Tracked (11 page)

Safe mode might have cloaked this room's secrets, but
now I see them all in the silvery dark. The news screens are gone, replaced by surveillance feeds. All around me, I stare at IP soldiers patrolling refinery fields, aerial shots of buildings, hundreds of other satellite streams. In horror, I recognize one of the feeds—there's a camera trained on the back door to the Larssens' clinic. I whirl and scan the rest, looking for a shot of their apartment, but thankfully, I see none.

Benroyal's watching everything—our planets, the cities, the Mains. When I touch the Spire again, gleaming red lines ripple out over the streets, crisscrossing Capitoline and beyond like infected veins. I press my fingers against the grid to see what lifeblood pulses at our feet. My breath catches at the answer, what Benroyal's wife tried to tell me.

They cook it themselves.

Black sap. Thanks to Benroyal, the drug flows everywhere, carried by his own transport rigs. Screens pop up over the mapped routes and show me everything happening from here to the Gap. Benroyal's refineries. His labs. They aren't just handling fuel. Live feeds show pipes spewing murky, scorched liquid into vials. Workers in hazmat suits carry trays and boxes, loading the drug into interstellar vacs.

Ships headed for Castra.

I trace the lines on the maps and press my thumb against the web of tangled intersections. Benroyal has distribution centers all over the place, and most of them are pushing black sap right through Capitoline. I try to take all the images in, but there's so much more, hundreds of icons and flex documents—lists of dealers, distribution orders, import manifests.

It's easy to connect the dots when the pictures spiral out in such straight and terrible lines. Cash's people aren't to blame for the black sap trade. While we're busy pointing fingers at Cyanese “terrorists” and Biseran dealers, Benroyal is hard at work. He takes the dregs of his own fuel sap, and instead of destroying it, he's running it straight through the heart of my city. No wonder the DP aren't making that many drug arrests. Benroyal Corp pays them well enough to make sure they don't.

We buy every half-truth and every product Benroyal pushes while he grows richer by the second. We cower while his hired guns pretend to police the streets. We watch
his IP soldiers perfect the charade, as they “protect” us
from drug dealers and terrorists in the Gap, when they're really protecting his product.

We are all King Charlie's fools.

Breathe. Grab the flex. Swipe into Safe Mode.

Run.

I bolt from the apartment without even looking for James. I slow down only to get by the guard at the penthouse doors. He calls out, asking again if I need any assistance, but I close the elevator without answering. After slamming my fist against the ground-level icon, I sink to the floor and pull my knees to my chest.

I've made a deal with a monster. His brand is tattooed on my shoulder. The thought pushes me over the edge. I kick the wall like an animal, trapped in Benroyal's cage.

Only when I have no more fight or breath do I pull myself to my feet again. The encrypted flex promised deactivated surveillance, but what happens if Benroyal finds out what I've seen? What happens if he doesn't?

What the rust am I going to do, keep racing and pretend I don't know he's shipping out enough black sap to deep-fry an entire generation? Look the other way while the feeds blame Bisera and Cyan for the constant threat of more war?

Benroyal is so clever at this game. War is a brilliant distraction, and there's profit in holding the Gap and poisoning the throwaway poor. Cash and I, so many of our people are hooked on his mind-killing sludge. I can imagine Benroyal's twisted logic. Keep the strong ones, put them on the payroll. The rest . . . who cares?

Lifting my head, I force a slow exhale. I watch the numbers blink as I reach the ground level. I need advice from someone I can trust. There's only one place to run now.

I'm ready to bolt for the lobby doors, but the scene outside the elevator stops me in my tracks. There's a crowd of Sixers down here, milling around, saying their good-byes. To Benroyal, who's circled by smiling guests.

Traitorous son of a jackal. That smug look on his rusting face. The adrenaline buzz hits me like a storm surge, feeding my blood with rage and numbing my brain. I stalk out of the elevator, ready to kick his teeth in, to spit in his eye and expose him, no matter what it costs me. I slam into someone. It's the woman from the gallery. The stranger who pulled James aside.

Her bodyguards start to pull me back, but she calls them off with a wave of her hand. Unfazed, she holds me at arm's length, studying me.

My eyes flick past her shoulder. Benroyal's still absorbed in conversation. My pulse rockets up, but I'm still dazed.

“Apologies,” she says calmly. “I don't believe we've been introduced. My name is Grace Yamada.”

Yamada. As in . . . “Yamada-Maddox?” I blurt. I've run headlong into the planet's most powerful banker. It's a wonder one of her bodyguards hasn't already stunned me. Or maybe they have, and that's why my brain can't quite sync up with my mouth.

She nods. “And you are Miss Vanguard.”

“I . . . I—” I stutter.

“Take a breath,” she commands.

I can't help but obey. Benroyal's turned away from us now. This time, when my eyes sweep the room, logic kicks in, anchoring me in place. In the Spire, amidst this crowd, there's nothing I can do. If I confront him here, I'm dead. I'd be dragged away before I landed a single blow. A new anger blooms. The cruelty of reason. I wish I'd never run into Grace Yamada.

