Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  “Uh, let’s see here.” Parnell tapped on the keyboard again, peering in at the readout. “Some guy called Knile Oberend. Rings a bell, actually, but I can’t place it.”

  Duran paled visibly. “What did you say?”

  “Knile Oberend.” Parnell pushed the spectacles up his nose and blinked. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Bring up the footage. Now.”

  “Ah, hell no, Duran. I just finished storing that–”

  “Bring up the goddamn feed!” Duran bellowed. “Now!”

  Across the console, Singh choked on the burger he was eating, hacking and wheezing and doubling over in response to the startling sound of Duran’s voice. As he recovered he cast an accusatory glance at Duran, but, seeing the look on the inspector’s face, quickly looked away again.

  “Okay, don’t blow a fuse, Duran,” Parnell said. He turned back to the screen and began digging through repositories for the data. Duran towered over him, stiff and intent as the seconds passed. Parnell found the image bank, scrolling through a series of twenty or thirty still frames before he found the one he was after – a grainy shot of a man in sunglasses moving through the gate.

  “That’s the guy,” Parnell said, tapping the screen again. “The system is never one hundred percent when they’re wearing respirators or sunglasses or whatever, but–”

  He turned over his shoulder at the sound of the door opening. Duran was already gone.

  15

  Knile’s lungs were on fire again. He sucked in a mouthful of air.

  It didn’t help. He still felt like he was drowning, that he was fighting a losing battle as the little remaining air within him slowly leaked away. He pushed with sweaty palms at the galvanised steel that pressed in around him, a material that his imagination told him was more like the wood inside a coffin than the interior of an air duct.

  Stop. Breathe. Relax.

  With an effort, Knile forced his eyes shut and slowed his breathing. Bracing himself with thighs and forearms, he pressed his back against the rear of the air duct and let his head dip. He’d ditched his overalls before beginning the climb, but he was still sweating like crazy. His neck muscles were aching and his arms and legs were beginning to feel like dead weights from the strain, but in the back of his mind he knew that this ordeal was almost over, that there was an end to this claustrophobic little prison not far away.

  This was always the hardest part. You made it through before and you can do it again.

  The air duct was one in a series that linked the lowest tier in the Reach, the maintenance section, with the tier above. Since the official modes of transport between these tiers – the elevators and stairwells on the other side of the building – were heavily patrolled, this was his best and perhaps only option for continuing his ascension through the building without being caught.

  Right now he was wishing that there had been another choice.

  Grunting, he began to push himself up the vertical enclosure again.

  He’d discovered this route when he was young and reckless. Hurling himself into an unknown network of air ducts was something he would be very reluctant to attempt these days, but back then he’d thought he was indestructible, that there was no situation from which he could not escape. Sure, there were schematics he’d stolen that had given him a fairly good idea of how to make it through, but those plans hadn’t told him what it would really be like inside these ducts. There was no light, for a start, and he had to rely on a tiny LED flashlight on his belt to illuminate the way. Keeping a grip was also exceedingly difficult, especially in these vertical shafts when sweat began to work against him. There were tiny joins between the sheet metal segments that helped him to find purchase here and there, but for the most part he felt like he was trying to push his way through a glass box.

  The first time he’d wormed his way through, his intrepidness had eventually faltered. After struggling for two hours, that veneer of invulnerability had been scuffed away, leaving him desperate and despairing. In fact, before long, he’d thought he was going to die in here like a rat that had become lost in a maze, starved to death. He pictured his body decomposing, swelling up like a balloon and bursting open, the foul stench from within wafting out through the network of air ducts like poison until it eventually seeped into the living spaces, aggravating the inhabitants who lived in this part of the Reach.

  Hope you suffocate on it, he’d thought bitterly. Every last one of you.

  He’d only kept going because, well… what other choice was there? There was no point heading back, since he was certain he’d get lost that way as well. He’d become confused, believing that any direction he attempted to go would lead to death, that there was no way out of this labyrinth at all. He’d prepared himself for the end, thinking of what a foolish and ignominious way this was to die.

  He hadn’t stopped, though. He’d kept going while there was still strength in his body, and, miraculously, he had eventually prevailed. That day he had reached his destination. Now as he retraced the steps in his mind, he believed that he could do it again. He could make it through and continue on his way toward his destiny.

  He pushed onward and upward, gritting his teeth and fighting against the slippery steel, bracing his legs to prevent a fall. Time passed in slow motion – he couldn’t be sure if he’d been in this shaft for a matter of seconds or many long hours. It was irrelevant, he decided. Everything was irrelevant, but for the mechanics of pushing himself upward, sliding hands and feet and body, bracing, and repeating it over and over again. Moving himself further along the network and onto the next section of ducting.

  At the top of the shaft was a narrow right angle that he remembered well. He’d been wedged there, the first time, stuck fast. He’d recalled an alley cat in the slums that had, in his youth, attempted to run under a wooden fence and broken its back. It had lain there, mewling pitifully, until one of the older boys had stepped forward and stomped it repeatedly to finally put an end to its misery.

  That was how Knile had felt the first time he had been through here, like the cat under the fence, except that there was no one to come and end his suffering should he find he could go no further.

