Tracer [Riley Hale 01]

by Boffard, Rob

  “Not good,” Kev says to Amira, giving an uncharacteristic shudder.

  Yao agrees, nodding furiously. “There was that woman who went missing a while ago. She worked in the mess. And I did that run to Chengshi and heard about a sewerage tech who went missing. I didn’t think about it before, but what if it’s the guy who gave you the cargo?”

  We all stare at her. She has a damn good point.

  “Imagine if we caught the guy,” she says, her eyes glittering.

  “Are you insane?” The goggles have been yanked off, and Carver is staring at Yao as if she’s grown an extra head. “Are we actually talking about going after someone who sends eyeballs by special delivery? No. Hell no. I like breathing. And by the way, nice work Riley. I always enjoy ending my day with a fight to the death against the minions of a psychotic lab boss.”

  “I wasn’t followed,” I say. It’s almost a snarl, covering up the uncertainty I feel.

  Amira has remained silent, her hands clasped before her, tilted back with the fingertips just touching her lips. She looks at me. “We’re not supposed to know what we carry,” she says. “That’s the job. That’s the only way we survive, and you know it. You should never have looked in your pack – I trained you better than that.”

  A hot flush comes to my cheeks, but I hold her gaze.

  She shrugs. “You got us into this, Riley. What do you think we should do?”

  I take a deep breath, trying to push my thoughts into some sort of order. “Darnell’s going to want revenge,” I say. “The man he sent after me won’t be the last. That means everyone here is at risk.”

  “So what? We can take ’em,” says Carver. Amira raises her hand, silencing him.

  “It’s more than that though,” I say. “We shouldn’t have to do this. We shouldn’t have to be a part of whatever … sick game this is.”

  “Mmm,” says Amira. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Right now, we’re the only people outside of Darnell and the guy who gave me the package—”

  “Gray.”

  “Right. Gray. Outside of them, it’s just us. So we bring the fight to them. Let them know we don’t go down easy – starting with Gray.”

  “Why not hit the big bad guy first?” says Yao, but Amira interrupts. “No, Riley’s right,” she says. “This merchant – this Gray – he picked us because he knew that we do not wish to know what we carry. He took advantage of our trust.” She shakes her head. “I won’t allow that. Attacking Darnell isn’t the answer – not right now, anyway – but we can take care of Gray ourselves. Send a message.”

  Yao is gagging. “I think I ate one of his onions the other day. What if he fertilises them with human blood?” Carver rolls his eyes.

  Amira glances at me. “We’re probably going to have to deal with this head-on at some point. Riley – you’ve dealt with Darnell more than the rest of us have. Anything we need to know?”

  I let out a long breath. “He’s nasty. Keeps a low profile, but he practically runs some of the gangs up there. Water points mostly – he’s got connections, so he shuts them down until people have something worth trading.”

  “So it won’t just be him we’re facing?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Stompers?” says Kevin, echoing my earlier thoughts.

  Carver throws his arms up. “Great idea, Kev. Because we have such a great relationship with the stompers anyway.”

  “No stompers,” says Amira. “This is our problem. We’ll deal with it.” She turns to the Twins. “We’ll need as much intelligence as we can get. I want you to go to Gardens and find a way into the Air Lab. Observe Darnell, see what he’s doing, and report back. If he really is going to come after us, we need to know about it.”

  With only the briefest of shared glances, the Twins head out, dropping through the hatch. I can hear their soft footfalls disappearing down the corridor.

  Amira turns back to us. Her eyes are cold slits. “We’re going back to the market. Time to meet this Arthur Gray.”

  She jerks her chin at my bruises. “Are those going to be a problem?”

  I shake my head. “I’ll live.”

  “Good.”

  When we drop out the hatch, the corridor is quiet, with no sound save for the rumble of the station. But as we start jogging towards the gallery, there’s a shout from the far end of the corridor. Someone yelling my name.

