Equinox (2 page)

The cabin was half full and Rosie had been lulled into a relaxed state by the low hum of conversation and wasn’t prepared for the sudden screeching alarm. It split the air like a blade scraping down metal. She jerked up, heart racing, and immediately felt ill. Her vision blurred. The sound was disorientating, designed to make you dizzy to reduce resistance. The doors burst open and two men in full disease-control suiting came in.

“Everyone sit down!” the first one shouted, his voice amplified by his helmet. They were dressed head to toe in white, and one carried a small case and scanner. The first man had a pulse gun and was plainly the soldier escort for the medic. Fear rippled through the carriage like a contagion.

The woman next to Rosie shrieked, clutching at the child on her lap. She wasn’t the only one. At the other end, a man started to kick desperately at the plasglass window.

“Stop!” The soldier ran towards him, people scrambling out of his way. The alarm abruptly shut off. Rosie’s vision cleared and she heard the unmistakable whine of a pulse weapon charging.

“Stop!” the soldier shouted again.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the man cried, but he was still trying to kick through the glass. The soldier fired, the sound a concussive whump in the confined space. Everyone screamed and Rosie ducked down behind the seat in front of her.

The pulse hit the man in the back. He slumped down, head lolling. The red rash of the MalX on his neckline was exposed as the soldier pulled him backwards by his shirt. Rosie had seen it that bad before. If the shot hadn’t killed him, the man would be dead in a few months.

The cabin of the shuttle was still with shock and suppressed fear: everyone thankful it wasn’t them, terrified one day it might be. It was barely a comfort for Rosie to know she was immune to the MalX.

She wondered if the man had a family. He was around the same age as her dad. The guilt hit her hard. Helios had taken her dad, tortured him and infected him with the MalX. And Pip had saved him. This man wasn’t going to be so lucky. Unlike her dad, or her aunt, and even her, the MalX cure in Pip’s blood wasn’t something this man could get. He would die, as would thousands of others, and there was nothing she could do about it. Pip was gone and she had no idea where he was.

“Rosie. Rosie!” Riley was calling her name.

She blinked. The medic was now pushing a shot of something into the fallen man’s neck and she realised her hands were curled in fists.

“Rosie, are you all right?”

She forced her hand to uncurl and raised it in front of her eyes, forming an O with her thumb and finger. Okay. There was an audible short breath. “Good,” he said. “You know what to do. I’ll see you soon.” The com went dead as he cut off its signal.

Rosie slouched down, picked the wafer-thin disc from her ear and ground it to dust under her boot. Now she had no contact with Riley, but she couldn’t risk the earpiece being detected by the soldier.

The soldier was scanning everyone’s idents. She sat up again as he came to her and waved the machine over her eyes. He surveyed her through the panel of his helmet as the machine beeped.

“I’m just going home,” Rosie said.

The soldier checked his handheld and Rosie worked on keeping her face neutral. Riley had put her image in the ident system so there shouldn’t be a problem. It should read her as Bridget.

“Been in the Banks the last week?” he asked. “No.” Damn, she’d answered too quickly. She sounded jumpy.

The man’s eyes narrowed a fraction and the woman beside her shifted nervously.

“Raimes,” the medic called. “The team’s at the doors.”

Outside, four more suited agents were waiting to be let in. The soldier gave Rosie a last look then walked away.

Rosie let out the breath she’d been holding. She’d been certain that he’d been about to consider a DNA scan and that would have been a real problem. Not even Riley could fake DNA.

The other agents came in and took the unconscious man away in a disease capsule and Raimes finished scanning the rest of the carriage without bothering to go back to her. The woman who’d been sitting next to Rosie made a point of moving to another seat.

Rosie just turned and stared out the window. She was starting to feel really ill now from the message capsule in her gut.

The shuttle finally started moving again over the bridge. The north side of the river was a patchwork of research stations and residential estates for the scientists – all Senate owned and controlled – and beyond that were acres and acres of farms.

Rosie got out at the next stop. A road continued on past the small shuttle stop towards the research stations. On either side of the road were the estates. High walls and code-controlled gates delineated them.

