Lena Pryce's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The crushed tracker lay in pieces on the hall floor. Lena stared at it. Someone had marked her twelve years ago. Her blood was on the chip. But she couldn't remember that year at all. She rubbed her temple, chasing a memory that stayed dark. Without it, she couldn't name who sent the machine. "Bex," she said. "That chip is twelve years old. I need to know where I was when it went into me. My own head's a blank." Bex's terminal brightened on the wall. Her scanner arm hovered over the broken pieces. "The chip carries a build stamp," she said. "A batch code. I can match it against colony supply records." "Then match it." "The records aren't mine to open." The arm withdrew. "Wes holds the manifest archive at the supply shack. Ask him." Wes was already stacking crates near the door. He'd stamped Lena's papers before, and thrown fuel on the rogue to help her burn it. He looked at the shattered chip and set his crate down. "That batch code," he said. "You want me to run it through twelve years of intake logs?" "I do," Lena said. He crossed to the shack's back wall and pulled a scuffed reader from a shelf. His taped ID card swung as he bent over it. He read the batch code off the largest fragment. He typed. The reader clicked through old entries, line after line. He stopped. His jaw tightened. "Got it. This batch shipped once. One order. Twelve years back." He turned the screen toward her. "Signed for at a med station in the Clovermire wastes. Same spot the rogue tore your arm off." Lena leaned in. A name sat in the buyer field. Not a colony. A private contractor. She didn't recognize it. But under the name was a route code, and the route ran deep into the wastes, past the old med station, to a site she'd never heard of. "That's the source," she said. "Whoever bought the chip put it in me at that station. The rogue's been carrying me back to them ever since." Wes copied the route onto a slip and handed it over. "You go out there, you go alone. My jurisdiction stops at the shack." Lena folded the slip into her duster. Outside, a low sound rose from the treeline near a huge cypress. A lean shape moved through its buttressed roots. Then another. Their eyes caught the light. Pack hunters, drawn by heat, watching the shack. Bex's arm swung toward the window. "Six of them," she said. "They read body warmth. Your prosthetic runs hot. To them, you're a beacon." Lena checked her scanner. The site lay a full day's walk out, through the hunters' ground. She had a name now, and a route to the source. She also had a pack tracking her heat every step of the way. She pushed the door open and stepped into the wastes.