IX. Underground Hounds
In Over Their Heads, Deep Beneath Haven...
He took the blows as well as he gave them, for the pomp and Old World presentation of Professor Smith afforded him the element of surprise as he fought five thugs in the middle of a back street.
They never knew what the “faerie fop” had in him as the fists flew, the legs swung, and the boots rattled at their backsides. In fact, in the debonair white wolf’s blind fury, he had forgotten what the thugs attacking him over. All his bounties were accounted for, all clients had paid, and he had also taken care of every gangster who tried to have their revenge on his clients’ revenge.
Racing from behind was a red-furred behemoth, brandishing a chain bound for the Professor’s neck. Down came the chain, but with a jolt, it whipped across Smith’s neck and off to the side. With four thugs at his front, he hadn’t time to check on the failed maneuver, so he kept duking it out until all were felled.
As his diverse cadre of opponents lay bleeding on the half-paved asphalt, snouts broken and breaths heavy, he turned to face his would-be assassin, and found him with a four-point blade between his eyes, slumped against the alley wall.
“Ah, the shuriken!” Smith observed with academic glee. “Rather primitive one too, must date back to the Edo period. Who in the blazes threw it?”
It was upon closer inspection that he found a business card-sized note attached. The corner was stained by the thug's blood, but it didn’t spoil the important part.
“Prof. Smith We’re Needed!” — XOXO Lita
“Gentlemen, I do hope I haven’t hurt you.” Smith chortled, plucking his cloak up from the writhing pile of crooks. “But I must be going.”
The white wolven fighter pocketed the blood-tinged card, tossed the cloak into his deep green Jaguar E-Type, and tore off to make his rendezvous. It was time for him and the Urban Avenger to settle this “Hazel” business once and for all.
“Z-Coordinates?” wasn’t the oddest question he had been asked, but with a double-check of Lita’s work, Professor Smith was sure she had come to the right conclusions. The coordinates dispensed by that vulgar computer terminal of their last meeting had taken quite a while to unravel, but the gray-furred hippie-punk proved herself a dab hand at decryption. The latitude and longitude were deep within Haven, but this Z-coordinate nonsense was where she had gotten stuck.
“Well it’s a negative value, so I can only presume it means down.” Smith surmised. “Let’s hope there’s a manhole wherever this takes us.”
Lita nodded. “Might wanna leave the dinner jacket in your ride, smart money’s on damn sewers.”
“What’s the count up to now?” Smith teased. It wasn’t long before they were all packed up, had loaded the details into their rides’ navigational units and began their organized tear through the city to their destination. The Red Devil gave the chic sports car a run for her money, the souped-up Bug playful as it wove about the Jaguar in the streets. Midway through all the fun, down came her sandaled paws on the brakes as the Bug skidded to a stop, the E-Type screeching to a halt within an inch of the car’s rear. Both hopped out, oblivious to the near-collision, and surveyed the area.
“Well,” Lita began, “This is where we’s told to go, right to the number, but there ain’a a manhole in sight.”
It made the crack in the asphalt as good as an entrance as any, so out came the crowbars from the Red Devil’s back seat, and after a few good whacks, the pavement was pried open, revealing…nothing. Just a hole in the city, God knows how many miles down, without so much as a ladder.
“Where in the devil is me torch?” Smith muttered to himself. “I suppose he thinks we’re crazy enough to just leap down there.”
“And we are.” Lita nodded.
“Well not in those you aren’t!” barked the wolven dandy, undoing his cloak and balling it up.
Lita’s snout scrunched in frustration “Not in what? You mean the Birks?”
“Precisely!” he bellowed, wrapping the cloak in silver twine, “Get some proper footwear on!” He chucked the balled cape down the whole as the gray punk growled indignantly.
“That’s rich coming from Mister Three-Inch Hee–” was all she got out before Smith clamped her mouth shut, waiting for the cloak to land. With a FMPH and a shriek of fabric, they now knew that something fatally sharp lay at the bottom. “That’s why! So you don’t get a spike through your paw and I have to run and get you a tetanus shot.”
