Author: Tom

Hurrying down the stairs, Ryder mentally braced himself for the impending conversation he had now psyched himself up for as he pushed on the metal bar across the door.

The exit clattered open, the noise echoing off the surrounding buildings towering over him as he stumbled from the stairwell into the narrow alley behind VistaTech. Mya and two men he didn’t recognize turned towards him with wide eyes. Ryder froze a few paces from the small group but jumped when the door slammed shut behind him.

Shifting from foot to foot, Mya was the first to break the silence. “Oh, great.”

At her words, the burly man next to her turned his attention to a tablet. Not one of those low-range models every kid had these days, but one of the top of the line devices with the holo-screen and augmented-reality capabilities. The man scrunched his face and tapped furiously on the screen, apparently not too concerned about the new addition.

The other person in the alley was a tall, skinny kid no older than twenty, wearing hole-ridden jeans, a t-shirt, and a beanie which looked like it had not seen a wash in a decade. He looked from Mya to Ryder. “You know him?”

She hesitated. “Yeah, he’s just some guy I work with.”

“Some guy? I have a name, ya know.” Ryder’s voice rose louder than he intended. This was not going the way he expected.

The kid ignored him and glared at Mya. “Get him out of here, Mya. We can’t afford anyone screwing this up.”

“I know, I know.” Mya glanced at her watch. “Look, Ryder – “

Confused by the whole situation, Ryder took a step backwards and raised his hands, “Hey, I didn’t mean to interrupt your… whatever this is. I was just trying to introduce myself.”

“You’re not interrupting anything. We were just…” Mya gestured to the deserted back alley but stopped herself as if unsure how to explain their presence.

As she did, Ryder’s eyes fell upon a faded duffel bag next to the feet of the husky man. Despite the unusual circumstances he hadn’t initially thought they were involved in any sordid activity but it wasn’t every day he saw a group lurking outside an office building with a bulging bag nearby.

The scrawny kid tugged at his shirt, smoothing down the brightly colored pop-culture logo adorning it while he tapped his foot. “Come on, Mya. We don’t need this right now.” Ryder got the distinct impression the kid had consumed far too much caffeine recently.

Turning, she snapped through clenched teeth, “I’m working on it, Rex. Will you please just calm down?”

Rex turned to Ryder. “Listen, man – “

The three of them continued to argue, talking over each other at an increasingly loud volume. After a few seconds, the man who had been focused on the tablet spun to face them. “All of you, shut up!”

Ryder stared at him, mouth agape. The large man stood in stark comparison to the younger kid Mya had called Rex. Whereas Rex was tall and lanky with rather unkempt, greasy hair and a slightly sallow complexion, this other guy was distinctly shorter, much more heavily built with tightly cropped salt-and-pepper hair, rounded off by a horseshoe mustache framing his ruddy face. The man stopped working on his tablet and tilted his head to one side, giving Ryder a glimpse of what he was sure was merely one of many tattoos.

The heavyset man suddenly picked up the worn, faded duffle bag sitting next to his booted feet and walked towards the street. “We have to move. They’re on their way.”

Rex trotted after him. “What about this guy?” He turned to face Ryder. “Dude, you’re going to have to go back to where you came from.”

“What?” Ryder asked. “Who are on their -“

“There’s no time,” the bulky guy answered. “He’ll have to come with us. We can’t have them interrogating him and getting more info on us.”

Ryder’s heart quickened as he processed what he said.

“Hang on. Interrogated?” Ryder protested. “Look, I dunno who the hell you are but I’m not going anywhere with you!” He backed away, his thoughts jumbled as he tried to choose the best option for getting himself out of this unexpected situation. “I don’t want to have anything to do with whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in.”

Mya pushed him back towards the stairs. “Jay, he can just go back up. No one will be the wiser.”

Jay – the burly man – gave them all a steely glare, appearing unimpressed. “Two security units are coming down the stairs right now and if all of you don’t hurry the hell up, we’ll be surrounded in this alley in less than a minute. I personally would like to be gone by then. Or would you all prefer to be subjected to God knows what for the next few days? Up to you.”

