THEIR DRONE WAS DENIED ENTRY to the parking lot of International Transport’s headquarters. This came as no surprise to Taraval. Corina, he told Sylvia, had apparently decided that the matter of the two Joels would be most easily resolved by simply placing the blame on him.
“I’m sure the PR team is already neck deep printing my smear campaign,” he told Sylvia as he directed the drone to another nearby location. “Unauthorized research, human experiments, and so on. No matter. They are changing the rules; we are changing the game. I’m not a risk Corina can simply ‘manage.’”
“Bill, I’m the one who should be blamed here. I’ll take the fall.”
“It’s too late for that, Sylvia. It’s too late for both of us. But at least you’ve still got your access. They’re just waiting for you to turn on your comms.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“I know. Your comms won’t work where we’re going.” He pointed ahead just as the drone dropped down to the Hudson River. It skimmed over the surface of the water, coming to a large round tunnel cut into a concrete wall. It flew in, continuing on until the way forward was obstructed by debris. The vehicle gently touched down. Taraval lifted the drone’s metallic red door, revealing the utter darkness of the tunnel.
Sylvia cautiously looked outside. “I know you’re using whatever the Gehinnomites used to disable my comms, Bill. At least do me the courtesy of not lying.”
“Fair play,” he said, exiting the drone. “I figure we’ve got a few hours left before anyone finds us. There’s a way to make everything we’ve worked for happen again. We just need time.” He held out a soft, blotchy hand to her.
“Why are we here, Bill?” she asked, staying where she was.
“We are here to weather the storm, Sylvia. Batten down the hatches.”
She shook her head. “I won’t go anywhere until you tell me what you’re planning.”
“I am planning to save our lives. Circumvent these shortsighted monkeys.” When she stared at him blankly, he said in frustration, “I’m suggesting we wait things out in the glacier. Somewhere they’ll never find us.”
“Are you serious? That’s crazy.”
“Madness is in the eye of the beholder. Fine lines and all. But this is mere pragmatism.” Sylvia could barely see his self-satisfied grin in the glow of the drone’s control console, but his smug voice assured her it was there.
“What, so we just pop out of the glacier in a few days and everyone forgives us?”
“Something like that. Come, I’ll show you.”
She had been biding her time. Trying to suss out his intentions and waiting for the opportunity to escape during the whole of their flight from Costa Rica. Sylvia ignored the sharp, tingling pain in her still-bound wrists. She had almost made a break for it when they swapped the people-mover for a much smaller drone in a private Ecuadorean airfield, but the only other person she’d seen there was a huge scowling mechanic who looked even more menacing than Taraval, and anyway, without her comms functionality restored, she’d have no idea where to run. So she had let her boss load her into the drone, and kept her eyes and ears open as they drew closer to New York City. The chain of events she’d set off had unhinged her mentor, and they were now nearing the end of his demented plan. The time had come for her to run.
So as soon as she stepped out of the vehicle, she took off into the darkness, the soft gravel crunching beneath her hiking boots.
She didn’t get very far. A sharp pain crackled through her skull. She fell to the ground, screaming, the bitter taste of blood in her mouth—the result of a tongue bitten due to seizures triggered by electric shock.
“Better me than the Gehinnomites, wouldn’t you say?” Taraval approached her, wagging the handheld device her captors had used to block her comms. He lugged her to her feet, nudging her to move forward. “We’ve got several more blocks to walk, so if you’d like to reach our destination fully intact, I’d suggest you start moving.”
Sylvia had no choice but to obey. They were like two ghosts haunting their way through a series of dark ledges and tunnels beneath Hell’s Kitchen. Every so often, a fine amber beam of the setting Sun’s light would find its way through the cracks of the streets above them and illuminate a bit of grotesque abandoned garbage. There were scrapped machines stripped of all metal and useful parts, crumbling subway station mosaics, and piles of discarded toys. Once she saw a cracked matryoshka doll so like hers that she momentarily froze.
Taraval had grown tired of nudging and pushing Sylvia. And for her part, she was sick of playing the damsel in distress. So when he poked her in the shoulder for the umpteenth time, she resisted. He shoved her again, and she spun to face him. Taraval brandished the Gehinnomites’ device. She closed her eyes, bracing for another electric shock, imagining the taste of blood and batteries in her mouth, but this time no punishment came. Instead her boss looked wistfully at the concrete ceiling beams, dimly illuminated by his device’s screen.
“The very space we occupy now, Sylvia, were it only under the restored East River rather than the toxic Hudson, would be filled with luxury shops and apartments. Did you know the mudflats along the Hudson were home to squatters when the railroad came in the nineteenth century? Most of the West Side was a full-fledged shantytown until Robert Moses decided to cram a park and a highway up its derriere back in the twentieth century. Then it flourished, becoming some of the most expensive real estate on the island.” He lowered his eyes back to her, smiling. “It’s all about being in the right place at the right time, don’t you agree?”
“Bill,” she said, “why are you pretending like we’re having a printer-side chat at work? You’re kidnapping me.”
“You’ve heard the old aphorism, ‘If God had wanted man to fly, he would have given him wings’? It means something different now, but its origins are rooted in fear of advancements in transportation. When autonomous vehicles became commercially available in the twenty-first century, fears of drive-by-wire failures and GDS hacking nearly crippled the autonomous vehicle market before it could reach its heyday.”
“Bill—”
“Lesser minds are never ready, Sylvia!” His shout reverberated through the cavernous subway tunnel before he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Worry not. We will show them, show them that Honeycomb is the next step in our own evolution. In the right time.” He indicated that she climb over the pile of debris behind her. “Now, please saunter on. We are almost upon it.”
She did as bidden—what else could she do?—clambering awkwardly over crumbled concrete columns and bent, rusted rebar until she reached ground on the other side. A sliver of golden light could be seen at the end of the tunnel.
“Where, Bill? Where are you taking me?”
“Taking? My dear, you are not mine for the taking,” he said, sounding offended by the implication. “I believe us to be equals. Intellectual peers, even. However, it occurs to me, do you mean to ask where we are going?”
“Yes, Bill, where are we going?” she asked, exasperated.
He pointed at the luminescence ahead—growing wider and brighter as they approached it. “The future, Sylvia.”