Whoof! The flame spread, a wall of fire between them and the guard.
Whomp! The first vehicle exploded, the hot air shoving Marcie in the back while she and the Eye ran to the buggy she’d separated from the rest.
In the driver’s seat, Marcie started the engine while the Eye climbed on.
Whomp! Another vehicle blew.
Marcie turned the throttle. The wheels spun in the mud, the vehicle at a snaking standstill before it shot off on a swerving path.
Whomp! Another vehicle exploded as they tore past it, the buggy’s engine roaring from where she twisted hard.
Many of the guards burst from their dorms as Marcie passed them, her vision highlighting each and every threat while they headed for their vehicles rather than her.
Whomp!
Marcie passed the barn with most of the sleepers inside and turned a hard left, the back of the buggy sliding in the mud before she pulled up in the shadows. At any other time, the idling engine might have attracted attention.
Whomp!
“Wait here,” Marcie said to the Eye, jumping from the buggy and running along the side of the building. She made her way around the front, a stream of guards pouring out and charging at the fire. The shadows were deep enough to keep her hidden. No sight of the kid in the fur coat yet. Hopefully he hadn’t been among the first to leave.
After about twenty seconds, most of the guards had left. But no kid in the coat. Marcie charged into the building, meeting a woman with a blow to the chin, knocking her out mid-step.
Three guards remained inside, clambering from their beds. Two men and the boy in the fur coat.
“You cunt,” one of the guards snapped at her. “What the fuck have you done?”
Marcie kicked him between the legs. A jackhammer blow driven by cybernetics, he lifted from the ground and something cracked. Probably his pelvis. As he fell, she punched the one beside him on the nose and grabbed the kid in the fur coat, pulling him out of there, his feet dragging through the mud.
“Why have you brought him with you?” the Eye said as Marcie returned.
“We need him.”
“What the hell for?”
Marcie threw the kid with the coat in the back of the buggy before taking to the driver’s seat again.
The thick tyres kicked up a spray of mud as she took off in the direction of the gates.
Just two guards remained on the gates. Both were armed, and both raised their weapons as if they might be up for the fight. Marcie twisted the throttle and the engine screamed. The guards cleared her path, the thin gates buckling and flying away on impact with a loud crash!
Marcie brought the buggy to a stop. The flames from the burning vehicles lit up the night. As they’d driven away, several more loud explosions reported across the wastelands. Two large axes in the back of the vehicle, she retrieved one and gave the other one to the Eye. She stood over the kid, who had been stripped of his coat and now lay on the buggy’s small floor, naked from the waist up. “Do you know where the traps are between here and Prime City?”
“Huh?” the boy said.
“The traps, moron. Do you know where the traps are? We need to get to Prime City, and we need you to drive without landing us in what I’m learning is one of many traps in this cursed place. You try to fuck us over and I’ll cut your throat with a rusty and blunt knife. Unless you don’t know of the traps, that is? If that’s the case, you’re already useless to us.”
The boy shook his head and sat up, showing Marcie the palms of his hands to implore her. “No, I can take you.”
“We all good?” Marcie said.
The Eye checked the small hidden pocket in his coat and showed Marcie the microchip.
As the boy climbed into the driver’s seat, Marcie got in behind him. “Any sign this clown’s trying to trick us, we end him, okay?”
The Eye wrung his grip on his axe. “It’ll be my pleasure.” He then reached out and squeezed the top of Marcie’s left arm. “Thank you.”
Marcie shrugged before cuffing the side of the boy’s head. “Right, you little fuckwit, take us to Prime City and we might let you live.”
Chapter 24
The noisy engine quietened down as they closed in on the dark and imposing wall. Lights burst from the top of Prime City like a multicoloured neon torch pointed at the clouds. The second the city’s perimeter had come into view, it appeared to stretch impossibly wide as if it had no end, and if it did, the only way to get a true understanding of its size would be to view it from space.
Not that he’d given them any reason to doubt him so far, but Marcie still leaned close to the kid driving the buggy. For at least the twentieth time she reminded him, “You screw us over and I’ll cut your throat.”
Although the boy scrunched his face, he’d given up responding. The only way to prove himself would be to deliver them to the city.
And maybe Marcie had been overcompensating. Directing her rage on their child chauffeur because if she paused to let her mind wander for too long, it replayed what had just happened. Sure, she’d contributed in a large part to Horace’s death, but she hadn’t actually pulled the trigger. But no matter how she looked at it, she’d murdered those gang members in cold blood. They might have deserved it, but taking a life, no matter how justified, always took its pound of flesh.
The Eye had refused to look at Marcie for the entire journey, wincing from time to time at whatever internal narrative he had tormenting him. It couldn’t have been easy to be in an environment that so reminded him of his childhood trauma.
The kid driving the buggy stopped about fifty metres from Prime City’s entrance. Two guards, a man and a woman, stood either side of two large chrome doors built into the wall. To their right stood a smaller black door.
Marcie let the Eye off the buggy first. He discarded the axe he’d used to encourage the kid to drive them there. As she stepped off, rolling her right shoulder to relieve the sting from the taser burn, she said to their driver, “You need to think on.”
