Data Runner

by Sam A. Patel

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ve gotten really good at this.”

  23

  Then again, maybe I spoke too soon.

  All I see are distant lasers cutting through smoke as they come at me from every direction. I make my way to the east exit of the school. I haven’t seen any soldiers yet but I assume they’re tracking me with infrared, which means they’re also tracking Dexter and Red Tail alongside me. That’s because I’m carrying a military-issue infrared booster capable of ghosting our heat signatures and projecting three bogeys. Yet another cool toy courtesy of Snake.

  I hop onto a handrail and slide down the stairs. Halfway down I feel it give, and the next thing I know the bolts rip out of the wall and nearly send me tumbling, but I manage to catch myself. Round the landing. Take the lower flight all at once. Roll out.

  The wide-open space with the kitchen in back has to be the cafeteria. That’s where I go. I figure the kitchen must have a back door to the alley where all the dumpsters would have been. From my right comes the bang and hiss of another smoke grenade. They’re smoking up the entire school to smoke me out, but so far that’s working to my advantage. I want them keeping eyes on me with infrared. With my infrared booster in play, their tactic becomes my cover. Still, it doesn’t escape me that I’m being herded. The way they’re coming at me from three sides, it’s obvious their aim is to funnel me in one direction. That direction is east. Further into the facility. Toward the river. I can’t let that happen. If I let myself get boxed in with the river at my back, I’ll have nowhere to go but in.

  Door to the alley. Jackpot. Now here is where it gets tricky. I’m supposed to run them away from the rendezvous point with Snake, so I should cross into the next building and lead them through. But now that I know that that’s the direction they’re flushing me in, and the reason why, I have to make an adjustment on the fly. I want to give Snake a big enough window to pick them up, but I can’t let myself get trapped in the process. And since they’re coming at me from all three sides, there is only direction I can go. Up.

  The fire escape is still intact, which makes getting to the roof as easy as climbing stairs. I get to the top of the building in no time. Below me, doors fly open at street-level and a cloud of smoke comes rolling into the alley. And through that, two piercing lasers. The first time I actually see who’s on my tail is when the first two soldiers exit the building and take position. The way they are dressed, in full tactical gear, you would think I’m a terrorist carrying a dirty bomb. I’m not, but whatever I am carrying seems to be just as damning.

  The way the streets are laid out below, I can only go in one of two directions. I pick one and go. Pick up speed. Ready to jump. Ten feet from the ledge, light blasts my eyes. Blind. I slam on the brakes and slide feet first on the slippery rooftop, gauging the distance by feel like a runner coming into second base through the stadium floodlights, until my heel catches the edge of the building. I shield the light with my hand.

  Vortex chopper. That’s why I didn’t hear it. Without a rotor to chop the air, those things are nearly silent. But now that it’s right on top of me, I can hear the blast of its vertical jet as it circles me thirty feet above the rooftop. Finally I am able to block the light enough to see through it. To see the rappelling line drop from the craft to the roof, and the snarling blonde kid standing at the door with dried blood all over his face and a taped gash running down the length of his cheek. In his hand is a carabiner ready to lock on. We make eye contact. He smiles with all but one of his teeth. I guess he survived the bulldozer after all.

  Bigsby dives face-first out of the chopper. I have only seconds until he hits the roof. I have to act fast. The chopper hasn’t changed anything. I still have to get off this building. I take four steps back and gap jump to the next building. My body armor rocks across the surface as I roll out and move on. The vortex chopper can’t swoop in after me until Bigsby has cleared the line, so that gives me a few steps to get ahead of it. Not that I can outrun it, I just have to keep evading it until I can figure out how to elude it, so I can make my escape.

  Evade. Elude. Escape. Because I am an Arcadian runner, and that’s what we do.

  I hear what sounds like a rocket being fired behind me just before a heat blast burns the back of my neck and the shaking building knocks me off my feet. I turn around. Behind me I see the chopper still hovering over Bigsby, who is caught in the line. Between us, a plume of dark smoke rises where just seconds ago was the corner of the building. Now it’s a scorched hole.

