Ciphers

by Matt Rogers

  Samuel cackled. ‘That’s me. Lost as you could imagine. Used and discarded by everyone. You two are about to do the same. Won’t be anything new.’

  ‘Are you expecting sympathy?’ King said. ‘You know full well what you’ve done here.’

  Samuel hesitated.

  His stride slowed.

  He said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The blackout.’

  The kid burst out laughing. ‘You think that’s bad?’

  ‘Yeah,’ King said. ‘I do.’

  ‘I killed over thirty people for them,’ Samuel said, his words hollow and devoid of empathy. ‘Wrap your head around that.’

  King paused. ‘For who?’

  ‘I told you my last name. You figure it out.’

  ‘The Whelans aren’t around anymore,’ King said. ‘Either we killed them, or they wised up and ran for it. So there must be somebody else involved.’

  Samuel beamed ear to ear, completely manic. ‘That’s the beauty of the modern world, hey? There aren’t “top dogs” anymore. There used to be the head of the family, obviously, but like you said, you killed him. That don’t matter much, though. It’s all bullshit, in the end. People sucking up to other people to get promotions. The fuckin’ hierarchy. Me … I was never good at that. I ain’t exactly … how would you put it? … socially intelligent. I ain’t get no favours with no one. So they always used me. But nowadays … prestige means nothing. The smarter ones in the family kept a low profile. The ones who could actually shake things up. That’s who stayed behind. That’s who you overlooked.’

  Samuel let them mull over that as he came to a halt over the lid of a giant storm drain. It was tucked into the shadows in the middle of the alleyway, unassuming, dark metal, a heavy solid thing. There was a thick rusting cylindrical handle on its far side, with a bolt at one end to secure it in place. It was hard to discern much in the dark, but King could see, clear as day, that the bolt had been tampered with. There was nothing securing it to the drain.

  Allowing discreet access to the sewers and tunnels underneath.

  King fought back apprehension. He gestured at the lid with his MP7.

  ‘Is that where you’re taking us?’

  Samuel grinned. ‘Sure is.’

  Slater said, ‘You know it’s a trap.’

  King said, ‘Do we have another choice?’

  ‘No,’ Samuel said. ‘You don’t.’

  Slater stepped forward. ‘Why should we believe you? You talk about being used and discarded. Why do you want to help them by handing us over, when that’s what they did to you?’

  ‘Maybe it’s not a trap,’ Samuel said. ‘You ever considered that? Maybe I don’t give a shit anymore. Maybe there’s no one waiting to ambush you. You won’t know until you try.’

  King said, ‘Is that the truth?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Samuel said, and for the first time a shred of humanity crept into his voice. ‘I’m tired of it all.’

  ‘You’re helping us, then? Is that what this is?’

  ‘I’m not fuckin’ helping anybody. They got a lot of reinforcements in that building. They knew they were gonna have to defend it. You’ll probably die. But hell, why not let you try?’

  ‘You hate them, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you hate us, too.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why not just keep your mouth shut?’

  ‘I’m gonna die tonight,’ Samuel said. ‘If you two don’t kill me, I’ll kill myself. Might as well make my last night a fun one, hey?’

  King looked at Slater.

  And shrugged.

  Slater seemed hesitant.

  King said, ‘What have we got to lose?’

  Slater’s gaze fell to the drain lid. ‘Everything.’

  ’So it’s the same as always, then.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Now’s not the time. I’ll tell you later.’

  King thought he saw something in Slater’s eyes. A different attitude. Unusual circumstances. Like the man was holding onto something precious, something he didn’t want to lose. They’d shared so many of their most vulnerable moments that it was hard to mask their feelings from one another.

  King’s instincts told him, Slater’s met someone. Someone who means something. Or could mean something.

  But where?

  And when?

  Slater was right. Now wasn’t the time.

