Revolution (Replica) (25 page)

The bombing continued throughout the long crawl, although it seemed to be concentrated farther away, at least for the time being. Perhaps the entirety of the free territories had been bombed into rubble by now and Dorothy was starting on the gang territories.

Toward the end, Agnes got so disoriented she couldn’t remember what she was doing or where she was going. Shrimp, who was in front of her, and Nate, who was behind, had to push, pull, and drag to keep her moving forward. He prayed that all the jostling and bumping wouldn’t cause her condition to deteriorate any more than it already had. He was afraid they might be killing her, but he also knew she would want them to do anything and everything possible to get her through.

Eventually, they popped through to the other side of the rubble and were able to make their way into the continuation of the train tunnel. Agnes lost consciousness almost immediately, but they kept going, Shrimp cradling her tenderly against his shoulder.

The bombing grew more and more distant, and soon they were in a stretch of tunnel that didn’t look like it had seen any damage at all. There were a lot more rats in this section—they seemed to have realized this was the safest place to be during the bombing—but they squeaked and scattered whenever someone shone a light on them, and Nate much preferred them to the bombs.

According to the old subway map Dante had seen in the first station, they were probably now traveling under the Harlem River, which meant they were officially out of the Basement, into one of the fringe neighborhoods that were close enough to the Basement to be considered undesirable. Unfortunately, being under the river also meant that there was no way they could pick up a phone signal, so they had to press forward.

It was too much to ask that the tunnel from the Basement could simply merge with the active tunnels and give them an easy way to get close enough to the surface to get a phone signal. Nate couldn’t say he was surprised when they came upon a solid brick wall sealing off the tunnel, but it made his heart sink just that much lower. Agnes needed medical attention
now,
and she wasn’t going to get it.

Shrimp laid Agnes on the ground, using some of the scant supply of water they’d brought with them to clean some of the grime from her face. Her eyelashes fluttered, but she didn’t wake up. Meanwhile, his men started to work on the wall, taking turns with the pickaxes. Nate powered up one of the phones they’d brought with them on the off chance it would get a signal, but of course it didn’t. They were just going to have to wait for the brick to give way.

Everyone was exhausted. They’d gotten little to no sleep in the last forty-eight hours, and they’d all spent a lot of time doing hard physical labor—and that was before the difficult and nerve-racking scramble through the debris. Swinging pickaxes under the circumstances was far from easy, and Nate was glad Shrimp had had the foresight to bring enough men that they could work in shifts. Despite feeling like he had jelly in his limbs, Nate offered to take a turn, but Shrimp turned him down.

“No offense, but it’ll go faster without you.”

The old Nate would probably have been insulted enough to make an issue of it, his pride stung. But though he didn’t like admitting it, he knew Shrimp was right. He wasn’t accustomed to manual labor, and though he didn’t think he was particularly weak, he wasn’t particularly strong, either. Several of Shrimp’s men—and Dante—definitely
were
strong, and they made steady progress on the wall, hacking away at the brick while everyone else stayed out of reach of the flying chips.

By the time there was a hole in the wall big enough for everyone to get through, Nate couldn’t hear any more bombs going off. He didn’t know if that meant the bombing had stopped, or if it had now moved far enough away for the sound not to carry through all the earth and water above.

Once again, Shrimp picked Agnes up, and they continued down the long, abandoned tunnel. After walking what felt like about five more miles, they found their way blocked once more, this time by a metal fence with a padlocked door. The tunnel they’d been following had begun a gradual curve a little while back, and when Nate shone his flashlight into the darkness beyond the fence, his heart gave a leap of hope.

“More tracks!” he said excitedly.

The rusty, disused rails that they’d been following through the abandoned tunnels merged just a little way ahead with another set of rails—ones that weren’t rusted.

All flashlight beams focused on the new set of tracks. They weren’t exactly shiny and new, and the spaces between them were as damp and nasty as the rest of the tracks they’d been following. But why would there be a fence here unless this was the border between the used and the unused tunnels?

