Chong… I sent again. He didn’t answer.
Okay, I told myself. Never mind it. Do what you came to do, and get out of here.
I scraped my hand on the edge of the platform until the feeling stopped, then took out my phone and snapped a few pictures before aiming the gate remote at a spot on the tunnel wall. I dialed up the endpoint for the black hole drop and opened a portal.
A point of white light expanded, revealing the darkness of the underground factory. I shined my light through, passing it over the machinery to the collapsed wall where I’d stashed the box.
I stepped inside, the muted street noise and metro rumbles disappearing in favor of the low whisper of the rim’s endless storm. I hurried over to the box, and scooped it up. Before I could change my mind, I carried it back to the portal and into the tunnel.
I closed the gate behind me, and knelt down on the tunnel floor. My hands shook a little as I opened the box, to reveal the three bricks inside. When I saw them, in front of me like that, I hesitated. Just one should be enough to bring the station down, and I had to bring the station down, but…
I’ll do it in the middle of the night, I told myself. I’ll do it when no one is there. No one will get hurt if I do it when no one is there. I’ll just—
“It’s a form of perfluorocarbon,” a voice said near my ear. A hand touched my shoulder, and I screamed.
I whirled around to see Nix standing there in the tunnel with me. He had to have gated in, and the train noise covered the sound of the portal opening.
“Shit, Nix.”
“Sorry.”
“You almost gave me a heart attack.”
He pointed at the liquid pooled on the floor, the strange liquid I’d been looking at earlier.
“It’s a form of perfluorocarbon,” he said. “The liquid breathing medium used inside Shiliuyuán.”
“What’s it doing here?”
“I’m not sure, but it didn’t come from the ship. They must be using it for some reason inside the Xinzhongzi colony.”
“Why?”
“Humans can breathe it… in fact you did some years ago when you were gated to the ship. More likely, though, it is being used by haan.”
“But the colony hasn’t been opened yet.”
“Regardless, at least some haan are inside.”
“Great.”
If LeiFang thought the protesters were getting out of hand now, just wait until Hangfei got wind that haan had already started to move in.
“I’ve seen tunnels like that one before,” I said. “Why is it here?”
“We use tunnels extensively in our habitats,” he said. “The bristles assist movement through the perfluorocarbon—”
“How deep do they go?” I asked. “How many tunnels are there down there?”
Instead of answering, he gestured toward the bricks that he’d seen inside the box. “What are those?” he asked.
“Nothing, Nix, I—”
“Detonating an explosive device doesn’t sound like something you would do.”
The way he said it made me feel angry and ashamed all at the same time. A sense of dismay, of disappointment, trickled in through the surrogate cluster.
“I need to shut down the colony power station,” I said, my voice rising.
“But like this?”
“I’ll do it after hours. No one will get hurt.”
“That is naïve.”
My face grew hot, as I turned back to the box. I reached in and pulled one of the bricks free.
“I’ll make sure….”
My words trailed off as I saw the brick in the light.
“What is wrong?” Nix asked.
The bricks had the same weight as before, and the wrapper around the one in my hand was the same as before, but the insides had changed. The solid claylike gray brick had been replaced with what looked like a piece of drywall.
“Sam, what’s wrong?” Nix asked again.
I dumped the other bricks out. They’d all been swapped, and the detonators were gone.
I stared at them on the sewer floor. Had they been fakes all along? Did I get ripped off? Or had Dao-Ming somehow managed to swap them out without my knowing?
Could she have done that, though? The only way to access them would have been with the remote, or through the black hole gate.
“Alexei has a key to my place,” I said.
“What?”
“She must have gotten it from him,” I said. That meant Dao-Ming had her explosives, and the detonators, and might have had them all along. She had set off the bomb in Render’s Strip.
“I knew it,” I said under my breath. “I fucking knew it!”
I threw the box away, and stood back up. I put the remote back into my Escher tablet, and dropped it into my pocket.
Chong, I’m coming back. I’ve got a haan with me so don’t freak out. I know him.
The message sat, unanswered, in the 3i chat pane.
Chong?
“He’s not answering,” I muttered.
“Who?”
“Chong, the guy I came down here with. Come on, we need to get back.”
“I can gate us out.”
“We can’t just leave him down here, come on.”
Something boomed from down the tunnel, and echoed into the distance. Two more followed right after.
“Gunshots,” I said. “Chong’s in trouble, come on.”
Three more shots went off as I drew my palm pistol and sprinted back the way I’d come. Nix followed, our feet splashing through the shallow water until we finally reached the junction. I turned the corner, and saw a muzzle flash in the dim light up ahead as Chong fired another shot.
“Chong!”
Something white stood out in the gloom, and I spotted Qian, back in her white uniform, standing only a few paces from Chong. As she passed by a fallen electric lantern, her shadow changed, just for a second. Just for a second she cast a shadow too large for her small frame, and right before she moved out of the light I saw something begin to uncoil from either side of it.
Her hands were still by her sides but Chong seized as if he’d been grabbed. His right arm went rigid, and began to turn purple as something invisible coiled around it. He tried to fire his gun again but something peeled his fingers off the grip. Two of them snapped and were peeled away as the pistol thumped onto the concrete floor.
“Shoot her!” he screamed. He stared bug-eyed at the spot where his fingers had been as blood ran freely from the ragged hole left behind.
I took aim, but they were so close together and I didn’t have a lot of experience with guns. I wasn’t sure I could hit either one of them from that distance, and I could easily end up hitting Chong instead.
“Shoot her!”
The coil around his arm tightened and his arm snapped. He screamed as his forearm bent ninety degrees and a splinter of bone tore through the skin.
“Qian!” I shouted.
She turned and saw me, as well as the bars that separated us. Chong’s screams became muffled as if something had moved to cover his mouth. Then she turned, and disappeared with him down the tunnel.
“Qian!”
I approached the bars and slipped through. Nix followed, and I shined my flashlight down the tunnel but saw no sign of Chong or Qian. Even his muffled screams had faded.
“Chong?” I called. My voice echoed down the tunnel.
“Sam, there,” Nix said, pointing.
I shined my light onto the tunnel floor, where Chong’s phone lay on the bare concrete, just on the other side of the bars.
“Shit.” I reached through and picked it up. Three red dots, still sticky to the touch, had spotted the screen where a message still sat.