The Unseen Read online

  So be it.

  Lucas switched on his flashlight. “Need some help?” he asked as he shined the flashlight in the kid’s eyes. He smiled. Cruel, yes, but he couldn’t help himself. This kid had pulled him out of a pleasant night’s sleep, after all.

  He was surprised to see it wasn’t really a kid. It was a guy in his thirties with a few extra pounds packed on his frame. Odd. The usual infiltration crowd tended to be thin, wiry, pasty-skinned.

  The guy, to his credit, only had that doe-in-the-headlights look for a few seconds. It disappeared when he lost his balance and tumbled from the pipe, hitting the concrete floor four feet below.

  “Oh . . . hey. You okay?” Lucas found him with his flashlight beam again, now sitting up on the floor’s concrete surface. He turned the beam of his own light Lucas’s way, and Lucas stayed immobile.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” the guy answered. “Might need a new set of underwear, but I’m okay.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Didn’t know anyone else was poppin’ this space.”

  Lucas slid down from the pipe and landed on the floor lightly, then walked to the guy. “Where’d you find out about it?” he asked, helping the guy to his feet.

  “Infiltration.org. Steam tunnels aren’t really my thing—I’m more into buildings. But . . . you know. Live a little.” The guy took off a glove and held out his hand. “I’m Donavan,” he said.

  Lucas took the hand and shook it. He didn’t like to give out his real name. “Call me Humpty,” he said.

  “Humpty. Yeah, make fun of me falling, why don’tcha?” Donavan patted concrete dust from his clothes.

  The name had nothing to do with Donavan’s fall, but there was no harm in letting him think that.

  Donavan looked back into the beam from Lucas’s flashlight again. “You aren’t gonna tell anyone about that fall, are you? Post it online or anything, I mean?”

  “Nah. Everyone craters once in a while.”

  Lucas himself never fell. But he wanted Donavan to forget about it. He changed the subject.

  “You got a barrier wall up here a couple hundred yards,” he said, pointing his flashlight behind him. “Kind of a tight squeeze around the pipe to get into the CUB. But I can get you in through a back door.” He threw in a few bits of infiltration lingo for Donavan; they always liked to run into kindred spirits who spoke their language.

  “Huh? Nah, forget it. Like I said, I’m not much of a steamer. Don’t know what I’m doin’ here, anyway.”

  “You want some pictures of the CUB?”

  Donavan squinted into Lucas’s flashlight beam, his pupils glowing red. “You’d do that?”

  “I’d do that.” Mainly because Lucas knew if he got Donavan some pictures, it would be marked off the guy’s list; he wouldn’t talk himself into coming back later, and he’d move on to his next target. These infiltration types always had new targets.

  “Okay, then. You got a deal.” Donavan handed him his camera, then shoved his thumb back over his shoulder. “You don’t mind if I get a head start, do you? I pretty much suck at this balancing-on-apipe thing.”

  “You don’t really have to stay on the pipe. You could have walked this whole corridor until you got to the barrier wall.”

  “So I just wasted forty-five minutes.”

  “Call it a learning experience.”

  “Well then. Since this is a learning experience, maybe I should just follow you to the barrier wall, see how you get by?”

  “Suit yourself.” Lucas turned and walked the two hundred yards to the wall, with Donavan close behind. At the wall, he reached for the pipe overhead, then wedged his foot against the wall and scrambled up as he’d done before.

  Donavan whistled. “Man, I never seen anyone chimney like that.

  Should get a picture of that.”

  Lucas smiled from the top of the pipe. “I don’t do pictures.”

  “What, they’re against your religion? Feel like they’ll steal a part of your soul or something?”

  “Something.” Lucas scrambled across the pipe, sliding through the narrow opening, and dropped to the ground inside the central utilities building. He powered on the digital cam and snapped half a dozen photos before reversing course.

  On the other side of the wall again, he pitched the camera down to Donavan.

  “Thanks, man,” Donavan said as he fumbled with the camera.

