Sharpe End Read online

  “I don’t know,” he replied, getting up carefully and walking over to her. “I’m not sure it matters right now, in terms of how we get out of here.” He held both his hands out to her. “Let’s see if you can put weight on the other leg while I help support you.”

  It rankled deep within her to need this sort of help, to feel so helpless, but she knew that wishing wouldn’t change anything. She reached up to take his hands and got her uninjured foot underneath her. The hurt ankle bumped against the ground and hurt like crazy, but she ignored it.

  Once on her foot, she put her arm around his shoulder and he held that hand as he slid his other arm around her waist.

  Once upon a time, this would have been more like a pleasant moment for them. Now, it just felt kind of awkward. Although some of that awkwardness, she hated to be aware of, was that she missed it. She worked hard to ignore both the feeling and the awareness, instead focusing on staying upright and trying to use her other foot to help her move at least a little.

  She found that if she put very little weight on it and moved quickly, she was able to use it to walk in a way. It wasn’t the smoothest or most graceful gait ever, but it was something and it made sure that she moved forward.

  “This is going to take forever,” she muttered.

  “It’ll still be faster than just sitting back there being stubborn,” he said pointedly.

  She twisted her lips, but it was hard to argue with sound logic.

  Cautiously, laboriously, the pair made their way from the debris pile and toward the area that Raven suspected might be a tunnel. As they moved, they looked around them to check that none of their gear remained where it could be gotten. Raven knew she still had her gun, but other ‘tools of the trade’ that she kept with her might have been lost in that pile forever. She certainly wasn’t going to go digging around to look for them.

  They had only been walking for a few minutes, nearing the darkest shadow, and her ankle was raging against her for everything she was doing to it. She ignored it, but she wasn’t sure just how long she could do that. Pain always had a way to make sure it won, in the end, or at least had the last word. She couldn’t just grit her teeth and ignore it forever, but maybe it would fade the more she walked. Or it would go numb. Either way would be useful, because she didn’t have the time to wait for it to heal.

  “Let’s hope this actually leads somewhere,” Blake said quietly.

  Raven really did hope so.

  11

  As it turned out, the shadow was a tunnel.

  They made their way slowly along, but neither of them had something to use as light, so all they could do was feel their way along. Blake used his spare hand to touch the wall, his other around Raven’s waist. Raven used hers to feel ahead and make sure they didn’t walk into anything, her other around his shoulders.

  It was somewhat torturous, to say the least.

  Neither of them said much. Whether it was because the walk took too much concentration, or they silently agreed that it was just safer that way, neither could be sure, but the silence did make the walk—which was already taking forever—seem even longer.

  “I think I see a light ahead,” Blake said tiredly.

  Raven looked up and could see what he meant. There was a dull light ahead, vaguely circular. It looked like the end of the tunnel.

  It wasn’t until that moment that she began to worry about what might be at the other side. She knew they didn’t have any choice but to find out, since they couldn’t just stay where they were, but she still began having a lot of ideas about what they might find on the other side and, admittedly, few of them were optimistic.

  That was probably just the throbbing, burning pain in her ankle talking.

  She guessed that Blake was feeling the same way because he started slowing down, which was impressive given how slow they had already been going.

  All the same, they soon reached the end of the tunnel.

  Raven took a deep breath and heard Blake do the same, but they kept walking until they were able to see what was on the other side. That was what made them finally stop.

  It was…

  …a city.

  However, it only took a moment of looking at it to realize that it—at least this area that they could see—was not inhabited. In fact, it looked like it hadn’t been inhabited for a long time.

  The buildings were made of stone, and several of them were half-crumbled. There were streets, but they were in ruin as well. The light came from unidentifiable sources, but it was clear there was no life. Just rocks and dust and ruin.

  “It looks like a city…fell under another city?” Blake asked, confusion in his voice.

  “Or maybe this city was built underground,” Raven pointed out, “and fell to ruin, and then we fell into it.”

  “Either way, it’s a city,” Blake said. “Or it was a city. Maybe there’s something here that can help us.”

  Raven sighed. “I doubt there’ll be anything like technology to call out of here,” she said. “Even if the people who lived here had technology, it seems unlikely to still be useful if it’s even working.”

  “Pessimist,” he mumbled.

  “Realist,” she countered.

  “Either way… Let’s take a look around and at least see what’s here.”

  She nodded, and they began making their way down the small incline toward what looked to have once been a road. It ran along side a large canyon that had another similar road on the other side. This one seemed in better condition, although it was still cracked with large chunks of rock at random intervals.

  They picked their way carefully between the cracks and rocks, hoping that the road wasn’t about to drop open underneath them like the last one had.

  They reached the first building and looked it over. There didn’t seem to be any cover over the door, just an arch built into the stone. Three steps led up to it, and they walked up to the door and then carefully through it.

