Undercity Read online

  As I flew closer, more people materialized out of the haze. Biker had brought the cyber-riders, including the adults and trans-folk, the true wizards, geniuses who rode the mesh-waves in support of the undercity, using a finesse no one in Cries could match. Another wave appeared, led by the father and daughter from the Down-deep. Every person in their group had alabaster skin and wore eye lenses or visors, protection against what, for them, had to be the unbearably brilliant light of the Concourse. Yet here they were, walking into sunlight—the first time in years, maybe even in generations, that anyone from that deep below Cries had come out of the dark.

  When I saw who came behind them, I inhaled sharply. I knew that looming woman, her muscled frame, her menacing walk. Dark Singer. She had a carbine slung over her right shoulder and a tangler on her hip. Black gauntlets surrounded her wrists, both with dart throwers, their tips surely dipped in poison. She did nothing to hide the Vakaar insignia on her gauntlets, the slash of white across a dark orb.

  She held a baby in her left arm.

  The child was about a year old, looking around at what it probably experienced as a chaos of colors and smells. Emotions built inside of me, so many mixed together, fear for the safety of these people and incredulity that so many came. I finally recognized the strongest, an emotion unlike any we usually felt below. Triumph. It was bittersweet, for so much pain came with these people. This had gone far beyond what I had asked of them. They were a full procession, adults and children in rags, many too thin, but none cowed. In their silence, they were making a statement, loud and undeniable. This is our city, too. We have the right to be here.

  The final wave formed out of the haze.

  Singer’s gang appeared first, then Digjan and the other two punkers in her trio, striding like the violent queens who once ruled the Raylicon desert. Today they came armed with carbines and tanglers instead of swords, and the procession they defended was far different than the armies of our ancient history. When I saw them clearly, I knew why this group came last. They brought the dying. Gangers and punkers together carried crude stretchers, each supporting a crumpled fighter from the battle. An older dust Knight helped a punker who was hopping on one leg, using a metal rod for his crutch. A heavily pregnant girl walked with the two of them, holding her huge belly with one arm. I thought of the mother I had found dead with her baby a few days ago. Then I thought of another mother so many years ago—a girl named Bhaaj who had died alone—and my eyes burned with the tears I had never learned how to shed

  Police patrolled the procession from end to end. Tourists retreated to shops or cafés. Gawkers lined the rail where Lavinda stood with Chief Takkar and Major Duane Ebersole. Everyone stared, their disbelief plain. I wasn’t sure if our numbers shocked them or that so many of us came in rags, gaunt and scarred. See what you’ve ignored, I thought. See the crime Cries has let go for years, centuries, maybe even millennia.

  A sudden motion caught the attention of the beetle, and it whipped around to show me a woman running across the Concourse toward the Center. Follow her, I thought.

  The beetle flew above the runner, who turned out to be Tanzia, the volunteer who worked at the Center. When she reached the building, she grabbed the handles on the double doors and heaved them outward, calling out an order: Stay open!

  I followed her inside. The building looked the same as the first time I had come here, with three people playing a board game across the room, two men and a woman. Today, however, several doctors and psi-testers were also setting up med stations, and extra rows of water bottles waited on the closest counter.

  A man in a white IRAS uniform ran into the Center. With no pause, he grabbed a cart by the wall, shoved it to the counter with the bottles, and swept them onto the cart.

  Tanzia shouted to the trio playing the board game, “Get more food! Hurry!”

  As they jumped to their feet, the woman called out, “What are you doing?”

  Tanzia went to her, gulping in air from her run. “We need more supplies.”

  “How much?” one of the men asked.

  “All of it!” Tanzia said.

  “I hardly think so,” the woman said. “We have supplies meant to last a year down there.”

  Tanzia met her gaze. “And it won’t be enough.”

  Major Ebersole jogged into the Center and joined the IRAS officer, helping him tear down the counter. “Even with this gone,” Ebersole said, “no way will we have enough space. We’ll have to feed and treat some of them outside.”

