Unmarked Journey

your reach.'

  'Wait, so I can have electric hands too?'

  'You certainly can.'

  'Show me how!'

  He gave her an old fashioned look. 'You still need to practice. But, having said that, once you're comfortable with the basics you can probably intuitively apply your understanding to other types of Knowledge. Basically, you won't have to practice everything, you'll just get it,' he said, while an idea seemed to dawn on him. 'Talking of which, there are two ways we could get back,' he started, incongruously, 'we could take public transport, or we could go underground.’

  Elra looked confused. ‘But I thought the Underground is public transport.’

  Kai smiled that devilish, knowing smile of his. ‘There’s a lot more beneath the surface of London than the Tube. Come on, let’s get back to mine.

  He jumped up and beckoned her to follow. More bloody walking, Elra thought.

  Eighteen

  Kai wasn't in such a hurry as before: he seemed excited, almost childishly so, turning to give Elra wide-eyed glances. They walked back down towards Knightsbridge, in the direction of the Royal Albert Hall. They passed the Albert Memorial, jaywalked across the road and, to Elra's surprise, walked up the steps and into the building.

  'Just look like you know where you’re going,' he explained. 'Walk with purpose. Get a bit of a stride going on. And follow me.'

  He led her through the main doors and past a desk, staffed by a bored-looking, dumpy woman. Kai strode forward and held the inner door open for Elra. The woman at the desk didn't bat an eyelid.

  They were in a large, curving corridor. Pictures of past concerts adorned the walls and the sound of their footfalls was muted by a thick red carpet.

  'Just down here,' Kai said, more to himself than anyone else. 'I think it's the second-last door on the left.'

  Sure enough, they came to a blank white door with a bold 'NO ACCESS TO PUBLIC' sign emblazoned on it. He pushed it open casually. Beyond was a whitewashed concrete stairwell and a bare metal elevator, the doors held open and a sliding latticed grill pulled across the opening. They took the stairs.

  Kai went two at a time, and did a little swing on the banisters at the bottom of every flight. Elra's danger sense raised red flags in the back of her mind, but given her circumstance, she ignored them. They reached the bottom, and were presented with a security door with an electronic ID reader. Kai put his electric palm against its magnetic surface and the door beeped happily in compliance.

  'After you,' he grinned.

  Elra pushed open the door and was greeted with quite a sight.

  A vast room with countless stacked chairs, jumbled music stands, instrument travel cases and even a few larger instruments: she spied a harp standing in a corner, and a colossal set of drums hiding behind an ominously tall object covered with a dust sheet. There were other odds and ends, too: crates of beer, coke, orange juice; stacks of sheet music and arcane electronic audio equipment. Kai grabbed a bottle of beer and thrust it in her general direction.

  'I don't drink,' Elra explained. Kai shrugged and cracked the top for himself.

  'So, do you have a... hideout down here?' Elra asked.

  Kai giggled. 'No. Oh no. This is just our Tube station, as it were. We have quite a way to go yet.'

  Her downed the beer and threw it into a pile of sheets. 'Come on.'

  There was a small spiral maintenance staircase in the back. As they descended, Elra noticed it was getting warmer. At the bottom, they found themselves in a boiler room – well, more of a boiler corridor. The ceiling was very low, and every so often a piping or ventilation duct would span its width at exactly head height.

  'Careful, now. Some of them are hot,' Kai warned.

  All around them boilers throbbed and pipes creaked. Beads of sweat developed on Elra's forehead.

  Eventually the walls gave way and opened out, and the floor became a gantry bridging a dark, deep space, kind of like a large vertical tube plunging into the depths of the building and the city. A solitary ladder, complete with a safety cage, budded off the gantry’s handrails and hung down into the darkness.

  Elra looked over the side and immediately felt vertigo kick in.

  ‘After you. It really isn’t that far down.’ Kai grinned.

  ‘No. This time, after you,’ Elra insisted.

  He raised his eyebrows, mounted the ladder and paused for a moment. He grinned at her like a madman. ‘See ya!’ he cackled, and slid down the ladder.

  Elra shrieked.

  Below her, Kai was laughing. ‘Don’t you try that,’ he said. ‘You don’t have the legs for it. Yet.’

  She carefully followed, gripping the thin metal railings and safety cage with sweaty hands. Carefully, she lowered herself into the shadows, rung by rung.

