Danger's Halo: (Holly Danger Book 1)

by Amanda Carlson

  Most of the scrapers didn’t have glass anymore, which made plunging to your death incredibly easy. It was a popular way to go.

  “Death is final,” I cautioned. “There’s no coming back, no second chances.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to come back.”

  “Do you have family? Next of kin in Port Station?”

  “No,” he answered dismally. “My mom died of the plague last year, and I never knew my dad. My sustainer family was going to sell me into slavery, so I ran.”

  The story unfolded.

  Sickness was rampant everywhere. If you didn’t have enough seniority or an effective way to bribe yourself an inoculation, which were heavily rationed, you were done for. We called everything “the plague,” because no one knew what they had. Most viruses were hybrids with genetically modified components. Before the dark days, people enjoyed perfect health. Sickness had been completely wiped out.

  Nanobiotechnology, where a single manufactured cell was programmed to obliterate an invader cell, had been highly effective. But after the world my ancestors knew ended, disease eventually crept back in, and cures and inoculations were scarce.

  “You must have someone,” I coaxed. “They gave me coin to recover you, remember?”

  “I bet it was Tandor,” he replied glumly.

  “Who’s Tandor?”

  There were very few names in this town I didn’t recognize. It was my job to know who was who, and I took it seriously. I was a salvager and all-around procurer of things. It provided a living above and beyond table scraps and protein blocks. I had spaces filled with goods to sell scattered all over the city that no one knew anything about, and I planned to keep it that way.

  To be fair, though, the job of tracking down this kid had come in the form of an anonymous note and a bunch of coin dumped directly into one of my contact slots—which were hard to find. You had to know people. And I didn’t make it a habit to turn down actual, physical currency, no matter what the job was.

  Coin was still traded, and collectors held an affinity for it. A good collector would trade you a week’s worth of protein or slurry for a single coin. Collectors were another name for the hopeful souls who were banking their entire existence on the return of the elite, when, they believed, physical currency would be reinstated.

  Coin kept me in business.

  The kid ran a grimy shirtsleeve under his nose. “Tandor’s new in town. He’s…a bad man.”

  My interest level jumped to inquisitively piqued. “You don’t say.” I tried not to sound surprised that this urchin knew something I didn’t. I’d heard rumors that there were new outskirts in town, but the info had been hush-hush and low to the ground. Fairly typical when the topic revolved around child slavery, which I took seriously—not just because it was repugnant and vile, but because I had a personal stake.

  At any one time, the city was overrun with orphans, and snatching them was nothing new. The street kids had little means to fight back and could be used for all kinds of purposes, most of them horrific, including experimentation. There were very few options for scientific testing, so when orphans “volunteered” for the good of society, who was going to say no?

  The moral code in this city bordered on nonexistent.

  The only code anyone took seriously was survival.

  These kinds of crime rings were usually run by outskirts, strangers who rolled into town, armed and dangerous, flouting our laws and rules to further their own agenda. Or those who’d already been kicked out of town for whatever reason and had slunk back in, which meant death if they were caught. The government didn’t give second chances. It barely gave firsts. Its favorite method of punishing someone for a high crime was an over-the-head acid dump. The lucky assholes got banishment.

  The outskirts came, took what they wanted, wreaked havoc, and moved on.

  Most of the time.

  Occasionally, they stayed. Or tried to stay. That’s when we got in the way.

  “You don’t know who he is, do you?” The kid was downright gleeful at my ignorance, actually cracking a real smile. His teeth were pretty clean, which wasn’t the norm. You had to work at it.

  I took a step closer, coming up with something on the spot. “Listen, I have a proposition for you. You’d be an idiot to turn it down. I’m not known for sharing anything with anyone, so this would be a first for me.”

  He looked me straight in the eyes. “I’m no idiot.”

