The World Beneath

Chapter 5

Rebar reached the half-empty train platforms. The numbers twenty-three and twenty-four told him he’d found the right place. He liked to go down into the tunnels from Platform 23. It felt right. He ducked to the side, away from a familiar silver train with blue stripes, and made for the far end of the platform, centering himself between the rows of fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling next to the tracks and avoiding the yellow stripes installed on the floor to tell people when they were getting too near the trains. He didn’t like the color yellow anymore, although he couldn’t remember why.

In Cuba his door had been painted yellow. Maybe that was it. There, the doctors had called him Subject 523, but here, in the tunnels and streets of New York City, the homeless called him Rebar. He liked the name. Ramrod straight, hard iron, invisible — but at the center of everything, giving it shape and strength.

Not a lot of folks came down here this late. Once the train left, the platform would be empty, and no one would notice what he did. He walked by people stumbling on to the train. Late-night smells assailed his nostrils — beer, onions, and wet wool.

A couple leaned against the railing by the entrance with their arms around each other and their tongues down each other’s throats. The sheer animal need of them brought memories — girls he’d kissed and girls he hadn’t. He hadn’t kissed enough of them.

He walked until he reached the end of the subway platform. The train made ready to leave, and the amorous couple hurried aboard. Two men slurred insults at each other, but neither seemed to have the energy or the passion to act on them. He made himself small against the wall and waited.

It was warm here, and safe. Maybe he should just sit here for a while. He was tired all the time since Cuba. Maybe he just needed rest.

The train pulled out and away, red taillights growing small.

The platform was empty. He could have dropped a grenade in here without hurting anyone. White light beat down on flattened gum, forgotten newspapers, an empty paper cup.

He dozed and woke with a jerk. He had to go down. It was his mission. Without checking to see if anyone had come onto the platform, he vaulted the metal divider and trotted down the stairs without breaking stride. No shouts behind him, but he didn’t slacken his pace until he was fifty yards in and invisible to anyone in the station.

He walked through the graffiti, broken beer bottles, and used condoms that gathered by the platforms, half-hearted attempts to assert ownership over the dark tunnel. Most desperate people’s tolerance for darkness extended about a hundred feet in.

He had a much higher tolerance than other people. For a lot of things.

He stopped next to the second pillar unmarked by graffiti and picked up his tools. He hefted a sledgehammer in one hand, a battery-powered lantern in the other. The pockets of his filthy jacket bulged with maps and papers, some old and others new. Since he’d left Cuba, he’d carried them with him everywhere. He needed to keep them safe, but also to reread them often to remind himself that he wasn’t crazy. Everyone was wrong about that. And he had to do it soon. He’d overheard them talking about December. December first was an important deadline for them. He wasn’t sure why right at this moment, but he would remember it again.

The yellowed pages crinkled when he moved. They were important. That’s why he’d stolen them from a filing cabinet in the Naval hospital. They described experiments carried out years before he was born by scientists taken straight from Nazi Germany and put to work for the US government. Even they had abandoned this research because it was deemed too risky.

Years later, however, another doctor had started the research back up. On him and five hundred men like him. He just had to prove it.

Even in the cool tunnel, sweat dripped off his nose, and he slowed his pace. It was the fever. He was weaker than he used to be. Before, he’d hiked for hours without faltering, but not anymore. Not since they infected him. The tiny organisms swimming around in his blood were eating away at his strength, his control, his identity.

He was too weak to protect the papers now. He must find a place to hide them. That way, if he were ever caught, they wouldn’t get the information. But what if he forgot where he hid them? He forgot so many things these days.

Setting down the heavy hammer, he patted his pockets. The papers were there. A big man had tried to take them from him. Rebar thought that he’d killed the thief, but he couldn’t remember. Whatever had happened, the thief hadn’t bothered him again. The papers were safe.

A far-off rumble warned him of an approaching train. He picked up his hammer and stepped over the third rail, being careful to keep clear of the tracks’ points. They might snap together as a train approached, shunting the train off in a different direction. If his foot got caught in one, he could lose it. Or be killed by the train.

He couldn’t be hit, and he couldn’t be seen. If the train engineer saw him, he’d call it in, and transit police would be down here with flashlights and baying dogs. It’d happened once before, and only his knowledge of the tunnel layout had saved him. He worked from a map that was older than theirs. It showed extra tunnels, and access doors that led to long-unused rooms. Places to hide. He needed a place to hide right now, from the train.

Two sets of tracks separated by concrete pillars ran up ahead. If he hurried, he could take cover behind a column on the side away from the approaching train. Good enough. Not caring about his fever or his weakness, he ran and ducked behind a pillar before the train’s headlights came into view. He leaned his back hard into the cool concrete.

The sound and shaking reminded him of night combat, of the aftermath of an IED, except that this went on and on, noise and light and the ground heaving under his feet. He’d fallen to his knees by the time the last car passed, the faces of dead friends swimming before his eyes as the red taillights winked out in the distance.

He fought back against the memories and forced himself to his feet. He was in New York, not Afghanistan or Cuba. His buddies weren’t here. And he had a lot of tunnel to walk tonight. Hours.

He would not think about how he was searching for objects that might not exist.

According to the papers in his pockets, the scientist who’d done the first experiments after World War II had last been seen on a train heading from Washington, DC, to New York, but the car had never arrived. The official version was that he’d escaped with the files and taken them back to Europe to sell to the highest bidder. The project had been shut down after that, deemed too risky to continue even with another scientist.

But Rebar didn’t believe the doctor had fled. He would not have fled. The United States was the safest place for him to be. Someone had taken the man before he’d arrived and silenced him. And, if he had gone back to Europe, what had happened to the train car? No, a bad thing had happened to him on the way to New York.

If someone had taken that car from the open tracks between the cities, Rebar would never find it. So his only hope was that the car had been abandoned underneath the city. He had a map on which he’d marked potential tunnels in red and crossed them off in black after he’d cleared them. For weeks he’d been walking through old passages, checking walls, seeking decades-old clues. It was crazy, but no crazier than anything else.

And his best chance lay up ahead. He knew it. Sometimes, he forgot what he was looking for, but not today. Today he was looking for answers.

He felt stronger than he had minutes before and whistled as he walked on the train ties, stepping on every other tie as if it were a game that he could win. The lantern didn’t weigh much, and even the sledgehammer didn’t slow him down anymore. Today was a good day.