"Call Ash," she said. "Have her meet us on the roof."
I nodded and slipped into the Stream. The incessant buzzing receded, squelched by the immutable silence of the virtual network. The reprieve from my physical circumstance was a welcomed gift.
I tracked Ash, slid her a message, and sprung out of the Stream. No sense waiting for her reply. The roof was our only out and either Ash would be there waiting or she wouldn't.
"Okay, let's go," I said.
"What?"
"Let's go," I shouted over the din.
Raines dipped her head in acknowledgment and sprinted down the row of servers we were squashed between. I ramped my speed implants to keep pace.
The aisle terminated at a service lane for maintenance vehicles. We slid into the intersection at the same moment a trio of guards emerged a dozen rows down. One of the guards raised a hand to point, the other two opted for their weapons.
Words were shouted and lost to the noisy room.
We didn't stick around to ask for a repeat. Turning back the way we came, we milked our legs for every ounce of speed they had to give.
Some quick math informed me we were about to become sitting ducks. I grabbed Raines' shoulder and pulled her to a stop. She looked back with eyes so wide I saw my reflection in her pupils. I gestured at the ceiling with a finger. Raines, a charades champion in a former life, took my meaning immediately.
Pivoting to the wall of computer terminals on my left, I took two steps, planted a foot against the vent grate at knee height, and jumped for all I was worth. I snagged the lip with straining fingertips and pulled myself atop the massive machine like a swimmer flopping out of a pool.
On my belly, I reached for Raines. She climbed my arm like a gym rope. Using my belt for leverage, she hoisted herself up and over as the guards rounded the corner at the head of the boulevard.
An enthusiastic guard raised his weapon, but stopped short thanks to his comrades. Firing into the servers would cost more lives than just our own. For the moment, we were shielded by the millions of lives housed and monitored within those computers.
We ran towards the nearest wall. The terminals were half a foot wider than shoulder width, making the task of sprinting at full speed a question of precision. The guards pursued from the alleyway below, gaining distance with every step. Soon they'd be close enough for an open shot.
I spied a door across the room. Didn't know where it went, but that hardly mattered. Raines followed the direction indicated by my finger, stepped sideways, and leaped to the row of terminals adjacent to ours without a moment of hesitation. She carried her momentum and launched again to the next stack. A handful of seconds later and she'd put five rows between us.
My turn.
Clearing the ten-foot gap between terminals was easier than expected. Executing the land-step-jump combination was not.
I cleared the first jump, but mistimed the follow-through and jumped too soon for the second. My feet pedaled the air for more distance, but it didn't help. I came up well short of the next row of towers and slammed chest first into the wall of computers. Air whooshed out of my lungs.
My hand dragged across the grate. A couple fingers slid through the narrow diamond-shaped openings and arrested my fall. The sharp metal ripped the tender flesh of my palm, but I managed to hold on. I struggled back on top of the machine and wiped bloody prints on my pants as a guard scrambled atop a terminal two rows over. His eyes thrummed with the intensity of nanites supercharging his muscles. He could probably outrun me with only one leg.
I had nothing to do but try, so I sprinted back towards the maintenance lane, no longer trusting Raines' method of hop-skipping.
Raines had almost reached the exit, but I was running perpendicular to her. Somehow I needed to reroute myself in her direction. I figured if I could stay ahead of the guard on my left, and get to the service lane, I should make it to the door a little after Raines.
Those hopes were dashed by two guards streaking down the service lane on a couple scooter-class Hummin'Birds. That reminded me to ask Felix Cross, next time we spoke, why he insisted on naming all the vehicles coming out of Phoenix Corp after birds.
My lungs felt used, a rag slimy with oil and set to flame. Every breath was a mouthful of water going down the wrong tube. Drowning with air.
My heart grated with every beat, chafing that poor contracting muscle raw.
Time was running out.
I was running out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Living Is A Young Man's Game
Seconds were all that remained before I'd be overtaken by the guards charging across the massive mainframe room on Hummin'Birds. Lacking a better option, I clenched my jaw and flung myself to the adjacent row of terminals. The world passed by in slow motion. I nailed the landing. My momentum carried me and I leaped again. The second landing was rougher than the first, but I salvaged it.
