Broken Universe Sneak Peak Chapter - Zvedya
Introducing a new character to the Broken Universe
A thousand feet beneath the earth…
It’s time to start sharing with you guys some early release chapters of my next big book, codenamed Broken Universe!
My current pitch is: Wesley Daimon grows up under mysterious circumstances. His mother is dead, and his father has been missing for a long time. He is raised by a man known only as The Steward, in an ancient mansion surrounded by an advanced mega-city. One day, Wesley discovers a portal that leads to a thousand other worlds in the stars, and he goes out to find his lost father.
Broken Universe is an epic space opera with multiple point-of-view characters. The following is an early sneak peak chapter introducing just one of those characters.
A thousand feet beneath the earth, between the roots of the mega-skyscrapers of the city, a man walks alone through the skeleton of a forgotten portion of the undercity.
His tools jangle at his waist. His boots thud against steel. Somewhere behind him, a homeless man coughs into the silence. A tumbleweed of digital newspaper flickers as it skids across the floor, propelled by a noxious breeze.
The elevator lobby is vast—more akin to a train station than anything, the ceilings vanishing into shadow. Elevator doors line both walls, each blinking with destination, some far-off, some close. The man is halfway lulled to sleep by the monotony of his walk when one of the doors dings and slides open.
Startled, he turns his head to scan the bank of elevator doors far down the lobby hall. Under the heading of “FLOORS -300 TO -400” there is a bank of various doors from different origins. One of them has opened. He can't see inside from this angle.
He hears a thud, and then the sound of metal being dragged along the ground. Then another thud, and more metal. Then he sees a hand protrude from the doorway and—thud—come down on the ground. Someone is dragging themself forward with their hands.
He doesn’t break stride, trying not to betray his unease. Grown men shouldn't be afraid of things that go bump in the night, even if it is down in the no man's land two hundred and three floors beneath the surface, the kind of place populated by mobsters and freaks, monsters and clones, and all other kinds of people who hide from the heavy surveillance of the overcity. He tries not to think about the fact that he is down here alone, and, throwing back his shoulders, begins to whistle as he strides forward. He makes as if to pass the person by, but as he nears, he can't help but stare.
It’s a young woman.
Something about the way she is dressed is strangely familiar and yet wrong. She’s wearing a holo-mesh halter top, sheer cyberlace tights. But it’s odd how ripped and tattered her get-up is, dripping with fresh blood. That, and the fact that she is wielding a fully automatic plasma gun.
Her head is shaved nearly bald, and her face looks perpetually angry and pinched, and well it might. Her body is a bloody mess, and one of her legs drags at a sickeningly twisted angle. Blood drizzles into her eyes.
"You," she says, piercing him with her stare.
With one hand she reaches into a satchel and produces two purplebacks. She proffers them towards him as if baiting a dog, while with the other hand, she holds the gun, trained on him.
"Move me away from door," she says in a thick accent that the man mistakes for Russian. "And these are yours. Do it now!"
He hesitates, then laughs. He looks around nervously, but then looks back at the gun. He moves slowly to her, then hoists her up with his neck under her right arm, so she can keep the gun in her left arm trained on him.
“Alright, let’s just get you over here…” he says. “You’ve uh…been through a lot?”
She does not respond. She keeps looking over her shoulder back at the lobby.
It occurs to him that she may be just as afraid as he is.
Once they are around a corner, she winces.
"Down!" she says sharply. He puts her down.
"What happened to you?" he asks. "I'll call emergency services."
"No! No services," she says.
She proffers the two bills of currency at him again.
"Take them! They are yours."
He takes them gratefully—two purplebacks is nearly what he makes in a day, after all, and is nothing to leave lying around. But he still can't just leave her there.
"Now listen. Don't go," she says. Somehow, she manages to make it look like she is perfectly in control of the situation.
"There is more where that come from, as they say," she continues, the gun still trained on him. "But you must take me to Chroma. You know of where I speak?"
He nods slowly. "Yeah, I know where it is..."
"Floor 213," she says. "I have stash there. You take me there and you have five more," she says, gesturing to the two purple backs he is slowly rolling up and sliding into one of his many pockets.
He frowns. There is an awkward silence.
"Listen," he says clearing his throat, "Uh...I think I know what you're angling for."
"No angle. Straight job," she says.
"Yeah..." he says. "Listen, I know what kind of place Chroma is. I take it you must too if you're asking to go there in this condition, I know you ain't lookin' to fix your air conditioner or pick up a soda."
