Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (3 page)

The truth of it was, they were all equal out here.  They were all nothing.

Forty-six hours, twenty minutes.

That wasn’t much time.  Not to make it to the top of the Reach.

How much had changed, Knile wondered, since the last time he’d been there?  How much of his knowledge of the slums, of Link and its inner workings
was still relevant?

It doesn’t matter.  First things first.  Get through the wall and into Link.  Get out of the slums.

Despite the excitement that this chance to escape had stirred in him, there was a horrible
sense of disappointment gnawing at Knile’s insides.  He was still thinking about Mianda. 
The chances of her still being alive had been
so remote that it bordered on the impossible, and yet he couldn’t let himself believe that she was really gone.  There was a tiny voice in the back of his mind that told him she was still out there, that they could one day be together again.

The same voice told him that m
aybe he would find her somewhere up there.  Somewhere in the Reach.  That there still might be a chance for them.

Let it go.  She’s dead.

Footsteps approached from a side street, and Knile
felt sudden panic surge within him.  He pressed against a hollow in the wall beside him.  It was not a great hiding place, but the best he could manage at short notice.  His nerves jangled in preparation for flight
, aware that he would be left with no other option should his disguise prove too flimsy.

The footsteps grew louder, and then a group of about a dozen appeared and came walking toward him.  In the darkened confines of the hollow he seemed to have escaped their notice for now.  They refrained from making loud noises, showing some measure of discretion, but there was a confident air about them as they moved along.  They chatted and giggled amongst themselves, their voices muted further by their respirators.  Their posture held none of the stiffness Knile had seen from others earlier.

Strength in numbers
, he thought.

If they saw him, he suspected they would probably bash him and search him for valuables.  That was the best scenario.

In reality they might do something much worse. 

Knile edged further back into the hollow, tried to make himself invisible
.  In the dim light he could see the vague outline of tattoos on the right arms of the passers-by, which he suspected might be the brandings of their gang.  As they neared, a
woman
with dreadlocks and a teardrop tattoo under one eye glanced in his direction, and for a moment his heart stopped.  Knile involuntarily held his breath and pressed his back harder against the wall, wishing he could melt into it.  The gaze of the woman was hard and cold above the piece of cloth wrapped about her face as a makeshift respirator.

Then she looked away and continued on with the others, never faltering or breaking stride.  He could only assume she hadn’t seen him.  People who wandered the slums at night weren’t in the habit of doling out lenience to lone travellers.

It  was good to know he could still find the shadows when he needed them.

The gang disappeared around a bend and Knile remembered to breathe again.  He let the air in his lungs trickle out silently between his lips before slowly drawing in another gasp.  He dug into his nostrils and pulled out the tiny cones that filtered the gunk out of the air.  Right at that moment they felt more like a hindrance to his breathing than a help.

Knile slowly eased forward, stepping cautiously out into the street.  He placed the respira
tors back inside his nostrils.
  As he moved along, he
used his knowledge of the backstreets to keep out of the better-
travelled roads, and as a result his encounters with other people were few.  In a little over two hours he came upon the wall that surrounded Link.  It rose up several storey
s high, an imposing mass of steel and concrete with a diameter of several kilometres that surrounded the Reach, drawing the line between Link and the slums.

The line between hope and despair
, Knile thought. 
Or between despair and even deeper despair.

He found concealment under the staircase of an old apartment block and observed the checkpoint, an archway cut into the wall, from a short distance away.  At this time of night there was not a lot of traffic moving through.  There were men dressed in black gathered around the arch, members of a group known as Enforcers, the equivalent to lawmen in these troubled times.  They stood idly against the ramparts with their rifles slung over their shoulders, talking and laughing as if they had not a care in the world.  As he watched, Knile saw a woman hobbling forward uncertainly toward the archway, her hand outstretched.  The Enforcers simply waved at her, dismissing her as if they were swatting away a fly, but when she kept moving forward, one of them roused himself and strode over to her, grabbing her roughly by the wrist.  He brought up a scanner and waved it across her fingertips in search of identification, but the procedure evidently came up empty, for he then gripped her shoulder and turned her away.  He gave her a second shove for good measure that made her stumble and almost fall.

“You come back again and we won’t be so gentle,” he called out.

No one got through the checkpoint without the proper ID chip embedded in their skin.  Knile knew that as well as anyone.  Trying to scale or break through the wall was also out of the question.  It was too well guarded for that.

There wasn’t time to arrange a fake chip.  That could take days,
or even weeks, since the contacts Knile had once established here were most likely gone.

That left him with only one other option.

Knile got up and began to walk confidently toward the archway.  He let his boots ring out on the asphalt, no longer making any attempt to hide his presence.  He quickened his pace, walking faster now.  Then he began to run.

Knile pumped his arms and set his face in determination, striding out as he closed in rapidly on the checkpoint.  He counted six, seven Enforcers.  Maybe eight.  One by one their conversations came to a stilted halt and they turned in his direction.

He must have looked like a madman careening at them.

He did not relent, and even quickened his pace as he came closer.

He bore down on them now, close enough to see the expressions on their faces: surprise, confusion, disbelief.  They were not used to being approached like this.  Not by someone from the slums.  They demanded fear and respect from those outside the walls, and they almost always got it.

“Slow down!” one of them yelled through his respirator, finally reacting and bringing up his rifle in Knile’s direction.  Others followed his lead and did the same, training their sights onto Knile like a firing squad.  Knile took a few more steps before slowing his pace and coming to a stop a few paces before them, breathless.