I glanced over my shoulder to see the guard doing his own variation of hopscotch across the terminals; he didn't seem to find it as difficult as me. The gift of youth, I told myself.
After a third jump, a fumbled landing, and an aborted fourth attempt, I bolted left to where my terminal overlooked the maintenance highway.
The floor stared up at me ten feet below. The kernel of a plan evolved in the most primitive region of my brain, the fight-or-flight at any cost sector. I acted on the plan before the higher processing portions could find the obvious fault and issue a more sane decision such as, don't do it.
I paused for approximately thirteen nanoseconds while the guard on my left completed his final jump onto my stack of towers. Then I leaped back to the row of terminals from which he and I had just come. The entirety of my focus was on sticking the landing and getting a strong second jump.
Impromptu calculations from my nanocomp reassured me that what I was attempting fell within the range of theoretically possible, if not wholly improbable. The slimmest margin of difference separated the two, but I convinced myself that would be enough.
The key was full commitment.
And I did. I committed like a baby bird testing its gift of flight for the first time and jumped harder than I had ever jumped before. I would have drifted lazily through the air, if not for my arms flailing wildly at my sides. I sailed over the top of the next row of terminals like a drunken superhero.
The man driving the Hummin'Bird saw me coming. His nanocomp probably dilated time, giving him precious seconds to process what was about to happen. Unfortunately, his perception of time couldn't stop the reality of physics.
Physics that carried him forward with too much momentum to avoid colliding with the fully grown man hurtling towards him. A quarter of a second later I landed on him.
The Hummin'Bird lurched, followed by myself and the driver rocketing off the back end. I had the man wrapped in a mama-bear death hug with the hopes of using him to dampen my landing.
We hit the ground, a high dive belly flop. My head snapped forward, bashing my face into the driver's helmet. The world wobbled out of focus. I lost my grip on the guard. We skittered across the floor in a tangle of limbs.
The world evolved into an ever-changing kaleidoscope of shapes, sounds, and pains. Protect the valuables: knees, elbows, and head. That's what they teach you in the Academy, anyways. In the absence of a better articulated plan, my body relied on muscle memory, which accounted for practically nothing given the novelty of the current situation.
Skin squeaked against metal until I came to a full stop. A patch of skin running the length of my calf had rubbed off, leaving an exposed layer of pinkish red blubber glistening beneath. The majority of the messages emanating from that appendage were terminated by my nanocomp, but it couldn't stop them all. The rest were left for me to grit my teeth and suffer through.
Over the hum of machinery, I heard the Hummin'Bird clanging across the smart-metal floor, no longer in possession of its driver, and therefore its mind. From a certain perspective the jump couldn't hav
e been executed any better. Despite the odds, I'd managed to get full body-on-body contact, rather than simply splattering myself across the Hummin'Bird's windshield.
I scanned the battlefield: the driver lay on his back where he'd rolled to a stop, the other driver had pulled a U-turn a thousand feet down the corridor, and a third guard was lowering himself off a stack of terminals.
In the trench formed by computer towers, I felt relatively safe from energy rifles and vortex pistols set to a lethal setting, so at least the world wasn't entirely against me.
The driver of the dispossessed Bird groaned and tried rolling to his knees. His hands groped for the weapon at his side. Too slow.
I pounced, driving my foot into the black reflective glass of his helmet. His head pinged back, and the tension from his muscles ebbed. The man had only been doing his job, which filled me with no insignificant amount of guilt. But I couldn't afford to process that guilt. I had to keep moving forward.
I stripped the pistol and battle baton from the man's belt. The sound of boots approaching from behind was the rhythmic beat of a drum. The black glass from the driver's helmet offered a distorted reflection of my soon-to-be attacker, his battle baton out and ready.
Light steps closed the distance quickly. It was the same man who'd chased me across the computer terminals. No doubt my physical superior. In a fair fight he'd win every time.
