by Boffard, Rob
I summon up every piece of energy I have and spit right in his face. The move costs me, and a fresh wave of heaving rolls through my chest. Darnell flicks the spittle off his cheek. I hear it patter softly on the ground. “That’s the spirit,” he says. And with that, he flips the shank in one effortless movement, and raises it above his head to stick me.
There’s a bang, and Darnell is knocked sideways. I see the hand holding the blade, twisted backwards in the air. And then Darnell’s gone, and the world is filled with noise and movement and shouting voices. Hands grip my shoulders, hoist me up. For a moment, the room seems filled with a dazzling white light.
Amira is there, mouthing words I can’t quite hear, gripping my shoulders. Behind her, the room swarms with stompers and medics, a buzzing cacophony of grey and white jumpsuits. Darnell is on his stomach, his arms being restrained behind him, blood leaking from a stinger wound below his left shoulder. He’s shouting, swearing revenge. A stomper aims a kick at his chest; he curls into a foetal position and falls silent.
Yao is sitting up, and one of the medics – a young woman with blonde hair split by a streak of electric blue – is shining a light in her eyes. Kev and Prakesh are blinking in the light. Nobody seems to be looking at the body of Gray, sprawled in the middle of the room.
“The blood,” says Amira. “Riley? Riley, where’s it coming from?”
It takes me a moment to realise she’s talking about Darnell’s blood, splattered on my face. “Not mine,” I say. “It’s not mine.”
“You should have waited, damn you,” whispers Amira. I just catch her voice above the chaos. I manage to sit up. Carver is standing by the door, and there’s a weird look on his face – pleased and appalled at the same time.
I jump up and run to Prakesh. A medic pushes me back, but I dodge under his grip. I want to look everywhere on Prakesh’s body at once, desperate to see if he’s been hurt. He pulls me into a hug. I freeze up on instinct, not used to the contact, then I hug him back. It seems crazy not to.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry. This was all because of me, I …”
“I’m fine,” he whispers in my ear, his voice hoarse. “It’s OK. Let them do what they need to do. We’re good.”
I squeeze him tight, then do as he asks, dropping back. Kev gives me a bleary thumbs-up.
Amira explains how they saw me start tailing Gray in the market; they’d been hidden close to his stall, and when I started the pursuit ahead of them, she decided that rather than try to intercept me, they should hang back and follow me as a fail-safe. “Darnell might have seen us if we’d crossed paths with you,” she says.
I stare at her, an unsettling thought occurring. “You used me as bait.”
Her gaze is steady. “You left us no choice. You always were impatient.”
They’d come up behind me in the tunnels, and when they saw how I’d gained access through the roof, they decided not to follow me – “Three people in the service ducts would’ve been a bad idea,” Amira says – and it was then that they’d decided to find the stompers. It was a gamble that paid off.
A medic comes over and crouches down to my level. He’s an older guy with a craggy face, but his eyes are friendly, and Amira steps back so he can look at me. I get the light-in-the-eyes treatment too, and he runs a hand over my collarbone, my stomach. “Bruises and some shock, but nothing major,” he says. “You are one lucky kid.”
I gesture to the Twins. “They got hit with something. Quicksleep, I heard him call it.”
He nods. “We’ve seen similar things before. It was a powerful strain he was cooking, but it’ll wear off.”
He lifts up my hand, and mutters something before rummaging in his tattered shoulder bag and taking out an injector. He notices me staring. “Disinfectant,” he says. “It’ll keep that cut from going bad.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Let’s find out,” he says brightly, and squirts a jet of white foam into my palm. The sting is so sudden and strong that I have to stop myself from lashing out, but after a moment the pain fades, replaced by a throbbing warmth. The foam bubbles, and seems to sink into the cut, forming a hard, white crust. The medic stands, holds out his hand, and, despite the shock, a wave of elation surges through me. I reach out with my good one and grab it, and I’m pulled roughly to my feet.
“Captain,” a voice shouts from the storeroom. “We’ve got bodies back here.”
