SINdicate Page 9

  “Shut up, Hernandez,” I said, pushing myself back to my feet. “Or I won’t let you help us invade the sewers on the long chance that we’ll find a killer hiding among all the other shit.”

  Her smirk turned into a grin. “You always take me to the nicest places, hermano.”

  Chapter 11

  “Jesu Christo, Campbell. I think I’d rather be back upstairs with Los Locos Muertos.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, trying not to gag. The tunnels weren’t sewers, not exactly. There was no raw effluvium flowing down the passage through which we traveled. Instead, it was more like a slightly rounded hallway, with numerous pipes lining both sides. According to Silas, some of those pipes did, in fact, carry waste—black water, as he called it. Others pumped clean water from reservoirs and treatment plants. Still others housed fiber-optic cables or served as conduits for electrical wiring. We were walking through the circulatory system of the city, where the lifeblood of modern living flowed. And it smelled worse than the morgue on a summer day.

  There might not have been raw sewage, but there was plenty of moisture. New Lyons was built on a swamp, after all, and the groundwater had been a problem long before the oceans started rising. It was also hot. It never got truly cold in New Lyons—it had been decades since the city had seen temperatures drop below freezing, but it was winter topside, with temperatures in the forties. Down here, though, it had to be closer to eighty, maybe ninety, degrees. The heat and the moisture made the tunnels a breeding ground for mold and mildew, and the place smelled like an old refrigerator full of rotting vegetables.

  “How do you stand this?” I asked Silas. I had ditched my jacket the moment we climbed down the ladder into the steamy hell that was the tunnel system. Hernandez had done likewise, though, with a disapproving frown at me, she had neatly folded hers and hung it over one of the few pipes not sweating some foul liquid. I swiped sweat from my brow, but it was a useless effort, since new sweat broke out almost immediately. “It’s like a sauna built on a compost pile.”

  “I wasn’t given much choice in the matter, Detective,” he said. “Besides, you get used to it.” He seemed truly unbothered by the heat. Hell, he hadn’t even bothered taking off his overcoat or hat. I didn’t even think he was sweating. The bastard.

  Hernandez was eying Silas, giving him that measuring look that seemed inherent to the female of the species—either species. She hadn’t spoken directly to the albino synthetic, choosing to aim all of her casual harassment in my direction. I couldn’t really blame her. Hernandez hadn’t set out to be part of all of this—I’d pulled her in before I had any idea that a serial killer case would result in what was tantamount to a slave uprising. When I’d tracked down her daughter and retrieved the child from the hands of said serial killer—I couldn’t say I’d saved her, given that my investigation put the girl in danger in the first place—we’d both been swept up in the administrative nightmare that followed. Hernandez had managed, barely, to come away clean, in large part to me taking as much of the shit onto myself as I could and doing my best to distance myself from her.

  I’d been shown the door, though I still wasn’t sure if I’d been fired or if I had quit. It didn’t matter either way, because I had gone immediately to Silas to help him tear down the system that I’d been fighting and bleeding for since the moment I’d enlisted. In the organized chaos leading up to our New Year’s Revolution, I’d isolated myself from everyone—the few friends I’d made in my years on the force and my family alike. Their only defense against the shitstorm I was calling down was plausible deniability. I had to break contact in order to keep them safe.

  It wasn’t until after New Year’s that I’d reached out to Hernandez to test the waters. To my surprise, she’d been willing to help. But I didn’t know why she was willing to help—whether it was out of some latent dedication to the cause of the synthetics or out of friendship. Until today, she hadn’t really interacted with Silas or any of the synthetics with whom I now associated. In fact, the last interaction between her and a synthetic of which I was aware was when she’d nearly shot her own synthetic nanny for failing to stop Fowler from kidnapping her daughter. I knew she wasn’t like Detective Fortier, who took pleasure in degrading synthetics any way he could, but she’d never shown any signs of empathizing with their plight either.

