“My flying is awesome, by the way, and it just saved your little, scrawny hide, so a thank-you is in order. And if Tandor has a pico, our world just got more complicated.” I glanced at the light on the dash. It’d gone solid green sometime during my retreat. I flipped a lever, sending a signal to the other craft, making them think a third vessel had entered the area on the other side of the gorge, just to further fuck with things. Just the way I liked it.
I sat back, propping my boot back on the console, sending a silent but grateful message to Bender for his mad skills when it came to installing tech in my craft. He was the best in the business.
“Thanks,” Daze muttered.
“You’re welcome. And, honestly, if you knew how hard it is to maneuver a craft backward, constant praise would be running from your mouth.” I arched an eyebrow at him as I flipped the drive over in my hand. “We’re going to hang out here for a while, and once I deem it clear, we’ll make our way back into the city. We should be there by blackout, but no guarantees. And no second-guessing allowed,” I warned as I popped open a small compartment underneath the steering levers. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to put this in here for safekeeping. I know it’s yours, and I’m not confiscating it, but if Tandor wants it that bad, we have to secure it. For now, that means here.” I snapped the door shut. “Nobody knows how to open this hiding spot but me, and now you, if you were paying attention. Luce has lots of hidey holes. They’ve come in handy over the years.” I stroked her dash affectionately, giving her a few taps for luck. “She’s one of a kind.”
“Tandor is going to kill me for taking that,” Daze said despondently, his gaze firmly directed out the window. “I don’t care what you do with it. I never want to see it again.”
I crossed my arms, one eye on the green light, one on the dejected kid with his bottom lip out. “If you knew it would get you killed, why’d you take it?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
In this town, friends were few and far between. If Daze thought he was helping his buddy, he would’ve done anything. I lived in that space. I knew it well.
“I overheard them talking one night,” he started. “Tandor was bragging to his partner about how he got his hands on this high-tech computer and how nobody would ever be able to decipher the information. He said he put it all in there—names, dates, and everything—and if he was caught, he’d just trash it.”
“But you managed to sleuth it out,” I said. “And why is that? From what I know—and full confession here, my knowledge is limited because superfast computers are rare and complicated—that quantum drive had to have been tucked into a slot inside the pico, hidden from view.” I didn’t even know where, because even though I’d seen a single drive before, I’d never laid eyes on a pico. “How’d you know how to get to it?”
Daze plucked at a frayed edge of the dirty blanket that was stuffed mostly at his feet. “Because my mom had one, and I used to play around on it.”
My knee jerked, hitting the dash with a painful thump. “What?” I reached up and yanked off my helmet, mopping the hair away from my face with splayed fingers. It was tangled and sweaty from being under an unbreathable shield all day, like usual. I tossed my helmet in the back. Daze’s eyes widened as he took me in without coverage for the first time. “You just had a pico lying around your place? Care to explain why you had a supercomputer—something the government may or may not even have—collecting dust around your residence?”
“Um.” His eyes were locked on me, his mouth slightly ajar.
“What? Snap out of it. Yes, I’m female. We’ve already met.”
“I just…I’ve never seen someone like you before,” he mumbled, his fists wadding up the stanky blanket. Then, realizing what he was doing, he shoved it off his legs with a huff. “Ew. You need to burn that thing.”
“I’ll get right on it. Now answer my question. Why did you have a pico? And do you still have it?” He tried to meet my eyes, but he blushed and glanced away. I sighed. “How old are you, Daze?”
“Twelve.”
“Twelve?” I couldn’t insult him by shouting that he looked like an eight-year-old. “I thought you were—”
“Younger. I know. I’m small for my age.” He stuck his chin out in a move I was going to christen The Daze. “But it’s about what’s up here and the boy who wields it.” He tapped his temple.
“Nice.” I grinned. “We’re going to get along just fine.” I readjusted myself, rubbed my knee, and launched Luce into action—this time forward instead of in reverse. “While I pick my way out of here, in between acres of dead, twisted trees, you’re going to explain to me exactly how and why you had access to a pico.”
“On one condition,” he countered.
Now there were conditions? “And what’s that?”
“We crack a window in here. It stinks like rotten slurry.”
“Fine, kid,” I said. “Be my guest. But you better not stop talking the entire way back. I’m expecting nonstop diarrhea of the mouth. Every single detail uttered, nothing left unsaid.”
Daze cracked a small triangular window in front as I took off. I was planning to take the long way back.
This kid needed time to spill.
* * *
Two hours later, Luce idled outside of a solid metal wall. It was blackout. No lights allowed. It was a nightly government order to try to reduce crime and save on power. It didn’t work—well, it did save on battery power—but the criminals could do bad deeds in the dark just as well as in the partial light. But somehow, blackout still existed and had since before I was born.
Daze leaned forward, squinting through the windshield. “I thought you said you knew where you were going? You even bragged about it. That’s a building, and all the entrances into the city are blocked. If we stay here much longer, UACs will find us.” Unmanned aerial crafts were a popular way for the government to keep eyes on its citizens. They claimed the small drones were for our protection, but because of the iron-laced air, UACs weren’t able to send live feed without massive interruptions. So all the drones could do was record reputed “bad” behavior, then zip back to their holding docks like the automated tattletales they were. By the time the government uploaded the files, most anyone with a brain was long gone.
