Tracer

by Rob Boffard

  Amira steps from behind me, and reaches down to the floor. She straightens up, and in her hand is a small, twisted object, burned and black. She tilts it towards me. I can just make out Treasure Isl … on the tattered spine.

  There are no words.

  We slump against the wall. My stomach aches; the food and water we had have vanished. Whoever did this – almost certainly people trying to find me – would have taken them.

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  Amira’s silent for a few moments. Her body is still, her eyes staring into the distance. Then she rises, leaping to her feet in one movement, and says, “We stick to the plan. But we find some food and water, because we’re not making it to Gardens without.”

  I nod, and as I do so, something catches my eye. There’s another mark on the wall, different from the others. It’s as if someone rubbed their finger in the burn marks, then used it to paint a design. I lean closer, my hand resting on the wall next to it. The bottom half of a circle, with three slashes above it, running downwards from left to right. The slashes are uneven, as if drawn in a hurry.

  Codes and picture ciphers aren’t too common among tracers. Some of the other crews, like D-Company, have dozens of members spread out across the sectors. They use the ciphers as a way to communicate, marking out their territory or their stash locations. Unless you know what to look for, the ciphers are just one graffiti symbol among many. With small, tight-knit crews, you usually don’t need them. There are a few we still use though, and I’m sure I’ve seen this one before. I’m almost certain that it was left by Carver and the Twins.

  “Amira, look at this.”

  She turns, her head tilted to one side, and her eyes widen as she catches sight of the cipher. “That’s a Caves symbol.”

  I stare at it, my brow furrowed. “You sure?”

  Amira says, “That’s where they’ll be: in the Caves. Kev must have drawn it. His family still lives there.”

  I shudder. “When was the last time you went down there?”

  “Must be a year ago now. I don’t run to New Germany too often these days.”

  “Will they have food?”

  “They’d better.”

  42

  Darnell

  It’s not long before Darnell finds out why the sector is so quiet.

  The Apex amphitheatre is packed with a hundred people – techs, administrators, council members. Their mouths are open in huge, terrified Os, and their foreheads are shiny with sweat. Darnell can see them through the big transparent doors, but he can’t hear them. The doors are completely soundproof, sealed shut.

  “How did you do it?” he says to Janice Okwembu. “How did you get them in there?”

  Okwembu shrugs. “Called an emergency briefing. Everybody to the amphitheatre. Then all I had to do was seal the doors.”

  She stands, arms folded, looking at the door. Someone, a tech with thin eyeglasses, is hammering on it, pulling at the handles, screaming unheard curses. Okwembu looks back at him, impassive.

  “There must be others,” Darnell says. “This can’t be everyone in the sector.”

  “Oh, there’ll be a few people. I’m sure you’re up to taking care of them.”

  “What about the control rooms?”

  “Everything’s automated. The techs left their stations when I asked them to.”

  Darnell has to admit to himself that he’s impressed. When Okwembu came to him, two years ago, he struggled to believe that she really wanted the same thing he did. The end she had planned for the station sounded fascinating. Brilliant even. But even then, he was never quite sure that she’d go through with it.

  But when she’d told him about her frustration, her own anger at the people of Outer Earth, how they squabbled and fought and squandered everything they had, he began to see. She was proof that his idea could infect anyone: she was just as susceptible as any other sleeper. Someone sympathetic to the human extinction movement, but who felt betrayed by it, let down, frustrated with the council’s inability to get anything done.

  Okwembu turns away. Suspicion floods his thoughts, automatic and instant. He puts a huge hand on her shoulder, rests it there. He can feel her bones underneath her jumpsuit, fragile and angular. She stops, but doesn’t turn to look at him.

  “What’s to stop me from killing you too?” he says.

  “Because you owe me more than that.”

  “Oh, do I?”

  “I got you out of the brig. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”

  He laughs. “And you think that means I owe you something?”

