As the citizens await my speech, one word repeats again and again throughout countless conversations, and it makes me smile broadly:
Children...
CITY OF GLASS
BOOK THREE
For Sara
"No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come will not be remembered
by those who follow them."
Ecclesiastes 1:11
Part I
Awakening
1 Sera
22 Years After All-Clear
I run.
Through darkness lit up for my eyes only, thanks to Wink and Blink hovering above the scene and painting every rooftop, every ledge, every gap between buildings in lines of infrared. My ocular implants pick up each architectural detail and highlight them in shades of crimson and blue, adding perspective and glowing brighter as I close the distance. I charge headlong, my exo-suit punching into the roof and providing an extra burst of speed for my lunge across a two-hundred-meter drop, then cushioning the impact when I crash-land onto the next unforgiving rooftop and roll to my feet.
Always moving as fast as I can. Always with my quarry in sight.
Somehow, he's managing to stay ahead of me, dodging and weaving as he runs, covering the same elevated urban terrain without the aid of any detectable augments or an exo-suit. According to the readings I'm getting from Wink and Blink, the guy's adrenaline levels are off the charts, and the same goes for the current endorphin rush he's riding. He moves like no one I've ever seen.
That first jump, three or four buildings back, should have been impossible for him. Never mind the landing. Without exo-rods attached to his legs, launching himself from one domescraper to another should not have been possible. Any normal person would have landed in a crumpled heap of bone fractures. Yet here he is, dashing full-tilt across this rooftop with no injuries sustained, whatsoever.
"Take him down, Sera," the voice of my commander says in my ear.
Back at headquarters, where things are just a bit less hectic, she's watching the chase play out on a big screen in the command center via Wink and Blink's transmission. They always like to share everything they see and hear.
"I've got him." My voice is quiet, confident. Not even winded. I've chased suspects before—maybe not at this altitude—and I've caught them without the use of any shock rounds. This guy is no different. Sure, he's got some impressive skills, but so do I. And I'm not about to let him beat me.
"Target him before he reaches the edge of that rooftop," Commander Bishop orders.
I glance at Wink and Blink's topographical map hovering at the bottom of my face shield's heads-up display. Swiping one gloved hand through the air as I run, I bring the map into a full-frame overlay and pivot it to focus on the next building and the gap in between. Measurements appear instantly, along with injury estimates according to the guy's current velocity and predicted trajectory, once he takes his next flying leap.
I curse silently.
"That's a hundred-meter drop to the next building," Bishop observes. "No chance he'll survive that. Shoot him now before you lose him. Takedown authorized."
I grit my teeth. If I shock him, he'll go into seizures, and he's no good to me if I can't get a coherent word out of him. By the time he's able to string sentences together again, he'll be back at HQ under an interrogator's supervision. And I won't be privy to anything they discuss while he's in lockdown.
Because once I pull the trigger, my role will be over. Takedown successful. Wait for the medics to arrive, then call it a night, Enforcer Chen. Go home to your cube, take a hot shower, stream something mildly entertaining to take your mind off work, eventually fall asleep alone in your bed. Wake up tomorrow, rinse and repeat. Leave the real police work to the investigators and interrogators.
No thanks.
"Enforcer, respond." Commander Bishop's tone makes it clear that my lengthy pause was not appreciated.
"Yes, ma'am. Taking him down." I draw my shocker mid-stride with one hand and swipe the topographical overlay aside with the other, leaving my face shield clear for the targeting reticle. Holding the shocker out in front of me with my index finger braced along the gun muzzle, I activate the charger. It whines as it powers up, promising discomfort. Then I increase the volume on my external audio transmitters. "You can guess what happens next, buddy. Save yourself the indignity."
He keeps running. So do I. The edge of the rooftop looms a few paces away for him, a few more for me.
"You won't make the next jump. Stop right where you are, and I won't shoot you. We'll have a little talk instead." I watch him, but he gives no indication that he's heard me.
He doesn't slow down. Neither do I.
The difference between us is that he'll die as soon as he completes that hundred-meter fall, and I won't. Wink and Blink will record the whole mess, and I'll land in his blood somewhere between his brains and his entrails. My exo-suit might suffer a few stress fractures, and I might have to replace it. Worst-case scenario.
But I have to know what he knows. Commander Bishop will be irate, and a well-written reprimand will be included in my permanent record for disobeying a direct order. Worth it? We'll see.
I raise my shocker to give the illusion of following through. I'm about to signal Wink and Blink to descend and block his path with their quadcopter props, usually enough of a deterrent when they're spinning millimeters away from the soft flesh of someone's face. I've got this situation under control.
But that's when the guy casually tosses a grenade over his shoulder. My boots skid across the rooftop as I try to alter course and avoid the blast.
"Enforcer—!" Bishop shouts in my ear, her voice cutting out at the same moment I lose all the data on my face shield along with everything incoming via my augments. Adding insult to injury, my exo-suit locks up, freezing me in place, stiff as a statue.
No last words from my commander as the grenade goes off. No chance for her to tell me how proud she is of her top enforcer, even though my inability to follow orders drives her nuts at times. No opportunity to question the guy before he vaults into the air and plummets to his death. No final thoughts to run through my mind as a twenty-year-young veteran of the human race.