He got a slap upside the head for the display before Lita stormed off to the Bug.
“Fucking limey sonofa,” she fumed.
“Mind your words, we have plenty to call you,” he chuckled, searching his coat for the flashlight. “Just imagine if that was sewage, unless that’s your turn-on.”
“You really are asking for it tonight,” she growled.
“And you get what you pay for, m’dear.”
She returned in a fine pair of snakeskin cowboy boots, another gift of her lover’s, lawman rocker Nic Ridgefield. For the gray punk’s first order of business, she gave the white wolf a kick in the rump. “And you get what you get. Flashlight.”
Try that with a biker, and you’d get a street fight. Try that on Professor Smith, you are met with a white-furred dandy brought to tears of laughter. “And that’s why you’re my favorite partner-in-crime.” he guffawed.
She tapped her newly sheathed paw with great impatience, but soon the display even got her giggling. “I dunno what to do witcha, but I dunno what to do without.” she snickered.
Once the pair had pulled themselves together, Smith produced a flashlight from out his coat pocket. When the beam hit the bottom of the cavernous hole, both wolves’ jaws were the first things down it.
“They got fucking rails!” Lita exclaimed. “Must be 30 feet down, too.”
Smith nodded. “Right then. How shall we get down there?”
First came a moment of silence, then her answer. “Jump-n-pray!”
Without a second thought, Lita threw herself down the hole! A short drop later, and she stuck the landing without so much as a rolled ankle. “Well shit! That ain’t ever happening again!” she hollered.
She looked up the line to see a rail tunnel that went on forever. When she looked down the line, she was met the sight of sharp spike an inch from her snout.
The punk gulped. “That REALLY ain’t happenin’ again.”
“Shall I overshoot then?” the white wolf asked innocently.
“YEAH!”
And down he went, landing dead center on the rail ties. Once he had caught his breath, Smith noticed the station platform he had barely cleared himself. “Another jolly-good reason to have sent the cloak down first.” he remarked, glancing over his shoulder. When he saw the wrought iron spike stood before Lita, he simply nodded. “Indeed, another good reason.”
Broken from the trance, Lita crossed the tracks and plucked up the skewered cloak. “You have a closet full of these, don’t ya?”
“Not at all, m’dear.” Smith took the balled cloak, undid the string, and with a flamboyant flick, revealed a perfectly unharmed cape. “There you have it! Nanotech needn’t all be sentient.” The Professor caught an amused golf clap from the gray punk, and he bowed in kind. “My next parlor trick will be finding out where this all goes. Shall we?”
They locked arms like a merry couple in the park, and sauntered down the abandoned tracks. It was a side of the city neither had ever conceived of, and one the dear old computer network had also forgotten about. The old brick work betrayed the subways of centuries gone by, but something about the rails seemed new, as though tracks were just laid down.
“Hmph. Not enough grease,” Smith muttered, rubbing the pads of his fingers together. “Should come from the lubrication of the carriage wheels. What’s a railway without trains?”
The flashlight had afforded them a great view of the tunnel walls, but it seemed as though the tunnels themselves were meant to go on for infinity. And with only their legs to carry them, and lots of ground to cover, the boredom drove them to odd conversations. They gabbed about the Professor’s scientific experiments, the joys of slaughtering irradiated thugs in the desert, and to each others’ surprise, album recommendations.
“Listening to Klemmer is like getting laid by a feather pillow.” Lita remarked. “You can’t do better than ‘Touch,’ I ALWAYS make Max and his cats play it at the speakeasy.”
“It was what the Missus and I toss on whenever the mood strikes.” Smith replied. “But I tell, Herrmann’s approach to ‘The Planets’ is infinitely superior to Von Karajan! You can’t convince me otherwise.”
