The City Unseen, page 24
part #2 of The Unseen Series
A bullet sparked off the wall next to my shoulder. The Kindred were shooting fish in a barrel, and if we didn’t move soon, we’d catch a bullet ourselves.
Hud was mouthing something, but I couldn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears. He pointed toward a recess in the wall a few steps away. The headlights and explosions had given us night-blindness, but my eyes were adjusting to the dark again, allowing me to see the hidden area for the first time.
Behind us, a Zealot raised his head from the remains of the fallen and looked our way. He’d worked out that staying put was probably a bad idea, and stood to make a run for us, before doubling over as he took a bullet in the stomach. A second hit him in the top of the head, and he fell forward, limp. There were only a handful of Zealots left, and they wouldn’t work as a distraction much longer.
Hud ran for the recessed area ahead. I followed, and he pushed open the access door.
The gunfire became even quieter, dull thumps echoing through the passage. The lights were off, but I dared to switch a torch on to see where we were. A metal staircase beckoned, and Hud turned to me.
He pointed to his wrist, then his ears. Right. We should wait until our hearing returned before moving forward. There’d be no way to know if we were being followed. I nodded in agreement, and we stood together in the darkness. Hud frowned and pointed to my right ear. I put my hand to it, and it came away with blood on my fingers. That ear had been the one facing the first explosion. My eardrum was probably blown out. That explained the awful pain in my head. If we lived through this, it was fixable.
In the meantime, the ringing in my left ear began to subside, and I could talk to Hud without shouting, although there was still a constant screeching, like feedback from a microphone.
“Reckon this leads all the way to the surface?” I asked.
“Doubt it. It’s probably an access point to the platform. We’ll still have to take down the Kindred, if they’re finished with the Zealots.”
“I almost feel bad for the Zealots,” I said. “I mean, I know they’re murderous psychopaths and everything, but they didn’t have a choice to become who they are.”
“They’re abominations,” said Hud. “They deserved to die.”
Hud’s face was dark in the torch’s ambient light. From this angle, his expression reminded me of someone, maybe Dad’s face when he’d changed and gotten angry. Either way, I didn’t like who this new Hud was becoming.
We slowly climbed the stairs to find Hud was right. There were only two flights, and then a short passageway. At the end of the passage was another metal door, and on the other side of that was likely the Century Park platform full of Kindred.
I hadn’t thought about Rachel or Noah since they’d sped past in the tunnel. Hopefully, they were okay.
Gunfire rang out across the station. If the Kindred were still distracted by the Zealots, they might not notice us sneaking up the stairs behind them.
Hud cracked open the door and the gunshots grew louder again. I peeked through at the remaining Kindred standing on the platform, firing wildly into the darkness. From the screaming further in the tunnel, more Zealots had turned up; probably drawn here by all the noise.
Hud slipped out through the door, and I followed, making a bee-line for the stairs. None of the Kindred turned; they weren’t expecting anyone to come from behind. We made it halfway up the stairs before one of them saw us, and he shouted at the others. Two of them twisted around to face us, raising their weapons to fire. There was no cover, and nowhere to run. I froze and took a breath, waiting for a bullet to rip through my chest.
The roof rumbled, and cracked, and shook, sending dust onto the platform and the Kindred facing us. One of them looked up as a chunk of the ceiling hit him in the face, crushing him instantly. The Kindred all stopped firing, staring at the ceiling as it splintered into shards. Zealots swarmed the platform behind them while the rail tunnel began to collapse next to the station.
“We need to go,” I shouted at Hud, but he didn’t respond. His forehead dripped with sweat as he stared at the ceiling, and his left hand held the damper. He’d taken it off to use his power.
“Hud, what are you doing?” I screamed. “The Pulse!”
“Shut up, Ari!” he shouted back.
Zealots and Kindred both ran now, heading for the stairs to escape the collapsing subway. Concrete boulders blocked their paths, and a water main burst, flooding pressurised water at the base of the stairs, making escape impossible.
A gas line broke, too, and flames billowed from the ceiling. Hud was bringing the entire structure down, and with it, whatever sat aboveground.
“Hud! Stop! That’s enough! There’s no chance they’ll make it up here.”
“They have to die,” said Hud. “I can’t let you die down here. You have to survive. It’s the only way. You run, but I’m staying here until it’s done.”
His eyes were sharp, and he seemed unaffected by Wheeler’s tone, which was definitely still rippling through the air. Hud was strong. Stronger than me. Stronger than any of us. He was taking the whole station down, and he didn’t care who he took with him.
With one final scream, he broke the remaining steel supports, and a deafening crack tore through the underground.
“Time to go,” he said, and pushed me up the stairs as the station filled with smoke. We reached the top and ran out onto the street. I gasped as I saw what Hud had done. He’d vaporised the entire concrete reinforcement, which supported a twelve-storey apartment building that sat atop the subway. The entire building was coming down into the station, and no-one would be left alive. I stepped slowly backward as the building shuddered into the earth. The windows blew out of the first floor, then the second, then the third, as the structure collapsed into the cavern below.