  King handed Samuel over to Slater, bent down, and heaved on the handle. It took practically all his strength — which, considering he could deadlift north of six hundred pounds on a barbell, was nothing to scoff at. He made sure Slater had his MP7 pressed to Samuel’s ear, then put his own submachine gun on the alley floor and switched to a double handed grip.

  The lid creaked upward, an inch at a time.

  Finally, it passed the point of no return, and dropped with a resonant clang to the other side.

  A black hole had opened up for them in the ground, with an access ladder just inside the lip.

  King picked up the MP7.

  Slater said, ‘After you.’

  57

  Slater watched King go first.

  King kept the submachine gun pointed below him to intercept anyone who might be waiting for them. He crept down the ladder, one thin rung at a time, until the top of his head vanished from sight.

  Slater kept Samuel Whelan in a tight grip. There were a million questions he could ask, but he kept his mouth shut. Samuel was a loose cannon, volatile as hell. The kid had descended into nihilism, and now the world was a sick game to him. Slater had seen it before.

  When all hope dies, it’s replaced by something close to soullessness.

  Samuel could easily feed him misinformation, just for fun.

  But a nagging voice told Slater the kid would talk.

  At least, to an extent.

  And he realised he only needed one answer.

  ‘Which Whelan is behind this?’ he said. ‘It’s just you and me here. I’m only going to ask you one question. Give me the name of the ringleader. It won’t make a difference. You know it won’t.’

  Samuel half-turned, and Slater didn’t stop him. The kid looked him square in the eyes with his hollow, unblinking gaze. A skull floating on a skeleton, injected with enough skin and muscle to make the kid appear human.

  He said, ‘Gavin.’

  Slater shivered in the dark.

  And he remembered.

  Over a year ago, before he’d reunited with Jason King, before the madness of their unification, Slater had been out on his own. A rogue vigilante, a ghost as far as the government was concerned. Here in New York City, he’d first encountered the Whelans, a powerful crime family residing in an impressive townhouse on the Upper East Side. He’d stormed into their home and made a fool out of them and their security measures, beating them down with his bare hands in an attempt to create enough underground chatter to get the attention of an old government contact. He’d used the entire family as a pawn in his overall mission, but he’d especially humiliated one of the sons.

  Gavin Whelan.

  The man had been making unwanted advances on the daughter of someone Slater knew, and he’d responded by breaking Gavin’s ribs and beating him senseless, delivering such a shocking display of violence that it might have taken him half a year to recover. Slater had seen the same situation a hundred times before — a third-generation mobster with feared parents and grandparents, thinking he had all the power and control in the world because he was born into it, pursuing an uninterested woman.

  Slater knew how often that power dynamic led to rape.

  He’d responded accordingly.

  To him, it had been a flash in the pan of his career. That sort of violence was nothing out of the ordinary, and by now his past was a blur of similar encounters. Sometimes, he forgot that actions had consequences.

  But … this?

  A near state-wide blackout?
r />   Slater remembered Gavin well. A cocky, useless brat. There was no feasible way he could have pulled off something like this.

  Unless Samuel had a point with his earlier spiel.

  There aren’t really “top dogs” anymore.

  A pit formed in his stomach as he formed a hypothetical scenario. A man in his late twenties, the spoiled son of a wealthy and powerful crime family, who kept largely to himself. Because the Whelans were the old world, running guns and drugs and carrying out executions, all things that existed in the physical world. Maybe Gavin had other interests.

  Maybe he’d figured out early on what you could do with a laptop and some initiative.

  What you could accomplish by recruiting the right people.

  There was a far-fetched timeline where all this made sense.

  But not yet.

  Slater shoved Samuel toward the drain and said, ‘Down.’

  Samuel lingered a moment too long above the lid, the same menacing smile playing across his lips.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me what to do,’ he laughed. ‘I’m the one showing you the way, remember?’

  ‘Just do as I say.’

