In the rearview mirror I could see the dust cloud billowing behind us and blotting out the city skyline. When I looked down at the blanket of soot and sludge that streaked past below the aircar’s belly, it made me uneasy. If for any reason we crashed down there, we’d be buried with no way to get out.
A jagged section of wall huffed past on our right, fog streaming through the rows of empty window holes. The skewed slope of one of the floors sheared down from one side and into the soot below. People had lived there. They’d been sitting at tables eating, or lying in their beds sleeping, when it happened. Everyone knew the story, but it was spooky to see it up close like this. Black bits of ash streaked through the aircar’s headlamps as they blinked on, and off in the distance I spotted a faint electric red light that would be invisible from the outer rim through all the debris and dust.
“What is that?”
The driver throttled the emitters back and we dropped lower. Hard charred bits peppered the windshield as we passed through a cloud, then down a powdery slope to where a deep, dark pocket had been dug out up ahead.
The red light flashed three times, went out, and then flashed three times again before coming back on. The driver closed in on the spot and hovered, making a lazy circle around the pit below. They’d blown out the dust and ash, then dug out the underlying layers of packed dirt, concrete powder, and soot to expose a big section of tiled floor about twenty feet down that they were using as a landing platform. An old twisted section of fire escape was half embedded in the wall of debris on one side to form a makeshift signal tower, the red electric lamp trailing cables down to a generator below.
There were four other airbikes lined up down there, and we landed in an open space near one wall that still had an exposed doorway on it, though the other side was packed solid with dirt and debris. Across the old tiled floor on the other side was another piece of wall that had buckled a little under pressure from above. A metal doorframe in the middle had held its ground, and the chipped blue door had a red LED shining over a magnetic lock. Through the car’s sunroof I saw smoke and dust moaning over the pit’s mouth in billowy gray streams, the bright point of Fangwenzhe bleeding through like a tiny second sun. The car settled down, and floating grit suddenly dropped back down to the ground as the emitters deactivated.
“Now what?” Vamp asked from up front. Fear flashed in his eyes as he looked out the window.
“Let’s go,” Ligong said.
The doors opened and we piled out, Vamp with his hands still pinned behind his back and Nix a little unsteady on his feet as we were escorted across the buckled floor. It was at least twenty degrees cooler there, and the air had a bittersweet chemical smell. When we reached the door at the far end, the LED turned from red to green, and I heard the bolt pop over the rush of wind. The door opened, and a man stepped out. He was tall and sinewy, with waxy skin and an ugly pockmarked face. He was dressed in uniform, but had a black rubber butcher’s apron on over it, and a cigar butt glowed in the corner of his wide, thick lips.
“You,” Hwong said to Vamp, “go with him.”
Vamp bristled, glancing back over his shoulder toward the car.
“There’s nothing back there,” Hwong said. “Go with him.”
“Wait,” I said. “Just hold on.”
“Alive or dead,” Hwong said, his voice hardening. “Your choice.”
Vamp took an unsteady step toward the man in the apron, who just watched, not smiling. Ligong shoved him then, causing him to stumble forward.
“You too,” Hwong said to Nix. “Go with them.”
Nix didn’t argue. He approached the uniformed man in the apron, and waited with Vamp as the man took a scanner from his belt and aimed it at him. When he switched it on, a holoscreen appeared in the air above it, displaying a vague outline of interference where Nix would be.
“He’s got an Escher Field,” the man said. “The destination’s scrambled and it won’t respond with an inventory.”
“Let’s have it,” Ligong said, holding out one hand.
I watched as Nix gave up the tablet and she held it up to the light. She angled it back and forth, but the screen appeared as nothing more than a seamless silver plate. She handed it to Hwong.
“Take them in,” Hwong said to the man. The guy nodded, then put the scanner away and gestured for Nix and Vamp to follow. Vamp looked back over his shoulder as he went, making eye contact with me.
“Where are you taking them?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Lieutenant, go with them.” She nodded, following along behind. They disappeared down the corridor branch ahead, and Hwong took us down the broken hallway in the other direction, to a heavy metal door. He held it open and signaled for me to go inside.
The hallway of whatever building had been buried all those years ago had a floor and walls that had shifted and cracked, but it was still mostly intact. They’d strung up a tangled length of holiday lights all the way down on both sides, held in place with carpenter staples. There were other doors on the walls along the way, but they looked like they were jammed shut and I saw rubble poking out of a gap in one of them. Up ahead the corridor opened into what might once have been an old office.
When I stepped through the doorway, my foot splashed into a black puddle of water and creosote, but beyond that it was dry. A desk had been set up in one corner, and there was computer equipment set up there, shielded wires trailing off through another open doorway on the far side of the room where a cracked glass window looked out into what might have been an auditorium at some point.
“What is this place?” I asked him.
“The important thing for you to know,” he said, “is that with all the interference it’s impossible for even our scanners to effectively sweep here. Anything that goes on here is invisible to the outside world. I am authority out there, but I am God in here. Do you understand?”
I stepped closer to the cracked glass window, and through it I could make out rows of shipping containers that had been fashioned into makeshift holding cells. There were people inside them, men and women in dirty prison grays who looked like they’d been there for a long time. Some were young men, tough-looking types, but most were older… balding men with glasses, and women who could be mothers or office workers. They didn’t look like criminals.
“This place is illegal,” I said.
“This place doesn’t exist.”
He leaned back against the desk, and it creaked a little under his weight. He held up Nix’s tablet in one hand.
“Since this is haan tech,” he said, “I have no hope of getting it open without the pass code. Do you know how to open it?”
“No.”
“Does the haan?”
“No.”
“So you’re telling me he is in possession of a device that neither he nor anyone with him is able to access?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re lying,” Hwong said. “I know he knows how to access it, but I don’t think he’ll tell me.”
“I don’t know how to get into it. I—”
“Back in the Pot, the soldier’s scanner recorded you manipulating the device and then handing it back to the haan shortly before they entered,” he said. “I think you do know how to access it.”
“Why do you care? What does it matter to you what he keeps in there anyway?”
“Because I suspect the twistkey I’m looking for is inside it,” he said.