  I whirl, bracing myself for the worst – the Lieren, or another attack from Darnell – but then I see it’s a tracer, sprinting towards us from the far end. He’s an older guy, one I’ve seen around, with flecks of grey in his shoulder-length hair. Not someone I know.

  “You’re Riley Hale?” he asks, jogging to a halt.

  I nod. “That’s right.” My fists are curled into tight balls. With an effort of will, I force them apart. Carver and Amira are a little way ahead of me, looking back quizzically at the new arrival.

  “Cargo for you,” says the tracer, reaching into the pocket of his jacket. He thrusts something at me – it takes me a second to realise what I’m looking at.

  “Is that – paper?” says Carver.

  Outside of our copy of Treasure Island, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sheet of loose paper. It feels strangely soft in my hands. The tracer gives a curt nod, and takes off in the direction he came from.

  “What is it?” Amira asks.

  My stomach is doing that long, slow roll again, and the noise as I unfold the paper is too loud in the cramped corridor. I read the message, written in a tiny cursive script, and my heart starts thudding again in my chest.

  “Riley?” says Amira.

  I thought Darnell would send more people after us. But this is worse. Much, much worse.

  Dear Miss Hale,

  You will die quickly. Prakesh Kumar will not. I suggest you trade your life for his. And when you come back to the Air Lab, come alone.

  Warmest regards,

  Oren Darnell

  14

  Darnell

  The foreman tries to tell him that the monorail is full. The man is new, barely a month into the job, and all he’s concerned about are the food shipments to Chengshi and Apogee and New Germany. He doesn’t notice the other workers edging away from him, doesn’t see the averted eyes or the sudden interest in train schedules and food manifests.

  Darnell puts an arm around the foreman. “What’s your name?”

  “Judd, Sir.” The foreman’s words come out a little muffled, mostly because his head is buried in Darnell’s armpit.

  “Judd. OK. Do you know my bodyguard? Goes by the name of Reece?”

  Judd tries to shake his head, doesn’t quite manage it.

  “He got his knee snapped in two a couple of hours ago. Mostly because he didn’t do exactly what I asked him to do.”

  Darnell lets him go. Judd stumbles away, staring at his boss. Darnell points to the crate behind him – a big, sealed metal box on a wheeled pallet, labelled Soja Japonica. “Load my crate, Judd,” he says.

  He can see the questions in Judd’s eyes – like why another crate of soybeans needs to be loaded onto a monorail already full of them. Or why Darnell wants to accompany the shipment personally. But by the time Darnell climbs aboard the back monorail car, his crate is loaded and strapped down. With a rumble, the train pulls out of the loading dock.

  It’s black inside the tunnels. The big halogen bulb on the train’s cabin doesn’t reach this far back, and Darnell has to hold on to the crates for balance. There used to be dozens of monorails trundling around the inside of the ring – it was the station’s public transport system. But it became impossible to maintain, and now monorail use is restricted to food shipments and council use only.

  The train passes an abandoned station, the platform thick with dust. There’s evidence of human habitation – pieces of trash, a clean space in the dust where someone might have bedded down – but it’s empty now. Just before the darkness swallows them again, Darnell spots the mark on one of the tunne
l supports. A rough white cross, spray-painted on the metal.

  Darnell gauges the train’s speed. Slow enough. Working quickly, he uses his knife to cut through the straps that tie the crate to the train car, then hauls the lid off. Prakesh Kumar is inside, still unconscious, his body twisted awkwardly.

  Oren Darnell reaches in, lifting the comatose technician up. Then he hurls him off the train.

  Prakesh bounces off the side of the tracks, rolling to a stop. Darnell sees his mouth twitch, form a groan of pain, but he doesn’t wake up, and the sound is lost in the rumble of the monorail. Darnell jumps, landing squarely on the side of the tracks.

  He nearly falls. Even overloaded and moving slowly, the monorail shakes the tunnel. The surface under his feet vibrates, like it’s alive. But he just bends his knees a little more, leans into it, and lands clean.

