Tunnels 02, Deeper

spheres embedded in it, which had been designed to degrade upon several hours' exposure to ultraviolet light and shed their load. The sun itself was the timing mechanism, the trigger.
    "They are ready?" the old Styx asked as he came alongside Rebecca.
    "They are," another Styx confirmed from farther down the line.
    "Excellent," the old Styx said as he began to stroll along the rank of men, each one melding with the next in the weak light as they stood shoulder to shoulder, all wearing identical black leather greatcoats and breathing apparatus.
    "My brothers," the old Styx addressed them. "We're done with hiding. It's time to take what is rightfully ours." He was silent for a moment, allowing his words to sink in. "Today will be remembered as the first day of a glorious new epoch in our history. It is a day that will mark our eventual return to the surface.
    Drawing to a halt, he punched his fist into the palm of his hand. "In the last hundred years we have made the Topsoilers atone for their sins by unleashing the germules they call influenzas. The first was in the summer of nineteen eighteen." He gave a sour laugh. "The poor fools called it the Spanish Flu, and it took millions of them to their graves. Then we gave them further demonstrations of our power in nineteen fifty-seven and nineteen sixty-eight with the Asian and Hong Kong variants."
    He punched his palm with even greater force, the slap of his leather gloves resounding around the rooftop.
    "But those epidemics amount to nothing more than common colds compared to what is to come. The Topsoilers' souls are rotten to the very core -- their morality is that of the insane -- and they ruin our promised lands with their excessive consumption and greed."
    "Their time is drawing to a close, and the Heathen shall be purged," he growled like a wounded bear, scanning from one end of the rank to the other before he began to walk again, his boot heels clicking on the lead flat of the roof.
    "For today we test a reduced strain of Dominion , our holy plague. And through the fruits of our labors, we will confirm that it can be spread throughout this city, throughout this country, and then to the rest of the world." He raised his hand, splaying his fingers at the sky. "Once our birds take flight, the sun will see to it that air currents carry our message to the evil masses, a message that will be written in blood and pus across the face of this earth."
    Reaching the last man in the rank, he swung around to return down it again, silent until he neared the midpoint of the line.
    "So my comrades, the next time we find ourselves here, our cargo will indeed be deadly. Then our foes, the Topsoilers, will be laid low, just as it is decreed in the Book of Catastrophes . And we, the true heirs to the earth, shall regain what is rightfully ours."
    He came to a dramatic halt and addressed the Styx in a lower, more intimate tone. "To work."
    There was a flurry of activity as the troop got ready.
    Rebecca took over. "On my mark... three... two... one... go!" she commanded, pitching her dove high into the air. The Styx immediately heaved open the baskets by their feet and the birds took to the wing, a white swarm flapping from between the amassed men and lifting from the rooftop.
    Rebecca watched her dove for as long as she could, but the hundreds of others caught up with it, and it was soon lost in the flock, which seemed to linger for a second over Nelson's Column before dispersing in all directions, like a cloud of pale smoke fanned by the wind.
    "Fly, fly, fly!" Rebecca called out after them, laughing.

     

Part Three
Drake And Elliott

20

    "It's just terrible," Chester kept saying over and over again as the enormity of what had happened sank in. "But there wasn't anything we could do. He didn't have a pulse."
    Chester was remonstrating with himself, laden with a mounting sense of guilt. He believed that he was partly to blame for Cal's death. Perhaps, by being so critical of the boy, he had goaded him on, provoking him into being so reckless and entering the cavern by himself.
    "We couldn't go back in..." Chester babbled on to himself.
    He was rocked to the very core. He'd never seen anybody die, not before his very eyes. It took him back to the time he had been in the car with his father and they'd driven past the aftermath of a bloody motorcycle accident. He didn't know if the twisted body by the roadside was dead -- and he'd never found out. But this was different. This was