It would have been enough to kill any normal man. And Jon too would have succumbed to the million fractures in his heart, its strings severed if only metaphorically, if not for the power of the goddess, who sustained him, healing him as she hurt him.
The images slowed, the intensity faded. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the tour was over. Jon was back on the cliff over the sea, the stone village behind him. He lay on the ground, panting. Tears stained his face, and snot bubbles ran from his nose to the mossy rocks beneath his broken body. His heart hurt more than he’d ever thought possible. The pain was real; visceral and tangible. He cried, a whimpering sound that started somewhere deep, deep in his soul. He felt naked, the cold vastness of space, an uncaring universe. There was no one and nothing left to blame.
To keep me alive at this point is cruel, he thought, wishing the feelings would go away, wanting more than anything to return to the salad days of the Academy.
"We are often cruelest to those whom we love the most," he heard Maya whisper and felt her soft lips on his wet cheek. At that moment, she was the mother he never had, she was his shelter in the storm.
Her kindness smothered him, pouring like thick honey over him, weighing him down. It warmed him and cradled him like a baby.
"I'm so, so sorry," she said and pulled away from him.
No! he screamed in his mind, come back!
He was falling, melting through the ground and into darkness. Panic threatened to rear its ophidian head, but Jon quickly ascertained the fall to be gentle, as if he were a feather, lazily see-sawing its way to the soft ground on a warm summer's day.
As he descended, he saw below him a multicolored tube, a funnel of sorts. He was slowly headed straight into it.
Please, no more!
The funnel of pictures enveloped him as he breached it. Fear evaporated as a feeling of warmth came over him. He was pulled into the images, just as before, but now the scenes were of kindness, of love. The laughter of one's child, the companionship of an animal, the kindness of a stranger. One's first kiss. Birth. Sex. Marriage. Family. God.
It all makes sense, Jon thought, realizing now why he had been forced to endure this ordeal, and why it was followed up with this second tour.
The images faded and all was quiet for a minute. Jon slowly became aware of his bruised hands and knees. He could feel the wetness of his cheeks and the swollen puffiness of his eyes. He opened them. The seaside vista, the village, and Maya were gone. He was in the bunk bed.
"But, I still have so many questions..." he mumbled to himself. He wiped his face and nose clean as best he could with his shirt sleeve and then pulled open the curtain. Lucy was sitting cross-legged on top of the table, her tail curled around her like an ouroboros. She was cleaning her pistol, either not noticing or caring he had returned from his Weaver-trance.
"Are you okay?" Carbine asked from one of the cushions on the far side of the table. "You sounded like you were dying a minute ago. I wanted to come see, but you know..." His voice trailed off, and his eyes shot daggers at Lucy. Jon didn't reply at first, ignoring his friend’s question and climbing down into the pod-room proper.
"Lucy," he said.
She rested the two halves of her broken-down pistol on each of her faux-leather-clad thighs and looked up at him.
"When do we get her out?" he asked firmly and without hesitation.
Lucy half smiled and nodded her head. "Tonight. Now, let me show why this place is called the Underground."
"But how do you know you haven't been tainted?" Carbine asked for the third time since Jon came out of the trance. "She is an esoterrorist, Jon. She could have shaped a Strange on you. How can you trust it?" The three of them had left the sky-pod behind and were making their way back down to the ground floor of the brothel complex. Carbine tried to keep his voice down so Lucy wouldn't hear, but the look she gave him over her shoulder as she led the way down the stairs told him that she’d heard every word of his disbelief.
"I can't explain it, Rene, I just know! I feel it in every cell of my body. Everything we have been told is a lie! Men have been killing men since the dawn of time, long before Invasives got here. Maya wants to end all that. She wants to defeat sickness and death and give us all the power to shape our own destiny!" Jon waved his arms around passionately as he explained.
"Maya?" Carbine asked.
"Lily Sapphire's real name," Jon said as if that made perfect sense. "We need to help her find the Morning Star. That's the place where the Anvil, the weapon that can defeat Warbak and the Harvesters, can be found."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Carbine said, not for the first time since Jon crawled out of the bunk bed, "But I will follow you to the ends of the Earth, bud."
