Danger's Halo: (Holly Danger Book 1)

by Amanda Carlson

  “Don’t be such a child,” I teased as I hooked the cable to a piece of metal, so it would be ready for the ride back. “Especially when the kid just kicked your ass, establishing himself as a swing pro. That one was a tiny one compared to the first one. And look, we’re here.” I took the lead, handing Daze his helmet. “I go first. You two copy everything I do.”

  “How many traps are we looking at?” Darby asked. “And how many of them are fatal?”

  “Too many to count,” I replied. “And all of them.” I didn’t mess around with security at my residences. “Just do what I do, and everyone lives.” I tapped Daze on the shoulder. “Oh, and I need my chromes back.” I held out my hand.

  The kid slid them off reluctantly, setting them in my open palm. They were certainly a better fit than his helmet. “That was cool,” he responded enthusiastically. I assumed he was referring to the cable swings and not the glasses. Although, the chromes were super cool and hard to come by.

  “A swing lover,” I said, rolling my helmet visor into the housing and donning my chromes, clicking them to X-ray. “It must be your lucky day. I have another pair inside. Two of the dials are broken, but I’m happy to lend them to you.” He gave me a cheesy grin, which looked comical through my lenses. Teeth all day. “Follow me. And I’m not kidding—do everything I do and don’t touch anything if you value functioning hands and feet.”

  Mirabel wasn’t my primary residence, since the canals took effort to get to on a regular basis, but it was my favorite for several reasons. One, it was named after my mother, and almost everything I had from our time together was stored here. When I was little, my mom didn’t go out much, so I didn’t either. But every once in a while, before the canals were overrun by seekers, my mother would bring me here. She’d grown up in this building. Unlike the other buildings around, which housed offices and manufacturing centers, this megascraper had been luxury condominiums, with all the bells and whistles. Integrated wall screens, state-of-the-art sleeping pods, 3-D personal printers that could print anything you needed, solar-capture windows, as well as full terraces that had been used for growing supplemental food. These megascrapers had been completely closed systems. They’d recycled everything from gray water to waste efficiently and generated their own power with solar windows and wind turbines on the roof.

  Two, I kept most of my prized loot here, because it was the most defendable location I had. Even the government didn’t want to deal with the seekers and outskirts who came here.

  Three, the building had been sheared off at fifty stories, so it was one of the tallest still standing. Over the years, I’d amassed more solar panels than I was fairly certain anyone had. So, this was where I charged my batteries necessary for life. All life.

  Everything we did required batteries.

  If it hadn’t been for the invention of nano-helium, just before the dark days, we’d have nothing—no power, no tech, no communication. Some genius—and I meant that in the most literal sense—invented a super-efficient battery that could store power at the atomic level, and if he hadn’t, the world would be stone-cold extinct by now. Shallow light constantly filtered through dismal cloud cover, and the rocks and debris that orbited Earth, but it was enough to keep the batteries limping along.

  The best time for charging was around the summer solstice, when we had the longest days of the year. The city made a point of charging up during solstice.

  I scanned the roof with my chromoscopes, noting that my tarps were all in place, none of my ultraviolet markers disturbed.

  Beside me, Darby cleared his throat. “Are those…”

  “Yes.” I continued my search of the roof. “Panels. Lots and lots of panels. It took me a full year to sew all those tarps together to make them look like they’d been haphazardly scattered there. That way, any government UACs or surveillance interested in this area never detects them.” I uncovered them only when I could monitor everything.

  It was highly illegal for an individual to own more than two panels or have more than two operating solar windows. We were supposed to hand the surplus over to the government so they could power their own buildings, and fuck the rest of us.

  I had fifty-three.

  “You always have charged batteries,” Darby commented. “But you never talked about why. Now I get it.”

  I clicked my glasses to the next setting as I moved forward, stepping over deliberately placed stacks of junk. “The less you knew the better. If the government got a hold of you and injected you, you’d be guilty by association.”