  Yes, kid, that was becoming abundantly clear.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Come with me, tell me all you know about this Tandor, and I’ll be your sustainer for one year.” I held up a single finger, scrunching it up and down. Just so he didn’t get any ideas that it would be a day longer than that specified timeframe.

  Right after the words left my mouth, I glanced down at the rushing water below and contemplated jumping. Had I actually made that proposition out loud?

  I’d never offered to be anyone’s sustainer in my entire life, which meant the dirty air I’d been inhaling since exiting the womb was officially affecting my brain—that, or that thing in my chest was searching for some much-needed exercise.

  I mean, after all, the kid had moxie, and I hadn’t stretched my muscles since my mother died nineteen years ago. After she left this Earth, my heartstrings had all but atrophied. Which, honestly, I was fine with.

  Foul air was likely to blame. I probably had so many iron particles built up in my brain, my synapses were misfiring.

  Being a sustainer basically meant I agreed to make sure this kid had food, adequate clothing, and a place to lay his head every night that was free from the constant cold, shitty drizzle that fell from our sunless sky. One usually did it out of the kindness of his or her heart—or apparently, if the air messed with her mind.

  “You want to sustainer me?” His voice sounded incredulous, which pretty much mirrored how I felt. “Shut up. You’re lying.”

  “I’m not.” I refused to retract my offer, even though my internal struggle was making me mildly queasy. What was I going to do with a goddamn kid? “I need information, and you have it.” That was valid enough. “Plus, I could use your small hands and body to weasel into places I can’t reach. I have my eye on a few quality items, but I’m having trouble accessing them. If you’re lucky, I can train you to be a kickass salvager, but only if you pay close attention. I don’t baby anyone, so it’s on you to keep up.”

  He looked unsure, but took a minute step back. It was a start. “They’ll kill me if they find me,” he said. “Especially if they see me with you.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll tell them you’re dead. You jumped before I got here. End of story.”

  “They’ll come check, and they won’t see a body,” he pointed out.

  “Sometimes people hit the rocks and roll into the water.”

  “Not without leaving any blood behind.”

  He was right. I turned and strode purposefully back to Luce, yanking open the flat storage compartment in the back. Sliding a large box forward, I lifted the lid, found the vial I was looking for, and slammed everything shut. Then I walked to the passenger door, lofted it, and grabbed out a jug. I made it back to the side of the gorge in less than two minutes, where the kid had been standing watching me. I set the jug on the ground, poured the contents of the vial into it, and shook.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making it look like you died a bloody, painful death.” I popped the top off and emptied the contents over the side. We both watched as red, sloppy goop splattered all over the rocks below.

  “That’s pretty gruesome.”

  “Do I detect a note of awe in your voice?”

  “Possibly.” The corner of his mouth went up in a half smile. Once the dirt and grime disappeared, he might look decent. “But I haven’t agreed to go with you yet.”

  “Oh, you will,” I said confidently as I headed back to the craft, tossing the jug inside, leaving the door open. I walked around to the contro
l side and got in.

  I had to wait a total of thirty-seven seconds before the urchin climbed in.

  The kid wanted to live after all.

  “Ew, it stinks in here,” he said as he reached up to bring the door down, making a show of covering his nose with his whole hand once he settled into the seat.

  “Get used to it. I have a lot of stuff in here. Stuff I need. Some of it smells.” I took off, gunning the propulsion, half trying to impress the kid, half trying to get the hell out of here, because the red light on my dash had started to blink. Another craft was in close proximity. “Hit the floor,” I instructed. “We’ve got company, and if I can’t lose them, things are going to get tricky fast.”

  “The space is too tight.”

  “Make it work, kid. That’s your new motto. Life is hard. Make it work.” I jammed the lever in my left hand toward the windshield, careening Luce forward, gaining speed. My right hand worked the props, increasing altitude.

  “How’d you get the name Holly Danger, anyway?” he asked as he scrunched down in an effort to fit into a space intended for adult-sized feet. I reached a hand into the back and dragged out an old blanket, tossing it over him. “Gross! This reeks like vomit!”

