“Smart girl.” Tiana’s wicked grin returned. “You want an escape tunnel the size of the Sledge, you’d best dig into one that’s already been dug down there.”
“But,” Emiko asked, now a bit pale, “what about the trains?”
“Maglev trains no longer run through these particular tunnels,” Kinsley declared confidently. “There’s far better maintained tunnels to either side of the Sledge. All tunnels beneath the Sledge have likely been out of service for some time now.”
“Just tell me one thing before you go.” Tiana stepped toward Jan. “Why’s the CSD after you?”
Jan shrugged in genuine frustration. “Honestly, I have no idea.” Just over three hours until he hopped into a coma.
“Well, it’s not like the feds ever needed a reason to take a man.” Tiana opened her arms wide. “Come here.”
Jan smiled despite the ugly situation. He hugged Tiana tight, resting his chin on the gray hair bunched atop her head. This woman had raised him since age eight, when a skinny orphan snuck into her tavern and stole a week’s worth of army rations.
“Thank you,” Jan said.
“Aww,” Pollen added.
Tiana slapped Jan on the hip and stepped back. “Don’t ever thank me for saving your ass. Just try not to die before we talk again. I’d be cross with you.”
Kinsley knelt and pulled open the hatch. “How will you move the shelf back in front of the door, after we go inside?”
“I won’t.” Tiana grinned at Pollen. “She will.”
Jan grimaced. “There’s no other choice?”
Pollen thumped her chest. “CSD is not hunting me. I work here.” She pointed commandingly at the little door. “Now go, before I lose patience.”
From outside the bar, a magnified voice blasted through the interior. “Attention, denizens of the Bowsprit!” The volume rattled the silverware in the kitchen. “We’ve tracked a fugitive to this location! We believe he’s inside this tavern!”
“Well, that’s stupid,” Jan muttered as Kinsley crawled into the tunnel. “Everyone in this tavern is a fugitive.”
“His name is Jan Sabato!” the CSD commander continued. “We’re broadcasting a recent image on wideband to all devices! We’re offering a four-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to his capture, provided he’s alive!”
“That’s not stupid,” Emiko pointed out as she, too, crept into the tunnel after Kinsley.
Tiana hurried to the entry to the walk-in freezer and closed its big metal door. “Now, son. Move that ass.”
It was time to flee his family. Once again, Jan had failed to save anyone, and once again his predicament had grown worse. Perhaps his years in Tantalus prison had ruined him for this type of work. Perhaps he had lost his touch.
Still, at least he had an escape tunnel.
09: Underground
Tiana Johnson was true to her word. While the tunnel was low enough that Jan had to crawl on hands and knees, small lights placed conveniently along their buried escape route made it easy to see. The thickly padded floor also made crawling on hands and knees a lot more comfortable than crawling on hands and knees should be. It was obvious Tiana, Pollen, and whoever else they’d roped into digging this tunnel had put a lot of love into it.
As Jan crawled after Emiko, gaze not quite fixed on the attractive ass in dark slacks ahead, he couldn’t stop thinking about everything that simply didn’t make any fucking sense. That was, even by his standards, an awful lot.
First, there was Fatima’s attempt to contact him back at the library, in the Luxury District. Garbled as her reply to his accusation had been, he had understood what little he heard.
“You sent me to orbit.”
“I didn’t, actually.”
Jan knew Fatima had betrayed him five years ago. It had been her text message that led him to his doom, and he had literally glared into her eyes as Captain Varik led him away in cuffs. So why would Fatima claim, now, that she hadn’t sold him out?
Was he missing something? What could he have possibly missed? The chain of events could not be more simple: Fatima summoned him to the starport, Fatima betrayed him, and Fatima walked away without being arrested. Yet was it possible Fatima, like Emiko with Elena Ryke, had been forced to betray Jan by someone he didn’t know about?
Next, of course, there was the entire fucking CSD hunting him. There was a remote chance that Sheriff Cross, back in Cliffside, had tipped off the CSD after all, but why wait almost two days before doing so? And why would both Cross and Mayor Solace risk Jan retaliating? They had as much to lose as Jan did if their secrets became public, if not more.
Even if Cross had fucked him over, the charge of impersonating a Ceto senator wouldn’t rate two full platoons of CSD soldiers. Given how thin the CSD was stretched these days, they reserved that sort of manpower for actual terrorists. So why send such a large force to bring him in? Why offer such an impressive bounty, yet specifically request him alive?
Every step Jan took toward Fatima got him knocked two steps back, and getting answers to any of his questions seemed about as likely as getting invited to Senator Tarack’s next birthday party. A coma was looking more appealing by the moment. At least, in a coma, he wouldn’t have to deal with Marquis.
“Clear!” Kinsley shouted from ahead. They had at least five floors of dirt and rock between them and the street above, and even the most powerful Wi-Vi couldn’t penetrate this deep. “Tiana left flashlights!”
Emiko scrambled out of the tunnel ahead of Jan and rose, looking around. “Well, this is a whole new world of ew.”
Jan emerged
