Dark Metropolis (19 page)

F
reddy lit the lantern and led the way to the tracks. A train was parked on them, but the windows were coated in grime. “Do you know where to go from here?” she asked him.

“Yes. I didn’t used to be able to feel the presence of the people I’ve revived, but now I can sense them ahead.”

“So do you think it’s true, what Father Gruneman said, that you don’t have to touch them, or even see them, to release the magic?”

“Yes. When he said that, I didn’t think it was possible. But since then I’ve been trying to use my magic in different ways. I’m more aware now.”

They climbed down, and it seemed to take only moments for the tunnel to swallow them up. Grates some two stories up cast patterns of light and shadow at first, but as they continued deeper, the lantern became their only light.

The track was on a gentle downgrade. The exit was no longer close enough to sprint to if something emerged from the darkness ahead. Eerie shadows wobbled on the gray walls beyond the lantern’s glow.

A bit later, the track joined with a second. Now two tracks ran side by side, with puddles between them, so Thea walked carefully. She heard something skitter in the dark. Freddy trained the lantern on a scruffy brown rat just before it scurried back into the darkness.

“I suppose we should be glad that’s the first one we’ve seen,” he said. “We haven’t had to fend them off with a curtain rod yet.”

“It’s the darkness that’s so awful. There could be a thousand of them just out of sight somewhere.”

But rats weren’t the worst of what they could encounter.

They came to a door placed in the left wall. Freddy opened it, revealing a staircase descending another story—at least.

“Oh,
no
,” Thea said. “Where on earth are we, anyway?”

“The city has miles of underground rails and old tunnels, I’ve heard Uncle say.” Freddy started down the stairs. At least the steps were dry and clean, but as they neared the bottom, she caught a whiff of something like smoke and…food.

“Do you smell that?” Freddy whispered.

“Yes. Could we be getting close to the revived people?”

“It’s not that.”

A prickle ran down her spine. “Then what is it?”

“Hopefully, not a convict.” He stepped off the stairs, into a narrow ridge hemmed in by solid wall on one side and crumbling wall on the other. “It seems to open up ahead.” He extended the lantern outward.

It looked like a natural cavern ahead, or maybe part of the old catacombs. She didn’t see any bodies, but there were shadowed niches in the walls that she didn’t care to look at too closely.

And the remains of a campfire.

Freddy swept the lantern over obvious signs of habitation. A blanket was crumpled beside a cup and a bowl, a wooden box, and a pile of small animal bones picked clean of meat. Rat bones, maybe. A few empty liquor bottles lay on their sides.

“Who’s there?” a deep voice barreled from the depths of shadow. A man sprang out from a niche in the wall, growling in his throat like an angry dog. Thea stumbled in the dim light, trying to get away as he launched himself at them. He was tall, with large hands, a matted dark beard, and steely, wild eyes.

Freddy held the curtain rod like a weapon. “We just want to pass peacefully.”

“It’s dangerous down here, boy,” the man said. “You need to get out and go right back where you came from, or I’ll eat you for dinner.”

Thea remembered Father Gruneman’s gun and opened her purse, and the man’s attention snapped to her…

And suddenly shot past her. At first, Thea didn’t see or hear a thing.

Then, shuffling footsteps. They moved faster as they grew closer.

“It’s him,” the man hissed. He suddenly shoved Freddy away, turned, and ran.

Thea didn’t really want to know what would scare a man like that. She took out the weapon. It was cold and heavy in her trembling hands.

“Where did you get that?” Freddy asked.

“Father Gruneman.”

“Put it away,” he said. “I know him.” He was looking into the darkness. Boots came into the circle of the lantern light, and then legs in tattered, bloody clothes, and then emaciated arms, the skin a withered brown, mottled, ending in filthy fingernails.

Thea dropped her eyes before she could see the face. She didn’t want to see the face. Her heart stampeded through her chest.

She heard a sniff, and then a whisper. “Living…flesh…”

“It’s the first man I ever revived,” Freddy said, his voice coming out choked, as if someone had hands around his throat. “Our neighbor. The day before the Valkenraths took me away.”

“You never knew what happened to him?” Thea asked. “How old were you?”

“I was three. And no—I never knew.”

“You,” the dead voice said. He was inching closer, and Thea knew she had to turn around and face it with Freddy.

The fear—surely the fear was as bad as anything.
Seeing something can’t hurt you. It won’t touch you. You won’t let it touch you.

She turned.