  I jerked Luce to the right as the red light began to flicker without ceasing.

  We were on an old forest path that had been cleared of trees once upon a time but now contained low, dead brush, which was ideal for keeping concealed below the tree line.

  Another quick few turns and I whipped Luce behind a stand of dead pines, slowing her props, dipping her close to the ground. These trees were as decent cover as any, due to their many branches, even if they were devoid of most of their needles.

  I fixated on the blinking light, watching as the pulses began to spread out. When I was confident that the other craft had turned in the opposite direction, I answered the kid’s question. “My real name is Hollywood California.” We were going to be here for a bit, so I lifted a boot up and rested it on the console between the seats. The kid wasn’t kidding, space was tight, and I had long legs. “You weren’t the only one who found old pictures in tunnels and got grand ideas. My mother discovered a bunch of things called postcards when she was pregnant with me and took a special liking to one that had a tree with a long, skinny trunk and broad leaves like fan blades, an ocean that was aqua instead of putrid green, and a huge ball of sunshine sparkling in the corner. It was captioned Hollywood, California.” I still had it tucked away. One of my meager possessions worth saving. “My mom told me that postcard was the most beautiful thing she’d ever laid eyes on. When she gave birth to me, she said it was time the two beauties in her life met. So, I was thusly named.”

  “What about the Danger part?” He coughed, wiggling his nose out from under the blanket—which was really just a large piece of raggedy cloth that had been in my craft for too many years to count. It had a variety of substances on it I couldn’t name. It was totally gross.

  The blinking on the dash switched to yellow. That was a good sign. The other craft was now at least three kilometers away. We’d be in the clear soon.

  “As a kid, I got into everything. My mom constantly yelled, ‘Holly, don’t touch that, it’s dangerous.’ ‘Holly, don’t do that, it’s dangerous.’ She eventually shortened it to ‘Holly, danger!’ and it stuck. Not exactly edge-of-your-seat stuff.” Instead of the light switching to solid green, like it should have, it began to flicker yellow again, the time between blinks shrinking rapidly. Then it went red. Fuck. Not in the clear. “Stay low,” I murmured, repositioning my leg near the converter, readying myself for a quick exit. “Another craft is entering the area. They won’t be able to pinpoint us exactly, but if they have any sophisticated tech, they know we’re here somewhere. We might have to hide out here until blackout just to be safe.”

  “Blackout?” He sneezed, rubbing his eyes, which had begun to water in earnest. “That means we won’t make it back into the city before dark.”

  I detected fear in his voice for the first time. “What’s your name?”

  “Robert, but everyone calls me Daze.”

  “Daze, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, because you don’t know me. But nothing keeps me out of my city, blackout or not. I have connections, know every back road and every crack in the mortar from here past Port Station. Luce may look old, but she’s retrofitted with the most up-to-date tech available.” Which wasn’t saying much, but it was a step up from what regular folks had access to. “Right now, she’s scattering the other craft’s radar, making it seem we’re much farther away than we actually are. From now on, there’s no doubting me. Keep it up and it’ll be the quickest way to get you kicked out of my life.”

  “But you promised to sustainer me for a year.” He sniffed three times and ended on a sneeze.

  “Yeah, I did. But I forgot to mention that our new arrangement is dependent on how symbiotic our relationship becomes. It’s going to go like this: You trust me unconditionally, give me information when I ask, and I keep you alive. We clear?”

  “Clear.”

  The red light on the dash solidified.

  Luce was painted a dull gray, to blend in, for this very reason. The craft had actually been painted every color of the rainbow at one point or another, but dead gray matched the bleak landscape the best. “Stay down,” I ordered Daze. “They’re on top of us. And, by the way, why are they tracking you so hard?” I raised an eyebrow toward the scrunched-up face peeking out at me. “It seems like a lot of effort for a runaway.” Actually, come to think of it, I’d never been paid to find a street kid before.