“What?”
“You need to think on. The way you’re living your life is wrong.”
“And who the fuck are you?”
“Huh?”
“Who the fuck are you to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be doing? Like you know what it’s like to live out here. Like you can make some kind of judgement on how we live from your life of luxury. How much is on that credit card? Ten thousand? What do you know, princess?”
Although Marcie drew a breath to reply, the kid cut her off. “By making me take you across the wastelands, by making me an accomplice, you’ve given me an impossible choice. Do I return to my army and hope they forgive me? Which they won’t. Or do I try to join another gang and hope they’ll spare my life? Which they won’t.”
“Why don’t you give up your life in the wastelands and go to one of the cities?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” He pointed at the entrance to Prime City. “What do you think will happen if I turn up at their door? At best they’ll turn me away. Our kind aren’t welcome in civilised society. So spare me your bullshit lectures. You’ve gotten what you wanted from me. Now get the fuck off this buggy and leave me to find a rock to crawl under until someone finds me and slits my throat.”
Marcie stepped off the buggy, the engine screaming from where the kid accelerated away, spraying her with mud and smothering her with black exhaust fumes. She worked her tongue in an attempt to rid it of the foul taste of molten rubber.
All the while, the Eye had stood off to the side, his hands on his hips. When Marcie approached him, he raised his eyebrows. “That went well.”
Marcie walked past him towards the entrance to Prime City. She ran her fingers around the plastic rectangle in her pocket, tracing the shape of the credit card. “At least we’ve made it.”
“We’re outside,” the Eye said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We haven’t made it yet.”
Both guar
ds stood over six feet. Both were almost as wide. Tall, rectangular, imposing. They were built like wardrobes. They stared at Marcie and the Eye.
“Uh …” Marcie said.
The woman had shock white skin, her jet-black hair scraped back in a ponytail. “Uh?”
“We want to come into Prime City.”
“You and everyone else. And I must say, we in Prime City take pride in the freedom we give to our citizens in how they express themselves. But that coat”—she nodded at the Eye—“really pushes our liberalism to the edge.” She turned her back on the Eye and focused on Marcie again. “Show me your forearm.”
Marcie and the Eye shared a look with one another before she pulled her sleeve back on her right arm and held it in the woman’s direction. The woman had a wand scanner, which she ran across Marcie’s arm. It projected a bar of red light on her skin. “Is it in the other arm?”
“Is what in the other arm?”
“Your visa.”
“What visa?”
The woman tutted before turning to the Eye. “I don’t suppose you have one either?”
The Eye shook his head, and the male guard pressed his finger to a scanner. A smaller metal door on his right popped open. Black and thick like it belonged on a prison, it lacked the sleek grace of the shining double doors. He fixed them with a scowl as if opening the door was enough.
“What’s this?” Marcie said, leading the Eye towards the doorway. “The tradesman’s entrance?”
“The Black Hole,” the woman said.
Marcie paused and shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“You don’t have a visa, so you have two options—go into the Black Hole and get one, or fuck off. It’s your choice.”
A ripple shimmered through Marcie’s arms and legs, but she resisted the urge to ball her fists. “How do we get visas in there?”
The male guard finally spoke. “Go and see Mads about it. He’s super approachable.”
The guards laughed.
“Now make a choice,” the woman said. “You’re making the place look untidy.”
The Eye shrugged. “Where else are we going to go? Maybe tomorrow, when it’s light, we can reassess and make a better decision.”
Marcie tutted.
The wide woman’s hand went to a baton on her hip. “Watch yourself, young lady.”
Marcie bit back her response. Avoiding eye contact with the woman because it helped her hold onto her reply, she went first, walking through the smaller, darker doorway into the Black Hole.
Chapter 25
Marcie turned right from the gloomy tunnel into the Black Hole and stopped dead.
The Eye slammed into the back of her before coming to her side. “And I thought the Blind Spot was garish.”
A similar neon glow Marcie had come to associate with her home, but amplified. Multiple signs hung over every establishment. Red neon cherries with green stalks, blue phallic rockets, open signs, closed signs, representations of plants she’d never seen before with sprouting yellow leaves. Glow-in-the-dark graffiti decorated the few spaces that weren’t dominated by lights. Like with the signs, there were too many tags and murals to process.
In the distance stood the lush towers of Prime City. Stilted penthouses allowed the haves to separate themselves from the have-nots. Shining skyscrapers pointed at the sky as if displaying their aspiration to get even farther away from the ground.
Despite it being the early hours of the morning, the streets were packed with people rushing everywhere as if loitering were a crime. The glow from cybernetic eyes, the awkward gaits of those with oversized frames. Like in the Blind Spot, the people here had no shame in their enhancements. Those who weren’t moving hung out on corners and in the mouths of alleys in gangs, everyone adhering to their own unique dress code. Some wore red hats, some green boots, some black jackets. Whatever they chose to represent their allegiance, they made sure the world knew it. They watched the people pass, predators with full bellies but not completely against the idea of attacking should the reward be sufficiently high.
