Code Breakers: Beta Read Online Free PDF Page B

onwards.
    It took Petal another twenty minutes of climbing until she came to a vertical shaft with a metal ladder attached. Placing her slate and pistol in the folds of her prison suit she ascended the rungs. Up and up she climbed. Her legs like jelly, her arms numb and weak. She stopped a few times and waited for the pain to pass.
    She reached the top of a ladder to find an electronic pad embedded on its surface. She reached up and touched the blank screen. A laser scanned her fingerprint. It beeped and the door slid away into the surrounding shaft. Good job, Gabe. He must have hacked the system to recognise her prints.
    The streaming light of the morning sun shone down into her eyes, made her squint and hold her hand in front of her while her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. She clung to the ladder and bathed in the warmth for a few seconds while she breathed the fresh air into her sore lungs. The air was cool and moist, and despite the clear skies and bright sun, the cold temperature penetrated her flimsy clothes, making her shiver.
    She had no idea how far away from Darkhan’s border she was. She looked behind her and saw the old, battered towers of the city centre, and between them a wide expanse of waste ground. A young girl, no older than nine or ten, dressed in filthy rags, propelled herself across the dusty ground with her hands. Her legs were withered thin, folded beneath her. She sat atop a makeshift wheeled board. The wheels clattered against the stones and fragments of Steelcrete.
    The girl stopped a hundred or so metres away and turned to look at Petal.
    Petal hauled herself out of the tunnel. Her heart pounded. Something about the way the girl looked at her like she was a criminal escaping from prison made Petal scramble to her feet and sprint away from the compound.
    She didn’t stop to look back until she had travelled a couple of miles away from the city. Along her route nothing but waste ground and old empty trenches civilians had dug to protect themselves featured. It wasn’t uncommon to find an entire family of skeletons hugging each other in those trenches. Most were dug too shallow to stop the blast damage and subsequent radiation.
    To the east she could make out the broken and dead city remnants of those places beyond the Sludge, the slow-moving river of mud and chemicals.
    Between the Sludge and Darkhan, about a hundred metres away, stood a small, low building. At first she didn’t notice it. It was the building’s shadow that gave it away, despite its walls and roof camouflaged to look like one of the many rocky outcrops within the vast nothingness of this land.
    Mustering up the energy she jogged closer.
    It was a sturdy structure, twice her height, ten metres wide, and twenty metres long. A sand-camouflaged door stretched across half its width. She tried the handle but it didn’t budge. By the looks of the rails above and below she realised it was a sliding door, and yet it still wouldn’t move.
    Coming from the centre of city, a dust devil plumed into the air. Within seconds she saw the small black mark on the horizon and knew it was a vehicle coming her way. It grew bigger every second, and she guessed she had less than a minute to find cover before getting caught.
    Damn it . Her breakout must have been reported already. Despite herself she worried for Gabe. But no time to dwell. She yanked on the building’s handle which again got her nowhere. The control panel resided with a locked steel box next to the door. It featured a battered biometric panel. She tried her luck but it just buzzed back at her with the message: UNAUTHORISED ACCESS.
    They’d likely know she attempted to get in now.
    The low whine of an h-core-powered VTOL engine grew louder by the second. When she turned round, a hovering ATV approached from a few kilometres away. It reminded her of the old hovercrafts she once saw on a piece of old video footage from the twentieth century. These new versions were much more