Tracked

by Jenny Martin

  “How much farther?” I yell.

  “Mile and a half. Start—”

  I read his mind and anticipate the upcoming tilt. I hug the lazy curve to the right on this makeshift road. I’m at the end of the boomerang-shaped route, so I should cross paths with the other racers in a minute or less. It’s point to point, get there whichever way you can, and I pray I’m not behind them all. The gravel may have cost me.

  “Where—”

  This time Bear reads mine. “Clown car is way behind you. You’re nose to nose with One-Eye, it’s going to be close for second.”

  “I’m in second?”

  “Wait, One-Eye just blinked out. I can’t see him on the screen.”

  “What?” I’m furious now. “Did he cross the finish line?”

  “No. I . . . He . . . His marker’s just disappeared. Wait. It’s back. He’s way off course, flying off in the wrong direction.”

  Something is very, very wrong.

  “Harkness. Eager,” I spit. “Where—”

  “Harkness is out.” Bear’s words are fast and pitched too high. “Patrol bike zapped his machine halfway through the plaza. Eager had to burn all his triggers just to outrun and escape. He’s still got first place locked, Phee. I don’t like the way things are looking. Pack it up for the alternate rendezvous point. Don’t do anything . . . ”

  I tune Bear out when I catch the scream of another engine. It’s Eager; his bright yellow Evenstar is parallel on the good road and he’s running hard. A nose ahead of me. As is, the curve will end and I can safely swerve and duck right behind him.

  Unsafely, I can pull two triggers at once and rocket the hell past him and the finish line. Sure, I’ll probably overshoot and smash into next year, but when I free-float and the six-point harness snaps me back, I’ll rock the biggest rush of my life.

  Or it will kill me.

  I grip the stick and pull both fuel releases in one hard- fist clench.

  Yesss.

  I surge forward. Two seconds of delirium before g-forces kick in and I’m pinned against my seat. It’s the sweetest blowback, but I can’t hold on to it. The moment slips through my black-gloved fingertips. I’m the cartridge in the gun, the scorching round left in the chamber after the trigger fires.

  No.

  I’m not the hollow shell. I’m the bullet now.

  Peak acceleration. I gasp as the fuel stops screaming, kindling the silent burn of maximum velocity. The world outside the windshield loses color, everything blurs into black and white. I’m tearing through, the wet streaks and bright splatters of light blind me. The night is bleeding.

  “Phee! Phee! No!” Bear screams. His voice snatches me back, and I’m just a girl again. “You’ve overshot. I’ve got a visual of the pier. You’re headed straight for them!”

  Reflex. I strangle the throttle, but it’s too late. I brake, but I’ve gone too far. I know I won’t be able to slow down in time. I’ve lost any chance to turn away from the docks.

  “DP are everywhere.” Bear chokes. “Bikes. Two armored cars. Blitz Birds are on me. Rust it, Phee. They knew. It’s a trap. They’ve got m—”

  Thump. Static. He’s gone. Bear—my safety, my reason—is gone. He’s been shot, stunned, or snagged into the air by one of these jet-packed, badge-wearing vultures. The DP must have him now, and they’re waiting to arrest us all.

  And Bear was right about the pier. I see the ambush, the nest of cops, their silver speeders parked in a row. It’s a flimsy barricade, but they have me. Why . . . why are so many of them here, already waiting in the perfect place? Who tipped them off? Rearview mirror. The flash of yellow paint. Eager’s trying to spin around, but there’s no escape for him either. DP swarm to box him in. I’m next.

  My Talon wails; it doesn’t like my foot on the brakes. Rust it. I don’t like it either. I shift, my foot slams back on the accelerator. No surrender. I’m dead, but at least they won’t bag me for jail.

  Smash.

  The whiplash stings, but the twist and snap of metal satisfy me. I cut through, mowing down the patrol bikes like they’re tin can ten-speeds. I roar past all their sirens and shouts and flashing lights. The end of the pier. Foot to the floor. I’m flying.

  I lie and say the soaring will last. The landing won’t hurt, the water won’t kill me. I will swim away. I will win.

  Flip.

  Tumble.

  Crack.

