Tracer

by Rob Boffard

  “You’re better with a gun than I thought you’d be. And I’ve seen people shot in the stomach before. The pain is bad now, but it’ll get worse. A lot worse.”

  Her voice cracks on the last words. Amira – my beautiful, strong Amira – is begging.

  I’ve picked up the gun without realising it. Slowly, I move it to her forehead. I touch it to her skin as delicately as she touched it to mine.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  I pull the trigger for the second time.

  55

  Riley

  I’ve met death in the past. My father, blown to pieces thousands of miles from home. My mother, wasting away to nothing. Gray and Darnell, and the lives they took. Yao. Grace Garner. But I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s as if something has reached into my gut and just torn it away. It’s worse than the hottest anger, worse than anything I’ve ever felt, and as I stare at Amira, see her eyes, glazed over, robbed of their power, I know, deep down, that the feeling will be with me forever. I’ll feel it when I awake in the dark, and everyone around me sleeps. I’ll feel it when I’m hurt, or when I sense someone standing behind me, ready to strike. I’ll feel it in my bones and my flesh and my heart. The tears come. And this time the trickle becomes a river, then a flood.

  I’m still there, bending over her body, when Prakesh arrives. He stops in the doorway, his eyes wide. Someone else is with him. A stomper. Royo.

  Royo has his stinger up, sweeping from left to right. Prakesh wraps his arms around me, pulling me away. My sobs turn to screams, racked with the worst pain I’ve ever felt, and I bury my head in his chest. He says nothing. Just holds me close.

  “So,” says Royo at length. His stinger isn’t quite pointed at us, but it’s held ready. “I have two dead bodies, and no answers. If I don’t get the second, there’s going to be a few more of the first.”

  “What happened, Ry?” asks Prakesh.

  Slowly, between sobs, I tell them. About Amira and Garner. And Okwembu.

  When I’m finished, Royo looks at me. “Why should I believe you?”

  “What?”

  “How do I know you didn’t just kill them both?”

  “You think this is an act?” I scream at him. But Prakesh raises a hand. His voice is calm.

  “She’s telling the truth. I know she is.”

  It can’t be enough. Surely not. But Royo is silent. He seems to be weighing his words carefully.

  “My gut’s kept me alive on this wreck of a station my whole life,” he says. “It’s telling me to trust you, so I will, but that trust can be rescinded if or when you do anything to make me doubt you. If you’re telling the truth, then we need to go. I don’t know how long we’ve got until that monster in Apex does whatever he’s going to do, but it’s not long.”

  “He’s right, Ry,” Prakesh whispers to me. He’s still holding me tight. “We’ve got less than twenty hours left. The station’s getting worse – the heat’s starting to build up already. And there’s nothing more we can do here.”

  I feel dizzy. My nose is clogged, my eyes wet. But I nod, silently, and he releases me. Behind us, Amira’s body lies sprawled across the floor.

  A thought occurs to me. “Garner. Is she …”

  Royo clears his throat. “She’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  Prakesh says, “Maybe I’m misreading things here, but if Okwembu is behind all this, maybe there’s a way we can let people know. Maybe we can stop her without having to go anywhere near Apex.”

  “Not a chance,” replies Royo. “I’m not saying I believe that woman” – he indicates Amira – “but if the head of the council is responsible, we can’t get anywhere near her. I’ve seen the security in Apex. After those riots all those years ago, they weren’t taking any chances. You can lock the entire place down. So even if we did somehow get the word out that she’s doing it, there’s not a lot we could do about it.”

  I force myself to concentrate. “If we can get to Apex, maybe we can figure out how to use the code Garner gave me. It’s the only way to stop this. I’m sure of it.”

  Prakesh frowns. “You don’t think that maybe it’s a way for Okwembu and Darnell to finally destroy the station? Something they needed for their endgame? If it is, then why don’t we just drop off the radar? Hide out somewhere?”

  “No,” I say. “She wouldn’t have started all this unless she could finish it. Not Okwembu. Iapetus isn’t her way to destroy Outer Earth. It’s the only way to stop it from happening. This was all about making sure there’s nothing to stand in their way.”

