Kade Read online

  “There’s too much access to your territory for you not to take notice.”

  “We are aware of the surface,” he said. “We walled off the tunnels under Derris’ Zone just to your west. They are savages and cannibals.”

  “It will do your people a service if you cultivate the relationship you have with the Society. They’re aware of the surface issues and can relay them to you. You have ways of traveling safely through the city that would benefit the Society. It would be a mutual benefit, and there is no one better suited to help you than Teresa’s people. They may even work with your security.”

  “It has crossed our minds to do something like this,” he said. “Years of hiding in the Tees, as you call them, has made us cautious.”

  “You’ve already got ties with her,” I said. “Wouldn’t be too large a step to go further.”

  “After this is through, I will bring it to the King’s Advisors.”

  “I have to say, it’s impressive that you guys have developed such a large territory. You work together, while the surface folks constantly fight among themselves.”

  “It wasn’t like that in the beginning,” he said. “It took ten hard years to unify the Tees. The result was a group of advisors, who used to be individual Zone leaders. They report to and advise the King, who carved his kingdom with a sword from the chaos that was.”

  “We could use a little of that up top.”

  “I understand you have already begun,” he said. “I hear you have brought three Zones under the influence of the Society. This might worry the advisors and the King.”

  “It wasn’t what I set out to do,” I said. “The leaders attacked me, and I removed them. The Society can offer safety to the people in those Zones, so it made sense.”

  “Of course, it makes sense. It made sense fifteen years ago, when Grady O’Neal rose and assumed leadership of the Tee that belonged to Mardin. He built upon those original Mardins and spread out to eventually run most of the Tees under the city. There are still some he doesn’t run. There are some that are walled off, barring any way of entering, such as Derris.

  “The surface will be much harder to unite,” he continued. “There are many more people on the surface than in the Tees. But consider the future if such a thing could be accomplished. Unite this broken city, and it will be a great start to uniting this fallen world.”

  “I’m no hero,” I said. “I was just doing my job. I don’t dream of uniting a city, just surviving it.”

  “I see,” he said. “I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, Mister Kade. Your guide should be here by now. You wish to go to Dunn?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We need to check my theory before we proceed any further.”

  “Then I will take my leave, and Portus shall lead you anywhere you need to go in the Tees.”

  “I’ll get this done as quickly as I can, Fraans,” I said. “Hopefully, we can get to him before he kills again.”

  Fraans turned and left the conference room.

  I looked at the maps for another minute, then rolled them up. We’d know soon enough if I was right. I heard the door open again, and a pale man of about five and a half feet walked in. He nodded at me.

  “Portus, I’m guessin’?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “I am at your disposal.”

  “The first thing we need to do is go to Dunn.”

  “Not too complicated,” he said. “We have to divert around the area under Derris.”

  “Fraans mentioned that Derris has been walled off,” I said. “Let me get my escorts, and we’ll get on our way.”

  “I will meet you in the basement,” he said. “This lighting bothers me greatly.”

  “I imagine it does.”

  I followed the Mardin out of the conference room, and we went in separate directions. I made my way to the commons, the area in the center of the Chapterhouse that was open and used for training. That’s where I would meet Michael and Lindsey.

  “I’m not sayin’ I want you to cook,” I heard Michael say as I walked into the commons. “I just want you to learn how to cook a few things.”

  “What!?”

  “There’s surviving the Fall, and there’s barely surviving the Fall.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “If we could survive on what you know how to cook,” he said, “it would barely be surviving.”

  “Why, you old bastard!” she said. “Maybe I won’t cook anything anymore.”

  “We’d all be better off,” he said. “Little Sammy is probably traumatized already.”

  “Sammy likes my cooking just fine!”

  “Then why does he go over and eat at the Kord’s all the time?”

  “He’s friends with the Kord girl.”

  “I’m just sayin’,” he said. “The boy came home with a sack of leftovers yesterday. I caught him eatin’ ‘em in the back room.”

  “He said he wasn’t hungry,” she said. “Come to think of it, you weren’t either.”

  “He brought a lot of stuff from the Kord’s.”

  “You and he both…”

  “Woman can cook a rat’s ass and make it taste good.”

  “You son of a…”

  “Hi guys!” I yelled. “Ready to go?”

  Michael turned and walked toward me as Lindsey cursed under her breath.

  “Sure thing,” Michael said with a grin.

  The two Squires followed me back into the building and down through the stairwells to the basement entrance to the Tees. Lindsey was still muttering under her breath as we followed Portus through the metal door and down into the dim light of the Tunnels.

  “Guys, this is Portus,” I said. “Portus, this is Michael and Lindsey Tanzik, Squires of the Society.”

  He nodded to the couple, who nodded back.

  “We’re headed to Dunn,” I said. “We have to test a theory about the killings. If I’m right, we may be able to guess where he’ll hit next and be waitin’ for him.”

  “That would be nice,” Lindsey said. “Catch him before he kills again.”