Riley had taken over a derelict house in a section of the estates that had been shut down. There’d been a MalX scare the year before and the Senate had closed down a whole estate on the western side. It was a perfect spot to hide. All the surveillance tech had been dismantled and the only thing to worry about was the occasional sweeps by Senate helijets. No one in the other estates would think of exposing themselves to a possible MalX risk. The Senate only checked on it to keep the Ferals out. As far as the Senate was concerned, Ferals should stay where they belonged – in the camps downriver and in the old city. The Ferals were the poorest people in Newperth, and ranked just above rodents on the Senate importance radar.

Pip had been a Feral when she’d first met him. At least he’d been pretending to be one, under orders from Helios.
Stop thinking about Pip!

Rosie forced her mind back to the present and headed along a footpath that ran between the wall of the estates and the river. On her left the tops of the twelve-storey skyfarm towers rose beyond the estates, green against the pale sun-bleached sky.

After the cool of the shuttle, she was sweating heavily, and with each step she felt more ill. She pressed her hand against her stomach and choked down a sudden spurt of saliva. Finally, she reached the no-man’s-land the Senate had bulldozed between the still-occupied estates and the quarantined one. One hundred metres of ground had been cleared. The new back wall of the habitable estate was topped with ship-class proton shielding to protect the citizens from MalX-carrying mozzies. Rosie could just see its blue shimmer rising several metres into the air.

She stopped at the corner of the wall and checked the sky for surveillance jets, then sprinted across the open ground. The houses were derelict, the streets deserted and easy to navigate. The estate was built in a grid, paved streets intersecting at right angles. Riley’s house was deep inside, near the river, and was the same as all the others: a two-storey, thick-walled house with wide verandahs and a roof made of solar collectors. She went around to the back. Piles of leaves and dirt had accumulated against the back door and a broken statue of a naked woman was propped against one wall.

Riley was waiting for her in the large sitting room on the top floor, watching a bank of holo screens. He swivelled around in his chair as she ran up the stairs.

“Rosie–”

“Hang on!” Hand over her mouth, she dashed past him and into the bathroom. She almost didn’t make it. The capsule came up in a rush of bitter stomach acid and the remnants of her meagre lunch. She hunched over the metal bin, shuddering. The smell of the spew made her retch even more. She closed her eyes, spat and tried to get hold of herself.

“I’ll leave some water by the door.” Riley put a glass down behind her then retreated. At least he didn’t hover.

She took a deep breath, wiped her mouth and sat back on her heels, surveying the small pool of viscous liquid and specks of carrot in the bottom of the bin. Why was there always carrot? The message capsule was an oval tube, barely the size of her little fingernail. Rosie picked it out of the bin with a grimace and used a drop of water from her glass to wipe it off, drying it on her pants. The water was warm and tasted faintly of chemicals. Probably treated sea water. She took a few small sips then went to join Riley. He was waiting in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” She still felt shaky, but that would pass.

Riley’s usually tidy light brown hair was sticking up slightly, as if he’d run his hand through it, but that was the only sign that he might have been worried. Other than that he was his usual calm but intense self. Blue collared shirt and dark pants, clean and unwrinkled. How he stayed so clean in this place was beyond her.

“Good work.” He took the capsule and placed it in a slot in his desk. One word,
decrypting
, appeared on one of the lower holo screens.

“Don’t drink too fast,” he said, his back to Rosie. “You’ll vomit again.”

“Thanks, doctor. Any other helpful tips?” She collapsed into the only armchair. The red fabric was ripped and dirty and the springs squeaked as she sat, but she was beyond caring.

“Tell me about the meet,” he said.

He wasn’t going to like this. Rosie rubbed a spot of sweat from her cheek. “The capsule’s from Cassie.”

He immediately tensed and turned to face her. “She’s not supposed to contact me directly. Ever.”

“I wouldn’t say this is exactly direct, but Sharia was certain. Her source told her she was to be sure to pass on that this message comes from Cassie Shore.”

“She used her name?”

