Danger's Race

by Amanda Carlson

  “Okay.” I nodded. “Let’s do it. If we mess up, we have six more.”

  Case laid his carefully on the table so that a portion of the bottom extended over the edge, the laser key in his right hand.

  Before he could make a cut, Darby said, “Wait.”

  Case stilled immediately.

  Darby took the thing off the table and turned it on its end, lightly tapping it a few times. He looked a little sheepish as he handed it back to Case. “I want to make sure whatever’s in there is at the farthest point away from where you’re cutting. Go ahead. But only sear a millimeter off the end, no more.”

  Case took the Eye Diff back. “I’ll do my best.” He arranged it again, then depressed the key. Light shot out, and Case made a quick motion across the end.

  A small disc of metal fell to the floor, tinkling as it bounced a couple of times and rolled away. Case brought the newly open diffractor up to his mouth and blew on the rim a couple of times, then upended the Eye Diff over his open palm.

  A small drive attached to a thin wire dangled out.

  “Don’t touch it,” Darby cautioned as he reached into a drawer for a small piece of cloth. “I should’ve thought of this before, but something that small is susceptible to corruption from any outside material.”

  Case moved his palm away, letting the thing hang in the air. It was less than a centimeter wide and so thin it looked like if you sneezed in its direction, it could disintegrate.

  “Move it over here,” Darby said. “Just a second, I have to get my macro-glasses. They’re in the lab.” He made a move to dash away.

  “I have a pair,” I said as I reached into my vest, withdrew my glasses, and handed them to Darby.

  He donned them and bent to the task of separating the wire from the tiny drive, using the cloth to cover his fingers. The chip was so tiny I wasn’t even sure the pico had a slot small enough for it.

  After a few minutes of trying, Darby said, “Got it.” With one hand, he immediately began punching a few keys on the pico. A small compartment separated from the top, rising slowly. He inserted the drive into a teensy slot and pushed it down.

  Maisie lit up. “Passcode: Roman numeral one dash three dash seven dash nine point forty-five.”

  Darby punched in the numbers. No one was going to question anything at this point.

  The pixels on the screen began to morph, coalescing into a 3-D map of the city, pre-dark days. “Whoa,” Daze said. “That’s so cool.”

  We all gathered closer. “Look, here we are,” Darby said, pointing at a blinking dot on the screen. “That’s the Emporium.” It was definitely the Emporium, because beneath the dot, gigantic letters that spelled out Pleasure Emporium were on top of the building.

  The map had been interactive at one point. The user would’ve been able to map their coordinates, get directions, and access live pictures of the city.

  Darby tapped a few more buttons, and a menu screen emerged.

  “Can you tell what we’re supposed to be looking for?” I asked. “Everything is so small.”

  Darby leaned closer, tapping in more commands, his nose almost touching the screen. “There,” he said finally, leaning back and pointing so we could see. “That little dot. It’s barely perceptible, but it’s definitely the marker. Roman Numeral One used this 3-D map for reference on purpose, so we could tell the distance between things, which is pretty genius, since the world no longer looked like this when he created it. I think that’s why he used AI, instead of just a regular mapping program. It can adapt, and it seems it just did, as it knew where we are, even though there is no satellite to mark our coordinates. It has to be responding spatially, which is incredible.”

  I pointed to the smaller dot. “That location looks like it’s inside Government Square. Can you zoom in?”

  Darby directed the cursor with his finger, and the image got closer. He did it several more times, until the dot showed clearly on the screen.

  We all leaned in.

  “By the looks of it, that’s inside a government building.” Darby spread his fingers on the screen, moving them side to side, and the map rocked back and forth. “Look, if I lean it this way, you can see it’s several stories underground.”

  I blinked, not believing what I was seeing. “Is that…is that a message on the wall? Enhance it more. Something’s written there.”

  “I can see it! I can see it!” Daze said. It was like we were on a treasure hunt that was created by someone years ago.

  “What does it say?” Case asked.

  Darby was the only one wearing the glasses to allow him to see print that small. “‘This location has been compromised and is heavily monitored,’” he read. “‘Enter at your own risk. Medi-pod scheduled for destruction 05.07.2159. Uncertain whether they will enact.’” He sat back. “2159 was eleven years ago.”

  “Wow,” I said as everything settled in my head. “We found a medi-pod, and if this is correct, there are six more locations hidden in each of the Eye Diffs. Even if this medi-pod was destroyed, like it says, there’s a chance that one of them is still intact.” I had to hold on to that thought. I took a few steps back and turned in a circle. “We have to get Bender and Lockland over here and open the rest of them. We only need one to work. If one works, we can cure people.” My brain began to go off in a few different directions.

  “There’s a chance they’ve all been destroyed, Hol,” Darby said, his tone sober, bringing me back. “Each one of them could have a message like this.” Darby read my expression, a low sigh escaping his mouth. “You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?”

