Chapter 1

I sat there, in shock, wondering what the hell I was mixed up in. Had she just asked me... ?

My little office – with its tiled walls, fan in the ceiling and no natural light, - was my cocoon, safe and secure. And I'd just been asked to abandon it, and fight for my life. Well, their lives. Everyone's lives.

April Carlisle and her blond – and very chesty, I couldn't help noticing – companion stared at me both pleadingly and defiantly at the same time. I don't know how you can actually mix those two, but they managed it. I guess I'd just not seen it on any of the TV shows I watch, which is most of my exposure to the world above. I still can't quite believe I managed to get a web connection working down here. Took two weeks of wheedling and whining with the cable company, but in the end, they caved (pun intended) and installed it.

"Look, they are going to be here any minute, will you help? Please. If you won't, we need to know right now so we can be on our way."

The funny thing was that in the past six weeks, the only person I'd actually seen in person besides Mike, my supervisor, was April,. And Mike only came once a week or so. Even he can't tolerate it down here very much, and he's been doing this for over twenty-five years.

We were thirty feet below the surface of Boston, sitting in my little office/apartment, which has a small en-suite bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen unit and a sitting area. All windowless – obviously – and accompanied by the constant quiet hum of the air conditioning system.

Why this space existed at all was a mystery to me. But I'd been living there for the past eight years, alone, removed from society. I was just fine with that. Prior to being converted to the little apartment, it had been storage rooms. I never knew why it had been changed. Bear in mind that we were sitting on top of a major connection of sewage and utility tunnels under Boston, so it was not complicated for it to have a bathroom and shower system – it's not like the water had far to go, though I was always amazed that we got fresh water down here. What made it tolerable was air conditioning. Let's face it, the stench from the sewage system that was just below us could be overwhelming – even unhealthy. But with the really good HVAC, it didn't bother me at all.

There were stairs that took you up to street level, plus there were a couple of rooms which acted as storage for sewage suits, air cylinders and all the rest of the equipment required to keep the system working properly, plus excess storage for other users of the sewer system. There was even a board on the wall in my office, with a map of the tunnels within a ten-mile radius that had little indicator lights on it. It looked like something out of 1964. Then, under that, there was an up-to-date Macbook pro laptop, tapped into everything I was allowed to see. There is a lot I wasn't allowed to be connected to. This is Boston, and there are lots of things going on that were classified above my clearance. To be honest, I wasn't much interested in it. I had access to whatever I needed for my job, and I was no hacker. I couldn't even play one on TV.

Right, so now you've got the set up. This is where we were. And there were these two women. I knew one of them, very slightly. April Carlisle had come to find me about two weeks earlier – she was looking for a briefcase that might have found it's way into the sewer system, and was wondering where it might have ended up, and if I might be able to 'procure' it for her. That was the word she used, 'procure'. She even offered me a lot of money to find it.

She explained it had gone in the system through the street grate on Massachusetts Avenue, around Cameron – about a mile from Tufts University. I pulled up the tunneling system on my laptop – just to confirm where my memory said this would probably end up, you understand – and found that yeah, it probably be in the filters at the processing filters near the Mystic River. There were lots of filters along the Boston sewage system – one of the oldest sewage systems in the US. April fluttered her eye lashes at me, and tried lots of patronizing verbiage attempting to get me to find this briefcase, which must have had something pretty damn important in it.

In the end I said, "Sure, I'd go look", just to shut her up – and because she was very nice looking. And it's nice to have a pretty girl be nice to me rather than just staring at me or laughing behind my back.

Yeah, I should talk a little about that, so you have the complete background. I'm Thomas. Thomas David Avaline. The second, apparently. I think I'm supposed to put a 'II' after the name or something. The name, really, is the only thing I have from my parents. That and a violin.

They were killed when I was four, and since I was an only child of two only children, there was no one to take me. Into the system I went.

