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

by Michael Robertson

  “You sure you’re up for this one?” Slip said.

  Maintaining her focus on the cage, Marcie leaned close so she didn’t have to shout. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  If Slip replied, Marcie didn’t hear him over the crowd welcoming the new fighter. Her opponent in the previous battle had resembled a bear. He’d been tall and had all upper body strength with his broad shoulders and long powerful arms. But he’d struck no more than a resemblance to the mighty creature. The new challenger had clearly been modelled on a gorilla in every way. She entered the ring on all fours, walking with her hands balled as fists. The lights continued to strobe, turning the fighter’s movements erratic and unpredictable. The roof of the cage suddenly made sense. Handholds hung down in loops at regular intervals. Marcie said, “They’ve set the cage up to give her the advantage.”

  “They saw what you did to their last fighter. You could wait for the next one.”

  “I’ve got to beat the best to get the top bounties, right?”

  Slip shrugged.

  The crowd quietened while the fighter in the ring paced back and forth on all fours, her shoulders rolling like huge round rocks. “Will anyone challenge the mighty Rakimi?”

  The front row of spectators had been leaning against the cage until that moment. As one, they all pulled back.

  “Seventeen fights, seventeen wins, and seventeen successful bounties. Has she already got to the point where no one will step up to challenge her?”

  Maybe Slip had a point. Maybe Marcie should let Rakimi go on her way and pick an easier fight.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the commentator said, “Mads has just told me he’ll up the payout on the bounty for the winner of this fight.”

  Marcie switched to X-ray vision, but the tinted booth overlooking the arena had been shielded to prevent her seeing inside. Mads had to be in there. Had he raised the bounty for her benefit?

  “Anyone?” the commentator said.

  Marcie stepped forward and Slip grabbed her arm. They stared at one another for a second before the boy lowered his head with a bow. “Take care, okay?”

  “Thank you. I will.” Marcie approached the ring to the sound of her own steps against the concrete stairs. Her ears rang with the complete absence of sound.

  She passed a skinny man with long hair and a sneer on his face like an oil stain on a dirty rag. “At least we won’t have to watch her sparing the lives of any more fighters when she’s dead.”

  The white mat, although stained a muddy yellow with gallons of previously spilled blood, had been completely dried by the fan. Marcie twisted her feet as she walked across it to test the grip.

  Rakimi continued to pace at her end of the cage. The strobe had been turned off, showing the livid purple scars decorating her body like stitches on a patchwork quilt. The different sections of skin went from shock white to deep brown. What had she looked like before the surgery? Also, her feet were more primate than human. Large opposable toes to grip the cage’s roof. Had Marcie just entered a zoo enclosure or a fighting pit?

  Crash! A black jacket slammed the cage door shut. Marcie’s already hammering pulse quickened. But she had this. She could dodge bullets, so what did Rakimi have to offer that would prove trickier?

  A loud buzzer blared, the crowd screamed, and Rakimi jumped straight up, catching the cage’s roof. Moving quicker than most people ran, Rakimi scuttled along the ceiling towards Marcie like the spider from her hotel that morning. Another omen like the carcasses in the abattoir? At the last moment, Rakimi swung down, her hands linked together, turning her into a pendulum as she went for Marcie.

  Marcie dropped to her belly, the wind from Rakimi’s attack dragging down the back of her shirt.

  The mat shook when the large woman landed. She threw another two-fisted attack, Marcie rolling away from it as it slammed down with a thunder crack.

  At the opposite end of the cage to her foe, Marcie’s eyes drew a red target around Rakimi, for what good it did. She switched her targeting off. The cage door locked, the top of it sealed; this fight was like getting into a coffin with a scorpion.

  Rakimi took to the rings above again, arachnid in her movement. She moved as fast as she would have on the ground.

  The crowd’s screams made Marcie’s head spin. If she didn’t think of something better than running, they’d get the bloodbath they craved. Twitches streaking the length of her arms and legs, she had the power, she just needed to use it in the correct way.