  I am wrong.

  The dash screens blink out and I’m flailing for the harness buckle and the door handle. Nothing will open for me. The windshield’s already cracked. Water pours in and I don’t know which way is up. There’s not much light—my helmet comes off, but I can’t get loose. For once, I can’t run or race my way out.

  I’m trapped. Gulp the last of the air. My heart and lungs and brain are on fire. Completely under the water now. I feel the buckle snap open, but it’s too late. Can’t breathe. My arms free float and I feel a hand grab me. But the hand can’t put out the fire. I close my eyes. I drift and scatter like ash.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Clean. The blankets. The bed. Everything feels clean.

  But it smells like the Larssens’ clinic. Bleached sheets scorched too many times in an industrial dryer. I lift my head a little, but it’s a mistake. The movement, the stink, the sting at the nape of my neck—it all makes me want to throw up. I open my eyes.

  There are no windows, and everything from the walls to the floor to the plastic pitcher of water on my bedside table is white. There’s only one door and it looks locked and the red eye of a surveillance camera blinks from the far corner of the ceiling. Rust this. I’m out of here.

  My bruised body aches and my neck is sore. There’s a numb spot back there, below my hairline, but a rim of pain, a shifting tidal wave of hurt surrounds it. Even so, the discomfort does nothing to slow me down. I move, ready to jump out of bed and get out of this hospital or detention center or whatever it is. But I can’t. I can only pull against the restraints on my ankles and wrists.

  “Let me out!” I half scream, half growl at the sight of the IV needle taped against my left arm.

  All my noise, all my rattling of the bed rails only accomplishes one thing. I shake the bed hard enough to topple the pitcher off the nightstand, but I don’t stop until a bolt snaps and my door is open.

  Once I see the horde of pastel-scrubs-wearing medical types, I think this might actually be a regular hospital. They don’t look like mad scientists or Domestic Patrol officers. I have to get them to take these straps off.

  I start to bug out again. One of the doctors tries to fake me out with an everything-is-going-to-be-all-right smile. Then I see the syringe in his hand.

  “Don’t you stick me with that rusting needle!” I fight the restraints so hard, I feel a trickle of blood drip down the inside of my wrist. I’m not afraid to die, but I don’t want to be put down like a rabid dog. Something breaks inside of me, and I hate myself for letting the words pass my lips so easily. “Please. Please don’t stick me.”

  Two orderlies pounce and hold me still. I’d bite someone if I could, if they’d lean in close enough. But they know what they’re doing. They have me all locked down, ready for the good doctor to do his thing. I still struggle, but I turn away.

  “Phoebe,” he says. “This is a sedative. I don’t want to use this. But I will if I have to.”

  They have to believe I’m cool and calm. I cannot slip this snare any other way. “Let me go,” I plead.

  “That’s not for me to decide, Phoebe,” he says. “I’m Dr. Poole and you’re at Capitoline General North. I’m here to patch you up, but if you keep going, you’ll tear your stitches.”

  Stitches. Explains the scorch and numbness at the back of my neck. And I’m at CG North? I’m so far from my side of the city, it’s not even funny. I don’t understand why an ambulance would bring me al
l the way up here, where the rich people hole up. I’m not some Sixer’s daughter. I’m not here for a nose job or a fat transfer or a rib removal. I don’t belong in this hospital.

  “My friend Barrett Larssen, is he here?”

  He points to a sore spot on my waist and lifts up the arm of my hospital gown. I flinch at first, but then I realize what he’s trying to show me. I twist and see the bruise on my shoulder. The handprint is huge. I don’t know how he pulled me out, but I know who left the mark. The cool hand in the water. My savior in the dark deeps. I should’ve known.

  My throat closes up. Bear hesitates. He worries. He talks me out of stupid ideas. He doesn’t pull suicidal stunts. The marks on my shoulder and my waist grow warm. Maybe it’s the drugs, but I can almost feel him reach for me. Somehow Bear—my would-be bodyguard and best friend—saved my life.

  “Where is he?”

  Dr. Poole ignores my question. A DP officer steps just inside the doorway. His coal-black uniform makes him an inkblot, a stain in this spotless room. “Phoebe Van Zant, you’re under arrest.”

