THIRTY-ONE

Seventy years ago,” Razor said, “this was a subway tunnel. Farther down, you’ll see where other tunnels have been carved out over the generations since. This is a city beneath the city.”

Caitlyn had been silent ever since dropping down the ladder. That self-possession irritated Razor as much as he found it intriguing. It was like her soul was shrouded in mystery. He wanted to sweep aside the shroud, find a way to make her vulnerable to him, as vulnerable as he wanted to be to her.

After going only about a hundred yards, they had stopped at a gradual bend. Razor didn’t explain why. He kept waiting for her to ask why, but she refused.

“Subway,” Razor repeated. “Mass transit. Trains. Moving beneath the city. Used to be steel tracks here, on this gravel bed. Been a long time since the steel was scavenged though.”

“Somebody keeps the lights on,” she said.

Her voice was a deep whisper. From anyone else, it would have seemed an affectation, a clumsy attempt at allure. From her, utterly without pretense, it only added to the mystery of her existence.

“Scavengers,” he answered. “That’s the entirety of this world. Illegals who scavenge for survival. Everybody knows the stories of life beneath the city. They just haven’t seen it for themselves. It’s not worth the risk.”

He expected a reaction. Of any kind. It didn’t come.

“We steal the electricity,” he said, choosing we over they, pushing hard to force her curiosity.

Again, she said nothing. She simply watched her surroundings with an eerie detachment.

He wanted her to want something from him. He should have found the hump on Caitlyn’s back repulsive. And her long, unnaturally skinny fingers. Was it the secret behind her appearance that made her so attractive that he looked beyond those superficialities?

No doubt he was fascinated. Caitlyn could fly. He’d seen it. When he’d first witnessed it, he’d believed, naturally, that it was a magic trick he could take for himself. That’s why he’d been waiting for her in the alley.

But now, obviously, there was much more to her ability than a complex magic trick. The swiftness of the events of the last twelve hours was enough proof of that.

“You’re not afraid?” he finally asked. “You do know what happens to people who go beneath the city. The urban legends are not just legend.”

“Pretend I don’t,” she said.

“You haven’t heard about the cannibalism?”

“Cannibals?”

“Some of the Illegals who live down here have never seen sunlight. Some of their parents haven’t seen sunlight. Those are the lucky ones. The ones who go to the surface have no legal status. They do what it takes to bring back food and necessities and anything of value they can steal from Influentials, or even the Invisibles, inside the city walls.”

“So far you’re only telling me about the Illegals down here. What happens to people who go into the tunnels?”

“There are places on the street,” Razor said, “where the Illegals from below the city know to go to offer themselves for service. Any service. All service. Influentials pick and choose. Some Influentials prefer…”

Razor spoke more slowly, determined not to let any emotion sneak into his voice. “Some Influentials want children. What they are willing to pay makes it possible for two dozen families of Illegals to survive.”

“Parents give up their children.”

“The poverty here is desperate. It’s how their children can eat well and sleep safely and perhaps someday be permanently lifted out of all of this.” Razor snorted. “I read constantly. Knowledge is power. I can tell you it’s no different than five hundred years ago, when parents volunteered their boys to the rich, and the rich would make them become castrati in the opera. Then and now, the boys were no more than playthings.”

“Castrati?”

“Boys neutered before reaching puberty,” he answered. “So their voices would not change. Didn’t matter that, without growth hormones, it affected everything else about them. Even the shape of their bones.”

Caitlyn had no response and didn’t seem to want to discuss it more. As they walked on the chunks of stone that had once served as bedrock for tracks, few stones shifted. Loose stones had found their place a generation earlier.

A low, eerie whistling sound filled the tunnel. It was impossible to determine where it came from—in front or behind.

Razor stopped. “They found us. The Illegals.”

He saw that Caitlyn glanced behind, forward, around. Looking for escape.

“No sense running,” Razor said. “They know this world. You don’t.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“Listen.” The whistling grew in volume. “Up and down the tunnels, they’re signaling that we are here. When enough are gathered, they’ll appear.”

“Then what?” She was standing rigid, unblinking. Her chest rose and fell. Fear, Razor thought, cloaked by a determination to remain dignified.

“Can you understand, even a little, how much it destroys a family when a child among them loses the lottery? How much they all hate Influentials for putting them in that position? How much they hate themselves for choosing survival over the hell a child must go through to pay for it?”

Caitlyn nodded slowly.

“Then you’ll understand why they inflict what they do on anyone from above who enters their world. But I promise you’ll be safe among them.”

“Safe? How do you know? How can you make a promise like that?”

She was looking up and down the tunnel again. The eerie whistling was growing louder.

“Trust me.” Razor had been using the conversation to distract her. That was one of an illusionist’s foundations.

He allowed a flashball to roll into his palm.

He dropped it.

He was prepared. His eyes were closed and shielded behind his hands.

Hers were not. While she was paralyzed, he knelt down beside her.

From a sealed plastic bag, he pulled out a damp cloth and pressed it against her face. She breathed in the fumes and sagged into unconsciousness.