Zero-G (21 page)

I don't get a chance to say anything. The thing's engine gives a massive, grumbling belch and cuts out, spitting a final blast of smoke out of the tailpipe. The corridor stinks of oil, and the silence is almost as loud as the engine was.

Carver thumps the engine block with his foot. “No, no,
start
, you stupid thing.”

He reaches down and yanks on a cord, pulling it once, twice. The motor gives a tiny puttering cough, but fails to catch.

“What. The hell. Is this?” I say.

“When it works, I call it the Boneshaker.” He's off the vehicle now, crouching down, doing something clanky to its innards.

“
When
it works?”

“Yeah, well, I sort of only turned it on for the first time ten minutes ago.”

“Carver…”

“I know what you're thinking,” he says, without looking up. He's gone back to his tinkering, his hands jammed deep in the machinery. “How did he manage to build a working four-wheeler in six months? Ow!”

He pulls his hand back with a start. There's a small gash in his thumb, already bleeding. He sucks on it briefly, and plunges it back in.

“Actually, I was thinking that you've finally gone insane,” I say.

He continues as if I hadn't said anything. “I just wanted to see if it could be done. I got tired of building little gadgets. I knew I had to work on something bigger.”

“So you built
this
? Where did you get the parts?”

“Here and there,” he says. “Trade for this, bribe someone for that, steal the other.”

I open my mouth to speak, then decide that there's nothing I could say that would sum it all up.

I settle instead for hauling Knox upright. Unbelievably, it feels like he's got even heavier. When I lift him up, he starts coughing, his unconscious body shuddering as his throat tries to get rid of the gunk in his lungs.

I have to shout at Carver more than once to get him to help. We manage to get Knox sitting on the machine. His body is barely upright, his head lolling on his chest. I step back, my skin caked with sweat.

With a muttered prayer, Carver gives the cord another abrupt tug. This time, the motor jumps into life. Carver yanks his hand away, and then the thing is running – coughing and spluttering, but running. Carver pumps his fist and vaults onto the machine, landing in front of the comatose Knox. He tweaks the throttle and backs the machine up, lining it up straight, and then jerks the throttle, revving the engine.

“Climb on,” he says. He has to raise his voice to be heard above the roar.

I jab a finger at Knox. “You sure he can ride this thing? It might make him worse.”

“It's the only shot we've got. This is the fastest way up the ring.”

“You'll never get through the crush!”

“There
is
no crush!”

I stare at him. Because he's right. There isn't. Not any more. The crowds of people that normally clog every public space in the station are gone. They've barricaded themselves inside their habs, shutting themselves away. For the first time in forever, the corridors and galleries are empty.

Before I can stop myself, I'm on top of the machine.
Boneshaker
is right – the vibrations from the motor travel up through my body, rattling my skull. With Knox and Carver on the thing, there's barely enough room for me – my backside is hanging right off the body.

Tracer routes unfold in my mind, corridors and passages that I've run a million times. Jumps I've done, walls I've climbed, stairs I've leapt down. My favourite spots. The ones I always try to avoid. All spread out in my mind, like a map on a desk, one I can run my finger over and plot the best route.

I reach forward and wrap my arms around Carver's midsection, sandwiching Knox between us. He trembles, and I feel a dot of Resin speckle the skin of my arm.

“We'll need to go up through Tzevya,” I say. “We don't have time to go the long way round. Go to the end of the corridor, then hang a left.”

“What about if we go down by the air exchangers?”

“My way's faster.”

Carver guns the throttle and the world goes blurry.

I've never moved this fast. Not on a monorail car, not when I ran the Core, not on my fastest, most effortless sprint, when it feels like a fusion reactor is powering my legs. The speed is intoxicating, a thing of raw power, exploding through my body as the Boneshaker bucks and shudders underneath us.

I have to use my feet to stay on, hooking them into the guts of the machine, desperately trying to keep my balance. For a few seconds, I forget everything: Knox, Resin, Royo, Okwembu, the Earthers. Prakesh. I'm laughing, a furious, joyous howl that I couldn't stop even if I wanted to. I don't know if Carver can hear me, and I don't care.

We shoot out onto one of the catwalks, high above the New Germany gallery. There's nobody in sight. My mind is racing ahead of us, and my laughter cuts off abruptly as I realise where we're heading.

