Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  “Okay, I’m in,” Binkowski said.

  “Me too.”

  “And me.”

  “Good,” the man in the suit said, satisfied. “You’ve made a wise choice. Now,” he said, tapping on his holophone, “this is the guy you’re looking for.”

  Knile took the chance to raise his eyes, just enough to see the men on the other side of the garden. The man in the suit was holding his holophone between thumb and forefinger, turning it slowly in an arc before the men so that they could each see the display in turn. As it rotated in his direction, Knile could clearly recognise the face on the screen.

  It was his own.

  His blood turned to ice in his veins and he inwardly shuddered, suddenly nauseous.

  “Get a good look, boys,” the man in the suit said. “Burn it into your memory. Don’t forget it.”

  Knile ducked his head back down and kept moving, his pace more urgent than before. He felt sick to his stomach. He had to get out of here. He had to get away from these men before their conversation ended and they began their search.

  Knile and Ursie made it to the end of the row and stuck to the shadows as they headed over to the stairwell, wasting no time before proceeding inside. Once they were clear, Ursie struggled to catch up as Knile bounded up the steps.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “Was that you they were after?”

  “Yes,” Knile replied grimly.

  “And? What does that mean?”

  “It means that things are about to get even harder.”

  25

  Duran stalked out of the barracks on Level 190, all too aware of the baleful glares at his back. As he reached the elevator he heard a muttered curse and then laughter, the pathetic bleating of those who mocked him. He told himself that it didn’t matter, that those men were beneath him. Still, he jabbed his finger at the call button impatiently. He wanted to get out of there.

  He’d never been liked by most other Enforcers, the ones he should have been able to call his own.

  It had been no different at the barracks down in Link. In the few years he had spent there, demoted and shamed after the incident in the Atrium, the Enforcers stationed with him had viewed him as an interloper, someone merely passing through on his way to somewhere else, somewhere even worse than Link.

  He couldn’t blame them for thinking that. In some ways they had been right.

  Duran had never been content with taking the easy path that most of the other Enforcers had chosen to tread. They seemed more than happy to use their power and status to make their own lives more comfortable. After all, it was easier and more profitable to take bribes than to bring the real criminals to justice, wasn’t it? And it was less likely to ruffle the feathers of one’s peers to boot. The other Enforcers never trusted Duran because he wouldn’t drink from the same cup. He was a do-gooder and they despised that.

  Duran didn’t view himself as some kind of saint or a pillar of justice. He wasn’t trying to appeal to a higher moral code than the other Enforcers. For him, it was purely about the work ethic. He believed in doing his job and doing it well, no matter what vocation that was. It was something his father had taught him from an early age, an ideal that he still aspired to now.

  “Alec,” his father had said, peering at him through his spectacles with sharp hazel eyes, “I don’t care what it is you become. You could be an astronaut or a fighting man or a politician. That part doesn’t matter. Just make sure that, whatever you choose, you do it right. You be the best at what you do. If it’s a janitor you become, you swing that broom with pride.”

  Now all these years later, here he was, still trying to be the best at what he was – an Enforcer, one of those who had been entrusted to maintain the peace and keep the law. To bring criminals to justice. Maybe the others in these barracks had forgotten what it really meant to do the job, or had never cared in the first place, but Duran hadn’t. And he never would.

  Of course, Duran had a knack for rubbing people up the wrong way as well, a habit of doing things that his colleagues disliked. Like storming into the barracks in the dead of night and waking everyone up. They hadn’t liked that at all. But how else was he going to locate the men who had been on guard when Knile Oberend walked through the gates?

  Then, once he had found them, the men had offered no help whatsoever. That was no great surprise. They had been more concerned with getting their eight hours’ sleep than trying to remember the details of one innocuous man among hundreds who had passed through the gates. Duran had been given the same response by all of them – no, they hadn’t seen the guy, so fuck off. The expletive changed from man to man but the tone had not.

  The elevator finally arrived and Duran stepped in, his finger hovering over the button that would take him to his next destination. The doors closed, shutting him off from the view of those at the barracks front desk, where those on night shift had glared at him with palpable dislike over the rims of their steaming cups of coffee. Alone in the confined space, he told himself to be calm. To think.

  What am I doing? Time is wasting and I’m no closer to Oberend.

  He’d already spent hours interviewing Enforcers and trawling through surveillance footage to try to track his target’s movements, bouncing from one level to the next like an errant pinball with no sensible plan of attack. No fixed destination. He was wasting time and he knew it.

  “Think,” he said to himself. “Get inside this guy’s head. What would he be doing right now? Where would he go?”

  He thought back to the hunt several years ago, the time he’d been entrusted to find Oberend when the man had first appeared on the Enforcers’ radar. Duran’s ability to track Oberend had not been terribly good then, either. Most of the information he’d gleaned about his target had been gathered in the aftermath of the explosion, in those few days he’d had to pick through the pieces of what had happened and try to put them back together again.

