CHAPTER 1

T he floor of the makeshift dance hall is a tightly packed, roiling mass of skin and sweat. Bass vibrates the soles of my feet and resonates in my chest as I twist a knob on my deck, warping the track’s keening vocals to a sky-high frequency.

Shag-furred Sevvies and blue-skinned Varuns in the crowd scream their appreciation. The humans don’t catch the frequency. They hear what I’d hear without my mods. But they’re thrashing to the beat I’ve laid down. Feeling the bass like I am.

I wipe a sweat-damp clump of navy hair from my brow and up the tempo. The floor explodes as dancing goes from fast to frenzied. I hit another button and pheromisters send a stream of adrenaline into the air over the crowd. Everyone’s high on Delirium anyway, but the misters tweak the flavour of the madness.

Well, everyone’s high except me. I pucker my lower lip, feeling sorry for myself. I’ve been clean for nine months, and it’s killing me. Earlier, I saw a semi-hot offworlder painting his lips with silver Delirium dust, and I fantasized about pulling him onstage and sucking just a taste of the drug off his deliciously pouty mouth. But I resisted .

Tonight is not the night to cave to temptation. Tonight, I need to be at the top of my game.

I scan the crowd over my swath of decks with their sliders, beat grids, and pulsing back-lit buttons. Where the hell is Tori?

My BFF and partner in crime is supposed to signal me to cut the lights when she’s lured our target onto the dance floor. But so far, I haven’t spotted Tori’s neon-pink head. And we’re running out of time before my set’s up.

I drop the BPM, transition the lights to a liquid cool palette that ripples over the crowd, then trigger the misters to release a wave of hormones designed to sink my audience into melancholy. From the stage, the people below look like the overlapping scales of a multicoloured reptile, glimmering and shifting in a wave as the hormones spread from the front of the room to the back, changing frenzied aggression to sorrow.

Shoulders slump. Dancing slows. A trio of girls at the front hold one another and sway, cheeks wet with tears.

This is what they came for—the manic-depressive switchback ride that’s earned me the name DJ Rollercoaster. But if anyone in this crowd knew my real name, I’d be banned from this place—and everywhere else in the Underground.

I work my magic, one hand dancing over my dashboard of decks, the other pressing an earpiece to my ear, while my eyes scan the crowd for pink.

Come on, Tor, where are you ?

We need this hit. It’s our ticket off this rock. Every day we spend holed up in the Underground is another day my dad could find us. And I’ll rip out my own stem chip with my bare fingernails before I let that bastard drag me home.

My eyes catch on a burly metal post that blocks a shadowed alcove near the back of the hall. Tori’s supposed to get the guy into the thick of the crowd, but maybe she’s stuck back there and can’t get through. Under the guise of going for my water bottle, I move to the opposite side of the stage. The alcove is visible from this angle, though it’s dark.

I spray icy, blue-flavoured liquid down my throat and eye the shadowy forms milling behind the post. A stab of hot pink, made purple in the cool light, catches my eye—Tori.

She leans against the wall near the door to the toilets, arms folded tight across her silver tube-top. Anxiety twists her mouth into a strained frown.

Tori’s mods make her hyperaware of emotions and social cues. Five minutes with a stranger and she knows their true nature and deepest desires inside out. But crowds grate on her. Between the mob and the pheromisters, she must be miserable right now.

It’s the opposite for me. The bigger and louder, the better. Crowds, music, drugs, sex. Anything that’ll short out my senses ’til I don’t have to think .

Tori looks my way and I catch her magenta gaze, sending her a silent what gives?

She throws bare pink shoulders into a shrug and gestures to the toilets.

I groan. Of all the times for our target to take a shit.

I’ll have to stall. Stretch out my set for one more song.

I knew bringing our latest side hustle under the same roof as the DJ gig that’s kept food on the table for the past six months was a risk. But this is the place where we have the most control. Better to do the deed here than to send Tori alone into Zander’s territory.

If Marlin will just give me a few more minutes on stage, we can still get away with it.

I step back to my pulsing dashboard, press the earpiece to my ear, and rev it up again. The teary crowd reanimates.

