Description: P R O L O G U E THE BLACK-CLAD FIGURE crept through the unlit corridor on Second Tier, silent and slippery as the sludge oozing from the corroded pipe running the ceiling''s length. The gunk from the pipe had very conveniently covered the lenses of the surveillance cameras at each end of the hallway, and this corridor was so unimportant in the grand scheme of the City that it would be days-- possibly weeks or months--before anyone would even notice, much less come to clean them. At least, the corridor had been unimportant, Yvelle Forister thought. Now it was potentially the most important corridor in the whole reeking edifice that those who had set her on this path hoped to bring figuratively, if not literally, crashing down. Because three-quarters of the way along its length, a maintenance hatch opened into a no-longer-used elevator shaft that rose all the way to Twelfth Tier. Through her night-vision visor, the corridor glowed deep green, the blinking light of the obscured security camera at the far end flashing brightly every few seconds. Yvelle didn''t like the thought of that thing looking at her, grease-covered or not, so she hurried to the hatch and knelt beside it. The tool she pulled from her belt was as illegal as her night-vision equipment, if not quite as illegal as the beamer holstered at her hip. The worker who had "lost" it had done so knowing it would cost him his job, but like Yvelle herself, he no doubt had good reason to help the shadowy anti-City forces who called themselves the Free Citizens. Her own reason had returned to her two months ago, from the notorious prison on Tenth Tier, as ashes in a small plastic urn. The cheap aluminum plaque embedded in its side bore a name, once as precious to her as her own: THOMAS DEVILLE. Yvelle''s hand tightened on the maintenance tool. Then she leaned forward and touched its tip to the first of the hatch''s access points. There was a sharp click, and a light on the tool''s handle flashed green. Eight clicks and eight green flashes later, she pushed at the bottom of the hatch. It sank into the wall a centimeter, then popped out, and she dug her fingers under the edge and swung it upward. The inside of the hatch had three metal ladder rungs built into it at thirty-centimeter intervals, a small segment of a ladder that she knew continued above and below the opening. She turned around and backed through the meter-wide portal, feeling with her feet for the rungs below the hatch. Once firmly on the ladder, she pulled the maintenance hatch closed. It clicked as it locked back into place. The square shaft, three meters on a side, glowed green, lit by the luminescent tubes called "eternals" because they were supposed to last forever. Like most things in the City, though, several of them were out of order, belying their nickname. Still, with the night-vision goggles, they provided more than enough illumination for Yvelle to see the intimidating climb ahead of her. They also showed her the old elevator doors, presumably sealed, on the opposite side of the shaft, and the rails on which an elevator car would ascend and descend. Those gleamed suspiciously brightly, which meant this "abandoned" shaft maybe wasn''t as abandoned as she''d been told. She just hoped whatever surreptitious purpose to which it was being put did not involve a car moving through it tonight, or she''d be a smear on the wall before she got anywhere near her destination. Presumably the shaft was being secretly used by the Free, not the Officers, and since her mission was theirs . . . She took a deep breath and started climbing. The City''s First through Seventh Tiers were each fifteen meters in height. Eighth and Ninth were each twenty meters tall, as was Tenth, where Thomas had died in prison. Eleventh and Twelfth, home to the Officers, were a lofty twenty-five meters. And the crown of the City, Thirteenth, dwelling place of the Captain . . . Thirteenth was a mystery. Fifteen meters of infrastructure in two levels separated the Tiers: pipes, conduits, service corridors. That meant well over three hundred meters to climb. Yvelle had to be at the top within twenty-five minutes. The shaft gave no hint of what lay beyond its closed doors on each Tier, but she could picture it well enough. At the very bottom of the City, below even First and Second Tiers, were the Bowels: four levels, some sixty meters tall, full of mysterious machines. Some functioned to provide power and water and other services to the rest of City, some were supposed to but had long since malfunctioned, and some served no purpose anyone could decipher. Only squatters lived in the Bowels, in dark corners and for dark purposes. Occasionally the Provosts would attempt to evict them. Sometimes