Authors: Rob Boffard
The guilt comes, blossoming in my mind like a diseased flower. If I hadn’t
attacked Marco, if I’d stayed down after that ambush, then Yao would still be alive. The realisation nearly doubles me over. I stumble to a halt, retching helplessly, desperately wanting to throw up, to force the feeling out of me, but nothing comes. I’m too shocked to cry; all I can do is hold my stomach as a creeping numbness spreads up my limbs.
Prakesh has run ahead, but he turns back when
he realises I’m no longer with him. “What are you doing?” he rasps, his voice ragged with effort. “We have to keep moving. Come on.”
There’s a hand on my back. Carver is crouching down, looking up at me. His arm is crusted with jagged strips of blood.
“Ry,” he says quietly. The kindness in his eyes takes a second to register. “We can’t worry about it now. We have to finish this. For Yao.”
Slowly, I nod.
The lights go out with a soft buzz, leaving us standing in pitch darkness. “What the hell?” Prakesh says, and then gets control of himself. “I know where this goes. Hopefully we can get to the tracks.”
The further we run, the more chaotic the station seems to become. Now it’s not just angry crowds hurling threats – it’s full-on running battles, stompers with stingers and stun-sticks
raised, plunging into huge brawls in the corridors and galleries. The fate of my crew, the death of Yao, all of it digs into my mind, and every fibre of my body tells me to turn back and find them. But I push forwards, because deep down I know Carver is right. I’ve got a job to do, and this whole situation is getting worse by the second. Darnell and the Sons of Earth are still in control. They
could do anything: more fires, more
bombs, even open one of the other airlocks and shoot all our air into space, suffocating us where we stand.
Every moment of my life – every moment of almost everyone’s life – has been lived on Outer Earth. This station is my home, as familiar and comforting as an embrace. But in the hands of Darnell, it feels like it’s been turned against me. Like every floor
plate has become a trapdoor, and every pipe has a tripwire tied tightly around it.
We hit the stairs. They’re almost silent around us; there’s shouting in the distance, but I can’t tell if it’s another crowd or the Lieren coming after us. Little by little, we adjust to the darkness, and I find I can make out the floor ahead of us.
My thoughts drift to the asteroid catcher ships. There are only
two left – big, hulking vessels with skeleton crews. What if the Sons succeed, and kill everyone on the station? The ships will return to find that they’re the last humans in the universe. Where would they go? Would they try to return to Earth? Would they contact each other? Or just continue into deep space, drifting until their supplies run out and their engines sputter and die?
We’ve been climbing
in silence, and every so often Prakesh will reach a hand back – I squeeze it, hoping that it’s enough. But I’m deep in thought when I realise that the stairwell is getting lighter: whatever killed the lights isn’t affecting areas above us. Before long, we hit the top level of the sector, and then we’re climbing the stairs to the monorail platform.
And then, a triumphant shout from behind us:
“Found you!”
Lieren: two of them, both carrying knives, their features hidden in the shadows. Can we risk running in the tunnels? Should we double back? I’m frantically running through places where we could lose them.
It’s then that I realise Carver isn’t with us. I turn back mid-stride, and see him standing with his back to us, his shoulders
squared, facing down the oncoming Lieren. I can’t
see his face, but I see his fists in the low light, clenched at his sides.
“Get out of here, Ry,” he says. “I’ll buy you guys some time.”
“Carver, come on!”
But he raises a hand, waving me away – it’s his left hand, and I see his face tense as he does it; it must be screaming at him, racking his body in pain. He’s in no condition to fight. I start towards him, but he senses me coming, and turns,
his expression angry.
“Why can’t you just do what you’re told, for once?” he growls, but behind the anger I hear a note of pleading that brings me up short. The Lieren are almost on him, their blades dancing, and he turns back to them, bending his knees slightly.
Prakesh is behind me: “We have to go. Now.”
I wheel around, furious. “We can’t leave him!”
“Yes, you can,” says Carver, and swings
his good arm in a huge, pistoning strike that takes one of his attackers in the side of the head and sends him sprawling back down the corridor. The other Lieren pauses, surprised, and then Carver is on him. Prakesh grabs my arm, and then my reserve breaks and we’re running into the darkness, leaving Carver fighting to the death behind us.