  I moved forward. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re going to be visiting seven locations shortly,” he said. “But how are we going to make them work if they’ve been destroyed beyond repair? We don’t have those kinds of specialized parts, and there’s no way to get them. I mean, I can only do so much.”

  Daze piped in. “Roman references the machines in his notes. Walt is smart, too. I’m sure he’ll help you.” The kid’s voice held the hope we all needed.

  “See?” I placed my hand on Daze’s shoulder. “The answer is simple. We open those things up and uncover the locations. Then we go see for ourselves.”

  “And if none of them are operational?” Darby asked.

  “Then we make them work.”

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  DANGER’S

  CURE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Damn it!” I felt like kicking the side of the medi-pod in frustration, but that would achieve nothing. Instead, I turned in a circle, hands on my hips. This one was in worse condition than the last.

  Not only had the government destroyed the project Roman, the scientist from down South, had been working on to potentially repair the DNA in seekers bodies from the effects of Plush, it had annihilated it.

  The machines were in pieces.

  “We only have two locations left to check.” Darby announced what the group already knew. Lockland pried off the front cover and Darby began to inspect the internal mechanics. After a moment he said, his face directed inside the pod, “There’s not a lot we can salvage here. But there are some pieces intact.” His hands worked overtime, tugging out parts and dropping them into the box Bender held next to him.

  “Do you think there’s enough?” I asked.

  “Enough what? To make a whole machine from scratch?” he asked, his voice muffled. “No. And the key parts—the ones responsible for the actual reconstructing of the DNA, in the form of precision lasers, have been completely destroyed. Whoever was doing the damage knew what to do.”

  Of course they did.

  Lockland sat on a pile of debris nearby, his head bowed. We were all tired. We’d been at this for the last few days, working around the clock to find these machines. Not to mention trying to dodge strange UACs that kept popping up all over. “The last
two locations are going to be the riskiest,” Lockland said, which was also something we all knew.

  “We have no choice but to go after them,” I said, pacing the small room that used to be a lab of some kind. “We decided as a team to try the less fraught-with-danger locations first, but this is no surprise.” I gestured to the broken medi-pod, which had several large dents pocked in the top, cracked glass, and a control board that had been smashed to smithereens. “They didn’t even set any traps for us to find, because they were so confident in their destruction.” This particular pod was located outside city limits in an old building the government had once used as some kind of experimentation facility.

  Luckily, it’d been easy to find, since we had a 3-D map and an eye-diffractor-turned-tracker that blinked at us when we were within a thirty meter range.

  The last four machines had been found in similar places, broken down buildings with no locks or traps. Sitting in a room just like this one, thoroughly destroyed and left to rot.

  Case glanced inside the medi-pod. “The most likely place with a working machine is the one in basement of the government building—the same one we can’t figure out who’s controlling.”

  Our investigation in to the Bureau of Truth, the secret government agency who’d canceled this much needed medi-pod program, and had subsequently ruined these machines, had turned up nothing thus far.

  It’d only been a few days, however, and I had confidence, especially with Claire on the inside, that we’d get a hold of some information soon.

  Waiting wasn’t my specialty.

  In the notes that Roman had left behind after he died, at least five of the pods had worked while he’d been involved with the program. They had completely reversed the damaged DNA of seekers. Why the government had stopped the program and allegedly poisoned the scientists involved was beyond all of us.

  Not knowing what was going on was infuriating.

  Finding an intact medi-pod was the only chance that Mary, and all the other seekers had at survival. After flying thousands of miles trying to track down bunk information and nonexistent ingredients, this was the only cure.

  “We know who’s controlling that building,” Bender said. “The Bureau of Truth. Whoever the fuck they are. They have to be the same ones who’ve been tagging us over the last few days as well.” He was referring to the UACs that had popped up outside of his shop and Lockland’s residence.

  They were military grade drones, small, sleek, and hard to detect.

  In my twenty-seven years in the city, I’d never spotted anything like them. It seemed they’d come out of nowhere, and it meant that whoever was manning them was worried that we were on their trail.

  We were, but likely not for the reasons they thought…

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amanda Carlson is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, with a BA in both Speech and Hearing Science & Child Development. She went on to get an A.A.S in Sign Language Interpreting and worked as an interpreter until her first child was born. She’s the author of the high octane Jessica McClain urban fantasy series published by Orbit, the Sin City Collectors paranormal romance series, the contemporary fantasy Phoebe Meadows series, and the futuristic/dystopian Holly Danger series. Look for these books in stores everywhere. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three kids.

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  Nothing is created without a great team.

  My thanks to:

  Awesome Cover design: Damonza.com

  Digital and print formatting: Author E.M.S.

  Copyedits/proofs: Joyce Lamb

  Final proof: Marlene Engel