The only problem was that the compromising footage went into a “file,” and if you were ever unlucky enough to get arrested, they could use it against you.
“I wasn’t bragging,” I said. “It’s called swagger. All the cool kids have it.” I twisted the controls, throwing my shoulder into it, and spun Luce around to angle her backside at a specific location on the wall. The move had been effortless, but I hadn’t warned Daze, who’d toppled into my lap during my expert steering maneuver. “You may want to use the shoulder straps next time.” I gave him a snarky grin. “They’re there for a reason and come in handy when you’re in the company of an excellent pilot.”
Daze gathered himself up quickly, scrambling back into his seat, his skinny arms tugging their way through the shoulder harness, buckling it with a loud clack. He gave me a side-eye. “You could’ve warned me.”
“Lesson number two.” I held up two fingers as I reached over and tapped a black button on the dash. “Everything I do is on-the-job training. If your brain is not awesome enough to figure it out, not my fault. You almost lost your cookies when I flew Luce in reverse. That should’ve been warning enough.” Behind us, a small seam in the facade began to grow, quickly becoming a gaping hole. “I mean, it’s not like you couldn’t see the shoulder harness. It’s always been there. Kind of like a welcome gift reaching out, aching to protect you, to feel the warmth of your body heating up its straps. It’s not there for decoration, no matter how pretty it seems. In fact, it’s—”
“You can stop now. I get it,” he muttered as he glanced out the back window. “Where are we?”
“I call this ‘almost home.’” The wall now had a craft-size hole. A single light flashed, and I began to back her up
.
Once inside, the wall in front of us silently shuttered. It didn’t make a peep. It was virtually impervious to any assault, except a very high-powered laser, because, well, it was graphene—3-D printed graphite, composed in a multilayered honeycomb matrix, making it super tough and durable. Graphene was still produced in limited amounts, regulated by the government. Most of ours had come from salvaging. Like most of my stuff.
I waited until the seam had fully engaged before I popped Luce’s door and got out. Daze began to follow. “Stay inside,” I said, reaching into my vest to produce a high-powered light no bigger than the tip of my finger. “I have to punch in some codes. Then we move.”
I made my way over to a panel on the wall, my light producing a big, bright arc in front of me. To the naked eye, the box resembled an old electrical panel, complete with wires spilling out. The wires had been left behind from when these buildings had been massively upgraded before the dark days, decades ago.
In reality, the panel held a security board known to only a select few.
That few included me, Bender, Claire, Lockland, and Darby. My crew. The only folks I trusted with my life in this city. It’d taken a hell of a long time for me to widen my network of trust beyond Bender and Claire, but eventually I had, and the five of us each brought a different skill to the table. That’s why it worked.
It was symbiotic.
Working together kept us sane and out of the hands of the government. Most of the time. That was the only way to survive in this city. It gave us all a better chance at staying alive, which was the primary goal. The secondary goal was to try to make our lives a little more comfortable—comfort being a relative term when most of the things relating to that word had been destroyed a long time ago.
Careful to touch only the black wires, not the red, I located a keypad and punched in the code. I waited not too patiently for the light to come on. After a few seconds, it did. It was orange.
Orange meant check-in.
I walked back to Luce and got in, bringing the door down out of habit. I opened up the console and dug around for a small tech phone. As far as communication went, low frequency radio was basically all we had. Not much else could penetrate the iron dust. It’d been a miracle that longwave technology had lingered as long as it had in the high frequency, shortwave world that had flourished in its place. Even more amazing was that we’d been able to modify it. Sixty-some years after the meteor took out life as my ancestors had known it, we hadn’t achieved much, but we did have low frequency. Without it, life would be so much more irritating.
“Is that a tech phone?” Daze’s eyes had widened. “Cool. I’ve never seen one, only heard about them.”
I checked the knob to make sure it was set on channel ten, one of our obscure bandwidths that no one else used. Even though direct communication was ours, anybody with access to a radio receiver, which were quite a few, since it was a source of entertainment around here, could listen in. So we were careful to speak in code.
I depressed the button and spoke clearly into the speaker. “Johnny, it’s Ella. My sewage separator is backed up again. Can you come help me fix it?”
Static came across the line, followed by, “No can do.” Bender’s voice held an edge, and I leaned forward. “I’m staying put tonight. See if Jerry’s available.”
“Okay, thanks.” I flicked my finger off the button and stuffed the phone into a vest pocket. Then I reached back for my helmet and slid it on. “I thought we could fly out, but we’re going to walk. I have another hard hat in the back, but I can’t guarantee it’s not going to stink. Want it or not?” Strolling around the city without protective headgear was taking your life in your own hands. A helmet not only deflected the rain and provided a built-in infrared visor, but it protected your skull from falling debris that tumbled down from the scrapers frequently enough to give you brain damage if you weren’t careful. The helmets themselves were extremely thin and lightweight, made from molded carbon fiber. The visor was essential. Without night vision, it would be difficult to get around during blackout or anytime at night, and sometimes during the day when the rain was heavy.
