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“COME ON.” FRANKLIN Rogers slapped his thighs and stood. “I’ve got things to do, and you people are clogging up my space.”
Rogers circled the table and laid a bone-crushing handshake on me. “Thank you, Joe,” he told me, holding my biceps at arm’s length. “You really made a difference here. Those kids on your crew got more from you than you’ll ever know.”
“I, uh... well...” For the second time that morning, I could think of nothing to say.
“Follow me,” he said with a grin.
Rogers led the way from his office, down the hall to the elevator vestibule. A cluster of people gathered there, centered by Momma Rose, who opened her arms and engulfed me in an outrageous hug.
“You take care of yourself, y’hear,” she ordered. “I don’t want to know about you gettin’ in no trouble. I’ll come after you and jerk a knot in yo’ fool head, boy.”
I breathed in the scent of fresh bread and hyacinth soap and tried to speak past the thickness clogging my throat. “Have to catch me first.”
Momma Rose stepped back and shook a finger at Millie. “You take care o’ dis boy. He don’t look like much, but he got the makin’s to be something special.”
“Well,” Millie said, “you’re at least half right.”
“I—Hey!”
“Don’ listen to her,” Monique said. “We know you ain’t nothing special any way atall.”
“C’mere, you skinny wench.”
I said my goodbyes, from the pencil-thin Monique Bordelon to the economy-sized Mycroft “Bears” Osborne. By the time I was done, my eyes were blurry.
“Is you cryin’?” Monique challenged.
“No,” I sniffed. “I’m allergic to Domino’s perfume, is all. You people try not to electrocute yourselves while I’m gone. I’ll be back to check on your sorry asses, and if I find you all burnt to a crisp, I’ll kill you. Understood?”
Millie, Alex, John, and I piled into the elevator. When the doors closed, Millie slid back a hidden panel under the push button controls, revealing a thumb reader. She touched it, and the mechanism whirred to life, sending the car downward with a lurch.
“Where’re we going?” I rubbed my sleeve across my face. I avoided everyone’s eyes, examining a water stain on the wall.
Alex chuckled like a mad scientist. “Our hidden lair.”
The elevator clunked to a halt, and the doors slid back to reveal a concrete tunnel lit by square ceiling panels every ten meters. A cool, musty smell puffed into my face. Gray and utilitarian, the corridor terminated at a metal door, made tiny by distance.
“Downtown Chicago,” Alex, the history teacher, explained, “is undercut by several levels of tunnels, from the uppermost pedway to the deepest tunnels at more than 100 meters. Parts of the pedway are still in use, if you’re brave enough to venture there, but the levels below that were sealed off some time ago for safety concerns. Flooding was the biggest issue, as some of these tunnels were dug in the 1800s.” He flashed a smile. “We moved in about twenty years ago and did some remodeling.”
Our footsteps echoed along the hall. Millie and Alex led the way, and I kept pace with John’s stride at a two-for-one ratio.
I cut my eyes at the big man. “Tunnel, huh? Who’d’ve guessed?”
John’s cheek showed a spot of color, and he stared straight ahead.
The door had no lock on our side, and Millie heaved it open with a simple lever handle. On the opposite side, someone had welded brackets for doorjamb braces, like the ones on old-timey wooden forts. Once we were through and the door closed, John slotted two thick metal bars into the brackets, one top, one bottom, effectively locking the door. Getting through it would take an explosive device or a laser welding torch.
“What,” I teased, “you don’t let Franklin come visit?”
“Sure. As long as he calls ahead,” Millie told me.
The tunnel we were in now was considerably older than the one leading to the elevator. We stood on a narrow walkway, surrounded by dank concrete walls, grainy and blackened with age, overhanging a trench that held rusted iron rails laid over rotting ties. Bare bulbs hung from jerry-rigged sockets, spaced far enough apart to give the tunnel that dark, scary-movie, rats-up-your-leg feeling. Someone had strung exposed Romex in the not-too-distant past to provide electricity for the bulbs. The work resembled a Saturday morning kid’s project. A smell of wet mustiness overlaid everything.
“We’re in a subway?”
“Very astute, Joe,” Millie said with a wink. “I see you’ve lost none of your keen observational skills.”
“An abandoned section of the CTA’s underground rail system,” Alex explained. “We’re borrowing it for an access tunnel.”
“This way.” Millie marched off, and I followed, with Alex and John behind me in single file. I hugged the wall to my right. No way in hell I wanted to fall into the rail bed. It was dark down there, with no easy way back up, and doubtless inhabited by flesh-eating rats. Rodents of Unusual Size, indeed.
We hiked without talking for what I estimated to be about eight or ten long city blocks, until we stopped at another metal door, as featureless as three others we’d passed. Millie tugged the handle, and it opened without a squeak. She held it long enough for me to catch the edge, then passed through into a stairwell without waiting. I trailed after her blond mop as she bounced down the stairs—down being the only direction available.