  This time, she does turn to face him, and there’s a tiny spark of anger in her eyes. “You would have stayed in there until the end. When you screwed up with Foster’s eye, and got yourself arrested, you lost any chance of doing something meaningful. But I saw an opportunity.”

  “Opportunity?”

  She nods. And when she speaks again, there’s a thin, weary contempt running through her voice. “The people of this station need to feel fear,” she says. “They need to know what it’s like to be truly powerless. It’s no less than they deserve. And you do have that effect on people. Being arrested made you even more infamous than you already were.”

  Despite himself, he smiles.

  “So yes, you owe it to me,” she says. “I want to be here for the end. I want to see it happen.”

  “And our friend is on schedule?”

  She nods.

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “Perhaps. First, you need to make a broadcast. You can say you’ve taken Apex, that you’ve got the council hostage. Make people believe that you’ll kill us, one at a time.”

  As she turns to walk away, Darnell calls after her.

  “What about Garner?”

  “It was only a matter of time before Hale’s friends broke her out. All we have to do is wait and watch. They’ll lead us right to her.”

  “And we can see her?”

  Okwembu nods to the camera. “Apex isn’t the only place on the station where the cameras still work. I haven’t found Garner yet – she’s clever, staying out of sight. But if Hale really knows where Garner is, so will we, eventually.”

  “We should have Hale brought here. Give me five minutes with her, she’ll tell us everything we need to know.”

  “I prefer a more subtle approach,” Okwembu says. “For example, take the people in that conference room.”

  The people behind the doors have stopped hammering. Their eyes are flicking back and forth between Darnell and Okwembu. Darnell can see the true panic forming, the realisation that they’re not just going to be held prisoner. He can see over the shoulders of the people at the front, see those at the back running their hands over the walls, looking for an escape route that isn’t there.

  Okwembu turns to Darnell, and tells him how they should die.

  43

  Riley

  We leave the Nest, not bothering to latch the door behind us. There’s nothing left to take. Amira gestures me to take point, breaking into a full run as soon as I hit the corridor below.

  I’m trying very hard not to think about what I’ll find in the Caves. When they were building what was to become New Germany, they made some of it smaller. More cramped. Someone messed up the blueprints, or perhaps they just found that they were running out of time. Or money – that was a big thing back then. Whatever it was, what they ended with was a section of the station with only one way in or out: a single, heavy door.

  The place is a breeding ground for horror stories. The last one I remember was that the walls were too thin to keep the radiation out, meaning that anybody who lived there would end up riddled with cancer.

  You go down to get to there, dropping onto the bottom-level corridor and entering through a stairwell at the far end of the gallery. The door is closed when we reach it, and Amira and I both have to grab it and yank it open; the metal screeches as we pull it back, the heavy door taking what seems like an age to ope
n.

  “Riley, look,” says Amira.

  I’m focused on the door, and don’t realise she’s spoken until she turns me around and I’m staring right at Oren Darnell.

  The comms screen is just above us, suspended from a catwalk. Wherever the camera is, it’s looking down at Darnell from above. From where we’re standing, it’s a disorientating effect, as if the world has twisted on its axis. He’s standing in front of a door in a corridor somewhere, and there’s movement behind him, fuzzy and out of focus.

  His voice, when he speaks, is distant and tinny. “Apex is ours,” he says. “We’ve taken the station council, and we’re going to kill them, one by one, for your entertainment.”

  I find myself wishing for a glitch, hoping that the feed will cut out. No such luck.

  “Of course,” Darnell continues, “you might wonder what’s happened to everyone else in Apex.”

  He steps to one side. The movement behind him is still out of focus, but impossible to mistake. There are people, dozens of them, trapped behind a door.

  Darnell’s gaze finds the camera. His hand strays to a control panel on the wall, and works its way across it.

  “We’ve modified the station’s life support systems,” he says. “I can control them right from here. It’s very useful.”

