Danger's Halo: (Holly Danger Book 1)

by Amanda Carlson

“Won’t be hard,” he muttered. “It’s the only way I can breathe without passing out. Does everything you own stink?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The view through my visor was granulated, shapes hazy and hard to differentiate, but it was better than nothing, and I was used to it. Even though the city was in blackout, the moonlight filtered through all the crap in the sky to provide tiny usable amounts of light. Most buildings contained enough holes to let the beams in. There wasn’t anything standing in the entire world that hadn’t been affected by the cataclysmic events that took place over sixty years ago. It was lucky we were even here at all.

  We crept up two flights of stairs, Daze doing exactly what I asked, not letting a meter get between us. If I hadn’t been so worried about him, I would have been irritated by having a shadow. I’d done this exact trek a hundred times before, but never as a protector.

  That wasn’t who I was.

  My mother died when I was eight, and like Daze, I’d never known my father. I did whatever it took to keep myself alive. My life had been one giant on-the-job-training lesson. It was clear that Daze hadn’t traversed that same road. He’d had a mother up until fairly recently.

  We made it ten more stories. This building was the gateway into the canals, which was why my crew chose it as our entrance. The streets on the south side of this building had collapsed, filling in with water after the sea levels rose. The streets to the north were still intact, for whatever reason, and the incline higher. I didn’t question anything anymore. It was here, so we used it.

  On the twelfth-floor landing, I grabbed on to Daze’s sleeve, dragging him forward, settling my ear against the door. He didn’t make a peep, which impressed me.

  No noise from the interior.

  This old megascraper was a remnant of what the city used to be before the dark days, complete with all the fixings: interactive wall screens, solar window panels, bio-printers, and 3-D hologram capabilities, to name a few. But it wasn’t so mega anymore. The top two hundred stories had been sheared off during the hurricane and gale-force winds that assaulted this city for weeks following the meteor strike, leaving only about thirty stories standing, which was actually fairly tall for this city. The average was between five and eight, although others were as high as fifty or sixty. Seekers occupied the top usable floors, but we’d secured the stairwell to the twelfth, which was why we were standing here.

  I cracked the door, edging my helmet away from my ear so I could listen. I had a noise amplifier in my pocket, but it was quiet enough for me to hear without it. I was tempted to pull out a phone and ask for a status report, but thought better of it. Staying off the grid was best for now.

  Deeming it clear, I slipped through the opening, tugging Daze along with me.

  We entered a long hallway that had once housed a business of some kind. I’d never, in all my years using this route, figured out what that business had been. Debris and trash littered the floor, like everywhere. Cleaning it up would’ve been an insurmountable task. A pile of rat feces sat on top of an old shoe to my right. Rats. They could survive anywhere. Too bad rat hide wasn’t a usable staple. Neither was cockroach shell, although people had tried. Too brittle.

  We reached the other end quickly.

  This was where things got a little tricky.

  I turned to Daze. “There’s a steel beam out there”—I gestured vaguely behind me—“that will lead us from this building to the next. It’s wide and sturdy enough to hold both your weight and mine, but there are zero handholds within your reach. You’re going to have to hold on to me. You up for this?” It was a rhetorical question. He nodded, his too-large helmet sliding down and up over his forehead. He repositioned it with his hands. “Good. Follow me,” I instructed. “I also advise that you not look down. Not that you’ll see anything, because it’s dark and murky, but keep your eyes on me and stay close.”

  Instead of following, Daze didn’t move.

  I glanced back. His eyes, which were the only part of his face I could see, were confused. Daze was in a daze.

  Reaching inside my vest, I took pity on the kid, bringing out my trusty cord. Everything I needed for basic survival was tucked away in my vest someplace, as a pack was too cumbersome to lug everywhere. If I needed more, I had survival kits tucked away all over the city, stuffed with enough supplies to last me a week or more.

