Adam glances at Kane. Sees him staring at Grover, fearless as a wolf.
—
By the time they reach the deserted gas pump, there’s a hot, dense wind blowing. Adam looks up and, sure enough, the clouds are dark and brooding. Electricity zings in the air. The instrument panel on his byke flashes an amber weather-warning light. He glances at Kane’s panel. Same signal.
“No threat,” Kane says.
Adam nods. He knows amber isn’t life-threatening. In most amber cases, he can leave his air-filter mask on his neck and he might get his lungs a little scorched or he might get drenched—it depends on the type of storm. A red light is more serious.
A paper flyer flutters through the air and sticks to Adam’s byke frame. He uncurls it and flattens it out. A picture of the Colonel stares at him.
Absolutely bald. Skin pulled tight over his bones. He wears mirrored silver shades and a crisp, military-cut black uniform. Deep and grizzled scar lines mark his brow and cheeks. The Colonel points a finger at him, inviting a challenge in the stenciled lettering above:
ENTER THE BLACKWATER TRAIL. WIN A TICKET TO SKY-BASE.
Underneath the picture of the Colonel, more words:
HAVE YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES TO BE FREE?
A bright splash hits the flyer and Adam looks up.
Rain.
A torrent comes down in sheets. A sudden brute of a storm. Huge drops slash through the sky and dance on the ground like oil on a hot skillet. Blue lightning cracks and the world turns dark.
Adam releases the flyer to the wind and takes off. He pulls up at a shapeless gray building in the rain and leans his muddy byke against the wall. Kane shadows him and they skip up the wooden stairs, three at a time.
They stand side by side under a creaking Bykemonger sign—sodden clothes stuck to them, foreheads dripping—and they watch the storm lurch through the town, picking up scattered flyers, throwing them, windmilling, to the sky.
The rain abates as suddenly as it came, like it always does, and leaves them wet to the bone and Adam wondering about Old Man Dagg and forces beyond his reckoning.
“You again.”
The voice behind them belongs to Blackwater’s best Bykemonger. A girl. She wears a red bandanna tied to her head. Streaks of black grease are smeared across her cheeks. She’s lean and long and she holds her body upright, like a stick of dynamite.
Sadie Blood.
She has a way about her, Sadie. Makes Adam feel hot and cold head to foot. Sometimes he gets so twisted up he can’t think straight. He nods and runs a hand over his scalp. He can feel the skin itch.
“How goes it, Sadie?” Adam points at a faded poster tacked to the wall, anything not to look at her. He tries to say something else, but no words come to his lips.
“It’s fifteen to enter,” Sadie says, wiping her hands clean on a blackened cloth. “Same as always, Adam.” She flicks her eyes from him to Kane. She lingers on Kane’s face, the scar. Then she turns back to Adam. “Got the dollars this time?”
“I got the dollars,” he says, feeling his cheeks color. Sadie is sleek as a panther. Her hair is pixie-short and coal-black. Almond-shaped hazel eyes. Confidence and resilience in them.
Eyes that burn holes in him.
“Only two days left,” she says. “You like cutting it fine.”
He stares at the porch floorboards.
“The Race doesn’t leave room for doubt,” Sadie says.
Adam shifts his feet and glances at Kane.
Kane is staring at Sadie. Looking at her with a quiet intensity, as though he’s trying to place her. Studying all her quirks and mannerisms. The tilt of her small mouth. The curve of her lips. How she stands, one leg cocked, the other straight. How she moves her hands when she speaks.
Adam knows these things. He knows everything about the way her body moves.
Same way he knows the Longthorn.
Kane turns his head away and leans in to read the poster.
THE BLACKWATER TRAIL
SUNDAY 3RD. STARTS AT 07:00. ENDS WHEN THE LAST RIDER CROSSES THE LINE. A 2,500-KLICK CIRCUIT. FIFTEEN DOLLARS’ ENTRY PER BYKE. SLING WEAPONS PERMITTED. NO KNIVES. NO SHOOTERS. ANY INJURY OR DEATH SUSTAINED IS NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE COLONEL. TOP THREE PLACED RIDERS WILL RECEIVE $1,000 IN PRIZE MONEY EACH, 200 BASE POINTS AND AUTOMATIC ENTRY TO ANY CIRCUIT RACE. THE OUTRIGHT WINNER GETS A ONE-WAY TICKET TO SKY-BASE.
