Ascending the Boneyard (11 page)

We slip through
the opening in the fence, into the station entrance and down the stairs to the abandoned terminal.

“We shouldn't have been able to do that,” Haze says, his voice bouncing back to us in echoes. I pull the penlights I was looking for out of my bag, knowing they'll be no match against the expansive black of the UnderGround.

“Never mind,” I say. “Just hold the beam low and steady and keep moving.”

It's wet in the tunnel, smells like ocean or moss one minute, urine and garbage the next, and so dark that the only thing we can rely on the penlights for is to make sure we're not stepping on the ten-pound rats Haze talked about. I reach out my hand, run it along the brick wall as a guide. But pretty soon all I can focus on is the condensation and grime on the tiles, and the next thing I know, my finger hits something flat and hard and ovoid.

Something that does not feel like tile.

Before I can pull away, the protrusion scampers over the tips of my fingers, and I emit some sort of other-than-human sound that echoes perfectly through the catacomb. Haze spins around, shining his penlight on the wall, where he tracks the biggest fucking cockroach I've ever seen in my life.

“Sweet Jesus,” Haze says. “Did you see that? It was a tank!”

“Yes, I saw it. Shut up and keep moving.”

Haze busts a gut, not realizing what this cockroach sighting could actually mean.

“Poor thing is probably running back to its little roach friends right now, going,
Oh my God, I can't get the human stank off me!
” He makes some squeaky little noises, which I think are meant to emulate a cockroach.

“It's not funny,” I say.

The phone kicks a text message into my pocket, but I'm too rattled by what just happened to pick up another picture of Turk. He would totally do that—send a minion scout into the catacomb and then chase it with a picture of himself to remind me who's really in charge here.

“How is that not funny?” Haze is saying, a chuckle still twinging his voice. “Why is it that nothing with an exoskeleton seems to garner much of a—”

But before Haze can finish the thought, we stop in unison, let our gazes slide up the station walls. We've reached an atrium of sorts, an arachnidian juncture of subway tunnels that all seem to converge right here. The domed roof is actually a series of skylights, with neon and moonbeams pouring down on us through the panes. There's enough ambient light coming in through the once-blackened windows that we can see traces of long-ago grandeur in the tunnels—gilded brickwork, glass tiles, brass chandeliers.

“Holy mother of . . .”

The UnderWorld looks nothing like this on the crappy screen of the Relic. Maybe this isn't even the UnderWorld. There are no burning wall sconces, no armed guards patrolling.
The world below will weep with blood.
I look up. Nope. Not even that.

I pocket my earbuds so I can listen for sounds of an impending incursion—soldiers, minion raiders, anything to indicate that we're at least on the right track.

I squint to see down one of the tunnel arms, but it's too dark to see anything beyond the dome. I've never experienced the tunnels from this vantage point—I'm all turned around, no longer sure of the code sequence. All I know is, if I take the tunnels in the wrong order,
we'll
be the ones running back out onto the highway in flames.

I stop. Turn.

It's the on-ramp,
Elan had said
. You have to take the right on-ramp or you're gonna end up crashing into—

“I knew it,” I say, tasting the rank air is it rushes into my open mouth. “One of these tunnels is definitely the way in. We have to figure out the sequence from inside. Bastard has me all twisted around.”

Haze is so busy gawking at all the history, he probably doesn't even hear me.

I let my gaze drag down the sides of the walls to the other arms that feed into the atrium. As my vision adjusts, it reveals even more skylights stretching down the tubes at regular intervals. This is Russian roulette. I already wiped this level once before, so spectacularly I almost got kicked out of the Boneyard for good because of it. I need mappers. And some dps wouldn't hurt either. Something tells me I'm gonna want to wreck some shit pretty soon.

I close my eyes, strain my ears to superhuman, hoping for any small clue, signal, direction.

I walk toward one of the tunnel openings, face the undiluted darkness. The old arms of the tracks seem closed off and stuffier than under the dome, by a hefty factor. Sweat dribbles down the sides of my face, trickles into my ears, fogs up my goggles; I can't even imagine what it's like for Haze in that knit cap and painter's mask. If ever there was a time he'd want to let that shit go, you'd think it'd be now.

I squint into the void. Is this the one? Getting it wrong could be lethal.

I made that mistake before. Split decision. Wrong choice. Devin. Max damage. I need to fix it. I need to know if this is the beginning of the end.

Or the end of it.

The answer comes as a low rumble at first. But as the noise and movement gain momentum, the dimness of the tunnel shrinks in proportion, and suddenly I realize that all that separates me and Haze from an oncoming subway car is a few measly inches of wall space.

“Run!”
I scream. Which is a ridiculous thing to say, if you think about it. No one should ever have to tell you to run if a train is barreling down on you.

Haze and I sprint our asses off as the sound and the heat and the shaking get louder, hotter, nearer. I have never run this hard or this fast in my life; in fact, I've never had to run for my life. Now would be the worst possible moment for a text to buzz through.

I refuse to answer it. It's either Turk, trying to distract me so I get flattened, or the commandos—and if it's them, well, screw their lousy timing and their better-late-than-never—

Hold up.