  A few days. That was all he had been given before the hierarchy had reviewed his handling of the case and summarily demoted him, casting him out of the Reach entirely.

  “So let’s start there,” he said, and punched the button that would lead him back to his office.

  A few minutes later he was back at his desk, tapping his finger on his bottom lip as he examined the footage from that day in the Atrium. People were running and screaming, many on fire, emerging from the billowing haze of smoke and staggering about, begging for help, collapsing. Lying unmoving as they succumbed to their injuries. Duran tried to ignore the horror contained in those images as he manipulated the controls, reversing the feed and turning back time, diminishing the field of destruction until it disappeared in the bright flash of the initial explosion.

  Now he was viewing the moments before the bomb had gone off. People were milling about, curious and excited as they passed through the Stormgates into the inner sanctum of the Atrium, blissfully unaware of the carnage that awaited them in a few moments’ time. They clustered around the elevator that led to the roof, to the Wire, astonished that they’d been admitted through the gates without passkeys, as two Redmen stood in their way, evidently confused by the sudden influx of people.

  Duran wasn’t a lip-reader, but he could imagine the conversations of those people all too easily.

  Are they letting everyone through?

  Do you think we can leave? Is the Consortium throwing open the gates?

  Are we finally getting out of here?

  They began to press in, the crowd getting thicker by the second, and for the first time one of the Redmen shoved the first in line backward. Duran recognised people who would, moments later, be rolling around in flames. People with limbs blown off. People who were dying.

  Duran froze the image before that happened, then sent the feed back even further, to when the first group of citizens were heading through the gate. He edged along frame by frame until he found the ones he sought.

  Knile Oberend and the woman in the blue dress.

  H
e sat and stared at them for a moment. Oberend stood there with his hand outstretched, but the woman wasn’t moving. People streamed past them as the Atrium began to fill up, and a crowd of only a dozen or so quickly became thirty. Forty. Word spread fast. They’d all materialised within a matter of minutes, hoping to try their luck at the Stormgates.

  Duran flicked the image aside and went searching through his notes. He hadn’t looked at them in a few years, and now, reading them back, they almost seemed like they’d been written by a different person. Perhaps it had been the shock of what had happened that had clouded his thoughts, but the notes now appeared stilted and incoherent. Not like him at all.

  He found the details of the woman. Mianda. That was her. How could he forget the name? She should have been indelibly imprinted on his mind, just as her partner had been.

  Unfortunately there had not been much in her background that had helped unravel the mystery of what had happened. She’d engaged in some small-time theft and there was one charge of obstruction of justice at a protest outside the gates of the Reach a few years back, but that hadn’t offered any help. During the initial investigation Duran had also found footage of her hanging out with Oberend in the days leading up to the incident, but there was nothing untoward in her interactions with him. No clues that might help unravel the mystery.

  He flicked back to the image in the Atrium – Oberend with his hand outstretched, Mianda standing a short distance away. That one frame told him more than all of his other notes combined.

  Mianda had meant a great deal to Knile Oberend. Maybe she was the only thing that had meant anything to him.

  That information was something that Duran could use.

  Unfortunately, right now it didn’t help him get any closer to his target.

  So how do I find him?

  Duran studied the rest of the frame. He glanced over the shimmering Stormgates, checking each of the citizens in turn, racking his brain for ideas. Then his gaze fell upon the two Redmen standing before the elevator.

  Duran snatched up his desk phone and punched in a sequence of digits, then leant back in his chair as it began to ring. He glanced at the time display on his terminal. It was an ungodly hour, and he knew that whoever picked up on the other end of the line wasn’t going to be impressed, just like those in the barracks hadn’t been earlier.

  Still, he had to try.

  There was a soft beep as the call was answered, then a slight pause. The camera had been disabled at the other end, so Duran was left staring at a blank screen.

  “Consulate Three,” a female voice said finally, thick with sleep. “This is Verhoeven.” Duran picked her age as being somewhere in her forties, although the huskiness in her voice could in part be attributed to her evident grogginess.

  “Good morning, Consul Verhoeven. My name is Inspector Alec Duran and I’m–”

  “What’s the emergency, Inspector?” Verhoeven interjected impatiently.

  “Uh, the emergency…” Duran said, trying to buy some time as he considered the best way to phrase his response.

  “Yes, the emergency. You’ve reached the consulate emergency number, and this better be good,” Verhoeven said irritably. “This better be fucking amazing to be calling at this hour.”

  “Of course,” Duran said. “I’m calling to tell you that we’ve detected a high-level target making his way through the Reach. We believe that he could pose a serious threat to the safety of Consortium assets.”

  “And?”

  Duran raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Inspector, you may have noticed that the Consortium has taken a number of steps to protect itself from those who wish to do it harm, the first of which is the presence of a specially trained military force. You may have seen them from time to time. Big guys with guns, dressed in red. Guys who turn anything that crosses their path into dust.”

