The Unseen (3 page)

THE NEXT DAY LUCAS MADE HIS WAY TO THE BLUE BELL CAFé FOR HIS early morning dishwashing shift.

The Blue Bell was an ancient cube of stucco, weathered gray by decades of grime. Just down the street, a new strip mall was rising, a nod at gentrification. But here, on the shady side of the street, the Blue Bell refused to give up its many ghosts.

He put a hand on the side of the Hobart. Room temperature; no way Briggs had run it in the last couple hours.

“Did it to you again, huh?”

Lucas recognized Sarea's voice and turned around. She was smiling, as usual, and her eyes shimmered. Lucas thought again of the photo he'd lifted from Noel's desk, and realized he was drawn to the photo because that look on Noel's face—that look of absolute joy—was much like the look Sarea always had on her face. He blushed a bit at this thought.

“Yeah, I guess,” he offered.

“Should at least ask you to kiss him first, before he goes and does that.”

Lucas smiled. “I could probably live without a kiss from Briggs.”

“We all could.” She turned and was gone.

Sarea was like that; one moment, she was in the room with you, carrying on a conversation. Then, without warning, she was gone.

An hour later, she might be back, picking up where she'd left off. For Sarea, life was one long conversation with several pauses.

Lucas, smiling, turned on the hot water and started rinsing dishes.

HE DID A DOUBLE SHIFT, AND SAREA DOUBLED OVER WITH HIM. SHE EVEN spent an hour helping him load dishes after the late dinner rush.

When they punched the clock and left the café, twilight was spreading its fingers over the city; purple light burnished the bright windows of the strip mall down the street.

Outside the back door, Sarea took out her pack of cigarettes and pointed them at him. He didn't smoke, but he always took one when Sarea offered. It was a familiar ritual, and it kept her around for a few minutes, talking to him.

Sarea put a flame to both their cigarettes, then leaned her head back against the stucco wall of the café, blew a cloud of smoke from the side of her mouth while she eyed him.

Lucas looked down, uncomfortable with the attention.

“You ain't much of a talker, Lucas.”

He shrugged, and she laughed at that. He wasn't sure why.

She took another drag on her smoke. “Where you from, anyway?”

He knew a shrug wasn't going to help him here. He also knew he couldn't answer the question, because he had no idea where he was from, unless you counted an orphanage. “Long story,” he tried.

“Yeah,” she said. “And you don't do long stories.”

She put one of her sneakered feet up against the wall behind her, picked a fleck of tobacco off her tongue. “So where do you live, at least?”

“Staying in a place over by Howard University.”

Another laugh.

“What?” he asked.

“Howard U-ni-ver-si-ty. How's a white boy like you end up in the District, working for cash under the counter at the Blue Bell, and staying at a place filled with black folks?”

He puffed on his own cigarette, looking down at the ground. “You mean I'm not black?” he asked.

That made her laugh again. It felt good to make her laugh.

She dropped her cigarette, crushed it with her foot. “Guess that's as much as I'm gonna get from you, huh?”

He shrugged again.

“It's okay,” she said. “Mysterious is always more interesting.”

She turned and walked up the alley, and Lucas watched her figure disappear into the haze of twilight.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, HE WAS HOME. HE'D TOLD SAREA HE WAS STAYING in a place near Howard University. That was true enough, in a way, but it wasn't really near the university as such.

It was inside it.

Specifically, he was currently staying inside one of the underground tunnels attached to the steam plant. He'd been here a couple weeks now, and he was comfortable hanging around for at least another two weeks before moving on. He'd been scouting an abandoned floor in an old office building several blocks away, and it seemed like a logical next step.

For now, though, he had his own space down here, below the pipes that occasionally clinked, occasionally roared as heated air moved through them. The sounds were comforting to him, more comforting than the utter silence he'd experienced in some other spaces.

He moved his electric candle—a miniflashlight with a removable top that became a base—and sifted through his backpack. He found the photo of Noel, the dark-haired office worker. She had her tragic history, which meant Lucas had his magic hopes she would turn out to be a truly interesting dweller.

