Death Thieves (25 page)

We made plans to meet in the dining hall after lights normally went out—after curfew. My heart jumped in my throat just considering being out after curfew. I’ve wondered many times during the day if the IDRs tracked when we took them off, and I’ve wondered many times more if we’d be ex-ed for being out after curfew if we got caught. As we waited for Dennis, Jay imparted his new knowledge of the day. “They don’t have fire escapes because the buildings are fireproof. The walls and floorings are all made out of that same stuff they make dishes out of. That stuff doesn’t burn.” Jay went off for several minutes more about
Tesla’s Ether
and how the government was selfishly withholding the one source of energy that would allow people electricity at no cost and with no damaging environmental effects.

Jay quieted his rants when Dennis showed up and led us down into the belly of the city.

What kind of ugly is hiding under the beauty suit?

The elevator doors opened. We stepped out into a world entirely unlike the one we lived in. I’d forgotten how the ground under me swayed above the dark levels until I’d taken those first few steps at ground level.

The smell hit me first. It smelled dank—the humidity and rot combining to make my gag reflex kick in. The lighting pulsed through green tubes lining the ceilings like huge glow sticks, making the ground floor of the building look ethereal and frightening. Jen huddled closer to Jay, and he put an arm around her in a position of instinctive protection. I crowded in next to them. Dennis, our guide, turned to us and smiled, his teeth bright in the glow of the light.

“Should we turn on some real lights?” Jay asked, trying to abate our nerves a little with something normal.

“Lumes are all we got here.” Dennis shrugged like we were dumb for thinking there was anything else and what they had was good enough anyway.

“Lumes.” Jay repeated the word and glanced around the littered floor of what seemed to have once been a hotel lobby.

“Some people have leds, but most use lumes. Cheaper. Cheaper’s better when the cost of electrics keep goin’ up. Cheaper totally spins. C’mon.” Dennis waved us to follow him. I was surprised that Dennis’s declaration of the electrics costs didn’t send Jay into another rant on
Tesla’s Ether
.

“Are we on the ground now?” I asked, grateful Jen and I had worn jeans since everything felt grimy. Even the air I breathed seemed dirty down here, though I knew that had to be just my imagination. “The real ground?”

Dennis nodded. “Go outside and see for yourself.”

There were revolving glass doors to my right and after a brief hesitation, I pushed through the doors and found myself breathing in cold, humid air—my feet tapping on hard normal cement. The cement had cracks and was obviously worn, but it felt normal and unmoving under my feet in a way nothing had felt since coming to the future.

Plant life existed at ground level, but it was all either a pale sickly green color or a pale sickly white, rather than the rich deep greens of the sky gardens. Across the street, multicolored lights spun and reflected from the windows. People had trickled out from that building and into the street—people, music, laughter, noise. The atmosphere reminded me of the few dance clubs I’d sneaked into during the summer with Nathan.

“It’s after curfew,” Jay said, twisting around so much to take everything in, it made my head ache to watch.

“Is it always like this?” Jen asked. “Isn’t anyone worried about the soldiers?”

“Naw. It’s July fourth. Time to spin. Soldiers aren’t usually around topside.”

“Topside?” I asked. This was the ground—definitely not topside.

“Yeah down under, things get pretty rough.” When we continued to stare at Dennis like he had ten heads, he said, “You know, in the basement and tunnel apartments. The soldiers spend more time patrolling down there. Anyway, today is a holiday. The holiday spins! Tomorrow night, people will go home, watch their net if they’ve got ’em, eat their dinners if they’ve got ’em. People will stay inside.”

Jen shook her head. “It
is
the fourth. I can’t believe I forgot. And they didn’t even mention it in class or anything. Not a word.”

Dennis shrugged and nodded to some girl across the street. “Yeah, they wouldn’t. The old holidays aren’t recognized under regent law, but down here, we make our own laws . . . at least when the soldiers aren’t looking.” Dennis maneuvered his way across the street to the girl he’d nodded at. We all followed. I shivered as Dennis introduced us to his girlfriend, Natalie.

“Sorry. The bay’s always cold at night, even in summer. I should’ve told you guys to bring jackets,” Dennis said.