“I hope you don’t screw your lady as slow as his Mars!” the gray punk guffawed. “You’ll both be pensioners between thrusts.”
“Oh, you recalcitrant brat!” the white-furred chevalier barked with mock indignity. “At least we can make it last, Mrs. Rabbit.”
They had just found common ground on the subject of old-time rock-n-roll when the deathly calm gave way to a gentle hum. A deep, deep hum. Smith went to pinch Lita’s snout shut, only to find her half-gloved mitts around his as well. With each shut up by the other, they listened with alert ears.
“Six O’Clock, sharp,” Lita said through the side of her mouth.
“And closing fast,” Smith added through his.
When they had released one another’s muzzles, the rumble grew to a thunderous roar, and from that roar came a blinding light at their back.
“RUN!” Lita barked. The gigantic subway car hurtled down its line, faster and faster towards them, their legs doing their damndest, but losing ground every second. Without a place to duck into, they only had one option.
“Want to find out where it goes?” panted Smith.
“Sure, so long as we don’t get skewered or smashed!” Lita hollered over the subway’s thunderous might.
“Jump up and grab the handrail on the count of three!” he barked. “One!”
“Two!”
“THREE!”
Up the wolves went and away there were carried, slammed against the train’s front. They clung to the handrails, heeled boots pressed sideways against the thin ledge of the coach.
“Not much of a running board!” Smith shouted. “Let’s hope it knows where to stop.” The hurtling train made the next leg of the journey easier, if only on their legs, the tunnel now mere strips of light and dark whizzing by. The duo’s stomachs were fit to burst, but both clung desperately their respective handrails. When the train came to a grinding, sparking halt at a dimly-lit platform, the chill that rolled up both elder wolf and younger punk’s spines was either nirvana or the sweet release of death.
Upon their arrival, Smith helped Lita off the front of the train, and the duo took turns in a trash can, relieving themselves of their nausea.
“Is that what roller-coasters were like?” Lita coughed, mopping her muzzle.
Smith nodded. “As far as my research tells me. Never doing another field study again.”
Once they had pulled themselves together, they turned towards the underground grotto. The brick work was smooth, and the platform spacious. At the back of it lay a simple, wooden door, and without a second thought, Lita turned the knob. Behind it lay the next in their bombing run of perplexing sights; a matte-black corridor, lined with bright white strips of light, and at its end stood three paths.
“Never is that easy, is it?” chimed a bemused Smith. Lita cocked an eyebrow. “Well it can’t be all tea-and-crumpets, Mr. Debonair.”
“Right,” the tall white hound shot back in playful indignity. “One more crack and you get yourself a jolly-good smacked bottom.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” the dark gray punk teased, cozying up beneath his cloak. When she went to put a half-gloved hand over his frilly-shirted chest, the professor ripped the black cape away and marched off. For once, it looked like the fellow’s feelings were actually hurt. “Hey, wait up!” she barked, sprinting up to him. “The hell’d I do? You usually take this shit fine.”
The white chevalier snapped on his heels and held up a curled left hand. Upon its middle finger sat a girasol ring, the gem catching even the faintest of the white light’s. The elder wolf’s gaze was piercing. “Ribbing, insults and exchanges, yes!” he barked. “But never anything vulgar! You see this ring? This is a vow I have held for 33 years. And so long as she still walks this earth, I am betrothed to her and her alone. Even as a joke, I won’t have that sullied.”
When he spun back around, Lita was well and truly speechless. When he was about to continue his march, she finally found her words. “I didn’t mean it as a pass. I’m…sorry.”
When he turned back around, his eyes had softened. “Very well then. Apologies for snapping. Call it a case of the old fashions.”
“Nah,” she smiled. “Just a good man with a lot on him.”
He nodded appreciatively, and with the wound now healed, it was time to make a decision. “Straight ahead to start?” Smith asked innocently.
“Lead the way!” Lita saluted.