  “Was Amira really serious about going through the Core? There has to be another way round.”

  Royo laughs, a sound with no humour in it. “Even if we wanted to, there’s no way. Chengshi is tearing itself apart right now. Along with Apogee, Tzevya and every other damn sector on this station. It’s going to pieces out there.”

  My eyes stray to Amira’s hand. The missing fingers, stolen by frostbite all those years ago.

  A thought occurs to me. “How did you get here?” I ask Royo.

  “They assigned me to guard the Air Lab entrance. We got an alert from a smoke alarm. I came to check it out.” He gestures to Prakesh. “Met your buddy when I came in.”

  Silence falls over us. I think of the sun. Of wanting to feel its warmth on the back of my neck. I think of what it feels like to run, to lose myself in speed and the air rushing past my face. I think of the Devil Dancers: Carver, Kev, Yao. I think of the Nest. It seems like a million years ago.

  I think of my father, of how he died. Fighting. So that the human race could keep going.

  And then, finally, I think of Amira. How, at the very end, she once again told me what I had to do.

  I turn to Royo. “How do we get to the Core entrance?”

  “The monorail. Maybe there’s a train near here. We could use it to bypass the worst of the rioting and get back to Apogee.”

  “You can drive a train?” I ask, incredulous.

  “No,” replies Royo. “But I’d say now would be a great time to learn, wouldn’t you?”

  56

  Darnell

  Darnell slams Okwembu up against the control room screens, their faces inches apart.

  “You call that subtle?” he screams at her, his words made metallic by the narrow room. “Now it’s even worse. Now she’s got a stomper escort.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Okwembu says. Darnell’s hands move to her throat, but she gets her fingers up just before he grips her neck.

  “Oh really?” he says, tightening his hold. “You heard them. They know what’s behind that retinal scanner. The whole point was that no one but us and our sleepers would ever know. Now she knows, she’s still alive, and she’s on her way over here.”

  He lifts Okwembu up, so her feet are off the ground, then slams her back against the screens. One of them cracks, spitting sparks. A shard of glass scratches a thin line across Okwembu’s forehead. Darnell squeezes, his thumbs hunting for her windpipe. Okwembu has her hands up, two fingers the only thing between her and strangulation.

  She raises her eyes to meet his, and pulls her fingers away. “So kill me,” she says, her voice thin and hoarse.

  Her eyes refuse to leave his, and Darnell’s fingers pause, just touching the skin above the scooped hollow of her collarbone.

  “Go ahead,” she says, her voice brimming with venom. “You can do it all yourself. Isn’t that right? Set up the comms feed, run the camera, even figure out everything the control room can do. You don’t need me. I’m not useful any more, am I?”

  In the silence that follows, Darnell can hear his heartbeat, feel the blood pumping in his ears.

  There’s a tiny ping, an alert from one of the screens. It’s a long moment before Darnell glances down at it. He drops Okwembu, and she crumples to the floor, coughing, holding her throat. Darnell kills the pinging, his fingers leaving dark smudges on the surface of the screen.

  “Someone’s coming in through t
he Core,” he says. “They’re opening the Apex-side doors.”

  Okwembu looks up at him, her face expressionless. After a moment, she rises, and begins swiping through camera feeds, hunting for the Core access in the upper level of Apex.

  “It’s not Hale,” Darnell says. “It’s too soon.”

  “True. Although I’m surprised it’s taken the protection officers this long to get here.”

  The camera viewpoint appears, just in time to catch the vast doors opening. There’s no sound, but they can see people slipping through the gap in the ceiling, dropping to the floor. Stompers, dressed in bulky thermal suits, their movements slow and uncoordinated.

  Darnell glances at Okwembu, his eyes narrowed. “You told me those doors were sealed.”

  “Do you think they’d just give up and go home?” Okwembu taps the screen, pointing to the doors, where a wisp of smoke is curling away. “They blew the lock.”

  Three stompers are already through the gap, starting to strip off their thermal suits. Three more are clambering through, hanging off the open doors and dropping down.

