Tracer (11 page)

My fingers feel out another knot. It’s a
hinge. I’ve happened on a trapdoor, another entry into the crawlspace, and relief floods through me. I hurriedly scratch around, locate the outer edge and pull it up. By now I’m beyond caring about how much noise I make. I just want out.

A little light brightens the tunnel, coming from the room
below. I pull myself forwards, past the open trapdoor, then gingerly lower my legs backwards into it.
It’s still too dark to see where the floor below is, or even what I’m dropping into, so I take it as slowly as I dare.

I quietly move down to a hanging position, and let go. My feet hit metal, and I drop to a crouch, scanning the room. The light is coming from a tiny crack under a door to my left, and I can see that the room I’m in is another storeroom, stashed with old electrical equipment.
Puffs of cold air are coming from vents set low in the wall, but there’s no way of knowing if it’s air conditioning, or just the breathing of the station. Despite that, the room has an odd smell – thin, unpleasant, almost chemical.

There’s a row of big lockers lining the back wall, and stray wires and tools lie stacked on shelves around the room, dimly visible in the low light. This place would
be a goldmine for the guys in the market.

The pain in my right hand flares, and I clutch it to my chest. Opening it gingerly, I run a finger along the gash. It’s already crusted with dried blood and dirt, and even the slightest touch makes me wince. But I can’t worry about it now. By my reckoning, the crawlspace has dropped me into a room just off the one where Gray and Darnell were talking.
I drop to one knee and lower my head, tilting it sideways and squinting to see under the door. Nothing: just a bar of blinding white light.

I don’t want to go into that room.

The thought of finding Darnell there causes little electric shocks to rocket up my spine, and as I slowly raise myself up, I have to struggle to control my breathing. I should have waited for Amira and Carver. Three of
us against Darnell might even the odds; hell, Carver alone could probably take him down with a little luck. But me?

And that’s just it. Right now, there’s only me.

Slowly, I pad towards the door. What if it’s locked? Sealed by a keypad on the other side? No. Can’t think about that now. I have to get to the Twins. I push my ear to the door, listening intently. Unlike a lot of the doors on the
station, this one isn’t electronic. It has an old-fashioned handle, caked with dust.

For what feels like a whole minute, I listen, but there’s not a single sound. Very slowly, I reach towards the edge of the door, grasp the handle, and pull.

With a click that’s too loud, way too loud, the door clacks off its lock. Dazzling white light shoots through the crack, blinding me for an instant. I blink
several times, and very carefully step into the room.

The place is sparsely furnished, with workbenches pushed up against the far wall. It must have once been used by repair techs working on the monorail. Gray’s body is on the other side of the room, and I do my best not to stare at it.

The Twins and Prakesh are on my right. Yao’s face is swollen and bloodied. She must have fought when Darnell
hit her with the quicksleep.

I scan the room once more, and run to them, sliding to my knees as I reach Prakesh. I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life. The fear digging into me is like a creature perched on the back of my neck, running its claws along my shoulders.

I reach out a hand, gripping his shoulder. “Prakesh,” I hiss.

His eyes flicker open, and at that moment, huge, damp
hands close around my throat.

His grip is steel. I claw at his enormous hands, desperately wanting to scream, but all that comes out is a horrified wheeze. How could a man so enormous be so quiet?

His hands tighten, those wet fingers crushing my windpipe. A dull ache starts in my chest, sharpening as he squeezes. He lifts me right off my feet, before spinning me around and slamming me into the wall above the Twins.

His expression is not one of anger, but something even more terrifying: joy. He grins, showing huge teeth. They’re pearly-white, dazzling in the fluorescent lights, and it’s that fact – that he’s somehow managed to keep them clean and pristine – that makes me lose it. I pummel at his arms, try to squirm out of his grip, but his smile just gets bigger. My feet are dancing, trying to kick him, but
he’s way out of range, holding me at arm’s length against the wall.

“You should have taken my offer,” he whispers. He flicks his eyes to the ceiling. “I knew you were there the whole time. I didn’t even have to come and find you. You came right to me.”

He leans in slightly closer, and I take the chance, swinging my hand up and raking my nails across his face. I keep them cut short, but they’re
still ragged and uneven, and they open up three thin cuts across his forehead. He swings his head to the side, but can’t avoid the strike, and when he turns back the childlike joy has been replaced by fury.

In a rage, he hurls me across the room. I wasn’t expecting it, and there’s no time to drop my shoulder before I hit the ground. The impact knocks what little breath I have right out of me.
My head collides with the wall, causing another starburst of pain.

But I can breathe again, and the oxygen rushing into my lungs fuels my anger. I push off the ground and spring up, woozy but alert. I am
through
getting my ass kicked.

Darnell crosses the room in a matter of seconds, his footfalls booming on the metal as he breaks into a run. His left arm is pulled back, level with his waist,
winding up a gut-punch. But he’s coming too fast to control himself: I feint right, then drop into a crouch and throw my left leg out. He sees the move, tries to dodge, but his back foot catches my thigh and he ends up smashing into the wall.

He roars, but he’s off balance, and as I spring backwards from my crouch I bring my other foot up and kick hard, aiming right for his crotch.

But for a
giant, Darnell is obscenely fast. He grabs my ankle in that tempered-steel grip, and in one movement he regains his balance and yanks me towards him.

My heart is full go, pounding in my ears, and I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. I see his hands on my throat again, and terror surges through me. If I can get away and get a little head start, I might just be able to find help.

I
twist to one side, throw my torso upwards – and sink my teeth into his calf.

The thin fabric of his trouser leg rips under my bite, and he howls in agony. Burning-hot blood explodes in my mouth. Every instinct is to let go, and I can feel my gorge rising, but I force myself to hold on.

He kicks out with his other leg, and connects with my bruised collarbone. He couldn’t have had a better hit
if he’d planned it. A grinding agony flares in my shoulder, and I let go of his leg, crying out. My face is sticky with blood. I try to get to my feet, but the balance has been knocked out of my legs.

Through eyes blurred and wet, I see the kick coming in, and this time there’s no bracing for it. His massive boot connects squarely with my stomach, and every atom of air inside me explodes from
between my lips.

I lie there, heaving, and Darnell flips me over. He straddles me, and with a sound like a dying breath, draws a knife from his belt. His breath is hot, ragged with effort. A short laugh crawls out of his mouth.

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!”