Marcie and the Eye lacked the purpose of those around them, so inevitably several youths—each of them a year or two older than Marcie—came to investigate. Five red targets in Marcie’s eyes, all of them wore black bomber jackets. They spread out, blocking their way and halting about a metre in front of them. Two girls and three boys, their expressions were blank.
The Eye drew breath as if to speak, but Marcie reached across, touching his arm to silence him. Let them play their hand first. Hopefully she presented an air of calm. After all, they couldn’t see the hairs on her arms and legs standing on end, or her cybernetics shimmering, readying to fight.
A shriek of metal grinding against metal rang through the district. Up to Marcie’s left, she spun around as a train flew over the top of her on a single rail. Where it had once been white, it was now as graffitied as the rest of the place.
A ginger girl sneered. “Bit jumpy, aren’t you? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were new here.” She sniffed in Marcie’s direction. “You smell like fresh meat.”
Again the Eye drew a breath, and again Marcie silenced him with a squeeze of his arm.
“What’s up?” the girl said. “You forgotten how to talk or something?”
The shadows shifted at the edges of Marcie’s vision, red circles zeroing in on the bodies hiding within them. Backup for these five should they need it. And they might need it, but it wouldn’t do Marcie any favours to show what she could do on day one.
A shrieking train ran in the other direction, the thing’s velocity failing to live up to its grinding fanfare.
“How do we find somewhere to stay?”
The ginger girl’s eyes widened. “You got credits?”
“What’s it got to do with you?”
The smile fell from the ginger girl’s face. “You don’t want to be making enemies in this place.”
Marcie looked at those waiting in the shadows. “I’d say in a place like this, I should also be careful about who I choose as my friends.”
A red circle target appeared in the sky. A drone. It had the blue and white colouring of police; a small blue bump on the top no doubt contained a light. “What’s that?” Marcie said, pointing up at the flying camera.
Several of the gang members backed away as the camera closed in on them.
“Is that the police?” She waved at the drone. “Do you think they might be able to help me out?”
Although she held her ground longer than the others, levelling Marcie with a lingering stare, the ginger girl finally shook her head and backed away. She spoke through clenched teeth. “This ain’t over.”
The camera hovered, turning from the girl to Marcie and back again. “Come on,” Marcie said to the Eye, “let’s vanish before they get a chance to follow us.”
“Why didn’t you just knock her out?” the Eye said.
“No need. The fact that I didn’t show the mohawks what I could do got us out of there. I want to keep that card close to my chest. I’ll use my enhancements if I need to.”
“More like when you need to.”
He had a point. The targets in Marcie’s eyes remained on the silhouettes in the shadows. Had she just upset the wrong people?
The Eye pointed past Marcie at a sign nestled in amongst a cluster of many on the other side of the street. It glowed purple and read rooms to let.
Marcie led the Eye across the road, bumping into people as she went, ducking into the reception of the hotel. If it could be called that. The man behind the counter wore a stained T-shirt, several days’ worth of stubble, and had a cigarette hanging from his mouth. From the size of the black bags beneath his eyes, he hadn’t slept for days. His pupils were dilated to the point where they damn near eradicated his irises. Some of the veins in his scleras were as thick as twine.
Although the man looked at Marcie and the Eye when they stopped in front of him, his expression remained unchanged. Marcie slammed her palm again
st the bell on the counter. The shrill strike sent a spasm down the right side of his face.
“Uh … we’re looking for a room.”
“You got credits?”
“Yep.”
“Five hundred per week.”
“What?”
“And a two-thousand deposit.”
“You want two thousand five hundred credits for us to stay here for a week?”
“The deposit’s refundable as long as you don’t trash the place.”
“If this reception’s anything to go by, I’d say the place is already trashed.”
The man smiled, displaying a full set of yellow and wonky teeth. “If you have any problems with it, I’m sure you could go and see Mads to get it sorted.”
Cracks in the walls, the brown carpet sticky underfoot, the varnish peeling from the counter between them. Before Marcie replied, the Eye pulled her away and nodded out towards the street. The red rings in her eyes told her everything she needed to know. “They’ve followed us here,” the Eye said.
The targets in Marcie’s eyes picked them out in the shadows. Twenty, maybe more. “So what, we stay here for the night?”
“He might be robbing us of five hundred credits, but unless you want to go to war out there, it might be the lesser of two evils.”
The man raised his eyebrows when Marcie slid her credit card across the counter. “I wish I’d quoted you more.”
“I’m starting to wish I’d snapped your neck. Now, I’m paying your price, but know if you try to shaft me on the deposit, I’ll rip your still-beating heart out.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“You wouldn’t.”
The man slid Marcie’s credit card back to her with seven thousand five hundred credits remaining. He handed her the key to room one hundred and one. “First floor.”
“Oh, and—”
But before Marcie could finish her sentence, the man pulled a metal shutter down between them. It hit the counter with a crash!
Prime City: A Science Fiction Thriller (Neon Horizon Book 2) Page 10