Sunfail (2 page)

He didn’t trust his eyes, but he wasn’t deep enough for the pressure to bring on any hallucinations. He wasn’t drunk or high or just plain crazy, but what he saw didn’t make any sense.

After staring for a minute, the swimmer kicked down hard, moving as close to the impossible landscape as he dared.

It was like nothing he’d ever seen.

A hidden world.

His first crazy thought was that he’d stumbled across Atlantis. He struggled to take in the sheer scope of the underwater city. In the distance he could barely make out the distinctive shape of pyramids towering above other drowned buildings. At the foot of them, a big, crouching sphinx guarded the place.

He checked his air. He was down to less than quarter of a tank. Nowhere near enough to explore the drowned city. So he made a judgment call and kicked for the surface. A minute later, his head broke through to open air.

He pulled the mask off and spat the mouthpiece out. The sunlight was blindingly bright; he squinted into it. He was no more than a hundred yards from the boat. He waved for his wife, shouting to get her attention. Pauline waved back. He didn’t stop waving until she got the message. A few seconds later, the roar of the boat’s engine echoed across the water as it glided toward him.

He trod water.

He didn’t dare leave the spot until he could mark it. It wasn’t like underwater cities turned up every day.

In the distance, he saw blue lights as thousands of ethereal, glasslike sea creatures were swept ashore by the wind.

It was hard not to think that there was something very wrong with the ocean.

* * *

Sitting in a darkened office that wasn’t hers, staring blankly at a computer screen she shouldn’t have had access to, Sophie Keane came to a decision.

What they were doing was wrong.

She’d known it for a while, suspected it for even longer, but confronted with the cold hard truth she knew she had to stop them or die trying. She owed the world that much, in expiation for the part she’d already played in this whole nightmarish mess.

But if she was really going to walk down this road she couldn’t walk it alone.

She reached into her backpack for a still-boxed burner phone, and tore away the shrink wrap. She fitted the battery, slipped the back into place, and thumbed it on. A second later the small screen lit up.

She dialed the number. In this day and age of contact lists, this was one of the few numbers she still knew by heart even though she hadn’t dialed it in years.

The call connected, the other end rang. And rang. And rang. Finally there was murmur, the voice warm and familiar. She’d missed hearing it. Getting his voicemail was good. She had a better chance of making it all the way through to the end of her apology without him interrupting her train of guilt.

“Jake,” she said. She paused, licked her lips, and took a deep breath. “It’s me.” She closed her eyes, but that didn’t help. She could see him, arms folded, giving her that
Are you really going to do this?
stare she remembered all too well. She opened her eyes, concentrating on the computer screen instead. The truth was there. She used it to gather the courage to continue. “Don’t hang up. Please. I know it’s been a long time, and I know you don’t want to hear this, not now. It’s too little, too late, but I need you to know I’m sorry. There are a lot of things I want to say to you, so many I don’t even know where to start, and there’s a clock ticking . . . I’m in trouble. I need help. I can’t do this alone. You’re the only person I can think of to call. Something is about to happen. Something bad. I’m not even sure how bad. No. I’m lying to you again. I know precisely how bad it’s going to be.”

Something clattered somewhere nearby, a small sound, but Sophie started, half-rose from her chair, eyes scanning the room. Nothing. The door was still shut, the lights in the hall still off. The only dim illumination came from the emergency strip-lighting out in the hall. Okay, deep breath. “Look, I’ll call again, I promise. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. You didn’t deserve what happened. What I did to you . . . You’re going to hear stuff about me. Bad stuff. I’m not who you think I am.” She hung up before she said anything else. She was starting to unravel. She needed to focus. Stay strong.

She had lied to him again. He wasn’t the only person she could turn to. She made a second call, reaching out to The Watchers. She knew they’d take her call. They’d been waiting for it ever since they approached her all those weeks ago and tried to turn her against her paymasters. It was a short call. She only said two words: “I’m in.”

“Good,” the voice on the other end of the line said, as if her participation had never been in doubt. “You know what you need to do. They won’t remain hidden for long.”

The line went dead.

Pocketing the phone, Sophie rose and moved soundlessly over to the door. She peered through its frosted glass, but didn’t see any movement out there. She turned the knob carefully, willing it to stay silent as she opened the door a crack.

Still nothing.

A little more.

Nothing.

She waited, listening, then finally slipped out through the narrow gap into the hall. She pulled the door shut behind her rather than let the hydraulic arm close it automatically, making sure the catch didn’t
click
as it dropped into place. When she was sure it was safe, Sophie turned away from the office and moved quickly for the fire escape and the stairs. It was all about speed. Now that she’d made that call, she felt better about her decision.

No looking back.

Sophie exited the building fast, disappearing into the city like ghost.

She wasn’t the only ghost.

* * *

Once the Hidden’s man was sure she was gone, he stepped out of the darkness.

“We were right,” he said, seemingly speaking to the empty room. “She’s turned. I’ll take care of her.” He raised a finger to his ear and terminated the call by pressing down on the earbud he wore, and followed Sophie out into the city.

She wouldn’t get far.

CHAPTER ONE

JACOB CARTER IGNORED THE PHONE.