  Darby fell in line behind me. “I have it on good authority they’ve run out of the dreaded Babble.”

  My eyes tracked in a grid, making sure every signal light I had was still lit, as we made our way toward my hatch. “I heard the same rumor.” I exaggerated my leg movements over a wire so the guys noticed. “Some time last year, the vials ran dry. But they’re keeping it hush-hush. Claire had no idea.” Claire worked as a liaison to child welfare within the government. That’s how we’d met. I was a street kid in distress, and she’d been an adult who gave a shit. “That’s why you’re here, Darby. We can afford to be a little lax when the government doesn’t have access to Babble.”

  Babble, invented before the dark days, had shut down the need for public trials for a time. Once a person was injected, they lapsed into unconscious verbal memory—answering any question truthfully—and once they woke, they had no recollection of what they’d confessed. A talented investigator could pull memories from birth to present day, and the entire confession was public record. Nothing in your past was free from prosecution, either. So, once brought in for one crime, all the other shitty things you did were up for grabs.

  That era had been documented as a blissful crime-free time in our world. But in subsequent years, the government had been faced with violent protests and rampant suicide from those who’d rather die than have their past laid out for the world to see.

  After that, Babble became highly regulated.

  It hadn’t been originally named Babble—it’d been labeled something like Articulation Interrogation Serum. But after the dark days, it was nicknamed Babble, because that’s all anyone did on it. Babbled about their sorry, awful lives.

  If you were injected with the memory extractor now, you were basically guaranteed a death sentence, because everyone here had broken the law in some way.

  My fifty-three solar panels were the least of my infractions.

  The first time I’d broken the law, that I could remember, I’d been six years old. I’d crawled into an abandoned apartment and found a pixie motor. I knew it was something I should turn over to the government, but instead I stuck it in my pocket, not even telling my mother.

  I still had it.

  To this day, pixies were hard to find. They were small, ultra-efficient motors, drawing only a tiny amount of current, and were interchangeable in a ton of things. So much so, the government still required us to turn them in.

  Not that I did, but it was mandated.

  I skirted another trap.

  This one was a canister of tasespray, aimed to send an arc of gas released at ultra-high pressure straight at an attacker’s face. Back in the Carbon Max era—some two hundred years prior, before bio-innovation and NewGen technology—it was called tear gas. But if you fell victim to tasespray, not only did your eyes burn like hell, you were blinded for a solid forty-eight hours, along with the warm, cozy feeling of gigantic needles inserted straight into your retinas.

  I knew firsthand, unfortunately.

  Tasespray was not my friend.

  I’d never met a single person who hadn’t been completely incapacitated by a dose to the eye, even a seeker in full rage-mode. Even though they were desperate for a fix, they could feel pain—and were said to be especially sensitive since their pleasure receptors were overly enlarged. Tasespray was one of the government’s favorite standbys, but there were rumors that they were running low on this, too, so the horizons were looking bri
ghter and much less painful.

  The three of us made it to the northwest quadrant of the roof without managing to set off any of my security measures. I stopped, placing a knee on the ground, hefting up a large square of what looked like steel.

  I lifted it easily.

  That’s because it wasn’t steel.

  It was synthetic simulation board, three times lighter. I motioned for Daze to come forward. “I’m going to drop you in first,” I told him. “Once you’re down, stand still and wait for us.” He nodded without question. He sat on the edge, and I took his arm, releasing him down the three meters to the hallway below.

  I motioned Darby to go next. “I’m impressed, Hol. There’s no question that you’ve always been badass, but this is on an entirely different level. The scope of what you have here is awesome. We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

  “Does that mean you’re inviting me to your place for dinner and drinks?”

  His face went pensive for a second. “I think I am. With your solar capacity and my power grid, the implications are vast. We might be capable of achieving something even the government hasn’t been able to do before…”

  “Nonverbal right at the reveal.” I chuckled. “So very like you, Darb. Now get down there. We have more important things to discuss.”

