Kate followed her into another shaft. “I had some anger issues.”
“No, really? You made quite the dog’s breakfast of those mercs.” Anna paused at a three-way junction to check her NetMini before deciding on continuing straight. “And now you’re all peace and love and ‘I don’t wanna kill anymore’?”
“I destroyed anything I touched. The world didn’t want me, and I didn’t want it. I mean, I did, but I’d convinced myself I was okay being separated from everything. This girl changed all that.”
“You fell in love?” Anna checked the map again and went left at the next junction.
“No… well, I thought I did, with this guy… but as soon as I was gone, he found another woman.”
Anna grumbled. “Typical.”
“This child somehow fixed me.”
The adoring tone in Kate’s voice made Anna glance back. A telepathic twinge preceded a gasp. “Althea…”
Kate grinned. “Yes.”
“What did she do to you? You’re practically ready to kiss her feet.”
“She gave me a life.” Kate squeezed up alongside her in the shaft, putting a hand on top of Anna’s and curling her fingers through. “I don’t burn everything I touch anymore. I can wear clothes, use beds, shower, and drive. I’m almost normal.” Tears of joy welled in her eyes. “Twenty-five years, I was a science project, some kind of fire demon no one wanted. She… cured me. Even though I’m a killer.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Even though I went there to kill her.”
Anna shot a guilty look at the vent wall. “Great. You’ve gone squidgy.”
They crawled in silence for a few minutes.
“How did you manage to get into a C-Branch facility?” Kate whispered. “They made it sound like they owned the world.”
“Well, first of all, I’m not an amateur. Second, I have an Aurora. There’s no defense against her. Thirdly, they made the mistake of hiding their facility under a residence tower. The levels they held you on were inside the city plate, twenty meters below the surface. That building goes all the way down to actual ground.”
“So?”
“So, they can’t have a military garrison around it without attracting attention. They were relying on stealth. And they still don’t know what they’re dealing with.”
“They know about Archon.”
Anna whirled. “What did you tell them?”
“Not much, they already knew more about him than I do. All I said was that he’d contacted me and he’s got brown hair and a funny accent.”
Another minute of crawling took them to a large slat grating. Anna slipped out first, and Kate wasted no time leaving the tight space. The corridor felt like they were in an ordinary middle-class apartment.
“Leave the gun in the vent. We’re trying to look like citizens.”
Kate clenched it. “Normal citizens carry guns.”
“What if it’s got a tracking chip?” Anna gestured at the vent.
Reluctantly, Kate slid the weapon out of sight. When she turned back, Anna had gotten half a hallway down at a stairwell entrance. Vulnerability fell on her like a wet blanket as she ran for the door and scrambled down the stairs. Anna grabbed the bar of an emergency exit, a dozen crackling sparks flew from her fingers into the alarm mechanism, killing it and letting the door open in silence. Sunlight flooded the hallway. Anna jogged a few paces ahead and knocked a punk off an iridescent blue motorcycle with a blast of lightning. The young man hit the ground twitching, trying to scream, but his jaw wouldn’t open.
“No stealing.” Anna stepped square on his chest on her way to the bike. “Come on! We’ve got seconds left.”
The man wheezed and rolled to the side.
Kate hopped on, wrapping her arms around Anna’s waist, clinging tighter as the machine took off. City blurred; to avoid getting Anna’s skull to the jaw a second time, she nestled her chin into the small woman’s shoulder. Metal squeezed her throat. Gunshots rang out behind them.
Without her pyrokinesis, she felt more naked than she had ever been.
peed reduced Kate’s surroundings to a smear of colored lights and blaring horns. When Anna took a section of sidewalk to avoid traffic, screams added to the mix. A hail of NetMinis and various other objects crashed over them, flung from a crowd of pedestrians diving for cover. Warm liquid splashed on her face from a disposable cup bouncing off the windscreen. Anna sputtered and wiped her eyes.
Kate basked in the scent of it. “Can we stop somewhere? I really want coffee now.”
“Ask them,” yelled Anna, nodding to the rear.
A pair of black hovercars skimmed over traffic, closing in fast.
