He gave her a dry look.
“I could boost you up,” Leonidas said, still considering the landing above. Far above.
“You are not hurtling us forty feet in the air,” Alisa whispered.
She was sure he imagined them easily grabbing on after being tossed up there like a ball, but she imagined getting conked in the head by the metal floor and passing out. And Alejandro seemed even less athletic and agile than she.
“I—” Leonidas pressed his ear against the door, then backed away and shook his head. “They’re coming. We go down. Our only choice.”
Alejandro hurried down the steps, not hesitating. Alisa suspected he knew far more about who had sent those people than she did. She hustled after him, with Leonidas following more slowly, guarding their rear as they descended. How had she gotten herself into this? She had just wanted to come to the library to do some research. Her battle was with the Starseers, not whoever had taken charge of the remnants of the empire.
“We’ll go down a couple more levels,” Alejandro said, as he continued past the landing on the floor below, “then cut through to the elevator, try to go back up without them noticing us.”
“Assuming they don’t have people posted in the elevators,” Alisa said.
“There’s no other choice, unless you know a way out. We’re fifty feet under the ground now.” He glanced at a sign by the next doorway they passed, denoting this was B5. “Maybe more.”
Leonidas did not override his suggestion, and Alejandro continued to B6 before trying a door. It was locked.
“Of course,” he said.
A clang came from above them. The door on B3 opening.
Wordlessly, Alejandro continued down. At first, he walked softly, keeping his shoes from ringing on the metal steps, but the thunder of boots pounding on the stairs above echoed down the well. Alejandro hurried, no longer worried about sound. It probably did not matter. Their footfalls would be lost in the cacophony in the stairwell now. Flashlight beams slashed down through the passage, seeking targets. Alejandro tried a door on B7, but it, too, was locked.
“Leonidas?” he whispered, pointing at it. “Can you open it?”
“Down one more,” Leonidas barked, passing them and pointing at a sign. It claimed that an environmental room was on the next level, probably the last level in the basement. Alisa did not know. She had never been down this far. “There’ll be machinery making noise,” he added. “Easier to hide.”
The stairs ended on a cement pad, a door the same as the others the only way to continue on. Leonidas tugged at it. Like the others, it was locked. He braced one hand against the wall, then tugged harder, one swift motion. Metal snapped, and the door opened.
Movement came from the landing above. Someone leaned over a railing and shouted. Leonidas waved Alejandro and Alisa through. She had no sooner than crossed the threshold when a blazer sounded, a beam of red brightening the air behind them.
“They’re shooting to kill,” Alejandro blurted as overhead lights flickered on in the vast environmental control room.
Leonidas lunged inside, shutting the door behind him. Since he had broken the mechanism, there was no way to lock it. Not that locking it would help if the soldiers had a cyborg like him with them.
A large cylindrical piece of machinery was bolted to the wall next to the door. Alisa had no idea what it was, but it looked to weigh a ton. Leonidas grabbed one of its legs and pulled upward, his broad shoulders and back flexing. The sound of warping metal filled the cavernous room, drowning out the hums and beeps of machinery. Rivets snapped. He went to the other side, pulled up the other leg, and shoved the massive cylinder sideways. It toppled as someone tried to open the door.
Bangs came from the stairwell. Someone shouted an order, and it grew silent on the other side of the door. In a second, the cyborg would probably be there, doing his best to move the blockage.
“Go,” Leonidas barked, waving Alejandro and Alisa toward the far side of the room.
Machinery filled the space, towering pumping stations, water heaters, snarls of pipes, and other items she could not identify. Alisa could not see the elevators through it all, but she ran in the direction where they should be. There was no way she was going to let herself get killed over Alejandro’s orb.
As she ran, loud clangs and clanks and thumps sounded from the door. She had not yet heard the screech of that big piece of machinery sliding across the floor. Maybe Leonidas had found a way to wedge it against something so that the other cyborg could not easily push it. Easily. She snorted, finding it crazy to attribute that word to something that weighed hundreds of pounds or more.
She and Alejandro, who was sticking close behind her, ran through an open area in the center of the room. Even though the lights were on in the control room, they weren’t strong lights, and deep shadows lurked all around the towering machinery. She glanced toward a large square drain in the center of the floor. A couple of pipes came through from the ceiling, plunging into the cement floor near it. Sewage.
She wrinkled her nose and ran on, being careful not to get lost in the maze of equipment. The elevator doors came into view, and the sounds of banging faded behind her. She ran and hit the button, relief washing over her. They were going to make it.
The button flashed at her, and a holodisplay appeared in front of the wall, a simple map showing the status of the cars. Only one descended all the way to the bottom level of the basement, a cargo elevator instead of the normal passenger ones, and the level it was currently on throbbed. B3.
“They’ve held up the elevator,” Alejandro said as Leonidas joined them. “Unless we can climb the shaft, we’re stuck.”
Leonidas shook his head. “We would be blocked by the car even if we could go that way.”
He did not point out the slim likelihood of Alisa and Alejandro being able to climb up an elevator shaft, but Alisa certainly thought of it.
“We’re trapped then.” Alejandro’s shoulders slumped.
