Winny began to scream. He was still screaming when the blade bit into the flesh on his chest and began to work its way downward.
22
Outside the window the streets of Link were quiet and dark. Deserted. Lamps in the apartment across the street that had flickered brightly in the early evening had dimmed over the intervening hours, and now they had gone out completely. Above the rooftops, the glittering lights of the Reach shone brightly against the starry sky.
Knile stepped away from the window and began to pace back toward the dim interior of the building. Nearby, Talia and Roman were also returning after leaving their lookout positions in other sections of the apartment. The place was still familiar to Knile. Years ago a failed demolition next door had caved in one side of the complex, leading to the evacuation of the residents. They had never returned. Knile had used the place as a hideout from time to time, and being not far from the Reach, it seemed as good a destination as any on their flight from their pursuers.
“Anything?” Talia said as she reached him. She shifted her feet uncomfortably, evidently still on tenterhooks after the harrowing events of the past couple of days.
“No sign of them. I think we’re good for now.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.” There was a bench next to her that she eyed longingly, but she stood firm, seemingly unable to bring herself to relax just yet.
“Take a load off, Tal,” Knile suggested.
“I will, I just…” She covered her eyes with her hand in a weary gesture. “I can’t believe I screwed that up over at the Reach.”
“You didn’t screw up anything,” Roman said. “Those guys jumped you. How is that your fault?”
“I should have given them the slip earlier.”
Knile took a step toward her. “There’s no point beating yourself–”
“Why did you come out through the gate, huh?” she said suddenly and with unexpected ferociousness. Knile stopped mid-stride. “You endangered yourself, Knile. You endangered Roman. That was stupid.”
“Calm down,” Knile said placatingly. “We’re okay here.”
“We’re not okay! We’re hiding in the dark while a bunch of thugs are out there waiting for us to stick our heads up.” She advanced at him with her fists balled as if she were about to lay into him. “Have you lost your mind?”
Knile reached out calmly and clasped her shoulder.
“There’s a very good reason why I came out through that gate. I’m never leaving you behind again, Tal,” he said softly.
The rage disappeared from her face, replaced by a moment of utter shock, and then she flushed in embarrassment. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes and she sobbed, then moved forward and wrapped her arms around his neck and embraced him.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, voice thick with emotion. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”
“It’s okay. You’ve been through one hell of an ordeal.”
She eased back and kissed him softly on the cheek, then ran her hand along the side of his face as she looked into his eyes. She smiled, then turned to Roman, moving over to embrace him in turn. The boy gave Knile an awkward look over her shoulder, but as a little smile spread across his lips it became clear that he appreciated the embrace.
“I still don’t get it, Knile,” Talia said as she turned back to him. “You had your ticket out of here. You were gone. What on Earth changed your mind?”
Knile eased himself onto the bench and dumped his backpack on a nearby table. He took a moment to frame his response.
“It’s hard to explain. I guess I had a ‘moment’.”
“A moment?” She finally collapsed onto the bench opposite, and Roman settled in beside her.
“Yeah. I realised that I’d been walking over people my whole life, even you guys, and that I was never going to find happiness by continuing down that road. Getting off Earth wasn’t the magic elixir. It wasn’t a solution. And it sure as hell wasn’t going to fix all of the bad things that have happened to me.” He shrugged. “I realised I needed to surround myself with good people first; otherwise the rest is meaningless.”
“Since when did Tal and me become good people?” Roman said, grinning.
“I figure you two are as close as I’m gonna get.”
“Thanks,” Talia said. “I think.” She settled back against the wall. “So how did this ‘moment’ of yours come about?”
Knile thought of Ursie on the roof, of the instant he’d realised that she was really a psycher, the chain reaction of thoughts and ideas that had resulted from that revelation.
“I had someone walk over me. Use me. I got a taste of my own medicine.”
“Somebody outsmarted Knile?” Roman said with mock disbelief. “It can’t be true.”
“Yeah, there was one person on Earth who was smarter than me, but she’s gone now, so I’m back at the top of the tree.”
Talia made a disparaging rasp with her lips. “Whatever.”
Knile briefly thought of Ursie again and wondered what she was doing. She was probably on her way to some exotic, far-flung destination by now. He wanted to feel animosity toward her, to hate her for what she’d done, but he couldn’t. She’d deceived and betrayed him, that much was true. But she’d also inadvertently made him realise something about himself that had changed his whole outlook on life, and for that he was grateful to her.
“Yo, Knile. You got any more bug bars stashed away?” Roman said, interrupting his train of thought.
Knile leaned across and rummaged through his backpack.
“One. We could split it.”
“I’m starving,” Roman said.
“Talia?” Knile offered.
“Sure. Break it up and I’ll take a piece.”
Knile did just that, pulling the bar apart and tossing a section to each. He hadn’t realised how hungry was until he’d taken the first bite.
“So what are we going to do now?” Roman said as he chewed.
“That’s the question we have to answer before we do anything else,” Knile said. “The way I see it, we have a few options.”
“Hiding, hiding and more hiding,” Roman said wryly.
