The world ended not with a bang, but with the squelch of a Gucci loafer in raw sewage.
"This is intolerable," Alta hissed. Her voice echoed in the damp darkness of the steam tunnel.
"Keep moving," Jason whispered, gripping her arm.
They were thirty feet beneath Broadway. The air was thick, smelling of rot, rust, and the ancient filth of a city that never slept.
O'Malley was in the lead, using a Zippo lighter to navigate. The flame flickered, casting long, dancing shadows on the brick walls.
Behind him, Senior was stumbling along, clutching a velvet pillow he had refused to leave behind. He looked like a bewildered ghost.
"My shoes," Alta complained, stopping. She was wearing a fur coat worth a Manhattan townhouse and diamond earrings that could buy a small island. "Ezra, I cannot walk in this slime."
Jason turned. He grabbed her shoulders and shoved her against the slimy wall.
"Listen to me," Jason hissed, his face inches from hers. "Up there, you are Mrs. Rockefeller Prentice. Down here, you are lunch."
He pointed to her ears. The diamonds glittered in the dim light.
"Take them off."
"Are you insane?" Alta demanded. "These are family heirlooms. They are worth—"
"They are worth a knife in the throat," Jason cut her off. "If we run into a scavenger, you're a walking target. Take them off. Now."
Alta stared at him. She saw something in his eyes she hadn't seen before. Not the calculating businessman. The desperate animal.
Slowly, with trembling hands, she unclasped the earrings. Then the necklace.
"Drop them," Jason ordered.
Alta hesitated. She looked at the murky water flowing around her ankles.
She dropped them.
Plop. Plop.
A hundred thousand dollars vanished into the sludge.
Alta let out a small, choked sob. It wasn't about the money. It was the realization that her name, her status, her power—it all dissolved the moment she stepped off the pavement.
"Good," Jason said, turning back to the darkness. "Now you're just a refugee. Let's go."
Twenty minutes later, the tunnel opened up.
"City Hall Loop," O'Malley whispered, extinguishing the lighter. "Quiet now. It's an abandoned station. But it ain't empty."
They stepped onto the platform.
Jason froze.
It looked like a circle of Hell from Dante.
The station was filled with people. Hundreds of them. Families huddled on the tracks. Men sleeping on newspapers.
Small fires burned in metal trash cans, illuminating hollow faces and ragged clothes. The air smelled of woodsmoke and unwashed bodies.
"The strike," Sarah whispered, stepping up beside Jason. "They have nowhere to go. No heat in the tenements. They came down here for the warmth of the earth."
"Keep your heads down," Jason said. "Walk fast. Don't make eye contact."
They moved through the crowd. Jason kept one hand on Senior's back, guiding him.
"Passport?" a voice barked.
A man stepped in front of them. He was big. He wore a dirty wool coat and a red armband.
Adolf's militia.
"We're just passing through, friend," O'Malley said, putting on his thickest Irish brogue.
"ID," the guard demanded. He held a wooden club wrapped in barbed wire.
He looked at the group. He looked at Alta's fur coat, now smeared with mud but clearly expensive. He looked at Jason.
"Soft hands," the guard sneered, grabbing Jason's wrist. "You ain't a digger. You're a suit."
He leaned in, squinting.
"You look familiar."
Jason's heart hammered. If they were recognized, they would be torn apart.
"He was a clerk," Sarah interjected suddenly. She stepped forward, her voice trembling but loud. "At the bank. Before they fired everyone."
She pointed to Senior.
"And this is our grandfather. He... he was in the war. Shell shock. We're trying to get him to Brooklyn to his sister's."
Sarah reached into her pocket. She pulled out a roll of bandages—her nurse supplies.
Quickly, she wrapped it around Senior's head, covering his recognizable white hair and half his face. She smeared a bit of mud on his cheek.
Senior blinked. "I want my milk," he mumbled.
"See?" Sarah said. "His mind is gone."
The guard looked at Senior, then back at Jason. He wasn't convinced.
"Toll is five dollars," the guard grunted.
"We don't have money," O'Malley said. "But we have this."
He pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket. Unopened.
The guard's eyes lit up. Tobacco was gold in the underground economy.
He snatched the pack. He sniffed it.
"Go," he grunted, stepping aside. "But watch the tunnels. The rats are big tonight."
They hurried past him, melting back into the shadows.
Jason let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"Nice work," he whispered to Sarah.
"I didn't do it for you," she said, her voice tight. "I did it for the old man. He doesn't deserve to die in a sewer."
They reached the Brooklyn Bridge access tunnel.
An old maintenance handcar sat on the tracks. A rusty seesaw on wheels.
"Get on," Jason ordered.
O'Malley and Jason took the handles. Up. Down. Up. Down.
The car creaked into motion. They rolled out over the river, hidden inside the maintenance tube beneath the main deck of the bridge.
Through the slats, Jason could see the water below. Black and oily.
They reached the other side—the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
O'Malley guided them to a nondescript warehouse near the docks. He unlocked the padlock with a heavy clank.
"Home sweet home," O'Malley said, pushing the sliding door open.
Inside, it was cold, but dry. The space was filled with wooden crates stamped AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT.
Alta collapsed onto a crate, shivering. Senior hugged his pillow.
"Is there food?" Alta asked weakly.
"Beans," O'Malley said. "And whiskey."
Jason walked to one of the crates. He pried the lid open with a crowbar.
It wasn't plows.
It was guns.
Thompson submachine guns. Fresh from the factory, gleaming in the cosmoline grease.
"Agricultural equipment?" Jason asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It's a rough neighborhood, boss," O'Malley grinned. "I figured we might need a harvest."
Jason picked up one of the heavy guns. The metal was cold in his hands.
He looked at the map pinned to the wall.
Manhattan was burning. His accounts were frozen. His reputation was ash.
He wasn't a billionaire anymore. He was a warlord.
"Turn on the radio," Jason said.
O'Malley fiddled with the dial of a wireless set in the corner.
Static. Then, a voice cut through.
Adolf Hitler.
"...the tyrant has fled! Prentice has abandoned his castle like a rat!"
The roar of a crowd filled the speaker.
"But we have the Prince! We have the heir to the throne of blood!"
Jason stiffened.
"Tomorrow at dawn," Adolf's voice boomed, "The People's Court will convene at the Public Library. John D. Rockefeller Junior will stand trial for crimes against humanity."
There was a pause. A dramatic, terrifying silence.
"And the verdict," Adolf whispered, "is already written."
Jason slammed his hand onto the crate.
"He's going to execute him," Jason said. "He's going to execute Junior on Fifth Avenue."
"Let him," Alta said from the corner. She was eating cold beans from a can with a silver spoon she had hidden in her boot. "Junior is weak. He let himself be captured."
"If Junior dies," Jason said, turning to her, "the Trust dissolves. The government seizes the assets. We lose everything. Including the bomb."
He racked the bolt of the Thompson gun. Clack-clack.
"We're not businessmen anymore, Alta," Jason said. "We're going to the library."
"To read?" Senior asked, looking up.
"No," Jason said. "To rewrite the ending."