RIDERS CAN PURCHASE ENTRY AT BLACKWATER BYKEMONGER SHOP. LAST DAY OF PLUGGING WILL TAKE PLACE SATURDAY 2ND AT THE TOWN HALL.
GOOD LUCK, AND MAY YOU LIVE TO SEE THE SKY.
“Twenty-five hundred klicks through the hardest country known to man or beast,” Kane says.
Adam feels a knot of fear. Fear mixed in with excitement. The Blackwater Trail is a big deal. He knows all the Tribes will come. It will be hell. A week of hell. At least a week.
Kane looks at him. “Think you’ll win?”
Adam shrugs to hide his thrill and his terror. “Wouldn’t enter if I didn’t.”
Injury or death. Why are those the words that jump off the poster?
“Forty percent mortality two summers back,” Sadie says. “One hundred Riders. Sixty survived.”
Kane smiles. “I like those odds.”
Adam feels his body clench. Two summers back. Longest Blackwater ever ridden. Lasted fifteen days, thanks to a bank of bad weather. Adam tries to recall who won that year. Every Race winner achieves folklore status. Adam can recite each one from the past twenty summers. Maybe thirty. But for some reason he can’t remember the winner from just two summers back.
Then he does remember.
It was the summer the Outsider, Finn Ankar, won. It was also the summer Frank lost his leg.
Sadie looks at Kane, points a slender finger at the jutting Plug low down on his skull, behind his left ear. “You’re a Circuit Rider.”
“That’s right.”
Sadie looks him up and down. “Ride any of the Big Four?”
“Zuckerberg Drop. Last summer.”
“You place?”
“Came in third.”
“So you’ve got money.”
Kane shakes his head. “Spent it on the byke.”
“Well. Placing gives you automatic entry.” Sadie wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. “But the Blackwater is meaner than the Zuckerberg, or the Southern Deep, or the Silvermine.”
Kane says nothing.
Sadie glances down the stairs at Kane’s Drifter. “Nice byke.”
“She can move.”
Sadie stands in the doorway and juts her hip. “I can fix any to ride as fast.”
“I’ll bet you can.”
She flashes him a look. The kind of look that would have Adam searching his pockets and staring at the floorboards. Kane holds her gaze.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before,” Sadie says.
Kane shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
She looks at him. And it feels to Adam that something passes between them.
“They’ll know,” she says. “You can’t hide who you are. They know everything about you, soon as they Plug you.”
Kane’s hand reaches up to feel the metal tube in his head.
Adam watches him. “Does it hurt?” he asks. “When they Plug you?”
He knows it hurts. He wants it to hurt. He wishes he could find words to inflict the same pain on Kane right now, in front of Sadie, to expose a weakness, any weakness.
Kane looks at him. “You will feel it,” he says with a crooked smile.
Sadie turns to Adam. “Well, if you’re not paying, I’m not standing here waiting.”
She swivels on her heel and walks into the building. Adam watches her without speaking.
God. The way she moves.
He wants her. Craves to run his fingers across her collarbone. Wants her smooth skin touching his. But he knows the only place he’s ever going to feel her skin is in his dreams. It’s never going to happen. He’s not the kind for Sadie Blood. Not
him. An Outsider, maybe.
Adam forces himself to think of something else. The money, burning a hole in his boot.
Just give her the dollars.
“Got juice, that girl,” Kane says.
Adam wants to call out after her, but he doesn’t. Instead he stands there, doing nothing.
It’s the same every summer. He saves up, comes here with his cash in his boot, but he can’t do it. He can’t bring himself to enter. How can he? How can he leave Frank? How can he leave Sadie? He’s never told her how he feels—she barely acknowledges him—but what can he do?
She’s Sadie Blood.
“Best fixer in town,” he says aloud. “There’s nothin on a byke she can’t set right.”
He watches her. He can’t keep his gaze from her, the way she walks with a cool sway. On anyone else he would call it a swagger, but on her it’s something else. It’s catlike.
“Whatsamatter? Chicken?” Kane says, mimicking Adam’s own taunt. “You didn’t pay her.”