Nate tried a cell phone again while Dante grabbed one of the pickaxes and started hacking at the padlock. For a brief moment, Nate picked up a feeble phone signal, but it quickly winked out. They were outside of Dorothy’s phone blockade, but still too far underground to get a reliable signal.

The padlock broke, and the door in the fence creaked open. Everyone took a hurried step forward, seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, but Dante blocked the way and raised the hand not holding the pickax.

“Wait up,” he said. “If those are real, live tracks up there, then we’ve got to be careful.”

Nate had gotten a glance at the time when he’d checked for a phone signal. “It’s three
A.M
. Subways don’t run at this hour, do they?” Not that he was any kind of an expert on public transportation.

“Not in this neighborhood they don’t,” Dante said with a scowl. “This near the Basement, it’s all unskilled laborers. You know, no one Paxco thinks it’s worth providing twenty-four-hour service for. But that’s not what I’m worried about. Any of you guys know what the third rail is?” They all exchanged baffled glances, and Dante shone his flashlight on the tracks beneath their feet. “These two rails are harmless,” he said, his beam moving back and forth between the rails on each side of the ties. “This one isn’t.” His flashlight illuminated a third rail, one Nate had never particularly noticed except for when it got in the way of his footing.

“In the live tunnels,” Dante continued, “there will be one hell of an electric charge running through the third rail. One touch could kill you, so make sure you don’t step on it.”

Nate glared at him. “You didn’t think to mention that when we first came down here? I’ve probably stepped on that damned rail a million times already!”

Dante rolled his eyes. “Like Paxco’s going to waste the money to run electricity through the rails it’s not using.”

“It still would have been nice to know.” Nate sounded sullen to his own ears, but he didn’t like that Dante had made a blithe assumption that could have gotten any one of them killed. However, he seemed to be the only one getting pissed off, and both Kurt and Nadia gave him reproachful looks. He couldn’t honestly say he felt jealous of Dante anymore, but that didn’t mean he’d grown to like the guy.

“Well, we know now,” Kurt said soothingly. “So let’s all be real careful and keep moving. We do
not
want to be in these tunnels when the trains start running.”

And so they walked on, now in single file, as far away from the third rail as they could get. Nate was sure he wasn’t the only one placing his feet with exaggerated care, trying to avoid all chances of tripping.

It didn’t take long before they started seeing signs that these tunnels were still in use—mostly in the form of litter scattered along the tracks, no doubt dragged there from the platforms by the trains. There might have been ancient litter in the disused tunnels, but if so, it had decomposed into unrecognizable gunk.

Luckily, it turned out they didn’t have that far to travel before they literally saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Light that was no doubt coming from a station—which would have access to the surface, where they ought to be able to get a phone signal.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The
station was dimly lit, many banks of fluorescent bulbs turned off for the night. There were multiple platforms, and in the dim light Nadia could see ad posters plastered to the wall as well as darkened video screens. There was a little litter around the tracks, but the platform was spotless and the air about a hundred times fresher than in the tunnels.

“Everyone wait here,” Dante said, when they all went to rush the platforms. “We don’t want to go parading in front of security cameras and announcing to the world that we’re here.”

“Security cameras,” Shrimp said, then cursed.

“Don’t worry,” Dante said, pulling out his gun. “There are always blind spots. And I have a good feel for where the cameras might be. I’ll take care of them.”

“Not with that you won’t,” Shrimp said, nodding at the gun. “Firing a nine mil in an enclosed space ain’t exactly sneaky.” He gestured at his men, who huddled together and then produced a small silver gun and a silencer, which they handed over. Shrimp screwed the silencer onto the end of the gun and presented it to Dante.

Dante looked at the gun—and at Shrimp—with genuine respect. “Nice,” he said. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you came prepared. It’ll be a lot quieter than the nine, but still … Maybe this isn’t the best idea after all. I wasn’t thinking about the noise.”

Shrimp shrugged. “We either walk in front of the cameras or we shoot ’em out. Which one draws less attention?”

