Avery heard the noise before anything else: the slap of water, the creak of wood, laughter and music. He, Janx and the others had been moving down dark hall after dark hall, stumbling and irritable. Somewhere flails squelched and fluttered, spraying sewage and mucus with every flap of their membranous wings. Avery walked through the black sewers, his flashlight flickering, sick with the stink, tired and dismal. Then, suddenly, he heard the noises, the creaking of wood and jounce of music, echoing down the tunnels.
He lifted his head. “What’s that?”
“You’ll see,” said Janx, and there was a knowing quality in his voice.
Avery saw the lights reflected off the walls, growing stronger as the group made turns until at last the tunnels were bathed in light: red, green, white, neon blue. Despite himself, he felt a flush of excitement.
Finally the group shambled out into one of the vast cisterns—a great lake farther than the eye could see, with a ceiling so lofty the numerous lights barely hinted at it. Upon this lake bobbed a city. Built of houseboats and shacks, planks and bridges, wooden houses on stilts, all of it roped and lashed together, buildings heaping from decks, towers rising and battling for supremacy. Lights blazed from the buildings of the city on the water, sparkling on the fetid lake. Something large moved in the brackish fluid, then submerged with a flurry of bubbles. Flails wheeled and spun. Foul fog drifted over the lake, surrounding the city in ghostly haze, suffusing the light and glowing from the inside in a myriad of colors so that the fantastic city seemed to drift in a dream. Avery stared, mouth agape.
“Welcome to Muscud,” Hildra said.
Pete or one of the others encouraged Avery along, down the walkway. One of the outlaws found a boat tied to a jetty, then another. Avery and the others in his party climbed into the boats and the ruffians piled in behind. Then, singing some throaty song about mermaid toads in dark rivers, the gang of criminals rowed their guests toward the town. Sound echoed and faded, lost in mist and distance, then rebounded off walls they hadn’t hit before. Coils of fog trailed around the boat, gleaming and ghostly. Large, pale things stirred in the water beside them, and at one point a rower had to beat one of the things away with his oar.
“I never knew,” Avery breathed.
Buildings loomed in the fog. Structures rising from nests of lashed-together tires bobbed and creaked. Some of the structures stood on long, moss-covered stilts that looked like they could snap at any moment.
They entered the city through canals that ran between listing buildings. Lights burned. Music roared. Alchemical lanterns strung from shanty to shanty, and Avery was relieved that they had been engineered to eliminate much of the stench, replacing it with a pleasant musky odor. All around him, mutants thronged. They cavorted in sagging structures, sang on rickety bartops, danced amid halls of ancient houseboats and gambled in smoky dens. It was a city of mutants. A city of mutants living in the sewers. It was true. He’d heard the stories, but he had dismissed them like anyone with any sense as fancy, as urban myth.
“Amazing.”
Pete looked around skeptically. “Ain’t the word I’d use. Rat-hole comes more to mind. And it’s my home.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Janx said. “It’s got some charm. Have to watch your step, though,” he added to Avery.
“I just want to know how it’s possible,” Avery said. “I mean, a town down here.”
“Don’t you know your history?” Pete said. “Muties used to own the coasts, back during the Withdraw. When normal folk moved back, though ...”
“Yes, I remember. Mutants were oppressed and marginalized, isolated to the quarantine quarter and forced to live in squalor, at the constant beck and call of scientists who performed what were, by all accounts, quite unpleasant experiments on them.”
“Yeah. Back then they didn’t know much about Atomic Sea infection. Were even more afraid of it then than they are now.”
“So the mutants fled to the sewers ...”
“A lot of ‘em.”
As the outlaws docked and led Avery and the others over rickety, swaying bridges, then onto more stable platforms and through wide avenues between towering structures, Avery saw a complete society, a civilization, built in darkness and foulness, based on misery and seclusion.
