Holly
Danger series
by
Amanda Carlson
Book
One:
DANGER’S
HALO
Coming September 18
Genre:
Science Fiction, Dystopian, Futuristic
ABOUT
DANGER’S HALO
153 years in the future,
Earth doesn’t look much like it used to.
Holly Danger’s current assignment, gleaned
from a set of foggy instructions and a handful of coin stuffed into a slot, is
to pick up a street kid who’s about to terminate himself off a cliff. And, as a
rule, she doesn’t turn down currency. Her job as a salvager keeps her fed and
clothed above the norm, which isn’t saying much.
The norm in this city is a scrape-by existence
in a post-apocalyptic world, where the rain never stops, food is always scarce,
and the elite have deserted the ranks in search of something better. Picking up
this urchin won’t take much time, even if he’s located outside city limits. Her
craft is fast, her weapons deadly, and her tech has been optimized as well as
it can be for a climate clogged with iron dust.
But things take a big turn when she decides to
become the boy’s guardian instead of hand him over. Outskirts have descended on
the city, and their plans don’t include playing nice. When her crew is backed
against a graphene wall, it’s a good thing her Gem is primed and ready to go.
It’s almost as deadly as she is…
Book
Two:
DANGER’S
VICE
Coming October 23
Outskirts never die…
After narrowly escaping death, Holly is back on the streets
in a quest to find the elusive pico. Discovering what’s on the quantum
drive—the same one the outskirts had been willing to kill for—is priority
number one. Daze is recovering, and forgiving the kid was easier than she
thought it would be. The cranky outskirt is another story.
It doesn’t take Holly long to discover that Tandor’s crew
hasn’t been obliterated, and are actively seeking retribution. They’re
recruiting Northerners, but she’s found one who’s willing to spill. It’s a good
thing, too, since things are starting to get strange. On the hunt, she stumbles
on an old man dressed in a burial cloth, and witnesses a seeker wandering the
streets where it shouldn’t be.
But after a friend gets caught up in the fray, Holly’s hand
is forced. She has to act fast to procure the information she needs. But what
she learns is harrowing. The outskirts aren’t just taking over the city—they’re
infecting people with Plush, and the quantum drive may hold the only key. In
order to save lives, she’s must find that pico. The only problem is, it might
be too late...
Book
Three:
DANGER’S
RACE
Coming
December 4
Time is running out…
After defeating the uprising, and becoming
infected with a dose of Plush, Holly is in a race to help a seeker before it’s
too late. Going South is the only option. But getting there is going to prove
difficult, which is why Lockland has entrusted Daze with a secret weapon.
A pulse storm, overzealous militia, and
uncooperative siblings are only a few of the obstacles standing in their way.
Once they arrive on the coast, the prospect of finding the supplies they need
dwindles. But what they uncover may be far richer. A way to move the remaining
survivors forward.
But the people of the town don’t see it that
way. They want to protect what’s theirs. With the militia closing in, they do
the only thing they have left to do, fight.
Author
Bio:
Amanda is a graduate of the
University of Minnesota, with a BA in both Speech and Hearing Science &
Child Development. She went on to get an A.A.S in Sign Language Interpreting
and worked as an interpreter until her first child was born. She lives in
Minneapolis with her husband and three kids.
Website:
http://www.amandacarlson.com
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/authoramandacarlson
Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/amandaccarlson
Instagram: http://instagram.com/author_amanda
The material below is copyrighted © 2017 by Amanda Carlson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced in any form or
by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author.
“Nobody survives that jump, kid.”
Judging by the boy’s ragged clothing, he’d been living on the streets for a
while. He couldn’t have been more than about ten. “It’s a lie. They tell you
that so they can steal from you once they discover your dead, mangled body on
the rocks below.”
I kicked the door of my dronecraft shut
with the tip of a titanium-toed boot. The vehicle rocked, but held steady. I
ignored the grating whir coming from the motor as I made my way over to where
the urchin stood, his toes already too close to the edge. I kept the craft
running to err on the side of safety. We were out pretty far, and it was
getting close to dark.
Save for the water rushing in the gorge
sixty meters below, the desolate landscape was like everything around here:
cold, dreary, dirty, and mostly dead.
I flipped the visor on my helmet down to
keep the slanting rain out of my eyes. Swirling gray clouds were a
near-constant sight and provided ongoing precipitation on most days. The only
good thing about the moisture was it kept the iron dust down to a minimum,
making air masks voluntary, except for the handful of days when the drizzle
cleared, which numbered fewer than the fingers on one hand.