“Did she come through here?” Knile shouted, doubling over.

The Enforcers looked at each other, confused.

“Huh?” one of them said.

“Th
e whore!  Goes by the name of Sienna.”  Knile straightened.  “At least, that’s what she called herself last week.  Might be
Candy.”

One of the Enforcers stepped forward, a tubby man with an old-fashioned and bulky respirator.

“You better start making sense, dipshit.”

“Listen,” Knile said urgently, still trying to regain his breath, “and pay attention to what I’m telling you.  One of my girls, goes by the name of Sienna, or might be Candy or Lizzy, is on her way into Link right now.  To your barracks.”

The Enforcer shrugged and gave a nervous laugh.  “Good for her.”

“Good for her?” Knile practically shouted, feigning hysteria.  “Good for her?”  He laughed.  “You know she’s a time bomb, right?”

“What are you talking about?” the tubby Enforcer said.

“She’s got Sailor’s Scratch, man.  Got a real bad case of it.  I told her to stay off the streets for a week till it goes away, but the bitch is crazy for the creds.  Said she needs the cash.  She got out.”  Knile shook his head.  “You turn your head for one second–”

“What the fuck is Sailor’s Scratch?” the Enforcer said.

Knile pursed his lips and tapped on his chin.  “Well
,
let me put it this way, man.  If she gives a couple of your buddies over in the barracks a special ‘lap dance’ tonight, they’re gonna wake up tomorrow with a rash so bad they won’t be able to sit down for a week.”

One of the other Enforcers cursed.

“Yeah,” Knile went on.  “Highly contagious, too.  You’ll all have it by the end of the week, most likely.”

“Dammit, why didn’t you say that?” the tubby Enforcer said, exasperated.  He stepped aside.  “Go and get her back!”

“Sure, sure,” Knile said, starting forward, but another of the Enforcers, tall and burly, stepped up and placed a hand on Knile’s chest.

“ID,” the Enforcer said.  “You’ve gotta have a work pass to get in here, just like your whores.”

Knile grimaced up at him.  “Don’t have one.”

“Why not?”

Knile laughed.  “Do I look like a whore?  That’s not my thing, man.  I make my living out here in the slums.  Never applied for a work pass.  Never needed it till now.”

The Enforcer’s eyes were steely.  “Then you don’t go through.”

“Fuck it, I’ll go,” the tubby E
nforcer said, his voice bubbling with panic just under the surface.  “What does she look like?”

Knile considered.  “Uh, kinda dirty blonde with fair skin.  About an average rack.  Brown eyes.  Or might be hazel, not sure.”  Knile shrugged.  “I’m not big on details, as long as they’re bringing in the creds, if y’know what I mean.”  He winked lasciviously.

“Well, that’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” Tubby said.  “You said her name was Senner?”

“Sienna.  Or Candy, or might be Lizzy.  She has a few names.  Real creative, this one–”

“Shut up.”  The tubby Enforcer pressed his hand to his temple, his irritation growing by the second.  “All right, I’ll give you an escort and you can point her out.”  He waved at Knile.  “But this won’t happen again.”

Knile made no attempt to follow.

“Come on, move it,” Tubby said.

Knile looked wistfully over his shoulder.  “Shit, man, I’ve gotta get back to my girls–”

“I said move it!” Tubby bellowed.  He grabbed Knile by the arm and began to drag him through the archway as the other Enforcers looked on.  They began to cluster together, whispering to each other in concern.

“Hey, is that the one you hit last night?” one said.

“Shit, I hope not, man.  Although I haven’t felt quite right down there today…”

The rest of the conversation was lost as Knile was dragged past the checkpoint and into the inner precinct of Link.

“This is bullshit,” Tubby was saying angrily.  “Your girls could have their passes revoked because of this.  All of them.”

“Aw, c’mon, man.  It’s one slip-up.  I really need this.”

The buildings within Link were in better condition than out in the slums, but even here the poverty was evident.  People were still doing it tough.  Plants were becoming harder to grow due to the worsening pollution, and the maintenance of the city was starting to slip.

People hurried about the streets, the fear and desperation that permeated every inch of the slums greatly lessened.  But looking into the eyes of passers-by, seeing th
eir posture and their demeanour, it was evident that, even here, things were not going well.

“The barracks are about a block away,” Tubby said, striding on ahead with such an effort that he’d adopted a kind of waddle.  “For your sake, I hope there’s been no damage done.”

“Hey, me too, man.  Me too.”  They bustled through a crowd of workers in overalls coming from the other direction, their faces streaked with dirt and grease after a long day.  “This kind of shit is bad for business.”

“Bad for business, hah!” Tubby scoffed.  “If I end up with a rash on my balls, I’m gonna personally come and find the rat
hole you live in and kick your ass.”  He shimmied out the way of more people coming in the opposite direction, cursing at the delay.  “Hey, what’s your name
, anyway?” he said, turning, but then he stopped dead.

Knile was nowhere to be seen.

3

Link was the remains of a once sprawling city whose name had long been discarded.  Oddly, there were more people living here now than in the city’s heyday.  They crowded in for one reason only – because at the centre of this cluster of low-rise apartments and factories stood the most important building on Earth – the Reach.

The streets of Link were familiar to Knile, just as those in the slums were, but there were more changes here inside the wall.  Blockades had been erected in several places, channelling the flow of human traffic through more checkpoints and away from places Knile could only assume had been deemed off-limits by the Enforcers.  He became mildly irritated after confronting the first one, exasperated after the second, and infuriated after the third.