Because there's no concussive blast and no smoke when that grenade goes off. Instead, I'm blinded by a burst of neon-blue light, the type that sparks and sizzles as it expands outward in a localized shockwave, knocking out anything with an electric signal in its blast radius.
I curse as Wink and Blink drop out of the dark sky like dead weights and smash against the rooftop, plasteel drone components breaking off and skittering in all directions.
"Don't jump!" I shout at the top of my lungs, unaided by my audio augments now.
"No stopping me," he calls out jauntily, trotting backward as he approaches the edge of the roof.
Everything is so murky without my visual implants, but even relying on biologic I can make out his shadowy form. Why are his arms spread out to the sides? Are those his eyes glowing in the dark—the same blue as that damn grenade blast? Night-vision ocular implants, if I had to guess. Wink and Blink should have detected them.
Not to mention the grenade.
"Stop right where you are!" I throw down my shocker, useless now, and pull the emergency release on my exo-suit. I tumble out of the thing in nothing but my thermal bodysuit and take off running in stocking feet, straight for him. I should feel naked and puny without the added strength of the exoskeleton, but I'm too angry to feel anything else right now.
Who does this curfew-violating miscreant think he is? And where did he get his hands on an EMP grenade?
"Have a nice evening, Enforcer." He pivots and lunges off the roof.
"NO!"
I won't be having a nice evening. Not now, thanks to him.
Reaching the parapet milliseconds after his jump, I fall forward onto both hands, fingers splayed across the brick, and stare after him. Not that I'm going to see much wi
thout my augments. Not after curfew, with every light out in every building and along every street, pitch darkness filling every space between the soaring dome above and my Eurasian city below. But I can listen, and holding my breath, that's what I do, straining to hear the impact of his body slamming into a low-riser's concrete rooftop—bones breaking and guts splashing—after dropping ten floors through the air from the adjacent high-riser. In the utter black of curfew's impenetrable darkness, I wait.
Silence.
Until I hear rubber-soled shoes squeaking and then slapping against pavement down there, along with a grunt that echoes up the side of my building. The sound of someone who's made an impossible jump and landed on his feet, only to keep right on running.
This can't be happening.
But it gets weirder.
Goodnight, Enforcer! he calls up to me. Except I don't hear his voice, not with my ears. I hear him inside my head—thoughts that aren't my own. We should do this again sometime!
My hands clench into fists. I stare after him blindly, hearing the roof access door slam shut behind him.
Then everything's quiet again, like it's supposed to be this time of night. Lights out. Everybody home, where they belong. Not out and about, running around in the dark. Jumping off buildings like it's nothing.
It's something. It really is. And I have no idea what to make of it.
I exhale loudly, releasing the breath I didn't realize I was holding, and take a minute to calm down. I can't go after the guy. I have to stay here, where my commander expects me to be—right where all my augments went offline. The aerocar she would've sent to retrieve me should arrive in a couple minutes. Standard procedure when a connection is lost between an enforcer and HQ.
I need to stay put. I need to get my head straight.
Scratch that. I've got to get my story straight.
Nobody's going to believe this guy took a flying leap and lived through it. Just like they won't believe he made the previous three or four jumps from one building to the next. Honestly, I lost count.
Before my requisite debrief, I'll need to watch the footage Wink and Blink transmitted to headquarters prior to crashing. Bishop should allow me that much. I need to confirm what I saw. But there won't be a record of anything after the EMP blast.
What I heard after he landed that final jump? His voice in my head? Stress-induced psychosis. Nothing else makes any semblance of sense.
A stiff breeze hits me sideways, and I brace myself against the parapet, cringing in my bodysuit. It keeps me warm enough against the ambient cold, but wind chill is another thing entirely. If it keeps up, I'll have to climb back into my exo-suit until the aerocar arrives, just to stay warm.
I retrieve Wink and Blink, carrying one smashed drone under each arm. Crossing paths with my discarded shocker, I pick it up and give it a spin by the trigger guard. Crouching, I slide the muzzle through what remains of the EMP grenade. Not much more than minuscule shards of plasteel.
"You guys let me down," I mutter.
Wink or Blink should have identified the bomb and let me know about it long before we started running across rooftops. Maybe the guy had some sort of lead shielding in his jacket to block their XR capabilities.
The first question my interrogator will ask: "When does a curfew violation escalate into a dangerous foot chase, Enforcer Chen?"
Answer: When that curfew violator has information I need, and he refuses to share it without an idiotic foot chase ensuing. When he's high on dust and nothing can touch him, and he feels the need to prove it to me.
Which he did, in a big way. And I still can't wrap my mind around what happened.
The soft warble of the aerocar's ionic thrusters announces its arrival, as does the minor jet wash stirred up by its vertical descent, gusting across the roof. I back up against my exo-suit and give the vehicle plenty of room to land. It doesn't take up more space than a sedan would, parked on the street. No wings, no nacelles. A sleek flying car with a full complement of powerful engines housed under the chassis.