  “What could possibly be more important than massive amounts of power?” he asked as he plunged into the opening.

  I leaned over, grinning. “A quantum drive and the possibility of recovering an intact pico.” I took massive pleasure watching Darby’s face go from surprise, to shock, to wonder, in less than three seconds. His mouth was still gaping as I dropped through the hole next to him.

  “You can’t be serious.” He tugged off his helmet, his short brown hair sticking up in hunks all over his head, wet and sweaty. That’s what wearing a helmet twelve to fourteen hours a day did. It made you a stinky, hot mess.

  “As serious as tasespray to the eye.” I shimmied up to the ceiling, using the strategic spots I’d placed in the wall to drag the trapdoor shut. Once it was firmly in place, I locked it from beneath with a steel deadbolt bigger than my fist.

  Jumping back down, I clapped the wet and grime off my gloves. Then set my chromes to infrared, dragging my gaze across the hallway, searching for any unusual heat signatures. “All clear,” I said. “Follow me, and I shouldn’t have to remind you not to touch anything, so this is your nonreminder.”

  Partway down, I doffed my helmet and set my ear against the wall.

  There was no way anyone could get to this floor without coming through the hatch, but it was always good to be thorough.

  I’d inserted a sonic-wave module in the wall. If anybody was moving around inside my unit, it would emit a low-level hum.

  No noise.

  I continued a few more meters, muscling an upended cooling unit out of the way, revealing not so much a door as a steel wall. One that looked to have no hinges or doorknobs. I peeled off my glove and set my open palm in the upper right quadrant.

  After a moment, there was a pop, and the wall cracked open a centimeter.

  Darby made a sound of disbelief, that came out like a partial sob-cough. “Why didn’t you tell me you have heat-sensor technology?” His tone projected equal parts hurt and wonder. Darby and I had never had serious tech talks, so he had no idea how much I actually had or knew. Most of the time we communicated via phone. Visits were scarce, and we had group meetings only once every three to four months. Socializing was a luxury most of us didn’t have.

  I nudged the door open a crack with the tip of my boot, listening, scanning the slim view of the interior that I could see. “The same reason you haven’t told me you have a working retinal-recognition display.” The technology for both heat and retina had become orphaned after the dark days, with no new manufacturing or engineers to operate it. I’d come across a few heat-sensing pads a number of years ago and put them to good use. Now was not the time to tell Darby that Bender and Lockland were fully aware I had them, and Bender had been the one to modify and get them working.

  But the boys had no idea where I’d installed the pads. That was the key.

  “Touché,” he said. “But how do you know about…”

  “I’m the one who actually leaves my home, remember?” Although I hadn’t seen the inside of Darby’s residence, I’d been to the outside many times. He lived near a passage I used often, right on the inside of Government Square. I ushered the guys in and shut the wall behind us, depressing a lever that engaged a complicated system of interlocking spirals, resembling an internal spider web. It connected together at the end with a loud, grating thunk.

  Once that was done, I strode into the entryway, simultaneously hitting a switch to shut down motion sensors and turn on the lights. The entire condo had voice-recognition capabilities back in the day, but they were all defunct now. I tugged my glasses off and set them, along with my helmet and a glove, on the utility ledge that ran around the entire space. The apartment was streamlined and glossy white. Bang kept the surfaces gleaming.

  “Everyone can relax,” I said. “If any threats come within thirty meters of this place, I’ll know it.” I peeled off my other glove and tossed it down next to my chromes and helmet.

  Next, I unzipped my vest, while simultaneously reaching out to press a single fingertip into an integrated panel on my wall. It sprang open.

  Daze exclaimed excitedly, pointing to my waist as I shrugged off the vest, “Is that a Gem laser? I’ve never seen one up close. Those are so cool.”