  The kid shrugged. He stepped away from the moonlight, further into the shadows, and his hollow eyes seemed to sink even deeper into his head. He put a foot on the top rung, and a voice from below said, ‘Who’s coming down?’

  King’s voice.

  Slater said, ‘Not me.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Samuel clambered down, his arms and legs spindly as he descended. He vanished from sight and Slater shivered, suddenly alone. Behind him the firefight raged on, but the cracking gunshots barely registered. They’d become commonplace by now, and he knew he was well out of the line of fire. Truth was, if Riordan hadn’t charged in with reckless abandon, there’d be no distraction to allow him and King to enter the building.

  Maybe the deaths of his men weren’t pointless after all…

  That was if he and King could breach the bank building, neutralise every hostile, and reverse the blackout.

  Big ifs.

  He scrambled down the ladder, eager to get off the street. He felt strangely vulnerable with no light to work with. It would be the same underground, but at least it was an enclosed space.

  Either a sewer, or a tunnel.

  It turned out to be the latter.

  Slater stepped down into a puddle of fetid water, the soles of his boots touching concrete underneath. Harsh white light flared as King fixed an under-barrel flashlight to his MP7 and fired it to life. The beam spilled down a perfectly rectangular, totally filthy concrete tunnel. It was barely wide enough to fit two people shoulder-to-shoulder across, and Slater found his breathing constricted by claustrophobia. But it was only one more temporary discomfort amidst many, so he ignored it.

  ‘What is this place?’ he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘Who knows?’ Samuel said. ‘We just use it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Gavin is … meticulous. He had so many ways to avoid suspicion. He didn’t want dozens of people to be seen coming and going with supplies, caught on CCTV. He wanted to do it anonymously. He found this tunnel system running only a few dozen feet from the perimeter of the building and just bored his way up into the lobby. Didn’t take much effort. Not compared to … all the rest of it.’

  Samuel shivered.

  Slater faltered for a moment. Only an instant, but he wondered if the kid had been coerced into doing all of this.

  Unlikely.

  He had, by his own admission, killed dozens of people for the Whelans. People who were essential roadblocks standing between them and the power grid. That took something far, far worse than brainwashing. It took a psychopath.

  Slater shoved him forward, and kept the MP7 trained on his back.

  The shadows rose and fell as King trained his own weapon.

  The trio advanced into the underbelly of the Bowery.

  58

  The walls constricted.

  Soon enough, King was able to reach out and touch both sides of the tunnel with his elbows. The air turned hot and foul, and the stink amplified, and their breathing started to echo, bouncing off the damp concrete.

  Samuel muttered, ‘We’re close.’

  King stifled a grimace. He thought of Violetta, stressed to the eyeballs, locked in her HQ in the tenement building, trying to keep her mind off the fact that her partner might get himself killed tonight. It was a brutal industry to operate in. She was fierce and uncompromising when she needed to be, and most of her coworkers — Slater included — probably thought she was a bitch. He thought she was one of the most respectable people he knew. It took courage you couldn’t describe to willingly accept that burden, and try to stay sane in the process.

  So he remembered that, and made a promise to make it back to her.

  No matter what.

  The fog of war settled over him again. They kept moving, using the glare of the flashlight fixed to his MP7 to navigate the tunnel system. Samuel moved fast — almost too fast — and King watched Slater hustle to keep up. The heat became stifling, and sweat beaded across his forehead. A couple of rivulets ran down the back of his neck. He didn’t dare wipe them away. All his focus was on Samuel’s skeleton physique, practically dancing through the tunnels, manic and unhinged and—

  Slater said, ‘Stop.’

  Samuel froze.

  Behind Slater, King froze too.

  Slater said, ‘Turn around.’

  Samuel turned around. His left shoulder scraped the concrete wall, hard, drawing blood. He didn’t even react. He simply stared Slater in the eyes with his soulless gaze.

  Pain was nothing to him.

  Slater wiped sweat off his forehead and said, ‘Where are we going, exactly?’