He smiles and mooches across the porch, leaving a trail of mud. Puts one booted foot up on the railing. Adam stares at his back. He feels a spike of jealousy, a scattershot of anger.
“Who the hell are you to say…”
He drifts off midsentence. Looks over Kane’s shoulder.
Six silhouetted Riders move on the main street. Behind the Riders the sky is bloodred and their distorted shadows travel spiderlike up the road before them. Each one rides low and the slings at their hip are easy to see.
There’s no escape. They’ve seen him.
Adam glances up the main road in the opposite direction, but it’s too late. A worm of fear turns inside him.
“Best stay quiet,” he hisses, coming down the steps with Kane at his side.
The lead Rider, on a white Stinger byke, drifts alongside. His opaque goggles reflect the red sun. He wears a gleaming riding suit, still dripping from the rain. Adam has seen a Voddenite suit before but never owned one. Too expensive. They are made from a woven composite of the miracle-stone Sky-Base mines from the Earth’s core. Light, flexible and incredibly strong, a Voddenite suit moves fluidly with a Rider. If the Rider falls, the suit tenses and becomes rock hard, protecting the soft flesh and the bones beneath.
Its color is fluid and changeable, like the surface of a lake. Black, then silver, then gold.
The lead Rider stops and the gang rolls into a threatening horseshoe around him. They look impressive. Adam can see their eyes, but not their mouths under air-filter masks that clamp to them like claws, each with eight breathing pipes feeding them clean air.
Two Riders—his lieutenants, also in Voddenite suits—take up position either side of him. One sits astride a black Shadow, the other a red Chopper. One tall. The other muscular.
Adam knows them. The strong one is Red Stetson, a bruiser and tough as nails. You don’t rile Red and get away unscathed. The tall one is Wyatt Dawson, hot-headed and mean as hell. Can fling a stone further and faster than anyone.
Anyone except maybe Levi, the lead Rider.
“You boys entering?” Levi asks. He speaks in a quiet voice, muffled by his mask.
Adam says nothing.
Levi removes his goggles and dusts them down with his hand. His fingernails are long and stuck with dirt. He pulls down the mask to reveal a mouth curling into a smile.
Without looking up, he says, “Stone. Is that right?”
Adam nods. “That’s right. Adam Stone.” He scans the gang with a hammering heart. They’re Scorpions. Ranged between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. Most of them wear scorpion tattoos on their necks. Others have shaved scorpions into the sides of their cropped hair.
Adam weighs up the prospect of outriding all of them. No chance. They sit on their bykes as though their bodies are molded to the seats. All of them are Plugged.
“And your acquaintance?” Levi says, still smiling.
Acquaintance. Levi’s family are homeschooled with the kind of private tutors most people don’t have the means to afford. Levi likes to remind people of their place in the world.
He looks up and sets his goggles atop his head.
Pale circles ring his dark brown eyes. Intelligent eyes. White crow’s feet fan out from the corners. The rest of his face is dark from the sun and caked in dust.
Adam glances at Kane. Kane’s alarming amber eyes are lit up. He’s staring hard at Levi.
Levi looks Kane over. “What are you riding?”
Kane doesn’t answer. It doesn’t look like he’s about to say anything.
“Drifter,” Adam says, wondering why he feels the need to speak for Kane, whom he hardly knows. Who just appeared.
“Drifter, is it?” Levi looks at Kane with his head cocked to the side, as though listening to distant voices. “I know you.”
“He’s not from here,” Adam says.
“No. I see that.”
Levi is good-looking, in a traditional way. Strong jaw. Sculpted bones. Wide-set eyes. But he’s ugly too. It’s what lies behind his eyes. The malice and disdain. A torrent of insecurity.
“That’s a fearsome-looking scar,” he says. “Must’ve hurt.”
Still Kane doesn’t speak.
Levi’s eyes laugh. “Lost your tongue?”
Kane looks at him. He doesn’t move.
“Doesn’t speak much, does he? Savvy. Less you say, less trouble you land yourself in.” Levi jerks his thumb at Wyatt on his left. “Something associates of mine would benefit from learning.”
Wyatt, hostile on the black Shadow, pulls a sling from his belt and plays with the cord.