  Like she’d done the first time, Rakimi used her momentum, gripping on with her feet as she swung her upper body in another pendulous attack. But Marcie went up this time instead of down. Catching the rings above, she kicked Rakimi in the stomach with both feet.

  The gorilla woman hit the ground with a thud! Before she got up, Marcie dropped over her, straddled her, and threw a flurry of hard blows into her face.

  Rakimi flinched and twisted, rolling backwards in an attempt to get away from the attack, her nose bleeding, her eyes closed against the assault. She clearly hadn’t been hit often.

  But what had looked like an escape, Rakimi turned into an attack. She used her opposable toe on her right foot to grab Marcie and launch her into the cage’s roof.

  Marcie’s back cracked when she hit the rings, and she landed on the mat like a dead fish.

  Rakimi loomed over her, spurred on by the crowd’s yells.

  One quick sweep, Marcie took Rakimi’s legs from beneath her and knocked her on her arse.

  As Rakimi rolled away again, Marcie chased her, punching her escaping form with jackhammer blows, dodging her swiping arms and legs.

  One final blow connected with Rakimi’s chin. It not only turned her limp, but it silenced the onlookers.

  A second later, the commentator shouted, “Finish her!”

  But like before, Marcie stepped away from her defeated opponent. This time, she pressed her hands together as if in prayer and bowed at her. But a fight in this arena should end in death, and the boos told her as much.

  The cage door exiting the ring remained locked, even when Marcie shook it. The crowd repeated the chant, “Finish her!”

  Two black jackets entered the ring from the other side. One of them carried a small chrome bolt gun much like the one Marcie had seen Jean executed with in the room beneath the top table.

  “Rakimi, like any great warrior, only wanted to leave this ring as a victor,” the commentator said to the sombre crowd. “She’s heard about Marcie and said if her opponent didn’t have it in them, she wanted to be put down where she lay.”

  A slight spasm twitched through Rakimi’s right arm, and she opened one of her large brown eyes, fixing on Marcie. The black jacket with the bolt gun rested the barrel against her temple. A noble beast reduced to a tired and defeated mess, she watched Marcie as the fwomp of the gun drove a bolt through her brain.

  Another black jacket opened the cage door, letting Marcie leave to the jeers of the crowd. He leaned in and said, “You shouldn’t stay here. The chip with your bounty’s instructions will be delivered to your hotel.”

  Black jackets lined the stairs out of the arena, shielding Marcie and Slip as they left via the steel door, slamming it closed behind them, shutting off the abuse.

  Chapter 39

  If Marcie could have chosen a colour for her flying suit, she would have gone for anything but brown. Of course she appreciated what Slip and his family had done for her, but why did it have to be brown? Mads had given her a forty-eight-hour visa this time. Had she been privy to this information, she would have saved her inquiry regarding Sal’s lungs for this trip. Although, maybe the length of the visa reflected his expectations for how hard it would be to secure their next bounty.

  Prime City had slightly more space to move than the Black Hole, but only slightly. Marcie still rubbed shoulders with almost everyone she passed, and like the Black Hole, everyone moved with purpose. As with the Black Hole, dawdling on the streets attracted the wrong kind of attention.
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  A tidier environment too. The walls were still decorated with graffiti, and the neon glare still advertised whatever pleasure you could partake in. Drugs, sex, and cybernetic enhancements were all on offer in abundance. The occasional more conservatively minded business nestled among them. Small stores selling necessary supplies like synthetic milk and bread. There were even several barbers and salons.

  “Well, well!”

  Marcie paused as three jocks closed in. The cameras on their chests blinked green. They were live-streaming to their viewers. The leader of the three beamed a glaringly white smile. Only the super wealthy had perfect teeth in this city. He had a small goatee and a tattoo along his neck that read flight. It must have been his sponsor. Nineteen at a push, the boy talked as if auditioning to be a news anchor for a major network. “If it isn’t the newest bounty hunter on the block. She seems to think she can go it alone, that she can muscle in on our bounties, and that she can be the cause of a crewcut’s death and not see any repercussions. I call that arrogant.”

