Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

“We’re almost there,” Corey said, raising his voice above the noise of the engine and rail wheels. Liani nodded without looking. She’d barely said three words to him since Matteo, but here in the dark on the way to God-knows-where… her shell cracked. The thought of opening her mouth in the sour, rushing air made her choke, but she felt the words coming anyway.

“Listen,” Corey said after another turn, “Liani, I’m sorry. I wanted to save the kid too, but…”

“It’s okay!” Liani blurted, “I mean… it’s not ‘okay,’ but… I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I mean it’s like you said… this is bigger than us and him. We need to play our parts, and it wouldn’t have done any good for us to get killed on the train…I just—” She felt his thick, warm fingers wrap around her left hand. A split second told her to pull away, but she hesitated, lingering in the moment as it dawned on her.

“Oh,” she said. Her heart raced, pumping her skin with tingling blood. Her mind left, taken over by the sensation. It rippled down her arm. As she squeezed his hand she felt a spot of rolling wetness creep down her cheek. His thumb caressed a soft patch on her index finger. Oh boy…

“We do this last thing, and that’s it,” Corey said, “We go back up, head East, and wait this out.”

“What if it works?” Liani asked. The question seemed to blow through him. He rubbed the sweat-laced stubble collecting on his cheeks.

“No way to know how it’ll land,” Corey said. The billions of possibilities rushed through Liani’s head as she asked herself. Would everything just collapse? The City, stripped of its dysfunctional but staggeringly complex government… would everything just die? Or would people fight just as hard as the rebels to ignore it? Desperate to keep their lives the same.

“But we’re journalists,” a smile crossed Corey’s face, “We report the truth as best we can. People make up their own minds.”

The final truth of it snapped together inside her like a puzzle piece. She smiled and took a deep breath. Gave Corey’s hand another squeeze. I’m going to explode.

Then both of them noticed it at the same time. The tunnel ahead turned left, but they could see the walls better than usual… and from farther off. A pale light shone on the networked piping and conduits on the wall, coming from an unseen source around the corner. The faint, echoing murmur of moving machinery bounced and clinked through the metal cavern.

“Must be them,” Corey said, “Grid’s all run by Outer Ringers, nobody else comes down here.” He pushed up against his harness, arched his back, and reached behind him. Before she could ask, he pulled out a gun. A shiny pistol with a snub nose and a short handle. Corey couldn’t even fit four fingers around the grip. He popped the tiny magazine out and checked the bullets.

“Uh, whoa, what the fuck are you doing? I thought you said it was them! ” Liani said.

“It is,” said Corey as he reloaded the mag and pulled back the slide, “Probably. But there is a war going on… I figure that makes us war correspondents. Morris Locke carried one the whole time during his coverage of the Mumbai Siege—”

“Jesus, Corey, put it away! Have you ever even fired that thing?”

Corey inspected it for the safety switch, clicked it, then put it back in his waistband.

“I… No.”

“Great.”

Their railcar rounded the corner, immersing them in the shocking brightness of a battery of flood lights. Two massive, flat platforms sat side-by-side on the tunnel’s main center rails. Construction and maintenance platforms… Mechanical arms craned up thirty stories to the ceiling and walls, frozen in half-completed tasks. A Grid Station sat adjacent to the gargantuan equipment, recessed into the tunnel wall. A group of figures waited at the rail dock.

Whoever they were, they soon noticed the approaching rail car. It seemed to make them nervous. Three of the figures ducked down while two other ones stood ahead. Liani squinted.

“Corey,” she said, “they have real guns.”

“This is a real gun!”

“Shh!” she planted a jab in his hip. Corey composed himself and lifted his hands in the air. Liani did the same as their rail car jerked to a stop, docking at the station. Clamps snapped shut on the track, trapping them there.

“Who the hell are you?! What are you doing here!” shouted one of the two gunmen. They looked to be wearing black at first, but Liani’s heart stopped as she recognized SCPD blue. Cops .

“We—uh… we…” Corey stammered.

“…missed the trains headed East!” Liani finished, “My… husband and I… we missed the trains and had no place else to run…”

“It’s true!” Corey followed her lead, “I worked for GloboMetro News and we did a piece on Grid worker conditions a few months back… figured the tunnels would give us a shot at getting someplace safe.”

The cops looked ragged. Terrified. They kept their guns trained on Liani and Corey.

“Bullshit! That were true, you’d be headed away from the fighting, not toward it!” said one of the cops. His dark black skin poured sweat.

“ Toward the fighting?!” Liani shrieked at Corey without skipping a beat, “Babe, are you fucking kidding me?!”

“I—must have misread the map controls, excuse the shit outta me! I am trying to save our asses, you know! It’s your fault we missed the goddamn train!” Corey fired back.

“ My fault?!”

“SHUT UP! Both of you!” yelled the other cop. One of the other three behind the officers peeked out. A slightly chubby woman in her mid-forties, she trembled like a cornered mouse.

“Excuse me?” she said, “I think they’re telling the truth.”

“What?” the cop’s gruff question made the woman cringe.

“I-I saw that young lady on the news last week… doing a story from our Central Hub. She was covering the ongoing negotiations between Governor Sato and Mr. Finley.” Slowly, the cops lowered their weapons. Everyone relaxed as the woman continued.

“Sorry about that… Li… Liani is it? I’m Connie Dreivan, City Municipal Supervisor for this Grid sector. Governor Sato sent down everyone he could to investigate the blackout… the officers just wanted to keep us safe. I hope they didn’t scare you too badly.”

“That’s alright,” Corey said, “We’ll turn around and leave you to—”

The towering mechanical arms burst into animation on the main platforms behind them. Liani felt like she leaped out of her skin. The arms retracted with a hiss of hydraulics and buzzing of servos, folding neatly into their designated places on the platforms. Liani spotted the incoming headlights first. The Virton employees and SCPD officers had no time to react.

Rapid shots echoed through the tunnel as the five citizens burst in sprays of neon blood. The flood lights underscored every detail, throwing highlights on Connie Dreivan’s beaded necklace as it flew apart. Corey and Liani scrambled to click out of their harnesses and drop behind cover in the rail car. Corey took out his gun. The shooting stopped, replaced by whooping laughter.

“Hoho man! If I had a credit for all the times I wanted to plug one of those big city supervisor fucks!”

Liani heard the sounds of heavy boots walking on a metal platform. She tried to make herself smaller behind the fore-console of the railcar.

“Mr. Corey Burrows! Ms. Liani Ray! Come out. Come out. Wherever you are!” said one of the voices. Corey shifted to stand up, but Liani grabbed his wrist. Shook her head, ‘No.’

“Let me rephrase,” said the voice, “Stand up from behind that fore-console, please. Nice and slow with hands where we can see ’em.”