forming a kind of cave we can drive the sub into. Prof cut into it through the floor and installed the docking seal a few years back.”
“Jon likes to have safe places in every city he might visit,” Tia said, settling on one of the plush couches with her mobile. It would work down here—they worked in the steel catacombs of Newcago, so I was pretty sure they’d work anywhere.
Honestly, I was feeling a little naked without mine. I’d saved for years working in the Factory to buy it. Now that my rifle was gone and the mobile destroyed, I found I didn’t really have much from that time of my life.
“So now what?” I asked.
“Now we wait for Jon to finish his reconnaissance,” Tia said, “and then we send for someone to pick him up. Missouri, why don’t you show David to his quarters.” Which should keep him out of my hair for now, her tone implied.
I shouldered my pack as Mizzy nodded and bobbed off down a corridor with a flashlight. It suddenly hit me just how tired I was. Even though we’d spent the trip here driving at night, I hadn’t completely switched my days and nights. For the last few months it had been a novel thing for me to live in the light, and I’d enjoyed it.
Well, it seemed darkness would become the norm again. I followed Mizzy out of the main sitting room down a corridor lined with artistic photos of colored water being flung into the air. I figured it was supposed to look modern and chic. All it did was remind me that we were on the bottom of the ocean.
“I can’t believe how nice this is,” I said, peering into a library lined with books, more than I’d ever seen in my life. Small, emergency-style lights glowed on the walls in most of the rooms, so it appeared we had power.
“Yeaaah,” Mizzy said. “People out on Long Island had it nice, didn’t they? Beaches, big houses. We’d visit when I was a little girl, and I’d play in the sand and think about what it must be like to live in one of those mansions.” She trailed her fingers along the wall as she walked. “I took the sub past my old apartment once. That was a hoot.”
“Was it tough to see now?”
“Nah. I barely remember the days before Calamity. For most of my life I lived in the Painted Village.”
“The what?”
“Neighborhood downtown,” she said. “Good place. Not too many gangs. Usually had food.”
I followed Mizzy farther down the corridor, and she pointed toward a door in the hallway. “Bathroom. Go in the first door and always close it. Then go through the other door. There is no light; you’ll have to move by touch. There are facilities and a sink. That’s the only running water in the place. Never bring anything out; not even a cup to drink from.”
“Regalia?”
Mizzy nodded. “We’re outside her range, but even if she almost never moves, we figure it’s best to be safe. If she finds this place, after all, we’re dead.”
I wasn’t certain. As Tia had pointed out, Regalia could have killed us up above, but she hadn’t. She seemed to be holding back the darkness, like Prof. “The gangs,” I said, joining Mizzy as we kept walking. “Regalia got rid of those?”
“Yeah,” Mizzy said. “The only gang left is Newton’s, and even she’s been pretty relaxed lately, for an Epic.”
“So Regalia is good for the city.”
“Well, other than flooding it,” Mizzy said, “killing tens of thousands in the process. But I suppose by comparison to how terrible she used to be, she’s not as bad now. Kind of like the dog chewing on your ankle is pleasant compared to the one that used to be chewing on your head.”
“Nice metaphor,” I noted.
“Though shockingly bereft of lions,” Mizzy said, stepping into another larger room. How big was this place? The room we entered was circular and had a piano on one side—I’d never seen one of those except in movies—and some fancy dining tables on the other side. The ceiling was painted black, and …
No. That wasn’t black. That was water.
I gasped, cringing down as I realized that the ceiling was pure glass, and looked up through the dark waters. Some fish swam by in a little school, and I swore I could see something large cruising past. A shadow.
“This guy built a bomb shelter,” I said, “with a skylight?”