“The sewer,” Alisa blurted, even as she cringed at the idea of trying to escape into the waste stream for the entire library.
“We can try,” Leonidas said, turning back the way he had come.
A thunderous bang came from the far side of the control room, the screeching of metal along the floor accompanying it. Leonidas’s run turned into a sprint. Alisa raced after him, even as she felt crazy for doing so—the soldiers and the cyborg had made it out of the stairwell, and she was running back in their direction.
By the time the grate came into sight again, Leonidas knelt beside it, gripping the crisscrossing bars. He probably could have torn it from its hinges easily, but he took his time, focusing on the lock.
“This way,” someone called as footfalls pounded across the cement floor.
Alisa dropped down next to Leonidas. “Problem?” she whispered.
She had drawn her Etcher, but the last thing she wanted was to get in a firefight with someone who was Leonidas’s equivalent—or more than his equivalent. Besides, if she fired at imperial soldiers on the imperial home world, she had no doubt that she would be arrested and never let off the planet again. Or maybe they would simply kill her outright.
“Trying not to make it obvious,” Leonidas said.
He tugged once, the gesture short and effective. The lock popped.
He lifted the grate enough for them to squirm through. Alejandro did not hesitate. He slithered through and dropped, even though they could not see what awaited them in the darkness below. Alisa went after him, nearly kicking him as she fell. She realized he was bracing himself against the sides, his feet and hands planted. As she dropped past him, her heart leaping into her throat, she stuck her legs and arms out, trying to do the same thing. His caution was understandable. Who knew how far this dropped?
But her hands wouldn’t reach. She plunged into darkness, unable to stop herself.
Chapter 6
Alisa wasn’t sure how far she fell, but the square of light up above gr
ew small before she splashed down. Cold water enveloped her and washed over her face. Only the memory that people were hunting for them kept her from sputtering and cursing. Judging by the smell—or lack of smell—she had landed in water and nothing more, but she rushed to find her feet and get her head out. It came up to her chest.
Someone splashed down beside her, making less noise than she would have expected. She was sure she had struck on her back, slapping water all over the place. She reached out and found a shoulder that was too broad to belong to Alejandro.
“Leonidas?” she whispered.
“They didn’t see me,” he whispered back, his voice barely audible over the flowing water. Pipes somewhere to the side emptied into this area, and the current tugged at Alisa’s waist. “I closed the grate before I let go. It may take them a moment to figure out where we went.”
Alejandro, who had made his descent in a more controlled manner, walking his hands and feet down the walls, slid into the water next to them.
“This way,” Leonidas said, striding away from the drainage chute—and the only source of light.
“You know where you’re going?” Alisa asked, surprised. He hadn’t even known where the elevators were when they had entered the first floor.
“Away from them.” He found her back with his arm and pulled her along faster than she could have walked in the deep water. She might have objected, but she sensed he was doing the same thing with Alejandro on his other side. “I don’t want to shoot imperial soldiers.”
“I don’t want to be shot by imperial soldiers,” Alisa said.
“Then leaving is a good idea.”
“I’ll agree with that,” Alejandro muttered.
They followed the current deeper into the darkness, Leonidas striding forward fearlessly. Alisa wanted to pull out her flashlight to get a better feel for their surroundings. She could imagine inimical things down here. White alligators, fang fish, poisonous water snakes…
“Can you see?” she asked Leonidas.
“Not much. We’ve gotten too far from the light.”
“So, you can’t see in complete darkness? You’re like a cat?”
“I’m a human with eye implants,” he said, his tone taking on that faintly miffed quality it had whenever someone implied he wasn’t entirely human.
“Too bad. I was going to offer to rub your ears later if you were like a cat.”
That did not earn her a response, and she had no idea if he was shooting her a scathing look. Probably.
The sound of rushing water increased up ahead, making Alisa wish he had said he could see. There were supposed to be centuries’ worth of old channels for storm water and sewage that snaked around under the city, and she remembered stories of people living down here, too, in abandoned transportation tunnels that were deeper than the existing lines, that came from a time before the capital had been built up, newer levels atop older.
Something brushed past Alisa’s shoulder, bouncing off before flowing along with the current. Maybe it was good that none of them could see. The odor grew fouler as they continued on, and she feared the water dumping into their channel from the nearby pipes was true sewer water.
“I’m sorry you’re involved in this, Captain,” Alejandro said, sounding weary as he slogged along with Leonidas’s help. “I didn’t expect Leonidas to bring you.”
“He said I would be safer with him than staying behind with Beck,” Alisa said, aware of Leonidas’s muscled arm wrapped around her back. One could easily feel safe in his arms, but their current situation was too bizarre for her to feel much more than discomfort, especially when something slithered past her leg. She jerked her foot away, thoughts of snakes returning.
“It’s possible he has an inordinately high opinion of himself,” Alejandro said.
“I just assumed he had an inordinately low opinion of Beck.”
“That is also possible.”
“Usually,” Leonidas said, “people talk about me behind my back, and I’m forced to use my enhanced auditory faculty to hear what disreputable things they’re saying about me.”
