Authors: George Barlow
“But magic? Come off it and I’m a… what did you call it?”
“An Inquisitor.”
“Okay,
why
am I one? And how did I not know about this before? Surely I’d be turning people I don’t like into toads all the time by accident.”
Gabriel didn’t look impressed by the last comment. He took a long pause before speaking and, as the silence continued to linger, the lift slowed to a stop. The doors peeled open to reveal a circular tunnel, lights coming to life around them as before.
“No reason Henry. You get these abilities at random, and tonight your cards came up.”
The involuntary eye movement and flash of sadness across Gabriel’s face told Henry that was a lie.
Tiles stuck to the walls in small clusters, revealing chipped concrete and the hints of rusting girders. It felt oddly familiar, walking through the maze of tunnels, amongst the smell of stale water and concrete. After a few minutes of walking, the tunnel opened to reveal a platform and, as the facts clicked into place, Henry cursed at himself for not realising where they were sooner. This was an underground station, or more accurately, one of the abandoned underground tunnels. The platform was empty, spot lights were all that pierced through the darkness, catching the faded white of an underground sign that read
Aldwych
.
“Where are we going?” Henry said.
“Does it matter?” Gabriel said.
“I didn't think these tracks connected to anywhere.”
“You knew about these tunnels?”
“Yes, I read about it, but-”
“Of course you did.”
They walked the length of the platform, stopping at the end. Gabriel crouched on the floor, swung his legs over the edge and jumped down onto the tracks.
“Come on, or do you want me to point the gun at you again?” Gabriel said.
“We are walking on the tracks?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
Henry did as he was told.
Gabriel took a flashlight from his jacket and walked off into the darkness of the tunnel, as the lights of the platform shut off behind him, Henry running to catch up. They had walked for about twenty minutes in silence, when the tunnel opened up ahead.
“We wouldn't normally go this way, but you would cause too much damage if we travelled via the normal routes,” Gabriel said.
“How do you figure that?”
“As part of this
gift
you have, you emanate a sort of energy. This is how they tracked you at the hospital. I injected you with something to neutralise it, but it doesn't last long. When you're new, you generate more energy than we can mask. Anyway, the devices we use to hide this place wouldn't cope with the amount of energy you're producing going through them, they'd blow out, which would cause us no end of trouble.”
“Who tracked me down? What do you mean devices? And where the hell are we?” Henry said.
“Questions, questions, questions! You'll get your answers soon enough.”
“Sure as hell I will,” Henry said under his breath.
Henry and Gabriel climbed up a long flight of stairs through the narrow passage at the side of the platform, the steps slimy from the water dripping overhead. At the top of the stairs was a small catwalk above a network of pipes leading to a metal door, rusted over entirely.
Gabriel took a small key from his pocket and delicately, as if mending an antique clock, turned it in the lock. With a cry, the door swung open.
Beyond the door was a street. It gave the impression of night-time, until Henry looked up. Metal scaffolding replaced the sky, smoke collecting around the rafters as cold drops, of what Henry hoped to be water, fell like raindrops. He followed Gabriel along the alleyway, the door creaking shut behind him. It led onto a cobbled street with two storey buildings either side, that melded with the roof and the clouds. The structures were a tour de force of architecture from modern to Victorian, and even Tudor designed buildings, all crammed next to one another. Walkways along the second floor wrapped around street corners, disappearing into the distance as catwalks stretched across the streets, like rope bridges across a ravine. At street level, fabric awnings, ragged and dulled with age, spilled out onto the street, only separated by the narrowest of margins from oil drums set alight, as groups of people gathered around them against the cold.
“Welcome to the under-city market,” Gabriel said, a little
too
much like Willy Wonka introducing the Chocolate Factory than he probably intended to.
“Where are we?” Henry said.
“The
under-city market
,” Gabriel said, mockingly slow.
Henry figured this was going to be a common theme with Gabriel, the teasing of information, but he played along anyway.
“And where is the under-city market?”
“This is a safe place for alternates. They can be open about their powers here and trade goods that you can’t get in human cities. The London under-city has grown quite large over the centuries, connecting to a fair few human markets and streets along the way. Look here.”
Gabriel crossed the street toward a darkly lit alleyway that ended in a brick wall.