  “That’s what I’m hopin’ for,” I said. “Let’s take it slow through here, Portus. We need to let our eyes adjust before we do much travelin’.”

  “Understood,” he said. “We’ll go slowly until we pass by Derris. You should be ok long before we get that far. I can inspect the walls as we go. Scouts are required to check the walls anytime we are in this area.”

  “That’s understandable,” Michael said. “Derris’ bunch are savages. They’ve been pushed back enough times on the surface to quit tryin’ to break out of their Zone.”

  “One of these days, someone’s gonna have to clean ‘em out of there,” I said. “Have to wait till Wilson gets better, though. I promised he could go, too.”

  “Better take more than just Wilson,” Michael said, his eyebrow raised.

  “They’ll probably attack our Zone before then, anyway, since I promised he could help.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Expect the worst,” I said. “You’ll never be disappointed.”

  “Poe told us about you,” Lindsey said. “That’s a pretty crappy outlook, Kade.”

  “I don’t walk around disappointed.”

  “Yeah, he said that.”

  Both were looking around the area suspiciously.

  “What?”

  “He also said if you brought the subject up, something bad inevitably follows.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

  I heard running footsteps, and I grabbed my straight razor. A woman ran from the darkness ahead and saw Portus. She skidded to a halt.

  “Scout! They’ve broken through!”

  “What?!”

  “They’re in the Tunnels! E-Branch!”

  “We don’t have any forces over here!” he said. “Are the charges still good?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered. “We have thirty people down beyond the charges!”


  “There’s nothing we can do,” he said.

  “There’s somethin’ we can do,” I said. “We’ll hold ‘em long enough to get your people out of the area. Then we can blow the charges.”

  “You would do something like that for us? It is suicide.”

  “Poe’s gonna be so mad,” I said. “Get your people out.”

  I ran straight toward the faint sounds ahead of us. I slowed as we neared the sounds of metal clashing. I could see the metal boxes that held the explosive charges Portus had spoken of.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said to my companions.

  “We are Squires,” Michael said.

  Then I heard the scream.

  I launched myself down the tunnel system at the fastest speed my augmented body could attain.

  I began laughing as I ran. There are worse things than savage cannibals in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 5

  I saw the branching tunnel the noise was coming from and rounded the corner. I took in the scene as I left the ground and rebounded from the wall to slow my speed. A group of pale Mardins fled toward me. The tunnels behind them were packed with half-naked, screaming savages with makeshift weapons.

  I palmed the Sig and pulled the slide to load it in one smooth motion. The silencer absorbed most of the sound from the shots, but it was still far from silent.

  I watched as head after head blossomed with the impact of the bullets.

  The eighth shot hit the eighth head as Michael and Lindsey rounded the corner. Michael’s hands blurred as his twin swords seemed to leap into his hands. He shot forward and leaped over the heads of the fleeing Mardins. He landed with his swords dancing around him. Lindsey was just seconds behind him, with her blades flashing.

  Wilson Poe had been a Yeoman when he accompanied me on my last case, and he is a deadly fighter. A Squire is in another league altogether, and the savages hit an immoveable wall of steel. As one of the savages got too close to Lindsey, I shot it in the head. Seven more shots and seven more dead exhausted the magazine, and I dropped the Sig to the floor.

  I stepped closer, and my hands blurred as I began throwing blades. The final blade sank into the throat of the last of the savages.

  “Wow,” Michael said. “He wasn’t kidding.”

  “If you don’t mind,” Lindsey said to me, “let’s not bring that up again.”

  “I’m not disappointed,” I said. “Are you?”

  She looked back at the heap of dead cannibals. “Not at this particular moment.”

  There were howls from deeper inside the tunnels, and I felt something I hadn’t in a long time. It was the indignation the righteous feel at the sight of evil. I had been that evil in the world before the Fall. I still wasn’t sure what I was in the fallen world. But I knew I would not let this blight upon our city take one more life this day.

  I walked forward and let my coat slip off behind me. “If anything comes down this tunnel besides me, kill it.”

  “What?”

  I launched myself forward and dove over the pile of bodies just as another horde of cannibals came screaming into the other end of the tunnel. I looked down for a second and slipped my razor into my hand. When I looked back up, someone else’s smile was on my face.

  “Oh, Mathew,” Stephen Gaunt said breathily, “you take me to the most wonderful places.”

  I glided across the tunnel toward the screaming savages.

  “Hello, my pretties.”

  They charged the spot where I had been. Three landed without moving. I had slit three throats with one swipe and rolled to the side. Then I was moving once more into the darkness.

  “This won’t hurt,” I whispered in the ear of a barely human woman. “Long.”

  I slid my razor around her throat from behind as my left hand pulled her chin up. Then I was gone again. I reached out with my razor and a femoral artery was severed, a set of tendons sliced, a throat cut. The screams of rage became screams of pain. Then screams of terror.

  “Don’t run, my little darlings.”