“Whoa, whoa, Carver, stop!” I shout.

He looks over his shoulder. The movement travels down into his hands, and the Boneshaker jerks a little. “What?”

“I forgot! This'll take us down the stairs.”

“It's the only way. Trust me!” He twists the throttle harder. The machine surges ahead, and it's all I can do to keep my grip while holding Knox up.

The entrance to the far corridor looms, and then we're through it, in blackness for a few seconds before we emerge into a lit part of the corridor. Carver jerks the stick to the side, and it's only when the right wheels jerk upwards and rumble over something that I realise why. We just ran over someone. A body. I flick a glance back over my shoulder, but the corpse is nothing more than a shadow, fading fast.

Carver shouts over his shoulder. “Hold on tight!”

I lift my ass off the seat to get a better look. The stairs are short, no more than ten steps, but steep, and coming up fast. Carver twists the brake – until now I hadn't realised that there
was
a brake – but then changes his mind and guns the throttle again. I barely have time to process what Carver is doing before we're airborne.

We're going so fast that, for a moment, we don't actually fall. We just keep flying forward, and it's only when we're about to collide with the ceiling that the Boneshaker drops. The thought comes to me – much too late – that we should have slowed and then driven down the stairs. I feel the ceiling just touch the top strands of hair on my head. In a weird way, I'm too fascinated to be scared – everything is moving at light speed and in slow motion, all at once.

Carver leans back, pulling the nose up. We slam into the ground with a bang that shakes the corridor. The wheels squeal as they try to keep contact. Carver is screaming, fighting with the control stick. I see him tweaking the throttle, desperately trying to speak to the skid – and then we're out of it, running straight, zooming down the corridor and laughing so hard with relief that I think we're going to fall right off. I'm astounded that Knox hasn't snapped out of his unconscious state; then, I wish I hadn't thought about it.

“Next time,” I shout, “go
down
the stairs!”

“How about next time you take us somewhere where there
are
no stairs?”

“I'll try. You know where to go from here?”

He nods. “You're not the only tracer on Outer Earth.”

As the words leave his mouth, the Boneshaker's engine gives an almighty cough, bucking so hard that it lifts me off the seat. It sputters and dies, and we coast to a halt at a T-junction, bumping up against the wall.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Carver says. He slams his foot down on a lever on the side, then does it again, but each time the motor refuses to catch, giving a sullen clicking sound before fading. The Boneshaker has left enormous, curling black lines on the floor, like question marks.

“Told you we should have gone down slowly,” I say, dismounting. My legs are trembling.

“And where's the fun in that?” He follows me, bending down to ram his hands into the motor. The metal is steaming slightly.

It takes me a few moments to realise that Knox has lifted his head. He's staring at me, his eyes rheumy, almost clouded. Little black bubbles pockmark his cheek and lips, dotting his pale skin.

He opens his mouth, the words dropping out it like hanging spit. “Wuh. Wuh. Where. Where are wuh.”

“He speaks,” Carver says, not looking up.

I try not to meet Knox's eyes. “Getting you to safety.”

“Wuh-why?”

“You die, I die, remember?”

He doesn't have long left. I close my eyes, trying not to pay attention to the hot, itching stitches. “Carver, we're running out of time,” I say.

“I know, I know. It's the batteries.”

“Just fix it.”

“I'm trying.”

That's when I hear the voices. They're distant, and it's impossible to make out the words, but it sounds like they're coming from behind us.

“Carver?” I say.

“I hear 'em.”

The Boneshaker gives another roar, briefly catches, then dies. That nasty clicking sound ratchets out of the engine, followed by more curses from Carver as he gets ready to try again. I drop down into a combat stance, my hands at my sides, ready to take whoever comes first.
Buy some time. That's all you can do.

It's a gang. I see it the second they come round the corner, colours out, vibrant purple, splashed across bandanas and tattoos. I don't know them, but it's easy to see what they've been doing. They're carrying boxes of stuff – food, parts, batteries. I guess it's easy to go looting when the station's locked down.

The leader is a short, stocky guy, with a shaven head and an ugly, badly healed facial tat in the shape of a scythe. He comes up short, staring in confusion at the Boneshaker. Then he grins and turns to his buddies, barking something at them in a language I don't understand. The ones carrying boxes put them down, and start to saunter towards us. They don't have any weapons that I can see, but I can tell they're ready to fight, and that they know how to do it.

