by Rob Boffard
I’ve never been there, but sometimes I like to imagine myself on Earth, running across fields of grass, under a sky so blue that it hurts to look at it. The sun, warm on the back of my neck as I go faster, and faster, and faster. Until I’m no longer running. I’m airborne.
I open my eyes.
Just in time to see the metal pole swing out from behind the corner and slam into my chest.
For a second I really am airborne, lying prone in mid-air. I crash to the ground, my bones feeling like they’re going to vibrate out of my skin. I try to scream, but all I can manage are thick, wheezing gasps.
The one with the pole is just a fuzzy black blur; he twirls the weapon in his hand, like he’s out for a stroll. Another spasm of pain crackles across my chest, and I begin to cough: a deep, hacking, groaning noise that causes the pain to spread to my abdomen.
“Good hit,” says a voice from the left. There’s laughter from somewhere else, behind him.
Then there are six of them looking down on me. More Lieren – different from the ones who were chasing me. I cough again, even worse this time, like there’s a dagger in my chest.
The one that hit me looks around nervously. I glimpse a dark red wolf tattoo on his neck. “Come on,” he says, looking back down the passage. “Get her pack.”
Someone wedges a boot under the small of my back and flips me over, forcing another cough out of my body. A foot on the back of my neck slams me into the floor before two others take my arms, yanking them backwards and sliding my backpack off.
My mind is racing. There should have been other people in this corridor by now. I can’t be the only person here. Even if they didn’t intervene, they might be the distraction I need to get away. And how did the Lieren set this ambush in the first place? They were behind me. I only came this way because the catwalk was blocked, and I had to …
Oh. Oh, that’s clever. The group of girls on the catwalk. They were sent directly into my path, either paid or forced to do what the Lieren wanted. They knew they weren’t fast enough to catch me, so they funnelled me right to them. I’ve run cargo to the Air Lab before – they’d know the routes I take, where I’d go and what I’d do when I was chased. Played like a fool, Riley.
“Anything else we can get? Her jacket?” I hear one of them say. Anger shoots through me; if they take my dad’s jacket, I’ll kill them. Every one of them.
“Nah, it’s a piece of shit. The cargo’ll be enough.”
They yank the pack off and force me back down. Someone reaches into my jacket pockets and grabs the batteries. The boot is lifted off my back. I raise my head and see the kid with the pole tossing a battery up and down, a weird little grin on his face. He has my pack dangling from his other hand, and he and the other five are already moving away.
I push myself to my feet, chest aching with the effort, forcing myself to stay silent. I gain my balance, then start towards them, shifting onto the balls of my feet to lower the noise in the cramped corridor. Quick steps.
It’s the one with my pack I’m after, and at the very moment he realises I’m behind him, I bring my right hand up in a lunging strike. I’ve balled my hand into a fist, with the knuckle of my index finger protruding slightly, and I’m aiming right for the base of his skull. Amira’s tried to teach me about pressure points before, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to put it into practice.
My strike is true, hitting the tiny pocket of flesh where the skull joins the spine, and I feel something under my fist crack. He makes a strangled sound, and flies forward, my pack falling from his hand.
I have about half a second to appreciate my victory. Then one of his friends steps forward and socks me in the eye so hard that I just go somewhere else for a while.
When I come back – seconds later? Minutes? – I’m pushed up against the corridor wall, two of the Lieren holding me in place. My face is numb, and there’s blood in my mouth; I can taste the metallic edge, sharp and nasty. The one I attacked is still out on the ground. As I watch, he groans, twitching under the flickering lights.
The Lieren with the wolf tattoo is standing in front of me, rearing back for another hit. If this one connects, it’s goodbye Riley.
He throws the punch. I wrench my head to the side, and his fist slams into the metal wall, sending a resonant clang rattling around the corner. He pulls it back with a cry of pain. A flap of skin hangs off his middle finger, blood already welling up around the edges of the wound. His buddies relaxed their grip in surprise for a moment when I dodged, but not enough for me to break free, and now they force me back against the wall. “She’s got some fight in her,” growls one.
Tattoo is holding his wrist and shaking his hand back and forth. “You missed,” I say. “Can’t even hit someone standing still, can you?”
“Is that right?” he says, wiping his mouth with his uninjured hand.
“Yeah. Maybe you have these guys let me loose, and we go a few rounds. You and me. See who’s faster.”
“Think so? You’re kind of small for a tracer. What are you, fifteen?”
“Twenty,” I spit back, instantly regretting it.
“She’s ugly, too,’ says one of the Lieren holding me. “Like some nuke mutant from back on Earth.”
“Maybe she’s got some cousins down there right now. New life forms.”
There’s laughter, cruel and sharp. I try to keep my voice calm. “Listen to me,” I say. “That cargo is going to Oren Darnell. I’m under his protection in Gardens. If you take my cargo, you’ll have to answer to him.”
“The hell is Oren Darnell?” says the one holding my left shoulder.
“Don’t you know anything?” says the Lieren with the tattoo. “He’s in charge of the Air Lab.” But no fear crosses his face – instead, he looks amused, still flicking his wrecked hand. Not good.