From the corner of my eye, I see Marlin step out of the shadows just off stage. He shoots me a look, tapping his wrist as he rotates his forearm toward me. The implanted digital display glows blue through his thin skin. Negative thirty. The numbers blink to negative thirty-one. Negative thirty-two.

Dammit. I’m already over time.

I get it. Marlin wants me off stage so he can bring on the headliner, RetroX. Wouldn’t do to keep the superstar of the Underground’s pop-up rave scene waiting. But as soon as I’m offstage, I’ll lose control of the lights. Tori and I won’t have the cover we planned on.

Unless…

I’m no code junkie, but I know my decks. I tap in an override sequence, cueing a series of quick commands into the lighting system, fingers flying as Marlin steps onstage.

He raises the mic to his mouth. “Give it up for DJ Rollercoaster!” He takes my hand in his iridescent, amphibious one and raises it in the air. The crowd screams for me.

Marlin lowers our clasped hands and presses a small, hard object into my palm. My pay. I shove it down my shirt and into the band of my bra as I eye the back wall.

I don’t have time for fanfare.

If I get to Tori fast, we can catch this jerk with his pants down just as the commands I cued into the lighting system take effect. But getting from the stage to the back of the dance hall seems impossible. The crowd squeezes body to body, not a centimetre of space to spare. I won’t be able to push through. I scan the sea of upturned faces and outstretched limbs, mind racing.

Then inspiration hits.

My lip quirks up as I step to the edge of the stage. Cheers surge. Hands reach.

I turn my back to the crowd, spread my arms wide. The audience screams louder, recognizing what I’m about to do.

Then, I fall backward.

I land on an uneven cushion of sweaty palms that dig into my back and butt. A velvet-furred hand supports my left thigh just below the hem of my miniskirt. Slippery fingers grip my right calf. A swell of limbs carries me backward like a wave.

I grin at the ceiling. I’ve always wanted to try crowd-surfing.

Marlin’s voice blares over the sound system, announcing RetroX. The crowd roars beneath me.

I can’t see the stage, just the dark recesses and rusted metal beams of the old warehouse ceiling as I’m jostled along on my back. Then a ghostly white glow flickers across the beams. RetroX’s light show must be starting.

I’ve seen his act a million times. He likes to build anticipation with a son et lumière before he appears on stage. First, these glowing pillars of white light appear over the crowd. Inside them, holograms of RetroX float like he’s weightless, rising up the pillar of light like someone being beamed up by a UFO in an old movie. With the visuals comes a deep bass buzzing that slowly escalates, rising in pitch as the sound gets more and more electronic.

When it reaches a crescendo, the holograms disappear from over the audience and one wide beam of light shines down on the stage. The real RetroX stands in the centre, posing with his head down, feet planted wide, and wearing his signature silver jumpsuit .

I hear the sound now, revving higher and higher ’til it’s an electronic scream. The reflected light disappears from overhead. A glow emanates from the direction of the stage. Voices below me cry out. RetroX must have made his entrance.

I’m near the back of the hall. The crowd has thinned. Hands lower me. My feet meet hard concrete, and I’m supporting my own weight again, cheek smashed up against a broad chest. I take a step back and bump into someone behind me who jostles me forward again.

The broad-chested guy grabs my elbow to steady me. I glance up at his face, ready to bolt.

Shit, he’s hot.

He’s maybe a few years older than me. Tousled black hair; thick, dark eyebrows; chiselled jaw. I like the smell of his sweat.

Not the time to think about hookups, Gemma , I remind myself. But I allow my eyes to stray to his body. He wears a simple white T-shirt and skin-tight black pants with reinforced thighs and padded knees, like maybe he rides a hoverbike. Exactly my type.

He’s looking me over, too. His gaze travels down my body and back up. When he meets my eyes, the corner of his mouth ticks up.

“Great show,” he calls over the din.

I can’t help it. I look at him through a shade of lashes and smile. “Thanks. ”

I really shouldn’t be encouraging him. I already said no to drugs tonight for the sake of this hit. I can say no to boys, too.

The shrill electronic prelude to RetroX’s arrival dies away. RetroX’s voice blares from the speakers. “Make some noise, Undergroooooound!”

