Prime City: A Science Fiction Thriller (Neon Horizon Book 2)

by Michael Robertson

  The ropes pinned Marcie above the exhaust. It kicked out toxic fumes as they tore across the dark landscape, the acrid smoke sending the sharp pains of a headache across her brow. Her back to the driver and those in their convoy, she fixed on Prime City, the neon horizon aglow in the darkness.

  Four buggies had left the farm. Marcie’s one carried just her and the driver. The other three had a driver and a passenger carrying a weapon capable of cleaving a person in two. A large axe, a broadsword, and the third one had a scythe similar to the one carried by the man from the spiral gang. A pang twisted through her chest. She’d taken a life that day. The necessity of it did little to dilute the emotional impact.

  Mud flicked up against Marcie’s clothes and face. With her arms pinned to her sides, she could only wince against the onslaught.

  Night had turned the landscape almost pitch black, yet the buggies were flat out. They jumped and bounced when they hit lumps in their path, the wind on the back of Marcie’s head dragging her hair forwards, whipping around the sides of her face. Her ears burned from the wintry assault, and every shock slamming through the buggy jarred her bones.

  Although her arms were strapped to her sides, Marcie had enough movement to hold onto the bars behind her. She braced against the jolts and jumps, wiggling her body to gain more purchase.

  The buggy hit the largest bump so far and took off. It landed with a crash, and Marcie lost her footing, one of the top ropes stopping her falling by garrotting her. The weight of her body cut off her breathing. She kicked out, missing the bar she’d stood on several times, the buggy maintaining its pace, the engine whining. She finally found her footing again and relieved the pressure, drawing a deep breath.

  The other three vehicles remained ahead of Marcie’s. They must have been there as a shield. They were clearing their path to the Blind Spot. Whatever else happened, they had to protect their bounty and get her to her destination. What a shock it would have been if they’d gotten there and found her hung by the very ropes they used to secure her.

  But the slip had loosened the ropes. And with the buggies ahead, no one watched Marcie. She moved her arms away from her body by a few inches. She rolled her shoulders, the scabs covering the burn from the electric pole ripping apart with a sharp sting.

  The buggy took off again, Marcie’s stomach lurching. She switched to night vision, checked her footing, and braced for the landing. She tightened her grip on the bars behind her, bending her knees as they came back down. The cybernetics in her legs did the rest. The ropes fell from around her and gathered at her ankles.

  Marcie spun around. The green night-vision silhouette of the driver remained focused on what lay ahead. The six guards on the other three buggies did the same. If she stood any chance of getting away, she had to kill these people.

  A spider stalking its prey, Marcie climbed over the top of the buggy, her arms and legs stretched out as she closed in on the driver. They hit another hard bump, the vehicle tilting in the air. She held on tight, bending her knees and elbows to absorb the shock of the next landing.

  Marcie slipped in behind the driver, the slap of her feet against the buggy’s metal floor masked by the roaring engine.

  The militia on the other buggies were oblivious, their green silhouettes facing forwards as she moved closer to her driver. The man gripped the handlebars, twisting the right one to go faster.

  In one fluid movement Marcie pulled her arm across the driver’s throat, her cybernetics tightening and choking him out. But he slammed his foot on the brake. It turned her weightless, catapulting her through the open frame. An urge to spread her arms and legs, but she’d left her flying suit in Scala City. Marcie turned a full somersault and landed on her feet, her legs absorbing the landing as she slid for several metres, turning to face the buggy now screaming towards her.

  The buggy’s engine roared louder than before. The driver gnashed his teeth. The moonlight illuminated the green tint of his lenses.

  Marcie jumped and caught the buggy’s metal frame, gripping the bar behind the driver’s head. The momentum of the vehicle swung her around, and she landed behind him. Like with Death in the pit, she clapped one hand across his chin and one across his brow. She twisted hard with a crack! The man turned limp. The buggy continued at full speed.

