Tracer [Riley Hale 01]

by Boffard, Rob

  But I can’t. Even with three of us, we won’t be able to fight them all off. And I can’t let the Twins get hurt. Not because of me. Not again.

  Almost imperceptibly, I shake my head. Yao catches the gesture, glances in Kev’s direction, and dives to the side. Kev grabs me, and he too starts yelling. “Got her! She’s over here!” I’m too startled to respond, but then he theatrically hurls himself backwards, as if pushed off. A performance like that from someone like Kev almost makes me laugh out loud, but the laugh dies on my lips when I see his expression. It’s the same one that Madala had before he was swallowed up. Kev remains silent, his eyes implore me to do only one thing:

  Run.

  There are more people at the far end now, running towards me, screaming with mad hatred. With one lingering look back at Kev, I take off, bolting down the corridor, away from the monster.

  37

  Riley

  I don’t know how long I run for. The corridors are endless, stretching off into the distance, punctuated by galleries filled with noise and anger. I run, and run, and run.

  It’s not long before I manage to lose my pursuers. But I can’t lose the rumour about me being involved. It’s spread through the station like a virus, infecting everyone. Every time I think I’ve got ahead of it, that I’ve reached a level or a corridor where people don’t know who I am, there’s an angry shout from behind me. More people chasing me, more crowds wanting me dead. When I do eventually slow to a halt, my chest heaving, it takes me a moment to figure out where I am.

  I’ve overshot the border somewhere. After a while, the corridors blur into one another, an endlessly unspooling road of black metal and flickering lights. I come to a stop, resting my hands on my hips, head down, sucking in great gasps of air. The run has pushed my body to the limit. Thirst and hunger tear at me. If I don’t find Kev’s stash soon, I’m finished. I need to get my bearings. Work out which level I’m on.

  I force myself to move, pleading with my exhausted body to hold on just a little bit longer. Heading back the way I came, I hit the stairwell; it’s crowded, filled with nervous energy, but I keep my head down and this time nobody stops me. It occurs to me that there are other tracer crews who might help me – or at least, who won’t attack me on sight. People like the Cossacks or the Area Boys probably won’t be too pleased to see me – they’re no fans of the Devil Dancers – but maybe I can find someone from D-Company. They’ve never really given a damn about anything that didn’t have something in it for them, but they know me, and might give me shelter.

  I can’t waste time hunting for them, though, and it doesn’t take long to find the Twins’ trapdoor. It’s exactly where Yao said it would be, and mercifully, there’s nobody around to watch me open it. It’s heavy, rusted with age, and it takes some time and a lot of noise to pull upwards. I’m worried that the screeching is going to bring curious onlookers, but in the end nobody comes, and I manage to slip through into the conduit below the passage.

  It’s tiny, barely big enough for me to crouch in. I can feel thick dust underneath my feet. Spaces below the floor tend to be dirtier and nastier than ones you reach through the ceiling. Darker, too; I have to sit for some time before my eyes become accustomed to the gloom. There are thick electrical cables running along the corners, and one digs uncomfortably into my ass. But I’m not moving. I’m still. My quaking body sends up waves of relief.

  I hear footsteps on the floor above me, booming through the tight conduit, but they don’t stop, vanishing into the distance. I realise I’ve been holding my breath, and let it out in a long, slow exhale. The breath causes a puff of dust to burst up. I have to force myself not to cough. But I can see now, and almost immediately I spot the steel canteen propped against the wall. Not for the first time, I send a silent thank you winging in the Twins’ direction.

  Trying to be as quiet as possible, I drink deeply from the canteen. The water is warm and slightly stale, but it soothes my parched throat. I have to force myself not to drink it all in one go, reminding myself that I might have to be here for a little while.

  Amira must be looking for me by now. She would have found out what happened in the market, and hopefully the Twins managed to escape and tell her where I was headed. But she might as well be a million miles away. Her last words to me, the irritation on her face, come hurtling back. What if I never see her again? Or Prakesh? The Twins? I’d probably even be grateful to see Aaron Carver.

