Gateway

By Crystal L. Kirkham

New Perish is a technological wonder in a land gone dark. War, famine and disease have decimated much of the world. Only a few beacons of society remain and technology is all they have left to rely on for survival. GLE is the corporation that keeps the people of New Perish alive by using Trackers to find those who use or develop unapproved technology. They are chosen from orphans that are healthy enough to be able to survive the modding and forced to serve until the tech used to create them, kills them.

 

Lara is the youngest Tracker ever created. Maybe that's why she's managed to live longer than anyone before her. Modded at only 12 years old as an experiment, she managed to override the coding that kept her loyal to GLE and escape into the desolate wastelands outside of the New Perish bubble.

 

Now, at 17 years old, she needs to return to find her old friend "The Butcher" who is capable of repairing an arm damaged in an altercation. She's ready to run as soon as she's is fixed, but he wants her help to find out who is behind a new liquitech drug called "Gateway". She's got nothing left to lose since the tech is starting to do what everyone expected it to do—kill her—but the shocking truth that she uncovers might also save her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Brew Press
• Release date: Oct 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393257547

Book preview

Gateway

by

Crystal L. Kirkham

Gateway

Copyright © 2020 by Dark Brew Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Any characters, names, places, or likenesses are purely fictional. Resemblances to any of the items listed above are merely coincidental.

Cover design by Crystal L. Kirkham

Interior design by Crystal L. Kirkham

Editing by Sam Hendricks

www.darkbrewpress.com

BOOKS BY CRYSTAL L. KIRKHAM

Saints and Sinners

Road to Redemption

Depths of Darkness

Little Stories in a Big Universe

Feathers and Fae

The Shadows of Fate

Falling Light

Rising Darkness

(Coming Soon)

1

An old hand-painted sign, pitted and worn, sat at the edge of the clearing that marked the informally acknowledged border between the city and the Wastelands. New Perish, where you die differently than you did in Old Perish. Lara knew the name had once been a joke, but it had stuck. She didn’t even know what the real name of the city was supposed to be, but she knew the joke well. Having lived both inside and outside the city, she understood the truth of that joke better than most.

It had been a year since she’d left it behind and now, here she was, crawling back. Not that she had much choice in the matter. This was the only place where she could find the kind tech necessary to repair her damaged arm. Lara adjusted the sling as she hopped down from the worn remains of an ancient building and entered the clearing.

She wasn’t cautious about her approach, there was no need to be since no one monitored the clearing. Several doors along the outer wall of the city would allow her access and it didn’t matter which she used. They all had the same working security protocol that had never been circumvented. You needed an implant that matched with your genetic signature to pass through it. No match, no entry. Try to bring an incompatible human genome in with you and it would be destroyed. It was simple and effective.

The hardest part was braving the open plain where the wind and debris blew freely. With no remnants of the ancient cities that had once covered this part of the globe to mitigate the wind, it was a brutal hike.

She hesitated outside the sensor range for the door. It wouldn’t take long for the system to flag her ID and notify the GLE—if she was lucky. Then she’d be fixed up and gone before they could even begin searching for her. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she wasn’t lucky. GLE wanted her, dead or alive—it didn’t matter—and she’d barely made it out of the city last time.

And there was no way she’d let them get their hands on her again. She may have been born their slave, but she was determined to die free.

The door opened for her as it would for any citizen foolish enough to venture outside the protective walls. She stepped in the dark alcove and it closed behind her. Lara listened to the soft mechanical whirr of the machines coming to life. Searching her for contraband, disinfecting her from outside contaminants. It didn’t take long before a second door opened and her eyes were assaulted by the bright lights of the city.

She kept her hood up to hide her face, but her goggles and mask would mark her as an outsider. She pushed them both down around her neck and took a quick look around. Unsurprisingly, she’d come in near one of the commercial districts of the outer ring. It was the poorest area of the city, the place that the living refuse of this thriving metropolis called home.

At the innermost circle were the headquarters of GLE and some of the richest people in New Perish. She had no desire or need to go there. This was where she wanted to be. On the literal edges of civilization, where the streets were poorly lit and shady deals were made. If the Butcher was anywhere, he’d be near here, where even Trackers didn’t want to go.

Last time she’d seen him, he’d been packing up shop. She wasn’t even sure if he was alive and well. He could have been captured and killed for assisting her, but he was no slouch. He’d known that helping her could mean a death sentence, but he’d done it anyway before hightailing to a new location. It was rare to find people with that kind of moral fiber in this part of the city, but they existed.

It wasn’t going to be easy to find him without the right contacts, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. All she had to do was find someone who had the right connections and force them to talk. Even though she kept her head down, all her other senses were open. This was where being a Tracker came in handy, if she could find the right digital signature.

The Butcher associated with many of the gangs, a lot of them depended on him for help and she knew which ones he was closest to. It didn’t take long for her to find what she needed. Every gang had a signal they transmitted, one