Chapter 1
The door swung open, the sound of it jerking Lucy from a light sleep.
A light bloomed and then was dropped with a soft curse. In the twist and tumble of its fall, she caught a glimpse of Dr. Farnn, pressed against the wall, a strange dark splatter pattern across the pale green of her shirt.
The dropped light hit the ground and rolled a little, illuminating Dr. Farnn's feet, and then the doctor slid down and sat on the floor.
Lucy swung her legs over the side of her bed, heart hammering in her chest. “What is it?” Her voice was a whisper.
Dr. Farnn lifted a hand for quiet, looked toward the door, and Lucy thought she heard someone scream down the passageway.
The sound galvanized the doctor. She pushed herself back up to standing, her breath coming in pants. “You need to go.”
Lucy shoved her feet into the thin shoes beside her bed. “Go where?”
There was nowhere for her to go. That had been made clear to her.
“Hurry.” Dr. Farnn bent to retrieve the light.
“Why? What's happened?” She was right next to the doctor now, and she saw what she'd thought was a pattern on Farnn's shirt was blood spatter. Dr. Farnn was covered in blood.
Lucy stared at her in shock.
A tiny cry escaped the doctor's throat, her beak-like mouth opening and then snapping shut, and she pointed the light in Lucy's eyes. “Move.”
Lucy blinked, blinded, the scent of blood, the stink of sweat, enveloping her.
“No! Wait!”
She stopped, felt the rough pull as Dr. Farnn grabbed the necklace she'd been given more than six weeks ago, and tried to snap its chain.
It didn't break easily, but after another yank, Lucy felt it slither across her skin and then the ting of sound as it landed on the floor.
“Why?” She had always wondered about the gift.
“Tracker.” Farnn didn't even try to sound apologetic. “It was either that or embed it in you. In fact, they think we did embed it.” She drew in a deep breath. “We have to go. Now.”
The door swung open.
“Here's my pass, this will get you out.” Dr. Farnn shoved the slim card at her.
Lucy looked at it in the dim light of the corridor but didn't take it, even though only yesterday she'd have grabbed it with both hands if it had been offered to her. “First tell me what's going on.”
“There's no time to explain.” Farnn looked down the passage. “Cantin and Rool are holding them up, they've blocked the door into this section. We have seconds.” Her big eyes gleamed in the reflected light from her tiny flashlight. She was shaking, Lucy realized, and shivered herself. “You need to run and hide. If they find you, they'll kill you.”
“Kill me?” Her voice rose and Farnn winced. “Who's they?”
“Shh.” Farnn tilted her head, listening for a moment. “They sent you here, asked us to work with you, and now they think if they make you disappear, make all of us disappear, that'll clean up the mess they've made.”
She grabbed Lucy's arm and pulled her down toward the far end of the facility.
Lucy heard a crash in the opposite direction and Farnn switched off her light. In the brief moment before it winked out, Lucy caught a glimpse of the doctor's face before they were plunged into darkness--she was terrified.
They ran in silence for less than a minute and then Farnn stopped and touched her shoulder, pointed to a door lit with a thin strip of floor lighting.
Before she could say anything, there was a thud of boots running toward them. “My hover is the one with the red wing.” Farnn shoved the pass into Lucy's hand, pushed her toward the door and ran on.
Lucy stumbled forward, shouldered through the door, and found herself in a garage full of small hovers.
She forced herself to move, even though she wanted to stand and gawk.
There! Three down from the door. A silver hover with a red wing on the side.
She ran to it, pulled herself in.
She was a little shorter than the Tecran, but not by much. She had never been in a real hover, but she had flown a virtual one almost every day for the last three weeks, racing the doctors and scientists in the game they all seemed to enjoy.
Had they known this moment was coming? Had they been preparing her for this?
She shook her head, slid Farnn's pass into a slot that seemed designed for it, and started up the hover.
As far as she could see, the controls seemed the same as the game. Rool had told her when he'd first introduced her to the game that playing it was just like driving the real thing.
She maneuvered through the parked hovers in her way, and then drove straight for the closed door that was surely the exit, and when she got close enough it started to open. She eased back on the throttle, trying to make as little noise as possible, drifting forward as the hinged door swung up. Just when there was enough space to fit through, she heard a sound behind her and glanced back.
Four Tecran--strangers to her--burst through the door from the corridor, weapons in their hands.
She faced forward again, panic making her heart leap in her chest, and punched the accelerator.
She shot out into a cold, foggy night, the acceleration forcing her back in her seat.
The road from the garage was short, ending abruptly in a T junction and stretching left and right. She heard shouting behind her and she was about to choose a direction, her hands uncertain on the controls, when something hot sliced past her cheek on the left, then another close to her hip on the right, forcing her to continue on straight, over the rough ground beyond the road's end.
She caught the sudden flash of rock and bush below the hover, and then she was suddenly airborne, a bank of fog blocking any view of what lay ahead.
The hover dropped.
She screamed, the sound wrenched from her as she went into free fall.
The wind snatched the scream from her mouth, making her breathless, and then suddenly she was through the fog bank, below it, and the hover's lights, as well as lights that came from somewhere to the right, showed her just what was happening.
She was falling down the side of a cliff toward the sea below.
She couldn't scream again, the sound frozen in her throat as she dropped, as she realized the height of the fall. She blinked watery eyes to make out the rough waves surging below her.
Self-preservation suddenly kicked in.
She knew what to do!
Knew from the racing game she'd played at the facility that the hover needed the ground to be at least five meters below it to fly.
She had to strap in--snap out of her confusion and fear, and strap the fuck in.
She fumbled for the buttons, and the straps shot out, securing her in the seat, and then, with the foam of the waves close enough to blow up to catch on her slippers, she turned the hover hard right, swinging her body to tip it ninety degrees onto its side.
Gravity pulled at her, almost wrenching her hands from the controls, and foam flecked her hair and her cheeks. Suddenly she was driving sideways, using the cliff face as the ground to hold up her hover.
Rool and Ziller had shown her this trick right at the start of her introduction to the game and they'd laughed when she'd used it to win against some of the other scientists.
She felt the hover stabilize, speed up, and she punched the accelerator as hard as she could.