  For the first time in years, I feel truly alone.

  I set the water down slowly, trying to lessen the loud tang of metal on metal. I lean my head back against the side of the conduit, my eyes closed. I have to think. Work something out. There’s got to be some way I can convince people I had nothing to do with any of it.

  It’s some time before I open my eyes. Almost immediately, I start cursing myself for falling asleep – how long was I out? – but then I realise the pain in my legs and sides is almost gone. I can’t stretch my legs out too far in the tunnel, but even an experimental flex feels good.

  Above me, the station is quiet. There’s a distant rumbling as some machine or other kicks into gear, but otherwise it doesn’t sound like there’s anybody around. I risk a peek, pushing up the trapdoor above me just a fraction, wincing as the metal squeals.

  The corridor is deserted. I drop back below, and take another sip of the brackish water.

  There’s something I’m not seeing here. Every time I try to get a hold of it in my mind it slips away, falling just out of reach. Grace Garner, Marshall Foster, Arthur Gray, Oren Darnell … they’re all connected, to be sure, but how? There’s some big element of this puzzle missing, and somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that Garner has information that could stop this whole thing in its tracks. I don’t know if Darnell is after her – or if he even knows she exists yet. All I can do is get to her.

  Finding her means going back into Gardens. And walking into Gardens means going right onto what used to be Darnell’s turf. But it’s the only way to the Air Lab. There’s no other option.

  I drain the water – with no pack, there’s no real way to carry it if I want my hands free – and hoist myself into the corridor above. Fortunately, it’s still deserted, and I manage to get a good head of speed heading towards Gardens. I’ve already got the route I plan to take in my mind, one which sticks to the upper levels, away from the main public areas. I’ll cut through the corridors around the furnaces – since the station was thrown into a total panic, there’s less chance that there’ll be any people there. I can take the topmost catwalk in the galleries – no people walking above me, which means less chance of being spotted.

  I’ve been running for less than five minutes, having just exited the stairwell up into the Level 6 corridor, when another ferocious thirst kicks in. My throat goes dry and lifeless almost instantly, and when I swallow, a sharp pain rips through it. I slow down, try to get some saliva flowing in my mouth, but it just makes it worse.

  Damn it, why now?

  I keep my speed down, trying to use as little energy as possible in each stride. But the thirst just increases, a burning desire for liquid that wraps lead weights around my feet. The last time I felt anything like it, I’d just finished a multi-stage cargo run which took me through four sectors and lasted about five hours. There’s hardly anybody around the furnaces, and those I do see barely glance at me. I’m running past one of the open doors when I hear it: the distinctive gush and spray of a water point as someone fills a bottle or a cup. With a pack and full water tank on my back I’d hardly notice it, but now it’s like someone flicking a torch on and off in a dark room.

  The furnace chamber where the noise is coming from is dimly lit, but even in the low light I can see it’s almost deserted. It’s a mess, strewn with discarded boxes, but at the far end, lit by a single light, is a water point. A man in overalls is bent over it, his back to me.

  As I watch, I hear another soothing gurgle of water. The sound is a soft hand which reaches deep down i
nto my body and then grips tight. The pain in my dry throat swells and stirs, and then I’m walking into the furnace, hoping and praying that I can get just a little water. The tiniest sip, just the tiniest.

  The man stands up as I approach; I expect him to take a drink immediately, but he just places a small bottle in the pocket of his overalls. I sidle in beside him, giving him a big smile and a nod. Last thing I need is more hostility.

  Instead of moving, he blocks the water point from me, staring me down.

  “Hi,” I say. He doesn’t respond. My heart falls slightly, but I keep smiling.

  “It’s still working right?” I continue. “I’ve been running all day, and I don’t have any with me. I’m really thirsty.” I force a laugh, hoping to put him at ease, but he does nothing, his hand holding tight onto his pocket. I hear the water inside his bottle slosh ever so gently, and it takes everything I have not to reach for it.