“This looks new,” I commented.
“It is,” Alex said from behind me. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the noise of all four of us clanging down the metal treads. “We cut the shaft about ten years ago and replaced the original ladder with stairs after that.”
“Where’s it go?” I yelled back.
“Next level down is the freight tunnels.”
“Jesus, how many freaking tunnels are there?” I muttered.
“What’s that?”
We rounded the final flight and Millie waited at the bottom, holding yet another steel door open. I threw a glance back at Alex and raised my voice. “Nothing. Just wondering if we’re gonna see any minor demons, or, you know, guys with pitchforks—” I passed Millie and entered the freight tunnel and stumbled smack into a wall of muscle with a tactical weapon aimed at my right eyeball. “Oh, shit!”
“Not a pitchfork,” Millie said. “An LM44 automatic rifle with All-Use optics, capable of firing over 40 rounds of self-propelled ammunition in under two seconds.” She grinned when I burned her with my fiercest scowl. “Joe, meet Sergeant Patrick.”
“Uh,” I said. “Hi?”
The rifle’s muzzle held rock-steady, and sweat broke out on my forehead.
Should I let him sniff my hand?
After a suspended heartbeat or two, Patrick snapped his weapon back to port arms—or whatever they call it when they hold their rifle crosswise—and nodded to me. A mix of charcoal gray and black, his camouflage fatigues blended into the dark background. However, his heroic jaw and glacial eyes did not. He tracked those diamond-chip blue eyes to Millie, and they lost a fraction of their chill. “Miss MacCauley. John, Alex. Cams picked you up on the way down. Wasn’t sure about this one.”
Meaning me.
“Joe’s with us now.”
Patrick failed to jump with glee. “Everyone’s ready,” he droned.
“Good,” Millie grunted and led the way again, the shortest among us obviously in charge.
There was no walkway in this tunnel; we traveled at grade level. Although all the rails were gone, impressions cut in the floor showed where they once lay. I stayed in the middle, between two of the grooves. Water dripped from the ceiling and seeped from the walls to collect in trickles, which flowed along each side, as the middle of the floor was slightly humped. The stagnant air had an earthy, wet smell and was cool enough to make me glad of my jacket.
Like a nice, chilly grave, whispered the nasty voice in my mind.
Stop it, Nasty Voice. I hate you.
Alex appeared beside me. “These tunnels flooded back in 1992. One of the reasons we have them to ourselves these days. The entrances were sealed off back then due to the danger, and most people forgot about them.” He shrugged. “We pumped them out, but still get some seepage from somewhere, not really sure where.”
“Oh, good. And me without my swim trunks. Where the hell are we, anyway?”
“Under Orleans Street, somewhere near Illinois, I’d imagine.”
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “And is that the only entrance?” If it was, Ramirez would pay hell getting his troops through that hole, after fighting his way through Cabrini-Green to get there. So it wouldn’t matter what I told him.
“Oh, hell no. These tunnels go all over the city. There’s a dozen entrances that we use, all of them hidden. Probably a hundred more sealed, or locked.”
“So the feds could cut in pretty much anywhere.”
He inclined his head. “I suppose so. If they knew where we were.”
Great. Peachy.
“And so what’s, uh”—I made air quotes—“the outing thing we’re doing? Spelunking? ’Cause I gotta tell you, I didn’t realize till this very minute I’m, like, claustrophobic.”
“Hah! No, the mission’s above ground, but I better wait for Millie to brief you in.”
“And when will that happen?”
“About... now.” Alex gestured ahead, and I realized Millie had disappeared through an opening in the tunnel wall. Brighter light glowed from inside, and when she went in, men’s voices rose in greeting. John and Patrick halted behind us. “Come on,” Alex urged. “Let’s go see the boys with toys.”
“Toys, huh?” Somehow, I didn’t think he meant Legos.
I drew a deep breath, let it out...
. . . and nearly gagged on the wall of testosterone in the room.
Millie stood at the far end, studying a row of overhead photographs tacked to the wall, close-up pictures of some blocky buildings. The pictures were heavily pixilated, indicating they’d been enlarged from a very distant shot, like a satellite. Between me and her, a battered conference table of circa 1980 vintage was covered in maps and cups and pencils and crap. Eight barbarians from the steppes of Cimmeria—mighty thews, festooned with weapons, urban camo, and badass—ringed the table.
“Yikes,” I blurted. “Where’s Wonder Woman?”
Only silence and a palpable sense of imminent destruction greeted me. They entirely missed my witty reference to the Justice League. Maybe Millie was right about the sorry state of modern education; it appeared none of them had studied the classics.