“
Human
markets?” Henry said.
“Yes. You have humans and you have alternates, who are magic-folk. You are the latter, as I explained before.”
“I am human.”
“If you say so,” Gabriel said with a smug smile.
“Whatever. What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?” Henry said dismissively.
“You see the crack in the pavement? Follow it down the alley.”
“To where? What am I looking at?”
“
Concentrate
.”
“This is ridiculous, are you winding me up?”
“Just do it,” Gabriel said, a slight redness adorning his pale cheeks.
Henry looked at the pavement by his feet. The slabs were cracked in such a way as to produce a thin line that meandered down the alleyway. It probably ended in a wall. It had to really. Or it ended somewhere that wasn't important at all, not even worth thinking about it.
“Shall we carry on?” Henry said.
“Take another look,” Gabriel said, his voice firm.
What was he getting so uptight about? Henry stared at the crack in the paving once again and followed it along the alleyway, but this time focussing on every slight deviation the crack made as it meandered towards the wall. As he got further towards the end of the alleyway, Henry noticed it. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but he was sure of the sensation. It was as if his attention was being purposefully diverted, his mind encouraged to wander from the task at hand, the feeling stronger for every inch he moved along the crack in the floor. Henry traced the line back towards himself and found his attention return, but going the other way was a different matter entirely.
He had to concentrate.
Henry focused again on the crack in the pavement with an intensity that felt stupid, following it with as much vehemence as he could muster. The line flowed from his feet, along the floor, twisting and turning with the broken paving slabs, passing
beyond
where the wall should have been. It travelled via the surface of a pond, except not one that lay on the ground, but vertically against the wall. Ripples cascaded across the surface, like a pool of mercury, and, in its moments of serenity, Henry saw glimpses of the brick wall again. The crack itself wobbled straight through the translucent fish pond and Henry continued to follow it, with renewed focus, until it came to an end at the most peculiar of items.
A shoe.
The shoe was pretty ordinary, be it on the other side of a shimmering pool of vertical water that merrily morphed itself into a brick wall now and again. What was more interesting, was what the shoe was attached to. A leg. Then jeans followed up to a belt and a jumper. Someone was on the other side of the fish pond. In fact, there were several people walking up and down a street, parallel to the one where Henry stood, shopping bags stuffed under their arms.
“What the-?” Henry said.
“Cool, isn’t it,” Gabriel said.
“Yes, but-”
“Now are you impressed by magus?”
“What? How? Where is that?”
“Soho Market and those people are late night shoppers. They can't see in here and we don't see out.”
“They can't see us?”
“Well, they can't notice us, not easily at any rate. Again this is one of the 'it's complicated' things I'm afraid. Essentially, a 'field' surrounds the alleyway which makes the under-city hidden from humans. Air happily travels across the divide, as would any inanimate object, but humans’ interest in objects or the alleyway itself fades approaching the dividing line between our cities. These gateways exist all over London, connecting back to the under-city, which itself acts like a snake, weaving between them all.”
“How does it work?” Henry said.
“Magic not a good enough answer?”
Henry folded his arms across his chest.
“Maybe you should master the basics first? In fact-”
“Gabriel, is all this a trick? Part of some game? I'm guessing the drugs you gave me haven't actually worn off, have they? I'm just hallucinating, tripping on whatever chemicals are rushing through my veins, the whole time you are trying to get something from me. What is it? Even if everything you have said is true, you couldn’t keep this place a secret, even with magic-”
“Magus,” Gabriel corrected.
“Ok, ‘magus’, people would find it. If I can see though, why can't everyone else?”
“Well, that is simple. You only know because you were told by someone who
already
knows. The Government and Inquisition, that's the place I work for and is full of people like you, ensure that nobody talks about it. You've read all those conspiracy theories about phone tapping, scanning internet histories and messages sent between people? The idea that the government are always watching what you are up to? Truth ain't that far off. We need to make sure this keeps a secret and, through a combination of technology and magus, we manage it pretty well. Anyway, you need to shut up now. That is, unless you wanna end up dead and I don't fancy that by the way - it would cause way too much paperwork.”
