The Lostkind Read online

  Vincent couldn't believe any of it was really happening. He was almost literally down the rabbit hole. Two hours before, he was on the train back to his apartment, trying to decide if the woman across from him was actually flirting, and now he was here, in this world beneath the world.

  Yasi actually grinned at him. "This is exciting." She offered. "We rarely do this."

  Vincent looked back, and observed the Triumvirate. Archivist, dressed in fine clothes that were a century out of date, but still immaculate; like he was expecting luncheon with the Queen. There was Keeper, an impossibly ancient old woman who looked like a cross between a scarecrow and a tribal Medicine Woman, eyes sharper than a hawk. And between them was Yasi, much younger, the only one armed, her face and exposed skin painted with minor ancestral marks; his first taste of this strange existence.

  They sat down at a small serving table, which was barely above ankle height. The three of them just settled down easily into a crouch, as Vincent followed somewhat awkwardly on his knees. There was a Chinese teapot on the table, and Keeper poured for them all with great ceremony. The tea was sweet smelling, and Vincent couldn't begin to guess what kind it was.

  "So... You have questions." Keeper said. "I'll tell you right now, we won't answer them all. But we'll answer more of it than we've ever told anyone."

  "What is this place?" Vincent asked.

  "This is The New York Underside." Archivist said. "It's where we live."

  "And... where exactly are we?"

  "About four hundred feet down. Under Manhattan, under the subways... We have tunnels that reach through all the Burroughs, though they are relatively new."

  "How long has this all been here?"

  "Over a century at least. The first of us, Werner, Wells and Camden, they came down here and saw the space they could use. They were wealthy men, great builders. They envisioned a Secret City, where people could hide. During the Great War, they were convinced that the war would last for decades, devastate the world. They spent their fortunes trying to rebuild their expensive world, far underground. A bomb shelter the size of a city. They wanted it to be very plush, very uptown. Well, that never really came about, but they put in a lot of necessities. We've added a lot more over the years."

  Vincent looked out over the huge dome; at the crowds of people making their way below. "How big is this place?"

  "That's hard to define." Archivist answered. "It's not all in one spot; some of it is sealed at one time or another. We have routes all the way through to-"

  "That's not important." Yasi put in, cutting off any details before they could be given.

  Vincent took the brush off for what it was and moved on. "How many people live here?"

  "A lot. Thousands. No need to be specific." Keeper told him. "New York City has several million, and we live in the cracks between them."

  "How come we don't know any of this is down here?"

  "For the most part; because you don't look. But if you mean; why isn't it on the records; it's because the Original Makers kept it to themselves." Archivist explained, and Vincent got the feeling he was used to telling the history as a story. "Remember, it was meant as a bunker. No matter how big it was, there's no way there'd be enough room for everyone in this town. They promised places of safety to the wealthy, to the powerful, to their friends... The money kept pouring in, and they kept digging out the room, but then the war ended and the Depression started, and most of those people jumped out a window. That's the Shelter, but the Underground itself didn't start until a few years later. The millionaires were suddenly broke and had nowhere to go, and nothing to fall back on, so they sold the last of their possessions, spent the last of their money and moved in to the places they had built down below. Then time passed, and..."

  "I know this part. Or at least I can guess." Vincent interrupted. "The subway tunnels were left as the station maps changed and new tracks were laid, and the steam pipes were left as the city moved to electric..."

  "Some of them at least. And we inherited it. Just like the Shelter, just like the tunnels..." Archivist sighed. "The Underground is a world made of the places long forgotten."

  "And the same goes for everything else, I assume." Vincent was already trying to comprehend the logistics. "Power, water, air..."

  Archivist started counting on his fingers. "Air gets pumped through the subway tunnels already. A few extra shafts and it comes to us as well. Water trickles down, like most everything else. Power is tricky because it costs money. People notice things that cost money. We've been doing this a while, we know a lot of tricks."