Her stomach roiled and yet—she was surprised to feel as much pity as terror. The dead thing lurching toward them in the shadows looked desperate.

Could my father be…like this?

“Mr. Schiffer…” Freddy said.

The dead man breathed raggedly. “Mr. Schiffer…” it repeated. “So long since I have heard…my name.” He took a step closer. “It’s you…little Frederick Linden…all grown up…look like your mother…”

Freddy clutched Thea’s arm. “Why are you here?” he shouted. “How did you, of all people, get down here?”

The sunken eyes bulged a bit. Thea dropped her eyes to the ground again. “They took me,” he said. “Years and years of
tests
…potions and needles and trances and treatments to keep me alive. But I got free. I showed them, yes….Find yourself a new guinea pig. They have so many now.” He reached for Freddy with fingers that were hardly more than bones and nails. “Where were
you
, Freddy? You’re the one who called me back.”

Slowly, slowly, Freddy let go of Thea. “I’m here now. I only ask one thing of you, Mr. Schiffer. Do you know the way to the underground?”

“Yesss…”

“Show us there. Please.”

“I don’t want to eat the girl,” the man—she couldn’t think of him as Mr. Schiffer—said.

“You won’t,” Freddy said very firmly.

The man started to move, and Freddy followed. Thea ran prayers through her head because she didn’t know what to do anymore. She didn’t want to see her father like this. She didn’t want to follow the dead thing. She didn’t want him to even think of eating her. She was unnerved by how calm Freddy was.

But she forced her feet forward, to stay with Freddy.

The dead man led them deeper and deeper into the tunnels, and as they walked it seemed that all she heard was the painful shuffle of his boots and his ragged breath. Freddy never took his eyes off the man. Thea mostly kept her eyes on Freddy. The man led them down another set of stairs, and there Thea imagined she was in the very belly of the earth, far from the sun or the sky or any open space.

A single light shone ahead. Thea had never known how comforting one weak lightbulb in the darkness could be.

“Are we getting close?” Freddy asked.

“Yesss…” The man stepped into the electric light, which was stronger than the glow of the lantern. “I want…flesh. I want to live again. Please help me.” He reached for the edge of Freddy’s jacket, and Freddy stepped back.

“Mr. Schiffer, I have to let you go. You need to go on to the next world.”

The dead man shook his head. One of the greasy tangles of his remaining hair fell into his eyes. “All these years of this, and all I get is
death
? You owe me something, boy. I deserve to go home.” His eyes slid to Thea. They seemed to strain in their sockets, trying to get a good look at her. “Just a good taste, how much better I’d feel…”

Suddenly his hand snatched out and grabbed Thea’s arm. She would rather have a dozen rats crawl over her than one touch from him, his awful, withered flesh. She tried to pull away, tried to kick him—tried not to
feel
how his fingers gripped her. Freddy hit him across the chest with the curtain rod, and he screamed like a wounded animal, but he yanked on her harder.

“Freddy!”

Freddy grabbed Mr. Schiffer’s arm, and abruptly his hand went limp, falling away from her, his body crumpling to the ground.

“Is he—?”

Freddy was breathing hard. “He’s dead.”

F
reddy raked his hand through his hair as though trying to wipe away the feel of Mr. Schiffer’s skin. “He was a carpenter. He had a daughter—or maybe even two—I can’t remember anymore.” His expression hardened as he stared at the body. “The Valkenraths must have used him to figure out the serum.”

“Poor man.” Thea never would have thought her heart could break over something she found so horrifying. She lowered her head and whispered a prayer for him. It was a lonely place to die.

“If only I’d known he was here,” Freddy said.

She squeezed his shoulder, and he started moving forward again.

Knowing they were drawing close, they quickened their pace, and soon they reached another abandoned—but lit—subway station.

“Ahead,” Freddy said. “I can sense them.”

Upstairs, hallways branched left and right, with regularly spaced doors. Everything here was ordered and lifeless, drained of color and personality. Thea heard a few doors opening, and some low voices.

“It sounds like they’re awake,” she said.

“I wonder if the Valkenraths got here before us.” Freddy looked grim. He started creeping rather than walking. It was hard for Thea to keep her shoes from clicking on the floors.

“…maybe I should see what’s going on,” a man was saying.

“Do you think something’s happened with those two girls who were in the cage?” another man answered.

“Why would I have heard a gunshot?”

Thea glanced at Freddy, and he nodded and turned the corner, revealing himself to the men standing there. There were actually a good half dozen of them, although only two had been speaking, and they all looked stunned.

