Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) (26 page)

Jack gave the rubber ball a gentle push, its dim shape rolling across the floor to the little Mole. It seized the toy, claws clenching around it, worried it like a cat with a mouse, then slowly rolled it back.

From the corner of his eye, Jack watched as two other youngsters dangled a pigeon leg in front of their pet, a boy given by their elders to keep them entertained. He was probably about fourteen years old, and after thirty sleeps in his new home, was already quite mad. He snatched at the meat through the bars, whining like a whipped dog when his masters pulled it a little beyond reach.

Jack caught the ball and sent it back, continuing the game. The Moles were slowly starving the boy to death, curious about how long he could survive on how little. Though Jack had snuck some of his own food between the bars, the boy wouldn’t last much longer. Thin when he’d arrived, he was now a living skeleton.

This time when the ball reached the young Mole, it hurled the toy at Jack. Lightning fast, Jack caught it and fired it back, bouncing it off the thing’s head. With a hiss of annoyance, the creature scuttled off to retrieve it.

Jack had taught this nasty version of ‘catch’ to the young Moles here in the nursery, a simple game culled from the fragments of his memory. Bit by bit, his keeper was giving him back his past, telling him who he was and what he’d done. Though he knew they had been warped, the stories rung of too much truth for him not to claim them. He remembered now his passion for the underground and his exciting exploration of its reaches. How he and Lindsay…no, Tasha, had journeyed to labyrinths all over the globe, and how much she had loved him for all the adventures he had given her.

His mind had a memory for when the nameless people of the city above had taken her away from him and exiled him down to the darkness, a pariah left to wander alone. It was the Moles that had saved him, who had recognized him as a brother and taken him in. He knew that wasn’t quite what had happened.

He knew for sure that Tasha wasn’t with him anymore.

He knew that because he had no memory of her death, she might still be alive.

He knew that he needed to get back to her. To find her. To find himself.

The good thing was the Moles thought of him as a junior member now, no longer bothering to chain or cage him. The bad thing was that they never traveled alone. Communal by nature, some of them were always with him, having no concept of privacy or solitude. He was waiting for the right opportunity, when only two or three of them would be present, to make his move and flee. That in itself presented problems.

The moldering passage of Devil’s Crawl was the only way into The Pits, and the Moles had posted sentries. To pass that way alone was sure to draw sharp suspicion, and he couldn’t think of an excuse that they might believe. Not that he could leave without the boy, anyway. He’d held in his mind a single pure fragment of Tasha, the real Tasha, a talisman that kept the last shreds of his humanity from slipping away. And it was that humanity that wouldn’t let him abandon the kid to his fate.

His Mole playmate tossed aside the ball. “I tire of this,” it said in its own language, a hissing, crackling sound like water spilled on a hotplate.

Jack gritted his teeth, replying in the same tongue. “What game do you want?”

“Rat bones.”

That game involved knives and tweezers, and consisted of seeing how many bones could be removed from a living rodent before it died. Jack shook his head. “We have no rat.”

“We catch one. In the river.”

Jack made sure he didn’t sound too curious. “River?”

The little Mole rose on its haunches. “Follow.”

As they moved to leave the room the other Moles instinctively loped after them, and together the four of them wound through the halls of the Moles’ lair, eventually turning down a passage Jack hadn’t visited before.

The phosphorescent light of the Moles’ tunnels faded to nothing, and Jack fell back on his finely attuned hearing to make his way. The dim luminescence returned as they emerged into a natural cavern, through which ran a river. The chamber was cold, and patches of icy filth floated on the sluggish flow.

Jack felt a clutch of excitement. This river had to empty somewhere. “Where does this go?” he asked, praying the younger Moles didn’t sense the emotion beating inside him.

One of the pair that had been tormenting the boy pointed a crooked claw downstream. “Hudson. Passage is underwater.” It swung its arm in the opposite direction. “Agharta.”

Jack was tempted to ask how far it was to the tunnel dwellers’ community, but didn’t dare. If he waited till summer he could slip away upstream in relative safety. Trying to make it now in the frigid waters was way more dangerous. Too easy to be caught in the undertow and swept away.