  “You were with Campbell when he went after my daughter?” she asked, speaking to Silas for the first time. Her voice was low, and though she threw occasional glances toward the synthetic, most of her attention remained on the tunnels around us. We should be safe down here, but then again, we had no idea who had left a message for us in a corpse, and no one felt like taking chances.

  “Yes.” Silas looked at her as he answered, his face so emotionless that it might as well have been carved from alabaster.

  “Would he have found Arlene without your help?” she asked, meeting his eyes.

  There was no fucking way, and I knew it, but Hernandez wasn’t asking me, so I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t sure what was happening here, but I knew I had to let it play out.

  Silas tilted his head, considering. “Perhaps,” he said at length. “The detective has proven even more resourceful than I first suspected. But the additional time it would have taken might have proved…suboptimal.”

  I couldn’t help but snort. “Hernandez, I wouldn’t even have been alive to go after Fowler if it wasn’t for Silas. He saved my life. And he saved Arlene’s life, too.” I said the last quietly, because I had no idea what kind of impact it would have on Hernandez.

  She regarded the albino for a moment. “Thank you,” she said, simply. And then she turned her attention back to the tunnel we were traversing, too quickly to even notice the nod of acknowledgement the synthetic gave her in response.

  The curved walls with their regularly spaced lights and networks of conduits passed by us as we walked. Every now and then, a side-tunnel intruded, but Silas, with all the focus of a homing pigeon, ignored these passages, moving with a surety of purpose that I envied. For my part, I kept my head on a swivel and my hand near the butt of my gun. The chances we were walking into a trap were high, and damned if I was going to die in a fucking sewer.

  “Where exactly are we headed?” Hernandez asked after a few minutes had passed in silence. “I mean, yeah, you explained about the map and the corpse—and Lord knows, I should be arresting you for that one, ’mano—but what are we actually looking for? It’s not like there was a giant X to mark the spot.”

  “I think that might be exactly what we’re looking for, Detective Hernandez,” Silas replied.

  “Call me Mel. And explain yourself.” That was a surprise.

  “Damn,” I muttered. “You never told me to call you Mel.”

  “That’s because you’re an asshole,” she replied. “Don’t change the subject.”

  Silas ignored us. “Of course, Mel. The original architects of these tunnel systems foresaw the need for them to be closely monitored—a result of the general state of decay in previously existing infrastructure and the astronomical cost of attempting to add such monitoring systems after the fact. As such, they built in…well, let us call it office space, though the term is not technically accurate…in order to allow for housing of a variety of monitoring systems. Some of that monitoring is now done via purely electronic means, and more is done by my brothers and sisters, though they generally do not rate any office space of their own. Instead, they roam these tunnels, walking miles upon miles of them every day, noting potential problems and reporting them to the Department of Sanitation. But I suspect that the map given over to us is actually pointing to one of those spaces. Not quite an X, I suppose, but it is, quite literally, marking the spot.”

  “And why did you invite me on this little spelunking adventure, Campbell?” Hernandez asked. “I get that Los Locos Muertos run the streets overhead, but you didn’t look like you were having too many problems wit
h them.”

  “It’s not up there I’m worried about,” I answered. “Apart from the gangbangers, you saw how easy it was to get into these tunnels. All we had to do was pry up a manhole cover, for fuck’s sake. And whoever it is that’s sending us on this wild-goose chase, we know they’ve killed one man already, and we have no fucking idea why. We could be walking right into a trap, Hernandez. I needed someone at my back that I trusted.” I glanced at Silas. “No offense, Silas. I trust you, but I also needed someone who could help if it comes to violence.”

  “No offense taken, Detective. I admire your prudence in choosing such a capable companion. I should point out that we have just entered one of the mapped tunnels. Based on how long it took us to get here, I would guess we have perhaps ten minutes of walking before we reach the intersection.”

  “How can you tell?” Hernandez asked Silas. And, to me, “Does he always talk like that?”

  “Pretty much,” I replied.