The thing is, I was in the car when it got crushed. Somehow even though my parents were instantly killed, I was "just" injured. Just. My whole head was partially crushed – the skull cracked and broken, a cheekbone smashed and more. But I lived. The surgeons did their best, and while they managed to push the bones of the skull back together, there was a lot of surface damage that, I was later told, was too much to fix at the time. I could 'get plastic surgery' when I was older. I guess they were just pleased I could still use my jaw and didn't loose an eye or an ear. Easy for them to be content. They weren't a little kid in the Boston public system, shuttled from foster house to foster house, orphanage to orphanage, clutching only the violin that was in the car with us. They couldn't find where we had been living – both my parents were somewhat 'unconventional' so I was told later. I don't know what that means. Whether it means they were homeless, or just didn't keep up the paper work with the authorities I don't know. Add it to the list of things I'll never know

Anyway, I have a nice scar down one side of my face, and a patch at the scalp line on the left side of my face where hair won't grow. There's scaring over one cheek, and down the left side of my face, plus my ear is messed up. It functions well enough, but it looks like I've been in one prizefight too many.

Anyway, so the face stuff, that was a black mark against ever really being adopted. Then add to that the fact that I shot up in height, around when I hit puberty, and you've got a real winner on your hands. The fact is, I was six foot when I was fourteen. I was six foot four by the time I was eighteen. I stopped growing at six foot six, thankfully.

I tower over people. And what's worse, it's not like I'm built like a brick shit house. I'm tall and slender, and it sucks. If I was built like the Jason Momoa guy from Game of Thrones, I might have stood a chance, but I'm not. So I have all the Tall Guy issues – two collapsed lungs in my life (it's a common aliment for tall willowy people, so I'm told), lots of pulled muscles, and I cannot for the life of me find a bed that'll fit me. I had to have one made. Getting it down into the small living space where I reside was a nightmare.

And that's when I can sleep. I've never been able to sleep well. The nightmares are still there. The repeating one, in a car, being chased and never being able to get away, trying desperately to dodge other cars coming at me, like some demented video game. I get that one at least once a week. I wake up bathed in sweat and I'm a miserable dick for the rest of the day. I figure it's something to do with the accident, but beyond that, I just endure it.

So that was my life. I was a kid; damaged; traumatized; disfigured; freakishly tall; poor; alone. Not the stuff that dreams are made of.

So, it should be no surprise that I am a loner. First by necessity and now by choice. I honestly don't know any other way to be.

I tried to live differently. To fit in as best I could. I didn't just give up and feel sorry for myself, well not entirely. I did well in school. I was accepted to a fine college here in Boston. But it became painfully obvious by the second semester that I was a figure of ... not fun, so much as an oddity. I did get asked to be on the basketball team, and at the time I thought, "Why not?" I had thought it would give me exercise and –more importantly –companionship. I couldn't have been more wrong. Everyone just expected me to be great at it because I was tall. And I wasn't great at all. I tried working out, but that got really awkward when I couldn't do all the things the littler guys did. I thought some humor might help, but calling people "little guy" isn't funny, apparently. After the third time I was laid out in practice, I gave it up.

As for women, forget it. There was another tall women the year ahead of me. She was six foot four, and mutual acquaintances wanted to push us together because, well, two tall people belong together, that's the way it's meant to be, right? Like two old people or two fat people.

Except she was a bitch. No, she was a Bitch. With a capital B. While my face and height had caused me to just be quiet and withdrawn, she'd declared the world at fault for her being tall, and the world had better look out. To start with, it was ok, since she assumed I felt the same way, and none of her vitriol was directed at me. But that soon changed when I didn't join her in making the world feel my wrath. So, that ended badly.

I finished my degree online. Easier by far.

Oh, I can play that violin, by the way. I made myself learn. Interestingly, once you've got the basic finger positions learned, you can do lessons all via Skype, since it's all listening anyway. I have three Violins now – a really nice Karl Willhelm Model 64, an electric Yamaha SV 200, and my parents', which sounds like shit, but I'll never part with.

So I watch TV – I have a penchant for 60's and 70's TV shows, particularly spy shows. I love Man from UNCLE, Mission Impossible and I Spy. And I play Violin and I sometimes try to write, both music and stories. Neither are very good, though.