Right then, the Boneshaker catches and holds. Hot smoke swirls around my legs, and I leap back on before I can think about it, wrapping my arms around Carver a split second before he guns the motor.

I'm sitting a little forward this time, squashed against Knox, but I feel hands brushing my back, scrabbling for a hold.

The front of the Boneshaker rises upwards, like an ancient beast rearing to attack. For one insane second I think I'm going to fall right off it. Then I see that the gang leader has grabbed onto the back edge of the Boneshaker and is being dragged along. His boots judder as they fly along the floor, bouncing off the metal.

I reach back to push him off, but Carver jerks our ride to one side. The man swings around, smashing into the corridor wall with a sound like a melon splitting open. He tumbles away, lifeless.

We're heading back the way we came – the Boneshaker came to a halt facing the wrong direction, and Carver didn't get a chance to turn around. “We're going the wrong way,” I say.

“Better hang on, then.”

Leaning to one side, he tweaks the brake, twisting the control stick and spinning the Boneshaker so fast that it nearly pushes us right off. Somehow, I manage to keep both Knox and myself on.

The gang is back on its feet ahead of us. There aren't that many, but they crowd the corridor. Carver shouts something, his words lost in the roar of the engine, then twists the power so hard that the grip almost comes off in his hand. The Boneshaker surges forward, its vibrations threatening to shake me apart, and we head right for the middle of them.

At the very last second, the gang scatters, diving out of the way.

One of them doesn't move fast enough, and the Boneshaker rumbles over her ankle. Her scream drills into my ears, but it's gone almost as soon as it starts. I expect to hear stinger fire, but we've knocked them down, and soon we've left them behind.

“Whatever you did to the batteries, it worked!” I shout.

Carver nods. “How's our patient doing?” he says.

I lean forward, studying Knox. He's unconscious again. The drool on his face has dried to a thick crust.

The power failures have grown worse – there are large parts of the station in darkness now, whole corridors blacked out. I think of the cities back on Earth. Or, at least, how I imagine them to have been. Huge buildings, towering to the sky. Thin streets winding between them like pieces of string, pulled tight. Easy to imagine them teeming with millions of people. What's hard is to imagine them empty, after the nuclear war. It must have been like Outer Earth is now.

The closer we get, the more scared I feel. It's impossible to know how Knox is doing, or how long he has. There's no telling whether more of the drug will even help him. Maybe it's something you can only take once.

Don't think about that.

There are more bodies, and the sickly sweet smell of decay is thicker, ebbing and flowing through the corridors. But there are no more gangs, and nobody stops us. It's not long before we cross the border into Tzevya.

Ahead of us, the corridor becomes a T-junction. Someone has scrawled a message on the wall in black ink, and, as Carver slows to take the corner, I see it clearly.
Resin? Turn back we shoot on sight.

They might
shoot on sight
, but so far Tzevya looks deserted. I'd expected to find the corridors blocked by debris or something, but they're wide open, although the doors alongside remain closed.

We trundle down a short flight of stairs onto the bottom level. There's another corridor ahead of us, long and empty. Most of it is in darkness, but here and there a few lights flicker, still holding out.

I feel Carver hesitate for a moment, as if reluctant to go back up to full speed. But then he guns the Boneshaker. The wheels squeal, spitting up smoke, and we speed down the centre of the corridor.

We're about halfway down when I see it.

It's so fleeting that I'm almost ready to believe I imagined it, but then it catches the light again.

“Stop!” I scream at Carver.

He turns to look at me, his eyes narrowed in confusion. We're still going way too fast. I hurl myself forward, pressing up against Knox, scrabbling for the brake. Carver yells in surprise.

The Boneshaker starts to skid. Its wheel clips the wall, and we nearly unbalance as the vehicle lurches the other way.

My hand is on the brake, pulling it hard, my feet gripping the body of the Boneshaker in a desperate attempt to hold on. Carver is screaming, trying to control the machine, his hand fighting with mine for the stick.

I feel the machine tilt …

We come back, slamming into the ground and ending in a screeching, grumbling halt in the middle of the corridor. The engine cuts, leaving nothing but the sound of our breathing.