  I get to my feet. The chopper dips, rises, fires again.

  The blast from the plasma cutter knocks me down once again as it takes another bite out of the edifice. I spring back to my feet and continue toward the edge. I have to hurry. With that plasma cutter, they could easily raze the entire building if they wanted to. Since they aren’t, it can only mean that Blackburn soldiers are already inside the building and ascending to the roof.

  I run. The plasma cutter fires again. I leap.

  The blast propels me well over the edge of the next building and slams me into the adjacent rooftop. Bigsby finally gets loose and leaps across the first gap while I run for the next. Now I’m one and a half buildings ahead of him, but that lead won’t last when the chopper comes around to intercept me. I have to get off the roof.

  I leap across the next gap. The vortex chopper overtakes me. Bigsby closes in behind me. Explosion. I look ahead thinking it’s the chopper firing at the next building to destabilize the rooftop, but it’s not. The plasma cutter hasn’t even fired. It happens again. This time I realize it’s coming from the street below, and whatever it is has gotten the attention of the chopper because it swoops away just as I get to the next building.

  Before leaping across the next gap I look over the edge to see what has drawn the chopper away. That’s when I see the SUV come flying around so fast it pushes the anti-roll stabilizers on the rear differential to the limit. Seconds later a Humvee comes screeching around after it. Way too fast. I don’t know squat about working on cars, but I do know a little about how they work. Anti-roll differentials have a very low weight capacity, which means they can only be used on light-duty vehicles. Consumer SUVs at best. Certainly not an armored Humvee.

  This one flies off its wheels and scrapes across the road on its side.

  Way to go, Snake!

  The SUV screeches to a halt. The old bakery must have been the site for a major exercise because the entire storefront is riddled with bullet holes and grenade scars, but now it’s the building from which Dexter and Red Tail emerge. The back door of the SUV opens automatically. They jump in. Snake takes off with the vortex chopper closing in.

  Bigsby is half a rooftop away and closing fast, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I hop onto the ledge and drop to the fire escape below. It’s a big drop, so I land hard on the metal grate and slam into the railing that gives a little as the entire platform rattles. I go over the railing, catch the grate with my hands, swing my legs and drop again. This time I fall backwards onto the landing, slamming the railing so hard I think it’s going to snap for sure, but it doesn’t. Bigsby comes crashing down onto the top platform as I go over the top and down to the next landing, this time able to stay on my feet. Just one lache after another. Over the railing, catch the grate, drop to the next one down. Drop and land. This gives me a big lead over Bigsby, who after the initial jump onto the top landing navigates the tight stairs the rest of the way down.

  The footfall of Blackburn soldiers echoes through the streets in every direction, but then suddenly they’re coming straight at me. Through the smoke at the end of the street. Lasers pointed in my direction. One of them fires. With a heat trail that nearly burns off my ear, the plasma drop whizzes past my head and opens a hole the size of my torso in the building behind me. “Holy Crap!” I scream and bolt around the corner just in time to miss another that blows a hole right through the corner.

  Helio guns, otherwi
se known as sundrop guns, follow the same principle as plasma cutters, just more compact. The bullets they fire are actually tiny drops of superheated plasma likened to a single drop of sun. Obviously not as hot or as dense as an actual drop of the sun, but that’s the analogy they use. Not that the technical inaccuracies matter in the least. Judging by the size of the hole it leaves behind, just getting grazed by one would take me down for good.

  Further up the street, the SUV takes evasive maneuvers through a rush of smoke. All of a sudden there is smoke everywhere. All around me. Up and down every street. Smoke like the heaviest fog bank you can imagine. Which would make sense if a hundred smoke grenades had gone off at once, but they didn’t. Besides, this smoke is thicker at the feet and different in texture. Then I see why. This smoke is coming up out of the sewer grates. Of course. Naturally they would have machines like that installed under the facility to reduce visibility or even remove it altogether during exercises. Now it’s being used to disorient me. And once again, all I see are lasers and shadows coming at me through of a cloud of white. It also doesn’t help that I’m getting lightheaded again.