  Something begins to happen to the people in the room. They start screaming wordlessly, pushing up against each other, as if they can knock down the walls through sheer numbers.

  “I’ve just vented their oxygen into space,” Darnell says. “Let’s see what happens.”

  There’s nothing we can do. Not a single thing. It doesn’t stop anger and an awful, furious despair from shooting through me. Without another word, Amira turns me around, and pushes me into the Caves.

  Inside the door, there’s a small entranceway, with multiple corridors branching off it. We take the leftmost one, Amira letting me take the lead. From the minute we enter, it’s as if something is gently squeezing my shoulders. Claustrophobia begins to build.

  There aren’t any main lights in the corridor, and the only illumination comes from the entrances to the dorms, set into the walls at regular intervals. It’s quiet, too: the Caves might be one of the most crowded areas on the station, but there’s hardly any noise.

  Here, nothing has a name – only numbers and letters. We’re in 1-B; it’s painted onto the wall, sprayed in huge, uniform characters. A few of the doors we pass have faces peering out at us. The women have wrinkles that are too deep and the men are almost all bearded, with dark eyes. Nobody tries to stop us, but as we reach the end of the corridor one of the shadows on the walls stretches and elongates, and a man rises from where he was sitting against the wall. He’s wiry, not large, but the space is tight enough that he blocks the corridor, and we have to stop. His greasy, dark hair frames a pitted face; I can’t place him, but he looks familiar.

  “You,” he barks, gesturing angrily. I don’t know if he’s referring to one or both of us, but before I can reply, he says: “What’s your business?”

  I hear the soft squeak as Amira shifts her foot backwards, lowering herself ever so subtly into a combat position. I’m about to speak, when she says, “You’ve got three seconds to get out of our way, starting now.”

  The man narrows his eyes and takes a step towards us, but I quickly raise my hands. “We’re tracers,” I say. “One of our crew lives here. Kevin O’Connell.”

  “Don’t know that name.”

  “Sure you do. You know his family,” I say, and then I realise where I’ve seen him before. I smile, and it disarms him for a moment, doubt crossing his face. “Come on, Syria. It’s been a little while but I know you haven’t forgotten about me.”

  He looks blank. “Riley,” I add helpfully. His expression doesn’t change, and for one heart-stopping moment I’m sure I’ve got it wrong. But then he relaxes, his shoulders dropping as he glances around the corridor. “Sure, Riley. Sure. I remember you now,” he mutters. “You took that message up the ring for my cousin a while back.”

  I nod. He’s still not exactly friendly, but behind me I feel Amira relax. “You’re not getting through here without a pat-down though,” he says. “Can’t be too careful.”

  “Is that really necessary?” says Amira “We’re a tracer crew. We’re not looking for trouble.”

  “Says you who was ready to brawl a minute ago,” says Syria. Amira sighs in irritation. Before she can say anything else, I hold out my arms as far as the corridor will allow, letting Syria check for weapons.

  “So, about Kevin. Know where we can find him?” I ask, as he runs a thumb between my ankles and my shoes, checking for blades.

  He grunts noncommittally. “Lotta Kevins down here.”

  “No, there’s not,” I say. “There’s only three. One of them’s a mental case, the other runs with a gang up in Chengshi, and the third is a tracer. Take a wild guess which one we’re looking for.”

  He starts checking Amira – she’s visibly irritated, staring pointedly at the ceiling. But as he runs his hands down her sides, he relents. “Yeah, yeah. Down in 3-C. Last door on the right. Come to think of it,” he says as he brushes Amira’s scarf back into place, “he came through with some other guys earlier. Friends of yours?”

  “One of them with an arm in a sling?” Amira asks.

  “Yup.”

  I catch Amira’s eye. So she was right about the code on the wall.

  “Sorry for the shakedown,” says Syria. “Things have been pretty hairy ever since that bomb went off. We’ve already had some trouble with those idiots from the D-Company tracers, trying to get in here.”