“Who are you?” one of the men asked. “You look familiar.” He was the tallest among them, and perhaps the oldest as well, with a large bald spot. But all the men looked very similar: gray faces in gray clothes, tired faces that didn’t really look any different from those of the workers who poured off the trains in the morning to work in the city.

“We’re revolutionaries,” Freddy said. “We’re going to lead you out of here.”

“No way out,” one of the men said, so promptly that Thea sensed he’d said it a hundred times.

“But then how did they get in?” a younger man asked, looking excited. “Where did you come from?”

She shot Freddy a quick glance, realizing she wasn’t sure she could find her way back; it wasn’t as if they’d had bread crumbs to drop. “The Vogelsburg subway station,” she said.

“Something’s already going on,” the balding man said. “Thomas heard shots in the cafeteria.”

“Guards are massing around there,” said a younger man, who looked excited. He was just joining the conversation, having come down the hall as they talked.

“Please listen to me,” Freddy said, raising his voice above their conversation. “All of you need to get out of here. You’re very close to the outside world, and there are people aboveground ready to help you. Wake everyone up and gather out here in the halls. I’ll lead the way.”

They were all looking at Freddy with confusion and almost a touch of awe.

“Who are you?” the man with the bald spot asked again. “I know you.”

“Hurry,”
Freddy said. “We don’t have much time. Get moving—make sure everyone’s up.”

“But where are we going?” one of the men asked. “What’s aboveground? This is all we know.”

Thea remembered Arabella saying at the meeting that the workers might have no memories. But being confronted with it—it was worse than Thea had expected. Would her father even know her face when she found him?

“What’s aboveground? Your families.” Freddy stepped up onto the concrete ledge beside a stairwell so he could be seen by the increasing crowd—a few women were trickling in at the back now. “You might not remember them—but they remember you.
They miss you. They think you are all dead and gone. All of you, in your old lives, you were parents, and children, soldiers and laborers and writers—every kind of person, and they took that from you, to force you into slavery down here. But it can all end tonight. You can be free, and when your families see you, they will know of your imprisonment, and this can never happen again.”

Thea could see that the people believed him. Maybe they didn’t remember, but they knew there was more to their lives; some of them had tears in their eyes.

She could hardly bear to see their hope, knowing that Freddy had to lead them with a lie. He could promise them freedom, but not for long.

“Now, go, gather everyone here. I know there are more of you.” He spread his arms, and the people began to disperse, even as more bleary, pajama-clad workers were wandering in.

Freddy stepped down off the ledge and rubbed his head. “I hope this works.”

“It looks like they’re listening to you, at least.” Some of the people were ducking back into their rooms and grabbing things—clothes, sticks, even a tobacco tin. “But I need to find my father.”

“I’m sure we’ll see him.”

“I don’t know—what if he just pushes his way out through the crowd and we never cross paths? Can you sense him?”

“I’m not sure. There are so many people here. Maybe if I take your hand.”

She had not touched his hand again, all this time, since the first two visions. Now she offered her hand, and when their fingers met, the vision of her father flashed through her mind once more.

“Come on,” Freddy said, keeping hold of her hand. “I think I can find him, but we need to hurry. I don’t want to abandon the crowd for long.”

They stuck to the walls, slipping by against the tide as workers poured out of starkly lit halls and flowed down stairs.

“Here,” Freddy said, gesturing to an empty hall. “Up ahead. He’s here somewhere.”

Thea heard male voices, speaking low behind one of the doors, and a familiar head peered out when their footsteps drew nearer. “Who—who are you?” Familiar brows furrowed, and her heart almost stopped.

“It’s me, it’s me, Thea! I’m your daughter, Thea!”

“Thea…”

She could not imagine a longer moment than this one, when she saw her father after eight years of hoping for him, convincing herself he was gone forever, missing him, seeing him every time she touched her mother…and now, having him look at her like this. His face searched hers. Hopeful—but unsure.

The forgetting—it must have saved him from bound-sickness. But she hardly knew which was worse.

“My daughter,” he said. “Thea. That’s your name.”

“Thea!” she repeated. “Please…remember.” She reached for him, and he took her hand. This seemed to spark recognition in his eyes.

“I’ve been trying to remember for so long
…Thea.” He threw his arms around her. “Thea, Thea.” He kept saying her name and looking her over, as if trying to join two pieces of a puzzle.

