Dark Star (3 page)

“Come on.” Gillian grabbed Rosie’s arm. “Let’s get in before the twin bitches do.”

Rosie saw San and Tara heading towards the platform. A scowl was on San’s face. Gillian shoved through the other students, dragging Rosie with her, Freddie and Stefan behind them. San and Tara squeezed on as well, followed by three others. San gave them a snide glare, but Gillian grinned at her. “Impatient to lose, San?”

“Could say the same to you,” she replied. Tara whispered something in the girl’s ear, eyes on Rosie, and San smiled. “No, she doesn’t look like she’s from anywhere near Central, does she? You a dirt-muncher too, newbie, fresh off the farm? Or are you more of a river rat?”

“Why?” Rosie said. “You looking for lost relatives?”

Gillian snorted and San’s face became an angry shade of puce, but before she could speak the operative was calling orders.

“Hands in. Brace!” she barked. A sudden draught of air shot up through the narrow gap between the platform and the ground, followed by a buzzing snap of energy, and a transparent cage of shielding surrounded them. Gillian gripped Rosie’s arm. “Bend your knees, newbie.” Rosie barely had the time to do that before the platform plunged down through the shaft.

The ride was swift and disorientating. The only light was an orange glow from the shielding which held them safe, but the motion made it stream in waves and Rosie was dizzy and breathless when they came to an abrupt halt after thirty seconds of descent. They emerged into a cool well-lit vestibule floored in stone, the walls lined with crete. Hallways ran off in either direction and directly opposite was one of the circular iris metal doors and a large number sixteen on the wall. Sixteen levels underground and the chute continued further down. How deep did it go?

“Zeroes, groups of three,” the operative shouted over the low murmurs. “Hanto will be the hunter. Everyone else – you’re prey. Group up and wait for the others.” She strode to the iris door and pressed her thumb to a wall indent. The iris opened with an audible hiss.

“Fun, fun,” Gillian said, under her breath, as Hanto stepped from the chute with another group of zeroes. “I think our chances just went down. Hanto takes no prisoners.”

Hanto’s eyes gleamed as he surveyed the trainees. The operative was two metres of heavily muscled man, his hair cropped short, and everyone was wary of him. Rosie remembered Hanto from the cell a few times when Alpha had used the manacle – his brutally strong hands pushing her down on the chair as Alpha put the device on her head.

Gillian noticed her watching the operative and nudged her. “Don’t worry, newbie, you team with me and Stefan. Freddie can go with San and Tara. All right, Fred?”

“Okay, they like me.” He smiled at Rosie, but it wasn’t friendly and it gave Rosie a chill.

“What?” she said.

Freddie chewed at the already gnawed fingernail on his left hand. “San thinks you used to be one of those Bankers.”

“So?” Rosie was unsure where this was going.

“You ever see any those other ones, the spares?”

“Spares?” Rosie frowned.

“He means the Ferals,” Stefan said. “Kid can never remember.” He ruffled Freddie’s hair.

A bad feeling grew in Rosie’s gut. “Why do you call them spares?”

Stefan raised one eyebrow at her. “Because that’s what they are – the extras the planet doesn’t need. I mean, you know there’s too many of us, right? The spares are the ones that help us figure out how to fight that. We study them to find out how to save the people.”

By study he meant experiment. What Helios had done to create the MalX and the reason her mum and Pip’s parents were dead, and so many others. The reason her dad had almost died and was now in Greenview Psychiatric Hospital, his mind fractured from too much loss and the pain of the MalX. She remembered the way he’d been the last time she’d visited. Pale and grey, older than his years. An ache twisted in her chest. She’d told him she was going on a pilot training retreat for the Academy and he’d been so happy for her. He’d even known who she was for most of the visit.
Your mother would be so proud
, he’d said. Rosie willed the tears away before they could start, pinching the skin on the back of her hand hard.