At the end of the corridor, there sat yet another door, and upon its opening, the discovered ladder going up. To where was what they had to find out. The further they climbed, the more they heard—more rumbling.
“Must be machinery of some kind.” Smith surmised, climbing closer to the top with each step. “Maybe headquarters, perhaps?”
Without a second thought, Smith pressed up against the round metal plate at the top of the ladder. “Right then, up you–”
VOOOM
The disc was gone in a flash as the train’s gargantuan roar screamed down the ladder’s chamber. The massive vehicle went on for an eternity as the wheels ground against the rails and sparks shot down towards the two wolves, just barely missing them. When the sound was off and away into the tunnels, and Lita looked up, and for the first time in a long-time, she screamed in horror. She could see the body of Professor Smith…but not his head!
“If you think that’s bad, try it from where I am.” came a shuddering disembodied voice before two white ears popped up, and the mercifully unsevered head of the dandy was revealed.
“Still got a hand?” she asked feverishly.
“All four fingers,” he said, counting them. “I’ll never trim me claws that way again, though. Let’s count it a dead-end and move on.”
Lita’s embrace of her elder knight was much more innocent upon his arrival at the bottom of the chamber, and soon the next path was chosen.
“Left’s Heads. Right’s Tails.” Smith stated, producing a pristine buffalo nickel from his pocket.
“Fuck, I hate this shit.” Lita muttered. “Tails.”
With a flick of his thumb and clap of his hand, the coin had made its choice. “Today’s your lucky day, m’dear.” Smith smiled, as the nickel landed buffalo-side up. The two vigilantes made their way down the right-hand corridor.
With his patented aerosol process of revealing invisible threats and Lita clutching her high-powered pistol, the duo were ready for anything. At the slightest hint of danger, they looked for trip wires and covered each other with their peacemakers. And at each junction point, their guardedness was rewarded with nothing. No trip-wires, no secret security guns, no thugs to blow away. Just the deafening clack of their heels on the hard black-tiled floor, lit between its cracks like a discothèque. The remaining silence was nerve-wracking.
“Best security system I guess.” Lita growled in hushed ebony tones. “Bore your infiltrators to death, or drive ‘em round the block.”
“Crazy thing is, you may be right.” Smith surmised.
And yet, it was in that silence that a true lead had finally been made. When the duo stopped to get their bearings, they heard the soft electric hum of something turning. Upon looking up, they saw a black bulb tucked in the corridor’s corner.
“Surveillance cameras!” Lita exclaimed quietly.
“Means one of two things,” the cloaked white wolf observed, “Either this ruse is exceptionally elaborate, or there’s something worth keeping an electric eye on.”
“Ight, let’s play it cool.” the punk smiled. They strolled through the halls like they owned the place, looking for the control room or something tied to the cameras. So far, no luck. They kept strolling through, the monotony of it erased by the prospect of something being down here at least. And in one of the camera’s blind-spots, they had found just that.
On the corner of a wall sat a black box, a metal pipe from which snaked up along the wall, across the ceiling and towards one of the black, bulbous cameras, facing away from the gray punk and her white gentleman. Meanwhile, the camera at the opposite end was making quite the fuss over its servos.
“I think the poor devil’s mechanism is jammed.” Smith whispered to Lita.
“Good,” she deviously grinned. “Let’s cook ‘em nice-n-well-done.”
Smith produced an arsenal of microtools for breaking into the box, but it was all to no avail. No screwdriver could open it, no crowbar could pry it, not even with both hounds jimmying the thing best they could. And pointing their guns point blank at the black box was just asking for trouble.
“Well,” sighed Lita. “Only one thing left.”
“Pray tell?” Smith ventured.
“Let’s see if you’re two-for-two on getting me into these shit-kickers.”
The short gray punk took a running leap at the box and landed a high-kick with the heel of her boots. The box blew out at the sides as a collective whine descended upon the entire hallway, a whine which died out on its lowest note.