"Chen?" the pilot says as his door rises, activating the soft glow of interior lights. Two bench seats behind the pilot, cargo space in back. Plenty of room for my exo and broken drones.
"That's me." Judging by the shape of his lanky silhouette, it's got to be Drasko. Low man on the totem pole, the only pilot Bishop would send out this time of night. And the only technician I'd ever trust with Wink and Blink. "I need you to fix these." I hand them over and go back for my suit.
Drasko cradles the drones like babies. "They've looked better. What were you doing up here, anyway?"
"Routine curfew violation." I grunt, dragging the rigid exo toward his vehicle.
"Routine? Right."
"Weren't you watching the big screen back at HQ? We put on quite a show for a little while."
"I didn't fly out of HQ." He places my drones into the backseat and belts them in place to avoid further damage while in flight. "Been out on patrol."
"Didn't realize it was your shift." Maintaining curfew from the air, ensuring lights are out all across the city. Gotta save energy, folks; can't be selfish. "Any noise?" I've got my exo by the shoulder struts, but I could use a little help.
"Calm and quiet in Dome 1—until Bishop's hail." He grabs hold of the boot-braces, and we load the suit horizontally into the cargo compartment. "EMP grenade, huh? That's unexpected."
I pat Wink's frame. "I'm gonna need the XR boosted. These two had no idea the guy was packing."
Drasko nods, lowering his voice. Like it matters up here where nobody can hear us. "Patriot, you think?"
I fold my arms. Now why would I be involved in anything like that? "You know as well as I do, that high-level stuff's for the investigators and interrogators. I issue warnings. Maybe a ticket. Anybody gets unruly, I shock 'em."
"You didn't shock this guy." He sniffs the air. "I'd smell it, if you had."
"What is this? You get promoted to interrogator without me knowing?" I punch him in the bony shoulder and climb aboard the aerocar. Careful not to rattle Wink or Blink, I find my seat beside them and strap in. "I don't have to tell you squat, Drasko."
He grins as he takes his place at the controls. Flipping a switch over his head, he activates the door closure and dims the cabin lights. "I'm not asking you anything they won't back at HQ. Consider this your trial run."
The door seals itself shut with a low whir, and the aerocar lifts off, pitching forward just a bit as Drasko takes us through the night sky at a leisurely pace. Outside, I can't see much of anything with my augments offline. Shadowy forms of domescrapers rise up from empty streets lined by dark buildings of different shapes and sizes. Maybe half a klick away at about the same altitude, another aerocar glides through the night on patrol. A single point of light on the side alternately blinking red and blue gives away its position.
"So, you didn't shock him." Drasko keeps his eyes either on the glowing display before him or the transparent windscreen, using his visual augments to maintain our course and trajectory. "I take that to mean you wanted to have a word with the guy. Instead of the usual untalkative seizures and pants-crapping."
"Never fun for either of us."
"Took me a while to clean up after the last retrieval. When was that? A week ago?"
"Sounds right." A drunk and disorderly curfew violator. I warned him politely to return home. He didn't want to. Thought he'd prove to his buddies what a real hard-ass he was by taking a swing at me instead. I wouldn't say I'm a quick-draw artist, but I hit him with a round from my shocker before his fist got anywhere close to my chin. "Almost good as new in here."
"Thanks for noticing." He chuckles. "So, tonight's violator. High on dust?"
"Prevailing theory."
He curses under his breath. "Hard to believe, right? The stories are one thing. Myths and legends. Nobody takes them seriously, not until you see it firsthand. Then it's like a whole new world's opened up, right there in front of you."
Drasko's twice
my age, at least. As far as I know, he's always worked in law enforcement but has never seen any reason to rise up through the ranks. He likes flying, and he likes fixing things. There's a lot he doesn't open up about. Take the scars that run down both sides of his neck like puckered seams, proof he battled the plague more than twenty years ago. I asked him about it once.
"I'm a survivor." That's all he said at the time, with half a grin.
Like that much wasn't obvious enough.
No idea if he's got any family, or if he lost them during the plague. Maybe they're still alive but relegated to Dome 6 with all the other sicks.
"We live only now," he often recites the Eurasian credo, "never looking back."
He's seen plenty over the years, and he's told me stories about some of his encounters with dust freaks: unaugmented people seeing in the dark, breathing underwater, impervious to cuts and bruises no matter what abuse they put themselves through. But the abilities are always temporary, active only while they're high on the stuff.
Like my guy who threw himself off that roof back there. I would've caught him eventually, if he played fair.
"Chen?" Drasko brings me back to the present.
"Yeah." I nod. "First time."
"Lemme guess. No exo-suit, but he could leap between buildings without any damage? Maybe even jump off one and live to tell the tale?"
"That's about the size of it. You seen this before?" If he has, he's never said so.
"Not a jumper. Nope, can't say that I have. Pretty sure nobody has." He pauses. "Your boys recorded it, I trust."
I pat Blink's frame next to me. As lifeless as a brick. "Transmitted the first few jumps to HQ, so Bishop will have a record of that. Got a feeling the memory storage on these guys is fried."
Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) Page 79