Tracer (25 page)

Amira steps in beside me, but I raise a hand, and she stops, puzzled. The people at the edge of the crowd have seen what’s happening, and have started to move away.

“Zhao, this really isn’t the time,” I say, but he just laughs.

“Tell that to Marco,” he replies. He indicates one of the Lieren, standing off to the side, glaring at me. It’s the one
who led the ambush that started all this, the one I kicked in the head on the run to Gardens. His nose is a bulbous black mess. His blade twitches, gripped tight in his hand.

Hello, Tattoo. Apparently you have a name.

I look back at Zhao. “They jumped me, and they tried to
take my cargo. Your boy here” – I gesture at Marco, and his eyes narrow in anger – “wanted to cut my ear off. I was just
repaying the favour.”

“No, it doesn’t work that way,” Zhao replies. The smile stays etched on his face, but his eyes are cold. “You kind of – well – you insulted Marco. And that means you insulted me.”

His eyes pass over the bruised twins, the crippled Carver. They’re standing firm behind me, staring down the Lieren.

“I’ll offer you a way out,” he continues, leering. “Call it a debt of honour.
We’ll leave, but we’re taking a body part of yours with us. I’ll let you pick which one.”

Amira steps forward, her teeth bared. “Not going to happen,” she says.

“I thought as much,” Zhao replies. And then he drives a fist deep into Amira’s stomach.

She cries out and collapses backwards, the air leaving her in one huge burst. Time slows to a crawl as she falls. I leap forwards, twisting my left
elbow round in the direction of Zhao’s throat, and the corridor explodes.

Sometimes, the choice about whether to fight or to run gets made for you.

Every one of the Dancers attacks at once in a wave of fists and feet. My vision blurs at the edges; Zhao dodges out of range, laughing, but it dies on his lips as I bring the elbow round into the face of another Lieren. I feel his cheekbone crack
under the strike, hear the howl of pain, but I’m already bringing my right hand up, balled into a fist and swinging at the man behind him. He’s short, scrawny, barely out of his teens, and for a bizarre moment I wonder how someone like him ever fell in with the Lieren. Then my fist slams into his side with a noise like a wet jacket thrown into a corner, and he doubles over, retching.

Yao takes
a few quick steps back, and then launches herself
towards Kev. He’s already dropping to one knee, cupping his hands to meet her. With a yell, she plants a foot in them, and Kev hurls her forwards. She explodes across the passage: a screaming, airborne ball of fists and feet, knocking two Lieren to the ground. As she tries to rise, another assailant appears above her – but doesn’t even get to plant
his feet before Kev hits him with an enormous right hook.

Behind them, Carver is facing off against two others; his arm is useless, but at the same moment that the Twins take down their opponents he launches himself towards the corridor wall, tic-tacs off and delivers a kick to the chest of one of the Lieren, knocking him backwards. Behind me, Prakesh makes a strange groaning sound – I can’t
tell if he’s taking a hit or giving one.

Before I can find out, someone drives an elbow into the small of my back. The pain is so sudden, so startling, that I can’t even cry out. It just stops dead in my throat.

I fall forwards onto my own elbows, my vision a starburst of colours. Instinctively, I lash out with a foot, and catch something – a leg – which jerks away, accompanied by a sharp cry.
A hand gropes my hair, finds a purchase and yanks upwards, snapping my neck back. I have a split second to try and pull away, but then the fist smashes across my face. I taste blood instantly, salty and metallic.

Whoever owns the fist rears back for another strike, but then vanishes, ripped away. Amira, her left arm clutching her stomach, breathing heavily through her nose, disables my attacker
with a jab to the throat.

For a moment, we’re apart from the battle. I’m on all fours, staring up at her. A few feet away, Carver, Prakesh and the Twins duck, block, swing, strike, retaliate. Zhao is wielding a knife, a thin blade, long as my forearm. The knife rips into Carver’s right shoulder, opening a jagged wound. He grunts in anger, before grabbing Zhao’s knife hand and twisting. The
blade
flies out of his grip, bouncing and skittering down the corridor. I’m dimly aware that the noise from the gallery has got louder, though whether in reaction to the fight or because the crowd has finally broken through the line of stompers, I can’t tell.