“Hiding is one thing we could try. We could bunker down here for a while and duck out at night for food. It would be pretty uncomfortable, but it could be done.”
“Hide in here?” Talia said doubtfully. “For how long?”
“I don’t know. A week, maybe two. Enough time for those thugs to give up their search.”
“The thing is,” Talia began, “I don’t know if these guys are going to quit. Sure, they might give up actively hunting us in a few days, but they’re still going to be around. If they see us in the neighbourhood two or three weeks down the track, we’re going to end up right back where we started.”
“Then we’ll have to keep our heads down. In the meantime I could make preparations for getting us back into the Reach,” Knile said. “It will take a few days at least, maybe more. I have to find new contacts, organise fake IDs for the three of us. Maybe disguises as well.” He turned to Talia. “Do you think those thugs know anything about me?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think we have to assume that they saw you outside the Reach, and now they know you’re one of my associates.”
“So I’d still have to be careful about showing my face in public.”
“Yeah. I think we could assume that.”
“What about Grove?” Roman said. “I still have access there. I can probably get you two inside where you’ll be safe.”
“I think that could be dangerous, Roman,” Talia said. “Grove is their target. They’re going to be looking for us that way. They’ll have men waiting and will probably pick us off before we get there.”
“Agreed,” Knile said. “We probably have to stay well away from Grove for now.”
“Or do we just take these bastards head-on?” Roman said, his eyes gleaming in the dim light. “Find some weapons. Forget hiding. We beat
them up earlier today, why can’t we do it again?”
“Because we don’t know enough about them,” Talia said. “They could have twenty men for all we know. Going up against them could be suicide.”
“Right,” Knile said. “I think evasion is our best option for now. We’ll stay here while I try to find a way for us to return to the Reach. Maybe I can find some of my old contacts still lurking around. If that happens, we can get out of here sooner.”
“If you have to go on without us, we’ll understand,” Talia said uncertainly.
Knile looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“If you have to head back into the Reach for some reason–”
“Talia,” Knile said calmly, “I came back down from the top of the Reach to make sure you guys were safe. I still haven’t managed to do that yet. You’re still in danger. I won’t be leaving without you.”
The corners of Talia’s lips curved upward slightly. “Okay.”
Knile pulled out his holophone and the room was splashed with faint blue light.
“All right,” he breathed. “Contacts. Where are you, my old friends?”
He thought of the local neighbourhood and the people he had dealt with here in the past. There was the old man, Jobe, over on Logan Street. He had always been pretty reliable. He’d been getting on in years, though. Might be dead by now. Still, it might be worth–
“What’s that?” Roman said, getting to his feet abruptly. Knile flinched and glanced toward the window, expecting to see something horrible out there.
“What?” Knile said, alarmed.
“On your arm,” Roman said. “What is that?”
Knile glanced down and realised what the boy had seen. He relaxed.
“This?” Knile said lifting his forearm, where the Skybreach tattoo was glittering in the glow of the holophone. “It’s a tattoo some kid tagged me with over in the Reach. Don’t worry, it’s almost faded now and it’ll be gone in–”
“What does it say?” Roman said, stepping over quickly and grasping Knile by the wrist so that he could see it more easily.
“Whoa, calm down, Roman,” Knile laughed. “It’s some gimmick called ‘Skybreach’.”
Roman held Knile’s arm almost reverently, staring down at the glittering points of light that had been revealed in the blue glow.
“I knew it,” Roman said softly, his voice filled with wonder. “They chose you.”
Knile glanced at Talia, who had been almost drifting off to sleep a few moments before, but who was now sitting bolt upright.
“What’s going on, Roman?” Talia said. “Who’s ‘they’?”
“Skybreach,” Roman said. There was excitement creeping into his voice now. “This is it. This is the answer!”
“Slow down,” Knile said, glancing at the tattoo uncertainly. “The answer to what?”
“I know about this Skybreach thing,” Roman said. Talia had made her way over and now she was staring down at the glittering points of light as well. “This tattoo is not just some random tag, Knile. This is a gold plated invitation. And they don’t hand out many invitations.”
“Okay, back up for a sec,” Knile said, drawing his arm away and turning the holophone off. “Start at the beginning. What’s the deal?”
“I first heard about them about six months ago. One of my friends over in Grove, a guy called Mattus, had been doing some work on a bunch of plant strains in his spare time, making them more resistant to the toxins and that kind of thing. Pretty clever guy. Anyway, he was telling me one day that someone in the street tagged him with a Skybreach tattoo like the one you have on your arm there.”
“Yeah, so what happened?” Knile said.
“He figured out there were directions, uh… coordinates embedded inside the tattoo. He was curious, so he went to see what it was all about. Turns out that Skybreach is a secret organisation, a group that’s gathering together all of the best minds that are still left here on Earth. They hand-pick people just like you and Mattus, the people who are the best at what they do. They’re going to overthrow the Consortium and open up the Reach to the commoners. It won’t just be the rich who get off-world after that.”