“Oh, shit.” Kate clung tighter.
“That’s one way to put it.” Anna threw her weight to the right, skidding into a turn. “Bloody handling is in the bog with two people.”
“Bog?” asked Kate.
“Loo.”
“What?”
“Shitter!” shouted Anna. “Bloody hell!”
Anna pulled into the space between lanes of slow-moving traffic and accelerated. They barreled past a red signal, narrowly avoiding cross traffic. The headlights of a forty-ton articulated cargo transport bore down on them, passing within three feet of Kate’s face, and inches of their rear tire. She clamped her eyes shut, unable to look, cringing and holding back the urge to leak from both ends. When she felt confident she would neither vomit nor wet herself, she risked a peek.
A spherical advert-bot hovered at speed, projecting a holo-panel with offers for protective motorcycle gear on one side and driver’s insurance on the other. Kate locked on to a shiny, red helmet―a steal at seven hundred credits. One arm unclamped to reach for the intangible screen, when the hovering robot disappeared with a clank. She blinked and looked back; a sparking, smashed metal orb wrapped around a bent Citycam pole. Kate blinked, staring at it. When her brain managed to ascribe meaning to her surroundings two seconds later―that Anna jumped the bike onto the sidewalk―she screamed.
“You’re going to kill us!”
“Oh relax,” said Anna. “Not like I’m heading for the tube.”
“What?” Kate spun to face forward again. “Tube?”
“Forget it,” grumbled Anna.
Shouting erupted on either side as the bike parted a crowd. An unexpected right turn sent them toward long outdoor stairway. Kate let out an uneasy wail of protest.
“Calm down, I’ve done this before,” yelled Anna, fighting for control. “Stairs look a lot worse than they feel. Lean up and forward… now!”
Both women shifted their weight; Anna pulled a wheelie and they cruised up the stairway, shuddering from a milder-than-expected vibration. The bike leapt the top step, landing a few feet later, and smashed a pair of sliding glass doors. Dozens of people turned at the explosion of glass bits resembling snowflakes as the bike skidded through the entryway of a shopping mall built into the fourth floor of a century tower. Shrieking children ran in random directions. Tires squealed over the polished tile floor. Several people leapt out of their way, flying into a fountain pool as the wobbling vehicle shot past them on the verge of wiping out. Faced with a choice of running down a little girl or taking a merchant stand head-on, Anna aimed for the pretzel cart and hit the brakes.
The bike came to an abrupt halt on impact, though the vendor’s pushcart rocketed away in a shower of pastries, powdered cinnamon, and salt. A short distance from where it had been parked, it punched a hole in a small railing around an open atrium and fell out of sight, likely onto an unsuspecting crowd one story down. They’d missed the child by less than two feet; the girl, who couldn’t have been older than seven, froze like a deer staring down a truck, seeming too afraid to move or make a sound.
“Off the bike, now!” shouted a man in a grey jumpsuit with a dark blue DuraFib armor vest; he ran up behind them and took a stance with a pistol in a two-handed grip, knees bent.
“Great… mall cops,” muttered Anna. She put on a placid smile. “Is there
a problem, officer?”
He blinked, straightened his stance, and glanced at the trail of devastation through the mall.
“I’m sorry, was I going too fast?”
Kate kept her head turned away, so the officer couldn’t see her on the verge of giggling. People stared at her as they got back to their feet. Most looked shocked, some cursed at her, others laughed. The kid Anna almost ran over continued staring at them in wide-eyed fear.
“Get off the goddamned bike now!” shouted the security officer. “Dispatch, I got a situation on four, central concourse. Get the pol―”
Crack!
Kate jumped at the sound of a single, sharp stroke of lightning between Anna’s hand and the man’s chest. Steam peeled away from his face, which had frozen mid-word with a look of surprise. After a second of stillness, he fell over backward like a board.
The crowd’s increasing anger turned to terror. People ran in all directions. The little girl seemed to recover from shock enough to start crying.
“Go to your parents,” yelled Kate, waving.
Anna stooped, grabbing two cinnamon-covered hot pretzels. She handed one to Kate. “Care for a munch?”