The crowd roars. I glance at the stage. RetroX, wearing his silver jumpsuit, poses in a cylindrical white spotlight, feet wide apart. One arm rises slowly, palm up, like his gesture’s lifting the volume of the crowd to new heights. “We’re gonna make the earth move under the Overlanders’ fee—” His mic screeches with feedback, then goes dead. All the lights in the hall cut out at once, plunging the space into darkness.

I grin in the pitch black. My commands have overridden RetroX’s lightshow. Tori and I have maybe three minutes to complete the hit and get out.

The audience’s adoring roar dies away, replaced by a cacophony of confused muttering. They can’t tell whether this is a malfunction, or whether the sudden darkness is part of the act.

I turn toward the toilets, but Mr. Broad-Chest-and-Chiselled-Jaw tightens his grip on my elbow.

“Hey, stick with me, DJ Girl,” he says. “You don’t want to get trampled if people start to panic.” He tugs me toward the exit.

Much as I regret it, I don’t have time for this.

“Another night, maybe.” I jerk my arm out of his grasp and push through the crowd, losing my inconvenient fanboy in the dark.

Here and there, a pair of reflective silver eyes pierces the blackness—Delirium users who’ve recently taken a dose. Their irises shine eerily, but they can’t see in the dark any better than I can. I reach the wall where I last saw Tori and feel my way along it, fingers scraping gritty cement blocks.

“Tor?” I call when I think I’m close.

“Gee!” Tori sounds relieved. “I’m right here.”

I reach down my shirt and take out the vial of Delirium Marlin passed me earlier—my pay for the evening’s work. It emanates a silvery light like a tiny glowstick, illuminating Tori’s face as I hold the vial between us. Her silky pink hair and magenta eyes look purplish in the cool light.

She grins. “You’re a genius, Gee.”

“I know.” I flash a cocky smile that quickly fades as I get serious. “We’ve gotta move fast. We have maybe two or three minutes left before Marlin and the tech guys figure out my little trick and get the lights back on. You have the burn-blade?”

“Yeah.” She raises the ridged black hilt into the light. It’s just the right size for her small hand. At the push of a button, a laser-blade—maybe twenty centimetres long and powerful enough to burn through skin, bone, and even metal—will materialize .

I don’t like the thought of shanking this guy with a laser-blade, but I remind myself that he deserves it. He’s been trafficking little girls for a decade. Who knows how many lives he’s fucked up in that time. We’re not the bad guys. We’re… we’re doing justice and getting paid for it.

“Good.” I try to sound confident for Tori’s sake. The slight tremble in her hand as she grips the blade tells me she’s just as freaked out as I am.

We’re new to this assassination thing. We’ve only done a few jobs.

I take a deep breath. Focus on the task at hand . It’s how we’ve survived this long. I give Tori what I hope looks like a reassuring smile and not an anxious grimace. “I scoped out every corner of the hall during setup, including the bathroom. There’s a grated vent on the far-right wall. The moment it’s done, we cut through the grate and get out through the vent system. Got it?”

“Got it.” Tori’s voice is only a little shaky.

I shove the Delirium back inside my bra, breathing in deep so I can feel the reassuring press of the hard glass vial against my sternum, between my barely there breasts. You’d think with the kind of high-level embryo selection my parents sprang for, they could have had the forethought to make me a little less flat-chested. But I guess even with a limitless bank account there’s only so much you can do with the two sets of parental DNA you have to work with.

Tori and I feel our way along the wall and through the door to the toilets. It’s pitch dark in here, too, and reeks of fresh shit and poor plumbing. From memory, I know the room stretches long and narrow, with stalls along the back wall and sinks lining the wall to the right of the door. Our escape vent opens at head height on the short wall farthest from us.

From the blackness comes muttering and fumbling, then the whoosh of a toilet flush.

“Zander?” Tori calls.

“Tori?” a gruff male voice answers, a little muffled. A stall door swings open with a creak, followed by a metallic bang as it slams against the adjacent stall. “What’re you doing in here? And what the hell is up with the lights?”