  The other buggies had all stopped in front of her. Marcie jumped from her one and sent it slamming into two of the three waiting. It pinned one of the passengers, her legs becoming a part of the twisted wreck. It threw the other one to the ground. The woman screamed, the lower half of her body now inseparable from the mangled metalwork.

  The one remaining buggy roared, its back wheels churning as it spun one hundred and eighty degrees to face her.

  Marcie’s chest swelled and sank with her breaths. The buggy shot forwards.

  The buggy encircled in red, Marcie’s microprocessor did the calculations. At the last moment she jumped straight up, clearing the buggy and driver. The passenger swung her broadsword where she’d been seconds before. Marcie kicked the woman in the head, sending her flying so she landed on her back with a squelch.

  Although the woman had gotten to her feet again, she stood lopsided from the fall, her left arm hanging limp. The circle around her was now amber. She meant Marcie harm, she just might not be able to administer her intent. Her broadsword in her right hand, she swung it despite Marcie being too far away. Marcie darted forwards and punched her in the jaw. The added kick of her cybernetics knocked her mandible loose with a deep crack.

  The roar of the one functioning buggy closed in on Marcie. She took the fallen woman’s sword and pinned her to the ground with it, driving the tip through her face.

  The woman in the twisted wreck continued screaming while her three friends tried to prise the two vehicles apart.

  A loud whoomph! The crashed buggies burst into flames. Screams from the four mohawks, their clothes and skin burned. Three of them ran away from the flaming wreck.

  The one mobile buggy on her again, Marcie jumped to the side, sending it sailing past. Of the four mohawks on fire, three of them were still targeted as threats. They flapped and rolled in the mud in a panic to extinguish the flames. The one sandwiched between the two buggies had already turned black.

  Taking their third run at her, Marcie jumped the buggy, this time catching it like she had with the first one. The most pressing threat, she climbed in behind the driver, punching him in the face when he turned to look at her. The driver fell over the handlebars, the buggy continuing at full speed.

  Marcie’s legs worked overtime to keep her stable while she lifted the man free and threw him out. She jumped into the driver’s seat and pressed the brake so hard the two back wheels lifted from the ground. It slammed back down again with a crash, and she jumped out, leaving it idling.

  The driver twisted and turned on the ground. Marcie descended on him first. He lifted his head to watch her approach. Had she kicked his face any harder, she would have decapitated him. The man fell flat.

  The fire had killed the fury in the other three. Slowed down by their injuries, they could neither run nor fight. Marcie ended them one at a time, putting them down like lame animals. Maybe she could have spared them. She could have tied them up and left them in the middle of the wastelands, but she couldn’t risk being followed. And she couldn’t leave them to do to other people what they’d done to her. The rules were different out here. Justice meant death. Anything less would be foolish.

  The three mangled buggies still ablaze and all of the soldiers dead, Marcie headed back to the one remaining vehicle. She sat in the driver’s seat and twisted the accelerator. The small vehicle lurched forwards, and she slammed her head against the metal bar behind her. A gentler twist the second time, the buggy moved slower than before. The neon horizon of Prime City as her magnetic north, she headed towards it. The concentration camp sat somewhere in the darkness between them. Whether she rescued the Eye or not, she needed to get her ten thousand credits back. The Eye
might have well and truly screwed her over, but she still needed the money to get Sal his lungs.

  Chapter 23

  Tearing across the dark landscape with only the moon to guide her, Prime City turning the horizon neon against the night sky, Marcie flinched against the grit and wind, a spray of mud kicking up from behind the buggy. Suddenly the two right wheels dropped, the ground beneath her caving in with the metallic pop of bending steel.

  The dirt and grass laid over the sheet metal fell into the concealed pit. It dragged the buggy with it. Marcie leaped from the driver’s seat, weightless as the vehicle slammed against the pit’s wall and fell from sight.

  While in mid-air, Marcie turned one hundred and eighty degrees, sliding backwards in the mud when she landed clear of the pit. A fireball burst into the sky as if belched from a giant mythical underground beast.