  “Pot, kettle,” the Eye said, a police drone now hovering overhead.

  All three jocks closed in around Marcie. The leader looked her up and down. “And what’s with the suit? Is this colour some kind of anti-fashion statement? I mean, if it is”—he applauded her with slow claps—“I say well done.”

  “Sorry,” Slip whispered in Marcie’s ear.

  “Better to have it than not at all.”

  “What?” the bounty hunter said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  The boy looked up at the police drone. “Of course you weren’t. I forgot about your eye in the sky. So what do the police think of you—”

  Marcie cut him off by tearing away the camera clipped to his front and dashing it against the road before stamping on it. Quicker than all three of them, she did the same with the other two, cutting off their connection.

  The female jock—a short girl with a high blonde ponytail—pointed down, her face twisted and puce. “They’re expensive.”

  “I’m sure Daddy will buy you a new one.”

  “You bitch.”

  The girl lunged at Marcie, who moved aside, tripped her, and took off into the crowd. Sure, she could beat them with her eyes closed, but the line of bounty hunters wanting to fight her in this city would probably never end.

  The other two jocks gave chase, the Eye following them with the hijacked drone.

  Time to test out the suit, Marcie weaved through the throng of people, zeroing in on a fire escape attached to the side of a six- to eight-storey apartment block. Black metal stairs, she focused on them instead of the screams and shouts from the people on the street being shoved aside because of the chase.

  The heavy slap of footsteps on her tail, the crowd parted for the jocks, allowing them to keep pace with her. Marcie counted down in her mind from three. On one, she jumped, one of the jocks clipping her heel as they tried to catch her and missed. She caught the black railing on the first floor and dragged herself over, the flimsy walkway shaking when she landed.

  Quicker, smarter, and a better climber than the three of them put together, Marcie opened a lead on her pursuers.

  On the building’s flat roof, Marcie focused on a taller neighbouring block. Fifteen storeys of offices, maybe more, she leaped from the edge of the building, hit a yellow taxi with a thud, and spread her wings, gliding across the impossible gap.

  By the time Marcie landed on the roof of the next building, the jocks had only just reached the top of the fire escape.

  “Why didn’t you kick their arses?” Slip said.

  “No one needed to get hurt.”

  The Eye laughed. “Apart from their precious egos.”

  “So where am I going?” Marcie said.

  A similar arrow to the ones she’d seen the last time she’d been in Prime City, but this time in purple, the Eye flashed directions for her. “I thought you said you’d improved my aug—”

  An image of a woman appeared. She had black hair scraped back in a ponytail. The sides of her head were shaved with three bald lines cutting away from each temple. She had gold teeth, a hard frown, and a thick jaw.

  “Alison Del Rey,” the Eye said. “She’s been behind enough heists in the past four months to now be classed as an expert jewel thief.”

  Alison’s image spun in the right side of Marcie’s vision as she leaped from another building, caught the air with her wings, and weaved through the flying cars, guided by the purple arrow.

  “So far she’s robbed eight jewellers and has stolen over one million credits’ worth of precious stones and metals. She and her gang are also responsible for the death of twelve people.”

  “So why’s her bounty not higher?” Marcie used three cars as stepping stones on her way down to a small office block. Thud, thud, thud. She left the tooting horns behind when she crossed the building and leaped for her next target: a conical bronze monument in the centre of a plaza. She struck its flattened top by kicking off from it. The hollow phallic testament to someone she didn’t know rang like a bell.

  “So far, the only people who have died have been expendable shopworkers. They’re a dime a dozen in this city. No one’s raising the money to pay a bounty for them.”

  “This bounty isn’t from the police?”