  “Thought they’d send more,” Darnell says.

  “It’s a classic stomper tactic. Sacrificing numbers for speed.” Okwembu’s voice has been torn to shreds by Darnell’s grip, but there’s no mistaking the worry in her voice.

  Darnell reaches behind his back for his knife. He pulls it out, running a finger across the edge. A wave of dizziness overcomes him, and his gut rolls with a burst of nausea, but it’s gone almost as soon as it starts.

  “I’ll deal with them,” he says.

  Okwembu doesn’t look at him. “No.”

  He bristles. “You think I can’t handle a few stompers?”

  “They have stingers. You don’t. I’ll wait until you get close, then kill the lights. You should have some element of surprise.”

  She turns, looking Oren Darnell dead in the eye. “You need me. You don’t want to admit it, but you do.”

  Oren Darnell leaves the control room, rolling his thumb across the point of the blade.

  57

  Darnell

  It’s just like before, Darnell thinks. They’re going to take everything away from me.

  He’s barely aware of what he’s doing. He’s walking through the top level of Apex, heading for the Core entrance, but his body is moving on autopilot. His mind is somewhere else, twenty years and two sectors away, and this time the memory is so vivid, so overpowering, that he can’t fight it off. He sinks into it completely.

  At first, it was just him and Mosely outside the hab, but then the corridor filled with dozens of people. He kept telling them that he had to go to school, that he was going to be late, but they didn’t listen. They all kept stealing horrified glances into the hab.

  The thing that used to be Darnell’s mother had melted into the cot. Plants covered her, their tendrils and roots and leaves colonising the spaces between her bones. A glistening, yellow ring of fat surrounded the corpse.

  Darnell didn’t understand the shocked faces, the horrified looks. She’d been useless before, and now she was helping his plants grow. Didn’t they see what he’d made?

  The protection officers huddled a short distance away, exchanging angry words, their hands over their mouths and noses. He tried to talk to them, but they ignored him. That was when he first heard the words “Controlled burn”.

  Darnell went crazy. He fought, pleaded, begged. But he was still a child, a long way away from the size he would attain later. When the chemicals arrived, he tried to knock them over, but the white-clad operator pushed him away. Darnell can see the look on his face, even now. The stupid, bovine hatred.

  The corridor was narrow, unable to contain too many people. But in Darnell’s memory, there were dozens, hundreds of people there. A tiny flicker of hope sparked inside Darnell. They would help him. They wouldn’t let his plants burn.

  But no matter how much he pleaded, they wouldn’t do anything. They just watched.

  And when the fire started, they were cheering. More than that: they were laughing. Cackling as his plants burned. In his mind, he can still hear some of them jeering at him.

  With an effort, Darnell pulls himself out of the memory. He makes himself focus by rolling his thumb down on the point of his knife. A tiny drop of blood wells up, and the dart of pain helps focus him. He comes back just in time to hear a noise from up ahead.

  The corridor he’s in ends in a T-junction, and as he looks up he sees a stomper peek round the side. The stomper catches sight of him, sucks in an excited breath, and vanishes.

  A second later, the corridor is filled with shouting and the sound of running feet. Six voices shout at him to drop the knife, six stingers aim right at his chest. The six become four when two of the stompers turn, covering the corridor behind them.

  Darnell stops, lowering the knife. His eyes flick up to the ceiling where, just behind one of the long recessed light bars, he can make out the eye of a camera. He looks back to the stompers, memorising their positions, fixing them in his mind. It’s hard – his memories want to fight him, fuzzing his thoughts – but he manages it.

  The lights click off, plunging the corridor into darkness.

  Darnell reaches out, grabs the nearest stomper’s wrists, and twists. He hears the bone break cleanly, followed an instant later by a scream of pain and the sound of a stinger clattering to the floor.

  The other stompers open fire. A bullet grazes Darnell’s shoulder, digging a furrow in his flesh. He barely feels it. He’s already moving, staying low, using the flashes from the stinger fire to pick his targets.

