by Rob Boffard
My cheeks are burning with guilt. All I can think of is Prakesh, lying next to me in our bed in Chengshi, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly parted as he sleeps. I can see the image clearly, as if I’m right there next to him.
I hear Carver suck in a quick intake of breath. My first reaction is to glance at Knox, but he’s still out, his chest trembling. When I look back to Carver, I see a strange glint in his eyes.
“Carver, listen, I didn’t mean—”
“All right, what if I had this thing?” he says, then stops. “But it’s not ready yet,” he mutters, more to himself than to me.
“What?” I ask, more confused than I’m willing to admit. I have to repeat myself before he looks up.
“The station’s pretty empty now, right?” he asks.
I think of the thousands killed by Resin, and shudder. “It’ll still take us too long to get to Apex.”
“No, no, listen: anybody left alive – they aren’t going to be hanging around in the corridors, are they?”
“Probably not, but what difference does it make?”
“It’s perfect,” he says. “I should have thought of this ages ago. Sorry about that.”
He jerks a thumb at Knox. “Can you pick him up and bring him to the main corridor? I need to go and check on something.”
I try to make sense of everything he just said, and come up with nothing. Carver doesn’t wait for my response; he’s already heading for the doors.
“Carver, wait up,” I say. I only just manage to catch him before he runs into the passage. “Carver.”
“We need to get him to Apex in under an hour, right?”
“Yeah…”
“So I might have a way to do that.” He starts to move again, stops. “Only: we might die.”
“Might?”
“It’s no more than a ten per cent chance. Twenty, tops.”
“Excuse me?”
“But I think it’ll work. Almost positive.”
“Carver, now would be a great time to tell me what’s going on.”
Every second we stand still seems to make him more anxious. “OK, you remember I told you I was working on something big?”
A dim memory surfaces, of our conversation following Mikhail’s arrest. “Sort of. Why?”
“Well, this is it. The thing that’s big.”
Without another word, he bolts.
“Get him to the main corridor,” he shouts over his shoulder. “I won’t be long.”
“Carver!”
But he’s gone.
With nothing else to do, I head back into the operating theatre. When I first woke up here, it was clean and ordered – Knox’s perfect little world. But it’s a mess now, with bottles and medical supplies scattered across the floor.
My mind keeps coming back to the kiss. Every time it does, I push it away. I can deal with it later. I have to. If I give it any attention right now, I’ll collapse completely.
It takes me a few minutes to work out how to move Knox. I find myself wondering if it’s even safe to move him, if that’ll just add to what Resin is doing to his lungs, but it’s not like I have an option.
He’s my height, but he’s heavy. It’s impossible not to think of the expression dead weight. I have to psych myself up into hoisting him, getting my arms under his and linking my hands across his chest. He moans as I lift him up, and a thin streak of black drool trickles down his chin. I almost let him go, desperate for the slime not to touch my hands, but I force myself to hold on. My legs protest as I drag him out of the room, and his rubber-soled shoes screech as I drag them across the floor, his legs bouncing whenever he hits the edge of a metal plate.
If I wasn’t so exhausted, if my neck wasn’t starting to hurt from looking back over my shoulder to see where I was going all the time, this would almost be funny.
Somehow, I manage to get through the corridors surrounding the operating theatre. By the time I reach one of the larger corridors, my entire body has become a conductor for pain, a magnet for it. Aches and stinging and a needling itch in the back of my knees.
I drop Knox, and he groans again as his head thumps off the metal. The corridor is deserted. No Carver.
I sit up against the corridor wall, relishing the chance to let my body do nothing for a few minutes, keeping an ear out for any sounds. If the Earthers come, I want to be ready. But outside of the rumble of the station, the only sound is that of a flickering light further down the corridor, the filament buzzing and clicking. After a few moments, it sputters out, leaving that section in darkness.