Patrick brushed past me and joined his clones at the table, his LM44 auto-whatever slung over his shoulder. John flanked me on my left, and I considered using the big man as a human shield. These guys made even Godzilla seem as meek as a puppy in a bowl of marshmallows. Where were they when Ramirez had me against the wall?
“Joe,” Millie said, “meet 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment, United States Marine Corps.”
“The Marine Corps? I thought they were—”
“Disbanded in 2032?” Millie said. “Officially, that’s true. The US government, in a cost-savings measure, gutted the Marine Corps and turned their mission over to the remaining troops of the Army. Some... felt that wasn’t a prudent decision.”
“Wow. A secret army in a secret lair. This gets better and better.”
“We only have one platoon here at the moment; the remainder got delayed in travel.” Millie pointed out each man in turn and said their names, “Privates Smith, Lilyhorn, Benson, Lance Corporal Jackson, Corporal Appier, Privates Perlmutter, Charles, Wix, and you’ve met Staff Sergeant Patrick. Marines, meet Joe. He’s the guy I told you about, who saved our butts at the Drake and wiped out an armed security guard.”
“I... didn’t do that much,” I mumbled. I refrained from adding, By hitting him in the back with a door and whacking him with a fire extinguisher. The soldiers in the room oozed skepticism and suspicion like heat waves from hot tar, so maybe less confession would be better. “Could’ve used you guys there, that’s for sure.”
“The marines weren’t dispatched until it became obvious Homeland was in a shoot-first mode,” Alex explained. “Typically, they remain on bases in—”
Patrick cleared his throat, stabbing Alex with dagger eyes.
“—in undisclosed locations,” the history teacher continued without a beat.
“Anyway,” Millie resumed, “our Marine detachment will assist with this mission.”
“Which is?”
“Have a seat, Joe.” Millie waited until the three of us by the door found chairs at the now-crowded table. I squeezed in between two marines, Wix on one side and Lance-something on the other. Our blond pixie leader remained standing and produced the vid player from a dress pocket. “This is the mission.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“The building you see here”—she pointed to the blown-up photo behind her—“is a server farm in Schaumberg, roughly fifty kilometers away. It is operated by Homeland, so it exists outside the NSA’s Vigilance system.”
She paused to let that sink in. My mouth opened and closed. Reopened. “You mean... no filtering of the content?”
“Exactly. Anything we post from there goes out raw and unedited. The government can’t stop it.” Millie broke out in a sunny smile that turned her into a teenager. She held up the flat, palm-sized box. “We plan to infiltrate this facility, take over a server, and publish this video showing the massacre of peaceful citizens. The truth will finally reach the people.” She paused, clearly pleased with how earth-shattering she found the idea.
“So,” I said.
“What do you mean, ‘so’?”
“John Q. Citizen watches a vid of Homeland killing innocent civilians. What happens then? Somehow I don’t see, first of all, that a ton of people are going to believe it’s real, or B, that it’ll generate this huge tidal wave of change.” I hated seeing Millie’s smile disappear, but her cockamamie idea had no legs to stand on.
An impish smile played at the corners of her mouth. A cat who ate the cream and blamed it on the dog. “But that’s not the only video.”
Ah-fucking-hah. Brain, meet Joe. It wasn’t hard for me to look mystified—it’s sort of my default expression—so I schooled my face to remain dumb and confused. Ramirez wanted a video file recovered, one he assumed the CoL were planning to manually duplicate. Only, they had a different plan, and it involved unblocked servers and direct Internet access.
Holy Mother of the Web. Ramirez would give birth to live fuzzy kittens when he found out. What would he do to Ding and the girls? Were they doomed to continue their miserable half-life without control of their own bodies? And Chelle? Was she gone for good, or did the short prick from Homeland really mean something when he said her situation might be temporary?
Millie had continued speaking while my mind ran down a dozen narrow, twisty alleys. I blinked and caught up with what she was saying.
“. . . recorded by an operative inside the president’s cabinet, who obtained this footage during a closed-door session last year—”
“Hold it.” I threw up a hand. “The United States president?”
“Yes, Joe,” Alex intoned, serious as an actuarial table. He lifted his chin to Millie. “It would be best if you just played the recording. Let Joe see for himself.”
The blond woman’s lips crimped in a determined line. She touched the vid player and stepped back as an image popped up on the table. It showed a meeting room with President Ross Johnson and a bunch of serious people I didn’t recognize gathered around it. No, take that back—the VP lounged a few chairs to Johnson’s left. He looked half asleep. The camera was positioned at head height to a tall man, showing the table from one corner. We could only see the backs of those seated close to the camera, and the ones at the far end were a little fuzzy. Closed captions displayed the speakers’ names and what they said. However, Millie touched the player, and the volume rose so we could hear their actual voices.
President Johnson: Okay, people, let’s keep moving. I want to be driving a Titlest before the end of the day. Marciela, you’re up.
