“Why do I only hear my footsteps when I can’t hear anything else?” Mali asked as he followed Riddle down the long, dark stairway into the earth. She held an ovular black object out ahead of her, illuminating five or six steps around them in soft white light. The device made a subtle *tick* every minute or so as they walked.
“Maybe if you stepped a little quieter we’d be able to hear everything else,” Roland hissed from beneath Mali’s collar. The little soldier was tenser than the others had ever seen him, scowling so deeply it actually looked painful. Mali stopped talking. They walked on, descending down the endless steps into whatever awaited them at the bottom. Riddle came to abrupt halt.
“It stopped ticking,” she whispered.
“What stopped ticking?” asked Mali. “You flashlight?”
“It’s not a flashlight.” She shook the little device and flipped it upside down. “It stopped ticking. That means…” She trailed off and sat down on the cold staircase.
“Hey! Earth to Riddle!” Roland pulled himself up to lean against Mali’s neck. “What do you mean that’s not a flashlight, huh?”
Riddle flipped to a different pair of lenses on her goggles. The pair she’d been wearing flared out to each side, making room for the new. They glowed a dim green. She scanned the walls to each side, stood suddenly and climbed back up a several of the stairs. “I’m not climbing back up there right now,” Mali grunted. After several minutes Riddle rushed back to them and flopped down next to Mali.
“The cameras end up there!” she cried, pointing to the yawning chasm slanting up behind them.
“So what?” said Mali. “Maybe they didn’t want to waste resources on a stairway.”
Roland, however, sounded shocked. “Are you sure they don’t pick up again further down?”
Riddle shook her head emphatically, holding up the black oval device. “This thing detects security cameras. It’s a top-of-the-line prototype, not even in mass production in the U.S. until sometime next year. It clicks as long as a recording device is in range.”
“I had a feeling this was a bad place,” growled Roland. “The people of Kingdom opted for those cameras for a reason. If we’re out of range that means there’s something they don’t want him to know about.”
“Him?” Riddle leaned forward, goggles gleaming.
Footsteps interrupted Roland before he could speak. Someone was running up the steps toward them. “Get behind me!” Riddle cried, slipping a hand beneath her shirt. “Shit-shit!” Her agile hands flew about her pockets, searching for something and finally pulling out a thin hook from a compartment at the back of a pantleg. “Messy. Guess it’ll have to do,” she grumbled.
Riddle sprang at the figure as soon as she spotted it, arms splayed as she rocketed from higher ground. Mali barely could barely make out a grey hoodie, sleeves rolled up too cool down a panting, tired man. The man stepped to the side just in time to dodge Riddle’s hook, but the start she gave him sent him tumbling backward along with her. He struck her outstretched hand as they fell together, knocking the hook from her hand and sending it careening down into the dark. The sound of struggle and bodies thumping on unforgiving steps made Mali flinch.
The light from the device in Riddle’s had spun as she rolled downward, a strobe in slow motion. Then it went out entirely. Hands scrabbled in the shadows. “Stay still!” Roland hissed into Mali’s ear.
Brilliant white light filled the corridor. “Who-who are you people?” An unfamiliar voice demanded from behind the beam. A man’s voice. He sounded terrified. Mali and Roland covered their eyes against the hostile ray. “Who are you?” he demanded. The beam flicked downward toward Riddle, illuminating an indignant tangle of limbs and displaced knick-knacks spilling from her pockets. No one answered the man.
The beam grew brighter on Riddle’s face, bleaching her skin and glaring from her clockwork goggles. “Hey. I think I know you!” the man cried. The girl from the Shambles, right? You were there!“
Riddle’s head turned slowly to the side, brows furrowed against the light. “I was where?”
“The night they took the Bug Guy from his daughter. I saw you guys getting swarmed by red-shirts.”
“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Mali whispered to Roland. Roland hushed him.
“That means you aren’t one of them!” cried the man.
“Great thinking, genius,” Riddle croaked. “Now if you don’t stop shining that thing in my eyes I’m going throw something sharp right into yours.” The man turned the beam downward. He rubbed at his shins with a hand.
“I think maybe we shouldn’t try to kill each other just yet,” Mali suggested. “Maybe we can table that until we figure out what’s going on here?”
Riddle was already stuffing things back into her pockets. “Fine. You first, hoodie dude. Why on earth are you sneaking around on a dark staircase?”
He laughed. “Fair question, I suppose. I was there the night the angry mob swarmed through the Shambles. I was sleeping in this old empty house when it happened. I saw the fight go down, heard the man’s little girl screaming but… as soon as I saw what they were wearing I was afraid.” He pointed the light up, revealing a large yellowish bruise across his eyes. “They don’t like outsiders much.”
“I felt guilty after I saw what went down, but I had no idea how anything worked around here so I stayed out of sight. Why does everyone look like they came from a costume party?” The man paused. “I’ve been tracking the red shirts for weeks, and they all eventually wind up down here. They’re in and out of the big triangle church, but nobody seems to come this stairway unless they’re wearing red.”