  “When you live in our circumstances, Detective Hernandez, you learn that proper elocution and formal speech can serve as both sword and shield. They are the only weapons available to us.” A strange, almost sad, smile played across his lips. “It does backfire, on occasion. As to your second question…” His massive shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I was quite literally born for this.” He waved a hand around, encompassing the sodden tunnels with their dim lighting and seemingly endless mold-speckled walls. “I have walked these tunnels for more years than I care to remember.” Another smile, this one more real, and a note of actual fondness entered his voice. “I was not born a revolutionary, after all.”

  “Hmm… Could’ve fooled me,” Hernandez said.

  I kept quiet as they talked amicably. It was strange, listening to the hard-bitten gangland detective chat with the slave turned revolutionary. They didn’t stray from or avoid difficult topics. Hernandez, being the cop she was, asked tough questions, but she listened respectfully as Silas answered. The net being what it was, it had been a long time since I had witnessed two intelligent people engaged in discourse with the sole intent of feeling out one another’s positions and not striving for a game of one-upmanship. And neither had even called the other one Hitler, yet.

  After a few more minutes of walking, Silas slowed, holding up one hand and dropping his voice to a whisper. “We are close, detectives,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better to exercise a modicum of stealth for the remainder of our approach.”

  The tunnel seemed no different to me, and I had no idea how Silas was determining how far we had traveled or how much farther we had to go. But I trusted him. As he had said, he’d been born to this world, where Hernandez and I were trespassers. “Where to?” I asked, keeping my voice low as well.

  “The intersection should be approximately one hundred yards ahead, around a slight curvature of the tunnel. If there is a workspace there, we should find a doorway. The easiest—”

  The sharp crack of gunfire echoed down the tunnels.

  The report echoed down the tunnels, the sound magnified by the concrete walls and so loud it set my ears to ringing. Hernandez and I reacted as our training dictated. She had been slightly ahead of me, shoulder to shoulder with Silas, so she moved into point, pulling her service weapon—a blocky-looking nine millimeter—and sliding over to put her right shoulder against the wall. She dropped into a crouch, minimizing her target profile while keeping some degree of mobility. I moved in behind her, my forty-five jumping into my hand as I crouched down and put my left hand on her shoulder.

  “Get behind us!” I barked at Silas, but he was already moving. He might not have had any training, and he might not have been constitutionally capable of violence, but he had both courage and a sense of self-preservation. The big synthetic had faded back, and edged into place behind me, also crouching low.

  More gunfire barked out, a rapid staccato of explosions that made me long for my hearing protection. I recognized the sound of a smaller caliber pistol round, nine millimeter or maybe something like a forty caliber. And also something heavier. Maybe five-five-six. Shit.

  I clapped Hernandez twice on her left shoulder, and she started forward, holding a crouch, pistol extended before her. A tunnel was a terrible place to be caught in a shootout, particularly if the bad guys had rifles and all you had were dinky little pistols. There was no cover in the passage, and we were pressed up against the wall of a near-perfect shooting alley. Moving toward the sound of gunfire in that situation was suicidal.

  We did it anyway. Hernandez was still getting paid to run toward the bullets. My excuse? Old dog. New tricks. With the echo of the gunfire ringing in our ears, we rushed around the curve.

  Chapter 12

  After about fifty yards, the tunnel curved again. We slowed at this curve, moving forward more cautiously. Whatever had been happening was over—after a heavy and rapid exchange, the shooting had stopped, and eerie silence, apart from the ringing in our ears, had fallen once again. We crept closer, hugging the wall, until an intersection of tunnels came into view.

  Where the passages joined, the space broadened, creating a hub of sorts. Most of my vision was blocked by Hernandez, since I was still in tight formation behind her, but I could see around her enough to spot the open, industrial-looking door set against one wall. I glanced back at Silas and made a gesture toward the door with my left hand. He nodded and mouthed what looked like “monitor room.”