Jon stopped walking and turned to Carbine, placed one hand on his shoulder and looked him directly in the eyes.
"Thank you, brother," he said, squeezing Carbine's shoulder.
"We can do male bonding some other time,” Lucy called out, having reached the bottom of the stairs. “Come on, we need to get the proper equipment if we are going to pull this off and survive." She motioned for Jon and Carbine to hurry up and follow her. They did, and all of them walked back over to the bar where Lucy signaled to Elena.
Jon stood a few paces back and turned to watch the day-to-day of the working girls and their clients. He felt half mad, half passionate, like a poet drunk on the wine of his muse. He was, in a sense, intoxicated, burning with newfound purpose. Despite his day-dreamy focus, he felt he was being watched. He turned slightly and saw Carbine looking at him, his friend’s face scrunched with worry.
"Things will never be the same, will they?" Carbine asked.
"No. I'm afraid they won't," Jon answered sympathetically.
Carbine continued to frown and nodded, inhaling deeply through his nose.
A moment later Lucy approached the pair. "Come on," she said and headed back to the bar. Jon and Carbine followed. Elena pulled up on a folding section on the bar, creating a small opening and allowing entry to behind the counter, and then led them to the end of the bar where there was a door framed into the side of the shipping container. She opened it for them and nodded for them to enter.
"Good luck, Lucy-gurl. Now youz knows dat youz cannot come back dis way or wez all die?" Elena questioned Lucy with pained sympathy in her brown eyes.
"Don't worry, Elena. I would never put you or anyone here in danger. They won't trace us to you, no matter what happens. I swear on my honor, and on my Lady."
"Bless her sweet heart." Elena bowed and let the trio into the darkened doorway and down a single flight of steps. Darkness swallowed them whole as the door shut behind them with a loud metal clank. Jon then heard the twisting of the door's handles as Elena wrestled them back into their cradles, locking them in from the outside.
"Hold here," Lucy announced and was gone. Jon swore he could feel her move away, but for his life he didn't hear her make a sound. Hmm. No bother. I guess we just wait here in the dark.
The air smelled like strong spirits and mildew. Chilling dampness quickly enveloped him as if he had plunged into an alpine lake. He shuffled his feet, could hear Carbine doing the same, and crossed his arms in front of his chest, giving each a vigorous rub to generate heat and stimulate blood flow.
"Here," Lucy's voice broke the silence, sounding as if she had never in fact walked away.
"Bloody hell!" Carbine exclaimed, nearly jumping out of his skin.
The darkness retreated before an explosion of soft, greenish-yellow light. Lucy held out two electric torches, offering one to each of the men.
"Don't sneak up on me like that! How do you do that, anyway?" Carbine asked as he reluctantly accepted the torch.
"It's what I do," Lucy said with a smirk. Her skeletal visage looked all the more sinister and sadistic when her marked lips curled into a smile. Jon felt a shiver run down his spine. "Built-in sound dampeners. Sensors in my body detect any sound made by my movements and then in
stantly create a vibrational sound wave that matches the one created by my movements and nullifies them. The two frequencies cancel each other out and make me virtually impossible to detect by the human ear."
"Not bad." Carbine made a mock frown and nodded approvingly. Jon took his torch and held it aloft, taking in the environs.
They seemed to be in a storehouse. Barrels of beer, wine, and spirits lay scattered about atop pallets and on makeshift shelves. Large plastic drums were filled with bubbling hooch, home-brewed by and for the bar outside. I guess they'd have to make do with what they can, Jon mused. He spotted what he assumed to be foodstuffs lying about as well. Bags of dried beans and rice, still in the marked bags of the Eastern Farmlands, clearly stolen. A head of lettuce here and there a pile of root vegetables, dirt still clinging to their skins.
"Ah! Ick!" Carbine made some noises and waved his torch, chasing a platoon of mice and cockroaches away from his feet. Lucy audibly scoffed. Jon threw his friend a worried and amused look.