He fingered the frame of the photo, looking at the bright, familiar smiles of Noel and her children.

Genuine smiles.

At least he had this.

He crawled to a space near the head of his sleeping bag and placed the photo among all the others; he had arranged more than two dozen of them in a deliberate, almost geometric pattern. Noel's picture fit the overall mosaic well.

Of course, his minishrine didn't hold just photos. There were other mementos that had spoken to him as well. Jewelry, notes, children's artwork, a purple scarf. They were all here, these totems of Happy Places. And they were here to comfort him. To let him know Happy Places did, in fact, exist.

He turned off the electric candle and crawled into his sleeping bag, letting the sound of air hissing through the pipes above lull him to sleep.

DEEP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, A SCRAPING SOUND AWOKE HIM. A scuffling. He lay awake for a few minutes, remaining absolutely still, listening to the sound and establishing the pattern in his mind.

It wasn't one of the pipes; he'd memorized their various sounds over the past few weeks. Rats? No. Plenty of them down here, to be sure, but he could recognize their movement by the scuttle of their claws. Nor was it a mechanical sound. It was, he guessed, another person. Dragging something, maybe.

Seccies? No, it wouldn't be security guards at this time of night, certainly not underground like this. And if it were, he'd hear more sounds; seccies weren't exactly light on their feet, in his experience. This scraping was slow, deliberate.

Already he had an idea what it might be, but he thought he should investigate, make sure it didn't get too close to his home base.

No one knew where he was, and he wanted it to stay that way. He had, after all, an altar of wondrous mementos to protect; the thought of anyone else touching that perfect photo of Noel and her children, for instance, made him sick.

He felt with his fingers, finding where he'd left his electric candle, and detached the base to screw the head back in place. Now he had a flashlight, but he didn't turn it on. No need yet.

Lucas crept down the tunnel toward the steam plant, the apex of the underground system beneath the university. Like so many other college campuses, the university had been built on top of a network of these tunnels, which carried heat from the central plant to the various dorms and buildings through pipes belowground.

He took several steps, paused at the wall several yards from his home base, listened again for the sound. It was closer.

He felt the pipe above him, then put his foot against the adjacent wall and boosted himself up, scrambling so he was astride the giant pipe. Quickly he crawled along its length, sliding through the opening in the barrier wall while he stayed on top. There was very little room above the pipe at the wall, but Lucas fit through it easily; he was able to sneak into tight spaces few other people would dare try.

A few minutes later he stood inside the main plant itself, next to the boiler, which radiated pipes in all directions like a giant, mechanical octopus. Steam hissed in the heavy air, and the whole room smelled like rust. Rats scratched at the floor in dark corners. He began making his way around the boiler, pausing to put his hand on each pipe as he listened.

At the fourth pipe he felt a vibration, followed by the familiar scuffling.

He hoisted himself to the top of this pipe and began to follow it away from the boiler, past the barrier wall and beyond. Ahead, the steady scuffling continued with slight pauses in between. Still Lucas refused to use his light; he knew, soon enough, he'd see another light to guide him.

A few minutes later, he saw what he was expecting: the light of a miner's helmet, obviously attached to someone who was inching along the pipe. He couldn't quite make out the form in the darkness, but he was sure he knew what he was looking at now.

An infiltrator. A creeper. Someone who loved to explore the hidden spaces behind KEEP OUT AND AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY signs.

He lay still for a few minutes, watching the other figure struggle. Move-pause-scuffle . . . repeat. Every thirty seconds or so, the figure stopped to sweep the light across the underground tunnel. A few times, Lucas saw the flash of a digital camera.

So what did this one like to call himself? Lucas had run into them inside buildings, drains, sewer systems. The more highbrowed bunch liked to call themselves infiltrators. Others preferred urban explorers or hackers. Some identified themselves by the kind of areas they preferred to explore: drainers, tunnelers, steamers. For slang, they all answered to the term
creepers
.

