Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  “No,” he whispered desperately.

  You’re a failure, and when you die in this place there will be no one to miss you. No one to mourn you.

  “No.”

  Everything you’ve ever done has amounted to nothing.

  “Fuck you!” he roared, his voice bouncing around the enclosed space, much as the man’s laughter had done. Now he was moving quickly and with purpose. The pain in his shoulder focussed his mind and brought it sharpness and clarity, blowing away the hazy fog that had been suffocating him a moment before.

  He reached the open area of the field generator, and from the next baffle emerged another man in a suit, who was glancing around as he tried to identify the source of the voice. They locked eyes, and both brought up their guns, but Duran was the quicker, firing twice and then a third time as he hit the man in the thigh, hip and chest. The man cried out and fell to the floor, clutching at his side. The gun went limp in his grasp, and he lay there squirming pitifully.

  The man laughed again as Duran approached, more weakly this time.

  “Taken down by a fucking Enforcer,” he choked, still laughing and wild-eyed. “Hope no one hears about this.”

  “Put the gun down,” Duran said to the man with the star tattoo on his cheekbone. “You don’t have to die here.”

  “Die here, die somewhere else, what’s the fuckin’ difference?”

  Jordan tried to bring up his gun hand, one last-ditch attempt at glory, but Duran fired another shot and put him down for good.

  41

  Wilt pushed Knile toward the corridor that led to the main elevators, but Knile baulked and shied away, resisting his captor’s attempts to manoeuvre him.

  “Are you stupid?” Knile managed to get out, even though Wilt’s forearm was pressing painfully into his neck. “You might have an ID chip that works in that elevator, but as soon as I step in there it’s going to shut down. You’ll have a dozen Enforcers up your ass in about thirty seconds.”

  Wilt slowed. “Then what do you suggest?”

  “I have another way.” He jerked his head at a long, narrow corridor leading off on a different tangent. “Back there.”

  Wilt seemed to weigh this up, then swung the two of them around.

  “Get moving.”

  Knile directed the taller man the only way he could – by gasping out instructions and nodding his head as far as Wilt would allow. The man’s grip was like iron, and worse, it was relentless. There was no respite. Knile felt on the verge of passing out several times as he struggled for breath, but Wilt showed not the slightest hint of compassion. He kept up the pressure, not allowing Knile more than an inch in which to move.

  “Y’know, you’ve… really done things the hard way, Wilt,” Knile wheezed out at one point. “Why didn’t you just… post a bunch of men in the Atrium and wait for me to show up? I had to… come through there eventually, right?”

  “I’m not quite as foolish as you seem to believe, Knile. I know that a group of armed men standing around in the Atrium is exactly the kind of behaviour that would gather the interest of the Redmen. They don’t take kindly to that kind of thing in their territory. You know it, and I know it.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Knile said.

  “So you keep saying. Now keep moving.”

  They eventually came to a bulky, rounded door with a yellow ‘W’ stencilled across it in faded yellow paint.

  “Through there,” Knile said. “It’s open. I unlocked it earlier.”

  Wilt moved to it and slammed it open with his palm, then reeled back at the sight of the outside world just beyond, the open sky above.

  “What is this?” Wilt demanded as air from outside howled around them. “What’s the idea?”

  “This is our way up,” Knile said simply. “We climb.”

  “What are you playing at?” Wilt said, tightening his grip further.

  “It’s the… only way…” Knile spluttered.

  “It can’t be.”

  “It is,” Knile said. “And the ride is leaving in a few very short minutes, so we can stand here arguing about alternatives, if you like–”

  “All right, then,” Wilt said, releasing his grip and pushing Knile forward. He raised the gun to Knile’s back. “Don’t bother about messing with respirators. We don’t have time. Just go.”

  The door slammed shut and the two men made their way along the narrow steel walkway. Under their feet there was a drop of dizzying proportions. Knile had done the calculations on a free fall from the top of the Reach, and he knew that anyone who tipped over the edge would have more than a minute to contemplate the impact before the unyielding earth rushed up to meet them far below.