Except the boy wouldn’t last that long.

Like everything else with the Moles, they slept in groups, and when the juveniles grew tired, Jack curled up amongst them and waited for them to sleep. Only then did he slowly lean over the eldest of them. With infinite care he undid the clasp that held the key there. Sweat trickled down his brow at the thought of what would happen if caught.

A moment later the key was his.

As silently as a shadow, he slid away from them and over to the cage. “Are you awake?” Jack whispered to the still form inside, his words thick and slurred, his tongue no longer used to English.

The boy twitched, whimpered.

“We’re getting out of here, but you have to be quiet. Okay?”

There was no reply. Jack unlocked the door, wincing at the low creak it made.

One of the Moles stirred, and gripping the bars of the cage door, Jack froze. It shuffled over, and snuggled closer to its fellows, then lay still again.

He exhaled his held breath. Suddenly the boy seized him by the arm and began screaming. “He let me out! He did! He should be in the cage! Not me!”

No saving the boy now, and bolting from the room, Jack abandoned the shrieking prisoner. He’d learned to move fast in the tunnels, navigating them in near blackness as fast as a normal man in daylight. His only hope now was getting to the river, and God help him were he to run into any of the Moles on the way.

His heart pounded as he sprinted down the corridors. His mind was running too, charting the quickest route to the water, while avoiding the passages the alerted Moles would be taking to the nursery. Luck was with him, and skidding around a final side passage, he flew down the last stretch.

The icy burn of the water was worse than he could’ve imagined, and still he waded out into it, driving himself mercilessly in the direction of Agharta. How long could he go before the cold killed him? He had no idea. But better to drown in the fouled waters than lose his one chance to reach Tasha.

* * *

Jack jerked awake as the door flew open, Tocat shining an industrial flashlight in their faces. “Get up! Now!”

The lights in the hall were off. Seneca had been plunged into darkness. “When did the lights go?” Jack asked, uncurling himself from around Lindsay and pulling on his boots before her or Reggie were even fully conscious.

“Twenty minutes ago.” Tocat’s voice was sharp. “Thought it might be a blackout, until we realized we’re still getting juice to the labs. Someone’s cut the lines for the lights. I want to know who.”

“Who the hell do you think?” Jack snapped as he stood. Lindsay was bent over her boots, her fingers trembling on the laces. Fuck. He wished he’d told her what he’d done down in the tunnels. What he’d do again in order to protect her. Even if she thought him a monster, she’d know she was safe.

“Why?” Tocat demanded from behind Jack. “What do those things want?”

Jack gave a mirthless smile. “Unless you secure this place fast you’ll get your answer. And they’re not big on conversation. Let’s move it.”

In the hallway they were joined by three more men, each armed with a submachine gun that looked decidedly familiar. They were keeping their cool; by the panicked sounds echoing through Seneca, the other residents weren’t.

“Only two ways in are the tunnel door and an emergency elevator to the surface,” Tocat said as they hustled down the hallway. “All the vents are too small for a person to get through.”

Jack dug his hand into Tocat’s shoulder, pulled him up short. “I’ll say this once. We’re not dealing with people. We’re dealing with
monsters
. Remember that and you might live to see tomorrow.”

The gang leader opened his mouth, shut it and nodded. They carried on, faster than before. King and three of his finest were waiting for them in his office. A couple of floodlights and strategically placed flashlights made everyone visible.

“He says it’s Moles,” Tocat said, gesturing with his head to Jack. “We have to be ready for a fight.”

King waved a hand like Tocat’s words were so many annoying flies. “They can’t get inside, but we’re going to need to go to the tunnels to reconnect the fucking power.”

“Can’t we run it from the labs?” Tocat asked.

“Not without a week of rewiring, and there’s nothing stopping them from cutting that line, too. Fucking bastards must understand the electrical grid.”

“They also understand the phone lines, sewers, water mains, fiber optics and everything else down here,” Jack said through clenched teeth. King’s attitude was going to get them all killed.

