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Outside The Opera House the tension was high, with gunshots being exchanged just outside the door. Summer remained low and out of the way until the fighting had moved farther away. When the street was clear, she entered the manhole into the underground network. In the dark and damp tunnel, she listened carefully to find the hum that would guide her in the right direction. She knew she wasn’t far from The Opera House Station, and she knew the network like the back of her hand. She was just slightly disoriented.
The metropolitan subway network had been abandoned after the building of the MegLev systems—which used different infrastructure—and after the tramcars system had been established above ground. While the access to service stations had been closed off and prohibited, it wasn’t long before illicit passageways provided access to the underground. The space was then populated by the homeless, fugitives, and those searching for a place to do their sketchy business. Initially, the mayor had attempted to closedown the underground and prevent a community from establishing itself. In the early years, there had been regular raiding by the police. Other times, the tunnels were filled with stink bombs. But this only made the problematic citizens spill out into the streets. People preferred them out of sight. Under pressure from business owners, the mayor agreed that it was best to leave them unbothered. They did no harm when left alone.
The underground had garnered a bad reputation and was considered a lawless space, where only the fittest survived. The people above feared it. Summer, who had grown up down there, never thought it was as bad as what people made it out to be. In her experience, if you didn’t mess with the wrong people, there wasn’t anything to worry about. Sure, the occasional fight over some ridiculous misunderstanding happened now and then, but otherwise things were quite harmonious. There were even some good people. One thing Summer quickly realized was that they were real down there, not like the phoney business people who strutted their stuff above.
Summer arrived at the station that was once called The Opera House Station. The body odor permeated the place. It was bad, but not as bad as Summer remembered it. The platforms on either side of the tracks were subdivided into individual living spaces, separated with broken-down displays and scrap metal and covered in patchwork of cloth. It was unusually quiet. Most people were gone. She could hear one man snoring and a couple whispering to each other in a corner.
She hurried along the track’s edge to the Convention Center Station, where she knew people who could help find another secure location.
“Summer, is that you?” At first Summer didn’t recognize the boy who called her name. Freddy was a year younger than her. They had spent a good part of their childhood exploring the network together. He wasn’t the brightest boy, but he knew his way around the city like no one else. Freddy was dressed all spiffy, in a long coat and fancy shoes, and with a mismatched melon hat to top it all off. An upgrade from the scruffy and dirty look she had last seen him with.
He approached her, clearly happy to see her.
“Where is everyone?” she asked. “They all enter the secure locations?”
“Most of them have gone inside,” he said. “The others are scavenging the empty buildings. It’s really an open house out there.”
“And a bit dangerous,” she said.
“Nah,” he said, dismissing her comment. “They busy shooting each other. They are not interested in us low lives.” He examined her head to toe before adding, “You coming back, Summer? I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, Freddy,” she said. “But I told you already, I was done living in this place.”
“I was hoping maybe you’d changed your mind, you know, you finally realized it wasn’t so bad down here after all.”
“No, it isn’t so bad down here, you’re right, Freddy,” she said, seeing his shoulders fall in disappointment. “There’s some good down here. I just want something different.”
“So, you’re going inside like the others, are you?” he said.
“Yeah, I have a friend that I’m going to meet.”
“A boyfriend...” he said, giggling like a young boy would.
“You’re not going in?”
“Nah, Summer,” he said. “I got all I need down here. With all that’s going down, it’s like a golden age for the underground. Look at all the treasure I already got,” he said, opening his coat to reveal the interior lined up with rows upon rows of watches. Nothing too fancy, but he was proud of them.
“You sure will know the time with all those.”
“I won’t miss a single second,” he said.
Summer laughed. “Where you get them?”
“A little all over,” he said. “The Central Library, beneath the old scotch distillery, The Opera House...”
The places he was naming were known secure locations. That’s when she understood that his treasures had been taken from the piles of clothes left behind.
“I need to get to the nearest location,” said Summer. “Where should I go?”
Freddy was shaking his head.
“What is it, Freddy?” she asked.
“They’re all full, except The Opera House—”
“No, that ones full too now.”
“There is only the old port station,” said Freddy. “Was there several hours ago. I saw no one on the site.”
The old port station was across town from where they were at. It was several hours walk, and she couldn’t risk taking that long to get there. It might fill up like the other places if she didn’t hurry.
“Is the subway still running?” she asked.
“I thought you never wanted to see him again,” he said.
“I don’t,” she said. “But I don’t have a choice. Is he running the subway?”
“He never stops,” Freddy said. He opens his coat and looks at one of his many watches. “He will be at the station in ten minutes.”