How would they know the difference between summer and winter when they lived in the shadows of the city above them? I looked up to see the buildings disappearing into the clouds that had rolled in for the night and shivered again. Which world would be considered the ideal? The one without the ground and the constant shifting of the platforms under your feet being swayed by the winds, or the one without the sky, without the sun? “No stars . . .” I whispered more to myself than to anyone else.

Natalie smiled. “You can see stars if you go out on the ocean. Friends of mine run a star-tour boating service if you ever want to go. I mean, you know, we don’t go around advertisin’ or nothin’ like that. We know how to avoid coast patrols. So this is an offer for you three only. Don’t invite anyone else.”

Natalie’s offer filled me with a degree of relief. So they didn’t have to always be in a world without a sky. A way for them to see the moon and stars existed.

“So if it’s the Fourth of July, will there be fireworks?” Jen asked.

Dennis laughed. “No fireworks. I guess we aren’t so tough, huh? We celebrate our holidays but keep the laws that get us ex-ed. Fireworks are for Disneyland and Regent Day only. But no one’s gunna ex us for singing the Star Spangled Banner if we want. It’s a free country.”

He said that in the same way I used to say back in my own time when I was trying to explain to Aunt Theresa why I should be able to do the things I wanted. “It’s a free country!” I’d yell.

“Not in my house,” she’d say back calmly. Aunt Theresa seldom yelled back.

I wondered if Dennis believed it was a free country or if he was being sarcastic. His tone made it hard to tell.
It’s not a free country in the regent’s house.

The gritty dark levels were, in a way, hauntingly beautiful. The people didn’t frighten me. They didn’t act wild or crazy like I thought they might. They acted far more normal than the people living the “high” life above them. Their hair colors were just as wild, many of them sporting several colors weaved and striped over their heads. Their colors seemed to glow in the sick light of the lumes and more of them sported advertisements on their heads and hands. But though they seemed normal as they interacted with one another, they still remained reserved, even shocked, toward Jay, Jen, and me. They’d be laughing with their friends, see us, and duck their heads, hurry back into their buildings casting furtive glances our way until we had passed.

They feared us. The povs feared us in the exact same way that the rich people did.

I didn’t want to be feared.

Natalie and Dennis led us into the place with the strobing lights. It
was
a dance club. The music seemed to have bite, the rhythm and beat unfamiliar and strange. Dennis led Natalie into the fray, and Jay took Jen and went to dance as well. I stood in the crowd of people, locked in my fear of being separated from my group.

I took several deep breaths to calm myself and even considered buying myself a drink except without my IDR, I had no money. I edged over to the wall, where I could still keep an eye on Jay and Jen and set myself up for research.

The way the door glowed as people neared it proved the use of the rings even down here. But with so many bodies moving in and out, the door constantly glowed, anyone not wearing a ring could leave or enter at their own discretion. It bothered me that no one seemed to notice this flaw in the regent’s ring law. But, then, a lot of things bothered me.

After several songs, Jay and Jen came back to me, their faces bright from exertion and their smiles huge. “Come join us!” Jay called over the music.

“I should’ve brought a date,” I said.

“Eddie would’ve been glad to fill that job.” Jen laughed at my face souring at the mention of Eddie.

“C’mon! Come have fun for a change!” Jay and Jen each grabbed my hands with the intent of pulling me back with them. As they pulled, the music abruptly stopped. Everyone froze where they stood, all laughter and chatter cutting off as sharply as the music. I turned to see what everyone else had turned to see. The door light glowed red—in spite of all the people standing by it with rings—
the door glowed red
.

The people’s faces registered fear. Panic took over the frozen quiet. People pushed and shoved from all directions, working to remove themselves from the area closest to the doors. The vast room emptied as people escaped to other areas of the building.

Jen looked at Jay. “Soldiers?”

Jay was about to answer when sirens sounded, loud and unmistakable—soldiers.

We’d all seen the vids. Soldiers raided gatherings with no mercy. We stood there, all three of us holding hands in a tight grip, none of us daring to move until I felt Dennis’s hand at my back shoving me toward the far end of the room. “Move! Move!” He herded us through the crowd and finally turned us into a doorway where several others were rushing through. “In there!” Dennis yelled as the front doors crashed open.

Screams!