“Again, I’m not following everything you’re saying, but I think you’re here to find Bug Man, too.” Mali ventured.
The man nodded. “He’s the only friendly face I’ve met since I got here. I can’t leave him alone.”
Riddle rose slowly to her feet, walked to the man and reached out a hand. “Nice to meet you…”
“Marvin. Marvin Blake. From Atlanta.”
She smiled. “Nice to meet you Marvin Marvin Blake from Atlanta!” Mali rolled his eyes.
“Hey Marvin?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
“There’s one more thing I think you’re going to need to know about.” Mali reached back and plucked Roland from his collar, holding him out into the light. The sound of Marvin’s crumpling body echoed down the stairs once again.
—————————————-
When they finally reached the bottom of the staircase, Marvin led the group into a wide, roofed hallway lined on each side with a balcony. “I can’t walk any further,” Mali gasped, taking a seat right in the middle of the floor. The others joined him. Hotel-style doors made a uniform pattern on the damp concrete walls for as far as they could see. Riddle craned her neck, looking down the long row of skylights cut into the roof of the great hall.
“That’s the valley floor up there,” Marvin whispered. “All the way down here at the bottom of that god-awful crack they still see the sun for an hour or so.”
Riddle kept her eyes on the ceiling. “And the doors? Have you seen anyone coming from any of them?”
Marvin pointed into the distance. “Just one. Way down there is a huge double-door where the red-shirts go. Once a week they walk down all these steps and gather for a ceremony. There’s so much red in this hallway it’ll give you a headache. The rest of them I’ve looked in are either locked or empty.” He gestured toward a door marked with the number “31” in fading paint. “I’ve been sleeping in that room and no one has bothered me.”
“You have a bed or something in there?” Mali asked hopefully.
“Not exactly. I have a backpack of dirty clothes though if you want to lay down for a little while.” Mali was already headed for the door.
Riddle watched the boy walk down the hall and step into Room 31. As Marvin turned to follow she caught him by a sleeve. Her eyes burrowed into him, magnified behind heavy lenses. “What are you really doing down here?” she whispered.
The man’s face grew hot. “Looking for the Bug Man, same as you.”
She did not release his arm. “You’ve been down here for weeks searching and you still haven’t found him? Doesn’t sound like you’re searching too hard.” Her gaze crawled over him, boring into the contours of his skin, peeking around the folds of his clothing. “You don’t look hungry.”
He blinked. “Hungry?”
“Where would a lone, friendless man like yourself get something to eat down here?”
A vein throbbed in Marvin’s forehead. The corners of Riddle’s mouth turned slowly upwards, hand twisting the man’s sleeve and pulling him close. “Run and I’ll throw something long and sharp into your calves. We’re going to go back to your room now and you’re going to tell me what’s going on here.”
His muscles tensed for a moment as if he wanted to make a run for it, but then relaxed. He nodded miserably. “Fine.”
__________________________________
“I found Bug Man the second day after coming down here,” Marvin began. Roland, Mali, and Riddle stood inside Room 31 with their backs to the door, trapping the humiliated captive before them. He sat bound to a loose-legged chair, sweat dripping from his eyebrows and upper lip. “The red-shirts had beaten him up pretty bad. I hid out until they all went back up the stairs and I thought the coast was clear. I could hear him breathing before I got to the door.”
“Which door? One of the ones out here?” Mali asked.
“No. The end of this hall opens into a big antechamber with some rooms branching out of it. They use them for their prisoners.”
“What kind of prisoners?” Riddle ventured. “Outsiders, right? That’s what the red-shirts kept yammering about.”
Marvin nodded. “The red-shirts think that people coming into Kingdom from the outside threaten their survival. Their meetings are a bunch of people presenting the dangers they present: foreign disease, new religions, too many mouths to feed.”
“Sounds like the rest of the world,” Riddle scoffed.
“They rally for two days at the end of each week and then resurface for their duties among the Penitant. I don’t think Jericho really knows what’s going on. Most of them work outside of the Church of M until their service. They hide and wear normal clothes to keep suspicions down, then put on the red shirts before performing their own missions.”
“Does the group have a name?” Roland called from Mali’s shoulder.
“The Terminant.”
“Terminant,” Riddle repeated. “So what do they want with Bug Man?”
Marvin set his jaw. He looked terrified. “I talked to him. I thought everyone was gone, so I went to his door. There’s a little window set in it near the top. I think he recognized me from the night we met. Just as I was about to speak up I heard someone coming. The door next to Bug Man’s was open, so squeezed inside and pulled it most of the way closed behind me.” Marvin hung his head, face a mask of disbelief and resentment. “The man who spoke to Bug Man just kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. I couldn't see him from where I was at, but every time he said it I heard splashing water and..."
"And what?" Roland demanded. "Splashing water and what?"
"Bug Man. Gasping for breath. I think he was shoving his head into some kind of bucket or something."
Roland went rigid on Mali's shoulder. "Marvin? What was the man saying?"
Marvin's face was drained of the hot blood that had lingered there just moments before. "He kept saying 'tell me about the cure.'"