  He knew how to approach it this time, however, how to angle his body and wriggle and use his legs to brace himself and apply the force necessary to squeeze through. It only took a few moments before he’d progressed, squirting through the gap with relative ease, a feat that almost seemed too simple. He looked under his armpit in surprise, wondering why. Then he realised that he had probably lost some weight since his last attempt, and this fact, coupled with his new approach, had made a previously difficult task very easy.

  “Starving to death in the lowlands finally has an upside,” he muttered.

  He continued through several more shafts, breathing easier now, and then he saw light ahead. Wriggling forward, he came to a grill that opened out into a corridor beyond. Taking a few moments to make sure that no one was around, he began to wrestle with the frame. The false screws that he’d added years ago popped out and skittered across the floor outside, and then he lowered the frame gently downward.

  He silently thanked the maintenance crew for not discovering the false screws over the years. If they’d been replaced, he’d have made a lot more noise bashing his way out, and that was the kind of attention he didn’t need.

  Knile began to push his body outward, making sure to keep a good grip behind him. First time around he had slipped while trying to exit the duct, exhausted and overeager to be free of his confinement, and fractured his collarbone. He remembered at the time that he had almost welcomed the pain, revelling in the acuteness of it, the feeling of it throbbing in his neck, because it meant that he was still alive. Death had not claimed him inside the air ducts.

  Now he levered himself out of the cavity and dropped easily to the floor. Returning the grill to its proper place, he collected up the screws and wedged them back in place, more an exercise in covering his tracks than an investme
nt in the future. After all, he was never coming this way again.

  Taking a moment to brush himself off and collect his thoughts, Knile began to move along the corridor.

  16

  The second tier of the Reach encompassed roughly sixty floors, from Levels Forty to One Hundred, and was collectively known as ‘Gaslight’, a slang term that had become ubiquitous in its use. The name was derived from the old-fashioned style of light fixtures that could be found across the many levels, ceiling-mounted lamps enclosed by iron frames and five glass panels in the shape of a trapezoid. These gave off a nostalgic kind of watery yellow light, a stark change from the bright fluoros of the maintenance tier below, and the mood was, in turn, reminiscent of a more romantic epoch in history.

  They weren’t real gas lights, of course. Oil and gas supply had long since dried up on Earth, the last of the fossil fuels sucked from the ground in the heady days before the evacuations. These lamps were powered by electricity, either from the reactor at the base of the building or through the solar panels that were built into the exterior of the Reach. Perhaps it was a testament to the waning productivity of these energy sources that the lamps seemed even dimmer than the last time Knile had been here.

  Knile wound his way through the corridors and up several flights of stairs, passing a few of the inhabitants without incident. Not for the first time, he pictured how this place may have looked in its heyday, the curving steel walls burnished and gleaming, the floors clean and unbroken. Back then it had probably seemed modern and, to an extent, even luxurious.

  In contemporary times it was a far cry from that ideal. The walls were turning a jaundiced shade of yellow and there were streaks of rust where moisture had permeated the joins in the metal. Yellow line markings on the floor that had once provided pedestrians with routes and directions had all but worn away from the passage of many feet. Interactive information kiosks on the sides of the thoroughfares stood dark and unused, their screens cracked and covered in graffiti in garish shades of pink and lime green.

  The Enforcer presence was not particularly strong in Gaslight and Knile did not anticipate encountering them in any great numbers. This tier belonged to the working class of the Reach – many of the cleaners, couriers and maintenance staff lived here, along with meat workers and those who toiled away in the greenhouses above. These were folk that Knile identified with. He had lived here for some time and had gotten to know many of them during that period. He supposed there was a chance that he would be recognised, but he was not overly concerned by that either. These weren’t the kind of people to rat each other out to the Enforcers.

  Still, Knile kept a low profile, moving quickly and keeping his head down. He wasn’t about to begin relying upon the goodwill of others to keep himself safe.

  On Level Fifty-Three he came to a relatively spacious market, a roughly circular array of outlets that served as one of the commercial hubs within Gaslight. The place was packed with people, just as Knile remembered, bartering and arguing over prices, hauling goods about or indulging in some light chit-chat. Knile spotted a couple of Enforcers on the other side of the market, but they were relatively subdued. They were still the peacekeepers inside the Reach, the lawmen, but they couldn’t manhandle or coerce the inhabitants of Gaslight with impunity like they did in Link or in the slums. The people inside the Reach had rights and the Enforcers knew it. Behind closed doors, Knile had no doubt that men in black would still do unspeakable things, but out in the open they could not afford to be so brazen.

  Knile kept out of the Enforcers’ way and soon found the place he was looking for, a little shop poking out of the shadows in the corner of the market. Ostensibly it was just another bland corner store where the people of Gaslight could buy meat and fresh produce, milk and eggs, alcohol of varying potency and basic pharmaceutical products as well. A sign that read Ollie’s hung above the door, faded and peeling in the glow of the wan light outside, and below that Knile could see another sign – a softly glowing red symbol, a stylised version of the letter ‘C’.

  It was an icon that belonged to the Consortium, denoting the location of one of their emissaries.