He was in the shower and he wasn’t about to fumble around the wet room looking for it. If it was important they’d call back. He wasn’t giving up the hot water—hard enough to get at the best of times, with the old building’s antique pipes filled with rust and a boiler barely able to service the five apartments it contained. These certainly weren’t the best of times. With the Dickensian rattle deep in the walls it wasn’t much of a stretch to say they were slowly creeping toward the worst of times. But it was worse for others out there. The New York winter was brutal. He had a roof that didn’t leak, and for a few more minutes at least, hot water on tap. There was food in the fridge, and, tucked away at the back, his Knicks bottle: an ice-cold bottle of Bud he’d been saving since 1999.

His dad had died the week before Latrell Sprewell broke the Knicks’ hearts with the miss that would have taken the series back to San Antonio and at least made a contest out of it. He was glad his old man hadn’t lived to see it. He died with hope in his heart, which is so much better than crushing disappointment. Jake had uncapped one of the two bottles and poured it out into the freshly turned soil, a commiseration beer, and made a promise to return with the last bottle to celebrate when the Knicks won the championship. One last drink with the old man. Maybe this would be the year? After all, hell might not exactly be freezing over—even if the city was—but some strange shit was happening out there. That had to mean something, right? He’d take any kind of sign he could get.

He savored the hard pelt of near-scalding water as it stung his scalp through his close-cropped hair, massaging the suds in and rinsing them out again. Water streamed down his slick brown body, clinging to the muscular contours of his abdominals. He gave himself one more minute of bliss then reached out, twisted the faucet, and let the noises of the real world seep back in to the little cocoon of his bathroom.

The first thing he heard was a gunshot.

It was always the same.

There’d be a siren too, soon, but the gap between the two was growing wider and wider these days.

There were other sounds: people down there looking to get ahead just like they always had, but not knowing what that really meant these days.

Jake toweled himself off, wrapped the wet towel around his waist, and moved to his bedroom. The phone was on the nightstand. The icons displayed one missed call and a message waiting.

He checked the message, and then he checked it again just to be sure he hadn’t slipped and banged his head in the shower. Some people saw ghosts, Jake heard them. This one said, “
Jake . . . It’s me.
”

Sophie Keane? Seriously? After ten fucking years?

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about her, and even then when she’d crept into his head it had been bad news. But then, bad news had always been their MO. Bad news and good sex. The worse the news, the better the sex, like some sort of inverse-proportional relationship forged in the crucible of war.

They’d served together.

For a while that had been the thing that bound them, even after they’d left the battlefields of Afghanistan behind them it was there, ever-present.

They’d seen things, done things others couldn’t understand.

They were the same, or so he’d thought.

They’d get through anything because they were fighters. Forget all that opposites-attract bullshit, there was nothing more powerful than fucking the female version of yourself. That kind of coming together was primal.

But sooner or later it would have blown them apart if she hadn’t disappeared in the middle of the night. He’d been twenty-eight when she walked out the door. He’d never heard from her again, and never expected to.

Something is about to happen?

Don’t look for me?

I’m not who you think I am?

Fuck it.

He tossed the phone onto the bed and turned to his dresser, ignoring the half-closed drawers for the clean clothes piled haphazardly on top of it. He picked out a pair of heavy jeans, a white T-shirt, and a dark sweatshirt. Five minutes later, leather jacket in hand, he was out the door, phone shoved into his pocket, wondering if the sex would be worth all the shit inviting Sophie Keane back into his life would bring.

It wasn’t a question he’d ever thought he’d be asking himself, but then, these were the end of days, weren’t they? Surely Sophie riding back into town upon her pale horse had to be one of the signs of the apocalypse.

A worn-down little Asian woman scrubbed at the steps of the tenement stoop opposite him. She looked up, stared daggers at him. He smiled at her craggy face. She grunted something and went back to scrubbing. The street smelled like stale cabbage and vinegar from the takeout place on the corner. Some things in Dogland, at least, didn’t change.

* * *

An hour later, Jake glanced up from the junction box he was working on. There weren’t a lot of jobs for people like him when they came out of the service. An ex had hooked him up with the gig at the MTA after he’d lost six months acclimating to life without people trying to kill him. He’d gotten a certain amount of skill with electrics, so it made sense. It wasn’t hard work. Plus, it was that or private security, and standing around protecting some asshole banker from picking up his bonus wasn’t exactly the kind of thing he wanted on his résumé.

The background chatter suddenly rose to a near-deafening explosion of white noise. Jake looked up and down the tunnel for the source. Seeing nothing but the looping coils of electrical cables overhead and the rails on the ground disappearing into the darkness, he gave the box one last scan before slapping the lid closed. He flipped the heavy locking mechanism along its side. He hated it down here. The darkness was oppressive. “Good to go on box one thirty-seven,” he reported into the mic clipped to the front of his orange safety jacket. A second later a squawk and a scratchy,
Affirmative, board showing green,
came through to confirm the job was done.

Jake checked to make sure nothing was rumbling down the tracks before he moved quickly along the narrow center lane toward the platform. Gravel crunched beneath his feet, amplified by the tunnel’s weird acoustics. There was something infinitely creepy about the subway tunnels, and not just the stories of the mole people who lived down here. It stemmed from the power pulsing through the third rail.

Jake emerged from the tunnel, reaching the platform edge well before the headlights announced the next train. He cut across the tracks and hauled himself up and onto the platform.

It might have been a decade since the last training ground drill or obstacle course, but he’d kept himself fit. Maybe not combat-ready, but he was in good shape. And the job was physical, lots of lifting and carrying and endless hiking through the miles and miles of tunnels.

He walked down the platform. His orange jacket and hard hat worked like commuter-repellent, clearing a path through the crowd.