  It was not a place he wanted to slip.

  “Where do we go?” Wilt said.

  “Over there.” Knile pointed to a set of thin cylinders that were mounted horizontally into the wall, spaced about a metre apart.

  “What are those things?”

  “Sensors that the military used back in the old days. I’m not sure what they were for, but I do know that they go all the way up to the Atrium.”

  Knile could see that Wilt didn’t like it, but also that he knew he’d been backed into a corner. There was no other choice now.

  “All right, but I’m going first,” Wilt said. “That way I can be sure that you don’t reach the top before me and run off.”

  “Heaven forbid,” Knile said drily, hitching his backpack up onto his shoulders. He made an elaborate flourish with his hand. “After you.”

  The wind whipped around them and the walkway creaked unsteadily as they moved along it. Knile was glad there weren’t more men than just the two of them – he doubted the steel would carry much more weight. It was rusted and worn and probably hadn’t been used in a very long time.

  Wilt moved cautiously, hiding his uncertainty behind a veil of hostility and coldness, but Knile could see it was there in his eyes, like a candle flickering at the bottom of a deep and empty well.

  Knile himself couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t uneasy about the climb. When he and Ursie had climbed down at the Greenhouse they had been secured by ropes, so there had always been a safety net to fall back upon. Here, however, there was no such thing. One slip would mean a very long plummet through the murky twilight, and then a bone-shattering crunch at the bottom.

  Wilt began his climb somewhat awkwardly, the gun in one hand. He divided his time equally between glancing upward in the hope of seeing the edge of the Atrium, and glaring back down at Knile through the sights of the weapon to ensure that his captive was following. Knile didn’t flinch, returning Wilt’s gaze with silent stoicism as he racked his brain to come up with a solution, a way out of this predicament.

  There has to be a way out of this, doesn’t there? he thought. There has to be a way to overpower this guy.

  But what did Knile have in his favour? Wilt had the higher ground and he had the gun. He had superior strength and speed.

  The only thing Knile had was a counter on his wrist that was telling him his time was running out one second at a time. Telling him that his dream was slipping away.

  Finally he stopped and sighed, then leaned his head forward against the cool metal of the Reach wall. Every part of his body ached. He was drained both mentally and physically by the relentless pace of the last forty-eight hours, by this quest to stay ahead of the Enforcers, Wilt, and the ruthless schedule that had been handed to him.

  And what had he gained from all of this? Where did that leave him? Stuck on a wall with a madman with no way out.

  Knile pulled his body inward against the rungs and took a deep breath. Then he closed his eyes.

  At that moment Wilt’s holophone rang, and with some difficulty he managed to answer it while still keeping the gun on Knile.

  “What is it?” he said. Then a moment later, “Are you sure?”

  Knile couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but he could tell by Wilt’s voice that there wa
s a problem.

  “Where was he? How did it happen?” Wilt said desperately.

  Sounds like this Tucker guy isn’t going to show up after all, Knile thought. What else would get Wilt so wound up?

  “No, there’s no time,” Wilt said. “I’ll figure something out.”

  He closed the connection and then hung there for a few moments as he gathered his thoughts. Knile could imagine what those thoughts might be.

  “I can see where this is going,” Knile said quietly.

  “What?” Wilt called down, pointing the gun at Knile again.

  Knile raised his face. “I said I can see where this is going.”

  “Keep climbing.”

  “No.”

  Wilt’s face contorted with rage, and he descended one rung back toward Knile.

  “I said keep climbing.”

  “And I said no.”

  “Time is running out, Knile. You said so yourself. What are you playing at?”

  Knile considered. “Well, Mr. Wilt, I’ve been running a few scenarios over in my head, and I don’t like where any of them are going. The way I see it, if this Tucker guy of yours is up there, you’re going to put me down like a rabid dog without a second thought. I become excess baggage to you, a third wheel. There’s no point letting me go. On the other hand, if Tucker isn’t there, which sounds the more likely option, you’re going to use me to get what you want, and then what?”