  In the midst of it all, one of the Center volunteers was walking through the semi-organized chaos toward the open door, his face puzzled.

  Follow, I thought.

  As the man stepped outside, he whispered, “Saints almighty.” The bot followed him—and I saw the full procession.

  It filled the length of the Concourse.

  We had been wrong. All of us. I had been so smug thinking Lavinda had no idea how many of us lived in the undercity. I was no better. It wasn’t thirty people, not ninety, not two hundred and ninety. According to my node, nearly four hundred people were walking up the Concourse, and stragglers were still feeding into the procession. I counted at least fifteen with carbines, and many wore knives. Saints only knew how many had tanglers. Either there were more punkers than any of us had realized, or the gangs had taken up their arms after the battle.

  As we neared the Center, soldiers ran to the building from the other direction, farther up the Concourse. Lavinda must have commed them for extra supplies. Some carried tables or crates, and others were rolling in extra med stations. Police stood everywhere, monitoring the procession with their gauntlet sensors.

  I released my link with the beetle—and I was suddenly in my own body again, leading the procession. We had reached the Center, and I was walking past the med stations that the frazzled volunteers were setting up outside. I slowed as I entered the building, and the procession poured around me, children staring around with unabashed curiosity, adults taking it in with warier gazes. People reached for the snap-bottles that volunteers offered and headed toward the counters where food steamed and fruits and vegetables were piled in slots. The mother of the baby took him out of my arms with a nod of thanks. She hurried back to her family, and Pack Rat went with her, holding her hand.

  The volunteers served the children first, then the adults. Children settled on the floor with their plates piled high, doing what we had always done when the opportunity presented itself, which was chowing down with gusto. Volunteers were opening bedrolls. Gourd laid the emaciated woman he was carrying on a pallet while a medic attached lines to her body and a doctor shouted for fluid pacs. Other medics helped the gangs and punkers set down their stretchers with the casualties from the battle. The Center had too few volunteers—no way could they deal with all these people—

  Except the Knights were helping. They had assigned themselves to sections in the procession, and they were making sure their groups received food and water in an orderly manner.

  A tall woman walked into the Center, a steady figure amid the chaos. Lavinda. She came over to me, her step firm, her face calm, but I knew her enough well to see she was in shock. She stopped next to me and we stood together in the middle of the room.

  “You brought them,” the colonel said.

  She was a master of understatement today. I tried to answer, but I couldn’t.

  Lavinda looked around. “We’ll provide medical attention and food first, before the tests.”

  I found my voice. “That would be good.”

  She turned a hard stare on Digjan and the other two punkers with her. They stood near the door, their faces hard as they looked across the room. I followed their gaze and my stomach clenched.

  Singer was standing on the other side of the hall with her baby in one arm. She wasn’t doing anything other than waiting for her turn with the medic examining the youngest children. She didn’t have to do squat. Just waiting there, she was everyone’s worst fear of the undercity, hu
ge, scarred, tattooed with a cartel insignia, the carbine large on her shoulder and the tangler glinting at her waist. People avoided her as if she were an explosive ready to detonate. But no one challenged her. Lavinda had given her word that anyone could receive medical care, and that included even the baby of the undercity’s most notorious cartel assassin.

  Singer looked around the room as if she were on reconnaissance. Her gaze raked over the Kajada punkers and she froze with the eerie stillness I had seen in troops before they went to battle.

  “Time to intervene,” Lavinda said in a low voice. “We can’t risk trouble.” She tapped the on panel of her gauntlet comm. “This could turn into a riot.”

  “Wait,” I said. Singer had sworn to the Code of the Dust Knights, as incongruous as it seemed. When her gaze came to rest on me, I lifted my chin the way I had when I demanded she swear to the Code or leave.

  Singer considered me. Then she left the line and stalked forward. People jumped aside, some of them stumbling backward to get out of her way as fast as possible.