Stefan flipped his hair back, not noticing how silent she’d become. “If you think about it, it’s kind of like how people used to make medicine and stuff years ago,” he said. “You know how they used monkeys, or those chimp things, before they died out? It’s like that only not as cruel. What we used to do to those animals, that was bad, eh? But you know Ferals aren’t like us, right?” Stefan’s expression was earnest like he really believed what he was saying. “They’re not the same. They’ve got something missing. They can’t feel the same as us, or look after themselves. It’s sad really.”

He was waiting for her to agree. She swallowed and spoke with difficulty. “Yeah, right.” They were different all right. They didn’t think of other human beings as nothing more than animals for the slaughter. She guessed Stefan must have been with Helios since he was old enough to talk. Most of them had. No wonder Helios was so hard to fight. She was filled with a new respect for Pip, that he had fought his way out of that ingrained belief. Pip had been born in the Enclave on Mars. His parents had been Ferals, part of the MalX experiments, but it wasn’t until it had been discovered that he was immune to the MalX that he had been taken under the wing of a senior operative. And he’d been nine by then.

Freddie giggled. “Yeah, spares, like monkeys.” Rosie felt ill.

She caught Gillian watching her closely. “So much to learn, eh, newbie?” she said.

Rosie didn’t answer. Her head began to ache again.

The other students came down on the platform a moment later, and they were all ushered through the iris door into a large room. It was a weapons cache. Long shelves lined the walls filled with pulse guns from hand size to rocket-propelled launchers, belts of plasma poppers, energy net shooters and an array of weapons Rosie didn’t recognise. They were all protected by a shimmering shield and all of them were real.

Hanto reached into a wheeled cart by the door and began distributing belts with personal shield projectors activated by the buckle.

“Make sure your shields are engaged before you start the game. Choose your weapons.” The female operative swivelled sharply on her heels and strode to another iris door on the other side of the vault.

Rosie clipped her belt around her waist. She’d seen the shields on Sulawayo’s soldiers in Nation. A single press of her finger to the buckle activated an invisible energy wave that sat a few millimetres above her skin. It would only be visible if she was hit by a pulse blast.

“Rosie.” She looked up in time to catch a sling of pulse poppers and an earcom Gillian tossed at her. She slung the poppers over her shoulder and across her body, and attached the com as she went to pick a gun.

“Where’s the game?” she asked.

“Behind that door.” Gillian pointed at the now closed iris. “It’s the holo deck. AI interface. They program it with a different scenario each time and it creates the setting.”

“Enough chat,” the female operative snapped. “Move out.” She opened the iris.

Rosie ducked low, crouching behind a collection of very real-looking crates at the back of a tower of bombed-out buildings. They felt solid and the only thing that told her they weren’t real was that they were all the same grey colour, made from whatever the floors and walls were constructed from. Still, it felt real and she’d been winged twice already by other teams trying to put her out of the game.

She was in a blind alley. She’d let herself be herded down here by Hanto and had got separated from Gillian and Stefan. She didn’t know where the rest of the teams were. She’d glimpsed them on their run through the bombed landscape, but lighting in here was bad, made to replicate night in a city under attack. The only illumination came from a fake moon, high above and the occasional smashed streetlight.

“X3 position?” Gillian’s voice came through the com.

“Sector five,” Rosie whispered.

“Hunter coming your way. X2 moving to assist. You better lock and load, girl.” Gillian’s tone held a laugh before the com went silent.

Rosie checked her weapons. She only had enough charge in her gun for ten shots and one popper and her head was aching fit to explode. She worried the implant would suddenly activate and make her pass out, or worse. She tried to relax, calm her breathing. Her plan wouldn’t work if she lost it.

A noise came from the end of the alley and, finger on the trigger, Rosie ran back towards the street, pausing at the corner. She could see nothing but the potholed street half blocked by burnt-out transports, rubble and fake dead bodies. There was a line of ruined buildings opposite. Crouching, she ran to the nearest truck, but as soon as she broke cover, a volley of pulse shots sang, sparking off the street and rubble.