They walked to the end of the street and around the corner onto a wider road. Henry hadn't really focused on the people down the first street, but this one was packed, as people hurried in and out of doorways and open plan shops. Others huddled around food stalls, bartering with the market sellers, who called out to passers-by as they attempted to sell their wares. The noise washed over Henry as people barged past, knocking him aside as they went about their business. Hundreds of people, working, trading and, looking further at the rooms on the upper floors, living in this secret city. They all looked so
ordinary
.
Still guiding Henry by his elbow, Gabriel increased their pace as they moved toward the end of the road. They passed numerous run-offs and side streets which made Henry consider again his chances of escaping. It shouldn't be difficult to lose Gabriel, running down a street and hiding himself in the crowd. Thing was, with his sense of direction being so terrible, how would he ever find his way out? He could ask someone, but then again, could he trust anyone here?
It was only when Henry truly looked at the people around him, that his doubts in the existence of magic started to extinguish. Beside him, a little boy walked along at a similar pace, swirling a stick in the air without ever touching it. His fingers twitched and the stick danced under his control. Henry looked for a string, some mechanism to it, but saw nothing. The boy was controlling the stick as if by… magic.
“Get out my mind
and
my shop you cheating Grol.”
A word Henry had heard before, his attention caught by the speaker. A butcher, his apron bloodied, was chasing a skinny girl, her hair a faded blonde, from a shop, shaking his fist in the air.
“If you bloody Grols can't keep honest, I don't want any of your kind in my shop. No powers in trading,” the butcher said.
The man in front of Henry stopped and shouted at the butcher.
“Racist!”
“It's not bloody racist, I am trying to run a business here. The use of powers is against the-”
The man ignored him, pulling his hood over his head as he continued down the road. That was when Henry noticed what he was doing. The man's right hand was slightly extended from his side as flames, like little meteors, flew in between his fingers, weaving around his hand. His other hand, now free from raising his hood, flicked and the flame jumped across to it, the ribbon of fire resting in his palm, slowly turning on the spot.
It was like being in a circus, full of impossible things. A place that collected the curious and the bizarre. One thing that didn't go un-noticed to Henry as they carried on down the street, was the distinct lack of mirrors or reflective surfaces around, glass was kept dirty and windows smudged. Was that for the benefit of people like him, those who could
see
the monsters?
About 50 meters away from it, Henry realised what they were heading towards. At the end of the street stood a tall black building that disappeared both beyond the ceiling and ground, shaped like an inverted triangle. Spanning across its full width at ground level were a pair of block-like doors propped open to reveal a room which appeared to house a series of security gates. Guards dressed in midnight blue stood around the entrance, their uniforms made of an unusual woven material that reminded Henry of Kevlar, the fabric conforming to the contours of their bodies. Long black guns, resting against their chests as they paced from door to door, told Henry that once they were inside, getting out was not going to be an option.
They were approaching the entrance to this triangular building when it hit them. A pulse of heat flung Henry off his feet and onto his back, hitting the floor awkwardly. Flames bloomed from every orifice of the building, casting the street in hues of red and orange. Pieces of the building tumbled through the air, falling as metallic meteors around them, as a low pitch whine rang in Henry's ears. He sat himself up and slowly started to take in the chaos that had erupted around them. People lay limp and unmoving on the ground, the crackle of the flames the only noise for a moment, before cries of pain filled the sky. The blue suited guards lay strewn around the entrance, their bodies burnt and bloodied, perfectly still amongst the collapsing wreckage.
“Deliver us for repression, deliver us from segregation, deliver us from persecution!”
The words chanted in the air, each repetition becoming louder and louder. People pushed past Henry, moving towards the building, but not to give aid. Henry noticed the guns in their hands and knew what was coming next. Shots surrounded around him as everyone on the street scrambled to move out of the line of fire. Henry felt Gabriel's hand grasp his shoulder again, hoisting him onto his feet.
“We need to move, now,” Gabriel said.
“What's happening?” Henry said.
Across the street, the hooded man Henry had spotted before now had a fireball, the size of a basketball, forming between his fingers. Pulling it closer to him, the flames compacted into a fierce white inferno that, with a flick of his hand, catapulted into the building with a flash of fiery red.
“All of this is probably meant for you. We need to run.”
Gabriel was pointing to a woman at the side of the street who held a large metal contraption, scanning the crowd. As her arc moved towards Henry, she slowed, eventually stopping directly on him.