  Knile glanced back at the Enforcers. If they had their way, they’d have been camped outside Ollie’s on a permanent basis, keeping tabs on all those who entered and exited so that they could stick their nose into the business of the Consortium. The Consortium, however, did not allow this. They were an organisation based off-world that stood above the jurisdiction of the Enforcers, and they were not subject to any laws here in the Reach. There were almost ten consulates of the Consortium spread across the Reach, and the Enforcers were not welcomed in any of them.

  Knile stepped inside the store. Three narrow aisles ran lengthways toward the back, and a glass refrigerated section shone its dismal light from the far wall, where a customer seemed to be examining the expiration date on a container of milk. The clerk stood behind the counter waiting patiently.

  “Morning to you,” he said politely.

  “Morning.”

  “Can I help you?”

  Knile walked over to get a better look at the man. He was not the same clerk who had worked here in the past, but Knile supposed that was not so surprising. He had been gone a while and the population of the Reach was in constant flux.

  “I’m here to see Jon Hanker.”

  The man nodded as if this were all very routine and pressed a button for an intercom on his desk.

  “Darkroom, we’ve got a customer here. Please advise.”

  He smiled reassuringly at Knile and twiddled his thumbs as he waited for a reply. Knile glanced up to see the wall-mounted camera pointed right at him. He suppressed the urge to wave. The customer with the milk moved past, swiping a credchip for the clerk as payment, then grumbled a farewell on his way out the door. Moments later the clerk pressed a finger to his tiny earpiece as he received a reply.

  “Yes. Good.” He glanced up at Knile. “Okay, you’re good to go. All verified.”

  He gestured to the far wall, where a door was beginning to slide open.

  “Thank you,” Knile said, and he proceeded to enter the portal.

  Behind the door, a short and narrow corridor covered in gleaming white linoleum led to two armed men dressed in red uniforms. They stood motionless, offering no response to Knile’s arrival. These were the Crimson Shield, colloquially known as Redmen, the personal escort of the consul. Their suits were spotless, their faces clean-shaven and their hair neat, a sharp contrast to the often dishevelled Enforcers. As he passed them, Knile noted their hardware with a degree of admiration – pulse rifles, high-tensile ceramic armour plating, augmented reality visors. These guys were not to be messed with. The technology and weaponry at their disposal dwarfed anything available to the Enforcers or any other faction in the Reach.

  At the end of the corridor was a small but luxurious office, outfitted on one side with a sleek leather sofa, a coffee table and a silver water cooler. Over by the other wall sat two neat black chairs and a broad grey laminate desk, behind which sat a middle-aged man in a black suit.

  “Welcome back, Knile,” the man said with a smile.

  “Mr. Hanker,” Knile said, moving across and shaking the man’s extended hand.

  “Huh? What’s this ‘Mr. Hanker’ business?” Hanker said playfully. “What happened to ‘Hank’?”

  Knile shrugged, taking a seat across from the other man. “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me after all this time.”

  Hank smiled again. He had a neatly manicured grey beard which he stroked idly.

  “I remember,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “You’re the guy who can move things around the Reach like no one else. You really came in handy when official channels weren’t available.” He dropped his hands. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’m almost surprised you’re still around,” Knile said. “I didn’t expect that. I figured you’d have shipped off to greener pastures by now.”

  Hank leaned back in
his chair and tapped a postcard that was stuck on the wall over by his desk phone. It depicted a pristine collection of white domes connected via a network of conduits and steel support structures under a black sky.

  “Six months,” Hank said smugly. “Six months, and I’m out. My time is almost done.”

  “Nice,” Knile said appreciatively. “Where is that? Ganymede?”

  “Europa. Damn fine piece of real estate.”

  “Or you could stay here…?”

  Hank laughed. “Like heck! I can’t wait to get out of this monstrous relic.” He tapped his chin. “Maybe you and I can meet up for a drink out there when all this is done. I’m pretty sure I owe you one.”

  “Sure. I’ll take some water, if that’s on offer.”

  Hank nodded amiably. “Could’ve offered you that any time you like, had you shown your face in the last few years.”

  “You didn’t think I was dead?” Knile got up and moved over to the water cooler. After all that sweating in the air ducts he was incredibly parched. “Everybody else seemed to think that.”

  “The Enforcers thought you were, but we didn’t.” Hank leaned forward. “Once they find out you’re back, they’re going to be looking for you.”

  “I thought the Consortium called the shots with those guys,” Knile said. He began to fill up his flask. The water from the cooler was so clear it seemed surreal. Knile hadn’t seen anything like it in a long time. “Can’t you do me a favour and tell them to back off?”

  “Doesn’t work that way, my friend, and you know it. The Consortium has a strict policy – we don’t meddle in the Enforcers’ jurisdiction. They police the Reach from the Atrium down, and we control everything above that. That’s how it works.”

  “The Consortium is a big, powerful organisation. Why don’t you guys just take control of everything?”

  Hank leaned back and sighed. “I’m sure I’ve had this conversation with you before, Knile.”

  Knile shrugged and the water cooler gave off a belching sound as air bubbles rose to the top. “Maybe.”