The kid had decided to ignore me.
Couldn’t really blame him.
Crisp wind abraded my cheeks, the only
skin exposed to the elements, the temperature always on the verge of too damn
cold. My boots crunched over the ground, rocks skittering and bouncing in and
out of dark, red-tinted puddles as I made my way toward him. I was dressed in
head-to-toe leather. The usual: pants, jacket, vest, gloves.
Well, I wasn’t actually wearing animal
hide, since all the livestock and most of the wild animals had been extinct for
years, but we still called it that. Old habits. The synthetic texture was
leatherlike, so the name had endured. As had many others. The consensus was
that it was too hard to find new names for stuff, and no one really gave a shit
what you called it anyway.
I was almost to him when he finally
decided to speak. “They…they said if I survived I could go live on the
Flotilla.” His voice wavered, reeking of fatigue, but stubbornly holding on to
a single kernel of hope—that leaving this wretched place for something better
was possible. It wasn’t.
“Whoever told you that was lying.” I
tried to make my voice sound less like I wanted to throat-punch someone, since
I was dealing with a child, but I had one dial, and it was always set to the
same channel. That’s what years in this city did to you. It set your dial. I
stuffed my gloved hands into my pockets. “Besides, how do you know that place
even exists?”
The Flotilla was mostly a myth for those
of us who’d been born after the mass exodus. That fateful day when the wealthy
took their vast resources and launched The Water Initiative, which, according
to the records left behind, consisted of a massive fleet of boats and barges
stuffed with most of the city’s critical supplies. The entire fleet had sailed
out of the harbor without so much as a backward glance, flipping the city a
gigantic finger in its wake.
I’d heard the same rumors this kid had
growing up—that the water city had flourished, was clean and chock full of
food, commerce, and fresh, breathable air.
Everything we lacked here.
Assholes.
“The Flotilla exists,” the urchin
insisted. “I heard from a runner, who heard from a peddler, who heard from a
guard, that the Flotilla is running out of supplies and they need hard workers
to rebuild after a great storm. I’m a hard worker.” He thumped his chest and
eyed me, his face grimy and smeared with dirt.
On second thought, he was probably more
like eight than ten.
I’d recently heard similar tales, and so
had my crew, but unlike the kid, we’d written it off as gossip, like every
other piece of information about that place. It ranked up there with other news
I’d heard recently, like: Rain was in the forecast for this week, or protein
cakes were delicious. They weren’t.
“I’m sure there’s no harder worker.” I
peered over the edge. The drop would kill him instantly. Hell, it would kill
anyone. I couldn’t blame him for believing the stories, however. There were
always stories. And, honestly, who wouldn’t want to trade their shitty lives to
be transported to a watery haven with fresh, breathable air and food that
didn’t crumble down your chin every time you ate it?
Most of us would take the same running
leap off a cliff if that were the case.
“They said it was about time someone
survived,” he said. “I’d even get a parade thrown in my honor.”
“A parade?” Was this kid serious?
“Honestly, have you ever glimpsed a parade in this town?”
“I’ve seen pictures,” he boasted. “In
the zoom tunnels. There’s a bunch of stuff on the walls down there. The photos
are torn and faded, but they exist. They had lots of colorful animals filled
with air, and people were smiling.” His voice held hope.
Poor bastard.
“Pictures you find in dank undergrounds
don’t represent our world today. You should know better than to listen to
street gossip.”
He glared at me out of the corner of a
soot-streaked eye, not appearing even a little bit convinced. He wanted to
believe, and I was the big bad bitch who was going to stomp all over his dreams
with my titanium-toed boots. “Listen, being gullible will get you killed
quicker than a laser straight through the eye. Now, let’s get out of here. I’ve
got important things to do today, like putting my feet up after my long journey
out here.” He didn’t respond. “Today is not your day to die, kid. I promise.
Get in my craft, and I’ll haul your skinny ass back to the city.” I gestured
with my thumb toward my ride. A standard-issue A1 military dronecraft. “I call
her Lucy, Luce for short.”
“That thing is a wreck.” He peered
around me, scoffing. “I’m surprised it still runs.”
I arched an eyebrow at the kid, who had
now decided he had some backbone. “I’ll have you know that this was my
grandfather’s. He served in the militia until 2141. He handed it down to me,
name and all, and I’ve kept her running ever since.”
“It looks like your grandpa’s. A1 is
ancient. The new ones are W6’s. That’s almost the entire alphabet.”
