An ozone smell reached him. He glanced to see that the train had shut its doors and was rising on its electrified field for departure. The watcher stood alone on the platform regarding him. Samuel slid the pass over the glass plate again. A human voice came on the speaker and asked him to please wait until an attendant could arrive to assist him. The voice asked him his full name, province, and departure city.
“Remember to speak clearly and include your prenomen, nomen, and cognomen. Help will be with you momentarily.”
He threw himself over the exit bars, landed on his feet, and ran for the escalators. He heard the scrape of shoe leather behind him. He turned to see the watcher, the hard man, rushing from between the open bars of the kiosk. Of course, a patrician would have a Visa Europan. All doors were open to the privileged.
Samuel reached the head of the bank of descending escalators. All three stairs were clogged at the center with the passengers who had exited the train. He changed direction and made for the ascending escalators. They were closed for the night, as this was the last train arriving until morning. He vaulted the barrier and lost his footing on the slick metal steps. He tumbled down a few painful steps, then gripped the handrail to right himself.
The watcher was stepping under the raised barrier and trotting down the steps toward him. Samuel rolled over the balustrade separating his current flight from the next. The watcher raced down the steps to catch him. Samuel leaped the next balustrade and landed hard on the escalator steps, to find that the steps on this flight had been collapsed for the night, leaving a smooth, uninterrupted slide to the bottom. He released his grip and allowed gravity to carry him toward the street exit. He felt an impact beneath him relayed through the metal plates. The watcher was on the slick, inclined surface with feet sliding as he gripped the handrail like a drowning man. His feet gave way, and the watcher crashed to the ramp and began a toppling descent in Samuel’s wake. The heels of his shoes yipped in protest as the watcher tried to control his slide.
Samuel gave in to the downward momentum, tucking his knees to his chest and slipping down the final length of the four-story grade at an alarming speed. He left the watcher behind, but at a cost.
He reached the bottom of the escalator and skidded under the lower barrier to a painful stop against a wall. He hobbled toward an exit arch, only to see a guard vehicle parked at the curb. Two guards, in their indigo uniforms and face-concealing helmets, stood by the armored truck in idle conversation.
Samuel’s abrupt arrival and disheveled clothing would be certain to draw their attention. He quickly stepped back into the arch and made his way along the wall toward a row of dark stores within the station. He made it into the shadows just as he heard the squeaking of the watcher’s heels come to a stop on the escalator ramp. Samuel broke into a run. The watcher was sure to alert the guardsmen, who would call for backup and seal off the station area.
The entrance to a pedestrian subway opened before him, and he raced down the stone steps into greater darkness. He heard no outcry and no pursuit. Down in the subway, he could lose himself in the great mall that lay beneath Blue City. The mall came to life each winter when the deep snows came to the city above. It was high summer now, and the place would be mostly deserted, its shops and eateries shuttered. From the mall, he could take any number of paths and lose himself in the maze of tunnels that ran in every direction under the streets to every corner of the metropolis.
He slowed to a casual walk. These passageways would be patrolled by night, and a running man would draw suspicion. There was enough risk that some bored guardsman might stop him to answer questions simply because he was alone and abroad so late at night.
Samuel was almost to the mall when he heard the scuff of a shoe. Behind him, black shadows pooled between the intermittent electric lanterns mounted on the tile walls. The hard man from the train could be standing in one of those dark places watching him.
Continuing on at a pace that Samuel hoped would make him look like nothing more than a man in a hurry to get home, he trotted into the mall. No footsteps followed.
There were voices from somewhere off to his right. He could not see their source through the forest of support columns spaced across the area surrounding the mall’s central rotunda. They were male voices, and he heard a tinny electronic response.
Guardsmen.
He slowed to a walk, keeping the columns between him and where he thought the voices were echoing. The words weren’t decipherable. One still sounded professional but not urgent. Routine communications, perhaps.
Samuel let out a breath and slowed his walk to a deliberate but unhurried stride. He was almost to the exit that would take him up to street level close to his target point. The voices grew fainter behind him, the cavern of the mall swallowing them up.
The man from the train stepped out from behind a column just in front of Samuel. He was smiling easily now. From within his coat, he drew a pugio, a broad-bladed dagger. Its steel gleamed like quicksilver in the artificial light. A ceremonial weapon given for meritorious service to the empire, no less deadly for its beauty.
The hard man stepped forward, blade held low and free arm up to shield himself. He moved like a man who had been in knife fights before. As he closed, Samuel could see the crisscrossed white of scar tissue across the backs of his hands. This man had survived many encounters like this one.