  “So where do you post your photos?” Lucas asked, watching Donavan’s reaction closely. He needed to make sure this guy was nothing more than an infiltration junkie out for a few late-night ya-yas.

  “Lots of places. Start with infiltration.org. You been there, I’m sure.”

  Lucas gave a noncommittal nod. He wasn’t into the whole online world of infiltration, but he was happy to let Donavan think that way. Just another guy, out for a late-night expedition.

  “Actually, I publish the photos to Flickr,” Donavan continued. “But the photostream shows up at infiltration.org, my blog, a few other places.”

  “Been infiltrating long?”

  Donavan considered. “Buildings, yeah. Few years.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? Isn’t that the creed? Go into the places, see the things no one wants us to see?”

  Lucas smiled. “Yeah.”

  “What about you?” Donavan asked.

  “What about me?”

  “How long you been doing this? Obviously for a while. You stick mostly to the underground tunnels?”

  “Do a little bit of everything,” Lucas said.

  “Maybe you could . . . you know . . . show me some tricks.”

  “Maybe.”

  Lucas began to lead the way out of the tunnel, and Donavan dutifully followed. Five minutes later they were in the basement of one of the university buildings.

  “How’d you get in?” Lucas asked.

  Donavan led him to the elevator shaft. “Told you tunnels aren’t my thing. But I like buildings.”

  With that, Donavan moved up the iron rungs on the wall of the elevator shaft. Lucas had to admit he climbed well, especially for someone with added bulk. Lucas followed him, then perched on the iron rungs, waiting for Donavan to force open the elevator bay doors with a crowbar. After a few tries, Donavan wedged the doors open a few feet and jammed the crowbar into the opening to hold it. He crawled through, then waited for Lucas to follow him before pulling out the tool and letting the bay doors close again with a metallic shriek.

  Donavan mopped at his forehead. “Okay, I guess I owe you one.”

  He looked at his watch. “You up for a little late-night breakfast?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, really. I’d like to. There’s an all-night cybercafé a few Metro stops over. The LiveWire. You know it?”

  Lucas shook his head.

  “I can post my photos, and you can tell me how you got those Jackie Chan moves.”

  Lucas stared at Donavan’s face, his skin now a dark, sickly yellow in the overhead streetlights.

  “Gotta work in the morning,” Lucas said, which was true.

  “Some other time, then? Maybe we can connect through the infiltration forum? How do I find you . . . um . . . Humpty?”

  “Sitting on a wall,” Lucas said, then spun around and walked away.

  THREE

  LUCAS WORKED HIS MORNING SHIFT WITH LESS THAN TWO HOURS OF sleep, but two things made it bearable. First, he didn’t follow Briggs from the previous shift; it had been Ernie instead, who had left the dishes in good shape for him. Second, he didn’t double over.

  Make that three things: Sarea worked the shift with him.

  At the end of the shift, they walked out the back door together, letting the cook and the other waitress coming off shift recede down the alley before their familiar ritual began. She took out the smokes, offered him one, lit them both.

  The Pause button came off Sarea’s previous conversation.

  “I thought about enrolling at Howard University once,�
�� she said.

  He nodded. “Why didn’t you?”

  She smiled, exhaled a plume of smoke. “Long story.”

  He smiled, took a polite puff of his own cigarette. “Good one.”

  He wanted to say something else, so he tried it. “You should go. To college, I mean. You’re smart.”

  She grunted. “Yeah, I aced all my tests to get this waitressin’ job.”

  He took another drag on the cigarette, coughed.

  She turned her head to the side, keeping her eyes on him. “You don’t have to take a smoke just ’cuz I offer, you know.”

  He shrugged. It was all he could come up with.

  They smoked in silence for a few minutes, until Sarea came to the end of her cigarette and dropped it on the gooey tar surface of the alley.

  “Oh, hey,” she said, remembering something. “Your friend ever talk to you?”

