**** Elysium 1986 ****

Just before the subway pulled into the station, Abigail had just finished putting on her rubber gloves. Yuri, who had recovered from the electrocution, watched her do so with a gentle smile, while Harry looked around vigilantly. He had his sword strapped to his backpack this time, encased in a specially made bag shaped like a golf club for camouflage. They were right next to a kiosk where a grizzled older gentleman in a dirty apron and a paper hat that said Wiener Productions was flipping hot dogs on a built-in grill. It smelled like he had put them there early last week. He was one of the few who hadn’t closed up shop at the station.
“How about a hot dog? They’re on sale,” he said to Harry, then opened a can of Foca-Cola and started drinking noisily.
“No thanks… I already ate earlier,” Harry declined, looking slightly disgusted at the dried sausages that were partially burst and burned. Then he turned back to the hustle and bustle on the platform where about 25 passengers were waiting with them. Most of them were dressed very simply to poorly. They were, of course, the people who could not afford to change to another mode of transportation. Security guards or police were nowhere to be seen. When the subway arrived, they entered one of the middle cars and stood in the entryway. If they sat down, they might miss important details and be less able to react quickly to unforeseen events. Many of the bench covers had been slashed, the cheap imitation leather was greasy, and there was the subtle smell of a public restroom in the air. Yuri tried to decipher some of the countless graffiti on the windows, but had no luck.
“Oy Harry, what does that mean over there?” he asked his comrade, pointing to a relatively good-looking spray-painted image. It seemed to depict a grotesque red head with horns and wild black hair, with Japanese characters underneath.
“Weird…that’s an oni,” Harry replied. “That’s like a demon. The writing underneath means invincible and territory. It looks like the writer was not Japanese. The style is untrained, and some of the kanji lines are too abbreviated, some too long.”
“Shall we go through to Heavy Steamer?” Abigail interrupted. “One of the police reports said the crawlers there came out of a ventilation shaft. We might want to check that out.”
“Sure,” Harry confirmed, and Yuri nodded as well. They had to start somewhere. A few uneventful minutes passed and they reached the next station. Only a handful of people got off, others got on. Even as the train picked up speed, there was no conversation among the passengers. Some stared at the magazines and newspapers they had brought with them to distract themselves, others gazed out the windows tensely, watching the dark tunnel they were traveling through. The interior lighting in the cars made it difficult to see outside anyway because of the reflections. The monotonous tapping of wheels on rails was ever-present, and it seemed much louder when there was nothing else to distract from it. This oppressive mood seemed to weigh heavily on Abigail, and she began humming softly to herself. Moments after they passed the next station and resumed their journey, the overhead lights flickered throughout the car and a jolt went through the train, causing the standing TRAP agents to stagger slightly. The computer specialist bit her lower lip nervously and looked up at the neon lights, but said nothing.
“Maybe ran over mole?”, Yuri tried to explain, Abigail’s nervousness not escaping him now.
“Bullshit,” she hissed, bobbing up and down slightly. Then the light flickered again and another jolt went through the train. The other passengers in the barely filled car looked up from their magazines or fiddled restlessly with their bags. One of them stood up and began to check that all the windows were properly closed. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut through. Suddenly, the agency cell phone rang and Abigail jumped, startled. Quickly clearing her throat to hide her reaction, she fished the phone out of her backpack and pulled out the long antenna.
“Yes, hello?” she answered.
“Hello A…gail… it’s Yanny. We ha… New… f… you. Have ju… returned… University….,” Yanny’s voice crackled and buzzed out of the phone.
“I’m having trouble hearing you,” Abigail replied, checking the antenna again. “Shit, the reception down here in the shaft is terrible.”
“Aby ca… hear me…?” still came through from the other end when the connection finally broke.
“These phones don’t work down here?” Harry asked in amazement. He had never owned one before his time at the agency, so he had no experience with them.
“I guess the radio waves are also affected by the overhead wires? I don’t know,” Abigail grumbled, sliding the phone’s antenna back into place when suddenly there was a loud bang from the direction of the locomotive and the lights went out completely for a few moments. Some of the passengers started screaming.
“We’re all going to die!” a man shouted anxiously from further back.
“Calm down man, there’s no need to freak out over a little power outage!” Harry shouted back. The darkness they were in didn’t bother him much because of his altered eyes. There was enough residual light from a few very dim tubes outside in the tunnel for him to get his bearings to some extent. Of course, he had looked around immediately, but couldn’t see any crawlers or other threats. Yuri’s hand, on the other hand, was already moving toward his pistol when he suddenly felt Abigail’s hand on his, standing wordlessly beside him. It was cold and damp, she had apparently taken off the rubber glove. He took it and squeezed it gently. Apparently, this situation made her a little more uncomfortable than she had been willing to admit. The giant wondered why she did not reach for the flashlights she had brought with her. However, she probably trusted that the light would come back on quickly. Then he put his arm around her, leaned down and whispered in a reassuring voice, “Don’t worry. Before anyone does anything to you, have to get past me first.” It seemed to help, because her breathing slowed.
“Thanks, big guy… I think I needed that…” she whispered back a little weakly. Seconds later, a smaller tube glowing dark red on the ceiling in the center of the carriage came on, and a loudspeaker began to crackle.
“Dear passengers, as you may have noticed, there has been a minor technical problem,” the conductor’s voice announced.
“No, we didn’t notice!” the slightly hysterical passenger shouted again from the back.
“Shut up!” Harry shouted back.