The building tilted, now, and Hud grabbed my hand, snapping me out of my shock and leading me further down the street. As the apartments crashed toward the ground, a middle-aged man fell over the side of his balcony, plummeting to the pavement. From the hair on his arms, he had been turning Zealot anyway.
The apartment block hit the asphalt, shooting debris into the street and breaking the windows of the office block on the opposite side. The shockwave thumped me in the chest, and a fireball ripped through the air as a second gas line ruptured. A dust cloud joined it, kicked up by the rubble that had collapsed into the subway below.
I took a breath. “Hud, what did you do?”
“I did what I had to,” he said, putting the damper back on and turning to face me.
“How did you stay immune to the signal?”
“No idea,” he shrugged. “Now, where’s this gallery?”
FORTY-EIGHT
Dust still drifted into the sky as we made our way toward the gallery. The brown haze swamped the air around us, too, filling my mouth, making me cough, and turning the streets ahead to mist, a mist made darker by a cloud of smoke that billowed throughout the city from countless fires. On the bright side, the dust and smoke helped conceal our progress from any watchful Kindred.
I tried to raise Noah or Rachel on the comms system, but there was no response. Hopefully that just meant they were still underground, and nothing worse had happened to them.
Up here in the exclusion zone the streets were eerily silent. The quiet wasn’t peaceful. It was morbid like a cemetery. Most of the residents here were probably dead inside their apartments, the buildings now giant concrete tombs where they were free to rest. Not in peace, perhaps, but at least they weren’t like the Zealots, who roamed beneath the city, for some reason seeking out darkness, perhaps because they couldn’t stand to see themselves in the light. People seek out darkness when they want to hide who they are.
Hud was certainly turning into someone else. He stalked ahead of me now, making waves through the dust cloud. In some ways, he reminded me of myself at Ettney. Lost. Angry. Ready to hurt anyone or anything that got in the way of my goal, the black patch on my stomach spurring on my darkest impulse. Did Hud have one too? A mark, the Seed of Night as Hackman had called it? I stared at him closely for any signs of the mark but couldn’t see anything on his hands or neck. If he had one, it was hidden under his clothing, and I wasn’t about to start checking that right now.
I saw the Kindred pack before they saw us, and grabbed Hud, pulling him through a smashed storefront. He opened his mouth in protest, but I pointed down the street, and he saw the hooded figures emerge from the mist. Staying low behind the butcher’s counter, I took deep breaths and tried to stay quiet. The sign on the back wall of the shop advertised sausages at half price. I couldn’t see any on display, so either they’d all sold out, or the Zealots had gotten to them first.
“This way,” said a male voice. “Century Park Station is up here.”
“Damn dust is making it hard to navigate.” said a woman, “Why are we even heading there? It’s not like there’ll be survivors.”
“We’re not looking for survivors,” the man replied. “We’re looking for the filth that took down an entire building. That kind of power is unheard of. We need to kill them before they do anything else.”
Hud’s eyebrow raised, and his mouth turned up in a small smirk. He was pleased with himself.
“Keep an eye out,” the man continued. “They’re not the only threat. You saw that crew get taken by the Zealots at the park. Don’t let them get a jump on you.”
The footsteps faded into the distance, and I waited until it was quiet to speak.
“Hud, thanks for saving us, but that was too much. Those people in the building—I don’t even know how many were in there. You should have stopped.”
“They were going to die anyway,” Hud growled. “Better them than us.”
I shook my head. “Down at the docklands you risked your life to save those workers.”
“And look how that turned out. Kidnapped by Wheeler, and—” he stared into the distance.
“What did they do to you?”
He didn’t answer.
I sighed. “Well you need to get past it, and fast. You can’t just go bringing down residential blocks every time things get dangerous.”
“Sure,” he snapped. “Easy for you to say. You’re the star of the show. The hero of the people. The Chosen One, the Child of Prophecy, the Approaching Storm, all that stuff. I’m just a sidekick who couldn’t save his girlfriend.”
“Seriously?” my mouth hung open. “You think I want all of this? You think I want any of this? You have no idea what I saw in the Chapel. No idea what I—what I saw myself become. You have no idea the darkness I have to carry. You’re worse than Noah. Pull yourself together and stop making this all about you. Too many people have died today, and I’m not letting any more die just because you’re sulking.”
I stood and stormed out into the street, despite the threat of Kindred patrols. Rachel or Noah must have told him about the prophecy stuff, and I wished they hadn’t.
Hud matched my pace and put one hand on my shoulder. It was awkward, like he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. “Ari?” he said, quietly.
“What?” I spat.
“Ari, I’m sorry. I lost it back there. And you’re right. I was sulking.”
I slowed and looked at him, smoke spiralling around us, whipped up by wind currents starting to pick up between the buildings. Overhead, the sky was barely visible, but it seemed to be glowing orange. We were nearing sunset.
“Hud, it’s okay. But you’ve got to keep your eye on the ball. We’ve got to stop Wheeler before things get worse. The backup team will be here soon, but it won’t matter as long as the Pulse is active.”
He nodded. “Okay.” He frowned for a moment. “Back there, you said you saw something in the Chapel. What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath, trying not to choke on the embers in the air. “The Chapel in the Ettney National Park, the one that felt wrong. You’ve heard of it?”
