Read Tracer for Free Online

I’m looking into the face of Prakesh Kumar.
    He’s taller than me, his arms strong from digging in the dirt every day, and before I know it he’s sat me on the edge of an algae tank. “Gods, Ry, what the hell happened?”
    His hands are already reaching towards my face, but I brush them away. His walnut-dark skin is calloused, flecked with grains of dark soil.
    “Thought you were offtoday,” I say. I have to focus on each word, form them carefully so I don’t slur.
    “Cancelled. They needed extra hands. What happened?”
    “I’m OK,” I say. “Just had a little problem on the run.”
    “A
little
problem?” He moves his hands up again, and I have to push them away more firmly.
    “I said I’m fine,” I mutter.
    “You don’t look fine. You don’t even look close to fine.” He folds his arms, eyeingmy bruises. On the other techs, the white lab coats look bulky, almost baggy, but Prakesh wears his well, square on his shoulders over a rough cotton shirt.
    I keep my voice low, in case anyone is listening. “Ambush. Lieren. They were trying to jack my cargo. Managed to fight them off …” I have to stop as a cough bursts up through my throat, doubling me over.
    Prakesh’s hands are on my back, steadyingme. “Easy. Easy. Just sit here, OK? I’ll get some water.” I try to push him away again, try to tell him that I already had some from his boss, but this time he pushes back, his hand holding steady between my shoulder blades. “No. You’re hurt. You can take some water. I’ll be right back.”
    He leaves, and I sit back down heavily on the edge of the tank. After a minute, I’m feeling less woozy, andstumble over to one of the nearby trees. Steadying myself against it, I sink down onto the soft, loamy soil. Prakesh will probably shout at me for sitting on something as precious as his good soil, but I don’t care. I’m just happy to be off my feet. I lick my lips. The crust of blood on them cracks just a little, like old glass.
    My thoughts drift back to when I met Prakesh. Back when we werein school, we had to file into a cramped room with hard chairs and harsh lights. When you’re little, it’s kind of fun – you don’t spend as much time there, and you’re mostly being taught how to read and write and count, and sometimes even draw pictures if the teacher had some coloured pencils.
    But when you get older, the classrooms get more packed, and there’s less space on the chairs. What youlearn doesn’tmake sense, either: the teachers would show us pictures or videos of life back on Earth: animals in captivity, blue-green oceans, huge collections of buildings called cities. They’d try to teach us how it all worked. I remember looking at something, some animal – a huge, improbable thing with a massive, tentacle-like nose and horrible, wrinkled, grey skin – and trying to pictureit in real life, as it would have been back on Earth. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t see it. I knew what it looked like but I couldn’t picture it. And the name: elephant, like something out of a scary story. The letters in a weird order, a word light years away from anything I knew.
    I got angry and started punching the tab screen in a fit of stupid rage. I remember the thin glass on the screencracking, the tiny sting as a piece cut me and the elephant vanished. I was seven.
    I hadn’t really paid much attention to Prakesh up until then. I’d sort of known who he was, sure, but I’d never spoken to him. But for whatever reason, he was sitting next to me that day, and as my hand came down for a fourth time to smash the screen he caught me, grabbing my wrist. I looked at him, startled: Iexpected to see fear, even anger, but his eyes were kind. He reached across, and gently plucked the piece of glass out of my hand. As I watched, a thin dot of blood appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.
    And then the teacher grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. He tossed me out of school right there, ordering me to go home. But