Ellie Quin Book 3: Beneath the Neon Sky Read Online Free Page A

dream. She vaguely recalled being chased by someone or something; fighting desperately to stay ahead of some closing threat behind her, clambering over rocks and rubble and all manner of unlikely obstacles to keep in front of it. The beep had been some sort of proximity warning coming from a device on her belt, urging her to go faster as it grew louder and more insistent.
    ‘Go for it, girl,’ Jez mumbled sleepily as she turned over in the cot above, and quickly fell asleep again.
    Ellie rolled out of her bunk, pulled herself across the grilled walkway and leant against the sink on the opposite bulkhead. She splashed some cool water across her face.
    It did the job. It woke her up.
    She sprayed a cloud of ActiBacto under her arms, up her nightshirt to kill the sweaty-socks smell of the cabin that clung to her.
    She looked up towards the front of the cockpit to see Aaron dozing in the pilot’s seat, his large legs pulled up onto the arm of his seat, and his cap tugged down over his eyes. Through the windshield, looking forward, she could see the first light of day staining the purple sky with a hint of peach, and the drab ground below raced beneath them still bathed in the violet-blue shadows of night.
    Their passengers would be waking up soon and it was Ellie’s job to play the stewardess. Yesterday had been the first day of the four day trip. They had set off at midday to allow their ten paying guests the best light with which to see the spectacle of the port and the exterior of the dome of New Haven and, of course, the encrusted shantytown along the base of it. Ellie had joined them by the recently installed viewing windows in the hold and
ooohed
and
aahed
along with the rest of them. Second time around, it had been just as breathtaking to behold the sheer, awesome scale of the dome.
    One of the older ladies confessed it had been several decades since she had last seen anything outside of the city. Ellie wondered how a person could endure living so long in one contained environment without at least stepping outside once in a while. Several uninterrupted decades trapped inside New Haven? She’d go mad.
    Ellie had studied the ten passengers they had aboard as they gazed out of the window, watching the city begin to shrink as Aaron eased the shuttle away, heading northwards. There were three older couples, varying in ages from, she guessed, mid-forties to mid-fifties. Ellie had struggled to engage them in a little small talk, something that didn’t come that easy to her, unlike Jez who could effortlessly exchange banalities with anyone, and somehow enjoy it too. Two of these couples had taken on the trip as an anniversary present to each other. For the third couple, the trip was a birthday present from the husband to his wife.
    Then there were two brothers, both in their early thirties by the look of them. She had found out that they owned a holo-board advertising business between them. The older of the two, Sam, had proudly told her that thirty-six percent of the floating holographic billboards that floated around the city were theirs. It was a booming business he had assured her, and they were one of the biggest players in New Haven. In fact, Jez had actually been in the process of renting some billboard advertising time from them when she’d decided that Sam and his brother, Ryan, could do with a couple of tickets and a well-earned break from making lots of money.
    Ellie shook her head and chuckled.
She never misses a trick
.
    The other two passengers were each on their own. One was a young woman, Corin, perhaps a little older than Jez. Jez had referred to her as an
Airbag.
Ellie knew the stereotype well; young woman married to a richer older man, her own air car…usually one of the bigger, chunkier, utility models. Her type lived their lives entirely above the twenty-four storey mark, flitting from one tower-top boutique to the next. Corin was already flirting quite shamelessly with the two bill-board brothers,