Chapter 45: Brooklyn
Brooklyn had always been an ultra-cosmopolitan neighborhood, but after the Great Wave, this particular attribute had skyrocketed.
Brooklyn was now a veritable sampler of the old world. America's renown as a melting pot was concentrated a hundred times in New York, and that concentration was at its absolute strongest in Brooklyn.
There was, unsurprisingly, a very dark streak to that reputation. Brooklyn had become the black market hub for the entire East Coast, a place where you could find absolutely anything you wanted, provided you had the funds to back it up—drugs, counterfeit currency, forgery services, human organs... and even humans themselves, for whatever purpose you might require.
The very worst corruption and perversion of human nature were on full display in Brooklyn, made worse by what had become a blurry line between legality and illicit horror by the year 2036.
When Alexandre's cab drew close to his destination, Alexandre didn't see some grim concrete jungle, but what appeared to be a pristine, upper-class neighborhood almost indistinguishable from Soho or the Upper East Side. The streets were clean, filled with well-dressed people and teeming with businesses of every kind. On the surface, this neighborhood seemed like a remnant of the old world, a place where people could pretend nothing at all was wrong.
But as in nature, a beautiful surface often hid a sinister interior. Alexandre wasn't interested in these pretty buildings and people of the surface. No, he was concerned with what lay beneath the skin of the city, in a very literal way. "Take me to the Clark Street station," he said, "and wait for me to return."
The cabbie wasn't terribly happy to hear that. "This isn't what I signed up for," he grumbled. "Every second I sit outside one of those portals to hell is another chance for one of those demons to rip me off!"
Alexandre rolled his eyes and deposited an even fatter tip than before in the car's fare account, which was emblazoned in several places inside the cab in the form of a QR code. "Just do it," he said.
Indeed, what interested Alexandre was not on the surface but underground. Shortly later, Alexandre's taxi pulled up in front of Clark Street station and let him out.
Alexandre descended the 24 meters to the platform, but rather than wait for the train, he turned and walked down an dark, unassuming tunnel that was simply labeled "Underground." The tunnel soon terminated in a wooden double door engraved with two skulls and a crown. It was strangely out of place, more what someone might expect from a pirate movie than real life.
Alexandre wasn't the first one there, either. A small line had formed in front of the door, and every minute on the dot, the person at the front of the line was permitted to enter. The people waiting were surprisingly varied—a man wearing a suit and a Rolex stood impatiently behind a young woman who looked like a college student, and in front of her was a bum covered in ragged clothing.