  She went to a table someone had heaped with fruit. Only a few succulent red orbs remained. A volunteer was carrying another crate forward, but Singer ignored him as she swept the last fruit to the floor. While children ran after the scattered orbs, Singer pulled the table to where I stood with Lavinda. She regarded us impassively. Then she slid the carbine off her shoulder, its strap scraping along her giant bicep. With her gaze on Lavinda and with her curious baby in her other arm, she grasped the gun’s stock, flipped it over, and thunked the weapon on the table. She pulled the tangler out of the frayed holster on her belt and set it next to the carbine. With that done, she looked across the room at the Kajada punkers, her challenge obvious. Then she strode back to the line of people waiting to see the harried doctor who was checking the babies. No one argued when she resumed the same place in line where she had stood before.

  Everyone was watching us. I met Digjan’s stare and tilted my head. She knew what I meant. She stood there, her face thunderous, and I felt sure she would turn away. Noise filled the room, the hum of equipment, the clack of utensils, but we paid no attention. I could almost feel her anger.

  Digjan walked forward.

  Lavinda stayed at my side, but she didn’t interfere. When Digjan reached the table, she threw a hostile glance toward Singer, who was watching us. Then Digjan pulled off her carbine and set it next to Singer’s guns. With no more ado, she strode back to her place by the wall.

  What followed next felt surreal, and it could only happen on this day where everything had turned upside down. They all came forward, all the punkers and gangers, and one by one they piled their guns in front of Lavinda. They were making a statement for each other that had nothing to do with the colonel, finally agreeing, after the carnage of battle, that at least for today, it was time to stop killing. I knew what they meant, but I also knew what I hoped Lavinda would see. They were returning stolen property.

  These kids weren’t the ones who had smuggled the guns; Commander Braze hijacked them, Scorch bought them from Braze, and Dig stole them from Scorch. Lavinda was no fool; she knew these fighters hadn’t come here to give up their weapons. I doubted they had returned all the guns; tanglers were easier to hide than carbines, and far fewer of those lay in the heap on the table. No matter. They had returned the visible weapons. Digjan probably didn’t realize it, but the moment she laid her carbine on the table, she made her hopes to join the army a possibility again. Instead of flaunting stolen ISC property in front of a colonel, she had recovered it in service of the army. At least, I hoped Lavinda would be willing to spin it that way.

  The chaos of our arrival was calming. More volunteers arrived, carting in supplies. Children were laughing, especially the younger ones, who must have thought this was the most amazing lark, free food and a parade, all with more friends to play with than they had seen before. Somewhere a baby wailed and a boy grunted as a doctor gave him an air-syringe shot. The testers were working now, too, doing Kyle exams. A boy and girl ran through the Center, knocking over chairs. Before the harried volunteers could object, one of the Dust Knights grabbed both kids, admonishing them to behave. Everywhere, the Knights quietly organized the crowd, undertaking duties I hadn’t given them, though I would have if I’d realized the need. They kept the children reasonably well behaved, a feat probably no one else here could have managed. The Knights were part of the undercity, and the other children listened in a way they wouldn’t do for the Cries authorities.

  I spoke to Lavinda, indicating the three recovering bliss users, who had sat in one corner while they nibbled at meat rolls. “You should test them for Kyle traits. They were addicted to phorine.”

  Lavinda beckoned to Duane Ebersole, who was seated at a nearby table, administering tests to a young man. Duane glanced at us, then offered a snap-bottle to the youth. The kid shrugged, but the moment Duane left the table, the boy took the bottle and downed its sparkling water in gulps.

  When Duane came over, Lavinda indicated the phorine users. “Make sure you check them.”

  He nodded. “I’ll take them next.”

  “Can you tell if anyone here is a psion?” I asked.

  Duane glanced at me, then at the colonel.

  “Go ahead,” Lavinda said.

  “I can’t give specifics yet,” he said, “but we have a rough idea.” He took a breath. “Of the twenty-four people I’ve so far tested, eight are empaths. One is a telepath.”

  Lavinda stared at him. “What did you say?”