Her eyes ran over every detail of his face, every line and crease. He didn’t look as if he’d aged from the last photographs that were taken. His hair was the same shade as hers. They both had the faintest of freckles on their noses. He was hers, hers.
Don’t take him away….

“So many times I almost remembered you,” he said, tears trailing from his eyes. “It was maddening. Just little pieces. But—yes—yes, I’m starting to remember. You’ve grown so much.” He put his hands to her cheeks now. Her hands, grubby from her travels, had left smears of dirt on his shoulders and face.

“You’re here, you’re alive.” The word slipped out, and just as quickly she thought,
No—

She could feel Freddy’s eyes on her, and when she glanced back at him, he turned away.

She was only making this harder for him. But she needed this moment.

She put her head against her father, clinging to him. She was somewhere beyond joy or grief, simply swamped with every emotion until she felt drowned by her feelings, until she could hardly imagine she had ever been laughing with Nan or working at the Telephone Club. This moment was all there was or had ever been.

“Thea,” her father said. “That boy you came with…” He paused heavily. “Who is he?”

“He—” How could she talk about this now?

“I’m starting to remember him, too.” He paused and frowned. “I was injured, and he…was there when I woke up. He was younger, though. About your age. I mean, when I last saw you. He had blond hair streaked with silver then. I’d never seen anything like it.”

“He…has magic,” she said. She struggled for words to explain.

“The men in my dorms, we’ve been here for many years, and we’ve long thought”—he held her shoulders gently—“that we’re dead, only we’ve been kept in some unnatural half-life.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to be the one to tell you….”

“This life isn’t natural,” he said, clutching her shoulders a little tighter. “All of us veterans feel we’ve accepted that. If he’s here to undo the magic…then…that’s what we want.”

She nodded, swallowing her sadness—the danger of this situation felt too close to lose herself in sorrow. “Do you think other people are going to remember Freddy, too?”

“Possibly.”

“That isn’t good. We don’t want a panic. We have to get everyone moving out of here. There isn’t time.” She caught Freddy’s eyes.

“We’ll just have to move as quickly as we can,” he said.

“Yes.” She drew closer to Freddy as they hurried back to the gathering crowd, but she held her father’s hand. She was never going to forget how his hand felt—warm and comforting and perfectly fatherlike. It seemed smaller than it used to be, but only because she had grown. He still felt strong.

Freddy had just stepped onto the ledge again when a worker came running from one of the halls, shouting, “Valkenrath’s dead!” His footsteps stopped just long enough for him to shout it again, then moved on. She heard him slow again and pound on doors, still screaming the message, and now the conversation in the room rose to a din. Some of the people moved out to see what was going on.

Freddy shot Thea a glance of alarm. The workers were looking to him now.

“Well—good!” he said. “He won’t be able to stop you. Follow me!”

The workers parted to let him move forward. Not long ago they’d found six men, and now there seemed to be people everywhere she looked, more than on the sidewalks of Lampenlight on Saturday night. As Freddy made his way down another hall, the crowd pressed in just behind them.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out where to go. She heard shouting in the distance. As they drew closer, they crossed paths with a few workers who had gone ahead to see what was going on. “There’s a strange woman in the cafeteria,” one of them said. “She’s the one who shot Valkenrath.”

“Are there guards up there?” her father asked.

“Yes. Some.”

Freddy pushed forward to a group of milling guards, all of a similar height and build, wearing what looked like police uniforms stripped of badges or markings. Their eyes alighted on Freddy with obvious recognition.

“Freddy,” one of them said, with an undercurrent of relief running beneath his military bearing. “Gerik’s asking for you.”

“Is it true that Uncle is dead?”

“He’s been shot. But what are you doing down here?”

“Let me see him,” Freddy said.

The guards were giving the workers a hard look. One of them outstretched a palm, indicating they should keep back, as they opened the doors for Freddy.

“Them too,” Freddy said, indicating Thea and her father.

“But—that’s—” The guards looked flustered. “You shouldn’t be down here. We can’t let them in.”

“If you want me to revive Uncle, then I insist,” Freddy said.

Some of the workers were clustering behind Thea and her father. Waiting to see what would happen. Their energy was beginning to shift; they were growing bolder. She felt it. But for now they kept a distance.

“All right,” one of the guards said, stepping aside. “Quickly.”

Thea and her father hurried into a large room with tables and chairs from one wall to another.

That was when she saw Nan.

Nan, her clothes bloody, her face grim and streaked with tears.