  Wilt looked at him evenly. “You’ll be free to go.”

  Knile laughed. “Really? You’d just leave a loose end lying around like that, huh? Because you’re a nice guy.”

  “Once I’m done with you, it makes no difference to me whether you’re dead–”

  “Or alive.”

  Wilt grated his jaw and climbed down another rung. “Stop this stupidity, Knile.” He brandished the gun again, pointing it right at his captive’s face, but Knile could see the doubt in his eyes. Something had happened to Tucker, and now Wilt’s last hope of escaping Earth was clinging to the wall of the Reach below him. “If you do as I say, you have a chance of surviving, Knile. If you don’t, you die right here.”

  Knile shrugged, savouring the desperation that was creeping into Wilt’s voice.

  “You put a bullet in my head after I do what you want, or I splatter on the streets of Link like a fucking water balloon. What’s the difference?”

  “Knile–”

  “See you later, fucker,” Knile said, and he took his hands from the rung at his waist and spread them wide, like an Olympic diver about to drop backward from the edge of the ten-metre platform. His face was calm, his eyes closed. His head tilted backward and his body swayed, tipping past the point of no return as he began to fall out into the void.

  “Stop!” Wilt roared, and he lurched desperately downward and clutched at Knile’s outstretched arm, striving for purchase before his captive fell to his death.

  Suddenly Knile’s body stopped at a forty-five degree angle, as if he was a marionette whose strings had gone taut.

  Something metallic glinted at Knile’s waist, hooked around one of the rungs, and then Knile was coming back at Wilt. Knile moved like a viper, hauling himself upright and grasping Wilt’s shirt, then wrenching himself backward again, using his full weight to dislodge Wilt from his perch. Wilt, already overbalanced, could not maintain his one-handed grip, and he was ripped away from the rungs and sent flailing out into thin air. The gun flew from his grasp and spun away into the nothingness.

  Knile braced himself, keeping his fist in Wilt’s shirt, and as the larger man dropped past him he swung him sideways like a ball on a string. Wilt cried out and clawed at Knile’s face, but Knile kept his focus, snaking out his free hand to the pocket in which he’d seen Wilt place the passkey. As Wilt swung back again he grasped the passkey and deposited it back in his own pocket in one fluid motion.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought: All those years of pickpocketing just paid off.

  He released his grip on Wilt’s shirt and was just about to voice a farewell quip when Wilt’s hand clamped onto the back of his neck, and those fingers of steel dug into his flesh so hard that he could barely breathe.

  Knile felt his belt start to give, where the carabiner he’d taken from his backpack and looped around the rung strained at the leather. It was the only thing keeping the two of them from falling to their deaths.

  His elation at retrieving the passkey was short-lived, now replaced by a surge of utter panic.

  “Clever,” Wilt snarled below him, lifting his other hand toward Knile’s neck in an attempt to secure his position. Knile found the shiv at his belt and flashed it defensively, gashing Wilt’s forearm, but Wilt barely seemed to feel the strike, backhanding Knile across the cheek with staggering force, enough to make him almost pass out. Fighting the blackness at the edge of his vision, Knile slammed the shiv into Wilt’s chest twice, then as the third blow struck home, Wilt’s free hand clasped around Knile’s wrist, immobilising it. The shiv remained buried deep within his body.

  “That’s enough of that,” Wilt said through clenched teeth, raising his face to Knile’s and smiling at him sinisterly. “You almost got the best of me there.”

  “I’m not done yet,” Knile choked, still struggling for breath with Wilt’s hand around his neck. He tried to pull the hand away, tried to pry the fingers upward, but they weren’t budging.

  Wilt swung his legs back toward the wall, but in his desperation he kicked too hard and snapped the rung in two. The pieces dislodged from their mounts and spun away below. Wilt was left without anything on which to place his feet, so he continued to hang there with Knile as his only tether.

  Wilt coughed. Knile saw that there was blood on his lips.