“He's here,” she screamed out.
Following Gabriel's direction, Henry ran down an alleyway packed full of people fleeing the explosion, squeezing in-between them to get through. Protests sounded as Gabriel barged his way past, constantly shouting for Henry to hurry up.
“They are heading down here. Quickly!” The woman screamed from behind them.
Henry didn't look back. It was like trying to make your way across a tube station at rush hour, except now everyone’s incentive was to save their own lives. People fell either side of him, but were soon covered by others desperate to escape. Henry tried to blank the screams from his mind, but they would live with him for a long time. The alley was long and twisted, Gabriel shoving Henry down random offshoots and turns in an attempt to get away.
Finally, the people thinned out and the alleyway opened onto another street, oddly similar to the one they had first seen on entering the under-city. The place was some kind of strangely repetitive labyrinth. He breathed heavily, resting his weight on his knees and bent forward. Henry found himself laughing at his exhaustion and how beyond reason the entire situation was, even his dreams were not this abstract.
“Are you completely inept at physical activity?” Gabriel said.
“What?” Henry said.
“How on earth can you be out of breath?”
“Oh shut up. What happened?”
“Deliverance. They're the terrorist group that are the hunting you. We need to shelter somewhere until I can think of a plan.”
“What was that building?”
“Safety. They knew that was where I would take you and lucky for us, made it there before we did, assumed we were already inside.”
“They blew up that building, killed all those people, to get to me?”
Henry felt sick. How many people had died then? Tens? Hundreds? The initial explosion had killed so many, but then the attack had begun. And in the streets as they escaped, how many more had died trying to get away?
“Inquisitors are difficult to kill once they are trained, their best chance is when you’re green. It's especially rare to find one just transformed and not in an Inquisition strong-hold.”
“I'm not worth that many lives, you should have left me.”
“Don't be a fool, Inquisitors save hundreds if not thousands of lives over their careers. If not for them, this world would fall apart.”
What could Henry possibly do enough to make up for all of those deaths? The faces of those prone on the ground, their eyes lifeless, flashed into Henry's mind and he knew, if he survived this, they would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.
Gabriel reached into his jacket pocket and then paused, “Probably not safe to call for help. They can still track you, so we need to move.”
“There's help? Surely we can-” Henry said, but he was too late.
Gabriel had begun to run again and, after realising what he was doing, Henry sprinted to catch up. He needed to block what just happened from his mind, deal with it later, his focus now needed to be on staying alive and figuring out what the hell was going on.
Gabriel stopped at the edge of some kind of moat, a torrent of water flowing past, brown and reeking of sewage. A small wooden bridge led across to a pair of large burgundy fabric curtains. In a blink, Gabriel disappeared through them. Henry begrudgingly crossed the bridge, the wooden beams creaking and warping underfoot, before coming to a stop at the curtains. On the other side was a muffled barrage of noise and voices, and a waft of fried food that mixed, rather horribly, with the sewage smell surrounding him. It seemed in the under-city, things just got stranger and stranger.
Gabriel stuck his head back through the curtain and, grabbing the fabric of Henry's shirt, pulled him through.
Where the streets before had been dimly lit, on the other side of the curtain was as bright as the midday sun. Artificial light, from long columns in the ceiling, bathed everything in a golden glow. They were stood in one of a series of small square courtyards and, like standing between two glass mirrors, the courtyards echoed over and over again into the distance, twisting slightly out of sight. The street was close-knit, even more so than before, with stalls spilling out far into the centre of the block, leaving no clear path to take, except to weave in between the sellers.
Gabriel led Henry by the shoulder through four blocks before he stopped abruptly and drove him into a cafe of some sort. It disappeared back from the courtyard, with individual round tables and ornate chairs filling every available space. Gabriel smiled at the waitress, a small woman with brilliant green eyes, that glowed even brighter when Henry caught her stare, as she guided them to a table at the back. Gabriel took the seat with the view into the street forcing Henry to take the other, concealed by the wall of the cafe.
“So,” Henry said, catching his breath. “To sum things up to far... I'm a freak?”
Gabriel smiled and sat back in the chair, “From what I've read about you Henry, you've always been a freak.”