Angel Of The City (13 page)

“
Please don’t tell me we have to go back,” Abby says. She’s sitting on the floor with Pen, resting the younger girl’s head in her lap.

I
’m sweeping the walls and floor with the flashlight, expecting to find some sign of an explosive trap, but can’t locate any wire or touch plate. In one corner of the floor however, is a large circular manhole cover.

“
Is that a way out?” Abby asks.

“
Possibly. Or another booby trap.”

I almost break my fingers
trying to carefully pry the cover off, but when it’s only an inch from the floor, I shine the flashlight inside. Sure enough, there’s a small explosives packet wired to it. It only takes me a minute to disarm the device and I carefully slip the packet into my coat pocket.

“
What are you doing?” Abby asks. “You’re going to keep it?”

“
It’s a weapon. First rule of being a shade is never throw away anything you might need later.”

I
shine the flashlight down the open passage. There’s a rusted ladder leading to a lower level. With little other choice, I go down to investigate.

The l
adder leads to a large empty room. There’s a depressed circular pit area in the center with the remains of a wooden table crumbled on the floor. In the rubble is a lantern. Not electric, but kerosene or some kind of flammable liquid. Probably left by Devon or one of his men. I shake it. There’s still some left. Using my lighter it takes four attempts before the wick begins to burn.

Abby calls down to see if I
’m all right and I explain what I’ve found. It looks to be a meeting or conference room. Old and unused for a century at least. Part of the old city, I suppose. Whatever its purpose, the people who used it didn’t come and go by the manhole. That was obviously for emergency escape. Which means there has to be another way out. It won’t be easy getting Pen down here, but I don’t see any other way.

Getting Pen through the opening and down the ladder proves even harder than I thought. By the time we set her on the floor she
’s out cold from the pain. Abby and I lay her down as comfortably as we can and I re-examine the wound. The bleeding has increase and I’m forced to tighten the tourniquet.

We can
’t go further until Pen revives, so we take a seat on the steps leading to the pit and rest. The flickering light from the lantern casts dancing shadows on the walls. I look over at Abby and find she’s staring at me.

“
What?” I ask.

“What did you mean back there, when you said Kingston might not have been after Devon?”

“
You really want to get into this now?”

“
Just tell me what you meant.”

“
I just wonder why Kingston would go to so much trouble to set up Devon? He knows the guns are useless. Why take such a big risk?”

“
Go on.”

I sigh.
“You heard what Kingston said back at the hospital: he’s the leader of this revolution. You’re just a symbol. Maybe he’s decided the symbol has outlived her usefulness.”

“
You’re insane.”

“
Maybe, but Pen said that after you escaped the G.D., the resistance moved you from place to place?”

“
What of it?”

“
How many people knew your last location?”

She frowns.
“I’m not sure; not many.”

“
Who?” I press.

“
I don’t know,” she says, exasperated. “Kingston, Jace, Faisal, Jirou and Meki…” She knits her brow in concentration.

“
Is that it?”

“
Maybe. Yes, I think so. Why?”

“
Counselors didn’t find you, Blueshirts did.”

“
So?”

“
So they’re not exactly known for their investigative skills. Any information they get is from off the streets, from snitches. Passing information directly to a Counselor is too dangerous. You want to rat on someone, safer to slip it to a Blueshirt.”

“
No…”

“
That little stunt back there at Devon’s? I figure that’s the second time Kingston has sold you out.”

Minutes pass before she speaks again, her tone angry.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You see the worse in everyone.” More silence. She stares at the lamp, her expression icy.

“
Abby…”

“
Shut up. Just…shut up.”

It
’s good advice and I take it.

An hour passes. The air, which was stale to begin with, is getting harder to breath. I stand and stretch. “We need to find a way out of here before we end up entombed with these relics. This wasn’t just some bunker. This was meant as a work area for a lot of people. They wouldn’t be climbing through manholes every day. There has to be another way out.”

We
manage to rouse Pen and I give her another shot of dust. With Abby and I under each arm, we get her up and make our way to the back of the room. Abby finds a door that leads to a stairway going down. We pass two landings, but the doors are rusted shut. Breathing is becoming real work and Pen is in constant pain despite the coal.

At the next level, the door is slightly ajar. The hinges are rusted, but I
’m able to force it open enough for us to squeeze through. We enter into a large room lined on both sides with machines I can’t quite identify, computers possibly, but even their cases have decomposed significantly. Some have rectangular openings that may have housed video screens, but the glass is long gone. I gently touch the front panel of the nearest machine and it falls away in rusted pieces, kicking up a cloud of dust from the floor. The age of the place is unmistakable, but how old? Hundreds of years at least.

I help set Pen on the floor and take a closer look at the machinery. In all the tunnels and underground bunkers I
’ve been in, I’ve never found anything more advanced than a rusted flashlight or decomposed batteries. And nothing near this old. I pick up a piece of the crumbling metal. It’s light. Some sort of composite material, maybe.

“
What was this place?” Abby asks.

I don
’t have an answer. “Who knows? But it’s old. This has to pre-date even the old city.”