“They’re both risky,” Dante admitted. “But I think we’re better off not having our faces caught on camera.”

Shrimp agreed, and Dante boosted himself up onto the platform. “Be ready to react if security comes running. And don’t shoot unless you have to. Anyone patrolling the station is just doing his job. Okay?”

Shrimp nodded, but Nadia didn’t think any security officer who stumbled upon them would stand much of a chance. She remembered the fanatical gleam that had come into Shrimp’s eyes earlier and knew he was poised for violence.

A few seconds later, Nadia jumped at a loud bang, about like the sound a hardback book would make if you dropped it on the platform. She held her breath and crossed her fingers, noticing that Shrimp and all of his men now had guns in their hands. They couldn’t afford to get into a shootout, and she prayed that no one was patrolling the station.

There were no shouts, and no sound of pounding footsteps, but no one relaxed as Dante took out the rest of the security cameras one by one before coming back and giving them the all clear. Getting Agnes up onto the platform was a delicate affair, but they managed it.

The phone signal was present but iffy on the platform, and so with Shrimp’s gunmen leading the way, they headed for a set of stairs at the far end. Nadia wondered if they could just keep climbing until they reached the surface, fantasizing about what it would be like to walk through the streets of the respectable Employee section of the city above them. Would it look different to her now that she’d spent several weeks living in the squalor of the Basement?

Sounds of a sudden scuffle and a cry of alarm from above broke Nadia out of her brief moment of reverie. Everyone except Shrimp, who was still carrying Agnes, though his arms must have been about to fall off from fatigue, hurried to climb to the landing above.

Nadia skidded to a halt when she saw one of Shrimp’s men riding a uniformed security officer to the floor, his forearm lodged firmly against the officer’s throat, cutting off all sound. The officer struggled, trying to get to his sidearm, but the enforcer probably outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. Nadia put both hands over her mouth to stifle a scream when one of Shrimp’s other men knelt on the floor beside the struggling pair and drove a long, sharp knife into the officer’s ribs.

The man’s eyes went wide, and his mouth gaped open in a silent scream, still pinned under the enforcer’s weight. His struggles weakened as blood poured from the wound.

Nadia’s eyes burned, and she found she wasn’t as numb as she’d thought. The security officer had done nothing to deserve this, had just been doing his usually dull-as-dirt job of patrolling the closed station. And he was dying, even as Nadia looked on—and made no protest, despite her tumultuous feelings.

Dorothy had turned this into a war the moment she’d let loose that first bomb, and innocent Basement-dwellers, including children, had already died by the thousands. Nadia and her companions were trying to prevent many more thousands of deaths, and if one unlucky security officer had to die to protect their mission, then that was just the way of the world. It didn’t mean she had to like it, though.

The security officer’s eyes slowly glazed over, his struggles slowing even more and then stopping completely. The enforcer kept up his stranglehold a little longer, just to be safe, while his partner in crime wiped the blade of his knife on the officer’s shirt and then hit a button that retracted the blade with a metallic snick. He locked gazes with Nadia, silently challenging her to condemn him for committing cold-blooded murder in front of her. Seeing as he was an adult male member of the Red Death, this probably wasn’t the first murder he’d committed, and it was certainly for the most noble cause. That didn’t make it sit easy on Nadia’s conscience, and she was the first to look away.

Dante had come up beside her, and he gripped her hand. His jaw stood out in stark relief against his cheeks as he clenched his teeth, and his hand was squeezing tight enough to be uncomfortable. Nadia leaned her head against his shoulder, not because she was in need of comfort but because she suspected
he
was. As sad a commentary as it might be for a girl who was raised as a top Executive, she was becoming eerily familiar with murder and death, and though it upset her, it was hardly the kind of shock that would unravel her. She glanced over at Nate, who was holding hands with Bishop and had a look on his face that she suspected was very like the one on her own.

With the brief struggle obviously over, Shrimp climbed the final few steps, angling his body so that Agnes couldn’t see the dead officer.