  I frog the second orderly, knuckle punching him near the groin. For a second, I think my thrashing will break the cords at my wrists. “I want a lawyer! Cut me loose. I want out of this place!”

  I hear Dr. Poole sigh. The needle sinks into my hip. I drown again.

  With a chin-snapping nod, I wake up in the back of a moving transport. I’m groggy, but upright, locked into a seat between two DP officers. When I blink and swallow and try to shift my feet, I realize . . . they put me in sync boots. Rigid, heavy, evil red-toe-light blinking sync boots.

  “You can’t just haul me off like this,” I plead. “I’m a minor, and you haven’t even notified my guardians.”

  “Oh that’s right,” the officer mocks. “How did we forget about that? Just say the word, and we’ll be happy to bring in your whole family for questioning.”

  He smiles, and I catch the glint of perfect teeth. He knows the threat’s enough to gut me. Across town, a world away, Mary’s probably out of her mind, bent over a sterilizer panel, cleaning instruments and pretending to keep it together while Hal paces the floor and texts me a thousand times.

  No, bringing up my ties to the Larssens would be asking for trouble. Their medical supply business is a good front for the clinic—it lets them operate on the edges of the system, without interference from the Sixers. Any of the Six would probably love to swallow another black-market clinic like so much krill. Especially one that patches up the protesters who shout down their names on the streets.

  Transcorp. Agri-tech. Benroyal Corp. Yamada-Maddox. AltaGen. Locus Informatics. I know they helped build Castra from nothing, but it’s like they think they own the whole rusting planet. If I coughed up the Larssens to the DP, they’d be shut down inside of eight hours. I can’t let that happen.

  We slow down. Through the windows, fire-bright colors catch my eye. So many knots of orange and red and yellow leaves. Castra’s a desert world, one made for scrubroot and hackweed, but there’s a whole grove’s worth of Earth-imported oaks lining the gated courthouse drive. What a waste of water. So much effort to keep withered roots alive.

  The officers tense as we come to an abrupt, curb- skimming stop. We’ve arrived. The bone-pale courthouse looms and I’ve never felt smaller.

  Inside the courthouse, I’m herded through a gray-walled warren of holding cells and intake stations. I’ve never been booked or processed before. Two years of racing under the radar and they’ve never been able to catch me, so I’m not exactly sure what to expect.

  My escort pulls out a flex card remote and fumbles with it. Arrows appear on the floor, illuminating the black-and-white tiles. My soles start to slide across the floor and I flail to keep my balance, but as soon as I surrender, moving toward the arrowed path, the pull relents and I’m free to walk normally. Or at least as normally as I can in these rusting things.

  I’m pushed through the booking stations without stopping. I don’t get scanned or strip-searched or zipped into a baggy lock-up jumpsuit. The DPs don’t even interrogate me. I was so sure that as soon as I got here, they’d toss me in a holding cell and start grilling me about Benny Eno’s garage/black-market betting operation, but they don’t. They only ask who I belong to. I don’t answer.

  I’m not selling out the Larssens. Not when they’re all I’ve got.

  My real mother split when I was little more than a baby. I barely remember her face, a perfect oval so much paler than my own. And even that image is counterfeit. My father used to store a picture of her on his flex, but now I’ve only got the memory. My case manager says she got into black sap, and I can only guess my dad didn’t want me to know that my own mom became a sunken-eyed junkie. So I carry an image less painful, frozen in time, of someone whole and young and pretty.

  And my father? The great Tommy Van Zant, the six-time Corporate Cup champion, the circuit rally racer who couldn’t lose? When I was five, one day he up and disappeared. Crossed a finish line and drove away, leaving me and his latest trophy behind. Maybe he couldn’t deal with the pressure. Maybe he was burned out. Maybe he was just plain bored.

  The only thing he left me is his itch for adrenaline and this hell-on-wheels need to race. Come to think of it, I guess he’s the reason I’m standing here in the first place. I should text him a message and thank him.

  But of course, I won’t. I can’t.

  Maybe I had real parents once. I’ve forgotten what that means.