The Lieren are everywhere. Another runs towards me, his face gleaming with triumph. I’m back on my feet now, and sidestep before whipping my
fist into his stomach, sending him crashing to the floor.

And then it all goes wrong.

From somewhere behind Amira, one of the Lieren appears – one I’ve never seen before. He’s tall, thin as a corpse, wearing a jacket of some dark blue fabric. In his hand, already raised over his head, a long blade: Zhao’s knife.

It’s my imagination, it has to be, but the knife is as black as the deepest space,
reflecting no light, and its wielder is fast, much too fast, and before I can do anything he’s swinging it down towards Amira’s neck.

Every part of me kicks into overdrive, snapping the corridor into sharp, clear focus. But even as my hand is reaching out to block the blade, I already know it won’t be quick enough. Amira’s eyes widen when she sees me, and she begins to turn, but the knife is
almost there, its point finally picking up a flash of yellow light.

And then something – no, someone – appears between Amira and the blade.

There’s a horrible sound, a kind of wet thud, like something plunging into a bucket of rotten food. The attacker’s knife is ripped from his hand, and he staggers backwards.

Yao falls to the ground, the thin blade buried up to the hilt in the side of her
neck.

For one terrible moment, her eyes meet mine, and it’s as if someone has driven a blade through me instead. The corridor
has fallen silent, Lieren and Dancer pausing their attack, everyone fixated on the dark blood that suddenly begins to spurt from Yao’s neck, coming in thick, gushing bursts, collecting on the corridor floor. She sighs – a soft, calm sound – and then her eyes go dark.

Councillor Morton holds out the longest.

He was one of the dozen people who ignored Janice Okwembu’s summons to the amphitheatre. He was in the council chamber, diagramming plans for diverting more resources to the Air Lab, when he heard Oren Darnell’s voice from one of the comms screens. He looked up just in time to see everybody he ever worked with asphyxiate, clawing at the walls.

Now he’s barricaded the doors to the chambers. Unlike most of the sliding doors on Outer Earth, these ones swing inwards, and he’s pushed every chair in the room up against them, jamming the handles shut. It’s enough to hold Oren Darnell back for a good two minutes.

Morton shrinks down behind the table, mad with fear. Darnell is using a plasma cutter, burning a hole through the steel door. The
air is hot with the stench of ozone. In seconds, he’s cut a hole large enough to thrust his arm through – Morton sees the molten edge burn through the sleeve of his jacket, sizzle at the flesh beneath. Darnell doesn’t seem to feel it. He
knocks the chairs away, then withdraws his arm and kicks the door open.

Darnell crosses the room in seconds, a black hulk silhouetted by the ceiling lights.
Morton is pulled from the chamber, Darnell’s hands on his shoulders. He tries to fight back, hammering on the giant’s arms, but he may as well try and bend a steel bar with his mind.

Darnell drags him into the passage, spins him around, hurls him to the floor.

“Whatever you want,” Morton says, and that’s when he sees Janice Okwembu. She’s standing behind Darnell. As his eyes fall on her, Darnell
can see the pitiful hope in them, as if he thinks she’s arrived unnoticed, that she can knock Darnell out and save him. When she doesn’t move, he says, “Janice, help me.”

Okwembu steps past Darnell, and crouches down, so that she’s level with Morton. He’s shaking his head now, not understanding, not wanting to understand.

“Janice, please,” he says. “What you’re doing … this is insane.”

“No,
it’s not,” she says quietly, her eyes never leaving him. “You know what’s insane, Charles? You. Sitting in that chamber for years, trying to legislate for this station, like it could make a single bit of difference.”

“But Outer Earth—”

“Isn’t worth keeping alive any more.”

Morton’s fear is starting to be replaced by anger, furious and disbelieving. “So you kill your colleagues? Torture them?
It’s monstrous.”

“Yes,” she says, standing, glancing at Darnell. “But necessary.”

She walks away, not looking back. Morton tries to rise, pushing himself up to one knee. Darnell reaches down and draws the knife across his throat.

Morton takes a whole minute to die.

As Darnell turns away, he finally registers the burn on his arm, the one he got from the plasma cutter. He runs a finger along
it, registering the pain but not responding to it. His stomach turns over, not from revulsion, but from hunger. When did he last eat? Or sleep? He doesn’t remember, and at that moment it doesn’t seem important.