  “I underestimated you,” Wilt said in a conversational tone, as if they were a couple of businessmen sitting down to discuss their latest transaction, rather than two men desperately trying to kill each other. “You understand what it takes to succeed, don’t you, Knile? You’ve done things that you’ve regretted, things that have made you hate yourself. I can see it in your eyes.” His grip tightened and Knile tried to pull the hand away from his neck again. No chance. “You’re like me, aren’t you? You know the price you have to pay to outlast the others. To overcome. You know what it’s like to sell your soul in order to see your dream come true.”

  Wilt’s words made Knile feel oddly sick. He felt repulsed by them, disgusted that a monster such as this could possibly think the two of them were alike. Knile knew that he had done some things he’d regretted, things he wasn’t proud of, but he was no Alton Wilt. He was not some callous madman who trod over everything in his way to get what he wanted.

  He had no idea why Wilt had chosen this moment to try to create an affinity between them, and he didn’t care. He wanted nothing to do with him.

  Knile tried to voice his feelings, to put Wilt in his place, but he found that he had lost the capacity to respond. There was no air left in his lungs, and the blackness was closing in on him. Wilt’s shirt was covered in streaks of blood. It dripped from his boots and fell through the air like droplets of crimson rain.

  “I respect that, Knile. I respect a man who’s willing to…” Wilt trailed off, his eyelids fluttering. His grip finally began to weaken and he licked his lips, then came back to full alertness with a start. “No. I can’t leave her,” he said.

  Knile choked and gasped, feeling unconsciousness descend upon him. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Wilt’s eyes fluttering again, and then a serene look came over the tall man’s face.

  Knile remotely heard a voice, which he thought might have been Wilt saying something incomprehensible.

  “I’m coming, Elia.”

  Knile came to with a gasp.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. It might have been seconds or minutes. The only clue he had was that the light still seemed the same as before, so the odds were that not much time had passed.

  Choking in great lu
ngfuls of air, he tried to take stock of what had happened.

  Wilt was gone. Amazingly, the bloodied shiv was still clutched in Knile’s hand, stringy red globs seeping and dripping from the blade at the touch of the wind, spiralling through the air.

  Then, far below, he saw the limp form of Alton Wilt plunging toward the ground. The man made no sound – he did not scream or call for help, did not wail in terror. He almost seemed tranquil, accepting of his fate, his arms spread loosely at his side as his sleeves flapped madly around him.

  Even though he was receding further every second, becoming more difficult to see, Knile had the feeling that the man was looking at him, staring forlornly as he fell away to his death. Knile glared back, defiant, revelling in the joy of having overcome his adversary, of having survived.

  Whether Wilt had passed out due to blood loss, slipped, or simply let go, Knile would never know. All he did know was that, one way or another, he wasn’t coming back.

  Knile turned back to the wall and took a moment to gather himself, sucking in more air as the tremors in his hands subsided. Then he shakily unhooked the carabiner.

  He began to climb.

  42

  Knile’s hand clutched the wire rope of the balustrade that marked the edge of the Atrium, and he wearily pulled himself up over the edge. Falling to safety on the other side of the railing, he lay there for the briefest moment to catch his breath before climbing back to his feet.

  He was here, finally. The Atrium rose up around him, the Stormgates within his reach.

  The vision before him was enough to make his breath catch in his throat. The Atrium was a large, open space a little more than one hundred metres across, surrounded on its outer edges by seven great arches that afforded a panoramic view of the horizon in all directions. Set into the pillars of these arches were elevators from the lower levels, their ornate chrome doors glinting in the twilight. It was through these that the more conventional passengers and visitors were able to access the Atrium, some of whom were here now, wandering about with their respirators equipped as they admired the view of the darkening sky. There was little else they could do, since access through the Stormgates was not permitted without passkeys. Unlike the Enforcers, the citizens were allowed to be here, albeit for short durations, and many came just to stroll around the perimeter and look out upon the vast stretches of land that led out to the horizon, dreaming of what might one day be.