The lockers. That thin smell. I have to work very hard not to ask if one of them is missing an eye.
A stomper steps out from behind the medic, and I’m surprised to see that it’s the one I met in the run to Darnell’s. Royo. His expression is still gruff, but as he looks me over it softens very slightly.
“You owe these two big time,” he says, looking at Amira and Carver. “We wanted to arrest them for going into the tunnels.” His voice is rough, as if a statue, heavy with dust and grit, had learned to speak. “Can any one of you tell me how we ended up arresting the chief of the Air Lab instead? Anyone? Not that I wasn’t looking for a reason before.”
I do most of the talking: I have to tell him the entire story, and then I have to repeat it when his boss – a bigger, uglier version of Royo named Santos – comes over.
I tell him that I’ve delivered cargo before, but never knew what it was. When he hears that, Royo gives me a long, hard stare – enough to make me trail off for a moment. Finally, he utters a non-committal grunt. He’s probably got every right to take us all in for assisting in criminal business, but he says nothing, and I decide not to chance it.
After a few more questions, Royo turns to leave, but turns back to offer his hand. His grip is firm. Carver has sauntered over, and does a double take at the sight of a tracer shaking hands with a stomper. I laugh, despite myself.
“So we’re good?” Carver says, looking sideways at Royo. It doesn’t look as if he trusts him all the way.
Royo releases my hand, and looks at him. “You just created a massive power vacuum,” he says. “Now every gang on Outer Earth is going to try get a piece of the water points. Which means we’re going to be working overtime to stop them killing each other.”
He pauses – and I swear I see the ghost of a smile slip across his face. “But in my experience, that usually takes a few days to happen. If we can get in there and show some face, maybe we can disrupt things. Anyway. I don’t usually trust you tracers, but you did good today.”
“And what’s that worth, exactly?” asks Amira. Royo shakes his head and turns away, his good humour exhausted.
Behind him, Darnell has been pulled to his feet, and all at once his voice is back. “Your world’s going to end!” he screams. More stompers have to rush in to hold him. He strains at his cuffs, muscles standing out on his neck “You’re all going to burn! All of you! You’re all going to burn!”
His voice fades as he’s dragged into the corridor, dwindling to nothingness. A fresh wave of nausea threatens to bend me double again as I realise what I just escaped. Amira’s hand is on my shoulder, worry creasing her face, but I wave her off, pulling it together, and stand. Yao walks by, supported by a medic, and reaches out to squeeze my arm.
Soon we’re out, into the tunnels, shot through with torchlight from dozens of stompers. Prakesh is holding my hand, gripping it like he never wants to let it go, and then we’re onto the tracks by the platforms. Amira jumps up ahead of me, then reaches out for me. I have to let go of Prakesh to climb up, and when I reach back for him, I see that one of the stompers has pulled him aside to ask him something.
For a moment, I want to be down there with him, but then Amira and Carver are hustling me away, and then he’s gone.
21
Riley
I was wrong about the Nest. It can hold plenty of people.
The corridor was already heaving when we arrived, and a huge cheer went up as people caught sight of us. Once in a while, gossip moves faster than the tracers – especially when it concerns someone as feared
as Oren Darnell. Seems like everybody wanted to shake my hand or pull me into an embrace. I couldn’t help smiling, especially when Carver started making loud hooting noises.
He quickly set up a makeshift ladder into the access hatch, ignoring Amira’s protests that we had to keep our home a secret (“It’s not as if people don’t know where we live already,” Carver told her, rolling his eyes, and Amira relented).
Soon, even more people started pouring into the Nest, filling it with music, plates of food, buckets of homebrew. Someone brought some extra tattoo ink, which Yao and a couple of her buddies jumped on immediately, splashing it all over the wall. Despite her head injury, and the skanky bits of dried blood still crusted in her hair, she’s made a pretty swift recovery. Kev is still a little groggy: he’s been given pride of place on the mattresses in the corner, clutching a cup of homebrew and staring blearily about him, a small smile on his face.
