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said with a grin. “Please mind the step.”
    Petal took Gerry by the elbow and led him in. They took a seat, and Petal slid in next to him.
    “Read up, code monkey,” Petal said. “We got a lot of evil to dump.” Petal sat next to Gerry on the plastic seat and looped her arm around his. “This is gonna be fun,” she said with a wicked smile.
    Gerry returned her smile, though his was pained and lopsided. Anxiety grew within him like hungry, urgent bacteria.
    “What the hell have I got myself into?”
    “The salvation business, man,” Gabe said.
    “The pay’s crap, but the satisfaction is good for the soul,” Petal said with a wink.
    “Okay, let’s do this. But once you’re sorted, I want you guys to help me reach my family.”
    Petal and Gabe remained silent as the door to the train slid shut and the electric motors whined up to speed. They headed deeper into the disused tunnels. Gerry turned his head and watched the light of the platform shrink to the size of a pinhead before finally disappearing, taking his old life with it.
    A new light shone in the far distance: a light beyond the city, into uncharted territory, into a land that no one he’d ever known had ventured since the rebuild. It was forbidden. The penalty was death—like almost every misdemeanour against the Family—and he, along with two people he’d known for just a few hours, were hurtling towards it in a train that should have been mothballed with all the others over fifty years ago.
    There was a name for the place he was going: Purgatory. All his life he was told there was nothing out there. The Cataclysm had wiped out everything, and yet despite that, despite the evidence to the contrary, here he was rolling to a frightening new phase of his life with two anomalies, outliers, freaks.
    When he saw his reflection in the window, he realised he looked just like them.
    His new life was starting. A man reborn.
     

Chapter 5
     
    T he train came to a stop at a decrepit platform a few minutes later. Old posters peeled from tiled walls. Mould colonised the paper, creating a map of its own organic tracks. Dark shapes skittered along the platform in the angle where the wall met the floor. Rats. Living creatures. Something Gerry hadn’t seen in City Earth. There were pets and animals, sure, but certainly not living, just constructs to make people feel comfortable. It worked, of course. Not that he knew any different. A cat running on a Cemprom chipset and AI logic was enough for most people, but Gerry could tell there was something missing there: a lack of a spark, real randomness. But that was to be expected. The degree of AI in those things was barely above children’s toys. Still, most people were happy with them, happy to settle for a close approximation.
    “What do they eat?” he asked.
    “Sometimes people try to escape, find these old tunnels, and well… not many make it. Don’t have a train like us, see,” Petal said. “We’re getting off here, Gez. Need to get you kitted out.”
    Petal and Gabriel alighted from the train and headed towards one of the mould-covered posters.
    “Wait here a sec, Gez,” Petal said, as she approached the wall with Gabe.
    A simple hand gesture from her elicited a red LED beam from the wall. It scanned her eye, and the poster, attached to a door, opened. Petal waited for Gabriel to crawl up into the dark gap before turning back, beckoning to Gerry.
    He barely squeezed his large frame into the tunnel. Only the sliding of Petal’s and Gabriel’s shoes against the stone surfaces gave him any sense of direction. For hundreds of metres he crawled on hands and knees, occasionally scraping the crown of his head against the rough, low surface.
    “How long does this go on for?” He tried to hide the strain in his voice, but the tremble was still evident. His breath became shallow, the confines of the small space crushing down on his psyche, making his chest feel as if someone stood on it, squeezing the air