  Raven looked around. Things were dusty, but otherwise seemed…normal, like everyone had just up and left one day. There was a table and chairs, made out of some sort of dark metal, though dull from all the dirt. She moved out of Blake’s grasp and hopped to it, sitting on one of the chairs.

  She stretched her leg out and just focused on breathing, letting herself and her leg rest.

  “It doesn’t look like there was any sort of conflict here,” Blake said, rolling his shoulders and looking around. “The furniture is all upright, and there are what look like cabinets, still closed. Everyone just…left?”

  Raven sighed. “That’s what I was thinking, yeah,” she said. “It is a little surreal, to be honest.”

  He started going to the cabinets, looking around to figure out how to open them. The doors and panels were smooth with no obvious handle or lock. He cleared the dust with his hands, and she saw a small light flashing.

  “What about the light?” she asked, pointing at it.

  Moving toward it, he cleared off a little more dust and then pressed the light and around it until the panel slid up.

  “They have technology,” Blake commented dryly.

  Then Raven blinked. “How was the light still working?” she realized.

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again without saying anything. Turning back to the cabinet, he looked it over, then looked back at her and shrugged.

  “That’s about as much as I had figured too,” Raven agreed with a sigh.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” he finally said. “For now, let’s just try to get an idea of what’s around.” He started carefully moving around the objects on the shelves within. She noticed that there wasn’t any dust on them, so the cabinet must have had a good seal. This place was already a lot more technologically sound than she had realized.

  “I don’t know what the language on these labels are,” Blake said, picking each one up and looking it over. “The packaging looks like it might be food?”

  “I’m not eating it,” she rep
lied quickly.

  Blake snorted like a laugh. “Me neither,” he said. “I was just saying.”

  She started looking around the room. “Is there anything around that we might be able to use for a splint for my ankle? I don’t think it’s broken, but if I could keep it from moving too much, I think that would help.”

  He looked at her and then nodded. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  12

  There didn’t seem to be anything on the first floor that was useful, but Blake did find a set of stairs. While Raven stayed downstairs to rest, Blake made his way up to the second floor. Like below, there seemed to be two large rooms. The first one had several piles of fabric that Blake guessed were beds? That seemed pretty contrary to the technology of the cabinets, but then he saw more panels like the cabinets next to each bed.

  He moved from panel to panel, dusting them off to find the light and press the button that slid the panel up. These worked just like the ones downstairs had, and he carefully riffled through each one. There were more packages, but he wasn’t sure what any of them were. He wasn’t sure about opening any of them, so he put them back and left them where they were for the time being.

  Everything up here was just like it was below, as far as he could tell. It all looked orderly.

  He moved into the second room, which he guessed to be…some sort of bathroom facility, although it was hard to tell. Whoever had lived here was much different than most of the humanoid races he had seen. There was another set of panels, so he opened them, and inside one of them, he found a package made of a clear material. Inside, there seemed to be something like bandages. He grabbed those and searched for something long and solid.

  Carrying the items downstairs, he found Raven with her arms resting on the table and her head on them.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, setting the items down on the table.

  “Yeah,” she said as she lifted her head. “I’m just feeling pretty worn out all of a sudden I guess, what with the tumble and the walking in agony and all that.”

  He nodded slightly and knelt in front of her. “Hopefully, this will help.” He took the long pieces and gently pressed them to either side of her ankle. She winced. “Sorry,” he mumbled, taking the bandage-like things and wrapping them around. He made it as snug as he dared, hoping the stability would help more than it hurt.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly. She put her foot on the floor, pressing slightly and then attempting to stand. “Still hurts, but I think it helps.” She was now on her feet, but still holding onto the table. Obviously hesitant, Raven pushed off the table and put her weight on her good foot with the other keeping her balanced upright. After a moment, she took a few steps.

  Blake watched her anxiously, worried that she was going to fall and hurt herself worse. He tried to not hold his hands out for her like a nervous mother hen, but that kind of felt like what he was. He wasn’t used to seeing his ex-wife in such a state. She was always so strong, so controlled. Although he tried, he couldn’t seem to recall any time he had seen her in a similar state.

  Despite his concerns, she made the few steps without falling over. He smiled a little, glad he’d been able to help.

  She lifted her head and met his gaze. He could see the tautness in her expression, the concentration and the pain, but she smiled a little. “Thanks,” she said again.

  “You’re welcome.”

  They held one another’s gaze for several moments before she nodded once and then started to look around. “So what do we have here?” she asked, gesturing around the room and in a vague upstairs direction.

  He sighed. Of course, back to business. For a moment, his thoughts had begun to wander, but he brought them quickly back around. “As best I can tell, it’s a home. There’s two rooms upstairs. I think a bedroom, although it has multiple beds in it. Four, I think it was, all in one room. And another room that I think was a bathroom of some kind, which was where I found the stuff for your leg.”

  “Was there any other sort of technology, beside these cabinets?” she asked.

  “Not that I saw,” he said, “although I wasn’t looking too closely. If it didn’t look like something to help your ankle, I didn’t stare at it for long.”