Replacing the white noise was a scream of frustration in a very familiar tone of voice. “OH NONONONO! FUCK!”
It was back the way they came, and both hounds bolted in the scream’s direction. As they got closer, suddenly there came another voice. A deeper, gruffer voice. Whatever he said was inaudible, for he was clearly not shouting at the top of his lungs anymore. As they got closer, snatches of a conversation about “sorry sir, I’m on it” and “they won’t get out alive” could be made out and upon standing before the obsidian panel where the voice could be heard the clearest came those most telling words. “Agent Hazel, over and out…oh Liiitttta!”
The voice slipped from gruff grunt to that sly, snide, and sickly voice who had tortured the Urban Avenger and her friends for months now. Both the well-dressed white hound and the hippie-punk wrapped in denim drew their guns ready to blow the door in, only for it to slide up on its own.
Before the two vigilantes stood a wall-to-wall rack of CRT monitors, covering nearly every street of Haven, blinding in their light after the dark of the maze. And sat at the swivel chair, with Chuck Taylor sneakers kicked up on the massive switchboard, was Hazel.
When he turned to face the duo, it was a bizarre sight indeed. By all accounts, a normal gray wolf, but with one eye blue, and one eye hazel brown. Not as young as Lita, nor as old as Smith. He didn’t dress the part of a state agent; no all-black garb or any augs to speak of. In many ways, he seemed to be dressed like Lita, sans sandals.
“Ah shit, he really is a fan.” she muttered in astonishment.
Hazel chuckled bashfully, speaking in his plain, clean, sinuous voice. “Yes and no. Yes in that I dig you. I dig you a lot. But no. I am from Empire Square. And I went through a lotta trouble to get you here.”
“So what, are you gonna arrest me now?” Lita growled, one boot kicked up against the wall. “Or do you…oh Jesus, you were serious about that, weren’t you?”
Hazel smiled his “dreamy” smile which was enough to turn both Smith and Lita’s stomachs inside out the same way the subway had.
“Well,” the light gray hound remarked coldly. “Fucking your way to freedom isn’t the worst way to break jail.”
“You’d risk your entire job on this?” Smith grilled. If he didn’t have the discipline, he’d have dropped the bastard where he sat, but he knew the fight wasn’t his.
“Oh, that’s the funny part.” Hazel whimsically answered, spinning in his chair like a toddler in his dad’s office. “She wasn’t even on the menu!”
Lita’s eyes went wide.
“I mean, you ARE a ‘public enemy,’” he added, fingers steepled. “But you aren’t even on my docket of crooks to catch. That’s the beauty of it.”
“You’re fucking mad.” she growled. “Absolutely insane.”
“Aren’t we all down here? You smoke enough for a commune, your accomplice is several centuries past his sell-by date. I just happen to be hunting down some snatch on the city’s dime.”
“What’s stopping me from dropping you dead?” the mohawked punk seethed, the long barrel of her silver Wildey Hunter staring the agent down.
“Your chances of getting out of here alive.” he teased through his teeth. “My chip implant is tuned to this whole system.” Hazel pointed to a side door on the duo’s left. “The subway’s how I get out of here and to the surface. If I die, you all get to suffocate down here. Neat, huh?”
Smith’s patience evaporated. “What in God’s name does this computer get from having a lunatic like you for an agent?”
“I struck a deal some time ago, that’s all.”
The Edwardian white wolf went to say something, but Lita stayed his chivalrous hand. “Step outside. Let’s just get this over with.”
“Lita you needn’t!”
“LET ME END THIS SHIT!” she snapped back. Though it churned his stomach, Smith obliged. When the door closed behind him, Lita worked her eyes along the strange fed. “I dunno. I guess it’s worth a shot.”
She advanced slowly, making a mating ritual out of it. The closer she came, the more the light gray hound panted, eyes widening with glee as his wish was coming true before his very eyes. She sat down on his lap, legs spread the width of the chair. Part of her was hoping the excitement would give him a heart attack, but by God was he sticking around for this. When she glanced over to the console, while taking off her jean jacket, she noticed something. Something that told the whole story.