  Whatever eyes I had on the SUV before, it’s all lost in the fog. The more important thing now is what I hear, or in this case what I don’t. I don’t hear the screech of its tires rushing through the streets. That means they must have made the second pickup point, my pickup point. Now I just have to get myself there before I lose my window.

  All at once the vortex chopper fires into the fog as I am blindsided with a tackle, and in that one crazy burst I get thrown into the wall. Bigsby is all over me. He throws me to the ground and lands a fist on my cheek, then a knee to the gut that’s taken by my armor. “I’m going to choke you till you pop, you little bastard!” he growls as he grabs me by the collar and repeatedly lifts and shoves me into the ground. “I’m going to rip that goddamn chip out of your arm and put it on my mantle!”

  Just because I don’t train with the Brentwood High mixed martial arts team doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a thing or two from Dexter. Before Bigsby can land another, I wrap my leg across his hip and turn my body to roll him off. This gets me out from under him and shifts the balance, but that won’t last for long. I try to lock him down the way Dexter showed me but he’s too strong. Each time I twist his arm, he somehow manages to twist it back. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, or maybe we’re just that mismatched. It doesn’t matter. With his field training I’m not going to last two minutes against him in a straight-up grapple. I’m trained for flight, not fight. I have to get on the move again. So I release.

  Bigsby immediately goes for the headlock. This is exactly what I expect him to do, and I am ready for it. I jam my thumb into his eye.

  “Aaaarg!” Bigsby’s head jerks back. I wriggle free and spring to my feet. He tries to grab me before I can take off, but I am already in motion, and he can’t hold on with only one hand. But I hear him get to his feet behind me. I have to turn up another smoke-filled alley, something I know is potentially a bad move, but it’s my only way out.

  My only way out…until the dark outline of a vehicle pulls up at the end of the alley and blocks me in. I look up. Neither building has a fire escape or drainage pipe. No ledges, no ornaments, nothing whatsoever to grab. Both walls are smooth as glass going all the way up to the third floor windows.

  Damn.

  I have no choice. I have to go for it. Through the rolling fog I visualize my lane. Push off the rear tire. Run up the quarter panel. Kong vault over the top.

  Five steps away.

  I am ready. But just before I leap, the rear door opens, and I suddenly realize it isn’t their ride but mine. Snake’s SUV. They must have seen me running and moved to intercept me. Instead of tracing up and over the thing, I simply hop in.

  Red Tail has moved to the front seat, and Dexter’s eyes are trained on the windows like a hawk. I’m not sure whether I’m going to vomit or pass out. Red Tail sees me go for an energy bar and stops me the only way she can, by handing me a sandwich wrapped in cellophane. “You keep eating those energy bars and you’ll be stopped up for days.”

  I revel at the feast before me. Ham and Swiss on honey wheat bread. Real ham and real Swiss, not processed food, and the moment I tear it open I am greeted with a tangy whiff of Dijon mustard. It’s a big sandwich. Under normal circumstances I would probably eat half and save the rest for later, but these aren’t normal circumstances. I have a parasite of data in my arm.

  Dexter and I get knocked around the back as Snake maneuvers the SUV through the streets of Red Hook toward the perimeter of the facility. We pick up two Humvees on our tail but Snake manages to lose one immediately with a sharp high-speed turn. And it seems like we’ve lost the vortex chopper, until it swoops in a minute later. Seeing it pop out of nowhere makes me wonder why it hasn’t been on us the whole time, but then I see Bigsby on a line being retracted back up into the chopper and realize it went back to pick him up. Now that it has him, the thing is on top of us all over again.