  He felt a mild shock course through his body, dropped his own cigarette. “Friend? What friend?”

  “Guy was in here earlier today. Sat at the counter for a while, asked me if you were working.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I dunno. You white boys all look the same.” She smiled and must have noticed something hard on Lucas’s face, because the smile slid off her face instantly. “Sorry. He was bald, stocky, looked like he worked out. Didn’t see him standing, but I don’t think he was very tall. Kinda blocky, if that makes sense.”

  Someone looking for him? Bad news. He tried to hide his stress.

  “How long ago?”

  Now it was her turn to shrug. “Don’t know. He sat there nursing a cup of coffee for a while, then on one of the refills he says, ‘Hey, Lucas washing today?’ I said you were in back, did he want me to get you. He said he didn’t want to interrupt you, he’d just wait until you went on break or something.” Her eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t seem like he stuck around too long after that, though, come to think of it.”

  Lucas was looking at the pavement. He felt her hand on his shoulder, flinched. She pulled her hand away, then let it settle there again. He looked up at her.

  “You okay?” she asked. “You in some kind of trouble?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Probably just . . . um, Bobby checking up on me.

  Bobby’s like that; I don’t see him for a while, then he just pops in out of the blue.”

  She wasn’t buying it. “Yeah,” she said, tight-lipped. “Bobby.” She held his gaze for a few seconds, then dug in her purse. She brought out a pen and a receipt, turned over the receipt and scribbled on it. She held it out to him.

  “Here,” she said. “My cell phone. You need anything, you just call me.”

  He took the receipt. “Okay,” he said.

  Now her hand was on his face. This time he didn’t flinch.

  “No, I mean it, Lucas. I don’t know what you’ve got going, but you can tell me. I grew up around here, and I’ve seen stuff that would make your head spin. So there’s not much chance of you surprising me.”

  He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  She patted his cheek and then she was off, down the alley.

  He waited a few moments, sprinted down the alley the opposite way, then turned and ran five blocks to the east. He came to a rundown hotel, then went inside and nodded at the clerk behind the front counter as he moved by at a fast walk. Seemed like there was always a new clerk every time he came through, and none of them took much interest in him beyond the obligatory nod; their mags or TV programs were more important. Next to the elevator, he came to a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Without hesitating, he pulled the door open; he’d broken the lock on it nearly two months ago, and he was sure no one but he had opened the door since.

  Glad to leave the scent of stale urine behind him in the hotel lobby, he took stairs down to the subbasement of the building. Once again, another Authorized Personnel Only door greeted him. He opened this one, pushing hard against its rusty hinges, and went out into a tunnel that connected to the city’s sewer system.

  Half a block away, a small cover, something like a horizontal manhole, was bolted to the side of the sewer tunnel. He opened it and went through, putting himself in a Metro tunnel. No trains were coming, so he boosted himself through, staying on the catwalk until he came to a third door. Behind this door was the platform for the Eastern Market stop on the Orange and Blue lines; he could transfer over to the Green or Yellow at L’Enfant and be back to Howard University just four stops later.

  Several other people were standing on the platform when he came out of the door, but no one seemed to notice him.

  This he knew he could count on. People looked, but they never saw.

  Twenty minutes later he stepped off the train at Howard University, slipped onto another catwalk, and found the entry into his own steam tunnel no more than a hundred yards away.

  It was midday, but here, underground, it was always dark. Energized by his conversation with Sarea, he fired up his electric candle, then squatted on his sleeping bag and held the candle up to his shrine.

  Immediately, he noticed something was wrong. Someone had moved the totems; his precise geometric pattern was broken. Whoever it was had tried to keep everything in the right place, he could tell; the correct order was there, but it was all wrong.

  Someone had been in his space. Looking for something.

  After a few moments of hesitation, he gathered the photos and totems, sweeping them into his backpack. Then he stuffed his sleeping bag into its sack and left.

  It was time to find a new home.