Hazel had indeed made a deal, for embedded in the console was a citizen chip, kept alive by the system’s electricity.
Gently, she reached around the feverish hound and ran her half-gloved hand along the back of his neck. The stuttering inhalation he made was repulsive, but she found out exactly what she wanted to know; there wasn’t a trace of an incision, not even a scar. Whoever the real agent was, he was long dead.
“Alright bad boy,” she whispered. “One for the road.”
Her lips locked with his. When he reached down to her zipper, out came the Wildey, and round after round cleaved through his light gray body. She sucked the last ounce of life from him with her kiss. “You did it to the letter, babe,” were Hazel’s last words before slumping down over his bloodied stomach.
When Smith swung in, and saw the dead body, he couldn’t hide his revulsion. He helped Lita to her feet, plucked up her denim jacket, and found the switch to open the side door, conveniently marked by a piece of masking tape with “train on A-line” scrawled across.
“Is there any way we can take the chip?” she asked softly. When she explained the entire, sordid affair, he hadn’t the words for it.
“If it is wired permanently, we’re as good as gone.” he sighed. “That said…check the closet. Look for a scanner module, anything.”
She found just what the Professor wanted, and out came the tools once more. “A makeshift syphon circuit ought to get the data at least. Not just the chip, but the board’s logs if they're kept on an interior server.”
It took ten minutes to jury-rig, but an agonizing 20 to download. When it had finally completed, he turned to look at the punk, only to find a girl who was anything but. Her stare was vacant, and she couldn’t lay eyes on the body she had slain just as she would any other.
For once, she seemed well and truly thrown off her game. Smith gently helped her into that raggedy denim jacket, wrapped his cape about her, and the two caught their train out of the subway network. The automated system made it as easy as the flip of a switch, and the inside seemed modeled after the silver trains of New York, down to the letter. The line ended at a staircase which took them above to the Haven they knew best.
“Blasted thing’s dropped us a block away.” Smith grumbled, though he knew it would make for a much needed walk. And a much needed talk.
“God, you think he’ll ever forgive me for it?” she asked. “Nicky I mean.”
“If your man is as much a ‘rock-and-roller’ as you’ve told,” he consoled, “and he understands the work you’re doing, I’m sure he won’t hesitate to return to your side when next he can.”
“S’pose you’re right.” she sighed. “God do these fucks make me sick.”
Lita let it all out on the walk, every slur she had for the grubby wolf she had slain, every fear she had about things thereafter. They continued on like that for the length of the block, talking not of the merriment they had deep in the tunnel, but of that strange road ahead of them, and those of this vast city they doted on from the shadows.
“I can only think we’ll have to really band together.” the white wolf continued. “A creed of sorts, for all of us to stay in touch and help one another. Malten and his gang are a good start. I’d be happy to oblige and I’m sure some of your street-fighters will too. And we now have our first lead on going from the outside in. That counts for something.”
Lita nodded quietly. It was a damn good idea. But all she could think about was the way she had taken this “Hazel” down, if it was even his real name, and how such a sick mind could murder his way into this all-knowing ecosystem. She buried herself in the tall white wolf, who soothed as best he could with the rubbing of her back. For the first time in a long time, she realized just how young she was. And for the first time in a long time, Smith said as much without getting decked.
“You’re a tough 20-something,” he smiled. “Never forget that. If I had done half of what you’ve done at your age, you probably would’ve heard of me before now, instead of meeting a silly ol’ git driving around in a hopped-up sports car dressed like Dumas’ first drafts.”
At last, the trance was broken, and the Urban Avenger was smiling once again, walking into a whole new future with a great friend at her side.
SIX STORIES, DOZENS OF HELLION HEROES & ONE WILD WOLVEN FUTURE
Support the Force and Grab The 365 Infantry Quarterly Today!