“I guess,” Daze answered tentatively. “What did he mean, ‘See if Jerry’s available’?”
“That was code, kid. You have to be careful what you say over the open airwaves.” I searched for a helmet that wasn’t too beat-up. There wasn’t much I didn’t have in this craft. However, anything I had in the back would be way too big for Daze, but he’d make do. I found one and plunked it in his lap. “I asked if it was safe to fly home, he said no, that there are heavy patrols out tonight, so don’t even think about it. Make it to the nearest safe house and settle in. Oh, and he said somebody’s looking for me, so watch my back.”
“He said all that?” Daze’s face was incredulous.
I nodded. “That he did. Bender’s a man of few words, but he makes every one of them count. I got the ‘somebody’s looking for you, so watch your back’ from his tone. Every single thing matters when you’re communicating across radio waves. Never forget. It’s the difference between staying alive and being dead.” I punched Luce off. Her landing gear engaged, and she slowly sank to the ground with a little bounce at the end. Once she was settled on her rubber pads, I popped the door open and got out. Daze followed out the passenger side.
“Where are we going?” he asked, buzzing around the back, donning his way-too-big headgear.
“To the canals.” I tried not to react to his expression, which was a straight-up mixture of shock and horror. My flashlight lit up the entire room as I made my way toward a door on the other side. Our visors were useless in here, because this space was devoid of all light. The beauty of infrared was it made use of any and all available light, allowing you to see in the dark—just not total blackness. For that, you needed a light. Like the one in my hand or the ones on my shoulders, conveniently attached to my vest.
Daze balked, trailing after me. “You can’t be serious.”
“Dead.” The retina scanner on the wall had long been defunct, but Darby had rigged up a fingerprint reader. The door we were exiting was twenty-centimeters-thick titanium with several layers of graphene sandwiched in the middle. To get through without a thumbprint, you’d need a megawatt laser. It could be done, but who carried a megawatt around? Those things were as big as trash bins.
Daze was still sputtering. “But…but the canals are dangerous…and nobody but seekers live there. Not even outskirts.”
“That’s true, for the most part,” I agreed as I settled my right thumb into the indentation. “The canals are a wild place, but if you know where you’re going, they can be a safe haven. Because, see, if no bad guys are there, and you know how to avoid the seekers, that, my friend, equals safe.” I wiggled my thumb. Nothing happened. My knee came up, jarring the box. Finally, a beep sounded, and a green light flickered over the doorknob.
I darted over to grasp the handle before the light extinguished. If I missed, I had to do the entire thing again. The techie’s idea of hilarity. Darby thought it would be funny to force people to make the grab in under two seconds. It would’ve been even more amusing if the box actually worked regularly. I’d been stranded down here one time too many to see any humor in the situation.
The door swung freely.
I snapped off my light and stuffed it back in my pocket, flicking my visor down, waiting a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. “Follow me closely,” I instructed. “If I hold my hand up, stop and stay absolutely quiet. Not one peep. We clear?”
“Clear.” His voice was muffled. The helmet I’d given him had a full face mask built in. Wouldn’t hurt to keep the kid covered for now. I had no idea how far this mysterious Tandor’s reach went and who was searching for us.
“Also, no less than one meter separates us at all times. There are multiple ways to get where we’re going, all dependent on who we encounter, and I’ll be making decisions quickly.” I wasn’t used to worrying about someone else, much
less a skinny little kid with absolutely no body mass who had no idea how to defend himself and no weapons at his disposal.
With decided conviction, I cut off my inner brain before it eviscerated itself with slashing rebuttals about my stupid choice of offering myself up as a sustainer.
Why couldn’t I have chosen a month instead of a year? That would’ve been so much easier. The kid probably would’ve taken it, too.
“Seekers. Is that who you mean?” Daze asked, his voice shooting for tough, but cracking around the edges. “Is that who we’re going to encounter?”
“Not just the seekers,” I said. “Remember, there are still outskirts crawling around out there.”
“Outskirts know better than to lurk in the canals,” Daze muttered, like he knew the inner workings of my city better than I did. “People talk, and outskirts listen. They aren’t stupid or drugged up like the seekers.”
He was right on that count. Seekers were “drugged up,” as well as violent and unpredictable. After years of imbibing a powerful pleasure-seeking drug called Plush, their body chemistries had been permanently altered. Now their only focus was getting another fix, and they’d kill you without a moment’s hesitation to achieve their goal.
Their behavior ranged between blissed-out after immediate ingestion to full-on rage-mode when they’d been without it for a day or two. They were extremely dangerous and uncontrollable, and they lived here, in the canals. It was the only place in the city the government left them alone. Very few people frequented the water maze, where the sea lashed against the crumbling buildings all day, every day. It wasn’t a warm, fuzzy place to hang out, and getting around took effort. More than most wanted to put forth.
“Yeah,” I replied blandly, “keep thinking like that and you’ll be dead by morning. Just follow me and keep your head down.”
Danger's Halo: (Holly Danger Book 1) Page 3