Danger's Cure: (Holly Danger Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  DANGER’S CURE

  About the Book

  Copyright

  Other Books by Amanda Carlson

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Sneak Peek of DANGER’S HUNT

  About the Author

  Many Thanks

  DANGER’S

  CURE

  A HOLLY DANGER NOVEL:

  BOOK FOUR

  AMANDA CARLSON

  Before it’s too late…

  Holly and her crew are on a quest to uncover the locations of the medi-pods following the clues Roman left behind, hoping to find at least one that hasn’t been destroyed before the government catches on.

  The only problem is, someone already has. Strange UACs are popping up all over, and in order to take them out, the crew risks exposing itself.

  When they do, what they find is chilling. A secret government group has a dark purpose. Holly and her friends have no choice but to launch an all-out war to set things to rights. But some factors have already been put in motion, and undoing them might take too much time and come at too high a cost.

  Danger’s Cure

  A HOLLY DANGER NOVEL: BOOK FOUR

  Copyright © 2017 Amanda Carlson, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-944431-05-1

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Table of Contents

  DANGER’S CURE

  About the Book

  Copyright

  Other Books by Amanda Carlson

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Sneak Peek of DANGER’S HUNT

  About the Author

  Many Thanks

  Other Books by Amanda Carlson

  Find all of Amanda’s books on her website.

  Jessica McClain Series:

  Urban Fantasy

  BLOODED

  FULL BLOODED

  HOT BLOODED

  COLD BLOODED

  RED BLOODED

  PURE BLOODED

  BLUE BLOODED

  Sin City Collectors:

  Paranormal Romance

  ACES WILD

  ANTE UP

  ALL IN

  Phoebe Meadows:

  Contemporary Fantasy

  STRUCK

  FREED

  EXILED

  Holly Danger:

  Futuristic Dystopian

  DANGER’S HALO

  DANGER’S VICE

  DANGER’S RACE

  DANGER’S CURE

  DANGER’S HUNT

  For Jane.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Dammit!” I felt like kicking the side of the medi-pod in frustration, but that would achieve nothing. Instead, I turned in a full circle, hands on my hips.

  This one was in worse condition than the last. Not only had the government canceled the project that Roman, the scientist from down South, had been working on to potentially repair the DNA in seekers’ bodies from the effects of Plush, but it had annihilated it.

  The machines were in pieces.

  “We only have two locations left to check,” Darby announced as Lockland pried the cover off the front so he could begin to inspect the internal mechanics. After a moment, Darby continued, “There’s not a lot we can salvage here.” His face was directed inside the pod. “But there are some pieces intact.” His hands worked overtime, tugging out parts and dropping them into the box Bender held next to him.

  “Do you think you’ll have enough?” I asked.

  “Enough what? To make a whole machine from scratch?” he asked, his voice muffled. “No. And the key parts—the ones responsible for the actual precision magnetic-field-modulation-based DNA reconstruction—have been completely destroyed. Whoever was doing the damage knew what to do.”

  Of course they did.

  Lockland took a seat on a pile of debris nearby, bowing his head. We were all tired. We’d been at this for the last few days, working around the clock to find these machines, while also trying to dodge strange unmanned aerial crafts, or UACs, that kept popping up all over. It’d been a stamina sucker for everyone involved.

  “The last two locations are going to be the riskiest,” Lockland said.

  I began to pace the small room that used to be a lab of some kind. “Yes, they will be. We decided as a team to try the less-fraught-with-danger locations first, so this is not a surprise.” I gestured to the broken medi-pod, which had several large dents pocked in the top, cracked glass, and a control board that had been smashed beyond recognition. “They didn’t set any traps for us to find, because they were so confident in the complete destruction of this thing.” This particular pod was located outside city limits in an old building we thought the government had used for some kind of experimentation long ago. It was hard to know for sure.

  It’d been relatively easy to find, since we had a 3-D map and an eye-diffractor-turned-tracker that blinked when we were within a thirty-meter range.

  The last four medi-pods had been found in similar places—broken-down buildings with no locks or obstacles, sitting in a room like this one, thoroughly destroyed and left to rot.

  Case walked over, glancing inside the medi-pod. “The most likely location we’re going to find a working machine is in the basement of the government building—the one controlled by the Bureau of Truth.”