  The cord was compact, yet strong. I’d salvaged it at least fifteen years ago. It was three meters long and less than two centimeters thick, made of something super strong and stretchy. Bender had deemed it my miracle rope. None of us had ever seen the likes of it before or after. We deduced it’d been left over from before the dark days, but nobody could be sure.

  Trinkets came and went, but this one was a staple.

  I tied it around my waist, cinching it tight, handing the loose end to Daze.

  When he didn’t reach out to take it, I clutched his wrist, settling the cord inside his palm, curling my fingers around his, coaxing him to make a fist.

  When that didn’t work, I reached down and settled a hand on his shoulder, bending over to meet his unfocused eyes. “Do they call you Daze because you get dazed when you’re worried?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “Kid, I’m going to need you to snap out of it.” I shook him lightly. “Daze, wake up.”

  He blinked a few times. “Yeah.”

  “‘Yeah’ is not good enough.” I held back listing all the reasons why. “I need you alert and ready to move. Right now. Plunging to your death out there is not an option.” I nodded over my shoulder toward the outside. “We’re twelve stories up, and we just thwarted your demise a short time ago. Ending it now, by tumbling off a rafter, is a much less dramatic death than splattering yourself all over the gorge, but it would still achieve the same effect. You’d be dead. So, here, hold on to this end of the cord.” I tied it around his wrist and stuffed the rest into his hand. “Now you’re attached to me, and I’m attached to you. I’m not going anywhere. Your only job is to hold on.” I stabilized the sides of his helmet with both hands, tilting it up so he had to look straight at me, careful not to slide it off his puny head. “Daze, honestly, this is the easy stuff. If you’re going to survive in this city, you have to want to survive. From now on, everything we do is easy. If you let your brain get in the way, it won’t work.”

  “Okay,” he said in a thin voice.

  “Okay, what?”

  “I’ll hold on.”

  “Is what we’re doing easy or hard?”

  “Easy.”

  “That’s the spirit.” I didn’t give the kid time to reevaluate. Instead, I turned and headed around the corner, straight toward the gaping hole in the wall, a window with no glass, which was basically every window in the entire city. But this opening had a steel beam spanning the fifteen necessary meters to the next building.

  I’d used it a million times before. We had no idea who originally put it there, but we’d happily commandeered it.

  Every pathway we used in the city had been secured by me or my crew—meaning nobody else had access to our routes without breaking through some kind of barrier or encountering multiple security measures that would get them killed. Sometimes we used paint and symbols as warnings, just in case anybody became confused as to why they shouldn’t go in, and sometimes we didn’t.

  On the rare occasion a route was compromised, we stopped using it until it could be secured again, or we moved to another location.

  I stepped out on the steel, Daze shuffling in line behind me, his hands clutching my waist. I secured my grip on the long rope strung above our heads that was too high for Daze to reach. “I’m planning on traversing this quickly, so keep up.”

  I knew exactly how many steps I had to take to hit the end.

  Twenty-three.

  We were thirteen steps in when Daze’s voice cracked. “Is that water below us?”

  “I told you not to look down, kid.” I sighed. It was a why-did-I-agree-to-sustainer exhale. “And yes, that’s wat
er. It glints a little off the metal in the dark.”

  “They say creatures live in the water,” he said. “Big, scary serpents with knives for teeth and daggers for claws.”

  I chuckled. “Not sure who they are, but nope, no monsters in the water.” I refrained from saying, All the monsters you need to worry about live on land, kid, but I didn’t want to freak him out any more than he already was. I was nice like that.

  Once at the end, I jumped down into the next building and reached back to guide Daze by the elbow to make sure he made it with no stumbles.

  “How do you know?” Daze asked as I untied the rope from my waist and his wrist and stuffed it back in my pocket. “Have you ever been in the water before? Like swimming in it?”

  “I have, but that’s not the reason I know.” I scanned the hallway in front of us, my attention elsewhere. “You’re not supposed to question me, remember? Come on. We have three more buildings to cross, and we’re wasting time lingering.”

  Two steps in, a noise came from up ahead.

