The Cityborn

The Cityborn: Prologue

The Cityborn is my eighth novel for DAW Books, releasing July 4, 2017. You can buy the full book from wherever you like to buy books, but to whet your appetite, here's the prologue and first two chapters. Visit my website at www.edwardwillett.com for more information about this and all my books.

Enjoy!

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 Tiern, 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 . . .