Rex muttered something under his breath and pulled his bag further up his shoulder, heading after Jay. Ryder felt the urge to run in the opposite direction but couldn’t seem to make his feet cooperate.

Mya shrugged and grabbed Ryder’s hand, pulling him after the other two who were already running. “Let’s go.”

Jay led the way as they sprinted from the alley and left down the main street, Ryder following behind Mya hesitantly even after she dropped his hand, all the while wondering what the hell he was doing.

How on earth did I suddenly end up running through the streets of Seattle with a biker and a hoodlum who could be hardened criminals for all I know when I only wanted to talk to a pretty girl?

Dodging a food cart, they snaked through the dwindling crowd of people late for work, occasionally pushing an offended bystander out of the way. Ryder kept up a steady stream of “Sorry, excuse me,” as he followed them. He assumed the others were used to this activity: they shoved anyone in their path and moved on effortlessly.

The group cut across the street to avoid a mag-tram whose AI pilot beeped at them and took a right up a shallow hill, heading outwards from the city center and putting an ever-increasing distance between themselves and VistaTech.

Two or three minutes into their escape, Ryder heard the distant drone of an approaching AI over his loud puffing.

“This is the VistaTech Security Team. Please desist. We wish to speak with you. You will not be harmed. Halt.” The voice continued and seemed to get closer with every step.

Ryder picked up his pace a little, realizing he was officially invested in their escape. If the AI took him back to VistaTech – or the police for interrogation – he would probably be fired at best. Most likely he would be arrested for this ragtag group’s criminal activities. Somehow he doubted they would bail him out, even if they had gotten him into this mess and he had done nothing wrong.

Rex chanced a glimpse behind them. “Guys, we have to move underground!”

Jay took a hard left without warning, startling a pair of workers in powered exo-suits as they loaded a freight lifter. “Over here.”

Ryder skidded around the corner into another deserted alley to find Jay dropping a manhole cover on the ground and Rex climbing into the opening. Jay ushered Mya down next and she looked up at Ryder, motioning for him to follow her.

As Ryder made his way down the ladder, an AI unit turned in their direction. Its oddly-jointed, vaguely humanoid body and alien, hammerhead-like face looked far more terrifying stalking down the alley towards him than they ever did at public events or the police parades where Ryder had seen them before. “Halt. Do not resist. You will not be harmed.”

Even though he had ever been on the receiving end of their tackle, this morning’s reminder of their detainment capabilities caused a chill to run up his spine. Just as he was mentally thanking Jay for sacrificing himself on their behalf – which he assumed to be the case when he didn’t follow him to the ladder – Jay lunged towards the AI, jabbing at it with his right hand while he fumbled around on his belt with his left.

Taking a full-on punch to one of its main sensors, the AI turned its head directly at Jay, who went for another swing. Before his hand could connect, the AI’s arm shot out and its fingers wrapped around Jay’s neck, slowly elevating him off the ground.

“Caution. Halt or we will alert the police. Cease and desist or you -“ Jay seemed to have found whatever he was reaching for with his left hand and slapped it onto the side of the AI’s head, electrical sparks coursing across the AI’s upper half. The AI instantly released him and kneeled, its head lowered. Jay reached for a large piece of broken concrete and slammed it down on the AI’s exposed neck. After the third brutal hit, some piece of metal gave way and the unit powered down, falling to the ground with a loud clatter that echoed through the alley far too long for comfort.

Confused, Ryder stared at the downed AI. “How did you do that?”

Coughing and rubbing his already bruising neck, Jay ignored Ryder and grabbed the AI by the arm, dragging it after him, composite limbs rasping with complaint as they slid along the cracked concrete. He turned towards the manhole entrance where Ryder stood. “Move.”

Not one to need a second order when being chased by robots, Ryder scurried down the rest of the ladder and joined Mya and Rex at the side of the tunnel in which he now found himself. Shortly after he cleared the bottom of the ladder, a series of loud crashes culminating in a splash behind him made Ryder jump and spin towards the narrow beam of light coming down the shaft that highlighted the crumpled form of their former pursuer.