I write music. Well, I don't write it, per se. I have lots of tunes rattling around my head, and I carry a small digital recorder, and record little rifts as they come to me when I'm wandering the tunnels. I know all the best natural echo spots in the tunnel system. Not that that is particularly useful information, but you pick up what you pick up.

Sorry, I'm rambling a bit, but it's important if you are going to have any understanding of why I live the life I do, beneath the streets of Boston, only coming out when I have to. I know I'm viewed as some kind of freak by the other people who work for the same agency as I do, but I don't really care any more. I keep to myself, get the job done and just hope that's enough.

My degree is in water management. Weird, right? I still, to this day, have no idea why I chose that. But it is a vocation that has jobs. Not necessarily glamorous jobs, but jobs that are steady and pay okay. Once I graduated, I started as a roving water tester, and then when this job came up – the old guy who was the Tunnel Treatment Manager retired – I jumped at it. I was never really part of society anyway – all I did was go to work, test water, write up reports, go to the movies (it's dark in the movies) and go home. I was more and more withdrawn anyway, so I just ... left.

But back to these two women. I did find the brief case that April had asked about, - in her breathless way, - although it took me two days of sloshing around in a hazmat suit through the filters – which it turned out needed a cleaning and removal of some of larger items caught in them anyway. I called her, and she came right away, giddy as a schoolgirl. It was one hell of a briefcase too. Someone had had to force it through the grate, because it was just slightly larger than the grate gaps. Very slightly. What was even more interesting was that the case itself was actually made of steel. Even though it was covered in leather, like a normal briefcase, it had a steel frame. And the locked looked like a normal number tumbler lock, but was anything but. Normal tumbler locks are easy to open, but this one – this was the real deal. No one was getting into this brief case unless the owner wanted them to.

This wasn't the first time I'd had people request stuff like that. It happens several times a year. I have had the Secret Service ask me to find a box for them, and the FBI had been in the tunnels with me, looking for both corpses and backpacks. They even had me examine maps and mark up where, if I were looking to bomb Boston, I'd put charges. I think they were just covering themselves, but still, it was interesting thinking like a criminal. It got me thinking about all sorts of possibilities – how I would make a getaway if I robbed a bank (I knew where all the bank vaults were, that had tunnels going past them), how I'd be able to bring Boston to a halt if I wanted to bomb the sewage tunnels (I did idly wonder what the Boston city council would pay for blackmail), or, most insidiously, where I'd drop a chemical weapon to have the most effect, before being flushed into the harbor. I read a book about that once, by Neal Stephenson, called Zodiac. He got a lot of it right, although there were the minor niggles that any professional has, when an amateur writes about his business. And, when those brothers bombed the Boston Marathon, well you'd have thought I was suddenly popular, I had so many cops, federal agents and soldiers going through the tunnels with me looking for anything that might have been shoved into the sewer, or anybody who might be hiding.

Anyway, April picked up the briefcase, and was all pleased and even sat and had coffee with me. Well, she invited me out to have one, and I said no, and so we did it in my little bijou palace. She was pleasant enough – nice to look at, tall-ish. Red hair. Well spoken. Well dressed. Seemed like a together woman in todays world. I assumed I'd never see here again.

And yet, here she is. Dressed up for an evening on the town, with this other woman – Megan? – in tow.

And they both seem to be in distress.

I was just microwaving some dinner, and the door bell pinged, and so I checked the hidden camera that shows who is at the door, and there they were, Megan looking around and April smiling at a camera that she should not have known was there.

And so here they are,, Megan looking around checking out my abode, and April smiling beseechingly at me.

"So, let me get this straight. There are 'bad guys' chasing you," I said, using the air quotes around the 'bad guys' phrase, "and you need to get away because if they catch you, they'll do unspeakable things to you. Do I have this right?"

April nodded impatiently.