  Instead, I spread my arms, trying to be as friendly as possible. “If you’re in control of this water point, maybe I can trade for it,” I say. “I’m a tracer. I’m with a crew called the Devil Dancers. Fastest on Outer Earth. Maybe there’s something you need transporting? Some cargo? A message maybe? I’ll take it wherever you need, really, even one of the upper sectors …” I’m babbling now, and he still hasn’t uttered a word.

  I tail off. This isn’t working. I’m torn between pushing my way past him, trying to fight him, and going to look for another water point. In the end, the third option wins out. I’m in no state to fight anyone right now.

  “Thanks anyway,” I sigh.

  “Please don’t move,” he says quietly.

  I’ve turned around already. There are three stompers, standing in the shadows. Their stingers are out, and every one is pointing right at me.

  38

  Prakesh

  “No ID, no entry,” says the stomper.

  “Come on, man,” says Prakesh. “I work here. I’m an Air Lab tech.”

  “Then where’s your ID?”

  “Lost it.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, really. I left it behind in the Air Lab, right before the fire. Which, coincidentally, I helped contain, so maybe you should cut me a break, move out of the way, and let me in so I can do my job.”

  “You don’t even have a lab coat.”

  “Did I mention the fire?”

  The guard pauses for a moment, then shakes his head. “Don’t know you.”

  “Of course you don’t know me. I don’t know you either. I’ve never seen you in my life.” Prakesh makes himself stop. This is getting nowhere. The door to the Air Lab – one of the auxiliary entrances, one that he was sure would be unmanned – remains stubbornly shut. And now the stomper has his stinger out, not pointed at Prakesh but not exactly held at ease, either. He jerks his head. “Go somewhere else.”

  Prakesh mutters under his breath, walking away. Ordinarily, he’d look for someone he knows, someone who could vouch for him. But there’s no one around – not Suki, not Dumar, not even bloody Chang. They’re probably all inside already.

  It doesn’t matter. There are other ways to get into the Air Lab, access points this moronic stomper wouldn’t even think to look for. He quickens his pace as he strides down the corridor, heading back towards the galleries, searching for the storage room which he just knows has a loose panel on its back wall.

  He stops. If he couldn’t get into the Air Lab through the regular channels, what luck is Grace Garner going to have? If he gets in there, they won’t let him leave – he’ll be pulled in a dozen different directions, asked to oversee everything from soil quality to the UV emitters. For a moment, he’s torn – that’s what he should be doing. But then he sees his parents’ faces again, remembers how helpless he felt when he visited them.

  He decides to look for Grace Garner in the galleries, in the endless corridors surrounding the Air Lab. He’s on edge, waiting for another crackle of static over the comms system, waiting for Oren Darnell to appear. But the only thing he finds in the corridors is very scared people. Habs are locked down, barred and shut. Lights flicker above clusters of young gang members, talking in hushed voices and casting dirty looks at Prakesh as he walks past.

  He walks up to one group, a mix of what look like Area Boys and Black Hole Crew. Some of them have ritual scars on their faces, parallel lines cut into the flesh and made to heal badly. The livid red scars look like war paint.

  Prakesh doesn’t hesitate. You show fear with these guys, they’ll break you. “I’m looking for someone.”

  They look at him like he’s crawled out of the buzz box. He keeps talking anyway. “Old woman, ’bout sixty, blue headscarf. Seen her anywhere?”

  Someone yells for them from the other end of the corridor. The gang takes off at a run. One of them looks back and says, “Doesn’t matter who you’re looking for, man. We’re all done. All of us.”

  He keeps looking. Garner is nowhere. It’s maddening – she could be behind any one of the locked doors. She could also be in Apogee, or Chengshi, or in the middle of the Core, for that matter. It’s less than an hour before Prakesh gives up, furious with himself. He sits down on one of the benches in the gallery. A dull ache has settled into his limbs, and no matter how much water he drinks, his throat keeps returning to its shredded state. The crowd outside the main doors to the Food Lab has become mad with fear, screaming slogans, arms around each other.