Rosie skidded feet first under the truck. It was dark, a tight fit, but she rolled to her front and fired back in the direction of the shots. Immediately, pulse blasts converged on her, peppering the truck with a spray of energy. Hanto was scarily close.

She curled up behind the wheel housing. Her personal shield was still on and she hesitated, her hand hovering over the controls. Could she really do this? Pounding footsteps sounded and a burst of shots came, followed by a popper exploding.

Then Stefan’s voice was in her ear. “Laying cover fire. Go now, now!”

Damn it. Rosie wriggled out from the other side of the truck, scraping her elbows and knees, and sprinted for the gaping doorway in the building. She flung herself in as shots slammed into the wall and ran down a wide dark hallway and into another massive room. A single broken lamp lit a corner. From behind came the sound of pursuit.

“Surrender!” Hanto shouted.

Rosie slowed then halted, but kept her hands on her gun.

“You’re gone, zero. Don’t make me fire on you,” Hanto said.

Slowly, with a shaking hand, Rosie flicked off her shield. This was going to hurt. She ripped her last popper from her belt and spun around to throw it, but before she could, a pulse shot hit her in the shoulder. She screamed at the pain as it flung her back to the floor. Dark spots clouded the edges of her vision and the heat of the burn seared through her shirt to her skin.

“Holy …” She dimly heard Hanto swearing, then he was on his knees beside her, his face centimetres from her own. “What the hell did you do? Goddamn stupid zero.”

But Rosie couldn’t reply. Her jaw was locked tight by the effect of the blast. He ripped off the shoulder of her shirt and sprayed something cool on her skin. She began to shake as the pulse worked its way down the back of her shoulderblade, and bit her tongue, tasting blood.

“Medic team to sector two,” Hanto yelled into his com. “Zero down, I repeat, zero down. Move your arses! Pria,” he was speaking now to the female operative, “cancel game.”

Rosie’s vision blurred as he picked her up and she saw through slower and slower blinks the walls of the holo building rushing past her. Then there was a confusing collection of voices talking at once and Hanto dumped her on some kind of trolley. Hands felt her over, things glowed and beeped, poking her pulse points.

“No, just take her to medibay!” Hanto shouted at one of the voices and Rosie would have smiled if she could.

Pip slammed his fist into the training bag set up in his bedroom near the windows. It shuddered under the impact and he drew back and did it again and again, then delivered a savage round of kicks. Sweat soaked his shirt and ran into his eyes, making them sting. He didn’t care. Rosie had been gone a month and he was no closer to finding her, or getting a cure for the MalX. The scientists here could replicate his blood cells easy enough, but it was the hard to isolate magic property that carried the MalX immunity they were struggling with. The protein, or whatever it was, kept disappearing like sand slipping through his fingers. He punched the bag again. The frustration was hard to fight.

Outside, a fierce wind bent the trees and blew debris against the pillars of Kev’s house. Inside, the temperature controls were struggling to contain the humidity.

A storm had ripped through the community overnight, damaging two of the water quality sensors and a lightning strike had hit the house, puncturing the shielding and shorting the AI. Par for the course this time of year. The damage suited his mood. He attacked the bag again, sweat flying, imagining it was Dalton’s face. He still hadn’t forgiven Dalton for waiting a week to tell him he’d known where Rosie had gone, and by that time, it had been too late to track her.

“You going to go at that all day?” Cassie said.

Pip paused, chest heaving. He hadn’t heard the door open. “If I feel like it.”

She came a few steps into the room, arms folded. Her pale blond hair was pulled back from her face and she appeared cool and totally unaffected by the heat. “You’re supposed to be in the lab.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll swing by in a bit.”

“How about you come now? And stop pretending that bag is Dalton.”

“Who says I’m not imagining it’s you?” He smashed the bag with another right hook. Cassie was nonplussed.