I sighed. New was a relative term around
here. They’d stopped making crafts thirty years ago, after the Flotilla left
with all the remaining resources. Assholes. “Honestly, kid, if you want to
live, get in the craft.” I swept a hand in front of me. “Or be my guest and
shatter yourself on the rocks below. I get paid either way.” His jaw stuck out
stubbornly and his skinny arms were locked in front of him. He was going to be
a tough sell. “You might as well give me your tag.” I held out my palm. “At
least I can give it to your next of kin once you perish in spectacular fashion.
I promise not to describe to them how your broken body looked splattered all
over the rocks, and I usually keep my word.” I always kept my word.
“I don’t have a tag.”
“What do you mean?” Everyone had a tag.
They were government-issued IDs and were the only way to get sustenance and
supplies on a regular basis. The food rations were crappy and came in the form
of dry, crumbly protein blocks, but they kept us from gnawing our arms off or
killing our irritating neighbors to stay alive. Most of the 3-D bio-printers
were inactive, and those that still ran worked at limited capacity, based on
their size and the fact we had few ingredients to fill them.
“I gave it away.”
“Seriously?” I didn’t even give a crap
about this urchin, but I was floored. “Hold out your wrist.” He turned it over,
and sure enough, there was a divot where the tag should’ve been. His skin was
puckered and pink. “It can take up to a year to get new ones,” I warned. Tags
were inserted at birth. They were a centimeter wide and less than a millimeter
thick. They contained a frequency and symbol combination that was uniquely your
own. As you grew, your flesh secured them. No one remembered how it felt to
have them inserted, so no one complained. “Why’d you go and do a stupid thing
like that?”
“Why do you care?” he shot back,
flashing me a look of disdain that was praiseworthy—if I was in the mood to
give out compliments, which I wasn’t.
“Who said I do? But that was dumb. If
you live on the streets, you should know better.”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Live on the streets. Well, I do now,
since I ran away.” He stuck out his chin. “But I didn’t used to.”
“Where was home?” I crossed my arms,
which was an accomplishment in my vest. It was fashioned from carbon fiber and
was tase resistant, but not laser impenetrable—because there was nothing on the
battered face of this Earth that would stop a concentrated blast of
electromagnetic radiation. It was bulky and thick because my pockets were
always stuffed with crap that could potentially save my life. But I managed to
hook my wrists and get them comfortably wedged between my elbows.
“Port Station.”
“Why’d you run?”
“Because I hated it there.”
“Did the city treat you any better?”
Port Station was a heavily guarded community just outside city limits. “Because
it doesn’t look like it to me.”
He glanced down, likely battling back
tears. Didn’t blame him. Crying here was the norm. Emotions had a way of
eventually bubbling out. If not from the eyes, from the fists. “Everywhere is
horrible.” He kicked a stone. It arced over the side, dropping out of sight
into the rushing water below.
“I can’t argue with you there.” Joy had
been known to happen on occasion, but you had to search for it. And most of the
time you were too fucking tired to go looking.
“I want to live on the water or
nowhere.” He shuffled a titch closer to the edge. “I’m not scared to die.”
I dropped my arms, suddenly wary of
watching this kid plunge to his death. Yet another casualty of this city.
“Don’t do it.” I’d felt like him a dozen million times. “Come back with me and
give life another try. I know people. We can try to find a boat captain. Maybe
they’ll take you on as a steward, or whatever hard workers on ships are
called.” It was a lie, but worth telling if the kid didn’t jump. There were no
boat captains, because there were no boats.
He shook his head slowly. “No.”
I tried another tactic. “Do you know who
I am?”
He peered at me sideways. “Why would I?”
“I take it you haven’t been out of Port
Station long, because I’m pretty famous. That’s why I’m here. Someone paid me
real coin to bring you back, and I used my honest-to-goodness tracking skills
to find you.” Leaving out that I’d known exactly where he’d be from the note
I’d found stuffed in my slot. That didn’t sound at all impressive. Lies were
important when told well. “I’m that good.”
“You tracked me in that rattling junk
heap?”
I suppressed a smile. “It’s not about
the craft, it’s about the lady who wields it.” When he didn’t take the bait, I
pressed an index finger solidly into my chest. “Me. I’m talking about me. I’m
the best salvager out there. I can find just about anything if given enough
time, including runaways who give their tags away like dummies.”
“What’s your name, then?”
Since I had no lead-in drum roll to amp
up the reveal, I settled on a dramatic pause. When a sufficient amount of time
passed, I answered, “Holly Danger.”
He shrugged. “So what?”
“Come on, you’ve heard of me. Admit it.”