Levi sucks air through his teeth. “So…I assume you have the entry fee? The full fifteen?”
Adam feels the worm twist. He knows what’s coming. He knew from the start.
“Assuredly these are tough times,” Levi says. “Times like these you need protection.”
Wyatt flicks the sling’s cradle with his thumb. Red rocks back and forth in his saddle and punches a fat fist down on his handlebar. A mindless thing to do, observes Adam, silent in his thoughts. Mindless is the right word. Red’s eyes are a dull mud color. Not much going on in his skull. Wyatt isn’t a great deal smarter, but there’s a warning light flickering in his eyes. Not a rational kid, Wyatt. Not the sort that thinks too much. Prefers action.
“You understand, don’t you, Stone?” Levi says.
“Well, I…” Adam’s mind ticks over. This situation is tricky. Maybe even lethal. He has to be careful. You don’t survive long in Blackwater if you make mistakes. Adam isn’t particularly big or strong. But he’s street-smart. He knows about survival.
“I’m not asking for it all, mind,” Levi says. “I’m not the devil. Though I am acquainted with him.” He smiles. “No. I’ll kindly only accept ten. Let’s call it tax.”
Adam shuffles his feet. His palms begin to sweat.
Breathe, Adam. Breathe.
His hands are trembling. His arms feel heavy. Now the curl of pain at the back of his head. Behind his eyes. It’s starting again.
Why now?
He knows the feeling. The rising Blackness. Spots of light in the fringe of his vision. A weight on his shoulders. His muscles caving. He tries to fight. But he’s powerless.
It happens fast.
One second he’s standing and the next he’s on his knees, blinking at the dirt, like some giant bug leapt up and bit him in the leg and filled him with paralyzing juice. It happens so quick he can’t tell if there was a lapse in time between standing and falling.
He clenches his fists in the dirt. Runs them through the ground until his knuckles bleed.
How much time did I lose? Minutes? Seconds?
He looks up and sees faces, too close for his liking. Bulbous and dirt-ingrained. Wild eyes and jagged teeth. A sound comes warping to him. A laugh.
“I forgot you were the kid who blacks out.” Levi’s voice. “Have you recovered, Blackout Boy? Need some shade? Some water? A hug?”
The Scorpion kid
s slap each other and grin.
Adam doesn’t answer. His mouth feels dry. A vague, lingering pain dances at the back of his skull. He stumbles to his feet and looks around.
Must’ve been a few seconds only. Nobody’s moved. One of the quick ones.
Levi shakes his head. “Look here, Stone. Let me paint this picture clear.” His tone hardens. “I aim to take that cash money. I aim to take it and move on. It’s business, understand?”
Adam stares at him, trying to regain composure. “I…I worked for this money.”
Wyatt laughs, loud and hard. He spits into the sand. “You kidding me? Call that work? Feeding a pig? That’s nothin but kid’s play. Now hand it over, ’fore things go bad.”
Adam hates the way everyone knows everyone’s business in Blackwater. He stands his ground, shaking, saying nothing. Kane says nothing either. Still nothing.
Levi tilts his head, the slightest of gestures, and Wyatt loads a stone the size of a pig’s ball.
Adam is filled with panic. It’s taken six months of hard grind to build up the princely sum of money hidden in the sole of his boot and he can’t bring himself to hand it over. He can feel nerves jumping in his legs. His thigh muscles contract. A blackout residue.
Wyatt holds the release cord between thumb and forefinger. The stone hangs down, neatly encased in its diamond-shaped cradle. He steadies himself and takes aim at the metal Bykemonger sign, creaking on its rusted iron chain. He swings the sling in a lazy arc above his head—once, twice—then whips it round once more, a quick, powerful swing, and—
CRACK!
A sonic boom. He releases at the top of the arc. The stone zings through the air.
KE-TAANGGGG!
It ricochets off the metal sign in a shower of raindrops, and disappears somewhere behind them.
Wyatt fetches another stone from his shirt pocket and it’s pouched and drawn back in one fluid movement. Now he aims at Adam and silence falls on the group.
“I wouldn’t do that, friend,” comes a cool, steady voice.
It’s Kane.
Stone Rider Page 3