  The perimeter fence is fifty yards away. The plasma cutter fires a hard burst that hits between us and the fence, blowing a hole into the ground big enough to swallow the SUV whole. There is high ground to one side, but it ends halfway across the giant ditch. Snake veers for it anyway. We all see what he is doing and brace for flight. Dexter’s seatbelt is already on. I zip mine across my shoulder but keep missing the buckle because I can’t take my eyes off the road. Dexter grabs it out of my hand and clicks it in for me.

  Snake forces the SUV into a lower gear and slams the gas. “Hold on to your butts!”

  The revving engine jumps an entire octave in pitch as our tires leave the ground and we sail clear across the hole… and crash nose-first on the other side.

  The impact throws us all into our belts as the front ends gets crushed, and the entire vehicle slides forward on grill and bumper until the rear end comes crashing down, nearly giving Dexter and me whiplash.

  But that’s not the end of it.

  With my temples still buzzing, we are already crashing through the perimeter fence and busting through a line of barriers. Snake fishtails the vehicle onto an actual street and heads for the tunnel leading out of Red Hook. The vortex chopper stays on us but has to climb higher now that we are off sovereign territory and back on Independent Long Island. The best part about that, it puts the plasma cutter out of range.

  “Now what?” I ask.

  “What else?” says Snake. “Now we get the hell out of here.”

  24

  The vortex chopper does not pick us up again on the other side of the tunnel. There’s no point. We’re in the Free City now, and it can’t fly low enough to keep tabs on us anyway. But that doesn’t mean we’re home free. Far from it. Where the soldiers leave off, the interceptors step in. Before we even get around Ground Zero, three non-military SUVs have already picked us up. One is on our tail, another runs parallel to us one street over, and the third has overtaken us and is somewhere up ahead moving to cut us off.

  “We’re never going to get through this,” says Red Tail.

  “Just wait,” Snake replies then takes a turn so fast that it pulls us all to one side. The anti-roll differentials feel just like that moment of weightlessness when you’re coming out of a skid, except in a skid that moment is fleeting. Anti-roll stabilizers make the entire turn feel like that. Unfortunately, our pursuers also have them and take the turn on the exact same line we do. “Damn!”

  “What did you expect?” asks Red Tail. “This is Blackburn. We’re not going to beat them with optional extras.”

  “Anti-roll isn’t an optional extra,” says Snake. “It’s a post-factory modification.”

  Snake takes another turn just as hard. Harder. This time a light on the dashboard flashes red as the stabilizers fail and two wheels leave the road. Even still, the absolute precision of Snake’s wheel handling brings it around and back down. The SUV behind us figures if Snake can do it, so can th
ey. They bring it around at the same speed.

  A piercing shriek disturbs the night just before the whole thing topples. Not slowly as if giving in to the centrifugal force bit by bit—it happens in one swift motion. The thing just flips onto its side like a toy that’s been flicked by a child—the child being nature and the flick being the immutable laws of Newtonian physics.

  One down, but another is still pacing us one street over, and the third is still somewhere up ahead, and I know it won’t be long before others arrive.

  “You have to let me off,” I say.

  “Are you crazy!?”

  “What are you talking about?” Dexter asks.

  “I don’t think they have any interest in you anymore. Whatever you’ve got, they’ve written it off. It’s this…” I say, indicating my wing. “This is what they’re after.”

  “No, we have to stick together,” says Red Tail.

  “Why, so we can all get taken down together? You said it yourself. We’re never going to get through this. But if we draw them apart, we might have a chance.”

  “I hate to say it,” says Snake, “but I think the Carrion has a point.”

  “His cargo is our responsibility,” she says. “We can’t just drop him off.”

  “His cargo will be in their hands if we don’t. We’re bound on both sides by river. I don’t see another option.”

  “Fine, then let me off too.”

  “No,” I say. “That serves no purpose.”

  “Um, it will when I save your ass again. How’s that for purpose?”

  “Not this time.”

  Dexter grins. “You’re taking them through the gauntlet, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Look, this is going to get very dicey. There won’t be time to hold your hand, and I don’t want to have to worry about you.”