Ashes of the Fall (20 page)

Eight blocks away
from the plaza, deep in the Black Hole, everything is completely deserted save for the rats. That’s actually a relief. I managed to jet out of there fast enough to avoid detection. The trip back will be a challenge, but I suppose I’m up to it.

Nice of Slick and Kid to tell me that there was a price on my life, though. Somehow, “they still want your head” doesn’t quite sum the situation up.
Everyone wants your head
would have been much more accurate.

I duck inside a ruined ice cream parlor to gather my thoughts. It’s the only place on the block with lights—albeit flickering and pink. The door jingles as I step inside.

“Hello?”

No answer. The lights must be automatic, on some sort of timer. That’s good. I take Slick’s letter out of my pocket and flatten it against the stainless steel countertop. The rose glow allows me to read the address and directions if I squint hard enough.

It says to go two blocks past the Pink Rose. That must be where I’m at now. City hall will be a straight shot from there.

I haven’t found any reason why this section of town is abandoned. From what I can tell, it’s nicer than the garbage heap where most of the people live. But who knows—the Remnants had their problems with coming into camp, so maybe something bad happened here.

I fold Slick’s note up and turn around to leave.

“Hey,” a voice calls, slicing through the darkness, “yo.”

It’s coming from outside. I glance behind me, where the last thin strips of neon pink lighting cling to life. I can’t see who the voice belongs to. I vault the stainless steel counter to hide. My shoulders snap rigid as the door jingles. Uneven, heavy footsteps come inside.

“Hey man,” the guy says. “I know you’re there.”

I suck my breath in and hold it, like if I don’t make a sound and shut my eyes, he’ll figure it was just the mouse. Not a human being. Not me. Shoes squeak against the linoleum floor. A shin bangs into one of the red vinyl stools. Curses.

“Come on, man, just come out would ya? It’s friggin’ dark in here.”

His voice is closer—next to the counter close. I search the ground for anything to defend myself with. I settle on an ice cream scoop. It’s heavy, could put a decent-sized dent in someone’s skull.

“You come closer and I’ll smash your head in,” I say, and get up. There’s a man cloaked in shadow. Hands in his pockets. I can’t see a face. He doesn’t move. “Who are you?”

I brandish the scoop towards him.

“Could ask the same to you, man.” He leans forward off the stool, so that the dim pink light splashes across some of his features. Heavy five o’clock shadow. Strong stench of whiskey, even though there’s still five feet separating us. A collared dress shirt hangs off his shoulders, far too large for his frame. “Hey now, don’t look so scared.”

He whistles, his eyebrows arching in recognition.

“What?”

He doesn’t respond. Instead, his gleaming white teeth arch in a delirious smile. It makes for a jarring contrast to his sandy colored skin, which has jaundiced from what looks like a natural brownish hue. The slightest hint of a silent h in his
hey
, and his youthful features suggest that he came here as a refugee. Parents probably got in right before the borders closed.

“Put that down, would you,” he says. I see that one eye doesn’t track my movements any more, stilled by a knife. His hair, grown long and feral, sits askew atop his head at all angles. “You look like him, you know, in the dark.”

“Like who?” I wag the heavy metal tool at him. To be honest, I’m not sure I need it. If I walked by this guy too fast, he might blow over.

“Your brother ever tell you about his old buddy Andy?” His eye looks at me. “Nah, of course not. That would’ve been impossible.”

“Jesus,” I say and almost stumble on to my ass from the realization. “You’re Andrew Marshwood.”

He takes out a flask hidden somewhere in the endless rolls of clothing. After an admirably long swig, he wipes the remaining dribble of whiskey from his stubble and flashes that awful smile again. I feel my shoulders start to drop, relax. I didn’t even have to track Marshwood down. Because he came to me.

“I’ve been following you,” he says. He takes a halting step off the tool and slips. He unleashes a flurry of Spanish and English curse words, so rapid fire that I can’t tell them from one another.

“Who sent you down here?”

“Nathaniel Blackstone,” Marshwood says with a derisive snort, trying to get to his feet but failing. “What a prick. You should have seen him at dinner parties.”

“Can’t believe I missed it.” I’m torn between helping him get up and staying put behind the counter. Helping him wouldn’t be an act of generosity, but one of self-interest. The sooner he stands up, the sooner I can figure out where the last drive is.

But first, I want to know one thing. “Why the hell are you following me?”

“Because the Black Hole belongs to me. And I hate unexpected visitors. Blackstone’s goons are after me, man.”

Marshwood gets to his feet and brushes himself off. It’s a hopeless gesture, because he’s covered in whiskey and I think he’s pissed himself, too, but at least it indicates he has some grasp of reality and appropriate decorum. Maybe he’s even capable of having a decent conversation.

Decent is relative. When you’re about to become the most hunted man in purgatory, a drunk who doesn’t shoot first could be the best friend a man ever had.

“That what got you sent down here,” I say. “Your infinite love for Blackstone?”

“Nah,” Marshwood says. He manages to fish a cigarette out of his robes. It glistens slightly in the light. That doesn’t stop him from putting it between his teeth and then lighting it, sucking in smoke like it’s the elixir of life. “No one gives a shit about him, man.”