The subway wagon arrived on the exact minute it was scheduled to arrive. It wasn’t the type of subway wagon that had circulated in the underground before it was shut down. The types that resembled trains and that had carried business people to and from work everyday. Those wagons had long been disassembled for scrap parts. The wagon created by some homeless genius was closer to a cart than a train. The flat open platform was built on old, rusted pipes with a mismatch of seats (taken from the trash above) bolted to it—nine seats in total. The propulsion was a leg powered by a pumping mechanism, activated from the person sitting on the driver’s seat upfront. When the subway cart arrived at the Convention Center station, no one was on it except the driver—Summer’s dad.
They stared at each other in silence, not wanting to be the first to speak.
“I better go, now,” said Freddy, uncomfortable from the tension lingering between the father and daughter. “It was good seeing you.”
“We only stop here a minute,” said Summer’s father. “Are you getting on?”
“I need to get to the old port,” she said, expecting him to be angry.
“Well get on, then,” he said.
“You want me to pump for a while?” she offered, as it was common courtesy for passengers to give the driver a break and pump between stations.
“Nah, hasn’t been very difficult, I’ve been travelling empty all day,” he said, offering a timid smile. “If I can ask you to remain in the back, I wouldn’t want you to try that crazy shit on me again.”
The cart left the station.
Squeal, clunk, clank.
The squealing and clunking of the mechanism did not allow them to talk while it was in movement. Summer preferred it that way. She was nervous to see him again. It was the first time since the accident. She expected him to be angry, but he acted as if nothing had happened between them.
Behind the driver’s seat, her father had refreshed the image of her mother, with the MISSING label in big block lettering above it. He changed it regularly, to make sure the image was clear and crisp. This was his obsession that he refused to let go and that was driving Summer crazy. Endlessly crisscrossing the underground network, expecting to one day find her, or, at the very least, to find someone who could explain what had happened to her.
She wanted her mother back, too. But she couldn’t remain in her father’s sick inertia. It was driving her mad. She had wanted him to stop, to move on with his life. To become normal again.
Summer regretted lying to Catch. She hadn’t been able to tell him what had really happened. But how could she be honest with him if she couldn’t be honest with herself? She hadn’t been pushed in front of the tramcar by an ex-boyfriend. She had made that up. She had thrown herself in front of the subway cart that her dad was driving. Luckily for Summer, it wasn’t the first suicide attempt her father had encountered. He had stopped the cart before injuring her too badly. She knew he would. She didn’t want to die, just make her father realize that his obsession was killing her.
“This is it. Old Port Station,” her dad said, turning back to look at her. She noticed the tear marks glistening on his cheeks.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, dad,” she said.
“You didn’t,” he said. “We are all suffering, Summer. We all make mistakes.”
“I loved her, too, Dad,” Summer said. “It’s not that—”
“I never doubted that,” he said. “You must live your life, Summer. She would have wanted you to make the most of it. But I need this. It’s all that’s keeping me going.”
There was a moment of silence between them.
“I met a boy,” Summer said.
“He’s a lucky boy,” he said, “you’re a lovely girl to be with.”
“You’d like him, dad.”
“You’re not going to ask me if I want to go into the Virt?” he asked her.
“I know that’s not what you want,” she said.
“You’re right, I don’t want that. I’ve got everything I need here,” he said, looking at his watch. “It’s time to leave the station.”
She understood that he survived on hope, and she no longer desired to take that away from him.
“Love you, Dad,” she said.
Squeal, clunk, clank.
The cart left the station.
––––––––
The port was a series of large yards with stacks of shipping containers and cranes to unload them from the ships. The access to the area was restricted, but several openings had been cut in the wired fence, and the surveillance cameras smashed off the poles. The guards had evacuated the premises—or had entered The Virt.
She needed to find the main docking ramp. Not an easy task considering the vastness of the area the port covered. But it didn’t take her long to find others that didn’t belong there. She hurried over to reach them.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you looking for the main docking ramp?”
“Found it already,” a woman said, with a defeated look about her. “It’s blocked. Three men sent by the president to prevent us from entering.”
“There is no way around them?”
“They’re not messing around,” she said, shaking her head. “They already shot down two young men who tried. It’s wrong, you know, they only wanted a better life. They were killed for doing nothin’ wrong.”
Summer’s heart sank in disappointment. She didn't want to be apart from Catch for too long, or for him to worry about her. She needed somewhere to get inside the Virt and reunite with him. But right now, each safe location in New York was either full or blocked off. It would be safer for her to stay off the streets, at least for the night. She would have to wait and be patient—see how things played out.
She found the tallest crane in the yard and ascended its ladder to the top. Finding the door to the cabin unlocked, she went inside and slumped down, her limbs aching from her climb. She watched the setting sun above the urban skyline with columns of black smoke rising from the streets in chaos.