Knox isn’t the only reason to get to Apex quickly. If the Earthers get to the ship dock, if we can’t get the people in Apex to mount a defence, they’ll overwhelm the remaining stompers, and take the Shinso. I still don’t know how Okwembu, and her knowledge of old operating systems, is going to help them. If we can’t defend the dock, it won’t matter.
There’s a sound. One I can’t place. I open my eyes.
It’s a rumbling – distant and dull, like a mythical creature at the bottom of a cave. Is it the Earthers? I bend down to grab Knox and drag him to a hiding place, but then I stop. The rumbling isn’t human. It sounds almost like a monorail car. But that’s not possible – there’s no monorail down here.
The rumble gets louder, revealing details of itself, unfolding into a high-pitched, whining growl. It’s not static – it ebbs and flows, revving like …
Like an engine.
Carver.
The blackness further down the corridor is obliterated by a blinding white light as something comes round a corner.
The rumble becomes deafening, and it changes to a squeal as the light rushes towards us. Gaping, I flatten myself against the corridor wall. If this isn’t Carver, then my life is about to get even more complicated than it is already.
Just as the light seems like it’ll swallow us, it swings round, revealing what’s behind it. The roar cuts off, grinding back to a low rumble as whatever it is skids to a halt, turning sideways in the corridor. It’s Carver, and he’s on top of a machine so strange that I have to focus to take it all in.
It has to be seven feet from front to back, with four black wheels. They’re huge, each of them a foot and a half across, bracketing a crazy collection of piping and wires and cables, jumbled together like a child’s puzzle. At the centre of it all, a massive, grooved steel block. A pipe shooting out of the back spits black blurts of smoke.
Carver straddles the body, his legs splayed out alongside him. His hands are gripping a control stick. He’s grinning like a madman.
He shouts over the rumble of the engine: “Like I said. I was working on something big.”
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I don’t get a chance to say anything. The thing’s engine gives a massive, grumbling belch and cuts out, spitting a final blast of smoke out of the tailpipe. The corridor stinks of oil, and the silence is almost as loud as the engine was.
Carver thumps the engine block with his foot. “No, no, start, you stupid thing.”
He reaches down and yanks on a cord, pulling it once, twice. The motor gives a tiny puttering cough, but fails to catch.
“What. The hell. Is this?” I say.
“When it works, I call it the Boneshaker.” He’s off the vehicle now, crouching down, doing something clanky to its innards.
“When it works?”
“Yeah, well, I sort of only turned it on for the first time ten minutes ago.”
“Carver…”
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, without looking up. He’s gone back to his tinkering, his hands jammed deep in the machinery. “How did he manage to build a working four-wheeler in six months? Ow!”
He pulls his hand back with a start. There’s a small gash in his thumb, already bleeding. He sucks on it briefly, and plunges it back in.
“Actually, I was thinking that you’ve finally gone insane,” I say.
He continues as if I hadn’t said anything. “I just w
anted to see if it could be done. I got tired of building little gadgets. I knew I had to work on something bigger.”
“So you built this? Where did you get the parts?”
“Here and there,” he says. “Trade for this, bribe someone for that, steal the other.”
I open my mouth to speak, then decide that there’s nothing I could say that would sum it all up.
I settle instead for hauling Knox upright. Unbelievably, it feels like he’s got even heavier. When I lift him up, he starts coughing, his unconscious body shuddering as his throat tries to get rid of the gunk in his lungs.
I have to shout at Carver more than once to get him to help. We manage to get Knox sitting on the machine. His body is barely upright, his head lolling on his chest. I step back, my skin caked with sweat.
With a muttered prayer, Carver gives the cord another abrupt tug. This time, the motor jumps into life. Carver yanks his hand away, and then the thing is running – coughing and spluttering, but running. Carver pumps his fist and vaults onto the machine, landing in front of the comatose Knox. He tweaks the throttle and backs the machine up, lining it up straight, and then jerks the throttle, revving the engine.