I got a message earlier that I never looked at. What if that one was something like,
Watch out for the subway car!
and there it is, sitting unread in my back pocket as I get smashed on the abandoned tracks under City Hall?

A sprint or two later, we're back in the atrium and safely on the platform, where I yank the phone out of my back pocket and slide it open.

The world beneath will weep blood.

I look up. The atrium has gotten hot. Melt-my-bones hot.

Sweet Jesus. I'm sweating, Haze is sweating; even the walls are sweating.

The walls. Are sweating.

Not water.

Not condensation.

Blood.

10

The deep blast
of a honking subway train nearly shoots me out of my own skin. I haven't even had time to process the dark red ooze dripping down the walls of the catacombs, but Haze and I spin around, and there, not ten feet away, is a shrunken-down version of a subway car.

And it's waiting. For us.

“What the hell is this?” Haze says. “It said on your app they haven't run trains on these tracks in over a hundred—”

“Just get in.” I push him through the open door of the car and scramble in behind him.

So it wasn't the tunnels—it was never
meant
to be the tunnels. It was the actual subway:
this
is our on-ramp. The mission hasn't even started yet.

Within seconds, we're moving, our pint-sized train car negotiating through the tight-cornered tracks like an amusement-park ride. Ages-old brass chandeliers flicker as we pass by, eerily illuminating the tunnel walls until they're just how I remember the Boneyard to look.

“Yo, Tosh.”

I follow the trajectory of Haze's shaky finger.

The thick humidity that's strong-armed its way into the subway car by now is still dripping in bloodred rivulets down the tiled walls of the station tunnels.

“That's dire, man,” he says, and I feel a stab of guilt. He can't even begin to conceptualize what we're sitting in the middle of.

The air around us is dense, heavy with the smell of wet cement and garbage. A metallic tang leeches off the walls of the subway car, burns my lungs every time I inhale.

My vision goes into soft focus, drifts mothlike through the car. I shouldn't be too pissed at the commandos for not keeping in better communication. Chat windows won't be secure. Texting is the only method they can use, and it's not very convenient. Still, I have to remember, they're getting me where I need to go. I just have to remain vigilant. Turk and his army are clearly lying in wait. Watching. Listening.

Outside the window, the shimmering skyline blinks in and out of view. A cast-off glow of neon-yellow streetlights illuminates my reflection in the glass and then too easily disappears. I feel the void in the center of my chest, the ache of being there one second and gone the next. If I don't fix things, everything I know could blink out of view that way. For good this time.

The train takes a sharp dip, dragging my stomach down with it, and suddenly we're underground again. With sweat-slick fingers, I pop in an earbud so I don't have to hear the screech of the subway tracks. Still, I keep a close eye out the window, hoping for some hint of where we're headed, since no one seems too keen on telling me.

“Tosh?” I hear Haze whisper.

He's pressed so flat against the window it's almost funny—until I turn to see what he's on about.

The bricks of the tunnel zip by us faster and faster, like a scene out of one of those sci-fi movies where the spaceship hits warp speed and the stars turn into blurred lines that shoot out behind it.

“What the—” But before he can finish the thought, he drops off the grid again. Narcoleptic Haze, succumbing to blissful slumber.

I close my eyes too, wishing I could lean my head back against the window and grab a quick nap. Not a good idea, unless I'm willing to sustain a third-degree concussion as the subway car caroms through the winding tunnels.

Sometimes she'd take me with her on her drive-offs. We wouldn't talk. I'd just lay my head against the window and let the vibration of the car soothe me. She liked having the company, I could tell, even though she never said it. I guess by then she was too used to keeping all her thoughts to herself.

I dig into my pocket, fish out the blackbird feather, flip it between my fingers. I left today without knowing where Devin was. I'm not saying it doesn't matter; it matters. But when I finally reach Turk's lair, when I kill that hostage-taking sonofabitch, it'll undo all the mistakes I made, and Devin won't need me to protect him like that anymore. He'll go back to being the emo skateboarding, arm-punching, cheesy-snack-stealing punk he always was, and everything will be exactly the way it should be.

When I close my eyes again, I see the blood schussing through my veins like this subway car, fueled by anger and no small dose of fear.

They told me to save it. They're giving me another chance. I have to get it right this time, even if it kills me.

I pull out my phone just to give my nervous hands something to do, realize I can't check anything—my apps are going haywire, random-flashing the icons on my wall screen. Doesn't that just figure. Nothing's fixed right now; nothing is static. Even time is meaningless now that I'm in the Boneyard; never mind that I can still hear it
tick-tick-ticking
right through my headphones.

The end is near.

The words flash bright neon green above my head.

An unexpected vibration cuts straight through the jarring chaos of the subway. Shocked, I quick pull up the message.

Time means nothing.

“Well, that's helpful,” I say.

Time unused melts into pools of regret.

Swell.

“What ever happened to
The world beneath will weep blood
?” I say out loud. Weep blood, my ass. I guess if you want to get technical, the walls of the station were kind of “bleeding,” but that was just a screen trick, if you ask me. Any moron could see it was condensation making some centuries-old funk run down the tiles. Not blood at all—just vaguely blood
like
.