The tunnels underneath the Neon Slaughter City smelled of piss, ozone, shit and something chemical that was burning the back of your throat. Jack was tracing Raina along the maze, his feet trudging in the puddles that were likely not water. Such pipes clanked overhead, and hissed, and transported god knows what between districts. Graffiti layers of defiance symbols, corporate logos spray painted, gang tags were on the walls, and each successive generation of tunnel dwellers left graffiti on top of the previous generation.
Why do you not want to know why we are not taking the street? Jack asked. His voice reverberated around the curving concrete, and swung back at him round angles which he could not see.
Due to the presence of cameras on the street. And turrets. And sponsored patrols who receive commissions on each run away they haul back to the arenas. Raina slipped beneath a low hanging pipe and her feet were dry in the wet floor as though she had been doing so all her life. In this part of the world there is no Syndicate. Different rules."
"Whose rules?"
"Mine. For now." She looked over her shoulder, and in the dim light of the lamp on her wrist he saw some sort of a grimace. "Also the rats. They've got opinions."
Jack put that away with things which may or may not necessarily be true in this city.
They crossed a crossroads where three tunnels went, each one marked with an incandescent symbol Jack could not identify the head of a rat with a crown on it, a broken chain, a kind of chainsaw and a middle finger that Jack could not identify. Raina stopped at each of them, and rubbed her fingers over the marks as though they were braille.
"Left," she said finally.
"You're guessing."
"I'm interpreting. There's a difference." Again she began to walk, more briskly. The signs displaying who manages what section. That Headless rat skull Scrap Kid and his crew. They dominate the eastern tunnels, all of the way to district nine to the former manufacturing area. The broken chain is the guarantee of safe passage to runners. The chainsaw thing indicates that you are a possible recruit.
"And the left tunnel?"
>Goods to Leads to Scrap workshop. Supposing the tags have not been tampered with during the past three days. She paused. And maybe, they have, and we will stroll into a war zone.
"Might?"
"This is the underground, Jack. Everything's a maybe."
After a little they proceeded without saying a word. Two hundred and thirty four hundred and thirty since the last junction that was the kind of count Jack gave himself. Marked all those side tunnels, all his maintenance hatches, everywhere he could have set up a turret had he been corporate security. The answer was everywhere. These tunnels were a doomsday waiting to occur.
How not this in control of the Syndicate? he asked. It would be like the sort of place they would like.
"They've tried. Multiple times." Raina's voice echoed back. Sends in drones, they are hacked. Brings troops and soldiers vanish. Orders in hired murders, they return as adornments in the tunnels. She shrugged. The underground has been around since the city was constructed. The Syndicate builds on top. We live underneath. They do not like it, and they are not able to do much about it, without destroying their own infrastructure.
"Seems fragile."
"Everything's fragile. That's the point."
They crossed a broader passage which appeared to be a former pumping station bulky equipment all rusted out into silence, control boards gutted and stripped, more labels on the walls. Raina paused at one of the closed doors, withdrew her slate and sat down to type.
"Security lock," she said. "Give me a minute."
Jack stood against the wall, and stared up and down the tunnel. There was no movement, other than the rat, which was no figment, but the literal rat. Down here they were larger, he saw. Meaner looking. Probably fed well.
Building something of the Syndicate, you said, he said. "Back at the bar. What did you mean?"
The fingers that Raina had were hovering on her slate. There was a pause, and the only disturbance was the heavy tread of something passing along the pipes up above.
Never mind that the broadcasts are not only amusement, she said to herself. "They're data collection. All the participants possess neural implants, they monitor their vital signs, their fear level, their pain level. Every kill gets analyzed. Each scream is tracked down. They are creating an index of human misery.
"For what?"
"I don't know. I couldn't access that deep." She fell back to typing again, more quickly. "But I saw the projections. They will not require arenas anymore in case they succeed. They will be capable of transmitting information directly into the brains of people. Make you feel the kills. Be the winner, without going out of your couch once.
Jack said nothing. Have just observed the pitch in the extreme ends of the tunnel.
The door clicked open. Raina forced the door open and Jack had followed.