  Our investigation into the Bureau of Truth, the secret government agency that’d canceled this much-needed medi-pod program and subsequently ruined these machines, had turned up nothing so far. But it’d been only a few days. I had confidence, especially with Claire on the inside, that we’d get a hold of some information soon.

  Waiting wasn’t my specialty.

  In the notes Roman left behind when he died, he’d said that at least five of the pods had worked. They had completely reversed the damaged DNA
of Plush addicts. On the first map we’d discovered, Roman had highlighted a medi-pod in the basement and then labeled the building as the headquarters of the Bureau of Truth. Finding an intact medi-pod was the only chance that Mary, and all the other seekers, had to be cured.

  “The Bureau of Truth,” Bender grumbled. “Whoever the fuck they are. They also have to be the ones tagging us over the last few days. Those drones are hard to shake, too—persistent SOBs.” Unfamiliar UACs had popped up outside of Bender’s shop and Lockland’s residence. They appeared to be military-grade drones—small, sleek, and hard to detect.

  “Case is right,” I said. “If any medi-pods have been left operational—and you’d think they’d be smart enough to leave at least one working—it would be the one in the building they protect.” I moved restlessly around the small space, still contemplating kicking the side of the medi-pod. Purging anger had its benefits, but I refrained.

  “Breaching their stronghold is going to be tricky,” Lockland said.

  Bender growled his agreement.

  “But we have no other choice if we want to help Mary and any others,” Lockland added.

  Mary had become our rallying point. She’d been an innocent caught up in all this, altered by the drug for only a short time, so her prospects for making a full recovery were high, but they were lessening with each passing day.

  Darby brought his head out of the machine. “Don’t forget that Roman added a note to the 3-D map indicating that that pod was set to be destroyed on 05.07.2159, and it could very well have been.” Roman, from what we were able to piece together from the other scientists, had been poisoned, likely by the Bureau of Truth, and ended up dying ten years later from complications from that poison. Before he died, he’d created a tracking program and installed it inside the Eye Diffs, which was how we’d found our way to this place.

  If it hadn’t been for Roman, we wouldn’t be standing here. And without Maisie, our LiveBot status reader, we never would’ve found the software inside the Eye Diffs. And without the pico, we never would’ve been able to read them. We had a lot of tech on our side, which was an unusual place for us to be. Most operational tech had been scavenged years ago. I wasn’t complaining.

  “True, the medi-pod was set to be decimated,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean they actually did it. Destroying every last one would be a mistake. Years of engineering and brilliant technology went into making those things. Why kill all of them? What if one of their own got infected with Plush? It defies logic not to keep one working.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t agree with you,” Darby said. “Those machines would be extremely powerful for healing other ailments, as well. But commandeering that medi-pod will be considered an open act of aggression against our government. And you know as well as I do that if we’re caught, we don’t live to see another day.”

  At this point, even though we hadn’t officially voted on it as a group, the fact we were all standing here meant we were willing to risk our lives for this cause. Because, quite simply, without actively trying to make the world a better, more sustainable place, we would all die anyway.

  It would just take longer, and be quite a bit more miserable.

  “You’re right.” I grinned. “That’s why we’re not going to get caught.”

  Darby gave me a wry look as he straightened, shutting the cover panel. “That’s it,” he said. “I’ve got everything I can salvage out of this one.”

  “Look what I found.” Daze rushed into the room, his excitement at the forefront. He’d been out investigating the rest of the building, learning how to salvage, and I had to say the kid had a knack for it.

  He held his prize aloft.

  I walked over to inspect it. He dropped it into my palm, and I brought it closer. “This is a raffie motor.” I turned it over. “With all the gears in place. A rare find.” I handed it back to him. “Great job. They power household appliances, including some personal-size 3-D bio-printers.”

  He puffed out his chest in his completely Daze-like way. “It was under a bunch of junk. It took me a while to dig it out. Maisie said there was something else in there, but I couldn’t find it.”

  My eyebrows went up.

  Maisie was the status reader Lockland had given us before we’d left on our journey south. She was small and egg-shaped, made of hard polymer. She contained LiveBot technology incorporated with a huge memory file and was learning and adapting to our needs and habits on a daily basis.

