Chapter 33: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

The windowless, menacing slab of the rationing center loomed over them like a tombstone. In its shadow a flame-gutted building smoked gently; it had been a small office of some sort, possibly where applications were processed. The desks and banks of metal cabinets along the wall were all charred.

They sheltered there, observing.

Delphi was arranged with streets like spokes on a wheel, running back to Alpha Base at the hub. They were very near the center now. Regulars marched past their hideout in columns and black armored vehicles rolled down the broad street, blaring a canned message about a ban on gathering in groups larger than three and a dusk to dawn curfew.

For the better part of the afternoon Lily watched patrols and mapped out patterns. A head-sized hole in the wall gave her a decent angle on an avenue leading to the base.

Aiden had been laboriously unpicking the threads from his nametape, erasing the word one letter at a time. Lily didn’t care why and hadn’t asked, but she did notice when he left off this task to join her at her vantage point on the second floor.

“You were right,” Lily said, without looking at him. “The city’s gone mad.”

“You know we’ve been smuggling guns up from Memphis?”

Lily frowned. “Who’s ‘we’? You and Anya?”

“Nope. Bigger ‘we’.” Aiden winced as a black-coated Operative shot a dissident point-blank in the head. The body crumpled gently sideways and was dragged off the street in a smear of blood before the echoes of the shot died away. “That’s what happened to our contacts, probably.”

Lily had never seen anyone resist before. She hadn’t thought it possible.

Aiden wiped his face on his sleeve, but all he did was move the soot around. “How much longer are we gonna sit here.”

“We could go in at shift change. Form up and just…”

“That’s even worse than your first idea. You have no idea what kind of security countermeasures that place has.”

She couldn’t even make herself feel anger. There was nothing but a dark sourness at the center of her, a foul, heavy thing like a tar pit. “Neither do you.”

“I know a bit,” Aiden said darkly. “I know you’re one biometric scan away from getting your skull aired out, and I think you want that because deep down you know he’s gone.”

Lily clenched and unclenched her jaw, staring out at the street.

“You’re tough, and you’re smart. You could do a lot of good…” Aiden gestured at the base. “Or you could die for a man who doesn’t even know you exist.”

“Don’t forget the third option,” Lily said, after a pause that was much too long. “The one where I win.”

The Operative was staring down the eastern end of the street, body half-turned. They appeared to be listening, but the whispered argument couldn’t possibly have carried those few hundred yards.

“Crying shame,” Aiden said.

But he was easy to ignore. A profound, aching weariness pressed on Lily’s back and shoulders, dragging her down. The Operative felt familiar — something about their carriage and bearing, the keen movements like a bloodhound…

Not him. He had never moved that way. And he would’ve hesitated before pulling the trigger. Whatever they’d done to him, however much they’d hurt him, he would’ve hesitated.

Lily rubbed her knuckles along her sternum, kneading and grinding the bone.

A vehicle pulled around the corner, something large and boxy. An ID number was neatly stenciled on the plain white side of the thing, an alphanumeric sequence. Deliveries from a factory to the rationing center, most likely.

The Operative motioned to the driver to pull aside, diverting the vehicle down the side street toward their vantage point. Regulars jogged over, clutching the straps of their rifles.

Lily would die if she stayed still another minute. They would be outside soon and there was no telling how long the inspection would take, how long she’d be trapped in this wreck with a man she was quickly growing to despise.

The Operative followed the delivery vehicle and the Regulars. Still familiar, still anonymous, face indistinct beneath a black cap. Lily remembered the morning she left with the militia, the brush of his thumb against the back of her neck as he adjusted her coat collar.

“I have to go,” she said.

Three or four things happened at once.

A Regular stepped up to the window and motioned for the driver to roll it down. Aiden crept back down to ground level, presumably to rejoin Anya. Lily crouched, minimizing her profile—

And the world was upended and inverted. Day became night. Sound and heat and light bloomed and then vanished, along with the ground, along with everything.

Lily pushed up on her hands and knees, fighting to breathe. Rubble cascaded off her back. The ground was slick and grimy. Blood. Her blood. She was impaled, bleeding, dying—

No. Her clearing vision registered a curved tunnel wall ahead of her and cracked, mossy tile under her. A thin, dank stream ran between the two platforms, trickling over the rusted tracks.

The Undermarket smelled like death and burning.

A siren wailed off in the city above her, distant and wavering. Gunfire popped and rattled. Chunks of the city were strewn across the ancient rails and everything tasted of smoke.

Lily rose to her knees, groaning, trying to get her wind back. Her hands bled. The sky was a jagged grey canyon above her, crosshatched by the ruins of the admin building. A grey-uniformed arm protruded from the rubble, dangling down.

She closed her eyes against a wash of panic like cold water, then hauled herself up and took stock. Alpha Base was close, maybe half a mile southwest of her position. She would move ahead til the tunnel ended, but without Anya the plan stopped there.