“I missed you.” Tori’s melodic voice oozes pout. Her light footsteps move toward the sound of the man’s voice. “There you are.”

Zander draws in a raspy breath. Obviously, Tori’s made contact. Probably her hands are all over him right now.

“It was no fun out there all alone with the lights out.” She’s got this guy’s number and she’s playing to it. I guess he’s into the pouty, needy, baby-girl-wants-her-daddy type. “I thought you and me could have more fun in here.”

I’m working my way silently toward the far wall, ass sliding against the edge of the wet countertop that houses the bank of sinks. The gross sucking sound of sloppy kisses echoes in the darkness.

I try not to barf.

Don’t let that sleazebag stick his tongue down your throat, Tor, I urge silently as Tori lets out a ridiculously fake little moan.

She must have the hilt pressed against the guy’s body so it extends straight into his flesh when she releases the trigger, because I don’t see the blade at first. I just hear the buzz and then a guttural grunt. Then, bit by bit, a burning white blade is revealed as the guy staggers back and the knife slides out of his stomach.

The searing light of the blade stings my eyes, pushing my lids to a squint. As my vision adjusts, I make out a middle-aged human man slouched against the metal front of a bathroom stall. The glowing knife illuminates his grimace. He clutches his gut, but it doesn’t stop the dark liquid seeping from the stab wound, dripping onto the floor.

My eyes catch on a drip as it splatters on grimy tile.

Drip-splat. Another red splotch.

Drip-splat. A third.

Images of blood on tile pound at the surface of my mind, trying to steal my focus. I slam them back down. Look away from the blood. I refuse to let this trigger me.

“What the fuck?” Zander’s staring down at his middle like his brain isn’t processing that he’s been stabbed .

“That’s for all the little girls you bought and sold, asshole,” Tori snarls. Her eyes flash with anger in the searing glow of the blade she’s still pointing at him, even as she takes a step back. This one’s hit a nerve. Makes sense with her history. But she’ll have to process later.

Right now, we need to get out. Fast.

“Tor!” I yell. “The knife!”

Her wide, angry eyes keep watch as the guy slides down the wall, leaving a smear of blood against the metal.

“Tori!” I hold out my hand.

She blinks, shakes her head. Then she retracts the burn-blade and tosses the hilt to me.

I catch it, press the thumb trigger. The blade hums to life again. I stand on my tiptoes and use it to sear along the perimeter of the metal grate that covers the air vent, while Tori hurries down the length of the room to join me.

The burn-blade makes quick work of the grate. I toss the slatted panel to the floor. It hits cement with a resounding clang.

I wince, but the commotion outside has got to be enough to muffle the noise.

Tori is at my side. I douse the blade and shove it into my bra band next to the vial. Then I make a stirrup with my hands and use it to boost Tori up. Her spike-heeled boots just about puncture my palm, and then she almost clobbers my face with a flailing heel as she hauls herself into the vent shaft .

Her hips just barely squeeze through the opening. With a grunt, she drags herself onto her hands and knees. Metal ductwork resonates as she moves farther in.

“I can’t turn around!” Tori calls, voice echoing inside the tunnel. “I won’t be able to help you up!”

“That’s okay!” Despite my small frame, I’m athletic. I was bred for it. I jump and grab the lip above the vent. Then, pulling with my biceps and crunching my abs, I haul my legs up and slide into the vent feet first.

“I’m in!” I’m facing the wrong direction, but I’m in. The rectangular tunnel clangs and vibrates around me as Tori starts crawling along the vent shaft. There’s nothing we can do about the noise. We just have to move fast.

Like Tori said, there’s no room to turn. I can either crab walk, or crawl backward on my hands and knees. I choose crawl.

I’ve only backed maybe half a metre into the vent when the lights in the bathroom flicker on. Marlin’s overridden my program, but it took him longer than I’d thought. I can’t help grinning.

But the sound of the bathroom door banging open wipes the smile off my face.

A guy walks in. Dark haired. Tall. He glances down at the bleeding body slumped on the floor, then looks up. Looks straight at me. Brown eyes lock with mine.

He’s the guy from the dance floor.

Shit.