  I’m hustled around a corner, down the last stretch of tile. We pass more holding cells; I catch my reflection in their safety-glass windows. My hair looks darker in here. Almost black. And unlike the other prisoners, I’m wearing oversized hospital scrubs that have been bleached so many times, it’s hard to tell if they were once purple or actually blue. Swallowed up in this threadbare getup, I look like a walking bruise.

  The cells are full of rough-faced prisoners, but there are no clean-cut Sixers here. They never seem to get arrested. Plenty of Cyanese rebels and Biseran drug dealers, though, and plenty of South Siders like me. I can guess what’s in store for them. The worst of the lot will be shuttled to prison and exile on Earth, while the petty offenders will get deported or sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor on Cyan-Bisera.

  I glance at one of the Cyanese detainees, the man closest to the glass. He’s gotta be nearly seven feet tall. Bet he thinks he’s really cute with the Cyanese Army flag plastered across his T-shirt. Rebel stars, pale silver, on a field of blue. I imagine the DP got one look at that and tossed him and his friends in here just for looking like fuel-stealing terrorists.

  Public menace. For the first time today, I smile. At least I’m really guilty.

  “Keep it moving,” my guard snarls.

  We make it down to the end of the hallway. My ears catch the splashdown roar of water in the lobby fountain as the double doors swing open. A flex screen message scrolls above: Enjoy improved, hassle-free judicial proceedings. These new, expedited services are brought to you by Locus Informatics. We’re innovating justice for you!

  I’m pretty sure this means my fate has just been outsourced.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Phoebe Van Zant?” The judge looks up at me.

  I’d expected him to look scary. All imposing and serious. Instead, he just looks tired. He’s not even perched behind the grand bench at the back of the courtroom. Here we are in this fancy, marble-pillared hall and he just sits there behind an ordinary wooden desk on the periphery of the room. He wears a fine black robe, but it looks too big for him.

  My public counsel stands beside me, as silent as the statues lining the walls. I don’t recognize the empty, ivory-eyed figures, but I’m sure they’re more dead guys—twenty-third-century colonials from Earth.

  “Answer yes or no, and say Your Honor,” the guard orders.

  I clear my throat. “Yes . . . Your Honor, I wan
t to—”

  “You are charged with six counts,” the old judge interrupts. “Reckless driving. Illegal vehicle. Illegal racing. Resisting arrest. Destruction of public property. Mayhem.”

  I stand very still and try not to laugh out loud. Mayhem. What the rust is Mayhem? The judge says something else about the damage I caused, but he’s mumbly. I’m insulted he doesn’t even try to sound intimidating or even make me feel guilty about what I’ve done.

  This place is a joke. All of us, the judge, his bailiff, even my sad little entourage—we’re packed in a small corner of this vast, opulent room. Everything is so . . . unused. I look up. There’s a faded mural on the dome above. Before a majestic sun, a white-robed angel holds a scale. I recognize the three planets—a much larger Earth hangs in the balance against arid Castra and lush Cyan-Bisera. If the angel could whisper, I bet she’d tell me she’s been watching this room shrink for a long, long time.

  “How do you plead?” the judge asks.

  “Not guilty.”

  I’m silenced by the dull thud of the judge’s gavel. “You have been found guilty. The sentence of this court is that you will remain in juvenile custody at the House of Social Rehabilitation, until you reach the age of eighteen . . .”

  One year in juvie. This is happening so fast. I don’t know what I expected. The judge takes a breath and I realize he’s not done.

  “Upon turning eighteen, you shall be remanded to the Labor Corps on Cyan-Bisera until you earn out. Or for the remainder of your life, whichever comes first.”

  I gasp. One year and I’m done for, exiled to an uncivilized planet crawling with sap miners, terrorists, and drug lords. Hard to imagine anything worse. If I were a murderer or political prisoner, the judge would put my name on the next deportation list, sentencing me to some hellhole penal colony on Earth, but still. I’ll never earn out of the Labor Corps. No one ever earns out the cost of “rehabilitation,” the steep room and board fees charged to every inmate. My leg starts twitching and I need to run. I need to run away and find a rig and just start driving.