  I tapped Hernandez on the shoulder and flicked my hand forward twice, toward the open door. She nodded and started moving once again, head on a swivel. A silhouette passed in front of the door, just a darker shadow in the dim lighting. Another followed. A third. At least three people were moving about inside whatever “monitor room” was up ahead. Hernandez stopped at the first sign of movement, crouching lower and turning to make eye contact with me. Even in the shadows, I saw the fear and uncertainty in the tightness of her lips, the drawn eyebrows. But I could see the determination there as well. She made a few quick hand gestures, indicating that she was going right and I should go left. I understood her fear. There was no cover to speak of between us and the door, and all it would take was one errant glance in our direction, and whoever had done the shooting—assuming they were the bad guys—would have to do nothing more than spray and pray. It would take zero marksmanship to peg us in our current situation.

  Which left us only one option. We had to rush the door, hoping the element of surprise would freeze up the bad guys when they saw us move—and they would see us move. That was unavoidable. I nodded to Hernandez, then held up one finger in the “wait” sign. I turned to Silas, who was still tight on my six, and motioned for him to fall back and get low. Bullets might be flying soon, and the time for him to stick with us was past. He nodded his assent, though I spotted a faint reluctance in his eyes, and the big man ghosted back on silent feet. I waited until he had faded from sight, moving around the bending tunnel. Then I turned back to Hernandez and nodded once more.

  She held up three fingers, and I took a steadying breath. Two fingers and I released the breath. One finger and I felt my muscles tense. The final finger dropped and we surged forward, staying low and hugging the wall, but pouring on the speed. As we neared the target, I split left, darting across the open doorway while Hernandez continued right.

  “The fuck was that?” someone called, and flashlight beams started bisecting the door. I didn’t bother trying to figure out if they were tac lights on the end of firearms or handhelds. I just sprinted, slamming to relative safety on the left side of the doorway as Hernandez contacted the right. Stealth was no longer an issue, so Hernandez, now in full cop mode, shouted, “New Lyons Police Department. Drop your weapons!”

  The answer to that was, of course, a short burst of gunfire.

  The interior of the tunnel system was concrete, and whatever control room we were plastered outside of was made from the same material. That gave us a nice, stur
dy barricade that at least prevented bullets from passing through our cover. That didn’t stop the bad guys—and if they were wantonly opening fire on people who identified themselves as cops, they counted as bad guys in my books—from shooting.

  There was something about the pattern of their fire—the short, controlled bursts that sounded like they were coming from multiple points from within the room—that told me we weren’t dealing with amateurs. Run-of-the-mill criminals usually opted for putting as much lead downrange in as short a time as humanly possible. People with training understood shoot, move, and communicate. I heard bits of conversation and what sounded like tables being knocked over. Our bad guys had shoot down, and it sounded like they weren’t only doing move and communicate but were throwing in a little entrenching for good measure.

  I glanced across the doorway at Hernandez. Our poses mirrored one another, both pressed with our shoulders tight against the wall, close enough to the doorway that we could pop out and shoot, but far enough from the edge to keep oblique-angled shots from finding a target. The bad guys had stopped shooting. That was a bad sign. It meant their initial salvo had been intended for the purpose of making us keep our heads down while they sought better positions. Which meant we were in a standoff. Against superior numbers. With better firepower. Double shit.

  Hernandez, still invested with the legal authority of the New Lyons Police Department shouted, “Last warning, pendejos. Toss out your guns and surrender like good little assholes. Don’t make us come in there and shoot your asses!” There was a reason Hernandez worked Guns and Gangs and not Hostage Response.

  “I don’t know who you are,” a man shouted from within the room, “but cops don’t come here, so you sure as hell aren’t NLPD. Doesn’t matter, anyway. If you get into this room, we still have to kill you. We haven’t seen you; you haven’t seen us. Why don’t you be good little interlopers,” he countered, mocking Hernandez, “and get the hell out of here before we send you to join our friend here.” There was a muffled sound, like a boot hitting a body. I felt a heavy weight press on my shoulders at that. The situation was bad, but even worse, it looked like whoever had led us here had already met an untimely end. Answers—the answers I needed to keep the synthetics, Evelyn, and now Tia, safe—were going to be hard coming.