“He’s got gang connections,” I say. “Death’s Head. Black Hole Crew. You sure Zhao would want you to jack cargo going in their direction?”
I’m half hoping that mentioning the name of Zhao Zheng, the leader of the Lieren, would have some effect. But Tattoo just laughs. “Rumours, honey. That’s all there is to it.”
“It’s the truth. I …”
And then Tattoo pulls out a knife, and the words die on my lips.
4
Darnell
Darnell marches across the Air Lab, his heavy footfalls ringing out across the metal walkways. He doesn’t need to check that Reece is following him; the guard is always close by, always there when Darnell needs him. His footsteps are as silent as his boss’s are loud.
There are algae pools lined up along the walkway, each one thirty square feet, with surfaces like murky glass. Darnell leans over one of them, idly running a finger along the slime.
“So what’s so urgent you had to pull me away?” he says.
Reece stops a short distance away, his arms folded. He glances left and right. There are plenty of other techs on the floor of the cavernous Air Lab, tending to trees or crossing the floor in tight groups, but there’s nobody close to where he and Darnell are.
“Well?” Darnell says, staring intently at the viscous water.
“What’s going on, boss?” Reece says.
Darnell says nothing.
Reece unfolds his arms, hooks his thumbs in his belt. “This isn’t some gangster who hasn’t paid us his water tax,” he says. “That was one of your employees. I can cover for you on most things, but even I might struggle to square that one.”
Darnell swings himself upright, pointing a finger at Reece. A tiny thread of algae comes with it, swinging back and forth. “You getting scared, Reece?” he says, stepping away from the tank. “You think I’m going too far?”
The guard doesn’t flinch, just refolds his arms.
“If I’m going too far,” Darnell says, “then maybe you should stop me. How about it, Reece? Want to try?”
Reece’s cool eyes look back at him. Despite his anger at the insubordination, a part of Darnell marvels at Ree
ce’s refusal to get scared. It’s why he’s kept him around so long.
“You’ve been distracted, boss,” Reece says. “For like a month now. And I’ve never seen you flip out on one of your own techs before, not like that. Whatever’s going on, you should tell me so I can—”
“Should?”
Reece stops dead.
“You just make sure that shipment gets here,” Darnell says. He sweeps his arm around to indicate the rest of the hangar. “Isn’t that what you do? I’m in charge of the Air Lab, Reece. I’m responsible for every molecule of oxygen that you suck into your lungs and every molecule of CO2 that comes out of them. You need to make sure I have everything I need to do it. That’s what you need to do.”
“I’ll handle it,” Reece says.
“Excellent,” Darnell says, resuming his march towards the control room, his mind already elsewhere. He’s got bigger things to worry about, like the other shipment: the little package Arthur Gray is supposed to deliver. If someone diverts that, they’ll have a lot more to worry about than his shitty knife-throwing.
5
Riley
It’d be nice to say it’s a beautiful blade. It’s not. The handle is patched and frayed, and the steel is laced with rust. If the cut doesn’t kill you, the infection will.
Tattoo holds it up, the metal catching the edge of the light. “You know,” he says, “we just wanted a score. We weren’t really planning on killing you.”
He rotates the knife, angling the point towards my eyes. “But now, we have to take something back. You can’t hurt one of us, and not expect to get it back in return. You understand, right?”
I try to say something, but I can’t look away from the blade. He leans in close. The point is now inches away. “What’ll it be? Left ear, or right?”
“Let me go,” I finally say. It’s almost a snarl. But the knife remains steady, its tip hardly wavering at all as it creeps towards my face. He starts flicking it gently back and forth. I can feel sweat soaking my shirt at the small of my back. I yank my body to one side, but the Lieren holding me are too strong. One of them plants a hand on my forehead, pinning me in place. “You might want to stay still,” he says.
Left, right, left, right.
There’s a yell from behind Tattoo. He straightens up, irritated, and looks back over his shoulder. One of the other Lieren, tall and gangly with sallow skin, is holding my pack. It’s open, and he’s frantically beckoning his buddies over.
With a sigh, Tattoo drops the knife from my face and walks over to him. “And now? What’s the matter with …”
His voice falters as he looks into the pack. He turns, blocking my view, holding a whispered conversation with his partner.
I don’t have the first clue about what’s in my pack. We never do. It’s one of the reasons why my crew gets so much work. You can send whatever you want, and you can trust us to never know about it.
I feel a flicker of hope: for the first time, it looks like it might just save my life.
After a minute of hissed back-and-forth with his friend, Tattoo signals to the ones holding me against the wall. Abruptly, they let me go. I collapse against the wall, try to rise, but my legs have stopped listening to me.
Tattoo is staring at me with an odd look on his face. He walks over, leans close, whispers: “This isn’t finished.”
He holds up a battery, bringing it as close to my face as he did the knife. “And we’re keeping these.”
The one who opened the bag lets it fall, and it lands with a thump on the floor. With a gesture from Tattoo, the Lieren set off down the corridor. One of them grabs the man I took down with the pressure-point strike, swinging him over his shoulders like a crop bag.