"Yes. That's the gist of it. There's a lot more to it than that, obviously, but the bottom line is that these guys are looking for us, and if and when they find us, well, I'm not sure we'd survive the experience. I'm being honest with you. I really didn't know where else to go – Boston is not really my stomping ground. I figured we could hide out here for a bit. No disrespect, but I don't think anyone knows this place exists."

"And you. You agree on this?" I directed the question at April's companion.

She nodded, eyes wide.

"Absolutely. We are ... involved, in this thing, well, it's something. Something bigger than we expected and it's ... coming back to bite us. We underestimated the people we were ... dealing with, and this is seriously bad for us. We just need a little time. Please? If you don't help, I don't know what we are going to do. They know us, they were following us and they are actively looking. They know Boston and we ... well, we don't."

She was very carefully choosing her words. Being specific and vague at the same time.

"So, are you with an agency? One that uses a lot of letters, I presume? Look, I have some clearance, not a lot, but I have worked with law enforcement. I can call people."

"Sort of. Look, we don't really have time for this, and you don't have enough clearance at all and you certainly can't call anybody. I am getting worried that they know we are here. They could well be trying to follow us. It may not even be safe here."

At that, I sighed. "What the hell have you got me into? I didn't ask for this. I just wanted to eat dinner and watch TV. Now there are people looking for you, intending you harm, and I'm in the middle of it? Way to go. Thanks a lot."

Megan smiled apologetically.

"I'm sorry. I really am. But ... can you help? Please, Tom, can you?"

"How do you know my name?" I asked at this Megan chick, still in a belligerent mood.

"It's on your desk plaque," replied April, nodding at my desk.

Oops. I deflated a bit.

"The thing is, how do I know you are on the up and up? How do I know you aren't the bad guys here, and the people following you aren't federal agents? Or men in black, for all I know?"

Megan actually got the reference. "We aren't aliens Tom. You can pull my nose and see if it's a mask."

I smirked. April said, "Here, Tom. Use the phone on the desk. Call this number, and say 'Field Agents Carlisle and Bromley are out of play.' Then just listen. You can then decide if we are bad guys or not."

She gave me the number, and I looked at her suspiciously – no doubt whomever I was calling would be in on this mess. But what the hell. I didn't have anything to lose.

So I called, and I got someone on the other end saying, "Good evening, this is the Field Institutes answering service. Can I take a message?"

Even more suspiciously, I said, "Hi. Um, so I'm supposed to say that Field Agents Carlisle and..." I looked at April again, who hissed, 'Bromley!' back at me, "Bromley, are out of play? Does that mean anything to you?"

There was silence for a second, and then the voice said, "Please stay on the line. I am connecting you."

I seriously expected someone to say "Opening channel D" at this point. Extra points if you get the reference, but I doubt most of you will. Most people who would are almost dead these days.

Seconds later a male voice, with a Scottish brogue, answered and said, "Hello? You are calling about some field agents?"

"Yes, Carlisle and Bromley?"

"Where are they? Are they safe? Who are you? What's your connection to them?" asked the voice, in quick succession.

"Um, they are here with me. They say they are being followed, and they want my help. I'm just trying to figure out if they are the good guys here?"

"Sir, all I can tell you is that you would be doing your country a service by aiding these ladies. They are involved in something I cannot discuss with you – I'm sure you understand – but anything you can do to help here will be gratefully received. And when I say grateful, I mean grateful. Can I speak to either one of the ladies?"

I handed the phone to April, and said, "He wants you."

April took the phone and said, "Hello Dermot ... Yes, fine for now ... No, I think they are onto us. We were followed ... Yes, we have it. Well, Megan does. I think she's blown though ... Yeah, she's here too ... No, we aren't harmed. But they are coming. I came here, it was the safest and most out of the way place I could think of ... No, it's pretty safe I think. It's in the sewer system ... No, part of it ... No, it's not smelly. Really, that's what you think to ask? ... I don't know ... No, he's the guy who runs the place ... Yes, I think he's trust worthy. He's helped me before ... Well, yeah, it's not like we have a lot of choices here ... Ok. Hang on..."