Usually they were teens or twentysomethings, chasing a few thrills to see if they could break into unauthorized areas or explore the unexplored. Some liked to “sign in”—infiltrate spaces and leave their own unique tags or markings as bits of communication with other creepers. Others, again usually the more highbrow among them, frowned on leaving any trace of themselves.

The question was, should he let this one know he was here? He felt a certain kinship, he supposed, with these creepers—he was, after all, something of a creeper himself—but he didn't like too much contact with unknowns. Not that the thought paralyzed him with fear or anything; in fact, he was rather comfortable communicating with others.

He just didn't enjoy it.

Washing dishes, sharing a smoke with Sarea, okay. Beyond that, though . . . just give him a dark hole he could crawl into.

Lucas sighed. He supposed he could just return to his space, lie awake for a few hours while he listened to this kid fumble about like a rhino on a tightrope. Or he could help the kid out, get him inside the central utilities building, let him take a few photos, and send him on his way.

So be it.

Lucas switched on his flashlight. “Need some help?” he asked as he shined the flashlight in the kid's eyes. He smiled. Cruel, yes, but he couldn't help himself. This kid had pulled him out of a pleasant night's sleep, after all.

He was surprised to see it wasn't really a kid. It was a guy in his thirties with a few extra pounds packed on his frame. Odd. The usual infiltration crowd tended to be thin, wiry, pasty-skinned.

The guy, to his credit, only had that doe-in-the-headlights look for a few seconds. It disappeared when he lost his balance and tumbled from the pipe, hitting the concrete floor four feet below.

“Oh . . . hey. You okay?” Lucas found him with his flashlight beam again, now sitting up on the floor's concrete surface. He turned the beam of his own light Lucas's way, and Lucas stayed immobile.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” the guy answered. “Might need a new set of underwear, but I'm okay.”

“Sorry.”

“Didn't know anyone else was poppin' this space.”

Lucas slid down from the pipe and landed on the floor lightly, then walked to the guy. “Where'd you find out about it?” he asked, helping the guy to his feet.

“Infiltration.org. Steam tunnels aren't really my thing—I'm more into buildings. But . . . you know. Live a little.” The guy took off a glove and held out his hand. “I'm Donavan,” he said.

Lucas took the hand and shook it. He didn't like to give out his real name. “Call me Humpty,” he said.

“Humpty. Yeah, make fun of me falling, why don'tcha?” Donavan patted concrete dust from his clothes.

The name had nothing to do with Donavan's fall, but there was no harm in letting him think that.

Donavan looked back into the beam from Lucas's flashlight again. “You aren't gonna tell anyone about that fall, are you? Post it online or anything, I mean?”

“Nah. Everyone craters once in a while.”

Lucas himself never fell. But he wanted Donavan to forget about it. He changed the subject.

“You got a barrier wall up here a couple hundred yards,” he said, pointing his flashlight behind him. “Kind of a tight squeeze around the pipe to get into the CUB. But I can get you in through a back door.” He threw in a few bits of infiltration lingo for Donavan; they always liked to run into kindred spirits who spoke their language.

“Huh? Nah, forget it. Like I said, I'm not much of a steamer. Don't know what I'm doin' here, anyway.”

“You want some pictures of the CUB?”

Donavan squinted into Lucas's flashlight beam, his pupils glowing red. “You'd do that?”

“I'd do that.” Mainly because Lucas knew if he got Donavan some pictures, it would be marked off the guy's list; he wouldn't talk himself into coming back later, and he'd move on to his next target. These infiltration types always had new targets.

“Okay, then. You got a deal.” Donavan handed him his camera, then shoved his thumb back over his shoulder. “You don't mind if I get a head start, do you? I pretty much suck at this balancing-on-apipe thing.”

“You don't really have to stay on the pipe. You could have walked this whole corridor until you got to the barrier wall.”

“So I just wasted forty-five minutes.”

“Call it a learning experience.”

“Well then. Since this is a learning experience, maybe I should just follow you to the barrier wall, see how you get by?”

“Suit yourself.” Lucas turned and walked the two hundred yards to the wall, with Donavan close behind. At the wall, he reached for the pipe overhead, then wedged his foot against the wall and scrambled up as he'd done before.