  Raven nodded and then began limping slowly toward the second downstairs room while Blake took in their current one a little better. He saw the table and chairs, the cabinets with the things that might have been food. That was about it, though, so this seemed to at least be a dining room.

  He followed her into the other room, which she was making her way around. She moved slow, and it was a little painful to watch, but he kept that thought to himself.

  “Living room?” she posed doubtfully.

  There was a long mat made of some kind of reed-like plant on one wall, and then a large panel inset on the wall opposite. Raven stood in front of it, dusting it off and looking for any sign of what it was or how to use it. There was a feebly blinking light down toward the bottom corner. She pressed it, like they had on the cabinets, and the panel lit up.

  It turned from black to green, but that’s all it did. She peered closer. “I think there is another light here, but it’s not lighting up. Maybe there’s a second function that’s not, you know, functioning?”

  “Seems likely,” Blake agreed.

  He moved past the reed mat and around a corner. He found another door, which contrary to the sight of the cabinet, was just like the front door. It was a wide-open stone arch. He stepped through it cautiously, finding a sort of small courtyard. One corner seemed to have been formed out of a cave wall—either made from it or had one collapsed onto it. That strange ambient light remained without the obvious source.

  There didn’t seem to be much else in the courtyard. There were low walls made out of the cement-like stone, but no sign that they were created to keep anything out or in. Unless the people living here were about the height of the average house cat, then it was just some sort of decoration. Or maybe it just marked the edge of something. He really couldn’t know.

  “Blake?” Raven called, coming to the arch.

  He turned to face her. “I don’t see anything out here either,” he said. “It’s just like a yard or something.”

  Her brows were knit. “You need to come see this.”

  13

  ‘After your hypothesis that they ended up underground, ’ Silvanus said to Kyra, ‘I have been attempting to use my sensors to search for them. ’

  Kyra was still sitting in the alley, a pile of rocks in front of her and Axel beside her. She waited for the AI to continue and when she didn’t, the cat impatiently asked, ‘And? ’

  There was another moment and then, ‘There seems to be a mineral in the surface layer that obscures the majority of my sensor scans. I can’t tell if they are down there or not, nor am I able to locate either neural implant. ’

  The cougar huffed a breath. ‘That is no help at all. ’

  ‘It does not enthuse me either, Kyra, I assure you, ’ Silvanus replied in a tone Kyra would have thought to be dry, if the AI were actually capable of emotion. Raven claimed that Silvanus wasn’t, but the cat continued to be less than thoroughly convinced. ‘However, I believe that I can see some sort of subterranean…tunnel or cave system. I can’t see it in detail because of the interference, but I believe it’s there. ’

  That set Kyra to thinking. If there was some sort of cave system down there, then it could lead to a way out…assuming Raven and Blake were both alive, of course. She still wasn’t willing to entertain the idea that they weren’t.

  ‘Has Nyx seen and relayed the same to Axel? ’

  After a moment, Silvanus replied, ‘She has. ’

  That was good, at least.

  Now Kyra had to determine what to do with this information. Silvanus couldn’t reach much beneath the surface, so she knew that the AI couldn’t give her much just yet. She assumed the AI was working on the problem, of course, but until she found a solution (if she ever did), Kyra had
some things to figure out on her own.

  If they were underground, there was no scent…so how could she track something that she couldn’t see, smell, or hear?

  While she was thinking, Axel suddenly got up and walked away. Kyra watched him go, wondering if she should follow or not.

  ‘Nyx has asked me to inform you that Axel is going to do a little searching on his own and will inform us when and where he wants to meet back up, ’ Silvanus updated her. The cat wasn’t sure whether she was relieved to be hunting solo again or annoyed at the presumption.

  Either way, she was still stuck with her current dilemma.

  ‘Silvanus, ’ she began after several minutes had dragged by. ‘Is there any way you can analyze the aboveground structures that you can see and perhaps…make a guess about where the cave system might lead? Where it might possibly let out? ’

  ‘I can certainly try, ’ the AI replied immediately.

  Kyra didn’t say anything more, just letting the AI do her thing, while she turned and left the rubble. There wasn’t anything more that she could learn there, and maybe if she started looking around the area more, she would be able to figure something out.

  As a cat, Kyra didn’t have a good sense of time, and she didn’t really care to. She knew when it was time to do things, but that was on their time. She didn’t regulate herself by the counting of moments, the ticking of a clock.

  As such, she had no idea how long she’d been prowling around that area of the city, looking for any type of clue that could help her. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found much of anything aside from a disgust with this city’s sanitation and maintenance system—if it even had one. Everything smelled bad.

  Sadly, it was not the worst place they had ever been.

  ‘I may have something. ’

  Kyra’s concentration had been so complete, and it had been so unnaturally quiet in her head without Raven, that the sudden appearance of the AI’s voice made the cat jump, then made her look around to be certain that no one had seen that embarrassing moment.