She handed the phone back to me saying, "My boss wants to talk to you again."

I took the phone and said, "Hello?"

"Hi again. Ok, so my name is Dermot, and you are... ?"

"I'm Thomas. Not Tom, Thomas."

"Ok Thomas. I need your help. These ladies are very capable, but even they are not likely to deal by themselves with the people that have been sent out after them. Now, Megan is in possession of something we very much need, to prove a case against some very bad people - that's going on here. This is not normally what we do, as an agency. We've been put in a situation we don't want to be in, and as such, we need help. And hopefully, you can help us. Am I correct in assuming you are in the Boston Sewer system?"

"Waaaaait a second there Dermot. Back up a little. I still don't know that you guys are the good guys? Convince me?"

"Yes, I get that. Let me think for a wee minute ... Ok, so do you, perchance, have access to a computer right now?"

"Yep"

"Ok, so I'm going to post a picture right now, at a specific web address. Can you pull that up for me?"

He gave me the address, and I put it in. Almost instantly, a picture popped up.

"Ok, so that's April, along with the current Chief Justice. You can corroborate by that googling him. If you scroll down, there's another picture. That's Megan with head of Apple, Tim Cook. Now these pictures will be removed in a second, because we don't allow pictures of our field agents on the Internet. I'm just letting you see who you are currently sheltering. I'm only asking you to help hide them and let them get away with their skins intact?"

I thought. Did I really want to get involved?

Right then the door chime pinged. I switched the laptop image to the front door, and saw three large gentlemen, in dark suits with long coats, all clean-shaven and squared jawed. One was on his phone. The other two were looking at the door very intently.

All three of us stared at the image on the screen.

I was suddenly aware of Dermot's voice again. "Thomas, are you there?"

"Yeah, I think your bad guys found them. Us."

"Crap. Can you get out? Is there another way out? We can't get any ... assistance there in any time soon. It would take at least half an hour. Is there a back way out? Or some place you can barricade, or a place where they can't find you?"

I thought for a second and then said, "Well, this is the sewer system. Can you have some guys meet us elsewhere in Boston?"

"Name the place, we can be there within 30 minutes."

"Ok then, the corner of Main Street and Church, in Watertown. 30 minutes. Don't be late."

"We'll be there. Thanks. Good luck."

I hung up, and looked at the women. They were wearing heels, which would be a problem.

"Ok, take the heels off, you need to get into hazmat suits. We are going into the sewers."

The doorbell rang again. I looked at the screen – the guy on the phone had put it away and was looking around. One of the other guys pulled a crowbar from his jacket – that must have been fun to carry around.

They were obviously going to force entry, which just gave me more impetus.

"Ok ladies, chop chop. There is a room outside that has the hazmat suits in. You'll need boots, and the ones I have are too large, so it's lots of socks for you, so you'll fit."

I hustled them out into the storage room, and dragged out three hazmat suits – thankfully they do come in three sizes – well, four, if you count the specially made one for me – and they fit. Both women struggled into the suits quickly, and then started putting on socks so the boots fit.

We all heard the wrenching noise in the distance, where the front door must have been jimmied. It made us work faster.

My suit fit easily, since I was practiced at putting it on, so I went to get the other things we would need –air masks and air tanks. Not like you see Scuba divers or fire fighters wearing. More like a small tank you wear on a belt and a set of goggles with a nose covering.

While the sewer system is designed with some ventilation, it still smells awful, and there are places where methane (sewer gasses) builds up. It's not usually at toxic levels, and the system is designed for it to vent out, but it's an old system and there are some places where new tunnels meet old tunnels and methane does collect at the junctions where mismatched tunnels sizes meet. So we take air, just in case.

I also grabbed light bars. These are special neon based lights designed to not produce any spark. Again, methane is not usually concentrated enough to explode but it doesn't do to tempt the gods. It's also why all the equipment you carry is either plastic, leather or metal covered in plastic or leather, so it can't spark if you hit it against a wall or drop it.

We could start hearing footsteps down the stairs towards where we were – we were out of time.

