Hello Hello!
Well, my dears, I've broken the 1000 followers mark on Twitter, which means I can now start to follow people back again, AND, that I can give you all the reward I promised for either 250 fans or 1000 followers!
Have you been feeling neglected? Wondering why I didn't publish much of a damn thing in December and barely much at all in November? Well, you're about to learn the reason. The Underlighters, a FULL LENGTH NOVEL, will be coming out soon as part of The Loved, The Lost, The Dreaming! That's right! Not only will I have a dozen new stories for you, I'll have a full-length novel!
Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please don your cyberpunk gear and prepare to get down with your nightmares. This is...a preview of The Underlighters.
*****
9—June 8, 0048
P.D.
So. Like I said, I’m back. Having to
cram this in at lunch time—I never take my journal to work!—feels so awkward,
but I need as much personal space as I can get, away from people. Back to
my...adventures.
The elevator opened on the old
apartment lobby. It was a tall building, and one of the first to be salvaged. I
know the building well—it’s one of the main training grounds—but it’s still
creepy as hell. Being able to sense that you’re far above the ground—above! Not
below!—without being able to see the distance, is terrifying. Some of the rooms
are full of Dust, and very dark; others were pretty well-sealed, and it’s
mostly confined to the outside.
Chloe was already hanging back
uneasily. The ambient level of Dust in here was low, but it was still
there—dimming our senses, deepening shadows, fading colours. Ian, a brave soul,
was sitting at a desk.
All of our masks were set to the
open channel automatically, rather than being dialed down to ‘local’ or
‘intimate’ range.
“Welcome,” Ian said, his voice
friendly. “Ready for your expedition?" I don’t think I’ve seen him more
than once or twice without his suit; he’s one of the most avid Crows, living
close to the surface.
“You bet they are,” said May. “I’m
going to head back down. Kids, sign your names on the form and stay out of
trouble. How long will you be?”
“No more than a couple of hours,” I
guessed. “Let’s say three.”
“With Una on rounds, you can bet
someone will be coming to check on you if you’re not back by then,” Ian
reminded us.
In spite of my standard-issue
protective gloves, skin-tight and slightly nobbly on the fingertips, the pen
slipped in my hand, left a shaking line in the middle of my name. The others
followed me, signed their names on the lines. Our names on the paper seemed so
tenuous and frail, considering what they represented. A line on a page in
thick, gritty ink--the only thing tying me visibly to the world below, proving
that this was the last place I’d been seen. I decided not to think about what
would happen if I went missing, if the suit was ripped, if I ended up stumbling
around Up here...
“Good luck!” said May, returning to the
elevator.
Ian nodded us forward. There was
nothing to do but go into the world, and see what we could find. Aiden moved
ahead of me, leading the charge forward.
As we opened the apartment doors, we
found ourselves in a grey world. The light was somewhat visible, here, in one
of the thinnest areas. It wasn’t entirely unlike the diffuse light during the
evening cycle, but below, the light doesn’t change like this. Patches of
darkness swirled across the sky, across buildings. Even without Dust crawling
in my system, the world was full of a moving, liquid blackness. Artificial
light and the light of the sun could shimmer through, faintly, but barely
enough to see by. I couldn’t see their faces through the masks, but the way my
friends straightened and slipped their hands to their holster belts told me
everything I needed to know about their feelings.
The weird light and the interfering
Dust were thinner in higher places, matching the air. As a level 1 zone, it was
still relatively safe.
We dialed down to the ‘local’
frequency. The strangeness of the old world surrounded me. The big, angular box
houses were all empty, sinister-looking, and many were covered in greenery. The
wide streets covered in pavement—not walls, but streets and roads! It always
amazes me—were broken and covered in plants and potholes. Thick grasses in
front of the houses and the enormous trees dominated. A few of the clumsy, boxy
cars they used to drive were still lining the streets, but they’d more or less
rusted into place.
Half lost kingdom, half forest
primeval. We followed the road. Its signs had rusted and been replaced by our
own. All of us knew “Elton Street” reasonably well, but the marvel of the big,
open world still hadn’t worn off.
“Let’s take Mercer to the Old Uptown
though 18th, and then we can ease our way towards Sunnyside,” said
Jay, interrupting my musings. “I mean, 18th ave goes right into
Sunnyside.”
“Sure,” I said. “You’re the
navigator.”
We all walked close together, in a
diamond-shaped formation. There were wild dog packs howling in the distance,
and the forest-neighbourhood was alive with birdsong and insects. Their lives
had continued uninterrupted—it was just ours that had been stopped.
There was no sense in picking
through the houses around here—in spite of their rather decrepit condition,
they’d been combed finely. Not even a stray marble remained, for the most part;
even bones had been interred.
As we walked further down the grassy
road, things changed. The darkness was lower, the Dust, thicker—there was less
diffuse light, and our lanterns seemed to throw off less illumination. Down
below, in our homes, the dark was never absolute—there’s always a candle or a
light burning somewhere, even if it’s only in the paintings of windows. With a
painted moon and LED studded stars to watch us, we could sleep easily. Here,
even awake, it was a different matter. The darkness was alive.
It moved like water through the
streets, thick strands and pools of near-opaque blackness swirling around us.
Most of it was thick, greyish, foglike, but with a life of its own. Shapes
blurred and shimmered in the distance and in shadowed-corners. There was still
some sunlight in the sense that the world had a faint glow, but not much. Dad
and old movies have given me an idea of ‘dusk’ and ‘twilight’, but this isn’t
like it—no stripey colours in the sky. Just murkiness, and shadows, and strange
angles where the lingering light and Dust play on shapes.