I push through the crowd and find a clear space against the wall, relieved to go unnoticed for a moment. Whatever the medic used on my cut, it’s amazing stuff: the wound knitted within minutes, and although there’s a dull ache in my palm I can almost make a complete fist. Somebody pushes a mug of homebrew into my good hand, and I take a deep drink. For once, the acrid, salty burn of the alcohol is welcome. I haven’t been drunk or even tipsy for quite a while, but I’m enjoying the buzz.
As more people climb the ladder into the Nest, they bring more rumours with them. Someone heard that bodies in Gray’s workroom had been identified, and a little while later, someone else arrives with names. Turns out one of them was someone fairly important: a man named Marshall Foster. He used to head up the council, years ago, and moved down to Apogee after his retirement. None of the news coming up through the hatch explains why Gray killed him – or whether he was missing any body parts. In fact, nobody mentions the eyeball at all – it’s probably still somewhere in the Air Lab.
Gray might have messed up in a big way when he killed Foster, but he was on a roll. There were two other bodies in lockers. Gray had snatched a sewerage tech and a mess worker using his quicksleep serum, taken them back to his room by the tracks, and done … things to them. Conspiracy theories are already flying around as to what Darnell and Gray were planning together – and whether it had anything to do with Foster’s death.
With an effort, I shake off my dark thoughts. Looking over, I see Amira drop onto the mattresses next to Kev. She’s sober, despite having knocked back more homebrew than anyone. She leans close to Kev, tilting her head to his ear and whispering something which makes his smile grow wider. She catches my eye, and winks before raising her glass in my direction. I raise it back, and take a slug of the drink – this time, the burn is too much and I cough.
“That’s what I always said about you, Riley,” says Carver, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “You never could hold your booze.”
He’s in a good mood. Before we left, he had a chance to raid Gray’s place for spare parts, and even managed to grab a few vials of the quicksleep.
“I think I’ve earned this drink,” I say, laughing.
“Oh, hell yes.”
He leans in close. He’s drunk, his eyes unfocused and floating in their sockets, but it’s a good drunk. “They’re going to be talking about this for years. The girl who took down the monster of the market.”
“Gray?”
“That’s what everybody’s calling him. And then there’s Darnell – he’s locked up in the brig with about fifteen guards. I think half the sector wants to break in and beat him to death.”
“You do know it wasn’t me who killed Gray, right?”
“Doesn’t matter. People believe what they want to. One dead murderer, one corrupt Air Lab boss in jail, two rescued tracers. Not bad for a trouble-magnet like you.”
“Careful,” I say, but there’s a smile in my voice. “Anyway,” I continue, “nice work on the party. Who brought the booze? Or did we trade for this one?”
“Suki had some with her,” he says, waving back over his shoulder, indicating a girl in the corner with a shocking crop of bright red hair, chatting with Prakesh. I know her, vaguely.
Carver wanders away, tottering towards Yao, who’s still working on the wall with her friends. It’s a riot of colour, extending upwards to the ceiling, the wet ink still glistening in the lights.
Your world’s going to end.
Prakesh catches my eye and gives a questioning thumbs-up. I nod and smile, but Darnell’s words cling to the edges of my mind like dust.
Words like sleepers. And in the days to come.
Almost without realising it, I’m pushing off from the wall and walking across to Prakesh.
“Hey you,” he says. “You know Suki, right?”
The red-haired sprite flicks me a small salute.
“Thanks for the drink,” I say.
“No problem. My brother and I make it. Beats going to work.”
I turn to Prakesh. “Listen, I’m going to take a walk. I’m feeling a little closed in.”
“Are you sure? I can always come with you if …”
“No,” I interrupt him, forcing myself to smile. “I’m fine. Just need to clear my head.”
I’m worried he’s going to insist – concern is written on his face – but then he smiles too. “I guess we know you can take care of yourself,” he says.
I feel like I have to say something more. “Listen, I’m really sorry. About before.”
His smile flickers, but he brings it back, waving me away. “I’m good, Ry. Promise. Get out of here.”