“Regular fucking scientists, aren’t they?”

“The underground is their environment. They know it like a cabbie knows the city, or an Amazon native knows the jungle. This is their home.”

“Fine. They want to fuck with Seneca, well, they just made a big fucking mistake. Tocat, take Cole and Reggie into the tunnels. Juan, too. Fix the fucking cable and then get back here.”

Tocat’s grip on his weapon tightened. “They’ll cut it again.”

King looked down at the leader of the Tecos, curling his baboon-like upper lip. “So what are you saying, Tocat? That we sit here in the dark for the rest of our fucking lives?”

“I’m saying we send these three back where they came from. They’re the ones that brought the Moles here.”

“Yeah, well, I’m the one who runs this fucking place and I’m telling you to go fix the fucking cable. What, you too fucking pussy to go out there? Is that it?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Tocat growled.

“Then prove it.”

The two men glared at each other, then Tocat snapped at the man beside him. “Let’s go.”

King grinned at Jack and Reggie. “Don’t fucking disappoint me, guys. And, as per our fucking agreement, your woman stays with me.”

Jack walked up to King's desk, his words as slow and precise as his steps. “The Moles won’t harm me, because they think I belong to them. What belongs to me also belongs to them, and Lindsay is one of those things. If anything happens to her, you will be the next person I skin alive. Is that clear, you fat fuck?”

Jack didn’t wait for an answer and he didn’t look at Lindsay. He left, leading the others. King leaned back in his chair as the door clicked shut. With three bodyguards in a locked room there was a sneer of confidence on his face, yet the fingers that lifted his cigarette to his mouth trembled.

And Lindsay knew she was safe, at least from him.

* * *

The tunnel door closed behind Tocat, the only illumination coming from the lights on the sub-machine guns he and Juan held.

Jack looked pointedly at the guns. “Care to share?”

“Get going,” Tocat said, aiming at a cable that ran along the tunnel ceiling. “The sooner we find where this thing was cut, the sooner we get back.”

Jack and Reggie exchanged beleaguered looks, then set off down the tunnel, the two Tecos trailing their footsteps. The light from behind cast Jack’s and Reggie’s shadows a long way ahead of them, the silhouette of their forms gliding over the crumbling brickwork like living things. The two peered into the darkness, both straining for any sound that might betray an ambush, but all was deathly quiet.

The electrical line led them on a zigzag path through the underground, till after a few minutes, it came to a large chamber ankle-deep in icy, brackish water. There the cable was neatly severed, with the live end lying on the far end of the room by the water’s edge, barely visible in the shadows.

Jack shot out a hand to halt Reggie, and pointed. “Over there.”

Tocat peered through the darkness. “I’ll go make sure the tunnel is clear. Juan, you stay here and watch my back.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Jack said before the man could move.

“Why not?”

“Because as soon as you’re halfway through the room the Moles are going to kick that cable into the water and electrocute you.”

Juan looked at his boss, his eyes wide. “We should go back,” he whispered.

Tocat’s mouth thinned. “No, we’re getting this done. We’ll go around through the wine cellar. There’s another way through from there.”

It was a trap. Had to be. Jack gave Reggie a hard look and his friend nodded in understanding. The four retraced their steps back to the main passage, heading along it toward the cellar. Halfway there Jack stopped them, closing his eyes and cocking his head to one side. Reggie did the same. “Yeah, Jack, I hear it, too.”

“Hear what?” Tocat said from behind.

Jack opened his eyes. “Dripping water.”

“So?”

“So it stopped. They’re up ahead, and more are circling around behind.”

Juan spun around, casting his light back down the long empty corridor. Tocat made a disgusted noise. “So what? They don’t have guns, do they?”

Jack shook his head.

“So we have the edge.”

“They don’t have guns because they don’t need them,” Reggie said. “We need more guys to do this.”

Tocat looked up at Reggie, pipsqueak to giant. “Those freaks show their faces they’re going to get them blown off. Now quit with all the ghost stories and get moving.”