Rosie nodded. She’d been as surprised as him. Cassie, Riley’s nineteen-year-old sister, had been in hiding in Gondwana Nation – the Indige lands outside Senate control – for ten years, ever since their parents had been murdered by Helios. Riley hadn’t seen her since then, as far as Rosie knew. He considered it too risky, what with him being on the top of Helios’s hit list. For her to contact him, using their name, was unprecedented.

“It gets worse,” Rosie said. “She thinks Helios is building a base up in Nation lands. The proof is supposed to be in that capsule.”

Riley said nothing, but his face had gone hard and still.

“What do you think’s on it?” she said.

“We’ll know in exactly” – he checked the holo controls – “thirty-nine seconds.” He looked pissed.

Riley was unremarkable in many ways: mid thirties, clean-shaven, blandly good looking, not particularly muscular, but that was just his camouflage. Look closer and you saw a resolution of purpose that was relentless. He had survived horrific torture at the hands of Helios to keep his sister safe, and almost died bringing down their operation on Mars. Now Cassie had risked exposing herself with this message. Lucky for her she wasn’t here to reap the consequence.

They waited in silence for the results. His tension infected her, a sick, taut feeling growing in her gut.

“That’s not all the bad news. I got a call today,” Riley said.

Rosie insides got even tighter. “Yeah?”

“You remember Chris and Jo from the Mars colony?”

“Are they okay?” Rosie immediately thought the worst. Chris and Jo had helped them on Mars after Rosie had crash-landed her aunt’s spaceship when she and Riley were fleeing from Helios. They’d basically saved their lives.

“They’re fine,” Riley said. “But only because Helios is being extra careful now the Senate is hunting for them. I don’t know how they found out Chris and Jo helped us – helped me – but they have. Essie’s source said Helios threatened their child and Chris told them everything, especially about how he helped me get off Mars after I escaped when the Enclave blew up.”

“So Helios knows you’re not dead,” she said softly. This was very bad news.

“Helios will leave them alone now. It’s me they want. But you know what this means. If they know I’m alive, it means you and Essie aren’t safe any more either.” Riley gave her a significant look.

“Wait, hang on.” She got to her feet. She knew where this was going. “I am not going into hiding,” she said. “No way.”

“Rosie–”

The decryption finished and a loud beeping interrupted him. It seemed to annoy him. Clearly this discussion wasn’t over, but right now the capsule took precedence. He turned to the blurry image that emerged on the holo screen as a recorded voice rang out.

“Hey, bro, it’s me, Cass,” the voice said. “I know you’ll be furious I’ve sent this myself, but I’m not there to yell at so suck it up.” Rosie glanced at Riley and saw his jaw tighten. “What you’re looking at is an aerial shot taken from one of our jumpers in Nation lands. I’ve included the coordinates where it was pinged. It looks like Helios has a base there, though we can’t be sure until we get better intel. Don’t worry about me; I’m fine. Your boy will be in touch. Stay safe.” There was a sharp click and the voice ended.

Rosie couldn’t stop staring at the picture. It was fuzzy but it seemed to be a huge base built in a valley of red rocks and clumpy grass. There were five domed structures and another massive building she couldn’t quite make out, plus a few figures dressed in dark clothing. The domes were way too much like ones she’d seen on Mars.

“Is that really a Helios base?”

“It shouldn’t be possible, but that’s what it looks like.” He pointed at the image. “Look at the style of the habitats. And I’d bet those people have the Helios crest on their shirts. Besides, Cass wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t have good reason.”

A sick feeling grew inside Rosie. Gondwana Nation was the one place they had thought was safe. The councils that ruled it had helped Riley after Helios had killed his parents all those years ago. They were the first to condemn Helios when the news hit that they had caused the MalX, and their councils had pressured the United Earth Commission and the Senate to hunt down those responsible. They had powerful allies in the UEC and their borders hadn’t been breached since the Climate Wars over three hundred years ago. That level of safety was the reason Cassie had been hiding up there for so many years. How had that been compromised?

Riley walked to the window, his expression brooding. Rosie wondered if he was thinking what she was: that it wasn’t safe for his sister up there any more. But it wasn’t safe here either.

“What do you think Helios is doing up there?” she said.