“Isn’t this stealing?” Kate’s straight face only lasted a second before she laughed.
“It’s fair game on the floor.”
Anna twisted the handlebars, holding the treat in her teeth, and drove left, heading for the walkway past the railing. Panicking shoppers leapt to the side yelling, despite their tame speed. More security officers chased on foot, shouting at them to stop. One skidded to a halt with a pistol out. Kate lunged forward, forcing Anna down over the bike. A window up ahead exploded in a flash of shattering flakes; people scattered in all directions, screaming. She cringed as the bike picked up speed, but a quick glance to the rear brought relief at the sight of other officers tackling the trigger-happy guard.
Anna caught a downward escalator, forcing people to leap the dividing rail to the ascending half. The undulating shudder of driving down stairs tightened Kate’s arms again, and pounded her tailbone.
“Bloody hell, you’re squeezing too much,” yelled Anna. “You’re gonna make me shit.”
Kate closed her eyes so as not to see the blur of stores and screaming people going by. Tires squealed on tile, and cries of surprise rang out on both sides. Severe acceleration dug Kate’s arms into Anna’s gut. Shouted curses faded into the distance before the people could finish two words. A sudden shift in the sound of the e-bike’s motors made her look; they zoomed down a clear-walled tunnel. People flattened into the sides of a skyway connecting the mall to an adjacent parking deck.
Some genius decided to make the whole thing (including the floor) transparent.
A comedian had painted graffiti of crashed advert-bots on the sides, like bugs stuck to a windshield.
“For the love of…” Anna tugged on Kate’s arm. “In some countries, the way you’re pawing me would count as marriage.”
Kate loosened her grip after the free-fall simulator ended with an opaque concrete deck between her and the ground. “Sorry.”
Forty yards of parked vehicles passed in an instant. Anna slowed and steered onto the exit ramp, stopping to catch her breath once solid wall blocked off any potential attack from the skyway.
“Are you trembling?” Anna glanced over her shoulder. “You are, aren’t you? What happened to that cold-hearted ‘it’s just a paycheck’ thing?”
The metal around her neck seemed to tighten. “Heights. Can’t burn gravity… and this fucking thing on my neck. I am as helpless as a child right now. You wouldn’t believe how much it hurt.”
Kate’s trembles worsened with anticipation as a mental vibration spread across her brain.
“Oh, bugger all.” Anna’s accusing glare softened before she frowned at the stun ring. “Damn government wankers. I think I’d rather be shot dead. That’s just cruel.”
“Can you fry it?”
A black hovercar slipped into the windowless gap, squeezing between the ceiling and gliding over parked cars. Windows cracked and body panels crumpled in its downblast. The other one circled outside, a streak of ebon against the building across the street.
“Yes, but not right this second. Hold on.” Anna hit the accelerator, crouching low to the frame as the bike zoomed in a corkscrew down the ramp.
Kate clamped her arms around Anna, screaming through gritted teeth until the bike bottomed out when it leveled off at the end. The shock kicked her in the crotch and set off a string of curses, which made Anna laugh. They avoided the waiting car, making liberal use of the sidewalk, and took off in defiance of traffic signals for several blocks in a straight line.
The Navcon chirped with a danger notice, a grey zone approached fast. Two streets later, they rounded a corner and Anna hit the brakes hard enough to smoke both tires at the sight of a road filled with old, wrecked cars. While Anna slalomed the bike among the wreckage, Kate stole a few rearward glances.
“They’re right on us.”
“Can you drive one of these?” yelled Anna.
“Sort of.” Kate looked up. “Not very well.”
“Trade places. I’ll go up and over, you scoot forward.”
“Are you fucking insane?” shrieked Kate.
“Fine then, you fireball them out of the sky.” Anna came close to losing control after hitting an already-dead small animal. After recovering, they went sliding into a hard left. “Shit!”
Kate squealed as the bike dipped enough to let ground scuff at the fabric by her knee. “I can’t. Not with this thing on my neck.”
“I was being sarcastic,” yelled Anna.