I turned and looked at the two women – both were suited up, and I handed them each a light and the mask and air bottle.

"Put them on as we go, ok?"

They nodded – somewhat frightened eyes staring back at me, although April's also had an amount of calculation and trust in them.

"Ok, where we go."

I opened a flat manhole in the ground, and instantly the smell wafted upwards, and both women wrinkled their noses.

Megan was about to say something but I stared her, and shook my head while holding a finger up to my mouth. They'd be able to hear us now, and we needed to go silently. Tunnels echo. Noise amplifies. They'd figure out where we were before long anyway, but there was no point in helping them along.

I motioned for them to go down the hole; there was a ladder into the actual tunnels. They went quickly and efficiently, folding their masks over their heads and attaching the air bottles to their belts as they went.

I watched them both go down, and then followed them. The footsteps on the stairs were getting louder. I think I managed the get the manhole cover closed about twenty seconds before the three men arrived. Thankfully it was well oiled, and also there was a rubber edge around where the manhole sat – more for stopping the fumes coming up than for sound deadening, but it was good for that too. So there was no clanging of the cover as I closed it.

I sat under it at the top of the ladder, listening for a moment and was satisfied that they hadn't heard us go down. They'd find it soon enough; there was nowhere else we could have gone. But we needed as much time as we could get a good lead on them. I knew the tunnels well, so I knew which way to go. That would help, of course. I just wanted to be far enough ahead and round enough corners that they wouldn't see out lights ahead of them.

April and Megan were looking at me anxiously as I came down the ladder. Both had their lights in hand, but neither had fired them up. I did mine by touch and they followed suit.

"Ok, go this way. There's a grate about twenty feet in the other direction, so this is the only way to go. I'll lead. Right now we can use the side walkway, but those are only on the newer tunnels. The old ones are more like a hole in the ground, and we'll be slushing through some pretty nasty stuff," I said, as quietly as I could.

I walked ahead and they followed, keeping close.

We walked for about three or four hundred feet, turning three corners, when I heard a small echo. I knew what it meant. The tunnels echo for miles, and locating where the sound came from would be totally impossible – but the fact we'd heard it at all meant they'd have found the manhole and had opened it. They were coming.

I wondered if they'd found the hazmat suits, or if they were ruining their nice black suits. Probably the latter. People imagine the sewage system to be something it's not – inch deep water with a slightly nasty smell. It's not. It's way nastier than that. Shit, refuse, the kind of stuff you want to put down a toilet, over spills, dead animals, everything finds it's way down here, in far greater quantities than you would think. Well, they'd find out soon enough how dank and dark and plain nasty it really was. They'd never get the smell out of their clothes, in fact.

I stopped, a thought occurring to me, Megan bumped into me.

"What?" she said.

"Ok, level with me. How 'bad' are these guys?"

Megan glanced at April before replying.

"In what sense?"

"Are they killers? Will they hurt us if they catch us? To what degree? Are we talking about a beating here, or are we in fear of our lives?"

Megan looked at April again, and bit her lip. April nodded at her.

"Honestly? We'd survive for a bit. I don't know how long, but at least until they got what they want. After that, all bets are off. You ... well, you would be collateral damage. If it isn't shooting you or beating you to death, it wont be far off. They are pissed off and being sent out and this," she gestured around her, "won't be putting them in any better of a mood. We aren't making it easier and they won't be happy about that."

"So, ... It's a life or death situation then? Do they have guns? I assume so?"

"I'm sure, yes. Why?"

I grinned, and realized she couldn't see it under the mask.

"Well, I ... have an idea. Look, here's what I need you to do. Keep going forward. There's a junction about three hundred yards from here. It's a T-junction, so you have to pick a direction. Go left. Keep going another two hundred yards and go right. Then just go straight until the tunnel widens out, and when you get to where it does, look up. There should be rungs in the wall that'll take you up. It's not far, about 30 feet, and there's a manhole cover at the top. There's a lever there that'll push it up and rotate it so it uncovers the hole and you can climb out. That's where I said we'd meet your people."