Chapter Sixteen
If not for her training Natalia wouldn’t have noticed the warmth that had touched her mind. It was not the subtle light touch of one of her Sirens, so she knew that Noriko had not been spying on her. Whoever had done the scan was use to brute force, not skill. Noriko.
How is your male?
He has a blinder of a headache. I’m going to take him home.
No worries, Noriko assured her, we can cover here, and it looks like the most interesting thing that might happen is a council member’s wife confronting her husband about his cheating.
Don’t be so sure of that Noriko. Natalia warned her. I felt another Siren do a scan. I blocked anything but surface, so I don’t believe he got any information, but you are the only Siren supposed to be here.
That’s not good; we have a lot of important people here.
I want you to call Takada and Haru to back you up. See if you can locate the Siren.
Yes, Major. Do you have any other orders?
Natalia paused to think. Shido is in charge, while I’m out, have him pull another Kitsune in to replace me, not Saki, she’s too young and still getting over her injuries from the Feral fight even if she’s nearly healed. Use either Allison, or Osamu, both of them are sensitive to psychic tampering.
Yes Sir. You will report in to let us know you are safe?
I promise. Natalia moved to the coat check and retrieved her long coat then sneaked into the servant’s bathroom. She shrugged the human clothing off and slipped into a dark blue skin suit hidden in her coats pocket. She undid the hidden seal at the bottom of the coat and turned it inside out, transforming her elegant black coat into a street appropriate grey one. She pulled a light blue synth-silk hip scarf out of the coats new pockets and wrapped it securely around her waist. She pulled the silver glass pearls off and put them in the hidden pocket of the angel sleeve of her human dress, before she pulled her sonic pistol out to put into her coat pocket. Natalia pulled her shoes off, pressed a button on the bottom of the stilettos and folded the heels up into the bottom of the shoe. Natalia slipped the now flat soled shoes back on.
As she dressed, she worked on shifting her body so no one would see her human persona leave. She turned her short wavy red hair to a waist length honey blonde. Next she shifted her eyes to a bright blue, and sharpened her cheekbones, her lips becoming full and rosy and her skin paled to a soft Undercity white. She carefully folded the couture dress and sealed it inside a hiding pocket at the bottom of her coat.
Natalia stepped out of the stall and checked the mirror; she made a small adjustment to the shape of her nose then walked out into the kitchen. She waved goodbye to the other servers as she went out the door and made her way back to the tree. “Alright, let’s go”
Rei’s eyes widened slightly, not recognizing the woman till he caught her scent. He grinned wearily. “So do blondes really have more fun?”
“Apparently, since I’m ditching work to take your sorry, sick butt home.” Natalia said, helping him to his feet. Her tone was teasing, although it still showed her reluctance to leave her job.
They took a lift down into the Undercity. Rei grabbed Natalia’s hand to keep from being separated from her in the rush of people.
“Where are we going?” asked Natalia.
“Sydney Station.” Said Rei wincing in agony as thousands of voices battered into his ears,
“Tune down your ears, before they start bleeding.” A wave of nausea ripped through her stomach at the scent of to many people. “Ugg! I forgot to un-tune my nose.”
Rei chuckled, “You going to be alright? I would not want to get a hyper-tuned scent of this place.”
“I don’t think I’m going to want to eat for a week, but I’ll be okay.” She said as she turned down her olfactory senses so she could bear to breath. Then they began fighting their way through the crowd, when someone grabbed Natalia’s long blonde hair and yanked her back. She yelped in pain, shards of electricity seeming to flow along her nerve embedded hair cores.
“Gimme your-“ The would be mugger’s words where cut short as Natalia spun and kicked him hard in the gut, the man went down gasping as the Kitsune woman gently touched her now extremely tender head. “Asshole.” She muttered
Rei quickly bent over the gasping man and relieved him of his cred-chip. The theft did not overly bother Natalia, in the Undercity you did what you had to, to survive. They left the mugger gasping on the ground as they continued with the crowd towards the Sydney station.
Natalia saw a Health Services booth and pulled Rei towards it, she handed them her green cred-chip. “I need two soothers, one for headache, one for nausea. The clerk, checking a screen and confirming neither of them were marked Kitsune, nodded and scanned her chip before handing her two small cups of fluids.
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“Purple for the headache, Pink for the stomach issues, please remember, if symptoms last longer than twenty four hours to immediately report to the nearest health center.” The bored man intoned, repeating a mantra he delivered a dozen times an hour.
Natalia handed Rei the soother as she drank the sweet pink fluid. Almost immediately her stomach settled, she tossed the cup into a small recycler. Rei tossed his empty cup in behind hers.
“Feeling any better?” Natalia asked as they moved into the crowd again
“A little, my head still feels like somebody took a shock-stick to it.”
“Sydney station is just ahead, soon we’ll have you home and you can sleep it off.”
Rei pulled her hand, “Come on we need to go this way.”
“But Sydney station is-“
“Trust me! I know where I’m going.”
Reluctantly, Natalia followed the other Kitsune as he walked through less crowded streets close to the district’s walls. He led her into a small tenement and up the stairs.