  ‘I told you…’ Samuel said.

  ‘You said this was a passage to cart in supplies. What sort of supplies fit through a tunnel this narrow?’

  Samuel smiled, baring his teeth. ‘What are you thinking of? Stuff the size of refrigerators?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘All they needed was CPU towers,’ he said, a psychotic glint in his eye. ‘The type you can fit in a large duffel bag.’

  ‘Who needed them?’

  ‘The people that did this, of course.’

  ‘It wasn’t Gavin?’

  Samuel laughed, and it reverberated through the tunnel. ‘You think Gavin wrote malicious code to shut down substations? Are you fucking stupid?’

  King said, ‘You know more about this than you let on.’

  ‘I know all of it,’ Samuel said. ‘I don’t understand how it works, but I know what it is. They told me that much before they threw me away.’

  ‘Then give it to us. Help us stop it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can make things painful for you.’

  ‘Good. I’d like that. Still ain’t tellin’ you anything I don’t want to.’

  King said, ‘Who wronged you?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Up there. Who threw you away? “Used and discarded,” as you put it.’

  ‘Gavin,’ Samuel said.

  ‘I can make things painful for him.’

  Samuel smiled again, and King found himself dejected by such a simple emotion.

  It was a kid with no sanity left, making a mockery of it all.

  Samuel said, ‘No, thanks. I ain’t never got anyone to do my dirty work for me.’

  Slater said, ‘If you’re leading us astray—’

  ‘You’ll do what?’ Samuel said, leering. ‘I see you two for who you really are. When you put all the bullshit aside. The reputations, and the ego. You’re scary men, yeah? You strike fear into people? They know you can hurt them. But then you run into someone like me. I’d prefer to get hurt. I don’t give a shit. What are you gonna do now? How will you make me talk?’

  King didn’t respond.

  Neither did Slater.

  ‘Simple answer,’ Samuel sai
d. ‘You won’t. I own you.’

  King said, ‘Then give us what you want to give us, and let us get on our way.’

  Samuel pointed a finger dead between King’s eyes, and smiled wider. ‘That’s it! That’s what I was looking for. Humility. You know you can’t make me talk. So admit it, instead of going through with your macho crap. Then we can all get along.’

  ‘Can we hurry this up?’ Slater said. ‘We get the picture. But we’re running out of time.’

  ‘Then,’ Samuel said, ‘it’s a good thing we’re here.’

  He took five steps backward, moving like someone who knew every inch of the tunnels off by heart.

  He veered sharply left, into a ragged maw.

  Disappeared from sight.

  In unison, King and Slater lurched after him. Momentary panic rippled.

  What if—?

  But when they rounded the corner, he was still there. Patiently waiting for them, like a deranged guardian protecting the doorway to another realm. They were in another tunnel, but this one had been recently formed. The walls were jagged and uneven, dug out in a hurry. Supports held the ceiling up, and damp groundwater had mixed with loose earth to form a slippery paste over the floor.

  Samuel lifted a shaking finger toward the sky.

  King looked up.

  There was a manhole there.

  Firmly shut.

  Another access ladder spiralled up to it.

  Samuel said, ‘That will take you to the lobby.’

  Silence.

  Samuel said, ‘You don’t need me anymore.’

  Silence.

  Samuel said, ‘Can I go now?’

  King said, ‘Sure.’

  Samuel hesitated. Scrutinised King’s features, to discern whether he was telling the truth. Then he took a few tentative steps, rounded Slater’s impressive bulk, and made to step past King. And then King saw the façade slip. It was brief, and anyone else would have missed it, Slater included. But King was a keen, almost prescient judge of character, and suddenly he knew everything Samuel told him had been an act.

  The kid wasn’t really soulless.

  Deranged, sure. A psychopath, almost certainly.

  But suicidal?

  No.

  He cared about his life. He didn’t want to die. He’d figured that pretending to lose all sanity was the easiest way to escape alive.