They were the screams of suffering—of pain, fear. The soldiers had arrived. Dennis nearly ran me over in his urgency to make us move. We wound down stairs, into hallways, and down more stairs. Someone in front of us fell, but the press of people didn’t stop to help her up. I barely avoided stepping on her as we rushed past.

Another hallway, toward a bookshelf that moved aside. The bookshelf hid a hole that looked like someone had used a jackhammer to create it. I ducked to go through, clipping my ear against the jagged brick edges. Blood trickled down my neck and into the collar of my shirt, but I pressed on, not daring to stop, not daring to look behind. We wound through several buildings, entering odd little doors that had been hidden by ragged sorts of odd furniture.

The elaborate exit strategy staggered me. These people had tunneled through brick and mortar to create a way out, like mice.

And then it occurred to me, we were no longer what Dennis had called topside. We were in the tunnels, where he said things weren’t safe. Not that things were safe where we’d been. Our group of escapees had thinned to a handful of people rapidly following along after Dennis and Natalie. The others had sifted off to different tunnels.

“We should go up.” The panic in my voice was evident even to my own ears.

“Can’t,” Natalie said.

“They’ve locked down for at least three streets in all directions. We wouldn’t be able to smuggle you guys back to the top of the world without all of us getting ex-ed.” Dennis’s raspy explanation heightened my panic.

“Told you it was dumb to hang with the regents’ pets.” Natalie’s whispered words were not likely meant for us to hear, but I caught them and felt pretty certain Jay had, too. I didn’t blame her. It was altogether possible we were the reason the soldiers showed up.

We maneuvered through the tunnels for what seemed forever. Red lumes, green lumes, bright white leds. The varying light colors and strain to adjust to each one hurt my eyes and made my stomach sick. There were some tunnels with no light at all.

Afraid to scrape against a low ceiling, I ducked my head, and kept my hands clenched at my sides. What if there were bugs, spiders, crawling things with poisonous bites and too many legs?

My legs and back ached from walking hunched over, and then finally we were at stairs and climbing up—up and out of the earth. I wanted to weep with joy.

When we reached the top, we all stumbled into a dark room.

“We’re topside now, we’ll find an elevator to get you guys to the sky, right?” Dennis’s voice took some of the edge off my fear of the dark. A noise like a large static charge filled the room as bright lights exploded into our eyes.

I stared down the barrel of a gun aimed directly at my head as the soldier holding the gun smiled and said. “We knew the rats would come up for air eventually.”

A Taser shot out of one gun directly into Natalie’s chest. She crumpled to the floor with a scream as she writhed and wriggled in the electrical current. The soldier aiming his gun at me hesitated as his finger twitched to pull the trigger. “Hey—they’re New Youths!”

Dennis took advantage of their hesitation at seeing New Youths in the dark levels and knocked the soldier’s gun to the side, then kicked the gun from the soldier’s hand altogether, freeing Natalie of the current arcing through her body. The second soldier jerked his gun up, but Jay followed Dennis’s example and kicked out at the gun. Jay’s kick fell short of its mark and he actually kicked the soldier’s arm.

A cry of pain accompanied the crack of a breaking bone. Dennis made quick work of silencing that cry and making certain the other soldier didn’t get his gun back. I turned my head away not wanting to see if he’d knocked them out or killed them altogether.

Jen and I each took ahold of Natalie’s hands and helped her to her feet. “Can you walk?” Jen asked, looking worried.

Natalie nodded, her pale face sickly. Dennis edged Jen aside so Natalie could use him as a crutch, and we hurried to put distance between us and the crime scene.

Dennis led us across the street, into another building, through it, and out the back door. We passed through several buildings that way, weaving a path back to the elevators Dennis’s IDR allowed him to use—the ones we’d come down on. Natalie’s steps were still shaky, but she kept up. Dennis looked pointedly at Jay. “I need to get her home before I can take you to the sky levels.”

Jay nodded. “Absolutely. I completely agree.”

Dennis took a deep breath as though it pained him to make these kinds of choices between people. “Stay here, behind the counter over there. The service elevator will take you home, but you have to wait till I get back so I can make the elevator work. Don’t come out for any noise, right? Don’t get curious; just stay down. Curiosity kills in the dark levels.”