  He reaches down, grabbing Prakesh and swinging him across his shoulder. Arthur Gray calls the stuff quicksleep. Darnell likes to carry some in his pocket, a small pouch filled with tiny capped syringes.

  He stills himself for a moment, letting his eyes get used to the darkness again. He quickly spots the door, recessed slightly into the wall of the tunnel. He walks over to it, activates the entry keypad, sending a dull white glow into the tunnel. Gray didn’t want to give Darnell the code to what he calls his work room. Darnell made him change his mind.

  He punches it in, and the door locks disengage, the sound echoing around the cramped tunnel. The passage beyond the door is dimly lit, the metal walls pitted and scarred. Hefting his loads, Darnell heads down the passage. After he dumps the idiot tech, he can head back to the Air Lab, and await the return of Riley Hale. He won’t even have to dose her. She’ll come with him willingly, if she knows what’s good for her. He can give her to Arthur Gray as a …

  Darnell stops, listening closely.

  The door hasn’t clicked shut behind him.

  He looks over his shoulder. The door is slightly ajar. His eyes move to the bottom, where the toe of a shoe is positioned in the space between the frame and the door.

  Darnell charges. He uses the tech’s body as a battering ram, slamming into the door. It flies open, sending the owner of the shoe stumbling backwards. Darnell lets go of Prakesh, hurling him outwards, and his pursuer crumples under the dead-weight, crashing onto the track.

  Movement. To his right. A figure leaps at him, barrelling out of the darkness. Darnell back-hands the attacker. She cries out, and blood spatters across his hand. He can’t see it in the darkness, but he can feel it, hot and sticky, and it brings a smile to his face.

  The first one is up. Darnell can’t see his features in the darkness, but he’s enormous, with arms like tree trunks. For a split second, Darnell hesitates. But as the man gets to his feet, he makes the mistake of glancing down in horror at the tech’s body.

  Darnell lifts two syringes out of his pocket, flips the caps off. They bounce away across the floor. The first needle only scratches the giant, but it’s enough to get some quicksleep into his blood, and in seconds he’s stumbling, throwing uncoordinated punches. Darnell dodges, dodges again, then plants the needles right in the giant’s chest.

  The man collapses almost instantly, dropping first to his knees, and then flat onto his face. There’s an incoherent yell of fury, and then the little one is back.

  She rushes towards Darnell, her shoulder low, aiming for his legs. He snags her by the neck before she can get close, lifting her up. She kicks out at him, tries to scratch the exposed skin on his arm, but it’s no use. His hand goes all the way around her neck, locking her in a vice.

  There’s some light coming from Gray’s passage. Darnell can just make out his attacker. She’s a tiny woman, her skin spangled with colourful tattoos. High up on her neck, curving around to her throat, are two words in a delicate, curlicued font. Devil Dancers.

  Riley Hale’s crew. So.

  Her struggles are getting more urgent. Darnell’s fingers clench. A little more pressure, and her fragile spine will snap. And there’s his blade, tucked in his belt. A single short cut will open her throat.

  No. Better to keep his options open – for now. Darnell pulls out another syringe. He takes the cap in his mouth, grips it in his teeth, pulls and spits. The girl’s eyes go wide, and then he jabs the needle into her neck and they defocus, the irises rolling back.

  He drops her, and the tunnel is silent again.

  15

  Riley

  I read the note again. And the horrible sick feeling in my chest begins to grow. Anger blooms like a poisonous flower.

  Trembling, I pass the paper to Amira, and she and Carver scan it. When she looks up, her face is grim. “We should stick to the plan,” she says quietly.

  I stare at her. “Stick to the … no. I have to fix this. I’m going back to the Air Lab.”

  “He’ll kill you if you do.”

  “He’ll kill Prakesh if I don’t.”

  “Slow up, Riley,” says Carver. I’m expecting a wisecrack, but his voice is calm. “Amira’s right. You don’t just rip out someone’s eyeball or hold kidnapped techs in the Air Lab – he’ll have somewhere quiet and out of the way. And if you show up in the Labs, he’ll kill you and Prakesh.”