  The pit at least ten metres deep, the twisted wreck burned, turning the thick wooden spikes along the bottom black. Anyone within a few miles would have seen the fire. She took off at a sprint.

  As she’d done when driving, Marcie used the illuminated horizon as her focal point. Head for that and she’d find the prison camp and her ten thousand credits. Hopefully she’d already covered a lot of the distance in her buggy.

  When she hit a steep and slippery incline, Marcie flicked to night vision. The wastelands opened up when she reached the top, the glow of green silhouettes and the flickering of flaming torches about five hundred metres away. It had to be the farm. X-ray showed her sleeping bodies in the barns dotted throughout the place.

  Cloaked by the night, Marcie took off again towards the chain-link, barbed-wire-topped fences. Four guards stood on the front gates. Go that way and she’d be raising all sorts of alarms. Instead she cleared the fence in front of her in one bound, landing with a squelch in the wet mud on the other side. Far enough away from any of the guards not to be heard. She’d landed amongst their vehicles. Her vicinity still clear of guards, she took one of the small buggies and pushed it away from the others around the back of a nearby barn.

  The leader must still have her credit card, but where was he? Not likely to be sleeping with the masses in the larger barn. And regardless of what the Eye had done to her, she’d made a promise to him. Snake or not, she’d get him to Prime City. She had morals, if he’d proven he didn’t. That also meant she had to find his fur coat or, more specifically, the microchip inside. As much as it would have been fun to abandon him, helpless and penniless, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  The chatter from the guards on the gate carried across the farm, snores and coughs ringing out from the barns. The closest accommodated just three sleeping bodies. Marcie held her breath as she tiptoed in, the ground inside as boggy as the rest of the complex.

  Three guards she didn’t recognise, Marcie left them to it.

  Another small hut, four people, all men. Again, she tiptoed inside and leaned over to check the sleeping faces in the poor light. They all had mohawks and circle tattoos along the sides of their heads, but none of them were the leader or the boy with the fur coat.

  The next hut had the bulk of the army inside. A barn with at least forty sleeping bodies. Maybe she should check everywhere else first? But where else would they put the kid with the Eye’s coat? Surely someone as low in the pecking order as him would have the most roommates. Hopefully he hadn’t found the microchip.

  An X-ray scan of the complex again. The sleeping bodies all remained horizontal. The guards on the gate continued chatting and laughing with one another. Marcie slipped inside the largest dorm.

  The second she stepped in, the fur coat stood out from a mile away, the boy’s silhouette inflated to three times his actual size. The garment might have lacked style, but in this biting cold, function won out over form. Gooseflesh rose on Marcie’s arms and thighs. Thank god she’d gotten out of that pit, and had the Eye remained in there all this time, he’d be dead by now.

  One of the women sleeping down to Marcie’s right snorted and rolled over. Marcie jumped away from her, her fists raised. But the woman remained asleep. How the hell would she get the coat off the kid without waking him? Him and everyone else in the barn. But at least she knew where to come. She should get the Eye and her credit card first and then come back. Once they woke this lot, they needed to be ready to escape.

  The ground tugged on Marcie’s steps as she moved through the wet mud. The next hut had just three people in it. When she poked her head inside, she froze. The leader and two women. All three of them in the same bed. A knife lay on a small table on the side. She lifted it in a shaking hand, the moonlight catching its long blade.

  Her breaths coming out in stutters, Marcie pointed the tip of the knife down and hung it over the leader’s right eye. Her left hand wrapped around the handle, the palm of her right hand pressed against the pommel. She counted down in her mind—three, two, one—and plunged it deep into his eye socket.

  Squelch. The leader released a death groan. His two women woke simultaneously. She cut the throat of one, a spray of blood tearing away from her. While the woman clutched her neck and gasped, she stabbed the other in the chest the second she sat up. The woman fell back, taking the knife with her.