He is referring to the front for Chroma, which is ostensibly a combination convenience store and HVAC repair shop.
"Why you care? Five hundred! Yours."
"Listen, I'll take you wherever you want to go for five hundred. But you don't need some botched up mod job at a place like that. Where you need me to take you is a hospital.”
"No hospital," she shakes her head firmly.
"No hospital? If it's a matter of money--"
"I have money!" she snorts. "That is not issue. And what is--you are not ‘need to know.’ You no talk, only listen. You take me to Chroma and you get the five hundred. You betray me and I shoot you. And you never breathe word of this to anyone. So get me up now. We go."
He shakes his head and looks around.
"I'll be late to my next job..."
"Eight hundred. No more, final offer. Take it and I don't kill you. Don't take it and you die."
Ajax's eyebrows shoot up, and his hands wave as she lifts her gun. It makes a whining sound as it cycles up its plasma beam.
"Whoa, hey now, what’s gotten into--"
"Do it now!" she yells.
Slowly, cautiously, he comes around to her right side and hoists her up again.
"Damn," he says. "We've got to put you on a cart."
"Gaddam!" she yells out from pain. He notices that she pronounces "god damn" a little different.
She keeps the gun trained on his chest.
"Always the gun with you," he grumbles, turning around back towards the elevator lobby.
"No elevator!" she says.
"Oh, jeez," he says, but he doesn't seem surprised at this point. He turns around and heads down a service hallway.
For eight hundred, he knew there had to be a catch. Eight hundred, though...eight hundred. Damn.
After a while the silence is palpable. It is just his feet echoing in the empty halls of metal and plastic, just the monotony of getting closer to an overhead light and then fading away. When they walk under the next light, he risks a glance at her neck. He can see the tell-tale lock port on the back of her neck that pimps use to control their girls. Only, hers looks like it’s been smashed to bits.
The hall he is walking down dumps out into a street—at least he thinks of it as a street. The only difference between a hall and a street is a matter of perspective down here.
He looks down one side and then the other, then crosses over to another smaller hall on the other side. His arms are getting heavy.
When it comes to the stairs, things get dicey. He can tell that every step down seems to cause her great pain. She convulses and breathes in sharply. She’s clutching him with a death grip.
After four flights, he eases her down.
“I have to rest,” he says, panting heavily. "Say, who've you got chasing you, anyway?"
"No one, necessarily," she says, looking away.
He laughs. He speaks between breaths. "You're quicker—to look over your shoulder—than to blink. There’s no way—you don't think someone's following you."
"None of your business," she says tersely.
After a long silence, he says, "Listen—I just think if it's someone dangerous—I ought to know."
"If there is trouble, I take care of problem. Not your job."
This unnerves him more than anything so far.
"Ok, but who—“
"My business!" she says, prodding the gun into his chest.
He sighs.
After a measurable silence, he tries one more time, gently. "You know, killing a man is harder than just pulling a trigger."
It lays in the air for a moment, and then she speaks into the silence.
"I have killed six people already today. I think not."
He gulps.
"Alrighty then."
Feedback
As always, feedback is welcome. Were you able to get into it? Was anything hard to follow? What do you think will happen next?
Author Notes
It’s hard to explain the relationship that an author has with their characters. The fact that a relationship exists at all is a wonder. I used to think it was cooky when authors talked about having conversations with their fictional characters, or talking about the characters “doing things against their will” or things like that.
But now I feel like I’m starting to understand.
Zvedya isn’t like me in so many ways. And yet because I’m writing her, she is in some sense coming from a part of me. Somehow.
I’m reminded of that transcendent line of Walt Whitman’s: “I contain multitudes.”
Anyways. All that to say: Zvedya has just been demanding to be written about for some time now. Leaping off the page at me, brandishing her gun at me. I’m amused at her, but also feel a deep sadness. I am concerned about her. And I want to understand her, and I don’t, and that’s why I have to write her, so that I can understand.
Feelings like this about someone in your head should qualify you as insane. And maybe I would be. But instead, I write.
Shout outs
Special shout-outs to Janean and Rachel for your helpful comments and encouragement lately! You made my day.
What’s Going on in My Life
Gretchen and I just finished our cherry season and now we are discovering that we have an apple tree producing an abundance of small green apples.
Our AirBNB is booked nonstop during the month of July and we’ve been busy with that. The AC went out for a while and now it’s back online. There’s fires in the area but nothing too concerning at this point; the firefighters seem to have it under control.
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Until next week!