“Just tell me where to put it.”
“It’s better if I show you.”
I thought about ditching him, just jumping through and closing the gate behind me, but he looked so damned earnest and he was right, really. Having some backup couldn’t hurt.
“After you,” I told him. He removed a small flashlight from inside his jacket and handed it to me.
“Ladies first.”
I grabbed the light, then gave him the finger, took a deep breath, and jumped through.
Dropping through the gate felt like plunging into thick mud. I fell straight through into darkness, and then met sudden resistance that slowed and stopped me almost immediately. For a couple of seconds I hung there, stuck, with no sense of space. Then, before I could even try to get oriented, I came out the other side in free fall.
I dropped only a few feet before landing on the concrete floor of the tunnel with a shallow splash. I stumbled, then lost my footing and fell down on my back as Chong looked through the gate from above. I could still hear the street noise leaking through, and echoing down the tunnel.
“You okay?” he called. I winced, and rolled over in the shallow muck.
“Yeah, I’m great.”
I turned on the flashlight as he splashed down next to me, almost tumbling over, and above us the gate shrank to a point of light and disappeared. I aimed the beam down the tunnel first one way, then the other. Something moved, skittering away in the distance and I froze.
“It’s just a rat or something,” Chong said. “Take it easy.”
“You take it easy.” I brought up the sewer map on my 3i, and shined the light across the tunnel wall until I found a sign indicating the junction. Something else moved in the tunnel, and I jumped.
“There’s someone down here,” I said.
“There’s no one down here. I checked it all out. There’s no scheduled maintenance. You’ll be able to set an endpoint to sneak into the station later. Then all we have to do is figure out how to shut it down from the inside.”
“I know how to shut it down,” I said.
“Yeah? And how’s that?”
I headed down the tunnel, following the map as the rumble of traffic rushed overhead, washed out by the occasional rumble of a metro car.
“Hey, how do you think you’re going to shut it down?” he called, coming after me. “You’re going to need me to—”
“Let me worry about that. Just get me inside.”
He let it drop, following along with me in silence for a bit.
“So, what’s up with you and Vamp?” he asked. I glanced back at him, frowning.
“Why?”
“Because if you guys aren’t a thing, then I figured I might see if you want to go out some time. Hit a club or something.”
I stopped, and turned back toward him.
“Me and Vamp are complicated, okay?”
“So, you’re a thing?”
“I don’t know what we are,” I said.
“Okay, okay,” he said, putting up his hands. “I just thought maybe he and Shuang were back together, so—”
He almost ran into me as I stopped short.
“Back together?” I asked. He saw the look on my face, and began to stammer a little.
“Well… yeah,” he said. “He never mentioned her?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Hey, it’s ancient history,” he said, trying to backpedal. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You just said you thought they were back together.”
“I… did just say that,” he agreed. “Hey, what do I know though?”
“Are they?” I asked. He shrugged.
“Only thing I ever talk to Shuang about are schematics from the power grid when she was coding the virus.”
“Did Vamp say anything?”
He started to protest again, then stopped, and let out a sigh.
“I’ll put it this way,” he said. “I figure the only reason Shuang is in on this, is because of Vamp. Back then, she called it off. He took it hard. She’s back because she wants another shot. That’s the only reason.”
“Does Vamp know that?”
“If he isn’t blind he does.”
An underground train passed by somewhere below, and as the roar faded back to silence I heard the skittering sound again, and brought my flashlight around.
“There’s nothing down here,” Chong said, when something froze in the beam.
The thing was small, and low to the ground. I thought it might actually be a rat or something but then I saw the pinprick, glowing lights. Several long, spindly legs pawed at the floor ahead, uncertain; then the little haan construct scrambled away. When it reached the corner, it startled a couple more and then took off after them.
“You were saying?”
“Huh,” he said. “What the heck are they doing down here?”
“No idea.”
“Should we squash them, just in case?”
“Good luck catching one of those things,” I told him. “Besides, they don’t care that we’re here.”
“Security will.”
“The constructs don’t record visual data.”
“Says who?”
“The haan.”
“And we know they never lie.”
“Let’s just get this over with before the station attendant comes back looking for his key, okay?”
“Fine.”
We headed down the tunnel, trying to stay out of the muck until we reached the junction and the tunnel widened. A concrete platform appeared, jutting from the right side to allow maintenance workers to make their way through. We climbed up onto it and followed rows of thick, black wiring that powered the tunnel lights, which were currently dark except for the faint glow of green power LEDs.
Following the map, we navigated the maze of sewers until according to the overlay I’d traveled several city blocks. By then, the air felt thick and heavy, and I found it harder and harder to breathe. With nothing but blackness behind us and ahead, I lost all sense of where I was and even my footsteps echoed and overlapped so that I wouldn’t know if someone snuck up behind me until it was too late. I picked up my pace, following the hanging wires down the platform with Chong in tow until the beam of my flashlight caught something up ahead.
“Shit.” My voice echoed as I slowed to a stop in front of a metal gate. It went floor to ceiling, a series of thick metal bars and when I pulled on the door I found it locked tight with an electronic lock. I shone my light through, and could see the next junction ahead.
“Um… according to the map, that shouldn’t be there,” Chong said.
“Well, it is there, Chong.”
“I can see that.”
The gate looked new, its paint clean and fresh in the dank surroundings.
“Can we go around?” I asked.
“No, the tunnels don’t meet up anywhere else. According to the map, the only way to get under the power station is through there.”
I shined my flashlight over the gate. The bars covered the whole of the tunnel, with no place to squeak past. A metal sign had been posted above the gate, displaying a Hangfei security seal.
TOP LEVEL SECURITY ACCESS ONLY BY ORDER OF THE MILITARY GOVERNESS.
“Governess,” I whispered.
“This went up after Hwong’s death, then,” Chong said. “It’s less than a year old.”
“That’s why it isn’t on the map.”
She knows, then, I thought. If LeiFang had gone to the trouble to not just surround Xinzhongzi with security but even choke off access from the sewers, then she must want whatever is in there kept secret, too. Was that why she hadn’t come down on the protests yet? Was she using the protesters as a distraction, and so that she didn’t appear to be too much in favor of the colony?
Standing close to the bars, I gauged the gap between them. Designed to let water through, they were wide enough apart to not get clogged with random flotsam. The space between them was still pretty small, but then again, so was I.