“Yeah.”
Okay, my not-entirely-real celebrity
status was non-impressive. Good to know. “I just heard about a new initiative
they’re starting. They’re talking about shuttling people down South. There’s a
rumor the sun is trying to break through there. The land is supposed to become
habitable in a few years.”
“They’re always coming up with
initiatives. They never work.”
“The Flotilla worked, or you wouldn’t be
standing here willing to end your life for it.”
He shrugged his twiggy shoulders.
Nothing but jutting bones popped against the thin fabric. The kid wanted to
check out. Even if I could grab him before he flung himself over, and managed
to haul him into Luce and back to the city, he’d likely dive out a megascraper
window the first chance he got.
Most of the scrapers didn’t have glass
anymore, which made plunging to your death incredibly easy. It was a popular
way to go.
“Death is final,” I cautioned. “There’s
no coming back, no second chances.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to come
back.”
“Do you have family? Next of kin in Port
Station?”
“No,” he answered dismally. “My mom died
of the plague last year, and I never knew my dad. My sustainer family was going
to sell me into slavery, so I ran.”
The story unfolded.
Sickness was rampant everywhere. If you
didn’t have enough seniority or an effective way to bribe yourself an
inoculation, which were heavily rationed, you were done for. We called
everything “the plague,” because no one knew what they had. Most viruses were
hybrids with genetically modified components. Before the dark days, people
enjoyed perfect health. Sickness had been completely wiped out.
Nanobiotechnology, where a single
manufactured cell was programmed to obliterate an invader cell, had been highly
effective. But after the world my ancestors knew ended, disease eventually
crept back in, and cures and inoculations were scarce.
“You must have someone,” I coaxed. “They
gave me coin to recover you, remember?”
“I bet it was Tandor,” he replied
glumly.
“Who’s Tandor?”
There were very few names in this town I
didn’t recognize. It was my job to know who was who, and I took it seriously. I
was a salvager and all-around procurer of things. It provided a living above
and beyond table scraps and protein blocks. I had spaces filled with goods to
sell scattered all over the city that no one knew anything about, and I planned
to keep it that way.
To be fair, though, the job of tracking
down this kid had come in the form of an anonymous note and a bunch of coin
dumped directly into one of my contact slots—which were hard to find. You had
to know people. And I didn’t make it a habit to turn down actual, physical
currency, no matter what the job was.
Coin was still traded, and collectors
held an affinity for it. A good collector would trade you a week’s worth of
protein or slurry for a single coin. Collectors were another name for the
hopeful souls who were banking their entire existence on the return of the
elite, when, they believed, physical currency would be reinstated.
Coin kept me in business.
The kid ran a grimy shirtsleeve under
his nose. “Tandor’s new in town. He’s…a bad man.”
My interest level jumped to
inquisitively piqued. “You don’t say.” I tried not to sound surprised that this
urchin knew something I didn’t. I’d heard rumors that there were new outskirts
in town, but the info had been hush-hush and low to the ground. Fairly typical
when the topic revolved around child slavery, which I took seriously—not just
because it was repugnant and vile, but because I had a personal stake.
At any one time, the city was overrun
with orphans, and snatching them was nothing new. The street kids had little
means to fight back and could be used for all kinds of purposes, most of them
horrific, including experimentation. There were very few options for scientific
testing, so when orphans “volunteered” for the good of society, who was going
to say no?
The moral code in this city bordered on
nonexistent.
The only code anyone took seriously was
survival.
These kinds of crime rings were usually
run by outskirts, strangers who rolled into town, armed and dangerous, flouting
our laws and rules to further their own agenda. Or those who’d already been
kicked out of town for whatever reason and had slunk back in, which meant death
if they were caught. The government didn’t give second chances. It barely gave
firsts. Its favorite method of punishing someone for a high crime was an
over-the-head acid dump. The lucky assholes got banishment.
The outskirts came, took what they
wanted, wreaked havoc, and moved on.
Most of the time.
Occasionally, they stayed. Or tried to
stay. That’s when we got in the way.
“You don’t know who he is, do you?” The
kid was downright gleeful at my ignorance, actually cracking a real smile. His
teeth were pretty clean, which wasn’t the norm. You had to work at it.
I took a step closer, coming up with
something on the spot. “Listen, I have a proposition for you. You’d be an idiot
to turn it down. I’m not known for sharing anything with anyone, so this would
be a first for me.”
He looked me straight in the eyes. “I’m
no idiot.”
Yes, kid, that was becoming abundantly
clear...
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