He takes a step, then stops. The corridor swims in front of him, and he has to put a hand on the wall to steady himself. The memory comes, arriving to replace the pain, and he’s halfway
through it before he even knows it’s there. The memory of his family’s hab.

Darnell had given up keeping track of the number of species he’d managed to cultivate – they all blended into each other, sprouting flowers and swollen fruit and questing tendrils. He had to be careful not to step on the plants or trip over their roots. He didn’t mind.

Nobody asked after his mother. At first, he’d been
worried that they would, but nobody wanted to get involved. He kept collecting food packages from the mess, and would eat them standing up, alone in the hab.

On one particular day, he was just leaving for school, closing the hab door behind him. He was thinking about a new cultivar he was trying, one which wouldn’t …

“Son?”

The man’s eyes were bright over thin-rimmed glasses. He wore brown
overalls, and carried a tab screen in one hand. He looked down at the screen, squinting. “Hab 6-21-E … Darnell family. Your parents’ home?”

Darnell shook his head. “Dad’s dead. And my mom’s not at home.”

“Ten-year maintenance inspection, son. Gotta make sure the chemical toilet doesn’t need repair. Look here, see? My ID.”

He held up the tab screen, showing the Outer Earth logo along with the
words
Maintenance Corps
. Underneath the words, there was a pixelated photograph, and the name
Mosely, Lewis J., Inspection Officer
.

Darnell shrugged. “I’ll tell my mom you came by.”

Mosely smiled. “I don’t think we need to trouble her, do you?”

“I gotta go to school,” Darnell said, turning to lock the door behind him.

He didn’t get the chance. Mosely reached over and pushed it open, and before
Darnell could stop him, stepped inside. Darnell didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“Won’t be a second, son,” Mosely said. “Then we can—”

His words choked off as he saw the inside of the hab. Mosely turned, his hand over his mouth. Darnell remembers stepping backwards as Mosely let go, vomiting all over the door.

“Are you coming?” Okwembu says from the far end of the corridor.

Darnell looks up, the
memory vanishing like smoke. He takes off after Okwembu, stepping over Morton’s body. There’s a distant stinging from his arm, the smell of burned fabric, but he’s barely aware of them now.

“I want to talk to our friend,” he says, as he catches up with Okwembu. She’s at the bottom of a flight of steps, walking down a long passage towards a door. “I want to know where he is.”

“You will,” she
says. “Once Hale has found Garner, and we’ve got what we needed.”

At the mention of Hale, a comfortable rage flares inside him. All the same, he’s about to tell Okwembu to do what he says when she opens the door, and then every thought he has falls away.

He’s looking at the main control room of Outer Earth.

The room is as long and narrow as the corridor, with screens arrayed across each wall.
Darnell touches the nearest one, and it responds smoothly at his touch, menu options appearing under his fingertips.
Orientation. Lighting Circuits. Core Operations
.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Okwembu says. “When you’re ready, come back to the main council chamber. We’ll do another broadcast from there.”

Darnell barely hears her. He’s moving down the room, hardly knowing where to look next, a giant
grin on his face. Then his eyes fall on one particular display, and his grin gets even wider.

“I’ll be along in a minute,” he says, taking a seat at the screen.

Zhao breaks the silence. He gives an inhuman yell as he flies towards a startled Carver, his hands twisted into claws. But then Amira is there, darting across the room and slamming into him, pushing him into the wall, past a startled Kev, still frozen in shock.

“Run!” she shouts.

Prakesh grabs my arm. The Lieren are stunned, but only for a moment. Then they’re giving chase, filling
the corridor behind us with angry shouts. There are people further down the corridor, but they shrink against the wall with expressions of terror.

I run on automatic, my feet pulling me forwards all on their own. But my mind is lingering, staring into Yao’s eyes, hearing that last whisper of her breath. Alongside me, I can hear Prakesh’s breathing, heavy and ragged. There’s someone else alongside
us – Carver, I think. I don’t know where Kev and Amira are.

Slowly, the cries of the Lieren vanish behind us. For a while, I lose track of where we’re going. Prakesh is leading the way;
he must be taking us towards Gardens. My chest is burning with the effort, and my calves are nothing more than twin slabs of aching flesh.