I hold his gaze for a moment, matching his smile, then turn to leave, ducking through the door. Behind me, another massive cheer goes up, and I turn to see Carver kissing Yao. She has her hand clasped around his head, his on her ass, and behind her Kev is looking stunned. Amira is laughing. “Aaron, I told you, no work relationships!” she says.
Unbelievable. I drop through the hatch.
The sector is surprisingly quiet, and I slip unseen through the corridors of Outer Earth. I’m taking it easy, walking more often than running, my bruised body grateful for the break.
The brig is on the bottom level, and my mind drifts as I head down towards it, the homebrew giving my thoughts some extra colour. I’m trying to piece everything I’ve been through together – Gray, Darnell, Foster. I’m dropped so deep into my own world that it takes me a few seconds to realise that I’m walking past the Memorial.
The corridor here is wider than most, and the Memorial takes up a whole wall. Proper paint, not just tattoo ink. Janice Okwembu commissioned it – she runs the station council now. Everybody was allowed to draw something – I must have been the only one in the whole sector who refused – and right in the middle, they let one of the more talented artists paint the ship itself.
I look at it before I can tell myself not to, pulling my jacket closer around me. The painting has faded over the years, but is still recognisable. The huge, tapered body, the swept-back fins, the bulging sections near the back which would have held supplies. And underneath it, in black lettering: Earth Return.
There are religious icons too: dozens of them, stacked on top each other. Candles, crosses, metal bent into strange shapes. Tributes to Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, Kali, Vishnu, to gods I can’t even name.
I try to stay away from the Memorial as much as I can, taking the upper levels when I need to leave Apogee. I’ve spent too long staring at it in the past, and it brings back too many memories I’d rather leave behind. I walk on, my gaze locked on a point further down the corridor. Before long, I reach the brig. It’s small – just a few cells, located near the Chengshi border. As I approach, I can see four stompers standing outside, clad in the usual grey uniforms. They look cold and lonely.
Two of them see me coming, and their hands drop to the holsters on their waists, fingers close around the butts of their stingers. But then one seems to recognise me, and motions his buddies to back off.
“You’re the one who found him, a
ren’t you?” he says.
I nod. “That’s me.”
“I got to admit, that takes spine,” says one of the others. “I’m impressed. Have to say though, it’s a good thing we got there when we did.”
They’re more relaxed now – apparently a single tracer isn’t a threat. I take a deep breath. “So this sounds weird, but I need to get in to see him. There’s something I need to know.”
A swift shake of the head from the first guard. “Not a chance.”
“Seriously, I’ll be two minutes. In and out.”
But he stares impassively back at me. His colleague steps forward. He’s a man almost as big as Darnell, and his jumpsuit seems ready to burst off him. “You heard what the man said. No one gets in. You did well today, but go home.”
The thought of trying to flirt with them crosses my mind, but I push it away, irritated with myself. Bribery might work, and I’m on the verge of offering them a job or two for free when I see Royo walk up to the barred entrance behind them. I shout his name, and he looks up, his face clouding with concern.
There’s a metallic buzz. The gate slides open, and he strides towards me. He looks tired, more human somehow. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says.
I hurriedly explain to him what I want to do. His eyes narrow. “Do you think we haven’t talked to him already? You don’t just hire someone to kill a council member for fun. But he hasn’t said a damn thing.”
“He’s known me for a long time. I used to run jobs for him, remember? He might let something slip.”
“He nearly killed you.”
I don’t have an answer to that one. But after glowering for a moment, Royo relents. “Fine,” he says. “You come in with me, you stay two minutes, then you leave. And if I even get a hint that you’re going to do something stupid, I’ll have you in a cell of your own so fast your words will still be hanging in the air.”
The other guards, bored with the conversation, have gone back to chatting among themselves. We step through into the entranceway – there are two doors, and the inner one doesn’t open until the outer one is locked shut. Another ear-splitting buzz, and we’re through, into a small corridor lit only by a couple of bare fluorescents.