  The Mardin security forces arrived in less than thirty minutes, which was a quick response, considering the distance they had covered. Michael and Lindsey hadn’t come into the tunnel, even after the noise ended. I understood. Stephen Gaunt can be a bit…well…terrifying. But they were the first in when the security forces arrived. I think they expected me to be dead since I hadn’t come out of the tunnel. I was standing in the center of the broken wall that had been keeping Derris’ savages out of the Tees. The whole tunnel was littered with bodies.

  “Jesus, Kade,” Michael said.

  Lindsey handed me my coat and the Sig.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Would have been a shame to wear that in here,” she said, looking at the mess. “Good choice.”

  “I thought so,” I said. “Wilson already threatened to mess it up. Didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seein’ it done.”

  The security forces were staring at us with wide eyes.

  “Three of you did all this?” their leader asked.

  “He did all this by himself,” Michael said. “We helped with the bunch out there.”

  “One man did this?”

  “That’s debatable,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “A little schizophrenic humor.”

  He looked at me in confusion.

  “Just…never mind,” I said. “You should have plenty of time to set charges and blast this tunnel without having to blow the other charges. They’re not comin’ back here anytime soon.”

  He nodded.

  “Have you seen Portus? He’s supposed to guide us to Dunn.”

  “He’s standing by the charges, preparing to blow the tunnels if needed.”

  “We’ll meet him there then.”

  I walked around the staring fighters and drew the Sig. I ejected the magazine and pulled one of the boxes of shells from my pocket. As we walked back along the path we had taken, I reloaded the magazine with sixteen bullets. The thing had already proven its worth.

  “I’m definitely gonna see if Teresa will sell me this,” I said. “I love it.”

  “I had a Sig before the Fall,” Michael said. “Very nice gun. One of the best in its time.”

  “How old were you?” I asked.

  “Twenty-two when the bombs fell. Had done a tour in OCAF,” he said.

  Obsidian Corporation Armed Forces was where I had begun, as well. But quite a few years earlier. They pulled most Agents from the armed forces. Some of the younger Agents had been pulled from other places. A few were even from prisons.

  “I was three when it happened,” Lindsey said. “Teresa found me when I was sixteen and pulled me out of a Zone in the east. They were about to do some evil things, and she walked in and destroyed the place with three Knights. Well…they’re Knights, now. I don’t think she had set up anything quite yet. I think it was the next year when she started the Society and moved into the Chapterhouse.”

  I had just moved into my new home under the bank when Teresa moved into Stiner’s.

  “Officers told us about Agents back then,” Michael said. “They could be anyone, anywhere, and they were always on a mission.”

  “Teresa told us when we became Squires,” Lindsey said. “You’re at the top of the allies on the trusted list.”

  “What was the mission when the bombs fell?” Michael asked. “Most of the Agents died, but the few who survived were stuck in the role they were playing at the end.”

  “I was in the imprinter,” I said as we rounded the corner and saw an anxious Portus, standing under the explosives, with a torch ready to light the fuse. “It dumped the whole database into my noggin.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Where are the fighters?” Portus asked.

  “Guarding the breach,” I said. “You won’t be needin’ to blow that.”

  I pointed at the metal-encased explosive char
ge. He pulled the torch away from the fuse.

  “I think we can continue our mission, but you should check with your boys, first, just to be sure.”

  He nodded and sped down the tunnel toward the breach. I squatted down with my back against the wall. I pulled a sack of jerky from my coat.

  “Jerky?” I held the bag out. Michael and Lindsey reached in and took a piece.

  “This is what I’m talkin’ about, woman,” said Michael. “If you could learn to make this, our son wouldn’t be trying to sneak out to eat at the Kords’.”

  “You just be careful, you old fart,” she said. “I may use arsenic in the next dinner I make.”

  “Probably taste better,” he muttered.

  “What?!”

  “Nothin’.”

  “I thought so.”

  “One of these days…” he muttered.

  “Pow! Right in the kisser!” I added.

  Lindsey looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  “Sorry, Old World joke,” I said and laughed. “Used to be a show on TV so long ago…”

  I looked into confused eyes.

  “Never mind.”

  We lost a great deal in the Fall.

  “I can teach you how to make the jerky,” I said as I started chewing on a piece.

  “Don’t you even start,” she said.

  “Just sayin’.”

  Anything more would be kicking a hornets’ nest. Some things truly haven’t changed in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 6

  We sat down and chewed on the jerky for a while in silence. Portus came back around the corner, his face paler than when he’d left.

  “Is his face paler than before?” Lindsey asked.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that possible,” Michael said, “but damned if it isn’t.”

  “Y-you were correct, sir,” Portus said. “We can proceed to Dunn.”

  “Lead on,” I said.

  I rose to my feet, wincing as the gunshots from Moreau’s goons sent a surge of pain to my brain. During the fight, Gaunt had ignored the pain as adrenaline had filled me.

  “You get injured?” Michael asked.

  “Just a twinge from the gunshots I got a couple weeks ago.”