“Give a guy some warning next time before you almost drop an AI on his head?”

Jay offered no apology or explanation as he finished climbing down the ladder and set off through a maze of tunnels. Before he could get far, Rex called after him. “Wait! Shouldn’t we blindfold this guy or something? He could rat us out.”

Pausing, Jay looked Ryder up and down, eyebrows furrowed, before stalking back to him. Ryder shrunk as Jay’s beefy hand gripped Ryder’s dress shirt and yanked him down the tunnel. After a hundred yards or so, they emerged into a room with four openings in each direction leading to more pitch-black tunnels.

Jay pulled Ryder to a stop in the middle of the room and ripped the sleeve of his shirt at the shoulder seam in one motion, undoing the button at his wrist to pull it from his arm.

“Hey!” Ryder shouted. “Was that necessary?”

Ignoring him, Jay moved around behind Ryder and pulled the sleeve across his eyes, tying it in a tight knot behind his head.

“Okay, this is bordering on kidnapping now. I have no idea where we are! How could I possibly tell anyone how to find you!” Ryder protested.

“Shut up.” Jay growled, “I’m going to spin you around and you’re going to cooperate. Understand?”

Ryder considered his options and they weren’t great. While he didn’t think Mya would let them hurt him, he realized he didn’t really know her at all. As the adrenaline from the chase ebbed away, the thought of what might happen if he refused to cooperate gripped him, an empty pit forming in his stomach.

On the other hand, Ryder was unavoidably curious as to what Mya was involved in and wanted to know more about the group’s activities in the alley. This would be his only chance to find out why they were there and what they were doing. Besides, maybe if he played his cards right, this could all lead to a date with Mya – hopefully without landing himself in jail, or dead.

Huffing, Ryder nodded. With Jay’s hand on his back, he spun Ryder in place five times before he felt dizzy and stopped. He swayed on his feet and Jay gripped his upper arm to shift him in the right direction.
With his vision impaired, Ryder felt even more clumsy than usual, fearing he would trip with every step.

As they continued down the tunnel system, Ryder did his best to ignore the odor of sewage and dead animals, but with his sense of smell heightening to compensate for the loss of sight, it soon became overpowering. To distract himself, he asked Jay, “How did you do that?”

For a moment, Ryder thought Jay was going to ignore him. Finally, he grumbled, “Every tech has a weakness, even AI. I stunned it with a portable electromagnetic pulse and the spot behind their neck is vulnerable to damage.”

“So you knew you could take it down?”

“I knew I had to try. If it told the others where we went…” Jay left it at that.

Ryder thought for a few minutes. “What were you up to anyway? I mean, why the need to run? We were just hanging out in an alley, minding our own business. No laws against that.”

“All in good time. And once you know, you may wish you could take back those questions of yours.”

The group walked through the dark tunnel system for what felt like close to half an hour in silence. They made several turns and, out of sheer annoyance at the insult to his character, Ryder tried to remember the path but soon gave up. The air around him was dank and after only a short distance he felt sticky and gross. A musty odor mixed with smells Ryder didn’t even want to guess at, his nose wrinkling at every new assault. Ryder guessed some of the sections were dated as the others kept warning him to step over debris, causing him to feel like a cantering horse with knees lifted high.

The tempo of the group’s movement shifted, and Ryder felt a firm but delicate hand press against his chest, stopping him in his tracks. From the sounds of it, heavy footsteps climbed a steep staircase. A set of ponderous knocks on heavy metal reverberated through the dank corridor, seeming to last forever in the still subterranean silence.

After a long pause, what must have been a door creaked open, rusty hinges complaining at the movement. Through his blindfold, Ryder could see the glow of light. Eager to be done with the uncomfortable journey, he sloshed forward through the watery puddles on the floor, swearing as he stubbed his toe on the bottom stair.

The same hand as before grasped his arm, guiding him carefully up the stairs. Mya chuckled t Ryder’s awkward movement. “Welcome to the Underground.”