  "What about… garbage?" Vincent seized on something that came to mind just by looking around. "How do you deal with that?"

  "Boy, you are a city planner, aren't you?" Yasi was amused.

  "We handle our refuse the same way you do. We throw it away." Keeper said simply. "There are supermarkets Above; they throw out more food than they sell most days. They padlock the dumpsters so that the homeless can't get in. Anyone from the underground knows how to slip past locks like that, so we take all the discarded food and goods out, and replace it with our own garbage at the same time. The next night we repeat the process."

  "And that works every night?" Vincent found it hard to believe.

  "How often do you check that you've got the right garbage?" The older woman shot back.

  "Not often." Vincent conceded.

  "Nobody checks what the garbage is, because it's like us: Too distasteful for people like you to think about."

  "You don't like us do you?" Vincent said with wry amusement. "And the people?" He waved at the large chamber. "Where did they come from?"

  "Same place everything else did. The people who live here are the ones that nobody notices are missing."

  "So, the Homeless work for you?"

  "A lot of them do; many do not." Yasi responded. "You don't think we could leave them all to starve? That's what your world does; not ours."

  Vincent felt terribly ashamed suddenly. His mother's voice came back to him, from across the divide of years. ‘Be nice to the beggars, for they may secretly be kings.'

  "A Lost World made of Lost Boys." Vincent said in open wonder.

  "Girls too." Yasi put in.

  Long silence.

  "So... I can only guess at how much you appreciate your privacy." Vincent said finally. "Why am I here?"

  "There's been a new development." Keeper explained. "The old tunnels are going to be noticed again."

  "Why?"

  "But of course… you know why." Archivist said coolly.

  Vincent blinked, and realization crossed his face. "The Fibre-Optic deal."

  "The new broadband network is planned to go through the old tunnels. The Underground will be discovered."

  "That was the plan." Vincent nodded. "It protects the fiber optic cables from accidents, terrorist attacks…"

  "People are looking deep again. Urban Explorers we can handle. Homeless and runaways populate every level. They're of our world. This is the first time we've had to look outside our own to protect this place."

  Vincent let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "And my office is making the decision."

  "A word from you could have the construction go anywhere." Keeper said. "Anywhere but here."

  Vincent was silent a long moment. "And if I refuse to help?"

  There was the sound of metal rasping on metal, and Vincent spun to see Yasi draw her sword from its scabbard. Fear crossed his face as she looked casually down the edge of it, testing the blade against her thumb.

  "Yasi!" Keeper barked.

  The warrior woman jumped. "What?" She blurted, surprised to see both of them staring at her. "I haven't sharpened this thing in a while, I was checking to see if Toshi had done it…"

  Vincent relaxed by ten degrees, and Keeper almost smirked. "Timing, my dear. Try and pay attention."

  "Yes'm." Yasi said, properly shamed; and she put her sword away.

  "To answer your qu
estion Vincent; if you won't help us, then we will have to abandon this place." Keeper said wearily. "There are other places. We speak to them, trade information, share news. The world is old. Everywhere there is a city, there are forgotten places. And where there are such places, there is this. It's the nature of things."

  Silence.

  "Guys..." Vincent said finally. "I... make my living making sure that buildings and bridges and roads are safe and viable and useful... This place is not only dangerous, it's illegal. Technically, you're squatters."

  "Squatting in a place that nobody knows exists." Keeper retorted.

  The silence stretched for a time.

  "Our lives are in your hands, Vincent." The old woman said coolly. Vincent knew that Keeper had likely never asked for help in her life. "If you won't help us, there's nobody else who can. And all this, will be remembered. And being remembered is the worst thing that could happen to us."

  And that was effectively the last word. It felt like the little meeting was coming to an end; and everyone rose to their feet.

  Yasi led him to the edge of her room, and drew back the hanging that served as a door/wall. There was no hallway, no steps. The chamber just stopped at the hanging, the room itself like a cave in a cliff wall. Vincent shook off the sudden vertigo as the air beyond opened for him.