  THE NEW PLACE WAS THE FOURTH FLOOR OF A NOT-QUITE-ABANDONED office building near Tiber Island, built in 1910, according to the cornerstone on its front—long before the Tiber Island development just a few blocks away. The ground floor was retail—Dandy Don’s Donuts and the Sole Provider shoe store; floors two and three were populated by small one-room and two-room office suites (many of which were empty), and floors four and five were entirely vacant.

  Lucas chose the fourth floor because it seemed to be the most abandoned; floor five had signs of construction, though none that looked recent, while four was only populated by dusty steel desks, a few marred file cabinets, and a thick layer of dust.

  He chose one of the back rooms near the fire escape (it was still intact; he’d checked), closing the front door and locking it. If anyone snooped around during the day, they would think the office was locked and abandoned. Meanwhile, Lucas was able to enter and exit his new space via a back window, directly onto the fire escape.

  He settled in, began placing all his mementos in their comforting geometric pattern, and forced himself to relax. Yes, his home had been invaded. Yes, someone was looking for him at the Blue Bell. But Lucas was above that; nothing rattled him, because he had perfect control over all his actions, all his emotions.

  He had discovered these amazing abilities while growing up in the orphanage: he could be ice-cold in any situation.

  Still, he needed to think, and the best way to think was to crawl into an observation deck and watch someone. Let his subconscious mind do some of the work. If he sat here and tried to piece it all together, his brain wouldn’t function; the Dark Vibration he always felt inside would shatter him into a thousand pieces. He could feel his hands starting to jitter even as he placed his mementos in the proper order.

  Perhaps Noel, but that was a long way from here; he needed somewhere closer. He knew a regional library just a few blocks away. Greater Southeast Hospital would be easy to get to on the Metro, and it was always interesting, filled with people who had wonderful histories; he had built several still-functioning observation decks there. But it didn’t appeal to him either.

  Maybe relief was as close as one of the businesses downstairs. Dandy Don’s Donuts seemed like a decent enough place. He’d noticed good traffic whenever he scouted the area before, along with a few tables inside so people could sit and get their instant sugar fix.

  Usually he’d prefer to see the place after hou
rs, do his work under the cover of darkness. But this wasn’t usual.

  He went inside Dandy Don’s and bought a glazed doughnut, surveying the surroundings. The ceiling was out; it was one of those industrial chic monstrosities that exposed all the HVAC, ductwork, and wiring. No dropped acoustic tile.

  He took a bite of the doughnut. Not bad, especially for this time of day. Obviously, Dan’s whipped up fresh batches well into the afternoon.

  The breezeway by the front entrance might hold some possibilities, but not in the middle of the day. He’d need some more time to explore what looked like fake walls on either side of the entryway.

  He scanned the rest of the shop, his eyes settling on the public restrooms at the west side of the building. Those were a good possibility; they’d been built out into the middle of an essentially square space.

  Lucas finished the last few bites of his glazed treat and moved toward the men’s restroom, wiping his hands on his pants.

  Once inside, he locked the door, turned, and scanned the room. Just as he’d hoped: a utility closet. He tried the closet’s door. Locked, but he could get around that; it was just a knob lock. No deadbolt. Gripping the handle in both hands, he gave it a strong, steady twist. After a few seconds of resistance, the lock broke, and he felt it rattling loose inside the handle as he opened the door.

  Knob locks on interior doors. Useless.

  Inside the closet, he saw the usual array of toilet paper, cleaners, an extra trash can, a mop bucket. But there was more than enough room for him to stand, and the bare wall directly in front of him faced the main shop. He wouldn’t be able to do anything too elaborate right now, but he could probably rig up something makeshift.

  He twisted off his backpack, searched inside, and found his hand drill again, then changed out the bit to the thinnest he had. Not electric. He hated electric, and for good reason. No way he’d be able to fire up an electric drill and just bore through the wall of the shop without notice.

  But with his hand drill and a slow, steady pace, he just might.