Flecks of debris floated past in the air. The bike picked up speed down a more open patch of the abandoned city. Judging from the decay, they had already passed into the blacked out area. Half-broken buildings formed a canyon of glass and steel; shattered windows glittered amber in the fading day. Tires kicked up a haze of water vapor from hours-old rain, and a patch of traction-coated plastisteel gave them three blocks of open space in a straight line. Numerous vagrants prairie-dogged out of trash piles to check out the oncoming noise.
“Well, then, grab the handles behind you. Let go of me. I’ll jump over you.”
Anna aimed the bike down the centerline.
“You are crazy!” screamed Kate, squeezing the air out of Anna’s chest. “Just go!”
Trash, shredded plasfilm posters, cups, and fragments of packing cartons whorled into a horizontal tornado behind them. Anna wheezed, glaring at the rear-view monitor. She steered with one hand while trying to pull Kate’s arms loose from her middle, giving up as the straightaway ended. Kate closed her eyes at the sensation of rapid deceleration; her resolve not to scream again failed when the bike twisted sideways and kept sliding against its tires. When she looked, they faced sidelong to the way they’d come, stationary at the end of a twenty-foot pair of skid marks. Two black hovercars hung in the air, nine feet off the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Anna flicked her thumb at the right handgrip. “They’re herding us.”
“What?”
Smoke billowed into the air as the rear tire spun up and fishtailed the bike around, pointing it straight at the hovercars. Kate crushed a gasp out of the smaller woman when the bike lurched forward. The hovercars glided backward, nosing together as the women got closer. Anna raised one hand. A great concussion wave slammed into Kate’s back in time with a deafening crack and flash of blue that left a coppery taste in her mouth. A shadow shot overhead. Vagrants shouted and ran for cover; a second later, a heavy metallic whump rocked the air. Anna forced the bike into a skidding left turn, barely controlling the too-fast maneuver. Behind them, both hovercars sat dead on the ground, clusters of sparks pouring from their ion thrusters.
Kate yelped at a sharp static jolt to her hands, instinctively releasing her grip around Anna’s gut. While she flailed in an effort not to fall off, the little woman coughed and drew a great br
eath.
“Sorry, luv. Was about to pass out.”
Fear of falling overcame fear of another shock; Kate clamped back on, but not as tight.
“The only time you see military intelligence following you, they’re either herding you where they want you to go, or everything’s gone pear-shaped.”
“Pear whaa―”
Kate ducked her face against Anna’s neck as they swerved at a half-collapsed dumpster, using the inclined metal as a ramp to jump through a blown-out second story window. They landed in the hallway of an abandoned apartment building. Cans, spent autoinjectors, and shredded bits of carpeting flew everywhere. Anna threw her weight right; the bike swerved into a sideways slide for a few feet before coming to a halt.
“Pear shaped. Means all cocked up. Gone to hell. So that’s what Lauren meant by use the dumpster…” She twisted around to look behind her. “You all right?”
Kate gawked at the swinging pieces of drop ceiling, wires, and dangling LED light tubes between her and the smashed window they’d flown in from. “No… I don’t think so.”
“What’d you see out in the weeds, hon? That little sprog have your bollocks in a jar now?”
“Can you speak English?” Kate released her death grip and breathed into her hands.
Anna gave the bike a little throttle, navigating past a number of apartment doors to the end of the hall. She hit the brakes, but they kept sliding due to the peeling carpet and skidded to a stop with a thump as the front tire hit a closed elevator door. She leaned forward and poked the button.
“Ever since you went out to that wretched wasteland, you’ve been different. Did that little girl reprogram your mind like she did to that lumbering dogsbody?”
The elevator opened with a ping.
“Bugger me… I wasn’t expecting this thing to work.” She walked the bike inside. “Be a dear and hit the button for six please.”
Numb, Kate twisted to her left and did as asked. Anger at being cut off from human contact had protected her from guilt over taking life. Even the label of self-preservation didn’t seem enough to justify what she had done anymore. She killed to please El Tío, and for money. Kate had been so desperate for his approval, a parental connection―for any connection, but he had seen only a useful tool.
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