“Then what was it?”

“Trying to help your brother,” he says. “With his plans to change stuff, you know?”

“Oh.” That’s all I can muster up.

“Tell you what, man.” There’s a minute-long pause where he wants me to say
what
, like we’re in this together, and where I refuse. Finally, I lose the standoff, because the smoke and whiskey and piss are getting to me, and also because curiosity can be a goddamn son of a bitch.

“What do you want to tell me?”

That same smile. It’s not evil or malicious, more off-putting because it’s the expression of a man who has forgotten what a real smile is supposed to look like.

“I thought I was gonna die before you made it down here. Your brother told me to wait for your ass.”

So Matt did come to visit him. And apparently I factored into that plan. “What’d my brother want from you?”

“To ease his mind,” he says. He doesn’t smile this time, just arches his thinning eyebrows. Marshwood savors the moment by taking another long drink. The cigarette tumbles from his burned fingers as he finishes off the whiskey. “Goddamn, that’s delicious.”

“I got shit to do, if it’s all the same to you.”

“You’ll want to stay,” he says, real casual, like he knows I’m hooked and can’t leave.

“Oh yeah, and why’s that?”

“Because Matt told me, if anything happened to him,” Marshwood says, his expression turning from sad and pathetic to defiant, like a light has been lit underneath this husk of a man. “To take you to the source code.”

For how loaded Marshwood is,
he traverses the jagged landscape of the Black Hole like a combination between a mountain goat and jaguar. The former treasurer might be a sad sack mess, but he’s learned how to survive down here in the shadows.

“You and Matt, how’d you meet?” I struggle to keep up with Marshwood, who, despite being fueled entirely by liquor, cigarettes and delirium, is outpacing me by a good margin. The terrain, as we go deeper into the Black Hole, begins to resemble a battlefield scarred by explosives.

“Oh, Blackstone found us,” Marshwood says. “He developed the program for Chancellor Tanner.”

“What program?”

“Gifted Minds,” he says. I try to remember where I saw the name. It comes back to me as I scramble over a chunk of ruined concrete. It was all over Matt’s shirts, stuffed at the back of the closet. And he lived just down the street from the
Gifted Minds Research Institute
.

“Was Olivia Redmond part of the program too?”

Marshwood shakes his head, and I think he’s gonna say no. Instead, he says, “That scheming cunt.”

I don’t have an answer prepared for that.

We duck into an old open-air shopping promenade, the kind that developers used to sell to neighborhoods when they were trying to gentrify the area. The granite stones are now warped and cracked and a large video screen hangs off-center from the corpse of a decapitated high rise.

In the hazy moonlight, it’s difficult to tell if it was an act of rebellion, an errant wrecking ball, or just decay that did the building in. But what once stood thirty stories now stands about twenty, its bare neck exposed to the elements.

I hear a little trickle. Something splashes my boots.

Whiskey.

“One for the fallen,” he says. “Gotta have respect for the dead.”

Marshwood looks at me with those sunken eyes. I’m gonna punch him if he grins at me. But instead he nods, not opening his mouth, and laughs to himself.

“What’s funny?”

“This is the first thing me and Matt made the little nano-builders do,” Marshwood said. “This was the test.”

I look at the ruined architecture. Now I know why Atlanta resembles a miniature New Manhattan—albeit unfinished. This was the program’s testing grounds, safe from prying eyes, questions or any outside interference. We turn off the promenade without further commentary and continue walking. I realize it’s been more than a couple blocks since the Pink Rose. Either Slick gave me bad directions, or something’s up.

“I thought you lived closer,” I say.

“Yeah, well, precautions,” Marshwood says. “Or you think everything around here just fell down on its own?”

“That why no one comes here?”

“You want to get caught in a feud between old friends?” He scales the burnt out shell of a truck and lands upright on the other side. I take my time and then have to run to catch up with him. “Me and Blackstone have been fighting it out for years, man.”

“What’d you do to him, anyway?”

“Stick around long enough and maybe I’ll tell you.” Marshwood takes a sip from the flask and caps the whiskey. It’s like he’s got an endless supply beneath that blouse of a dress shirt. At this point I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he secretes the stuff and it drips out of his pores into the container like tree sap. “But you don’t really want to know.”

“I don’t, huh. Why’s that?”

“It’s boring,” Marshwood says. We round another corner. “You like my house?”

At the end of the block is an old, magnificent building. Its architecture marks it as a product of the 20
th
century, maybe even sometime in the 19
th
. Either way, from its prominent position at the end of a wide street, and its regal, if crumbling tower rising from the center, its easy to tell that we’ve finally arrived at city hall.

“I’m the mayor, now,” Marshwood says. He thinks this is funny, and laughs and hums to himself as he skips down the street, between the abandoned cars. As I watch him, I spot a series of drones flit out from beneath the wreckage, following him as he sings.

Whatever this strange, broken man did to Blackstone, one thing’s clear.

There’s a damn good reason no one comes into the Black Hole.