  Duane met her gaze, and I could see the shock underlying his outward calm. “My results are the same as what the other testers are recording.” He motioned at the room teeming with people. “Colonel, one-third of these folks are empaths. Five percent of them are telepaths.”

  “That’s impossible,” Lavinda said. “Did you check your equipment?”

  “Thoroughly. We all have.” He let out a breath. “The results are genuine.”

  I had no idea what to say. Over thirty percent empaths, when in the general population, empaths were at best one-tenth of one percent. That meant the undercity had three hundred times more empaths than normally found among human beings. And five percent telepaths? If only one in a million people were telepaths, that meant the undercity rate was fifty-thousand times the normal occurrence among humans.

  I spoke in a low voice, finally understanding. “Our ancestors went under the city because their minds couldn’t take the flood of human emotions drowning them in Cries.” Yes, I saw. The isolation protected us. Over the ages, deep within the canals, my ancestors had lived, loved, and interbred, concentrating the psionic traits of ancient Raylicon.

  Lavinda spoke quietly. “I don’t know if this is the greatest crime ever committed here or our greatest miracle.”

  Both, I thought.

  A silence fell over the Center. Conversations died down and even the small children went silent as people looked toward the doorway. I turned—and stiffened.

  A woman had walked into the room. She resembled the drug punkers, but in the way that a grown desert-lion resembled its cubs. This was no throwback to the barbarian queens of our past, this was the real thing. She stood as tall as Lavinda, as muscled as Singer, as scarred as Ruzik, and as implacable as Scorch. She looked like she had been through hell. Her clothes were burned, her right arm was obviously broken in several places, and gashes covered her body, crusted with dried blood, purpled by bruises. She held a primed carbine in her hand, ready to shoot, with the snout pointed at the ceiling. She had a tangler in her other hand, also drawn, pointing at the floor between mine and Lavinda’s feet. She stood there like an avenging demon come to exact her price for the devastation of her empire.

  Dig had survived.

  The soldiers did what, for them, was the only logical action. Two moved to guard the table with the guns, preventing anyone from retrieving them. That meant Dig was the only openly armed cartel member in a room with both Vakaars and Kajadas. Either the car
tels had been larger than we thought or not as many had died as the army believed, because I counted the insignia of at least five Vakaars, including Singer, and four Kajadas, including Digjan. Right now, with one violent sweep of her carbine, Dig could slaughter the surviving Vakaars before they had a chance to move. The soldiers would fire, but I had no doubt Dig had better biomech than any of us. She could move fast enough to achieve her goal before she died. That she would kill many other people in the process wouldn’t stop her if she were furious enough over the destruction of her cartel.

  Lavinda tapped her comm and spoke in a low, fast voice. “Takkar, get me a unit—”

  “No.” I laid my hand on her wrist and prayed people didn’t get court-martialed for touching Majda royalty without permission.

  Lavinda moved away her arm, but she stopped speaking.

  “Colonel?” Takkar’s voice came out of the comm. “A unit of what?”

  With her gaze on Dig, Lavinda said, “Wait, Captain.”

  Dig continued watching us. I tilted my head toward the wall where her daughter stood with the other two Kajada punkers. Dig glanced that way, and Digjan nodded to her mother, her body tensed. Dig inclined her head, and I understood her unspoken message to her daughter. Wait.

  We all waited. The soldiers in the room kept their hands on their guns.

  Dig walked forward, limping badly. It looked like only sheer determination kept her going. She came on, approaching Lavinda and me. One of the soldiers stepped closer to Lavinda, but the colonel shook her head and the soldier stopped. Everyone was watching that carbine Dig had aimed at the ceiling and the tangler pointed between our feet.

  Dig approached steadily despite her limp, but I knew what it cost her. I knew her tells. She was in excruciating pain. Gods only knew what had happened to her when the canal collapsed or how long she had been down there before she crawled free.

  She didn’t come directly to us. Instead she went to the table with the guns. A soldier stood in front of the piled weapons, blocking her way. She looked at him, her face hard. We all tensed as she lowered her carbine—