the TelCorp logo on our backs.”
Sure enough, the goons surrounding me grew wide-eyed and panicked, retreating quickly.
“Stop it, men!” the scarred lead goon shouted. “They can’t communicate with their tech down here! They’re just trying to scare you. Do not retreat. I repeat, do not retreat. Continue your assault.”
The goons looked between one another, uncertain of how to proceed. Exasperated, the head goon groaned, put on some brass knuckles, and rolled up his sleeves, preparing to fight us on his own, but it was too late for him. I’d already pulled another grenade, the last one I had, off my tool belt.
“Incoming,” I screamed, and Clem and I both made a run for it as I primed the grenade and threw it in the goons’ direction. The grenade went off, sending sparks and fire and debris flying every which way. The crowd dispersed almost immediately, and I heard screams of pain and agony as I ran. But this time, I didn’t stop to look back. There wasn’t any time. We had to get out of there, stat.
Clem and I leap-frogged our way around the rubble of the fallen brick wall, and I could hear some scattered footsteps behind us. But soon, we were left only with the sounds of our own boots slamming against the pavement.
13
We ran as fast as we could all the way back to the building without once looking back, only moving our attention briefly to pull our laser lights back off of our belts and shine them in the right direction. We didn’t speak to one another. That would take away energy best spent on getting the hell out of there, and it could serve to draw more attention to ourselves from any goons who may have gotten away from the explosion and any others who may be hiding out, lying in wait for us.
Malthe’s voice came back about two-thirds of the way there, but I didn’t answer right away, out of breath from all the sprinting.
“Nic, Nic, are you there? Are you okay? Nic!” he cried, practically begging for me to answer him. Then Lin’s voice joined with his, more distant since she wasn’t right next to the microphone, but she was yelling so loud that I could make out every word, nonetheless.
“Please tell us that you’re alright!” she called out.
“Okay,” I panted under my breath. “Talk later.”
“Oh, thank God,” Lin gasped, almost as out of breath as I was from the fright we’d given them.
“Whew,” Malthe said, and he sounded similarly winded.
When we got back to the original brick wall we’d blown up, we barreled right through and into the basement where we found Cindra, Kinley, and Kira anxiously waiting for us. They were all leaning against the back wall and stood alert when they heard us coming.
“What happened?” Cindra asked, taking a step toward us when she saw us. “We could feel that something was wrong. I could tell you were in trouble. We didn’t want to leave…”
“No time,” I said, still barely able to speak because I was so out of breath. “Blow up the other wall. We have to get out of here, now!”
Her eyes widened, and she blinked at me for a split second, but then she and the other two all rushed into action, pulling out the grenades I’d given them and unleashing them on the other wall before running back to take refuge with Clem and me on the other side of the basement. I held Kinley’s shoulders as she was right in front of me.
Thankfully, the wall blasted open to reveal dirt and a sidewalk up at the top, meaning there wasn’t just another tunnel on the other side. Excellent.
“C’mon,” I said, beckoning for the rest of the group to follow me. I jumped from the ground to the sidewalk, pulling myself up, and helped the foxgirls do the same using our bonds. Clem followed after the rest of us were safe and sound on the surface.
“What happened?” Cindra started to ask again, but I shook my head and held up my hand to stop her.
“Safety first, then talk,” I said. I’d sort of caught my breath by then, but my chest still burned, partially from all the grenade smoke.
We ran as fast as we could back in the direction of the foxgirl community where Cindra’s family lived. I pressed on the earpiece to give one simple instruction to Malthe and L
in.
“Meet us back at the house,” I said. “Be careful. Talk to you soon.”
“Got it,” Malthe said, and I could hear him and Lin packing up their things quickly to come to join us.
We ran into them a while later on the gravel path leading to Henri and Paola’s place. No one said a word, the two of them just fell in line with us and continued running. Finally, we arrived back at the great big house safely surrounded by TelCorp drones. The whir of them never sounded so sweet.
Malthe ran up ahead of the rest of us and opened the door, holding it open as we all filed inside. I ran all the way to the couch and then collapsed on a cushion, breathing heavily. Clem curled up next to me, nearly knocking the whole thing over with the force of his weight. Kinley and Kira both fell to the love seat, while Cindra collapsed at my feet. Lin sank onto the arm of the couch next to me, and Malthe shut the door forcefully behind him and sunk to the floor right then and there.
“What. The fuck. Happened?” Cindra said, pausing between each word both for emphasis.
“They’re there all right,” Clem said, staring wide-eyed at the door where Malthe still sat as if expecting more of those goons to come bursting through it at any moment now. “Oh, they’re down there.”
“The secret org?” Lin asked, equal parts enthralled and frightened. “They’re actually down there in the old tunnels?”
I nodded slowly. “Oh, yes.” My chest was starting to hurt a bit less. We must’ve run four straight miles at sprinting speed. A marathon in less than half the time, you might say. Or a mini-marathon, at least.
“For real?” Malthe asked. “We were right?”
“We were right,” I said. “And then some.”
“Were there actual people down there?” Kinley asked.
Clem laughed out loud, though there wasn’t any joy in the sound. “There were tons of people down there. More than I could count.”
“How many do you reckon there were, really?” I asked him, craning my neck to look across the couch at him without moving my own slouching form. “Twenty? Thirty?”