“The others told me, yeah.”
Maybe it was time to tell someone. I hadn’t spoken the vision out loud to a soul, but maybe Hud could take it. Maybe I could trust him with that.
“I had a vision. The Chapel—it showed me my future.”
“The look on your face tells me it wasn’t winning the lottery.”
“No.” I looked around, suddenly conscious that we were exposed on the street. “I saw a city drenched in blood. I saw Noah dying. And I saw myself, turning into one of the Shadow things, and I knew I was the reason everyone was dead.”
Hud stepped back for a moment. “Whoa.”
“I know. And I don’t even know why I told you that, except that I’m terrified that this is it. That Coleton is the city I saw, and that somehow, if everyone in this city dies, I’m going to turn into a Shadow creature and end the entire world.”
Hud shook his head. “No. I don’t think that’s it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think Coleton is the city you saw. Plus, Noah’s not dead.”
“You did just bring an entire apartment building down onto the tunnels. I’ve been trying not to think about what that could have done to him and Rachel.”
“They were in a van. They would have been long gone by the time I brought that down. My point is, though, that you’re not going to end the world today.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I think this war still has a long way to go, and I think that future is still a long way off.” His eyes were intense, but his voice was hopeful. It made me feel a little better.
That hope faded when we rounded the corner into the street where Elements Gallery sat. The front of the gallery was guarded by close to forty Kindred armed with automatic weapons and even a gun turret. No chance of us getting through there. Next door, the Channel Three studios sat quiet, and above it the transmission tower was barely visible through the smoke.
Look,” said Hud, pointing. “I’ve never seen so many in one place.”
The transmission tower was swarming with Shadows that flew in spirals around the antenna. They reminded me of sharks in a feeding frenzy, ducking and weaving and swirling, as if the smoke was deep water and the signal their prey.
Every now and then, one stopped for a moment, tendrils pulsing.
“It’s like they’re feeding off the signal,” I said as Hud and I edged back around the corner and out of their sight line. “They’re drawn to it.”
“So what? Blow it up anyway, kill the signal, and they’ll leave,” he said.
“I’ve seen one stop a fire by drawing energy from the flames. Even if I get to the roof without them or the Kindred guard spotting me, they’ll most likely suck the energy from the grenades before they do any real damage.”
“So, now what?” asked Hud, peeking back around the corner.
“If we can’t stop the transmitter, we have to cut the signal off at its source.” I took a breath. “We have to kill Wheeler.”
FORTY-NINE
We stopped at the edge of the alley that led to the back of Elements Gallery. At least a dozen Kindred stood armed with automatic weapons, guarding the alley on both sides. They didn’t see us because we were crouched behind the wall, and the smoke concealed our movement, but we were going to have to sneak past them to get in. At least the back was less heavily fortified. If we could sneak in through the back of the Channel Three loading dock like last time, we could avoid them entirely.
“What do you think?” I asked Hud.
He switched off his damper.
“Hud, seriously. That’s not a good idea. Turn it back on.”
“I was fine last time. I can hear the signal, but it’s not affecting me. They won’t be expecting someone to use abilities, not this close to the Pulse.”
“Hud, I—”
“Stay here.” Hud ducked around the corner. A series of muffled explosions thumped the air, and then silence. Hud reappeared and motioned for me to follow him. I did, and gasped. The dozen Kindred guards were no longer there. Well, they were, but they were in bits. Hud had blown up the ammunition in their guns. All of them. At once.
“How did you do that?”
“Just good, I guess,” he smirked, one corner of his mouth turning up at the edge.
“The Kindred thought I was powerful,” I said, “but I’ve got nothing compared to you. You’ve got the strongest abilities I’ve ever seen.”
“Guess I’m more useful than you thought, hey?”
I frowned. “I never said you weren’t—”
“Never mind. They probably didn’t hear that out the front, but let’s not wait around and find out.” Without waiting for me, he set off down the alley.
I followed, trying not to look at the mess of bodies on the ground. The smell rising from them was already awful, as their insides were now very much not inside.
The Channel Three loading dock was unlocked. People had probably turned up to work this morning as normal, not expecting that, instead of broadcasting the news, they would become the news. Perhaps, right now, news crews from around the world were heading to Coleton as the city unravelled. Although, and much more likely, nobody outside this city knew what was happening at all. The Kindred would have made sure of that.
I slipped inside, and the dock smelled musty and wet, rising damp staining the concrete edges. My breathing echoed through the space. I tried slowing it; I hadn’t realised how fast I was panting. Stress, probably, not to mention the smoke clogging up the air outside. The Blackwood Logistics truck was still here from last time. Maybe it was an outside broadcast truck for on-the-ground reporters. Whatever it was, it brought back memories from inside Blackwood’s offices. I shuddered and tried not to think about what I’d done to those Kindred on level nine.
The gallery was quiet, and unguarded. Wheeler had so much confidence in his Pulse, in the guards outside, he probably thought he was invincible. That worked in our favour.
I sidestepped the mirror this time, refusing to look at whatever was happening there. Right now, I had to take out Wheeler; freaky art could wait.