A tunnel past was different newer, cleaner, with real lighting every few metres in it and walls which had been repaired not long before. The labels of these were more recent as well, The rat skull with a crown everywhere.
We are in the land of Scrap now, said Raina. Keep to your side, do not touch anything, and pray God do not offend his work.
"His work?"
"You'll see."
In five more minutes they had passed another five minutes, with an increasing widening of the tunnel. There were other signs of life food wrappers, battery packs, a sleeping bag, curled up in an alcove playing an old holo screen of DeathWatch footage. Someone lived down here. Multiple someones.
The tunnel was a way into a subway station as it used to be.
Jack paused in the entrance and accepted it. The platforms were turned into a giant workshop hacked together terminals that stretched all along the walls cables everywhere like metal vines, holo schematics flickering over work benches that displayed weapons unfamiliar to Jack and some familiar but undesired. Components were all around the room: there were piles of cybernetic limbs in corners, drone chassis on ceiling hooks, half an engine and a chainsaw blade attached together.
At the middle of the whole mess, there was a kid who could not be more than nineteen welding what was apparently a katana out of parts of a train. Pieces of lightning flew all about him, and he did not appear to hear or see them.
"Scrap!" Raina called. We want a road that will lead to District Seven.
The child turned round and threw up his welding mask. Hair, which had been bleached at the tips, would be standing on angles which would have been impossible otherwise. One eye was a jerking red lens which was continually refocusing, checking up the room, checking them, checking all at once. His smile indicated that he had never been subjected to a bad choice, and he had devoted his life to trying to prove this hypothesis.
He had burn scars and shrapnel tattoos on his bare arms names, dates, symbols, which most likely held some meaning with him. He was wearing a necklace of broken arena wristbands, which was making a soft clink as he moved.
"Raina!" He sprung over his working table and sprung, indeed, as though possessed of some gymnastic type of hyperactivity and sat down in front of them in an athlete's fashion. "You're not dead! Solid. I had a pool going. I bet on maaimed but mobile so it is technically a win on my part.
He reached out his hand to Jack. "Scrap Kid. Tunnel runner, arms designer, professional pained in the Syndicate. Something you want, I likely can get or steal one.
Jack ignored the hand. We must have a way of getting to District Seven. Skyline Gladiator Towers."
Scrap's grin didn't falter. He simply taken back the hand and crossed his arms and examined Jack with that jerking red eye.
No, it is Raina, he said and did not look away at Jack. You never said you were taking the Jack Cayman to my workshop.
"Didn't have time."
"Fair." Scrap wound around Jack gradually, and adopted him. Scar pattern in line with chainsaw duels. High end, custom, not Syndicate, left arm prosthetic. You have been taking care of that yourself or you have a guy?
"Maintain it myself."
"Good answer." Scrap paused before him with the grin enlarged. "So. Jack Cayman. Chain saw, set ablaze Varrigan city, kicked off the camera and a skyscraper dropped on your head Jack Cayman. And what do you want of the towers?
"My mother's on Level 89."
The madness of the man dimmed. The expression of Scrap changed but only momentarily, only slightly to something like a human expression.
"Shit," he said quietly. "Sorry, man. That's rough."
"I don't need sympathy. I need a route."
"Right. Yeah. Okay." Scrap returned immediately, drawing up a holographic screen of a projector on the wrist. Planes of urban plan fell alive streets, tunnels, buildings, all. "District Seven's a nightmare. Skyline Gladiator Towers eighty nine stories of corporate bloodshed. They even fall down when fighting, in order to make it dramatic, and therefore the integrity of the building is more of an implication. Your mom is being detained on Level 89, and that would mean you have to fight your way up through eighty eight levels of sponsored assassins, death traps and whatever the Syndicate has conceived up to now.
Eighty eight floors, Jack said again. "In forty hours."
Scrap looked at his HUD displaying the time. Technically, now it is thirty eight. Two hours you have wasted to come here.
"Your tunnels are slow."
The world of the underground is not a speed world, old man. It's built for survival." Scrap zoomed in on the tower structure bringing out particular floors. "Anyway. The edifice is outfitted with sponsor technology. Each floor is controlled by some other corporation Titan Cola, Diamond Finance, HyperVolt, BioCorp, you name it. You defeat their champion, you receive a sponsor buff. You lose, they air your death with product placement. Standard stuff."