  “Oh what, Syria, you were going to take them down all by yourself?”

  He smiles, displaying blackened stumps where his teeth should be. “Who, me? No. Them, though …”

  He gestures behind us. At every door, there are people holding weapons: homemade blades, lengths of pipe, even one or two homemade stingers. Had we tried to fight our way through, we would have been dead in seconds.

  Syria stands aside, and we head to the stairs at the far end of the corridor. We’re not running, but every so often we have to flatten ourselves against the wall to let someone else squeeze past. Several times, we’re looked at with suspicion, but no one else stops us. We’re both on edge, and I’m aware of time slipping away. My stomach is a knotted ball of hunger. Around us, Outer Earth rumbles and creaks, the sound getting increasingly louder as we continue deeper into the Caves.

  44

  Riley

  Kev’s father is as big as I remember, and seems to open his mouth even less than his son. He greets us at the entrance to the hab, a huge, heavily muscled man, with arms thick from endless shifts lifting containers in the sector kitchens. He doesn’t say anything when he sees us, just nods, and gestures behind him. There, lying on a cot and looking poisonous, is Carver. Behind him are the Twins, leaning against the wall by the bed, their arms folded.

  And with them: Prakesh.

  Yao spots me, then so does Kev, and then everyone is talking at once. The relief at seeing everyone there must show on my face, because Kev flashes me a rare smile.

  Kev’s family are clustered one bunk down, huddled together: his grandfather is nothing more than a wizened face peeking out of a bundle of blankets. His mother sits on the edge of the bunk, holding Kev’s baby brother in her arms. She stands when she sees me, forcing a smile onto her face.

  “You’re the last, right?” she asks. The swaddled baby is held before her like a shield. She rolls the edge of the blanket between her finger and thumb, worrying the fabric.

  We nod, and she shouts to her husband, “Ira, that’s it. You can close the door now.”

  I turn to Kev. “What happened at the market …” I say, and I’m surprised to find my voice catching. “Thank you.”

  “Tell me you found our stash,” says Yao.

  “Saved my life. How many of those do you have?”

  “A few,” Kev says. As he turns his
head, his face catches the light, and I notice the bruises there, already turning an ugly purple. I reach up, gently running my hand over his cheek. He doesn’t flinch, but he must see the look on my face, because he shrugs and then looks away. “No big deal.”

  I catch his mother staring at me. Kev told me once that they wanted him to be a ship pilot, training at the academy in Tzevya, and they’re still not happy with how he spends his time. Or who he spends it with.

  Yao’s face is crusted with dried blood, but she looks OK. She smiles as well, and gives me a thumbs-up. Around us, the dorm is quiet, with only a few people sprawled on the beds. They’re either straining to hear us or doing their best to ignore us; right now, I don’t care. Kev passes around protein bars, some fruit, some water. I’m not proud about digging into his family’s food supply, but we can’t do anything unless we eat.

  “The Air Lab?” I ask Prakesh, as I swallow a bite of protein bar.

  “Wouldn’t let me in,” he says. “Lost my ID in the fire.”

  “That means Garner could be anywhere,” Amira says. “And with Darnell in Apex …”

  “The what now?” Carver says. Yao and Kevin stare at us, open-mouthed. Even Kev’s family start listening.

  “Darnell made it into Apex?” Yao whispers. “And who’s Garner?”

  “You don’t know?” I say, confused. “You didn’t see the comms?”

  “This is Caves,” says Carver. “Nothing works down here.”

  Kev looks sideways at him. “What?” Carver says. “It’s the truth.”

  Amira and I fill them in, starting with Darnell’s latest broadcast. After we’re done, nobody says anything for a minute. Carver’s face has gone pale.

  “How is he doing this?” asks Yao, rubbing her ankle. “You don’t just waltz into Apex. They’ve got security codes, scanners, watchdog programs, killer robots for all I know. Things that do nothing but keep people out.”