  And just like that, my well-honed instincts took over.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I wasn’t used to reacting to a threat with company, but I made do. I had Daze out of the hallway and into a safe room in less than fifteen seconds. My crew and I tried to secure places on every floor of every building we used. Sometimes the space was a storage closet. Sometimes it was no bigger than a hollowed-out indent shielded by a removable wall. This one was an old office.

  One of the few that had a window to the outside. No glass.

  This one provided an exit via a long cable that swung idly in the breeze, knocking softly against the building. I’d never had to use it before, but I was happy to see it. Before I could decide if we should make a quick exodus out said window, a tentative knock came from the door.

  Not just any knock. It was a signal tap. One that indicated the coast was clear.

  Meaning I knew this person.

  Tat-a-tat-tat. Pause. Tat-a-tat-tat-tat.

  “Holly, are you in there?” Darby’s voice was strained.

  I flung the door open with a confused look on my face as I hauled him inside, shutting it behind him. “What the hell are you doing here?” I whisper-yelled less than ten centimeters from his face. He shut his eyes against the spray of spittle, even though he was wearing a visor. Darby didn’t venture out of his hole very often—and when I said not often, I meant never. He was our techie. He was kickass at his job, but hated life outdoors more than just about anyone I knew.

  I hit a button on the bottom inside of my helmet, and low red light flooded around us so we could see each other better. We used red or blue light for almost everything, because it was harder to pick up at a distance. “Why are you here? Is there an emergency?” That was the only thing that would’ve gotten Darby out of his comfort zone.

  “Well…” he hedged.

  When he didn’t readily offer anything up, I said, “Darby, enough with the nonverbal. What’s going on?” I grasped him by the shoulders. “Tell me it’s not Claire. Please let it not be Claire.” When he didn’t respond quickly enough, I shook him. My crew knew I wasn’t good at bad news. It took me a while to shake it off.

  Like, years.

  “Everyone is fine,” he assured me, turning on a small button light attached to his shoulder. A halo of blue effused around us. “The issue is…you. We were worried about you.”

  “Me?” I asked, dropping my arms and taking a step back. “Why me? I’m always out after blackout.” Most of the time. “And I just talked with Bender on the phone.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t give him a signal indicating everything was fine.”

  “Why would I? We signal when things are shitty, not when things are solid.”

  “Yes, but he gave you the ‘people are after you’ tone.”

  “I know.” I crossed my arms, starting to get defensive. “That’s why I left Luce behind and headed here. I’m on my way to six.”

  “Six is good,” he agreed. “But we thought maybe you were under duress, so you couldn’t tell us what was really going on.”

  “Duress?” I wasn’t someone who needed a babysitter. It was just the opposite—I cleaned up messes, I didn’t make them.

  “Well, because…” He angled his body to the side in an obvious slanting gesture, glancing around me, his eyebrows twitching. “The proximity monitors picked up two bodies.” He shot me a pointed look. “Two means trouble, especially when everyone’s accounted for. Who’s your friend here?” He straightened and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “Oh, fuck.” I tugged off my helmet, brushing my hair away from my face with an irritated hand. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t specify two.” I didn’t because I’d never been a twosome before. Ever. “I made you leave your hole and everything.” I smiled, playfully socking him in the shoulder. “But it was mighty nice of you to track me down here. Last time I checked, you were allergic to water, and you made it here so quickly. It does the heart proud.”

  Darby’s gaze tracked to the floor. “I was…actually out anyway,” he confessed. “I was just a few buildings away when Lockland made contact.”

  I folded an arm in front of me, my helmet dangling from my fingers, a soft red glow still radiating from inside. “You were out—as in out out, not just looking out your window or wistfully thinking about going out?” I’d never been to Darby’s actual residence before. We kept our private lives private, because it was safer that way.

  “Yes. I was out. I was going to tell you…” His voice trailed off, which was very Darby. Nonverbal endings were his specialty.