I don’t want to, but I stay down until they’re out of sight. I’m shaking, and it takes a minute for me to steady myself. Then it takes me another minute to rise – I nearly lose my balance when I do, and some blood droplets patter onto the floor ahead of me. My face is humming with pain, and my eye socket is on fire. But I can’t worry about that now. I’ve lost too much time already.
As I move to grab my still-open pack and zip it shut, I can’t help but see what’s inside. It’s the box Gray gave me to deliver – barely the size of a fist, like something you’d keep a small machine part in. The top of the box has been opened up by the Lieren. Inside is something wrapped in layers of opaque plastic padding – a blurred shape, vaguely familiar.
And from the bottom right corner of the box, slowly leaching into the protective foam, I can see a thin trickle of blood.
I want to close the bag, to zip it shut and finish the job and not think about the thing in the plastic, but my hands falter. The blood is still there, pooling on the foam. The corridor is deserted.
I have to know.
Slowly, I push a finger into the plastic wrapping. It’s thick, clammy-cold against my skin. The wrapping is tight against the cargo, the edges catching as I lift it up. But then my fingers brush against something soft and slick, and the blurred shape in the bag leaps out at me.
I’m staring at it, willing myself to look away, but there’s no mistaking it.
It’s an eyeball. I’ve been carrying an eyeball.
6
Darnell
Darnell has a table at the back of the darkened control room, surrounded by battered chairs. Every tech who works there knows not to move them, not even an inch, or to say anything about the suffocating temperature their boss likes to keep the room at.
He’s sitting at the table, going through reports, when Reece brings the storage technician in. The man hovers off to one side, a small box under his arm, waiting for Darnell to notice him.
Eventually Darnell waves him over. The tech scurries across the floor, holding the box out in front of him like a shield. The heavy lettering on the front reads AIR LAB CONSIGNMENT 6/00/7-A MOST URGENT.
“Found it, Sir,” he says. “Just got misplaced, that’s all. Temporarily.”
Darnell barely glances at him. “And the knife?”
The man swallows. With a trembling hand, he pulls the knife out of his pocket, careful to hold it by the blade. He places it flat on the table, lined up next to the box.
Darnell tilts his head. “You got fingerprints on the blade.”
“I …”
“You sharpen it, like I said?”
“Yes, Sir. Like you said.”
An urge takes Darnell then, hot and demanding: the urge to test the knife’s sharpness by sliding it into the man’s stomach. His fingers twitch. It would take less than a second. In and out.
Instead, he waves the man away. The tech backs off, nodding like his neck is already broken. Darnell returns to his reports, scowling. As much as he hates to admit it, Reece’s words have stayed with him. He needs to be more careful. He’s worked too hard and waited too long to get distracted now.
He tears the top off the box, wiggling his hand inside. His fingers brush machined glass, and he pulls out a tab screen – smaller than the regular units, with a bulbous antenna poking out the top. He switches it on, flicking through the menu options. A smile creeps across his face like oil moving through water. His connection in Tzevya sector did his job.
The storage tech nearly trips over the door as he leaves the control room, and the thunk of his foot on the metal lip makes Darnell look up. He’s pleased with himself for not giving in to his urges. Besides, the tech will get what’s coming to him soon enough. Along with Reece, and the other techs, and everyone else on Outer Earth, if he can just keep it together. Discipline, that’s the key. Control.
7
Riley
A dry heave builds in my throat, boiling up from my stomach. My hand jerks, and the box is jolted sideways. It slips out of the pack, and the thing slides out of the plastic and hits the floor with a muffled plop.
It rolls in place, the trailing optic nerve stuck to the floor on a meniscus of blood. It’s not looking at me, but I can see the iris, dark blue, surrounding the inky-black dot o
f the pupil. I have to force myself to look away, and as I do the heave becomes a full-blown retch. Doubling over, I push it back, forcing it down.
You will not throw up. Not here.
Never look at what you carry. It’s the one big unbreakable, the one thing Amira has told us over and over again. There’s a reason for that: it gets us work. People trust us. We’re not going to steal your cargo, or even care what it is.
Plus, not knowing keeps us alive. Tracers, us included, sometimes carry bad things. Weapons, contraband, drugs concocted somewhere in the Caves and destined for sale in a distant sector. Be nice if we could live off doing hospital runs, but we can’t. It’s better if we don’t know. Realistically, I know I could have been carrying severed eyes for years and never known. But actually seeing it, touching it …
Crouching, I use a corner of the plastic to grip the nerve, gently tugging at it. The iris rolls towards me, and I force myself to look away. The retch comes again, and I have to close my eyes and inhale through my nose for a few seconds, before looking back. More details begin to jump out. Tiny, milky-smooth clouds in the pupil that I hadn’t noticed before. Thin arteries, running off the iris like fine pen lines.
Movement. Voices. Without thinking, I grab the eyeball. It’s soft and pliable in my grip, like putty.
Don’t squeeze it too hard or it’ll pop.
I have to force back another heave. I shove it back into the box and zip my backpack shut as the owners of the voices come round the corner.
Two stompers. They’re officially known as Station Protection Officers, but nobody calls them that any more. I’m surprised to see them; there aren’t too many around these days.