“I just need to get out of here,” I croak.

She nods, then signals her entourage. Instantly, her bodyguards surround us. She takes my arm and suddenly, I'm gliding alongside her. “Let's go for a walk,” she says.

She steers me, and seconds later, we're walking through the first set of doors, shielded by her escort. We breeze past several pairs of Benroyal's guards. Alert at their posts, they watch me, but no one makes a move.

I feel my pace quickening, but she holds me back. “Don't run,” she says softly. “Head high. Back straight. Prove you have permission to leave. You're only going for a walk.”

And just like that, we reach the last set of doors. No blocked exits. No shouts for me to halt, but the silence is more terrifying. I sense it's no mistake, that I haven't engineered some brilliant escape. The animal part of my brain hums in alarm. This woman is not your friend. None of them are. They are letting you leave. This is a trap.

After the front doors slide open, I wait for a struggle that doesn't come. Once we're outside, Grace Yamada lets go of my arm. I drift beyond her, but she is very still, like a carved goddess who's rooted to the steps. A sharp breeze lashes through my hair, and I could almost believe she is one, the force of nature who willed it.

I pull myself together. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“I find it hard to breathe in the Spire.” She looks down at me, then gestures toward the sculpture garden separating us from the street. “But I'm sure there's at least an hour's worth of fresh air out there.”

“Why are you helping me?”

There's something both casual and dangerous about her smile. It could harbor sympathy. Or it could hide a death threat. “Sometimes it's good to take a walk. Fresh air clears the head. Stops girls from making very foolish mistakes. The clever ones, at least.” Smoothing the drape of her gown, she turns away, then signals her men back inside.

And with that, she's gone. Back inside with the rest of the Sixers. The night air was her gift, so I risk a breath and take it.

Quickly, I make my way through the sculpture garden. Abstract shapes—sun-bleached and sterile—loom like the giant bones of ancient things, skeletal creatures long dead and drained of marrow. Above, the Spire rises like the blade that pierced and slaughtered them all.

It's quiet. The only sounds are of my quick footsteps and the rush of wind as it gusts against stone and metal and glass. Down the Mains, I spy the Sixer playgrounds—all the standard clubs—like so many splashes of light in the dark.

I'm so far from the grubby food carts and the black- market back rooms on the south side of Capitoline. Here, the facades are all the same. Every sidewalk is smooth and unstained. Each sign and corporate logo promises the unique, the exotic, but it's all an engineered ruse. No one but Benroyal and his elite friends taste anything unique.

I figure once the Sixers run their focus groups and test their assembly lines, there's nothing left but the illusion of choice. This is why it must be so easy to hook people on toxic black sap. We're dying to see something original, even if the tripped-out mind movies erode our memories and rot out our brains. And that's the only choice Benroyal wants to give us—we can accept dull, prepackaged lives or we can die slow deaths, poor and drug-addicted. I want to break something. Get behind the wheel and tear these streets apart.

I step closer to the curb and snag a passing cab.

“Twenty-first and Mercer.”

I knock on the apartment door. Mary answers, bleary-eyed and in her scruffy gray bathrobe. I'd forgotten it's pushing midnight. Here I am, on her doorstep, wild-eyed and huffing after running up five flights of stairs. “I'm sorry,” I gasp. “Is Bear here?”

“Phee!” She pulls me close, more tightly than she ever has before. The gesture breaks something in me and I'm not a circuit racer or a jail-break runaway. I'm just Hal and Mary's daughter. Suddenly, I'm stringing words together without making much sense.

“I . . . I had to come home . . . I've seen it . . . He's making it himself and I don't know—”

“Who is it?” Hal staggers into the living room. The second he lays eyes on me, it's over and done. He practically tackles Mary and me, guiding us both inside. I break loose, scrambling past them to get through the hallway and into Bear's room.

I swipe the light on, but he's not here. His bed is made, empty. “Where is Bear?” I ask. Hal shuffles me back and guides me to the sofa, my favorite lump of cushions in the whole world. I sink into its red raggedy softness.

Hal and Mary sit beside me. The fact that they still haven't answered my question makes me uneasy. “Where is he?”

Mary cuts in. “What were you thinking, street racing in town? We've been so worried, Phee. Hal's been at wit's end since you were picked up. Are you hurt? Are you all right? What has Benroyal done to you?”

“I'm . . .” They are keeping something from me. “Where is he? Where is Bear?”

Mary looks away. Hal is quiet. Tense.

“He's at Jason Eager's house.” Mary's voice limps along. “He and a few of Benny Eno's boys are keeping vigil.”

I blink. “Keeping vigil for what?”

“Jason Eager's gone. TransCorp offered him a circuit deal, but he wouldn't have it,” Hal answers. “He didn't—”