“Climb on,” he says. He has to raise his voice to be heard above the roar.
I jab a finger at Knox. “You sure he can ride this thing? It might make him worse.”
“It’s the only shot we’ve got. This is the fastest way up the ring.”
“You’ll never get through the crush!”
“There is no crush!”
I stare at him. Because he’s right. There isn’t. Not any more. The crowds of people that normally clog every public space in the station are gone. They’ve barricaded themselves inside their habs, shutting themselves away. For the first time in forever, the corridors and galleries are empty.
Before I can stop myself, I’m on top of the machine. Boneshaker is right – the vibrations from the motor travel up through my body, rattling my skull. With Knox and Carver on the thing, there’s barely enough room for me – my backside is hanging right off the body.
Tracer routes unfold in my mind, corridors and passages that I’ve run a million times. Jumps I’ve done, walls I’ve climbed, stairs I’ve leapt down. My favourite spots. The ones I always try to avoid. All spread out in my mind, like a map on a desk, one I can run my finger over and plot the best route.
I reach forward and wrap my arms around Carver’s midsection, sandwiching Knox between us. He trembles, and I feel a dot of Resin speckle the skin of my arm.
“We’ll need to go up through Tzevya,” I say. “We don’t have time to go the long way round. Go to the end of the corridor, then hang a left.”
“What about if we go down by the air exchangers?”
“My way’s faster.”
Carver guns the throttle and the world goes blurry.
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I’ve never moved this fast. Not on a monorail car, not when I ran the Core, not on my fastest, most effortless sprint, when it feels like a fusion reactor is powering my legs. The speed is intoxicating, a thing of raw power, exploding through my body as the Boneshaker bucks and shudders underneath us.
I have to use my feet to stay on, hooking them into the guts of the machine, desperately trying to keep my balance. For a few seconds, I forget everything: Knox, Resin, Royo, Okwembu, the Earthers. Prakesh. I’m laughing, a furious, joyous howl that I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I don’t know if Carver can hear me, and I don’t care.
We shoot out onto one of the catwalks, high above the New Germany gallery. There’s nobody in sight. My mind is racing ahead of us, and my laughter cuts off abruptly as I realise where we’re heading.
“Whoa, whoa, Carver, stop!” I shout.
He looks over his shoulder. The movement travels down into his hands, and the Boneshaker jerks a little. “What?”
“I forgot! This’ll take us down the stairs.”
“It’s the only way. Trust me!” He twists the throttle harder. The machine surges ahead, and it’s all I can do to keep my grip while holding Knox up.
The entrance to the far corridor looms, and then we’re through it, in blackness for a few seconds before we emerge into a lit part of the corridor. Carver jerks the stick to the side, and it’s only when the right wheels jerk upwards and rumble over something that I realise why. We just ran over someone. A body. I flick a glance back over my shoulder, but the corpse is nothing more than a shadow, fading fast.
Carver shouts over his shoulder. “Hold on tight!”
I lift my ass off the seat to get a better look. The stairs are short, no more than ten steps, but steep, and coming up fast. Carver twists the brake – until now I hadn’t realised that there was a brake – but then changes his mind and guns the throttle again. I barely have time to process what Carver is doing before we’re airborne.
We’re going so fast that, for a moment, we don’t actually fall. We just keep flying forward, and it’s only when we’re about to collide with the ceiling that the Boneshaker drops. The thought comes to me – much too late – that we should have slowed and then driven down the stairs. I feel the ceiling just touch the top strands of hair on my head. In a weird way, I’m too fascinated to be scared – everything is moving at light speed and in slow motion, all at once.
Carver leans back, pulling the nose up. We slam into the ground with a bang that shakes the corridor. The wheels squeal as they try to keep contact. Carver is screaming, fighting with the control stick. I see him tweaking the throttle, desperately trying to speak to the skid – and then we’re out of it, running straight, zooming down the corridor and laughing so hard with relief that I think we’re going to fall right off. I’m astounded that Knox hasn’t snapped out of his unconscious state; then, I wish I hadn’t thought about it.