  After a while she felt solid ground beneath her feet, and a silent ringing in her ears.

  ‘Kai?’ she called, tentatively.

  Silence.

  Elra knew enough not to be scared. She could feel what he said was true, as if it was in her very -

  'Boo!'

  Kai swept out of the darkness and jabbed her in the waist with both hands.

  'That was predictable, Kai. Very predictable. So, what is this place?'

  Kai feigned the decrepit voice of an old mystic. 'The answer you seek is through that door,' he pointed, and to Elra's surprise, the all-consuming darkness around them wasn't as total as she'd imagined. Off to her left there was, in fact, a doorway with faint light round the edges. At the same time, her eyes were becoming adjusted to the gloom, and she could begin to make out her immediate surroundings in the bottom of the tubular shaft. Nothing interesting, mainly old sacks, deflated plastic bags, an oil drum and... was that bag moving?

  Kai saw her frown. 'Rats. You'll see a lot of them down here. In fact, in London, and I guess this goes for New York, Paris and other big cities, you're never more than six meters from a rat.'

  Elra hurried towards the door and kept her eyes off the floor.

  On the other side was a sight she'd never forget.

  Nineteen

  Size-wise, Elra would say it was on par with a cathedral, and a large one at that. It was if she and Kai had entered it from the roof, and were now surveying its vastness and monumental length from above. Up at the very far end the space's incredible width channeled into a large tunnel that continued off into the darkness.

  Around the walls were smaller tunnels branching off in various directions, some large enough to drive a car through, others mere cramped walkways. Huge pipes snaked out of the concrete here and there, ducts angled off now and then, running in all directions, some looping back on themselves. Faint columns of light cascaded down from vents in the ceiling, giving the place a dim but discernible light. A deep rumbling surrounded them, seemingly coming from the walls themselves, interspersed with distant booms.

  ‘What is this place?’ Elra asked, amazed.

  ‘My dad showed it to me: I think he said something about it being a secret underground storage space during World War II. London is full of places like this, all interconnected by thousands of labyrinthine tunnels. There’s a whole hidden city down here.’

  ‘Does anyone live down here?’ Elra said, in awe.

  ‘Sure, some people. Homeless groups, mostly. Most live nearer the surface, for obvious reasons. I once spent a few weeks down here.’

  Elra frowned at him. ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘Right, pull up the legs of your jeans,’ Kai asked, skirting her question, removing a black marker pen from an inner pocket.

  Elra duly complied, puzzled by his evasiveness. He pulled the lid off the pen, stuck it in his mouth, crouched down and frowned at her legs with a quizzical, almost scientific look on his face.

  'Now hold still.’

  He began drawing small, complex marks on her key leg muscles: their lines were fluid, intertwined and compact, as if their very forms contained pent-up energy. Occasionally he'd have to look at his own marks for reference: he'd
pull up his own jeans, scrutinize a lesser tendon-mark for a while, muttering to himself, seemingly forgetting what he was supposed to be doing. Elra found it comical, being drawn on in such a place. In fact, being drawn on was funny in itself: the pen tickled as it moved across her skin – not that she let Kai know.

  ‘Actually, you'd better take your shoes and socks off too.'

  Then he started on her feet, and she couldn't help but let loose a burst of laughter.

  'What?' he asked, looking up at her, grinning.

  'No, nothing,' she replied, straining to keep a straight face.

  The tip of the pen prodded the arch of her foot, then her heel, then the ball. She was surprised at how many feet marks were necessary.

  'Right, time for the upper legs,' Kai announced.

  'Um... do you want me to...?'

  He looked slightly uncomfortable. 'I've seen it all before, Elra. Just take them off.'

  She grinned, dropped her jeans, and thought about how this was the second time today he'd asked her to get undressed.

  Unlike before, he seemed almost embarrassed. He drew the two upper leg marks with professionalism, performing his task quickly but diligently, avoiding eye contact at all cost.

  'Right, all done,' he said, standing up backing away. 'You're good to go. Only one thing left.'

  'What?'

  'A test. To make sure they're working. Well, to make sure you're working. The key to using Knowledge is being able to understand and appreciate one thing. That you and your environment are the same. Not in a silly 'everything in the universe is connected' way, no. You are the universe. There is no separation. You, and