Carver starts to turn around, on the verge of asking me what I was doing—

And stops dead as the wire strung up across the corridor just touches the side of his neck

I still can't believe I saw it. I can barely see it now – it's only really noticeable through the impression it's leaving in the skin of Carver's neck, a thin channel just to the right of his Adam's apple. Somewhere, very distant, an alarm is blaring.

Very slowly, Carver leans backwards. His finger searches for the wire, finds it, twangs it gently. The light dances off it, zipping up and down its length.

“Like I said,” I say. “Stop.”

When he looks back to me, his eyes have gone huge.

Right then, what feels like every door in the corridor bursts open. There are people everywhere, ripping us off the Boneshaker and throwing us to the ground.

I try to stand, but I'm forced down by a foot in my back. I see Knox fall to the ground on my right, see a strand of dried Resin gunk fall across the floor.

Shoot on sight.

Before I can even articulate the thought, they've spotted the strand. Their angry shouts coalesce, turning into cries of “He's sick!” and “Do it!” I try to scream, but there's a gun barrel jabbed deep into the back of my neck. I see one being put to Knox's head, forcing it down.

My heart flash-freezes. It just cuts off mid-beat. I can't take my eyes off the stinger against his head, against the finger round the trigger. I can see every groove, every wrinkle. The joint is scarred, filigreed with white lines, and a thin silver band shines at its base. The finger begins to squeeze.

All at once, I remember where I've seen that ring.

“Syria!” I shout.

The finger pauses, just for a second. The hand holding the gun is shaking ever so slightly.

And then there's a voice, cutting above all the others. “Riley?”

The gun is lifted off my neck, and I'm pulled to my feet. My heart kicks back into gear, and it feels like the Boneshaker starting up: all noise and vibration. Part of me is still waiting for the gunshot that will end Knox's life, but it doesn't come.

Syria turns me to face him, both of his hands on my shoulders. He's wearing a medical face mask – gods know where he got it from. Greasy hair sticks to the mask in sticky strands, and the eyes above it are grim.

Anna is standing behind him.

Her expression dances between joy and confusion, shouting at the others to stand down. They stare at her, not sure whether to put the guns away, and it's only when she gets between them and me that they start to lower them. Syria is staring at me, recognition dawning.

I have a million questions – how Anna escaped the Earthers, how Syria ended up in Tzevya, what happened to the Caves. I don't have the energy to ask any of them. Behind me, I hear Carver hauled to his feet, shouting at the others to get off him.

From somewhere on the floor, Knox gives a hitching cough.

“He's sick,” someone behind me says. “No exceptions, remember?”

The words kick the crowd back into gear. Syria steps forward, raising the stinger.

“
No
,” Anna says, inserting herself between us and the crowd. “This one comes in.”

“You giving
me
orders now?” Syria says, elbowing her aside.

“And who put you in charge, Caver?” one of the others says.

“Shut up. All of you,” Anna says. She points to me and Carver. “I'm immune, so I'll take him – me and them, too. We'll put him in the hospital, in one of the iso wards.”

“Out of the way, Anna,” says a woman at one side of the corridor. She has a face mask, too, and short black hair that sticks up in untidy spikes.

“No, listen.” Anna looks right at the woman. “Walker – you know me, and you know I'd never ask you this if I didn't have a good reason.”

Walker raises an eyebrow. Anna looks over at me, then back at her.

She points a finger at my chest. “If he dies, so does she.”

Silence in the corridor. Anna senses the hesitation, and presses home her advantage. “Donovan. Rama. Shanti,” she says, looking at each of them. “Please. You have to trust me.”

I badly want to say something – to tell them just why Knox's death means mine as well. But if I mention that I'm a walking bomb, it could disrupt the precarious position we're in. And even if Anna succeeds, what then? I need to get Knox to Apex. It's the only way he survives.

“Isolation ward,” says the woman Anna called Walker. “We'll clear a path. But if one more person dies, it's on you.”

Anna nods, then squats down next to Knox. I follow, lowering my head to hers.

“Anna, you don't understand,” I say, but then I stop talking. Because Anna has reached in her pocket and drawn something out.

It's a tiny vial, no longer than her palm. It's just like the one Carver and I took from Apex – the furosemide-nitrate. The drug compound.

“We've still got a little left,” she says.