Footsteps crunched in the rubble down-tunnel. Someone coughed, low and throaty.

Lily grasped her knife, flipping her oversized uniform tunic out of the way.

A figure weaved down the tracks, stepping over and around debris. Their clothes were chalky-grey with the dust of pulverized buildings. A square of smoky, thin light fell across her face as she drew closer, and Lily relaxed. Her hand fell away from the hilt.

“Anya,” she sighed, swaying a little.

Anya blinked. “You were not part of my detachment. State your purpose in this sector.”

It was Lily’s turn to be struck mute. She opened her mouth and closed it again, uselessly. Beneath the ash and dust of pulverized concrete a small silver insignia was pinned to Anya’s collar. The Operative’s collar.

“Make your report, Sergeant Davis,” Operative 23 ordered.

No lie was forthcoming. Nothing was. Lily couldn’t take her eye off the little glinting badge, the damning numbers.

Operative 23 reached for her sidearm. Then her duplicate hurtled into the tunnel from above and grabbed her by the throat, momentum carrying them both to the ground.

They saw each other’s faces, and 23 hesitated.

Anya didn’t.

It was quick. A twist, a dry snap, the thunk of skull against ground as Anya dropped her opponent with a derisive grunt and dusted off her hands. Immediately she started stripping the body of its uniform. The dead Operative’s head lolled grotesquely.

More footsteps, above them. A familiar silhouette. Aiden hung and let go, landing heavy, and began smacking dust off his clothes. Blood trickled down the side of his face from a shallow forehead wound but he was infuriatingly alive and whole.

“Fuckin’ truck bomb! We used to call that a Memphis Special.” He noticed the body, and then the face. “Oh. Huh. All right then.”

“Angelina,” Lily said, finding her voice at last. Anya’s hands slipped. She flinched. “I thought that was your name.”

She shook her head and kept working, wrestling her double out of her trousers.

“Hold on,” Aiden said, darkly. “You two know each other? Is that what this is all about?”

“We have a mutual friend.” Lily struggled to keep her voice level. She couldn’t decide what emotion she should attach to the words. Confusion? Blame? Nothing at all? “He looked for you. For years.”

Anya was struggling into the black uniform. It wasn’t quite right; the dead woman was younger, narrower in the shoulders and biceps. She did not look up from the buttons.

“When were you going to tell me,” Lily demanded.

“Forget that, when are you going to tell me,” said Aiden, folding his arms. “Let me in on your fun little secret.”

The ground trembled. A fresh spurt of gunfire rattled through the grey streets. They’d already been too long in one place.

“You could’ve stayed in Dallas and minded your own business,” Lily snapped. “You really want to know? They grew up together, her and my — the man I came to find. She got herself out and left him behind.”

Anya made a swift chopping motion with her hand. Rage sat ugly on her face. She signed in sharp, furious motions, then jerked her chin at Aiden and made a sign that could’ve only been talk.

“She thought this guy was dead,” he translated, grudgingly. “When we met, she figured you were after the man who’d killed him, since you’ve got his knife. Nice, Anya. You never thought to mention that your infamous dead lover was Owen’s duplicate? That’s disgusting, it’s practically in—”

Anya slapped Aiden open-palmed across the face. He staggered, clutching his mouth and nose, cursing faintly.

“You could’ve stayed home,” Lily told him, as he examined his bloody fingers. “Nobody made you come.”

Anya looked like a nightmare in the uniform, but her face…it was grief, there, not anger. She signed something she knew Lily couldn’t understand, a brief and bitter statement that culminated with her hands spread out in supplication. Looking for forgiveness? For what.

“Get me into the base,” Lily said. “That’s all I care about.”

It occurred to Lily that she ought to be afraid.

Death above her. The impregnable heart of the Coalition in front of her. No real plan, no way out, nothing but a memory that faded a little more every time she brought it out into the light — but if she opened the door to fear, then in behind it would slip the other thing. The hope.

She took point as they moved southeast through the tunnel, which saved her from having to look at either of her companions. And she carried the dead 23’s pistol, which helped even more.

All her doubts converged on a single point. Aiden was too convenient, and apart from the matter of his changing accent there was also the uniform. He’d removed the dead man’s name from his breast pocket, an act that Lily’s mind kept circling like a buzzard. She was prepared to kill him.

Anya signaled that she was going to scout ahead, and Lily reluctantly let her advance out of sight. Her new uniform would stop more than just questions if they found themselves with company.

“Let’s entertain the possibility of a door,” Aiden said, sliding up beside her the minute Anya was gone. “You said it would get us into a maintenance area? Maybe the sublevels?”

Lily couldn’t tell if he was genuine. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“They’ve probably got a computer in the sublevels,” he went on, voice low.

Her distrust deepened a shade. “And?”