"Tough guy," Lucy muttered, then, "Come on." She walked across the storeroom and disappeared around a corner Jon hadn’t realized was there, his depth perception and the walls’ outlines both muted by the ghostly light of the electric torch playing with the darkness. Jon and Carbine quickly followed the woman, whom it seemed did not need a torch. Around the corner, stacks of crates and storage racks bridged the floor to the ceiling on both sides of them. In the space between the walls of storage was another door.
Unlike the door from the bar, this one was cage-like and hinged in a crisscross pattern allowing it to nearly collapse on itself when pulled open. Lucy attempted to do just that but seemed unable. Jon tried to peer around her to see what she was fidgeting with when Carbine asked, "Can I help?"
"The day I need help from the likes of you is the day I—"
"I'd say that day has come," Jon interrupted. Lucy let go of the chains binding the door closed. She turned around, a look of pure rage on her painted face. In the dim, sickly green light of the torch, her narrow eyes looked solid black and demonic. Her lower arms moved, parting open her coat like curtains in a theater at show-time, her upper hands reached down to her left hip and gripped the handle and saddle of her Macuahuitl. Jon flinched but refused to step back. The black toothed club flew out of its holster and rose above her head, poised to strike like a scorpion's tail. She brought it down, pivoting in place, and sliced the chains off the door.
Loose and broken links chattered to the floor. Without a word or glance back, Lucy re-saddled her weapon with a flourish and let out a long, deliberate exhale. Jon and Carbine stood as still as statues. Jon could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He wanted to call her out on her bullshit, to tell her that he was tired of it. That if she wanted their help, then it was time for some respect. Enough of the edgy attitude and threats. But he held his tongue.
Her weapon sheathed, Lucy opened the accordion door and waited for the boys to enter, not saying a word.
"Right," Carbine announced. He and Jon stepped inside the room beyond, a small two-by-two-meter square framed in by the same cage-like metal that the door had been made of. Lucy followed them, closing the door behind her. She reached past Jon and pushed a switch, mounted on the inside of the wall. The room lurched and shook, dropping an inch or two, causing Jon and Carbine to reach out and grab the walls for stability. A loud mechanical groaning noise filled the space around them. The moan went on for several seconds, loud enough to discourage any questions the boys may have had, and then it faded into a gear-like tick. Slowly, and smoothly, the room began to lower.
They descended for a good minute, the actual distance traveled difficult to discern. The torchlight illuminated solid stone and concrete block in all four directions beyond the cage. Then the stone walls of the shaft peeled away upwards as they cleared its confines, dark space taking its place; the stone only remaining at their backs. Jon squinted to see, holding the torch flush up against the cage in a vain effort to see beyond. He could detect lights, small as motes, but couldn't tell what they were or what he was looking at. Distance meant nothing; attempts at perspective became disorienting.
"Turn off your torches," Lucy offered. Jon and Carbine flicked their lights off and were struck dumb in amazement at what they saw.
An expanse, cavernous and vast, opened before them, easily the size of the Ziggurat's footprint. A ceiling stretched out from where the shaft had ended and ran for what seemed like several klicks or more to another wall like the one they rode down. The cavern was nearly as deep as it was wide. Half the Zigg could fit in here, Jon thought.
"What in the actual fuuu..." Carbine's words drifted off into dumbfounded silence. Jon let his arm hang limply, no longer needing his torch. Electric light decorated the ceiling here and there, now above them, like stars in the night sky. Below, fires dotted the cavern floor in random patterns. The biggest fires came from the center of the cavern, where stood what looked like a small mountain. The smell of woodsmoke was strong, almost overpowering, and caused both Jon and Carbine to cough. It wasn't until another minute, and another hundred feet had passed that the level of smoke became tolerable and they were able to uncover their mouths and noses. Mingled in with the smoke of the lower levels Jon could also detect less savory odors, such as rotting trash and feces.
"What... what is this place?" Jon asked.
"This is the Underground. The real Underground," Lucy explained. "This is the city your people forgot."
"My people?" Jon asked.