“Next time,” I shout, “go down the stairs!”
“How about next time you take us somewhere where there are no stairs?”
“I’ll try. You know where to go from here?”
He nods. “You’re not the only tracer on Outer Earth.”
As the words leave his mouth, the Boneshaker’s engine gives an almighty cough, bucking so hard that it lifts me off the seat. It sputters and dies, and we coast to a halt at a T-junction, bumping up against the wall.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Carver says. He slams his foot down on a lever on the side, then does it again, but each time the motor refuses to catch, giving a sullen clicking sound before fading. The Boneshaker has left enormous, curling black lines on the floor, like question marks.
“Told you we should have gone down slowly,” I say, dismounting. My legs are trembling.
“And where’s the fun in that?” He follows me, bending down to ram his hands into the motor. The metal is steaming slightly.
It takes me a few moments to realise that Knox has lifted his head. He’s staring at me, his eyes rheumy, almost clouded. Little black bubbles pockmark his cheek and lips, dotting his pale skin.
He opens his mouth, the words dropping out it like hanging spit. “Wuh. Wuh. Where. Where are wuh.”
“He speaks,” Carver says, not looking up.
I try not to meet Knox’s eyes. “Getting you to safety.”
“Wuh-why?”
“You die, I die, remember?”
He doesn’t have long left. I close my eyes, trying not to pay attention to the hot, itching stitches. “Carver, we’re running out of time,” I say.
“I know, I know. It’s the batteries.”
“Just fix it.”
“I’m trying.”
That’s when I hear the voices. They’re distant, and it’s impossible to make out the words, but it sounds like they’re coming from behind us.
“Carver?” I say.
“I hear ’em.”
The Boneshaker gives another roar, briefly catches, then dies. That nasty clicking sound ratchets out of the engine, followed by more curses from Carver as he gets ready to try again. I drop down
into a combat stance, my hands at my sides, ready to take whoever comes first. Buy some time. That’s all you can do.
It’s a gang. I see it the second they come round the corner, colours out, vibrant purple, splashed across bandanas and tattoos. I don’t know them, but it’s easy to see what they’ve been doing. They’re carrying boxes of stuff – food, parts, batteries. I guess it’s easy to go looting when the station’s locked down.
The leader is a short, stocky guy, with a shaven head and an ugly, badly healed facial tat in the shape of a scythe. He comes up short, staring in confusion at the Boneshaker. Then he grins and turns to his buddies, barking something at them in a language I don’t understand. The ones carrying boxes put them down, and start to saunter towards us. They don’t have any weapons that I can see, but I can tell they’re ready to fight, and that they know how to do it.
Right then, the Boneshaker catches and holds. Hot smoke swirls around my legs, and I leap back on before I can think about it, wrapping my arms around Carver a split second before he guns the motor.
I’m sitting a little forward this time, squashed against Knox, but I feel hands brushing my back, scrabbling for a hold.
The front of the Boneshaker rises upwards, like an ancient beast rearing to attack. For one insane second I think I’m going to fall right off it. Then I see that the gang leader has grabbed onto the back edge of the Boneshaker and is being dragged along. His boots judder as they fly along the floor, bouncing off the metal.
I reach back to push him off, but Carver jerks our ride to one side. The man swings around, smashing into the corridor wall with a sound like a melon splitting open. He tumbles away, lifeless.
We’re heading back the way we came – the Boneshaker came to a halt facing the wrong direction, and Carver didn’t get a chance to turn around. “We’re going the wrong way,” I say.
“Better hang on, then.”
Leaning to one side, he tweaks the brake, twisting the control stick and spinning the Boneshaker so fast that it nearly pushes us right off. Somehow, I manage to keep both Knox and myself on.