Pen groans.
“Didn’t you two take history?” she asks. Her words are slow and mumbled, effects of blood loss and the coal. “There’s no such thing as the ‘old city’. At least that’s what my teachers said. It’s a myth.”

I smile.
“Right.”

The official history of the city begins one hundred and eighty years ago with its founding. Our courageous forefathers, it
’s said, fleeing a world grown poisonous, laid the first stones in the walls that now encircle us. If there’s any documentation of a world before that time, I’ve never seen it. But then who knows what lies hidden in the vaults of the Historical Committee. And how does the government explain the tunnels running like a maze under every building and street? They don’t.

Abby coughs.
“The air is even worse here.”

She
’s right. We have to find a way back up and soon.

Abby takes the flashlight and
the right side of the room and I go left with the lamp. At the end of the first bank of machines, I find a large metal plate imbedded into the wall. Etched into the plate is what appears to be a map. It takes me a moment to realize I’m looking at a map of the city—or a city. I recognize the general street layout, but this map covers a much larger area, at least fifty percent more than the city at present.

“
Here,” Abby calls out. “I found another door.”

She
’s standing in front of a set of double doors. Like the rest, they’re rusted at their hinges, but with the two of us pulling, we manage to get one of the doors open. We’re both breathing hard as she shines her flashlight onto a wide stairway leading up.

“
This must be the main entry,” I say. “Let’s get Pen and get out of here before we all suffocate.”

Pen is somnolent and hard to awake. Even so, she refuses to be lifted up until she gets another dose of dust. Once again, Abby and I take her up
between us and we begin the slow climb up the steps.

This time there are no doors until we reach the top level. This door is easier to open and we step into
a smaller room—a lobby, perhaps—with another set of double doors on one wall. But the doors are collapsed and behind them rubble blocks the way.

Abby is holding Pen up, both of them leaning against the wall and panting heavily. Pen is grimacing and Abby is near tears. As if it wasn
’t bad enough, the kerosene lamp finally goes out.

“
There’s no way out of here,” Abby says.

She reaches for the
flashlight, but I hold her off. Although the lamp is out, it isn’t completely dark. I hold my hand in front of me and can still see it. There’s light filtering in through the wall of rubble. It can’t be as thick as it seems.

Climbing up
the exposed boulders, I start pushing on the smaller ones at the top until one finally rolls away. More light streams in. Abby sets Pen gently down on the floor and climbs up to help me. At first only the smallest rocks give, but as we work, soon larger ones are tumbling away into a large cavern beyond the doors.

I take a deep breath. There
’s good air here. There has to be a way to the surface.

We
’ve managed to make an opening large enough to climb through and I slide over and into the cavern. On my right is the smooth concrete curve of a large pipe, probably a storm drain. The light is coming from above, where an access grate has been placed above the pipe. I try shimmying up the side of the pipe a few times before finally climbing the rock of the far wall and gaining access to the top of the pipe, where I’m able to reach the grate.

From the angle of the sun, it must be
late afternoon. I try and peer up through the grate, but it’s impossible to tell where we are. From our initial direction out of Devon’s nest, I figure we must have been traveling east, back toward the Bonifrei, but it’s only a guess. I resist the urge to lift the grate for a better view. Considering how my luck has been running, I’m likely to raise it up right between a Counselor’s legs.

I climb back down and
back up through the rubble to Abby. “There’s a way out, just beyond the rocks.”

She sighs then looks to Pen, who
’s lying on the floor, unconscious again. Her skin is pale and her breathing shallow. “She needs a doctor. Do you know where we are?”

“
East, I think. But I won’t know for sure until we lift the grate and we can’t do that until after curfew.”

She starts to protest, but I stop her at the beginning. If we drag Pen out into the open in her condition, it would almost certainly bring the Blueshirts, especially after the events of the last few days. Reluctantly, she agrees and goes to her sister and sits next to her, caressing her hair gently.
“How long do we have to wait?”

“
Two hours; three maybe.”

I sit near her. At least the air is better now and we can breathe easy.

Time slips by in silence.

“
You know, it’s funny,” Abby finally says. She’s reclining against the wall, Pen’s head in her lap.

“
What is?”

“
All that’s happened in the last few days and I know nothing about you. You know my entire life, and yet all I know about you is that you were born in the Alba district and you snore.”

“
Do I?”

“
I could hear you from Reed’s bedroom even with the door closed.”

“
I’ll remember to sleep on my stomach in the future.”

“
I’m sure Reed would appreciate that. Seriously though, I’d like to know more about you.”

“
Like?”

“
Anything. You have family?”

“
I had a mother and father, if that’s what you mean. Not that they shared a last name. Marriage is a bit of a rarity in the Bonifrei. Most people find it easier to just cohabitate. Less paperwork and of course you avoid the marriage tax.”

“
I see. Siblings? Any brothers or sisters?”

A tight knot forms in my chest. Yes, I had a brother I want to say. Cole, three years older than me. It was Cole who took me to the trash piles the first time; taught me how to scavenge
—and how to fight. He was small but tough as horse leather. Even the bigger kids thought twice before trying to elbow into his finds. I looked up to him as much as any kid ever looked up to his big brother. If I ever had a hero, it was Cole.