“Sounds a bit far-fetched,” Knile said dubiously.
“No way. Mattus was a straight-up guy. He wouldn’t make this stuff up.”
“So what happened to him?”
“He left Grove a week later. I saw him again about a month ago when he stopped by Grove to ask a favour from Giroux. He didn’t say much about Skybreach, said he wasn’t allowed to, but I could tell he was excited. He said they were going to change everything.”
“I don’t know,” Knile said, shaking his head.
“What do you mean you don’t know? This is it! This is the answer to all of our problems! If we can make it to Skybreach we’ll find safety there, and we’ll also have a way of getting off-world together. All three of us. We’d be at the front of the queue!”
Knile rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Are you sure about this? I don’t want to blunder into another bad situation like the Candidate program, some sort of trap that’s going to leave us worse off than we are now.”
“Skybreach isn’t a trap. It’s the real deal.”
“That’s what you thought about the Candidate program,” Talia reminded him.
“If Skybreach was some sort of trap, why was Mattus still walking around perfectly fine almost six months after he joined? Wouldn’t they have used him up and spat him out by then?”
“Maybe,” Knile said. “But why do they want me?”
“Why wouldn’t they want you?” Roman said. “You know everything about the Reach. If they’re going to overthrow the Consortium, they’re going to need people like you to give them the advantage.”
Knile turned to Talia. “What do you think of this, Tal?”
She chewed her lip. “I don’t know. I mean, if it’s real, it sounds amazing. Like Roman said, it could be the answer we’re looking for.”
“I think it’s worth the risk,” Roman said. “Definitely.”
“Maybe we should wait to see how our other options pan out first before we go throwing ourselves at Skybreach,” Talia suggested.
“We can’t,” Knile said. He activated the holophone again and the pinpricks of light on his forearm began to glow. “The tattoo is fading. It’s a temp. By this time tomorrow it might be gone altogether, and then we won’t be able to follow the coordinates.”
“So write them down now before it fades,” Talia said.
“I’ve already memorised the coordinates that are here,” Knile said, turning his arm under the light. “The problem is, they’re incomplete. The final destination is an area the size of a city block.”
“So what good is that?” Roman said, disgusted. “How are we supposed to find them?”
“I think I know,” Knile said. “They probably have a short-range beacon at their headquarters that sends out pulses at a certain frequency that will reveal the final coordinates within the tattoo. So we have to get close before we can find that out.”
“And if we don’t make it within the reach of this beacon tomorrow?” Talia said.
“Then we lose it for good. We can cross Skybreach off the list of options if that happens.”
“We can’t let this go,” Roman said, adamant. “Please, guys. We have to try.”
“But you’re saying they hand-pick the people they want,” Talia said. “What if Knile is the only one they want?”
“Then we walk,” Knile said. “No question. I’m not leaving you two behind.”
“So we go tomorrow morning,” Roman said. “We go and check it out while we still can.”
Knile said nothing, gathering his thoughts as he looked about the room. He glanced at Talia, but she only pressed her lips together and shook her head as if to say don’t ask me.
“We’ll see,” Knile said. “We’ll discuss it again in the morning. Right now we need to get some rest.”
“I’ll take fi
rst watch,” Roman said, stepping lightly over to the window, his fatigue seemingly forgotten.
“Yeah, okay. Wake me in a few hours,” Knile said.
“You sure about this?” Talia whispered. “We don’t know anything about these people. Why should we trust them?”
“What he says makes sense,” Knile said. “I don’t trust it one hundred percent either, but he’s right. If it’s true, this is going to be our best chance of leaving together. Maybe our only chance. The complexities of organising three hacked passkeys at once is mind boggling.”
“If you think so,” Talia said, sounding unsure, but she seemed to be too tired to discuss it further, lying down on the bench in front of him and scooching back until her body was pressed against him. “Mind if I steal some warmth?”
Surprised by her sudden proximity, Knile hesitated for a second before putting his arm around her waist and lying down next to her.
“Sure.”
“Just don’t try anything,” she teased.
“No chance. I’ve seen what you do to men’s faces with those boots.”
Her body was warm and soft as she nestled against him. Comforting. He was suddenly glad that she’d chosen to sleep next to him.
Roman’s silhouette was still and watchful against the window as he looked down upon the street. Knile closed his eyes.
As they lay there, he thought back to Gaslight, when the kid had planted the Skybreach tattoo on his arm. He recalled her voice very clearly as she had stepped back and regarded him calmly.
It’s the only way out.
That was all the kid had said. Then she had disappeared, offering no explanation of what she meant.
Knile shifted slightly, hoping to find sleep, but a question still nagged at him.
The only way out of what?
23
Ursie awoke to the steady, muted thrum of Habitat Thirty-One, which was quickly becoming the bane of her existence. It was never quiet here, not completely at least. She’d learned this much in the couple of days since she’d arrived. The hum of the habitat’s inner workings, while not loud enough to stifle a conversation, nevertheless hung around at all times like an annoying burble that filled the void when all other sounds had ceased.
Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) Page 16