  “Yes, but–”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “This particular target caused considerable damage to the Atrium several years ago, and we believe it may happen again. If we knew when he was likely to arrive there–”

  There was a scoffing noise on the other end of the phone. “I get it. You want to see our passenger manifests.”

  “Those would help, yes.”

  “You fucking guys,” Verhoeven muttered disdainfully. “Always trying to stick your noses into our business.” She sounded very much awake now, and her voice became hard-edged. “Let me tell you this in the simplest way I can, Inspector Duran. Enforcers are not privy to any dealings between the Consortium and its clients. We will not supply you with details of passengers or cargo, and we will not supply you with details of when said passengers and cargo are due to be shipped. That information is strictly confidential, and no amount of fucking weaselling on your part will make me give it to you. Is that understood?”

  “So you’re not concerned about the safety–”

  There was another soft beep to indicate that the call had ended. Duran grimaced and then dropped the phone back on the desk, massaging his eyebrows as he tried to figure out where he was going to go from here.

  Meanwhile, Oberend was out there, and Duran was still no closer to finding him.

  26

  Dawn was almost upon them.

  The old man in brown gripped another length of thick black PVC pipe and hefted it up onto the pallet, which by now was getting close to full. He stood back and surveyed his work, his bony arms planted on his hips, seemingly satisfied with the load. Then he lifted his faded khaki sun hat and scratched his balding pate, weighing up his next course of action. He disappeared back into the storage shed and moments later returned dragging another length of pipe noisily across the concrete, his mouth set in a lopsided grimace as he struggled with the weight of it.

  “Shit,” Knile muttered from his position behind the thatch of tomato vine. He brushed his fingers against the leaves to afford himself a better view of the old worker.

  “He’s still there?” Ursie said, slumped on the floor behind him. “How long is this going to drag on? We’ve been waiting for ages.”

  “I know,” Knile said.

  “Why don’t we go back and find another path?”

  “We can’t,” Knile said. He glanced at the elevator located not far from the old man, not for the first time that morning. “We need to go up here.”

  “So what are we going to do? This codger could stay here all day.”

  “I’m working on it,” Knile said, lowering himself back down again and returning his attention to his holophone. “The systems here are a mess. The labels are all wrong. It’s making it difficult for me to find the right device.”

  Ursie shrugged. “You’re running the show. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  She closed her eyes and allowed Knile to do his thing. Outside, the sun was turning the sky a dark shade of pink, and the natural light was beginning to make the illumination from the hanging bulbs redundant. It wouldn’t be long before the grow lights came on, Knile realised. Hiding was going to be more difficult from now on.

  That was why they had to get past this old man who, by mere virtue of the fact that he had come in early to do his work, was now an unwitting sentry, prowling around before the elevator like a withered, toothless watchdog.

  Ursie sat with her eyes closed for such a long time that Knile decided she had drifted off to sleep.

  “Why did everyone leave?” she said softly, her eyes still closed.

  “Huh?” Knile said. “Are you talking to me?”

  Ursie opened her eyes. “Why did everyone leave Earth?”

  “In the evacuations?”

  “Yeah.”

  Knile stopped what he was doing for a moment to consider.

  “I guess it had something to do with the polluted air, the contaminants in the water, the people getting sick from the toxins…”

  “Yeah, but it’s not as if they can breathe the air on Mars, right? It’s not as if they can walk around o
n the surface of Titan without breathing apparatuses and suits. Those environments are even more inhospitable than here. So why go there?”

  “Because those are all planned habitats,” Knile said. He poked his face into the tomato vine again, but the old man was still there. “Those places you’re talking about are utopias. They’re regulated. The population and food supplies are controlled, the energy is renewable and the resources are properly managed. But this place?” He looked out the window at the twisted hues of the chemical sunrise. “It went to hell in a handbasket. There was overcrowding, disease, crime. Greed, corruption. It was everywhere. We burned through our oil, cut through our forests. The whole place was too far gone to salvage. That was when economies went to shit and governments just fell apart. In the end, people weren’t just running from the poisons in the air and in the water. They were running from each other.”

  “And now you’re running, too,” Ursie said with that fake smile. “Livin’ the dream, right, Knile?”

  “Going someplace better, that’s for sure.”

  “Aren’t you sad about leaving people behind?”

  Knile paused again and looked at her. The question seemed sincere, and it made him think. What was he leaving behind? A lot of problems, and a lot of people who didn’t like him very much, that was for sure.

  But he also thought of Talia sitting in her basement, going about her work day after day with little chance of escape. He thought of Roman as well, the boy who had looked up to him for so long, and whom he had let down in return.

  “In a way, I suppose I’m leaving some people behind,” Knile admitted. “Everyone who goes up the Wire leaves someone behind, I guess. What about you?”

  Ursie stared at him, perplexed. “I’m not leaving.”

  “Yeah, but if you were, who would you be leaving behind?”

  Ursie scratched at her neck self-consciously. “No one. I, uh… I never really had anyone to look after me.”