  "We'll take you home now." Archivist said.

  Vincent spun on him. "But... I just got here."

  "It's best that you don't spend too long with us." Yasi said. "There's a reason that your world doesn't know we exist."

  "But I know." Vincent said. "How do you know you can trust me?"

  "You know one way in." Yasi explained. "This time tomorrow, that entrance will be gone. Sealed tight. You can lead the entire City Above to that railway and spend an hour clawing at the floor. You won't find anything, and you'll be locked in a nut-house for your trouble."

  "There are old asylums down here too, Vincent." Keeper put in. "You don't want to be in a place like that, even if the ones up there are cleaner."

  "And that's assuming you'll ever find anyone that believes you anyway." Archivist added. "Come on. I'll go with you."

  Vincent sent Yasi a quick glance, but she was already at the entrance. He watched as she rose from her crouch and launched herself upwards; a standing spring that took her five feet up, to catch the ledge Keeper had dropped from, and from there launched herself at the ropes. Her movements were liquid steel. He followed her, peeking at Archivist out of the corner of his eye. There was no way the old man would be able to handle the climb down...

  No sooner had the thought crossed his mind, when Archivist simply stepped off the edge, flashing his cane out. He caught the rope with the handle and seemed to zip-line down the ropes to the platform.

  Vincent didn't question it. It was the latest in a long list of impossible things that had happened to him since he got on the subway that night.

  ~oo00oo~

  Yasi started to lead him home, and he put a hand out. "Can we take the long way?" He asked meekly. A child asking to stay out longer to play.

  "We really shouldn't." Yasi said. "Keeper said we needed to be straight with you. That doesn't mean we have to tell you everything."

  "Did Keeper say that you should get me out of here the fastest possible way, before I see anything interesting?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh. That's disappointing." Vincent complained, and Archivist's deep bass chuckled echoed behind him.

  They had returned to the lowest level, back to where the water lapped gently. Vincent eyes had adapted, and he looked closer. He could see the water marks where the boats had risen and fallen. He boarded the boat, Yasi taking a seat in front of him, Archivist standing behind with the pole.

  They took a different route, moving away from the chamber down one of the omnipresent tunnels. There were hundreds of them on the lowest part of the chamber, and Vincent began to get an idea of how this world worked. The Twelfth Level Chamber was the heart of the Underground, with the lowest level filled with water. Artificial rivers leading through hundreds of pipes, each big enough to walk through without ducking.

  It was hard not to be intimidated by the scale of the place, made all the more awesome by being subterranean.

  Archivist had drawn something from his vest and passed it forward to Yasi. The small device looked like a small windup alarm clock, only made from polished brass, with a handle instead of alarm bells. Yasi wound the key several times, and Vincent could hear something winding up like a fan in response. A moment later the front of the device glowed, and Vincent laughed. It was a flashlight.

  They went into the pipe, slowly paddling along through still waters.

  "Don't touch the water." Yasi warned him as he tried to get a look at the water beneath the boat. "Dangerous."

  "Alligators in the sewers?" Vincent asked, stunned.

  "Alligators on higher levels. Down here... Riverfolk."

  "Who are they?" Vincent asked with interest.

  "Don't ask." Yasi said immediately with a voice that spoke of absolute doom.

  "Where are you taking me?"

  Archivist fielded that one. "We detoured you tonight. We can drop you off closer to home at least." There was a smile in his voice, and Vincent suddenly realized why he was being taken a different way. Archivist was quietly showing him more of the Secret City.

  ~oo00oo~

  "What is that music?" Vincent asked. "It's beautiful."

  "The Met." Archivist said. "There are steam pipes that still run through the whole city. All the old buildings. All the new buildings with old buildings within or beneath them. Plus a few where we added pipes ourselves when you weren't looking. When the city went electric, the pipes never got taken out, so we open and close them as we like. We can echo sounds through the whole underground. What you're hearing is the New York Philharmonic rehearsing for a concert tomorrow."