It takes a long time for us to adjust to the darkness in the tunnel. Right now, the only thing we can be sure of is that we’re heading in the direction of Gardens. We have to move slowly; the ground under our feet is twisted and uneven, and the tracks are nothing more than thin black lines. Our footsteps echo into the gloom.
“Do you think they’ll follow us in here?” Prakesh asks quietly.
“Probably. But they won’t see us right away. And we have a head start.”
“Thanks to Carver.”
I don’t reply.
Eventually, after what seems like hours, we reach Gardens. The platform is deserted, lit by that ghostly orange light. Soon, we’re on a catwalk high above the main entrance to the Food Lab, which is still spouting puffs of acrid smoke. I can’t see the floor below, but I can hear people
down there: it doesn’t sound like a fight, but every so often angry voices are raised: people pleading for food, demanding to be let in.
Right then, there’s the crackle of the comms systems. There’s
an enormous screen at the far end of the gallery, and as it flashes up the station logo, a cold chill settles over me. I know exactly what’s coming.
Darnell appears on the screen. He’s seated at
the main table in the Apex council chamber, his hands folded in front of him. His frame is too large for the chair he’s sitting in, and he towers over the table. He’s smiling.
“It’s time to make things a little more …” He pauses, as if searching for the right word, then his smile gets wider. “Uncomfortable.”
Now that he’s in the council chamber, there’s no need for him to hack the feed, and
the lack of glitches somehow makes it even worse. “We can control the thrusters from here, turn off all the oxygen, even send a little signal down the lines that’ll boil every drop of water on the station into nothingness.”
Prakesh has gone very still. His hand finds mine, and grips it tight. I can’t take my eyes off the screen. Darnell leans back in his chair, his huge hands laced over his stomach.
“But none of that seemed to be enough. Not for the people on this station. So we’ve told Outer Earth’s convection systems to cease functioning. It’s not quite as efficient as fire, but it’s so much more fun to watch.” The screen cuts to black.
There’s perhaps half a second of silence before the crowd below us starts screaming. I turn to Prakesh, my eyes wide. I’m no scientist, but I know how
this place works. And I know that we’re in serious trouble.
You can heat Outer Earth without too many problems. But cooling it? Keeping the temperature down with a million people, a bunch of power sources and the regular blasts of direct sunlight when the station swings round in its orbit? That takes a lot of work. There are big fins on the station hull, convectors which let the heat just radiate
off into space. They rely on coolant, circulating through pipes around the station, an enormous nerve
system of liquid which keeps the temperature stable. If they shut down, if the liquid stops flowing …
“How long do we have?” I ask, my voice high and thin.
Prakesh looks away, and for a second I think he hasn’t heard, but then he says, “Probably as long as Darnell’s deadline. A day. Maybe less.”
“Could someone get into the main systems and turn the coolers back on?”
He shakes his head. “No way. Maybe. I don’t know.”
We stand, listening to the chaos unfold below us. Eventually, Prakesh takes his hands off the railing. “This way,” he mutters, straightening up, but instead of moving, he just stands there, hands on his thighs. His face is slick with sweat, his breath coming in huge, ragged
gasps. The signs are hard to miss: the quivering calves, the slumped shoulders. Every rookie tracer goes through them. Prakesh is muscled from constant work in the Air Lab, but he’s nowhere near tracer-fit. Not even close.
I crouch down, looking up at him. He tries to force a smile, and doesn’t succeed.
“Will there be food and water? In this little entrance of yours?” I ask. He nods. “Good.
And it had better be all natural. I don’t want to be eating any genetic stuff.”
He laughs, forces himself up. I rise with him. “Come on,” I say. “We’re almost there. Let’s get into the Air Lab, and then we can rest. Promise.”
Prakesh takes the lead at a slow jog; I desperately want him to move faster, but bite my tongue, letting him go at his own pace. He leads us off the catwalk and down through
a maze of corridors and stairwells, taking us through a couple of keypad-protected doors. The corridors change slightly, the sparse metal plates and recessed lights giving way to banks of computers, some of which look like they haven’t been used in
decades. The glaring white lights from the ceiling reflect off the dark screens.