“We didn’t want you to strain yourself,” Alisa said.
His arm tightened around her briefly, and she wasn’t sure if it was a fond squeeze of acknowledgment—he sounded more amused than irritated by their commentary—or a reminder that he could break her in half with his pinky.
“If they catch up with us,” Alejandro said, “you should veer off in another direction if possible, Captain. This isn’t your fight.”
Water full of clumps of questionable material flowed in from a pipe, splatting onto Alisa’s shoulder, and it was a moment before she could respond. Her last meal was too busy trying to come up.
“You’re not going to make a similar suggestion to me?” Leonidas asked, turning them around a bend that Alisa had not seen in the darkness. The dreadful aroma was getting stronger, threatening to sear the nose hairs out of her nostrils. “I know nothing about your secret treasure,” he added.
“I know, but you’re… we’re… on the same side.”
“The war is over, Doctor,” Leonidas said. “The empire has fallen.”
Alisa punctuated this somber statement with gagging sounds. Rebus-de’s river of decay, she was going to end up puking all over Leonidas. What would his enhanced cyborg senses think about that? She took deeper breaths, trying to calm her queasy belly, doing her best not to breathe through her nose.
A distant clang sounded.
“Any chance that’s not related to us?” Alejandro asked. He didn’t seem affected by the stench. Maybe doctors were used to all manner of human excrement and grossness.
“They found the grate,” Leonidas said.
Wonderful. Their cyborg probably wouldn’t be slowed down by shepherding two civilians along.
“Any chance you know where we’re going and that we’ll be out soon?” Alisa asked, sucking in gulps of air between the words. It did not help. Her belly roiled with discontent.
“I know the direction to the harbor,” Leonidas said. “There should be a sewage treatment plant there, perhaps a way to climb out.”
“The harbor is miles from the library,” Alejandro said.
“I know.”
Alisa lost it. Maybe it was the suggestion that they had to travel miles in this, with sewer sludge flowing all the way to their chests, or maybe she was just succumbing to the inevitable. Either way, she turned to the side and threw up. Her only consolation was that the water was flowing in that direction, so it would not come back and hit them. A small consolation. There were worse things than vomit in the channel.
Leonidas continued to carry her along. Apparently, they couldn’t risk slowing down for regurgitation breaks.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Alejandro said again when she was done.
He sounded miserable. At least she wasn’t the only one.
“I think there’s a tunnel ahead without water in it,” Leonidas said. “It may tilt upward, an old subway passage perhaps.”
“It’s pitch black in here,” Alejandro said. “You can’t possibly see anything.”
“I can hear auditory changes, get a sense of the layout based on the echoes.”
“Like a bat?” Alisa managed to rasp, not trusting her voice.
At first, Leonidas did not answer, and she thought he would ignore her, but then he said, “I think I preferred it when you compared me to a cat.”
“Perhaps he was intrigued by the proffer of an ear rub,” Alejandro said.
“Yeah,” Alisa said. “I’m sure the idea of being rubbed by someone who just puked on him gets him excited.”
“One hopes you would shower first.”
“Shower? I’m going to need the top layer of my skin cells lasered off to feel sanitary again.”
Another clang sounded in the distance. They all fell silent. Alisa had the uneasy feeling that their pursuers knew exactly which way they were going and were catching up.
Her foot scuffed the bottom o
f the channel. As Leonidas turned them to the side, the ground rose, slick with slimy growth under her boots. She stuck her hands out in front of her and found the rough stone of a crumbling wall. By feel, they climbed into a higher passage that connected to the main one. Leonidas let go of her as she pulled herself out of the water. The scent had not lessened any, but she felt better being out of the grimy sludge.
“Hurry,” Leonidas urged as Alisa clambered to her feet, leaning against the wall for support.
Now, voices were audible in the distance. She did not know how the soldiers were tracking them, but they seemed to know exactly where they were.
Alisa forced her legs into motion, first walking and then, at Leonidas’s light touch on her back, running. She kept her hands outstretched, one in front of her and one using the wall to the side for guidance. She did not want to smack into another wall with her nose. Leonidas ran soundlessly at her side, clearly pacing himself so that he would not leave her and Alejandro behind. She could hear Alejandro both by the sound of his breathing and by the thump of his satchel against his side as he ran.
The tunnel curved, then connected with another in what she guessed, by the sudden disappearance of her wall, was a cross-shaped intersection. Leonidas kept going straight. Alisa was completely lost and had no idea which way the harbor was or even if she could have found her way back to the library. She wondered if Leonidas had truly kept his bearings or if he was just guessing.
They had run for about five minutes, with their passage widening, when two pinpricks of light appeared up ahead. Alisa’s first reaction was one of relief as she believed they had reached the surface, but as the lights grew larger and brighter, she realized that they hadn’t traveled upward enough to be anywhere near the surface. A faint rasping came from the direction of those lights.
“Run faster,” Leonidas said, touching Alisa’s back again to urge greater speed.
“What is that up there?” Alejandro asked, panting from his exertions.
“An automatic sewer cleaner,” Leonidas said.
Normally, that would not have sounded ominous, but it was coming straight toward them.