“And instead of searching the place top to bottom you could find out exactly where your man’s been posted.” His eyes flicked up the tunnel and back. “Or if he’s even alive.”

For a moment Lily could just about touch it: a glowing terminal, an efficient end to her search. Something going right at last…but she would not win if she allowed herself the luxury of trust.

“What would you get out of it,” she asked, aware that her pause had been too long.

Aiden grinned a familiar, guileless grin. “Maybe some good intel to buy our way back into Dallas’ good graces. We are AWOL, after all. Or maybe just the satisfaction of killing for my country.”

Lily couldn’t shake the feeling that this, finally, was the first honest thing he’d ever said to her.

“Guess we’ll see,” she said.

This part of the Undermarket had been sealed up and untouched by anything but the river, which had left its high water mark on the curved walls a good foot above Lily’s head.

No one had ever lived here, and so it had retained some of the trappings of its original purpose. Blue plastic chairs were bolted to the walls beside a floor to ceiling poster of blonde soldiers in strange uniforms. It was water-stained from their chins down. The rivulet between the platforms was a stream now.

Would it really get so high? It hadn’t flooded much in the section where she’d lived, just a foot or two when heavy rains came. Barely enough to splash the platforms.

The tracks ended in a yellow and black striped barricade with a much newer warning sign affixed to it. This one bore the Coalition logo, and beneath the green scum residue it was as clean and white as the city above.

“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Aiden said.

Beyond the barricade was a door.

Anya immediately tried to brute-force it open. Despite centuries of rust there had been an obvious Coalition retrofit; a hand-scanner, and something stenciled on the wall in bold yellow letters.

The wheel lock didn’t budge when Anya applied her considerable strength, so she peeled off her glove and laid her hand on the panel, giving Lily a reassuring look over her shoulder as the lights cycled in a familiar pattern, red-green-red-green.

Red.

“Error. Unknown Biometric Signature.” It was the same cool, robotic voice.

Lily shifted from one foot to the other and back, thinking of the tide. Of how much earth and stone and time still stood in her way. “Why didn’t it work?”

Anya shrugged, and tried again with her left hand. Lights flashed like the beat of a heart: Green. Red. Green. Red.

“Error. Unknown Biometric—”

Lily shouldered Anya out of the way and banged her fists against the thick, cold metal.

“Open up!” Her voice bounced back at her from the deep shadows. “Come on, let us in! We’re stuck out here!”

Nothing. The echoes died away.

“Was there something in the water wherever you grew up,” Aiden said. “Something toxic?”

How thick could this door be? Three inches? Less? Thousands of miles, days upon days, and she was held back from her victory by such an insignificant thing. She drew back her fist to strike again—

Anya caught the punch in the cup of her palm. She shook her head.

Lily’s hands throbbed. Blood roared in her ears. “Get me in. If you ever gave a damn about him, get me inside. Please.”

“All right, ladies,” Aiden interrupted, coughing a little. “Tide’s coming in, and I can’t swim for shit. ‘Scuse.”

He produced a small, flat rectangle of scuffed metal, scratched and battered. He held it confidently against the wall panel.

Anya scoffed, rolling her eyes. Lily’s skin hurt. She wasn’t supposed to be here; she was supposed to be in Seattle with the sun on her face and—

“Scanning.”

The cycle of lights began again: Red. Green. Red.

Green.

A heavy thunk. A sound of grinding gears. Then, inexplicably, with a hiss of escaping air, the door eased open. It had a heavy rubber waterproof seal, ancient and peeling.

“Welcome,—” The rest was unintelligible static.

Lily gripped the hilt of her knife. “What is that.”

“It’s a door,” Aiden said, hauling it open wider. “After you, I insist.”

Even Anya was staring at him, arms folded, blue eyes narrowed to slits.

“Listen,” he sighed.

“I don’t think I want to,” Lily said. “I’m tired of secrets. Lies too. Why don’t you go first.”

Battered rust-speckled lockers lined the walls of the small room on the other side. Through their metal-grilled doors Lily caught sight of slick waterproof material in standard-issue Regular grey.

It was empty. It smelled like plastic and old socks.

“A little anti-climactic,” Aiden said, looking to Anya with a grin that faded somewhat when she didn’t even look back.

Lily felt like she was burning to the ground. “Go find your machine, or do whatever it is you really came here to do. I’m fine from here.”

“If I could just explain,” Aiden began.

“No.” There was another door at the opposite end of the room. It was ajar. “I better never see you again. And Anya —”

She couldn’t hold onto the necessary anger. Not when Anya was looking back at her like an exposed nerve.

“I’ll tell him you lived,” she finished. “If he remembers you, then we’ll come find you. Try not to die.”

Anya shifted as if to go with her anyway, and that might’ve been the final straw. Fortunately her abbreviated forward movement was the only argument, and it died before it was born.

She left them both there in the locker room and did not look back.