  He wasn’t ready to discuss his whereabouts, so I dropped it. For now. “Okay. Hanging around here is not advisable. I have to get Daze to six. The kid’s exhausted, and I need to pump him for more information as soon as he wakes up.” I turned and winked at Daze, who scowled back, his helmet in his hands, a red glow issuing from it. He’d figured out the light. Smart kid. The headgear looked gigantic next to his small body. Mental note: Salvage a kid helmet as fast as possible.

  “Daze, is it?” Darby asked, half to me, half addressing the kid directly.

  “Yep,” Daze answered back.

  Darby smiled. “Man of few words. I like that.” He addressed me. “I’m coming with you. It’s too late to get home now…and I don’t…enjoy blackout.” He reached for the doorknob, but before he could open it, I smacked my palm against the cool metal, holding it shut.

  I leaned forward, shaking my head. “For safety reasons, you follow me, not the other way around. You make it into the canals maybe once a year, I do it weekly. I’m not used to working as a twosome—and certainly not as a threesome—but I’ll figure it out.” I glanced between the two so everyone knew where they stood. “We do this my way. Any complaints?”

  Darby snatched his hand off the knob, having the decency to look abashed. “Of course not. You’re totally right. I’m not used to this. You go first.”

  “We’ve accumulated too much time in here, especially since we just came from a building that houses seekers.” Daze made a gurgling sound, which I pointedly ignored. I wasn’t getting into another monster debate. “Sometimes they hear things and decide to check them out. They can’t get through the barricaded stairway and would likely stumble off the beam if they tried to cross it, but it’s been a long time since I reinspected either of these buildings. So, I go first, then I come back for the two of you.” I held up a finger. “If I don’t come back in ten—not twelve, ten—you take Daze out that window.” I gestured to the wide-open space where slanted drizzle pelted the floor and the cable was busy bumping against the building. “Get back to Luce and contact Lockland. I have three spare tasers and whatever else you need in the back of the craft. He’ll come get you.” I donned my helmet, switching off the light. I didn’t wait for Darby to respond, knowing he’d do exactly what I said. “Lock up behind me.”

  I slipped out the door.

  Crouching low to the ground, I
listened.

  This hallway was more exposed than the last one. At the other end, a small light was affixed to the wall covered by a screen. If Lockland had gotten wind of anything suspicious, the light would be red, and we’d be forced to go back the way we’d come, staying with Luce for the night.

  I debated pulling out my tech phone, but there was a reason Bender and Lockland weren’t choosing to use theirs. Either of them could’ve gotten a hold of me about the sensors picking up two bodies, but instead, they’d sent Darby here.

  This entire day was turning out to be unusual. Last time I had an unusual day, three people died. Two weren’t my fault.

  Halfway down, I backed myself into a large, square divot in the wall. It was most likely a space where a bio-printing meal machine had sat. Long before my time, the city had been mad for them. There were records that folks before the dark days had food and water aplenty, whenever and wherever they wanted it. No one ever went hungry.

  Sounded like fucking utopia to me.

  You couldn’t find any actual machines anymore. They’d been either destroyed or given over to the government directly after the impact.

  I leaned my head back against the wall and blocked everything else out, focusing on smell. I’d gotten good at detecting the telltale waft of a seeker. Since they spent their days either fogged or hunting for a fix, hygiene wasn’t high on the list.

  But it was more than that.

  After ingesting a steady cocktail of pharma-psychotics for so long, they smelled toxic. It billowed around them like a cloud of noxious fumes. Their scent was actually similar to the all-purpose cleaner provided by the government called Bang. It was billed as a plague killer, and we were instructed to use it on everything.

  A few more sniffs, and I deemed the air was free of noxious odor. I heard no surprising noises, so I ventured to the end of the hall. Once there, I removed the screen and saw the light was yellow.

  As I watched, it began to blink.

  Lockland was monitoring my movements. He knew where I was. This was a message to keep alert. We had a few live radar feeds that were strategically placed in the most dangerous areas. One of which was here.