Michael Ares - Dayfall

The guard walked by without noticing him.

No one else noticed him, either, before he was able to find a roped-off, disabled escalator with the sign above it removed, and head down it. There were a few lights hanging at broad intervals in the tunnel at the bottom of it, enough for him to find the catwalk on the far right side of the tracks, but not enough for him to be seen as he started walking south on it. The catwalk was perfect, because there would likely be no obstruction to collide with on the darkest parts of it, and the far right side was perfect, too, because that’s where the access to the Flatiron Building would be.

As his eyes adjusted and he found nothing to stumble on in his path, Jon started to jog again, reflecting bitterly on how royally he had been shafted by Render and the Mayor. Then he thought about Amira and Halladay and Mallory and started to jog faster. In less than ten minutes he passed the old platforms of the Thirty-Third Street Station, and in another ten, having slowed to a walk for a while to catch his breath, he went by the Twenty-Eighth.

If he remembered correctly, the Flatiron Building and Madison Square Park would be coming up on his right soon, before he got to the next station, so he started looking for the access point he had seen on the map. He had passed several others along the way, which probably led to the basements of other buildings on Broadway or Madison Avenue, and he was assuming that the one he wanted would look the same. There was usually a small tunnel, like a hallway, that had been dug by GS engineers and ran perpendicular from the main subway, with the access door requiring a key at the end of it. The length of those passageways depended on how far they needed to go to reach the various buildings to which they wanted access.

Before long Jon found the corridor he wanted, or at least he was pretty sure it was the one, and turned into it. The already limited light from the tunnel outside only lasted about a hundred feet into the smaller one, and soon he had to feel his way along the wall on one side with his right hand, the other held out in front of him. It was only about another hundred feet until his left hand hit the metal of one of the GS access doors, and after feeling his way to the lock, he used the key to open it.

On the other side of the door was more dim light and another abandoned subway tunnel, this one running almost parallel but slightly diagonal to the 4 line he had traveled along to get here. He guessed this was one of the lines that ran under Broadway from Times Square, which was the more direct route he had decided against earlier. If he was right, this one should pass right next to the basement of the Flatiron Building, which itself was on Broadway. But he wasn’t sure which direction he should go. To the left, which was presumably south, he couldn’t see anything but more tunnel and then darkness after that, but to the right he could tell it opened up into a larger space, probably a station platform. Since the Twenty-Third Street Station was the only one in this area, and it was right next to the Flatiron Building, he took a right and headed for the open space.

As he did, he heard a train traveling through another parallel tunnel to his left and stopping up ahead of him, so now he knew that some of the tracks on this line were still being used.

When he got to the platform, he saw tile mosaics reading 23 at the top borders of the walls on the platform, and a similar tablet lower down spelling out 23RD STREET STATION. He also noticed that there was a seemingly random collection of various kinds of hats painted on some of the tiles, and wondered what was up with that. But as he made his way deeper into the station, he was focusing on more important things, like the commuters who could be boarding and debarking from the trains on the two platforms that were in use on the other side. A makeshift wall had been erected between them and the unused platform he was on, but there were enough well-spaced doors in it that he felt a pang of fear that a security guard might come through one of them and shoot or arrest him before he could find Williams.

That feeling was only momentary, though, because what Jon now saw up ahead on the abandoned track made him realize that he wasn’t very far from the explosives expert.

A small utility pickup truck with GS markings was parked next to the platform facing south, equipped with an extra set of flanged steel wheels that allowed it to travel on the tracks. Jon quickly figured out where it had come from, because in its rear bed was a collection of the cube-shaped explosive devices that had been taken from the Below near Times Square.

Jon peered over the back gate at the group of bombs in the bed, and saw that on top of them was a detonator timing apparatus with a green light shining on it, but no minutes or seconds activated yet. He noticed that Williams had stretched two sets of colored wires over the side and onto the platform, where another pair of bombs sat side by side, with green lights lit on them as well. Then the wires stretched farther to an open GS door on the right side of the platform, where there was another pair of bombs—and so on, through the doorway and into the dark hallway on the other side of it. Jon peered down it and could see the pairs of green lights stretching for about thirty feet until they turned a corner and disappeared out of sight.

He turned back to the truck bed and thought about messing with the timing apparatus, but realized that Williams clearly knew what he was doing, and wouldn’t leave any way to disconnect the chain of bombs without setting them off, or at least alerting him. The former soldier had obviously laid them in such a way that they could not be tampered with, and planned to start the countdown when the other end of the chain was finished.

Jon was pretty sure where that would be, so he headed into the dark passageway, navigating through it by the little lights on top of the bombs, and trying not to step on any of them.

Around the corner at the end of the small tunnel was another one just as long, and that one ended in a set of about eight hastily carved steps that led down to a small hatchway only about half as tall as Jon. When the Gotham Builders had created this access to the basement of the Flatiron Building, they were clearly more interested in concealment than appearance or ease of use. Perhaps the mayoral and police offices had already been moved there when GS was securing the underground, or maybe they knew it would happen and had the foresight to construct this access. Either way, it worked for Williams to get in without being detected—the deadly chain of green-lit bombs and wires continued through the open hatch and into the basement of the building.

Jon crouched and craned around the edge of the hatchway to make sure he wouldn’t be seen by the mercenary from the other side, then quietly squeezed through it and ended up in a tight strip of space between a high metal wall in front of him and an even higher rock wall behind him. He stepped sideways to the right, toward the end of the metal wall, which was about ten feet away, and had to be even more careful in the cramped floor space not to disturb the wires or explosives with his feet. He didn’t have to worry about being heard, however, because of the hum of heavy machinery coming from around the corner of the iron wall.

When Jon reached it, he peered around and saw Williams at least twenty feet away, laying the last of his explosives at the foot of a big electrical generator that was about the size and shape of the concrete mixer on the back of a cement truck. The killer was crouched down and facing mostly away from Jon, but the young cop wasn’t confident that he could reach the man and jump him before Williams saw him and pulled the gun that was resting on his hip. So Jon scanned the rock wall to his right and noticed a partially open doorway built into it, leading to some kind of recessed room.