  “So what do we do?” I say. My voice cracks on the last word.

  “We stick to the plan,” Amira says again. “We find Gray. We track him. He leads us right to them.”

  Another burst of guilt as I remember that we sent Kev and Yao over to Darnell’s. “What about the Twins?”

  “They can handle themselves,” Amira says.

  She doesn’t wait for a response, taking off down the corridor in a run. After a moment, Carver and I join her, running in tight formation. As we turn the corner, we see more people in the corridor ahead, right in our path.

  Amira yells over her shoulder, “Riley, point!” and I accelerate, bursting ahead to overtake her.

  There’s an art to running in a group. You have to move in single file, creating as narrow a profile as possible. Even then, you have to know when to break formation to cut through the crush of people. The fastest tracer sets the pace and the route, and I pick the quickest one I know, heading back past the mess hall and into the maze of corridors on the bottom level.

  There are crowds we have to fight through by the habs – the ones in this part of the sector are dorm-style, designed to hold a lot of people. There aren’t any mining or factory facilities in Apogee, and over the years more and more people have moved in. There are plenty of families here, which means the corridors are always crowded and noisy – mostly with kids, no matter what the hour is.

  As we descend, I come round a corner on a stairwell to find a ball flying right at my head. I have to spin to the side to avoid it, nearly colliding with the wall. Amira knocks the ball back without stopping – it’s nothing more than rags held together with tight strips of cloth. The kids are in a tight group at the top of the stairs, and one of them catches the ball above his head, a huge smile on his face. I have to suppress the urge to shout at him. How can he be so happy when Prakesh is …

  I fight it off. Let my movements and the rhythm of my breathing take over. Every so often, when the crush forces us to break out of single file, I’ll catch a glimpse of the other two Dancers cutting in alongside me.

  I might have pure speed on my side, but Amira moves with a devastating economy, each foot placed exactly, perfectly balanced, her shoulders tilted back and her eyes on the horizon. Her scarf billows out behind her, the faded red material catching the light.

  Carver’s technique is less precise, but his sheer brute strength and long arms mean he can take the biggest of jumps with ease. As we near the market, we reach a small open area, where the passage we’re in narrows to a dead end by a bank of terminals. Another walkway runs parallel, above and to the left. Amira and I have to tic-tac off the opposite wall to reach it, but Carver just flings himself upwards in one huge leap, hauling himself over.

  Sometimes, the crush of
the crowds forces us away from each other, but we always link back up. Just when I think I’ve got ahead of them, Amira will appear, or Carver, shooting out of a darkened passage where the lights have burned out, or slipping through a crowd. It feels horribly wrong to be running away from where Prakesh is, but Amira’s right. The only way is to stick to the plan.

  The crush gets thicker the closer we get to the market. More and more often, we’re having to spread out to find the gaps. But we’ve made good time, and we soon reach the huge hangar doors marking the entrance. Merchants have spilled out the doors, their makeshift tables jumbled together. The air is hot, thick with smoke from improvised forges and furnaces. I can smell iron, and spices.

  My throat is parched, and I’m grateful when Amira pulls a small flask out of her pocket and passes it over. There’s not a lot, but we manage a few gulps between us. We passed a few water points on the way over here, but I didn’t think to stop at any of them. They’re all over Outer Earth: machines set into the walls of corridors and galleries where you can get clean water, purified from recycled human waste, connected by a nerve system of pipes and filters that extends across the whole station. It’s nasty when you think hard about it, but it’s also the only source of water we’ve got.

  “What now, boss?” says Carver as he passes the flask back.

  Amira takes a final swig and runs a hand across her mouth. “We go in. Riley, stay out of sight, no matter what. Wait a few minutes before you follow us.”

  “Got it.”

  Amira and Carver move off, walking slowly through the massive doors. Soon, they’re lost in the sprawl. I wait a few moments more, then follow, ducking my way under an awning and cutting to the left.