She began to think she’d mistaken his directions, and that he had said he lived near Sydney station, when he continued up past the last floor and to the roof access. The door, which was supposed to be kept locked by Council ordinance opened easily for him. “We’re almost there, don’t worry.”
Natalia wasn’t sure if he was reassuring her, or himself.
They walked to the back of the roof, which was actually the wall of the arcology its self. Natalia realized his destination before they’d reached it. “You’re going to access a maintenance department hatch?”
“Sure. Do it all the time. They never change the codes.” Rei murmured in response, tapping a code and slipping into the portal in question, Natalia followed close on his heels.
A few short ladders and one cramped tunnel later, they were in the Sydney/Melbourne tube-way. “Wouldn’t taking the train be easier?” Natalia commented dryly.
Rei didn’t answer, instead walking over to a grate on the wall of the tunnel. He began prying it off with his hands. “What are you doing? That’s an air pressure release grate! Don’t tell me you… live in there?”
Natalia hadn’t bothered hiding her disdain for the very idea. A year ago she’d been forced to hide in one while investigating a drug smuggling ring and the two meter by two meter square, with barely one and a half meter of ceiling clearance, weren’t very comfortable. The tunnels leading out of that first chamber weren’t any better, quickly dropping from one meter to less than half a centimeter wide three kilometers away on the surface. The tiny holes, intended to let pressure built up by the high speed maglev trains, were small enough to prevent any animals from wandering into the arcology, and those few insects that might hide in the small tunnels generally wouldn’t travel that far without the promise of food.
“No.” Rei grumbled, which relieved the woman behind him, and set the grate aside. He stepped into the pitch black hole, and Natalia stepped to follow him only to stop with a yelp when bright lights kicked on from inside. A few seconds later Rei drove a small cart out of the hole. “I… Think you had better drive. Do you think you could handle it?” Rei asked softly, slipping over in the simple plastic bench seat and away from the steering yoke.
Natalia could only stare in shock for a few moments. The ownership of personal vehicles was extremely rare in the City, requiring strict licensing and proof of actual need. Even her own commanding officer did not qualify for a personal car, and her team could only use their transport lorry when a security or military situation warranted its use. The fact that Rei had somehow managed to acquire one was nothing less than astonishing!
Granted, as she walked closer and climbed behind the small carts wheel, it wasn’t much of a vehicle. Under two meters long, it had no roof or doors, seats for two people if they were very friendly, and a small flat-bed behind those seats. It was electric, which wasn’t unusual, but was obviously older than any vehicle had a right to be.
“Drive towards Melbourne, about one hour. I… think I’m going to rest my eyes for a while.”
Natalia turned to argue, not wanting to be gone for so long a time, but the drawn expression on his too pale face silenced her. With a quick message tapped to Shido, telling him she’d be gone until the next morning at least, she pushed down on the throttle pedal, and they were off into the dark.
An eternal hour later Natalia nudged the softly snoring Rei awake. He blinked, peering around blearily as he tried to reorient himself, then he gestured to a discolored portion of the wall at the edge of the stopped cart’s lights.
“Pull up there.” He ordered, and Natalia did. She was surprised when, as they pulled closer, the discoloration resolved itself into a short stairway leading into a small depression in the wall. Rei climbed out with Natalia hot on his heels, and led her up those stairs to a heavy, plasticine door. The Kitsune male pulled a key from his long coat’s pocket and unlocked the door leading her inside. She heard an echo as he flipped a switch in the wall.
For a moment nothing happened, and then lights began flickering to life. They revealed a huge, open room with plain concrete pillars and several doors exiting off of it. “What is this place?” Natalia asked, having never seen so large an area without people filling it.
“It’s a Tunnel Construction Project dorm.” Rei replied as he began walking across the plain, cracked floor. “About a century ago, when resources were tight, they used hand labor to dig out the tube-way tunnels. The higher ups, who didn’t want to waste what few vehicles they had at the time on ferrying workers back and forth from the end of the tunnels, decided that building these off of them about every fifteen kilometers would be more economical. Then the poor bastards only had to walk so far to get to a bed after a twelve hour long shift of digging.”
“I’ve seen documentaries on the project.” Natalia admitted. “But those said these were collapsed after the last teams passed them.”
“Most were.” Rei acknowledged. “There’s probably half a dozen doors to nowhere behind us along that tunnel. They even chipped out the stairs. This one must have just been missed, probably because of some bureaucrat somewhere.”
“Are there more like this one?” Natalia asked, dreading his answer. The number of Ferals or other terrorist groups that could make use of places like this was a chilling thought.
“I actually spent a month searching, once.” Rei admitted. “There’s a half collapsed one out Perth way, and a pristine one only about thirty clicks from Darwin. A band of human and Kitsune prostitutes found it somehow and converted it into a brothel. It seems that white bread, ‘humanville’ types pay big for a piece of Kitsune tail. Or so the girls told me, at least.”
He didn’t notice her sigh of relief, instead reaching another door and digging in his pockets for another key. “Did you know these places could house a thousand workers, or more, and had offices for the administrators too? All blown out of the rock and used for a few months before everyone relocated and they collapsed the whole thing.” He shook his head, and, finally finding his key, unlocked the door in front of him, marked ‘Foreman’. “Here we go. Welcome to The House of Rei.”