Chloe was already shivering, and I
didn’t blame her. At this point, we were farther afield—out of the Level 2
area, which is partly but not fully explored, and heading towards the Level 3
zone. The murk was deepening, the houses and greenery even more shadowed and
twisted by the imperfect light. The old people say our world above is one of
endless night, but it’s more than that. Night doesn’t move on its own, and
night doesn’t follow you around.
“I guess we should probably start
looking for things,” said Aiden. His voice was a little wavery. This was
supposed to be a Level 3 area, but the Dust levels were higher than
expected—closer to 4. I widened the range of my ‘Local’ signal. Luckily, Jay
stepped in.
“Keep your comms open, people. It’s
better to say something you regret than getting Lost up here. It looks like the
Dust is thicker than we expected. I say we keep this trip tight, and revert to
proper protocol, over.”
“Agreed, over,” I said. Next to me,
Chloe was starting to cling, brushing my arm constantly. It was annoying.
“Can we just go look at a house and
get it over with? Over.”
“Remind me, what are we looking for
exactly, Aiden? Over,” I added. I tried to keep my tone light, but I could feel
my palms tingling, beginning to sweat.
“Well, to be honest, I was hoping
for fancy artificial flowers, but anything nice—vases, whatever, will do.
Over.”
“Okay, I guess we should hit them,
over,” I replied.
“Which one should we do first? Can
we do the nice one with the door that’s still standing? Over.”
“Chloe, we have to check it for
hazards first. Unless you want the roof for a hat, over,” snapped Jay. It
wasn’t like her to be sharp, not at all. A stealthy trickle of fear down my
spine made me pause. If Jay was already nervous, this didn’t bode well.
Sunnyside had probably been
well-named a long time ago, but now, with its decrepit streets and
half-fallen-in houses, the name couldn’t have been more ironic.
Chloe mumbled something too quickly
to understand.
“Chloe, please speak clearly when
you’re on comm, over,” I said.
“I said watch out for the witch,
over,” she said. A high-pitched note cracked in her voice.
“Um, sure. That house over there,
the one Chloe picked out, over,” I said. If Chloe was panicking, it was best to
indulge her. I couldn’t decide whether to worry or be annoyed. Feeling the
reassuring, second-nature weight of my foldie on my back and the strap of the
holster, I forced myself to calm down. I’d been out to these areas before, or
close to them, anyway.
The house Chloe had chosen was more
intact than the rest, with a big attached garage that had diamond-paned windows
on top. It was older in style, according to what I remembered from school, but
not ancient like some of the smaller places. Half of those, more than half,
were in awful shape or had already been pillaged. That meant the walls would
probably be in awful shape, but if the mold hadn’t completely taken over and if
its original owners hadn’t returned to ransack it, it might be a gold mine. You
could never tell until you took the door down. There were a few times in
training for my Level 3 when we’d even found ancient bodies, still, preserved,
and picked clean to the bone, lying peacefully in the houses.
Just then, Jay broke comm protocol. “Hey!
Look!” I turned, and in the grime on the street, there was something
glittering.
I knelt down and picked it up,
examining it through the dark lenses of the mask. “Looks like a button. A nice
one, too. Plastic. Not worth breaking protocol for, over.” I handed it back to
her. “That’d be nice for a sweater or a brooch, over.”
Jay surveyed the ground closely as
she took a step or two closer to the house. I wondered what had caught her
attention this time.
“Sorry for breaking protocol, but I
found another one! Over.”
“Cool! Over.” She held it up, a
brassy thing this time, with a bit of plastic in its centre.
“Good start! How do you guys feel
about the garage? Over.” Aiden sounded hopeful, and I didn’t blame him; it
wasn’t every day you found things lying in the street, in good condition.
I cleared my throat nervously and
decided, hell with it, I’d be honest with them. “I won’t lie, guys, I have a
weird feeling that we should just head back. Over.”
I’d intended to make this Aiden’s
show, since it was his shopping trip, but I will admit that being Up changes
me. It’s the one place I’m willing to lead. Normally I’ll say my bit, but I
won’t disrupt the order of things. When I’m Up, I feel calm.
Usually, anyway. Today, we were all
jittery. I couldn’t help cranking my neck around, watching for hidden eyes.
“Neg, let’s stick around for a bit,
since we came all this way—over,” said Aiden. It was a reasonable request, and
I wondered if I was being silly.
“I know what you’re saying, Aiden,
but I don’t like this either and I’m going to flip my lid if I have to stay out
here much longer. Over,” said Chloe.
“Widen frequency range to open,
guys. We’re pushing the boundaries and I don’t want any accidents, over,” I
said decisively.
At this point, we’d been standing
still, in our diamond shape, backs towards each other—there was a soft stirring
in the grass, a faint breeze, but I thought I heard something rustling as well.
“We haven’t got all day, guys. We’ve
been walking around for at least forty five minutes, over,” said Aiden.
Chloe stuffed her gun back in the
holster and broke, running for the house.
“Chloe! What are you doing! Over!”
She didn’t answer, but her breathing sounded harsh and frightened.
I shook my head in frustration, and
did something stupid and logical—I ran after her.
****
Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. Don't miss any of the good kind of crazy. Find me on Twitter, Facebook, and on Tumblr. More reviews, a smokin' hot 'best of 2012' list for indie authors, and, yes, some backlogged reviews are all coming. In fact, there will may even be a 'Missed It' analysis of Bioshock 2! There will even be more interviews. This is your darling SciFiMagpie, over and out!