"Yes. Your government. They don't teach you how Warbak built the Ziggurat on the broken back of Denver-That-Was. Or how once his fortress was complete he sealed off the lower levels, trapping the poor. The forgotten."
Jon and Carbine both tore their gazes away from the wretched wonder that was the Underground and stared at Lucy in shock.
"Nor do they teach you how people from the Shanty, driven and chased, hounded at every turn by your precious Ministry of Social Purity, eventually found a few remaining passageways. And how, to live with just a modicum of peace and freedom, choose to live down here, in the dark, amongst your trash." Lucy's voice was so cold, Jon nearly shivered.
"Our trash?" Carbine asked.
"Do you see that?" Lucy pointed to the mountain in the center of the cave Jon had spied. "Besides the secret ways, the only holes in the ceiling are the Ziggurat's trash-tubes." The mountain of trash had grown bigger in their view as the elevator they rode in descended. Jon could see and smell fires burning all over its slopes. Some of the fires were smaller than the others and appeared to be moving.
"What are those?" Jon asked, pointing to the moving lights.
"Pickers, most likely," Lucy said. When she saw Jon's look of confusion, she sighed. "Families send their children to pick through whatever the Ziggurat dumps to see if there is anything usable, or edible."
"My God," Jon muttered.
"Your god, the State, is the reason they live this way," Lucy spat.
"Why don't they just come up? Ya know? To the surface?" Carbine asked, sincere concern in his voice.
"Except for the people who have been down here for generations, most start out on the surface. They come down here to escape the Ministry. Ever since the Storm, ever since the Drops, more and more people, not just Displaced, but Earth-born, pure humans, suddenly and spontaneously began shaping Strange. Some without even trying or knowing that they are doing it. They say that all one has to do is register, and they're fine. Well, I'm here to tell you that's bullshit." Lucy's voice became angrier as she went on.
Jon winced; she was getting worked up again.
"More and more, being Unpure means a death sentence. This place is the last refuge of the people, Displaced and human. If your Chairman ever found out about this place, or remembered it—" Lucy stopped herself short, then fixed her eyes on Jon and Carbine, menace in her stare. "Personally, I think even showing it to you two is a bad idea, but I follow my—"
"Yeah, we know," Jon interrupted her again.
"You follow your Lady's orders."
"I swear by my Macuahuitl, if either of you ever—ever!—even think about betraying us, I will find you, cut your balls off and feed them to you. Got it?"
"Easy there, sister." Carbine smiled peacefully, hands raised. Jon nodded, ignoring her threats.
"I am not your sister, Jarhead," Lucy hissed.
They were quickly approaching the ground now. Once the elevator stopped, Lucy withdrew her pistol and said, "Stay close and keep your eyes open. Not everything that's trying to survive down here is harmless. Some gangs will shoot you on the spot just for looking like an upworlder, as well as some very successful little Beasties that have made this place their hunting grounds. Just stick to me. We only have a few klicks to go."
Lucy unlatched the accordion door and opened it. Her pistol held aloft, she began trotting out into the darkened streets of Denver-That-Was. Jon followed on her heels. Carbine, less confident, lagged behind, his eyes darting here and there between the trash-filled street and crumbling buildings, trying not to lose his cool when he caught the occasional pair of glowing eyes peering through the dark back at him.
"Wait up!" he called and sprinted after them.
010
TWENTY MINUTES of non-stop jogging went by with Carbine and Jon keeping pace with Lucy, though Jon suspected that she was holding herself back to accommodate them. The smell of burning trash was much more tolerable once on the ground level, and soft electric light, mounted here and there by the denizens of the deep, illuminated the forgotten city in muted reds and vibrant yellows. They came upon an intersection, not unlike many others they had passed. Lucy went left around the corner, and the boys followed. Jon nearly crashed into her when she stopped abruptly.
"What?" Jon started to ask, then looked up and had his question answered for him. The way before them was piled high with trash and large chunks of metal, their original purpose, and function unknown. At a glance, the mountain of debris that filled in the street seemed completely non-traversable without special equipment.
The Goddess Gambit Page 19