they managed to arrest half a dozen people. Sometimes they came back empty-handed. Sometimes they didn''t come back at all. First and Second Tiers were crazy quilts of temporary structures made of any materials the denizens could obtain, dividing and subdividing what had once been a neat grid of orderly structures. Many of the original metal walls had been cut down, the pieces used elsewhere. The only remnants of the original neat, logical layout were the old street signs embedded in the corroded metal floors. Condensation from the ceilings dripped like rain into the dank, fetid streets, the ventilation systems overwhelmed by the sheer number of people crammed into spaces never intended to house so many. Fog, smoke from cooking fires, and strange vapors from the overworked and failing recycling plants-- and the equally overworked but thriving illegal drug labs-- drifted through the air, sometimes so thickly you couldn''t see your hand in front of your face and every breath burned. Like the ventilation, lighting was poor and erratic. Only the lucky or ruthless had reliable sources of power. In those dark, dangerous, deceiving streets, people went missing all the time. Sometimes they''d been robbed and murdered. Sometimes they''d been secretly arrested. Like Thomas. Despite the mask he''d worn, the Provosts had identified him at a protest held after an overhead pipe had ruptured and sprayed a market courtyard with an acidic sludge that had killed twenty-three people and disfigured a hundred more. They''d seized him in the middle of the night, dragging him and Yvelle out of bed. He''d been imprisoned; she had not. Instead, they had torn up her precious Reproductive Right card before her eyes and explained with cold contempt that since her husband had been identified as a Level-Two Security Threat, her right of reproduction had been terminated-- as would be the now-unauthorized child she carried. She remembered the horror of that conversation and the brutal drug-induced miscarriage that had followed. She remembered the doctor explaining to her, his face impassive, his eyes focused not on her but on a spot over her right shoulder, that the drugs had also sterilized her. Two weeks later she had been contacted by the Free: an "accidental" encounter with a woman who gave her name as Bertel, who claimed to have been a friend of Thomas''s. Bertel ran a First-Tier bar-- "a nicer place than most," she''d said-- and she''d invited Yvelle to come have a drink and a friendly talk. One conversation had led to another, always in Bertel''s Bar, a small place in which Yvelle never saw another guest. Bertel had confided her hatred of the Officers, and Yvelle had responded in kind, grateful to have someone she could safely talk to. Maybe all that sympathy and support had only been bait to get her to bite the Free''s hook, but when Thomas''s ashes had been returned, Bertel had somehow known it, and she had been at Yvelle''s door within an hour. Do you want to make them pay for what they''ve done? she''d asked, and Yvelle had replied, Hell, yes. They''d gone to Bertel''s Bar. Bertel had produced a highly illegal commset, and Yvelle had found herself talking to someone named Prime. His voice had been digitally distorted and his image blacked out, and he had claimed to be the Commander of the Free. He had told her what the mission entailed, what she might have to do to make it succeed, and then gravely asked if she had the courage to carry out such a task. Yvelle had gripped the silver locket she now wore beneath her snug-fitting black top-- a locket containing a hologram of Thomas as he had looked the day he asked her to marry him and two grams of the ashes that were all that remained of him-- and sworn that she did. Two weeks later, Bertel had given her detailed instructions. Following them, she''d found the maintenance tool in a back alley on Second Tier, right where the "negligent" worker had "dropped" it two minutes before. She had retrieved the night-vision goggles and beamer from a box buried in a rubbish heap on First Tier that hadn''t been disturbed in a decade. And tonight, at the appointed time, she had come to the sludge-slicked corridor and this ladder. She continued climbing. She''d passed two more sealed doors, so she had to be past Third and Fourth and ascending toward Fifth. In all three, she knew, conditions were better than in First and Second. Though still overcrowded, the streets were wider and cleaner, the structures less haphazard in location and construction. There were proper factories and residential blocks for those fortunate enough to have jobs in them. Sixth and Seventh were middle-class respectable, Seventh more so

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