Through Glass Darkly: Episode Two by Peter Knyte Page B

way,’ I had to explain. ‘They’re designed only to be used by someone that knows what they’re doing, and to reset in order to preserve power and the lenses themselves whenever they’ve not been in use for a bit.’
    He’d tried them anyway, but even with his natural aptitude he still managed to get completely confused with-in moments, and after half an hour of struggling we both eventually had give-up on the idea.
     
    ‘Thanks for the offer Ashton,’ he said, taking the rig off and handing it back to me. ‘But if I can’t get it straight when I’m not under pressure, there’s no hope of me figuring it out once we’re in the field.’
    I had to concede it was a fair point, so let the matter drop, and just hoped they wouldn’t have been needed.
    By the time we got the Bowry, the search teams were all ready to go, so the car just dropped us off in turn at our entry points. Each team would consist of three people, two armed police and a sanitation department worker who knew the sewers in this area well enough to act as a guide.
    I’d been paired up with a Blake and Shelby again while their sergeant, Riley was re-cooperating from our run in with Ariel in the old boat-yard, that had resulted in him coming away with a broken leg.
    They were both looking pleased to see me despite the slightly fraught nature of our last meeting, and immediately introduced me to our guide an older gentleman of eastern European extraction by the name of Leopold, but who insisted we call him simply Leo.
    Despite being dressed in a set over overalls, Leo somehow managed to make them look smart. They were immaculately clean and pressed, as was the white shirt he wore, complete with bow tie.
    He had several pairs of wellington boots, along with safety hats and some long rubberised gloves for us to put on before he showed us the way down into the sewer tunnels beneath the road, leading the way and then talking us down the darkened ladder and onto a broad ledge at the bottom.
     
    ‘You’re lucky to be doing this in the summer,’ Leo explained, as he shone the beam from his electric torch up and down each of the main channels that fed into the junction. ‘I know everyone up above thinks it must smell more down here with the heat, but it’s the water level that’s more important than anything else.
    ‘The main lines like this one run from north to south,’ he continued, as if giving a lecture on the subject. ‘Just like the streets and buildings above us, with the slightly smaller cross channels linking between them, similar to the cross streets above, and of course we’ve got a combination of storm drains and sewers, so when it rains these sewers turn into some pretty fast flowing bodies of water.
    ‘Needless to say, if we were down here in the winter or spring, you’d need a lot more than a pair of boots and some gloves to keep you clean and dry.’
    It was certainly rather ripe smelling when we got down next to the flowing water, but it was nowhere near as bad as I’d expected, and within minutes of being down there with Leo politely rambling on to himself, I’d practically forgotten about the smell as we started making our way eastward down the cross-channel we were supposed to be following.
    I’m not sure what I was expecting when Platt and Jenkins were talking about forming a line and trying to, forgive the pun, flush the creature out of the sewers and into the East River. But it certainly wasn’t a fifteen foot tall and twenty five foot wide brick lined sewer system that had raised walkways on each side and even handrails and street signs in places, not only that, it also seemed remarkably . . . clean.
    The plan we’d come up with on the surface had been a relatively simple one. All the search teams would simply start at the same time on the north-south sewer line that followed the Bowery. We’d make our way eastwards, check-ing out any smaller culverts or side channels as we went, and then when we reached the next