  The kid kept her close at all times.

  If Maisie had made mention of something, it was likely important. “Show us where,” I instructed.

  Daze led us down a hallway, which was on the way out. Our crafts were parked out front. After two turns, we entered a room with shelving running along one end, possibly used for storage long ago, but it was hard to get a real sense, since everything had disintegrated so badly in our rainy, rusty climate.

  Daze held the egg up in the middle of the space like an offering as he intoned in a slightly exaggerated voice, “Detect all like signatures and vital elements, excluding human matter.” He was getting good at ordering her around.

  We’d realized, after Darby had gotten her to respond to his questions fairly quickly and accurately, that she needed precise directions, or she just kept repeating the same thing over and over again. Detecting like signatures was one of her favorite things to do.

  Maisie’s kaleidoscope of lights shot around the room, dotting the area with reds, blues, greens, and purples. She used NeuDAR and lidar, which relied on neutrinos and lasers, respectively, to detect both hidden and visible objects. Hence, her light show.

  After a moment, her calm robotic voice filled the space. “I detect a high concentration of elemental hydrogen.”

  Hydrogen usually meant bomb, but not always.

  “Are you referring to any of our weapons?” I asked. Most of us used nano-carbon fuel cubes made of compressed hydrogen to power our guns.

  Her lights blinked around, her computer brain in action. “Negative. Hydrogen in liquid form.”

  Bender whistled low, setting the box of parts Darby had collected on the ground. “Liquid fuel. That’s not easy to come by or to keep.”

  He was right. In order to condense hydrogen, it had to be cooled to negative two hundred and forty degrees Celsius at about thirteen atmospheres of pressure and then kept cool in a perfect vacuum. I didn’t own a big enough power source to do it myself, although the government did and made limited quantities, as some things still ran on liquid fuel and couldn’t be adapted.

  Perfect vacuums had been invented about a hundred years ago. They had revolutionized the way people utilized fuel. Hydrogen, and mixed hydrogen bipropellant, had become the norm. But perfect vacuums were almost nonexistent these days, because any minor crack or flaw in the canister caused the compound to decompose immediately.

  We needed more information from Maisie. “What’s the directional location of liquid hydrogen, Maisie?” I asked the egg.

  “Liquid hydrogen detected ten meters south,” Maisie replied.

  Daze stood in the middle of the room.

  We all glanced around, trying to figure out which way was south. We’d been in the building awhile, walking through a bunch of hallways. Not to mention it was always dark outside. Trying to pinpoint directional accuracy when you weren’t in your craft with a readout was difficult.

  Lockland finally withdrew something from his coat. Then he moved forward, reaching out to touch the wall. He glanced over his shoulder. “This is it. Seven meters south.” There was no opening. The wall was solid. “Whatever she’s talking about is behind here.”

  My brow knitted as I moved to stand next to Lockland. “There must’ve been a room behind here at one time.” I examined the wall, knocking to see if there were any particular reverberations. It sounded normal. “If there was, it’s been thoroughly sealed.” My salvaging instincts took over. “We’ve got to find a way in. If there’s liquid fuel, and it held a
vacuum, there might be some other important resources with it.” On a few occasions over the years, I’d found rooms that no one else had discovered. But it was exceedingly rare. This had been a government building once upon a time, so who knew what was stored in there? This building would’ve also been a magnet for early scavengers.

  “The entrance could be located on the other side,” Bender said as he walked out of the room. “I’ll go check.”

  Darby wandered over to a heap of broken ceiling tiles. “This place is eerie. I wonder what they did here.” He picked up a chunk of something and turned it over.

  Before any of us could comment, Maisie said, “This location was a treatment facility. Traceable data goes back seventy-five years.”

  “Treatment of what?” Daze asked what we were all thinking.

  “Brain dysfunctions,” she answered.

  Brain dysfunctions was what our ancestors had called diseases of the mind. No matter how many inoculations the government could engineer, or how many viruses and diseases could be cured with nanobiology, some mental diseases, known from the historical data as “chronic brain dysfunctions,” had never been completely resolved.

  The conclusion was that people were hardwired when they were born, and no amount of gene therapy could undo biology. “Please don’t tell us this facility was used to test human subjects to try and cure brain dysfunctions,” I muttered.