  Nobody, except for a handful of folks, with actual working, beating hearts, cared about lost kids.

  “I did something I wasn’t supposed to.” His voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.” He pushed the blanket a few centimeters away from his face and gulped in a few big breaths. “I snuck into Tandor’s office when he was out on a run and stole something important.”

  “Now why would you go and do a thing like that?” This kid had run away from Port Station, fallen into something over his head, and now he was caught in the middle of a brewing shitstorm. The kind that circled this city on a regular basis, and once you were sucked in, it was hard to come out the other side unscathed.

  “I was trying to save my friend.”

  “Noble.” In front of us, through the trees, I spotted what appeared to be a Q7 dronecraft creeping forward. It was matte black and slightly bigger than Luce. The Q’s had several features that had made them marketable back in the day. The 7’s, in particular, were a favorite, as they had bigger props, which provided a faster ride. Those same features were changed in the 8’s, as the larger props in the 7’s made the crafts too heavy and therefore unstable.

  There’d been a hell of a lot of crashes.

  Whoever chose a Q7 was in it for speed and had to be a damn good pilot.

  The only reason the driver wasn’t checking the brush around them was that Luce’s radar expander was making them think she was up the road a good half kilometer.

  Once they passed, I pulled back hard, shooting Luce in reverse.

  I maneuvered her through the trees, using my eyes and skills, not autopilot, which had become a nonexistent feature once the satellites had been knocked out of the sky by all the shit floating around in the atmosphere.

  “I was too late to save my friend.” The ride began to get wavy, and the kid had to grip the seat in front of him to stay put, the blanket tumbling back, the look of relief on his face endearing.

  “Sorry to hear that.” My arm was braced across the back of his seat, neck craned, eyes pinned out the back windshield, occasionally darting a glance forward. Dodging obstacles in reverse was one of my favorite pastimes. I could do it in my sleep.

  “She was my only friend. But I got Tandor back.” A shit-eating grin emerged. “I took something, and he wants it back bad.”

  Daz
e was ready to talk.

  “What’d you steal, kid?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I nearly crashed the back end of Luce into a thicket of trees, this time a stand of old oaks with peeling, gray bark. All of them were dead, their upper branches gnarled and black. They could be on their way to petrified, it was hard to know.

  “What did you just say?” I asked as I brought the craft to a jerky stop, keeping her idling.

  Daze was on his knees, forehead braced against the bottom of the seat he’d been forced to hang on to for dear life to stop from tumbling around.

  I could dodge anything, but I never said it would be a smooth ride.

  Instead of telling me, the kid lifted his head and dug in his pocket, drawing out something that looked remarkably like a quantum drive. It was no bigger than a two-centimeter square, coated in nano-carbon with a row of barely there input holes running along one end. “I took this.” He set the curious object in my outstretched palm.

  I brought it in for a closer look.

  “I’ve only seen one of these in my entire life.” I refrained from gaping, because that would’ve been strange and alarming for the kid. “This technology isn’t supposed to exist anymore. This little chip”—I held it between my thumb and forefinger—“can hold every word, number, or piece of data in existence before the meteor hit. And the only way to read it is on something called a pico.” A superfast computer that hadn’t been around since the elite left town. Picos did everything a computer did, but reading, formatting, and transferring data to quantum drives was their specialty.

  Crafters had tried to restart the technology, creating new superfast computers from spare parts, but they always failed because of the microscopic connections needed to engage with this finicky quantum drive.

  I couldn’t believe I had one resting in my hand.

  Daze crawled onto the seat, looking pale from our exciting adventure. “Your flying stinks, by the way.” He blew out his cheeks and held his stomach, looking like he was trying hard not to lose his breakfast. That was, if he’d eaten at all. By the look of his painfully thin shoulders, the answer was no. “Tandor has a pico. It works, I saw it.”