  Beats the hell out of elevator music. Vincent thought to himself; as the three of them walked down the Gothic underground path to the sound of echoing chamber music.

  "In an hour or two, we'll close those pipes, open another set that lead to an old movie theater on the West Side." Yasi added. "They're playing Planet of the Apes."

  Vincent's head jerked around to look at her, amused. She nodded blandly. "Yeah. We know all about New York. We know what movies are playing, what the Museums are showcasing, what the hottest restaurant is, where the best clubs are, and who's playing what game; and what's on TV."

  "This is our town too Vincent. Our city has its own spirit, its own soul." Archivist crooned. "We just live under Park Avenue instead of above it. Every inch of this city is our home. Places you don't even know about."

  Vincent watched her for a time, and followed. "What exactly do you do here?"

  Yasi didn't look back. "Security. I'm the one that makes sure we stay hidden, makes sure the other Secret Cities don't start with us."

  "There are others?"

  "Sure." Archivist said behind them. "Every city has lost places; lost people."

  Vincent just went with it, swaying with the small boat. "You were serious before, weren't you? About the way in vanishing after I'm gone."

  "The ways in and out change all the time." Yasi counseled him. "The tunnels can be latched to be easy to open, or sealed up like they were never there. The place we showed you is Twelfth Level. It's where most of us live in the West Side. The levels go down, like on an elevator. The first level is closest to where people not unlike you live. The sewers, the phone lines, the subways… Below that is us. We let ourselves in through subway tunnels, through manhole covers, through building foundations. You have rush hour traffic, we have The Rhythm."

  "The Rhythm?"

  "The Rhythm of the Underground." Archivist explained. "The Underground is largely closed. Not exactly airtight, but we can seal a lot of the ways in and out at will, so... every breeze that comes in can only do so if it goes out somewhere. Every pipe or tunnel that floods has to have an exi
t. Sewer lines can flood, rainwater can overwhelm subways stations… The ways in and out change every day, every hour. We follow the Rhythm of the place. One tunnel is clear to walk, another needs a boat, the Rhythm changes with the tide or the weather or the people who live here, and this boat we just used will be beached, or the tunnel you came in through is full of sewerage."

  "Incredible." Vincent whispered. "It's like my city. I'm a city planner. When someone wants to put up a stoplight or a crosswalk, we have to decide if..."

  "If it screws up the Rhythm in New York." Archivist agreed. "We have planners too. When we make changes, add things, someone has to make sure it doesn't screw things up. That's what I do. An Archivist is a knowledge-dealer. Especially when it comes to the Underside. You and me are in the same business."

  Vincent grinned, despite himself.

  ~oo00oo~

  The path turned upward, and suddenly there were stairs. Spiral staircases that went up for hundreds of feet. The Underground people were well used to it, to the point of being almost superhuman in their endurance. Vincent had been puffing the whole time, until they came to another intersection. This tunnel was lit warmly with more of those kinetic lanterns.

  The tunnel was full of people. Young old, male, female. They were all dirty, but unashamed of it. They were hard workers, and it showed on their faces. They were all carrying loads. Some of them had old trolleys or wheelbarrows, most just had packs of goods piled high on their backs as they trudged through the intersection, heading into the Main Chamber. Vincent assumed so at least. He was so turned around that he didn't have a clue where any of this was leading.

  "We have to pause here for a while." Yasi said. "The largest cargo gets the right of way."

  Vincent didn't care that she was taking pity on the poor, out of shape, surface dweller. He just collapsed as he looked around the much wider, higher tunnel, ornate as the Main Chamber, with paintings on the walls like cave dwellers had hand-painted them. Vincent looked and realized that one of the stick figure sketches on the wall was of him in the boat with Yasi. "How?"

  "The kids." Yasi said, as though that explained everything. "They see everything. And everything they see they draw. It helps them. It's good for us too. Keeps the history."