  The stompers’ training takes over, and they react just like Darnell hoped they would: feet planted, not moving, aiming with two hands. They’re static, slow, and Darnell is a whirlwind, smashing and crushing and slicing. His body is soaked with blood, both his and the stompers’. Somewhere very distant, his shoulder is on fire, and it’s joined by a screaming pain from the side of his head as a bullet rips off the top of his left ear.

  The lights come back on.

  Three stompers are dead, their bodies ragged with stab wounds. Two more are down: one is unconscious, the other cradling her broken arm, moaning in pain. Only the final stomper is still standing. He points his stinger at Darnell, his hands shaking, and pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  The stomper tries again, and again, shaking his head furiously. Darnell towers over him. He reaches down, and plucks the useless stinger out of the man’s hands. In that instant, the look in the stomper’s eyes is exactly the same one Mosely had, all those years ago.

  Darnell smiles.

  58

  Riley

  There’s no choice but to leave Amira and Grace Garner behind. We can’t carry them, not with time against us, but I promise myself that I’ll come back for them. If I come back at all.

  I follow Prakesh as we leave the control room from the back. Deeper inside the complex, the corridors are wider, designed to let heavy equipment pass through. I’ve never been this way, and I’m surprised to see just how clean it is, with soft lighting and spotless floors. At one point, we cross through another hangar, smaller than the Food Lab but still enormous, criss-crossed with conveyor belts and littered with processing equipment. There’s nobody around, and the black conveyors lie silent.

  “Monorail’s this way,” says Prakesh. He’s sure-footed, taking the stairs two at a time. More than that: he seems upbeat, confident even. I want to scream at him. Instead, I force myself to match his pace, pushing away the anger, trying to focus on the movement. Stride, land, cushion, spring, repeat. Behind us, Royo puffs as he tries to keep up. He’s fit, but heavy with muscle, and his bulky frame – made heavier with his combat armour and equipment – isn’t built for speed. He keeps snagging his gear, muttering under his breath.

  What Amira did is like a splinter, lodged deep in my mind. We were hers. Her crew. Her Dancers. She was the calm, controlled centre of everything we did. We would have died for he
r. Yao did die for her. It wasn’t just that it was unquestioned loyalty; it was loyalty that never needed to be questioned.

  But it meant nothing. She betrayed us. And worse, she betrayed us over something so stupid, so pointless. She must have felt like that for years, locking the thought away in some deep, dark part of her being, nurturing it. And then one day, Janice Okwembu found her, and pulled that poisonous little thought into the light.

  In the end, the Devil Dancers were just in the way.

  But I can’t let what she did be the end. I won’t. Okwembu and Darnell betrayed the station, and Amira betrayed her crew, but it doesn’t matter. Because I’m not just loyal to the people who are supposed to lead me. I’m loyal to things no one can ever change or touch or hurt. Like the memory of my dad. Like the hope that one day I might run in the sunlight.

  I won’t let what Amira did stop me.

  My stomach growls as we walk through the processing hangar, but I ignore it. I’m hungry, and thirsty, and more exhausted than I’ve ever been in my life, but I can’t focus on that now.

  The hangar leads to a loading dock, brightly lit, and two huge rolling doors which lead onto the monorail tracks. I’m worried that there won’t be a train there, that we’ll have to walk the tunnels, but there’s one sitting by the platform, ready to receive cargo. Most of the cars are flatbeds, lined with heavy-duty locking mechanisms designed to hold large containers. Several of these are stacked along one wall of the loading dock: huge, misshapen things, tall as two men, made of bent metal. Above the main doors, two large screens display destinations and shipment details in that orange text.

  The heat hits us as soon as we walk out onto the dock. The air is muggy, cloying and thick with warmth, and beads of condensation run down the walls. At this rate, it won’t be long before people start dying from heatstroke. Any longer than that, and we really will be roasted alive.

  “Where’s the driver’s seat?” I ask Prakesh. He points to a few cars up. It’s little more than a raised platform, a small space with waist-high railings and a bank of controls. Beyond it, the darkness of the tunnel. Royo climbs up, and Prakesh and I follow, jumping in behind him.