  Rapid breaths and shaking hands covered in warm blood, Marcie checked the inside pocket of the leader’s animal-skin waistcoat. She found her credit card. Of course she did. No chance of him leaving it lying around in a place like this. She spat on the man and turned, but before leaving his hut, she paused. What little light came from the moon and the torches outside caught the blue reflection of her glasses on a wooden box in the corner. “I’ll be taking these back too,” she muttered to his corpse, slipping them on before she left his hut. She might have had to give up on her supplies and her backpack, but at least she had her credits and glasses. The rest could be easily replaced.

  Those who were asleep previously remained asleep. The guards remained on the gates, oblivious to the near silent assassin working through their camp. Where the hell had they put the Eye?

  A splash of water called out to her. A fish breaking the surface of a pond. Because it had been left empty when she vacated it, Marcie hadn’t checked the cage above the watery pit. A lone figure shifted and twitched as if trying to stay warm. Her X-ray showed her the eels swimming around his legs.

  Marcie ducked back into the leader’s hut. The box in the corner had spare jeans and tops in it. Most importantly, they were dry. A squelching run from the hut to the cage, she kicked the padlock from the door, reached in, and dragged the Eye out by his collar.

  The Eye lay on his front and shivered. When she rolled him over, his eyes were wide and his jaw clamped shut. “I need you to walk,” Marcie said, dragging him to his feet. He stood so rigid it was like he’d been struck by premature rigor mortis.

  Marcie stripped him down, replacing his soaked clothes with the dry rags she’d picked up. She rubbed his frigid arms while he hugged himself for warmth, his hands clamped under his armpits.

  “Don’t worry about trying to speak. Just get warm.” Even with the orange glow of firelight from a nearby torch, the Eye’s skin remained blue. But he nodded, and as she rubbed him, some of the tension left his brittle frame.

  “I-I-I f-figured Wrench would p-pay—”

  “Huh?”

  “W-w—”

  “Wrench?” Marcie said.

  The Eye nodded. “Would p-pay t-t-t-the ransom—”

  “You figured he’d pay the ransom for me?”

  Again, the Eye nodded.

  “And what?” She tutted and shook her head. “You’d get a cut?”

  Frowning harder than before, the Eye shook his head. “No. T-that you’d be s-s-safe.”

  Marcie stepped back. After a few seconds, she said, “Oh.”

  “S-so why did you c-c-c-come back?”

  “To get you to Prime City. I made you a promise.”

  The Eye dipped a nod. “Thank y-you.”

  A lump caught in Marcie’s throat.
To think, she’d considered leaving him when he’d been trying to save her. She swallowed and nodded through it. “You’d do the same for me, right?”

  Slightly looser in his dry clothes, the Eye turned left and right as if he’d heard something. “We need to g-g-g-g-get out of here before anyone wakes up. If we get in a fight, I’m going to be u-useless in my current state.”

  “As opposed to the fierce warrior you are the rest of the time?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Marcie took the Eye’s frigid hand and guided him back towards the vehicles, taking him to the one buggy she’d separated from the rest. She pointed at the others nearby. “I didn’t realise they were flammable until I crashed one.”

  “You what?”

  “It’s a story for another time. I’d rather not crash again, so how easy are they to set alight?”

  “Give the mohawks something to focus on while we escape?”

  “Right.”

  The motion back in his limbs, the Eye nodded. “I can do it easily enough. But I need that microchip inside my coat before we leave here. It has everything I need to survive.”

  “I know where your coat is. Can you set this lot up and wait while I go get it?”

  The Eye walked over to the first vehicle in the pack. A large truck, he tugged a rubber tube in the engine. It disconnected and released a heady chemical reek with the quiet splashing of spilling liquid. He did the same on the next three vehicles, the air now rich with the dizzying scent. The Eye said, “Just let me know when to start the fire.”

  The squelch of footsteps gave them no more than a second’s warning. The man barked in a deep and authoritative tone, a red ring encircling him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Before Marcie reacted, the Eye lunged for a nearby flaming torch. He ripped it from the holder and threw it at the vehicles he’d just tampered with.