Yet the mutants throve. They danced, they sang, conducted business. Avery saw the shop fronts of seamstresses, carpenters, ferrymen, grocers, a school, even a detective agency—his mind fired at that one—and more. Much more. He passed brothels built of mud and brick and wood, second story windows glowing with life and roaring with sound, naked mutant women lounging on terraces, entertaining men in a lobby adorned with expensive rugs and chandeliers. Ragged, unhealthy-looking mutants squatted in alleys, drinking and forlorn. A group of youths tore down a street, clutching a burlap bag whose blood-soaked sides might indicate a haul of rats or flails, while an outraged adult chased them. Giggling, they floundered down an alley and disappeared.
It was an entirely different universe from the one in which Avery had lived his entire life. It was alien yet familiar, patterned after the one in which he hailed from, yet completely and fundamentally different.
He turned to study Layanna. She had been grimacing and rubbing her temples earlier, but she was more relaxed now.
Seeing his scrutiny, she said, “I can no longer feel the psychic. We’re safe here. I think it worked.”
“Thank goodness.”
Pete led them toward a grand edifice of stone, and Avery imagined it must be supported on stone pillars that ran to the very bottom of the cistern. This was an important building. And old, surely. Sound and light blazed from it, and Avery saw a faded sign that read VASSAS’S HOUSE OF PLEASURE over the batwing doors.
Pete strode past the guards and shoved through the batwings, leading the way into a wide, smoky room, clinking and tingling to the sound of gambling machines. They passed banks of slot machines, a roulette table, a poker table, and more, all of them fully occupied by mutants—and even the occasional non-infected human, perhaps outcasts from the city above. The customers shouted, sweated and drank. Half-naked female mutants (and a couple of males) sauntered through the aisles, across the expensive rugs, holding trays of beer mugs, peanuts and snacks with tentacles, pincers, mottled hands. Some wore even less than others, and these teased the men, sprawled in their laps, kissed their ears or ear holes, and occasionally led them upstairs to what must be the brothel. Avery saw two mutants fighting, rolling about on the floor while onlookers cheered. A bouncer dragged another man from his table and, screaming, toward a back room; perhaps he had been caught cheating and was going to be taught a (surely terrible) lesson.
Accompanying this group was a mutant that could only be Vassas, judging from the deference everyone else showed him. Flanked by two large men, he was scaled and slimy, with huge, protruding eyes. A cigar jutted from his wide mouth. Slime soaked through his expensive gray suit in patches, especially his chest and arm-pits.
Noticing Pete, he stopped and said, “Welcome back, Pete-me-boy. You can fill me in later. Gotta gouge a little sense into this stupid bastard first.” He indicated the man being hauled off, and by the glint in his eyes Vassas was looking forward to it.
“Well, ya see, Boss—” Pete started.
Hildra shoved him aside. “We need a room.”
Vassas’s eyes widened. “You!”
For a moment, he tensed, and so did she. Avery sensed some old animosity, perhaps some bad blood, or bad debts anyway, but then something seemed to go out of Vassas, and a weariness came over him. He had enough problems without this, Avery could practically read his body language.
“Fine,” he said. “But your rates are double.”
While his men dragged the cheater into the backrooms, Vassas invited Hildra and her companions for a quick drink in a corner booth.
“Let ‘em soften him up for me,” he said, throwing back a shot of vodka. “Still, I need to make this quick. What’re you in town for, Hildy? Janx?” He seemed to know Janx as well as Hildra, and have some respect for him.
“We’re layin’ low,” Hildra said, taking a shot. Grimacing, she added, “Bad times up top.”
“Yeah. Right.” Vassas poured himself a refill from the bottle he’d brought to the table. “What else?”
“Guy named Jeffers,” Janx said. “A boatman. Heard of him?”
Something dark passed across Vassas’s face. “Uh-huh. He stays here in town, sometimes. He was the one brought me the body. Gods, but I’ve never seen such a messed up corpse, and I’ve seen my share. It was so bad I had a contact of mine drop it off at the morgue up top. Thought they could make better sense of it than I could, maybe give me some idea how to deal with what did it.” He started to say something else, then heard an abbreviated scream from the backroom. “Looks like I’m missing the fun. Anyway, I’ll have Jeffers found for you. He can tell you all about it.”