  He leans back, closing his eyes, weighing up the options. Option one: sneak into the Air Lab, get to work making food. Option two: go back to Apogee, find Riley, tell her that Garner is gone. For the second time, Prakesh tells himself that he should be in the Air Lab. He should be doing what he’s supposed to.

  Which is how, hours later, he finds himself crossing the border into Apogee. The further he gets from Gardens, the worse it gets. He avoids the galleries as much as he can – they’ve become boiling cauldrons of anger, of stompers trying to hold back growing crowds who are demanding to have their sector councillors address them. The Apogee main gallery has been closed off, blocked by lines of stompers. Prakesh can’t understand what they’re doing there – they’re guarding an empty room. And he can smell the aftermath, a sick, sulphurous smell with an edge of burned fat. It’s enough to make his gorge rise, and he quickly makes his way upwards, climbing the levels towards the Nest.

  He takes the last few steps at a jog, suddenly desperate to find Riley, to know that she’s OK. But as he enters the corridor where he can get into the Nest, he sees Aaron Carver and the Twins. They’re collapsed against the wall, and the trapdoor above them is wide open.

  Carver looks up as he approaches. “P-Man,” he says, using Prakesh’s least favourite nickname.

  The Twins raise their heads towards him. Kev’s face is one big, mottled bruise. Yao’s shirt is ripped, and there’s a grimy crust of blood under her nose.

  There’s a sick feeling in Prakesh’s stomach, made worse by the absence of Riley, or Amira. “What happened?”

  “Your friend Riley’s pissed a lot of people off,” says Carver.

  “Riley – why would—”

  “They wrecked the Nest.”

  “I hate ’em,” Yao says, her voice small and furious. “All of ’em. Why can’t they just leave us alone? What did we do?”

  Prakesh takes a deep breath, and asks them to start from the beginning. The Twins fill him in on what happened at the market. When they tell him what happened to Riley, the sick feeling in his stomach swells and rises, threatening to overwhelm him. “Then we got back here, and they were tearing the Nest up,” Yao says.

  Kev shakes his head. He seems to have gone beyond words.

  “Where’s Riley?” Prakesh says. His voice is turned into razor blades by his dry throat.

  “We don’t know,” says Carver. “We’ve lost Amira too.”

  “We have to go find them.”

  “Where?” says Kev.

  “Where is right,” Carver says. He sounds worn out, more t
ired than Prakesh has ever heard him. It occurs to Prakesh that if the Nest has been destroyed, that means Carver’s workbench, and all his experiments, will have been wrecked as well.

  “You want to go looking for her, be my guest,” Carver goes on. “But right now, Devil Dancers aren’t too popular round here. Or anywhere, actually.”

  He stands, dusts his pants down. “We need to go. Probably best for us to lie low for a while.”

  “What if Riley and Amira come back?”

  “They’ll know where to find us,” Carver says, glancing at Yao. “Trust me.”

  39

  Riley

  The cell I’m in is six paces long, five across. I’ve counted them out. Twice.

  There’s a camera in the ceiling, enclosed behind tough plastic. The white light from the thin fluorescent strips on either side of the camera captures and destroys any shadows it finds. Beyond the transparent barrier at the front of the cell, the brig is dark. The sound of the station is muted here, dwindling to almost nothing.

  Turns out there were six stompers, not three. I’m still not sure how they knew where I was going to be. I can only guess that I must have been caught on a surveillance cam somewhere: when so many have failed over the years, you forget that there are some that still work.

  The moment they grabbed me, I started demanding to know what they wanted, but all I got was an order to shut up, and they marched me right back into Apogee, to the same prison that Darnell was in yesterday. There was a small crowd outside the prison. They started shouting the moment they saw me, but I was hustled straight through and pushed into the cell. When I realised where we were going, I started hoping that Royo might be there, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  After I was thrown in here, and after I’d finished banging on the plastic in frustration, screaming at the backs of the retreating guards, I collapsed on the cot, lying back on the thin mattress.

  The water point in the cell isn’t working, and nobody’s given me any food since I landed in here. My stomach is rolling with nausea. I’m back where I started, my crew has no idea where I am, and outside is a mob that wants me dead.