Health and Human Services Secretary Zapata: For my first item, the Gen VI B-Mod packs have been distributed to all clinics and doctor’s offices across the nation. Beginning in—
President Johnson: Remind me?
Zapata: The new B-Mods to prevent obesity, smoking, and to curb aggression, Mr. President. We found a sixty-eight percent reduction in negative social behavior among the test group, and the decision was made—
President Johnson: Gotcha. Continue.
Zapata: Ah, beginning in this upcoming school year, all children will receive the B-Mod dosages with their Dip-Tet inoculations. We predict coverage of over ninety-seven percent of all school-age children.
Education Secretary Contreras: Amazing. In ten years or less, we could practically wipe out smoking and heart disease. With a few little nanobots.
Zapata: Yes, ah...
President Johnson: Yvette? You have the legal side of this locked down? Don’t give me chapter and verse, just a yes or no answer.
Attorney General Lemieux: Um... yes.
President Johnson: Good. Marciela, anything else?
Zapata: One more thing, Mr. President. Phase Two of the Elderly Relief and Reclamation Plan is prepared for your signature. That’s the one where all federally funded clinics and hospitals will begin offering incentives to the terminal and elderly to accept early Revivant status. This will significantly reduce the strain on our health care infrastructure by removing those with the highest medical expenses from the system. Estimates vary on the savings—
“Turn it off,” I choked out.
Millie touched a button, and the playback disappeared. “Are you sure, Joe? There’s another twenty minutes of briefing here.”
“Yes,” Alex chimed in with a sardonic grin, “you shouldn’t miss the part where they intend to replace all the military and law enforcement paramilitary troops with Revivants. It’s a great cost-saving—”
“Stop,” I told him. “Enough already.”
Stale sweat and burnt coffee scented the room. My eyes locked with Millie’s for a hundred years during the next few seconds. For some reason, she wanted either my approval or agreement. Why? Why would she give a damn what I thought? It sounded to me like the feds had all the bases covered. Best thing to do would be to find a hole (or a tunnel) and hide out until the shock waves passed. What could the fourteen of us accomplish?
I said, “Do you really think this little vid is going to—what?—ignite folks to... to overthrow the government?”
Alex cleared his throat. “Some of us believe there is a sleeping giant in the American populace”—he indicated Millie with a tilt of his head—“who will wake up to their own enslavement once sufficient evidence of the chains is brought forth. Others argue that it’s too late for incremental change; that nipping away at some rotten branches will not solve the problem, which has grown too big, too complex, and too protected for uprooting. And yet a third position”—he touched his own chest with a thumb—“believe Americans are so unenlightened, so uncaring, and so self-absorbed that nothing we say or do will precipitate change. We must simply hunker down and wait for the inevitable implosion. Once that happens, the rotted tree of liberty burns to the ground. We arise from the ashes and rebuild.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” I tapped a riff on the table. “Where do we hunker? And when’s lunch?”
“Joe.” Millie pinned me with a sad puppy look. “Do you know how many people will die if we allow the system to ‘implode’ as Alex suggests?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “Millions, Joe. Millions and millions. Think about it. Federal law enforcement disappears. Welfare, veterans’ benefits, and healthcare go belly-up without money. Over two-thirds of the people in this country receive some form of government assistance. What happens when that goes away?”
“Melodramatic much?”
“Joe, cities will burn.” She ignored me; I should be used to it. “Local law enforcement won’t be able to stem the riots on their own, not without the National Guard. What happens if our foreign enemies overcome their own internal issues and invade in force? The Chinese have invested heavily in this country. There’re rumors some of our own leadership have made plans to defect there in the event of a total collapse. How hard is it to imagine a few million Chinese troops being dispatched to help ‘keep order’ or ‘protect their assets’? You think our current military, unpaid, unfunded, and without leadership could stop them?” She ran out of steam, but not fire. The propane flame in her eyes burned as bright blue as ever. “How can we stand by and let that happen without trying?”
The marines shifted and shuffled but remained tight-lipped. Alex stared at the table, spinning a pencil in circles, while John’s gaze promised he’d charge hell with nothing but warm piss and a blanket if Millie told him to. Millie straightened. “I don’t know what releasing the video will accomplish. But I think the American people deserve to know the government plans to inject nanos into their kids and turn Grandma into a Revivant as a cost-saving measure.”
And exactly what difference would that knowledge make? The feds held all the cards—all the troops, all the drones, all the advanced weaponry, artillery... And with Revivants for troops, none of the conscience of the American soldier. The concept of revolution was as outdated as the black-powder musket.
“Well,” I heard myself saying, “should be a walk in the park. Break into a secure government facility, hold it long enough to upload a video, and save the world. I’ll get my cape, and we’ll get started.”