I’m uneasy. We’re so close, and the thought that we might not find
Garner – or worse, that the information she has might turn out to be useless – continues to gnaw at me.
“We’re here,” calls Prakesh. He’s gone a little way ahead, to a low door set into the left side of the corridor. He leads me through, and as I come into the room I see him twisting a panel off the wall. I help out, both of us pulling hard, and it comes off in a screech of metal. The space beyond
is dusty and dirty, but I can see light leaking through from further along.
Without a word, Prakesh slips inside. I follow, and soon we’re in the Air Lab.
We’ve come out onto one of the paths between the algae pools. The huge trees lie silhouetted against the lights. I see a couple of technicians in the distance, off to the right, doing something to the base of one of them.
Whatever carnage
the fire wreaked in the Food Lab, it looks as if Prakesh really did stop it reaching the Air Lab. The air, after the stale smokiness of the gallery and the corridors, is refreshingly cool. I’m expecting the lab to be packed with techs, but there are only a few, dotted here and there among the trees. There are voices and loud banging coming from one of the smaller buildings on the other side of the
lab – the structures I’ve heard Prakesh calling mobile labs. Must be where they’ve set up food production.
“Let’s look in the control room,” says Prakesh. He points to the huge structure jutting out of the wall, visible through the trees. It’s where I handed the eyeball to Darnell. “If she isn’t there, we can fan out across the lab.”
We head towards the control room, jogging between the algae
ponds. Their surfaces are smooth, calm, with only the odd tiny shudder floating through them, as if wind had touched
the water. After the insanity of the battle with the Lieren and the run through the station, the ponds are calming.
The control room looms above us, staircases and power lines underneath it. The upper part is level with the tree canopies, and holds a massive window. I can just
see inside from where we are, and I scan the rooms for any sign of life, but there’s nothing: just more computers, blinking softly through the glass.
Prakesh points, indicating a narrow staircase off to one side, which leads to the metal gantry that curves around the structure. “What are you going to do after we’ve talked to her?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “Depends on what she has to
say. Maybe she knows what Darnell was trying to get out of Foster.”
“It’s just …” He shakes his head. “We’ve come a long way on faith, Riley.”
“Don’t,” I say. My voice, drained and weary, doesn’t communicate the anger I feel.
He continues, unfazed. “What happens if she can’t help us? What then?”
“I don’t know,” I say through gritted teeth. It sounds helpless, pathetic. And he’s right: if she
can’t help us, then Yao – and Carver, possibly – died for nothing. Not to mention Amira, who could be anywhere.
We try to minimise the noise we make, but with every step the metal clangs and booms, sounding too loud in the quiet of the Air Lab. We’re just at the top of the stairs, stepping onto the bottom part of the gantry, when a voice booms out from far below, somewhere under the trees.
“My offer’s still open. Better take it – unless, of course, you want your friend to contribute some flesh in your place.”
Zhao.
Prakesh and I crouch quickly, ducking behind the metal barriers on the gantry. And then I see them, through a gap in
the metal. Five of them, scratched and bleeding, but very much alive. Zhao standing at the back, his arms folded, death on his face. And lying at his
feet, her hands bound behind her, her eyes closed: Amira.
All at once, there’s too much saliva in my mouth, like the feeling you get before you vomit. There’s no sign of Kev or Carver. Zhao continues, raising his voice, and this time the anger in his voice is palpable. “You think this is a joke? I know you’re up there somewhere – you and your scientist friend.”
I know you’re up there somewhere
. We’re off to one side, partially hidden by the curve of the control room wall. He’s seen us go up, but he doesn’t know where we are. I meet Prakesh’s eyes, and I can see he’s realised it too.
He leans forward, bringing his mouth to my ear. “I’m going to make a dash for the control room. Wait for my signal.”
“Signal?” I hiss back, but he’s up, running along the catwalk to one of the doors. I
hear a shout of triumph from below as Zhao spots him, and I have to force myself not to leap to my feet.
“Hiding in there won’t help you,” shouts Zhao. “Hey, Riley,” he continues, and the laughter in his voice chills me to the bone. “Do you think your friend here will notice when we start? Marco hit her over the head pretty hard, but I’m hoping she’s awake enough to know what’s happening.”