  “No, it’s a private one. The funds have been raised by the jewellery stores. And even then, they’re not paying much. It’s more about the gesture than anything.”

  The image of Alison continued to turn in Marcie’s vision. “And they think she’s working alone?”

  “No, they think she’s the brains behind it all. Bring her down and the robberies, and more importantly the deaths of the shopworkers, will cease.”

  The winter sun reflected off the rippling water, Marcie’s eyes quickly adjusting to manage the glare. It had taken about twenty minutes to get to the roof of the warehouse she currently stood on. The salty reek of fish clogged her nostrils, and she pressed the back of her hand to her nose. “Jeez, this place stinks.”

  “This is where the city’s fish supply comes from,” the Eye said, the drone hovering close by.

  Marcie squinted against the hard, cold wind. “I can believe it.”

  A range of ships bobbed on the water while workers unloaded nets and filled wheelbarrows with dead fish. Lorries lined up on the dock. One of them lifted into the skylanes, joined the traffic, and shot away from there. Although most of the daily catch seemed to go elsewhere, the streets were lined with fish stalls, a multicoloured sprawl of tarpaulin flapping in the strong wind.

  Marcie jumped down from the warehouse roof into a quiet alley before she slipped out into the main street.

  “These don’t look like your people, Marcie,” Slip said.

  “And who are my people?”

  “I dunno, but not swearing burly sailors.”

  “You think a few swear words bother me?” When Slip didn’t reply, Marcie added, “Well, it’s a good job I’ve not come here to socialise.”

  “Tell that to them,” the Eye said. He’d clearly logged into the cameras in her glasses, leaving the police drone hovering out of sight above the warehouse.

  Twelve red circles locked onto the gang, one for each member. The split between men and women about even, all of them wore woollen jumpers with holes in, thick trousers, and rubber boots. Despite still being several metres away, Marcie ruffled her nose at their fishy stench. They were clearly a gang, all of them with the left sides of their heads shaved. They’d all dyed their hair garish colours, from pink to luminous green.

  “Who are this lot?”

  The Eye said, “I haven’t got a clue. I’d guess Alison Del Rey has nothing to do with them though. They stand out too much. She would have been caught in days if she associated with losers like this. I wonder if she chose the docks because of both the transient population and the scores of two-bit gangs.”

  The gang carried chains and knives, which they were more than happy to display to Mar
cie as they drew closer.

  “Buy something from one of the stalls,” the Eye said. “I’d imagine the vendors won’t let their customers be harassed.”

  The gang no more than a few metres away, Marcie picked out the burliest vendor. A woman with short grey hair, thick arms, and only half her teeth remaining. “I’d like some fish, please.”

  The woman threw a pit bull’s snarl at the gang while her knuckles turned white on the handle of her twelve-inch knife. They continued past as if they’d not even noticed Marcie.

  The woman had a deeper voice than most men Marcie had met. “What can I get you, sweetheart?”

  “You need to make yourself worth protecting,” the Eye said. “Drop a few hundred credits on her.”

  “Uh,” Marcie said, “can you do me a mix of fish for three hundred credits?”

  The woman smiled. “I certainly can. Any preference?”

  “Whatever you’d recommend.”

  “Payment first around here. You seem like a nice girl, but people have a habit of trying to take things they haven’t paid for.”

  “I understand,” Marcie said and handed the woman the credit card.

  “What the hell?” the Eye said. “Where have all your credits gone?”

  Slip said, “She gave my mum thirty thousand this morning. I think she wanted to help feed my family. I’ve got no dad, you see. He crossed Mads, so Mads killed him.”

  “So why the hell do you work for him?”

  If the Eye hadn’t asked it, Marcie would have.

  “What else should I do? I need to feed my family, and Mads pays.”

  “You’ve ripped her off. You’d best be returning those credits when she comes back to the Black Hole.”

  “No, he hasn’t,” Marcie said. “It was my choice.”

  The fish woman looked up and Marcie smiled.