"Great. Corporate synergy."
Raina had already started typing, her neural implants glaring as she opened something that Jack could not see. I can break into the elevator systems, shut off some sensors, possibly masquerade as a few floor IDs. However, air gapped manual security is the highest. You'll have to earn those."
Jack studied the schematics. The icon of his mother flashed on the Level 89. supposing it was she, supposing the Baron was not lying, supposing that all of this was not a lie. Thirty eight hours. Eighty eight floors. Between him and the top, thousands of slayers.
"Sounds like a busy weekend."
Scrap laughed he was really pleased, and the sound went skipping on the broken tiles of the station. "I like him. He has that 'I have resigned to my own death' thing. All of the guys who come into this place are just puffery and boasts. You just... don't care."
"Caring doesn't help."
"No. No it doesn't." Scrap examined him a long time. You really are going to do it? Grab a tower, climb through eighty eight stories and take a look at what there is up there.
"I don't have a choice."
"There's always a choice. You simply do not like the other alternatives.
Jack said nothing. Only looked at the schematics and learned the floor plans, escape routes, structural points of weakness.
Scrap's grin returned. "Okay. I'm in."
"What?"
You have to have somebody who is familiar with the towers. I know the towers. They were supplied by Ran over a period of six months and then security was upgraded. I traced all the maintenance hatches, all the camera blinds, all the floors where the integrity is so poor that you can drop an entire section of the building, should you strike the correct support beam. He shrugged. "You're going to need that."
"You're nineteen."
"And you're what, forty? We've all got problems." Scrap raised up his stuttering red eye. "This thing cost me my real one. But it also allows me to be able to visualize structural vulnerabilities, heat patterns, security rates. That will be worth more than a chainsaw arm in those towers.
Jack looked at Raina. She shrugged.
"He's useful," she said. "Annoying, but useful."
"Stay here," Jack told her. In case of my death, spill everything you have on the Syndicate. Make it hurt."
"I'm coming with you."
"No."
"Jack"
He turned, and whatever she saw in his eyes stayed her. "You're good with computers. I'm good with chainsaws. You do not die so that no one gets to know what happened to me when I do not come back.
He picked up a duffel that was lying there, the work of Scrap, a custom transport case to carry his arm. The weight felt familiar. Comfortable. This was the only thing in this world that made sense.
"You'll need help!" Scrap called after him. We have an underground system of us! Freedom fighters, tunnel rats, those that desire the Syndicate dead! We know the towers. We know the sponsors. We are aware of the traps and the ordinary murder floors.
At the entrance of a tunnel Jack stopped. Looked back.
In his workshop he was the Scrap, with the arms burnt and the dead eye and too much to see, nineteen years old and ready to rebel. He resembled all the children Jack had ever seen in all the war zones young enough not to be there, stout enough not to take him away.
"You know the towers?" Jack asked.
"Better than anyone. More than those who made them better than the people who built them.
"Then you're coming."
Scrap's face lit up. "YES. Finally. One of them is taking me seriously.
"He's nineteen," Raina said.
"Old enough to die." Jack shrugged. "Let's move."
Scrap seized a bag on his work bench a bag that Jack saw was packed, so he had been waiting to be approached and went to jog. "One thing before we go."
He took something out of the bag and threw it to Jack. It is a small gadget, perhaps larger than a fist with one button on the top.
"What's this?"
"Emergency beacon. There is something wrong when things are wrong bang that button. It will open the ears of all the fighters against the government. We'll come running."
Jack looked at the device. Then at Scrap.
"You don't even know me."
I know you are going to walk into the towers to keep your mom. That's enough." In a more relaxing manner Scrap grinned. Otherwise, I have seen your fights when you were old. You are nice fellows, Jack Cayman. The nonsense of all that chainsaw nonsense.
Jack pocketed the beacon. Said nothing.
They went to the tunnel which led up towards District Seven, towards the towers, towards eighty eight levels of sponsored death.
Raina stood behind them until the darkness had swallowed them.
"Don't die," she whispered.
The holes devoured her words as well.