“It looks like the problem is with our locomotive, something with the power circuit. Until we get things working again, I’m afraid all I can do is run the emergency lights. I’ll keep you posted, have a nice stay with us here at the Elysium Subway,” the loudspeaker continued to creak.
“The nerve of him,” Abigail grumbled.
“Too bad Yanny isn’t here. She’d have this thing fixed in minutes,” Harry sighed. The hysterical man further back now began to giggle uncontrollably and Yuri gave him a sharp look.
“Should I put him to sleep?” he asked matter-of-factly, massaging his right fist. Harry thought about it for a moment, for the offer was tempting. The guy was only making the other passengers more upset, and he really didn’t want to be stuck in a carriage with 30 panicked people. Just then, the conductor spoke again.
“Dear passengers, it looks like a fuse has completely blown and I’m sorry to inform you that we have no replacement. I have already sent several radio messages to the control center and hope to hear back soon,” he explained.
“How can this happen? And if it can happen, why don’t they have replacements with them?” Harry asked, confused.
“Always thought things run better in the south of 86 than with us in the north,” Yuri remarked, running a hand through his beard.
“Guys… be quiet for a second, do you hear that?” Abigail suddenly asked nervously. She was right, there was a sound. A dull thud, as if something had fallen from above onto the roof of the carriage. Then there was a scraping sound, as if something or someone was moving towards the end of the train. The three of them slowly looked up at the ceiling, following the sound with their eyes.
“Sounds like the conductor checking the catenary,” Harry mused quietly. Abigail was now as white as a sheet and starting to sweat a little.
“Guys, we can’t just stand here, I can’t take it,” she said matter-of-factly, and you could see how hard she was trying to pull herself together.
“What we do?” asked Yuri.
“I know little about this kind of machinery, but I could at least take a look at that thing up ahead,” Abigail explained. “Maybe the fault is somewhere else? Then at least I’ll feel like we’re doing something useful.” Harry pulled his sword out of his golf bag and strapped it to the back of his backpack, ready to hand, causing a whisper among the other passengers.
“Sure, I’m in. But for that, we have to get out of this car and to the locomotive in front,” he nodded. Yuri pulled his large combat knife from his boot and tucked it into his belt, briefly checking the fit of his pistol in his jacket.
“Here we go,” he grinned. As the three of them finally approached one of the doors, the hysterical man ran past them from behind and stood right in front of it, arms outstretched.
“There’s no way you crazy people are going to open that door!” he shouted in horror. “The crawlers will get in and kill us! The doors stay closed!” Yuri reacted in a flash, grabbing the man by his jacket and roughly lifting him up to look him in the eye.
“This guy here we take with us, need bait for creatures out there anyway,” he said calmly, whereupon the man began to whimper shrilly and wiggle his arms and legs. The rest of the passengers, on the other hand, watched the scene with extreme trepidation, and no one dared to say a word.
“I don’t know,” Harry grinned. “As loud as he’s yelling, he’s just going to scare the crawlers away, and then we’ll probably never solve the problem.”
“Starting to stink, too,” Yuri remarked, slightly disgusted as he realized that the man had just peed his pants in fear a moment ago. He put him back on the ground and the man immediately ran to the back of the car and crouched down, shivering. Abigail pulled the red emergency release lever, clearing the way. Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out two flashlights. She handed one to Yuri, who nodded gratefully. It was cold in the tunnel, and the air smelled damp and stale as they stepped outside. Faint tubes of light were spaced far apart along the walls, giving only a hint of the route. Some of them flickered slightly as they approached the end of their life expectancy. Yuri first turned the flashlight up to the roof of the subway, but found nothing out of the ordinary. Then he signaled to his comrades, and together they went to the front of the locomotive and knocked on the cabin. The conductor opened the door and seemed quite surprised to have visitors in such a situation. After a short greeting, he let the three climb into the cabin.
“It’s this part right here,” he explained, holding up a white but heavily charred fuse the size of a beer can. “We usually carry spare parts for emergencies, but someone must not have been very conscientious about their work.” Abigail, who had just taken a look at the machine, couldn’t find anything else wrong either.
“Is there anything else we can do? If you still haven’t gotten a response to your radio messages, it’s possible they weren’t heard, isn’t it? Then we’re stuck here even longer?”
“The subway has recently been reduced to a half-hourly service due to low ridership,” the conductor mused. “Since we haven’t reached the next checkpoint yet, it will be a while before they notice our disruption. But the following train will automatically stop at our last station to avoid a collision. Then, with the current staffing situation, it could really take a few hours – as you say – to get us out of here. After all, many of the technicians are still refusing to even enter the network. Well, if you ask me directly… there is actually a maintenance room here a few hundred meters away where tools and spare parts are stored. There are rooms like this all over the network so that the technicians don’t have to bring all their equipment.
“There are fuses too?” Abigail asked immediately, her voice full of hope.
“There’s at least a good chance, unless they’ve all been used up and not replenished,” the conductor nodded in confirmation. “I just hope you’re not asking me to accompany you on this venture. Because frankly, I’d pee in my pants if I had to go through those tunnels right now.”
“You wouldn’t be the first to do that today,” Harry grinned, tucking the charred fuse into his backpack to keep as a sample for later. Then they let the conductor give them some brief instructions, opened the cabin door and stepped back outside. Abigail took a deep breath. Now it was her turn to check her weapon before they stepped out into the darkness.

Categorized as: Novel 3 (EN) | Novel Chapter (EN)

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