Chapter 7 - THE DRAINAGE CULVERT
-7-
The rain had started just as the sun dipped below the jagged horizon of the Joliet rail yards, turning the gravel paths between the rusted shipping containers into a slick, treacherous morass of black mud and diesel-slicked water.
I pulled the hood of my canvas jacket tighter around my head, keeping my head down as I navigated the labyrinth of abandoned freight cars. According to Brenda’s crude napkin map, Drain Culvert 4 was located less than a hundred yards past the old switching tower where the Chicago and Alton railway lines used to converge before the freight companies shifted operations down south.
My heart hammered against my ribs with every step. The amnesia drugs were completely out of my system now, replaced by a razor-sharp, hyper-vigilant adrenaline surge that made every sound—the distant screech of an active freight train miles away, the drip of water off a corrugated tin roof—sound like a closing trap.
I reached into my pocket, my fingers wrapping tightly around the cold, heavy brass key stamped DSC-472-NORTH.
If Brenda was an operative planted by the Directorate to test whether my memory wipe had completely taken hold, walking into an abandoned drainage pipe was the fastest way to get a bullet behind the ear and a shallow grave in the slag heaps. But if she was part of whatever underground network existed to push back against the Overlap—the shadow bureaucracy holding my children—then this was the only door left unlocked.
The culvert entrance loomed ahead like the dark, gaping maw of some subterranean beast. A massive corrugated steel pipe, eight feet in diameter, protruded from a concrete retaining wall choked with dead ivy and rusted reinforcement bars. A thick iron grate had once sealed the opening, but the lower hinges had been sheared off cleanly by a cutting torch weeks ago, leaving a gap just wide enough for a man to squeeze through on his hands and knees.
I dropped to my knees, sinking ankle-deep into the stagnant sludge at the mouth of the pipe, and switched on my cheap plastic flashlight. The beam cut through the thick, damp air, illuminating millions of floating dust motes and slimy concrete walls coated in green mold.
"You're late, Mr. Hayes."
The voice echoed sharply off the curved steel ceiling, bouncing back with a distorted metallic reverberation that made me jolt and nearly drop my flashlight.
I swung the beam upward into the darkness thirty feet down the pipe.
Standing beside a heavy, industrial-grade steel hatch embedded directly into the concrete floor of the culvert was Brenda. But the tired diner waitress in the stained apron was gone. She now wore a heavy weather-proof tactical jacket, cargo pants tucked into combat boots, and held a suppressed compact submachine gun pointed casually toward the floor.
"Brenda?" I stammered, scrambling forward on my hands and knees until I reached solid, dry footing on the concrete platform surrounding the hatch. "You work for... who? The resistance? An internal faction?"
"I work for whoever hates the Directorate as much as I do," she said sharply, stepping closer with the submachine gun lowered but ready. "And right now, that includes a desperate architect who was dumb enough to keep his wife's override key in his pocket when they dumped him in a third-rate motel."
She reached out, grabbing my wrist before I could pull away, and yanked the brass key right out of my fingers. She walked over to the circular steel hatch, dropped the key into an obscure, recessed locking cylinder concealed beneath a rusted utility plate, and turned it counterclockwise with a heavy, satisfying clunk.
"How did you know I had the key?" I demanded, catching my breath as I stood up, wiping the cold mud from my jeans.
"Because Agent 472—your lovely ex-wife—is sloppier than she thinks," Brenda replied over her shoulder as the heavy steel hatch groaned upward on pneumatic pistons, releasing a rush of cool, sterile air that smelled faintly of ozone and antiseptic. "She thought a standard memory wipe would leave you docile and broken in Indiana. She didn't account for the fact that architects always keep spare emergency keys buried in their coat lining for midnight site inspections."
She turned back to me, the blue glow of a subterranean emergency light catching the hard, unyielding edge in her eyes.
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"You want your kids back, Julian? You want to know what the Directorate is really doing beneath the suburban sprawl of DuPage County?" She gestured with her chin toward the dark, vertical ladder descending into the abyss beneath the hatch. "Then step on down. But I warn you—what you see at the bottom of this shaft isn't going to look anything like the happy little home you used to share."
I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the cold iron rungs of the ladder and began descending into the dark, leaving the rain, the rail yards, and the ordinary world far behind.
