Page 88 of Throwing Fire

“Nag-Morrd still flooded,” Match responds. He looks back over his shoulder at Acker and I see that the fur on the right side of his face and neck has been burned away, leaving grizzled stubble striped with pink newskin. “Um take the Shutsoga.”

Acker shakes his maned head. “We got lucky coming that way. They’ll be waiting for us.”

Match shrugs. “Current too strong for ‘um.” He nods at me and Kez.

I start to protest. I can do anything the rats can do, and Kez is a strong swimmer. But I’m carrying thirty kilos of gear over my shoulders, a lot of which is metal. Kez is carrying nearly as much. Swimming, particularly against a current, is probably out of the question, unless we ditch my gear, which isreallyout of the question.

Acker looks at me, takes stock of my knife. Nods. “We may have to fight our way through.”

“Least we came packing,” Kez mutters behind me.

Acker doesn’t react to her little joke. Just continues to look at me. I give him a hard stare back. He ain’t still pissed about me steppin’ on his toes, is he?

Acker turns away, flicking open the ties that hold his scythe to his back.

Iglance at Kez, who shrugs.

Puzzled, I follow the rats. We descend a set of stairs into darkness.

Acker and Match pace surely and steadily ahead of me, so I figure they can see in the dark like I can. Kez can’t, though. I reach back for her, take one of her hands and guide it to the bag on my back. That way she doesn’t get lost, and my hands stay free.

Darkness sharpens my modified senses, and I catch the whiff of the sewer in the still, stale air. Down two more flights of stairs, the second one gridded metal that clangs under my boots and ends in a splash when I step off the last riser. Water up over my ankles. Cold and none too clean by the smell.

In descending, we’ve passed from smooth ceramsteel corridors into something older, and less man-made. The watery tunnel we’re in now looks like a natural cavern that’s been laser cored. Lighter patches in the walls are sprayed permacrete, probably filling irregularities in the rock. Close to the waterline, a few, faint red sensors blink, bloody fingers that flicker across the flow. Monitoring the water level, maybe, or the methane. The sensors help me gauge the distance as the tunnel stretches ahead of us. At least a quarter klick.

We start forward, Match still in the lead. The tunnel’s wide enough for all of us to walk abreast, but we keep to single file, down the middle of the tunnel. I step where the rats step. The floor is smooth, slightly slippery. Not ideal footing. The tunnel twists ahead of us, probably following the natural line of the fault or cavern that predated the sewer. The water rises as we walk, a wave of cold creeping up my shins.

We move quietly. There’s no sound in the tunnel but the distant tumble and drip of water. I’m careful not to break that near silence as I reach back, draw Kez up beside me, and whisper in her ear. “You ever been down here before?”

She shakes her head.

“Know anything about what lives down here?”

She turns her head so she can speak right into my ear. “Cannibals,”she whispers. “One rule in the sewers. Kill them. Before they eat you.”

Good rule. I brush my lips across Kez’s temple so she knows I appreciate her intel and the warning. We move a step apart, but she stays at my side, her hand on my bag, as we follow the rat-men further and further into the depths.

They move at a fair clip, despite the water, which creeps up to my knees. We turn, and turn again. I know we’re moving generally south, under the long sprawl of the city’s suburbs, parallel to the beach. Other than that, I’m disoriented. Are we close to Doc Gray’s chop-shop? The Night Market? I’ve got no idea, and not knowing exactly where I am knots the muscles of my neck and shoulders. The tunnels themselves are uniform: laser-cored, grey rock. They fork and branch at random intervals. No landmarks. Match leads us on unerringly, but if he’s following any map but the one in his head, I can’t see it. I don’t think I could find my way out, and being so dependent on anyone, even someone I like as much as I like Acker, makes my neck as taut as a bowstring.

It’s the tension singing through me, cranking my senses into overdrive, that alerts me to the new sound first. Not thesloshof water stirred by four sets of legs. Not our breathing, echoing off the rock walls. This is a hiss.

Water on scales.

I put my arm out so Kez knows to stop. Turn my head until I locate the source of the sound. Behind me. I spin and catch the first dark shape as it rises out of the water. I get a glimpse of long snout. Gleaming eyes and teeth. Something incredibly muscular whips my left leg out from under me, but not before I slash my kukri across a scaly throat.

I go down in a spray of water and hot copper. The heavy bag strapped to my back drags me under and I remember to clamp my mouth shut before I submerge.

As the water closes over my head, it lights up like a solar flare. The water’s murky and I don’t want to know whatthe things floating in it are, but the wide, dark red current is unmistakable. I took one of the scaly bastards down.

I roll until I get my feet under me and pike up out of the water. A meter ahead of me, Kez is facing off against three gator-men. She’s got a glowing monofilament in each hand. She spins the left one in in a tight circle, using it as a shield against the claws of the gator-man trying for her throat. She lashes out with the other like a whip, scoring bloody wheals on the upraised arms of the second gator-man and severing the tip of the third’s tail as he lashes it at her.

The water’s a disadvantage. I usually rely on speed in a fight, but the scaly fuckers will be faster than I am. I need to take them down from a distance.

I shuck off my equipment bag. It’ll sink to the bottom, where I can retrieve it later. I don’t want the weight slowing me down. I also don’t want a stray hit setting off the grenades while they’re still strapped to my back.

Sighting carefully, I lift one of the kukris over my head and hurl it. My kukris are not ideal for throwing. But they’re well-balanced and with such a long cutting edge, it would be hard for me not to hit something. Nothing fancy, no spin; I just put a lot of force behind my throw.

The knife sticks true, point in, above the long snout, between the gleaming eyes. The gator-man with the bleeding tail topples backwards into the water. He’s not getting up again.

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