  I hung my attire—chock full of its life-saving weapons and tech—on a hook inside the storage locker that contained an arsenal of even more weapons and shut it up safe and sound. It would open only for my fingerprint. “It is, and for now you will remain a Gem virgin. My gun is temperamental, and I only bring it out when the situation calls for it. One thing at a time, kid.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Daze trailed behind me as I made my way in to my compartmentalized living space. “Is that a full tase on your waist? Or a half?” he asked. “And what’s in that other holster? Is that a handgun? Does it shoot actual bullets? I’ve never seen one before. I thought they were made up.”

  My vest contained a multitude of useful items, but I kept the necessary ones strapped to me at all times. Two guns and one taser at my waist, a knife strapped to each thigh, and other things attached to various body parts, none of which Daze was getting an eyeful of anytime in the near future.

  I tapped on more lights.

  Everything in this place was protected from the outside. The windows were covered in thick graphene. I stopped in front of my big screened wall, turning to the kid. “Yes, it’s a full taser set to Most Pain Inflicted, or MPI, as I like to say. It will stun and drop the biggest adult you’ve ever seen. And yes, it’s a handgun, but it doesn’t shoot the bullets you’re talking about. People love to gossip, but that kind of technology hasn’t been around for more than a hundred years.” I patted the cold steel hugging my hip. “This shoots air bullets filled with Nyoxine gas. The air bubbles, once in your bloodstream, kill you by blowing up your heart. The gun runs on vaporized fuel. Don’t touch it.”

  Daze’s face was a mixture of awe and super awe.

  I’d just morphed into this kid’s walking, talking idol.

  Darby came in after us, taking everything in. “This is incredible,” he murmured, pacing directly toward the far wall. I knew he would. He took off his gloves and began to trace the contours of the packs mounted there. He turned to me, his eyes bright. “How many?”

  “I lost count around eight hundred and something.” I opened my cooling unit and drew out a jug. Water in this building, before the dark days, had been recycled in an efficient hydroponic biosphere, back when these luxury apartments ran smoothly. Now I piped it in from the roof, running it through a reverse-osmosis system. It still tasted a bit metallic because of the iron, but it was drinkable.

  I’d been lucky that this entire building had b
een wired for a backup power source in case of global calamity. Kudos to the architects. Powering that closed circuit with my batteries made running the cooling unit, lights, and everything else possible. I still could’ve achieved it, but that made it easy.

  Darby’s eyes tracked back to the wall, and his hand went up again, seemingly without his permission.

  “Darby, stop fondling my batteries,” I teased as I opened some cabinets—these were integrated, but not fingerprint sensitive—and drew out three carbon molded cups. I poured the cool liquid into the cups.

  Once they were full, I put away the jug and grabbed the remote sitting on a shelf and pointed it at the wall, clicking a button.

  The micro-pixelated screen that ran the span of the entire room sprang to life.

  “Whoa,” Daze half wheezed as he stumbled forward, extending his arm. Even Darby was momentarily distracted from my power-packed wall. “Is that…a mountain?” Daze’s helmet was long gone. The kid squinted, rubbing his eyes, much like I had when I’d first taken in the same scene. The video was so much brighter than anything we were used to seeing on a daily basis, it was almost blinding.

  “It is.” I walked the two cups over, handing one to Daze and the other to Darby. Even if I snapped my fingers in front of both of their faces, it wouldn’t have broken the spell.

  Mirabel wasn’t a typical residence.

  Darby didn’t make a move to drink his water. Instead, his eyes found mine, confusion and surprise in them. He was at a loss for words. So very Darby.

  “It’s a looped video feed, as far as I can tell,” I said. “I just discovered it about a year ago. I thought the screen was dead, but when I was rooting around in the wall, inserting another sonic-wave monitor, I came across some wires that I hadn’t seen before. I fixed them, joining them to my closed circuit”—I shrugged—“and this popped to life.”

  Darby made a sound in the back of his throat. It was a cross between a gurgle and snort. He moved to stand next to Daze, the two of them equally mesmerized by the larger-than-life mountain, with its clear blue backdrop, swaying, lush green trees, and pristine snowcap.