But this wouldn't be a fair fight.
I forced myself to wait; to maintain the element of surprise.
When he was less than five feet away, I flicked my wrist, extending the battle baton to its full three-foot length, and spun.
The guard saw the weapon; his face sparked with the realization he'd been had. His feet failed to find the required traction to sidestep the wide arc I traced with my baton toward his knee.
Metal cracked against bone.
The man grunted as he stumbled past. He managed two more steps before crumpling beside his fallen compatriot. His baton rolled away from fingertips too occupied with clutching his knee.
I lowered the intensity of the vortex pistol in my left hand and fired a round at the man. The blast would feel as if a miniature tornado had taken up residence inside his cranium. Pressure would build behind his eye sockets like an air pump had been jammed in his nose, inflating him. Eardrums, if they didn't perforate upon the initial blast, would bow inward and distort balance and equilibrium. Every head tilt would become a roller coaster ripping through a maze of fun-house mirrors.
It wouldn't kill him, but it wouldn't leave him smiling, either.
That is, if he was unlucky enough to maintain consciousness.
Which left one guard barring my rendezvous with Raines.
A hundred feet down aisle he'd parked his Hummin'Bird sideways in the middle of the lane, an improvised road block. It wouldn't stop me, but it's the thought that counts.
The guard drew his vortex pistol and fired a round. I was caught flat-footed, thinking, There's no way he's going to shoot.
A smoke ring blown from the lips of a giant spiraled towards me. I dove between a row of computer terminals on my right. A funnel of air rushed past.
The man had set his pistol to a low density, high dispersal setting which accounted for his apparent lack of concern for the field of servers surrounding us. The blast wouldn't kill me. Knock me down, yes. But it wouldn't even knock me out. I'd be awake to feel my face swelling like an overripe zit.
I toggled between settings on my own pistol, dropped to the floor, and poked my head out from behind the wall of terminals. The guard stood to attention in the center of the aisle, poised with weapon in hand.
He fired once.
I fired twice.
His vortex ring collided with my first. They canceled each other out in a swirl of smoke and vapor.
My second shot skimmed through the wake. The guard barely registered the danger in time, and dove for cover. His Hummin'Bird wasn't so lucky. It took the full brunt of the blast. Gale-strength winds flung the vehicle hundreds of feet down the aisle. It toppled across the floor before skidding to a stop against a bank of servers with the sickening crunch of metal on metal.
I prayed for superficial damage to the terminal, otherwise I might have just committed mass murder. Those were thoughts I couldn't afford to ponder 'cause the guard, by cowering for cover, had given me an opportunity.
I sprinted into the corridor. The man popped out from his hiding place and fired three shots in rapid succession. Adrenaline lit a fire in my loins and I cleared the aisle, sliding feet first into the next row well ahead of the first vortex ring.
Now, on the same side of the corridor as the guard, I imagined his position in my mind's eye. Five rows separated us. I think.
I leaped atop the terminal. A task that was, surprisingly, easier than it had been before. Feeling confident with my guess of five aisles, I clutched the vortex pistol in my right hand, and jumped the gap.
I flicked off the portion of brain responsible for conscious thought and relied on pure motor memory.
Land. Step. Jump.
Land. Step. Jump.
Land. Step. Jump.
One more.
Land. I took a deep breath. My forward momentum carried me.
Step. I took aim with my arm locked at full extension.
Jump.
I aimed between my legs where the guard should have been, ready to blast him from above like a weaponized Eagle.
Only one problem.
He wasn't there.
Before my feet touched the ground, over the ruckus of white noise, I heard a familiar whoosh.
He had the drop on me, a fact confirmed a split second later when the vortex ring chucked me across the room like a piece of garbage fluttering on the breeze.
I transformed into a trapeze artist, flying through the air thinking, Land, Step, Jump, but there was no graceful way to dismount that ride.
My worldview rapidly cycled between the shiny support beams of the ceiling and the smooth, unmarked floor. I just happened to be looking up at the ceiling when I landed. The ground punched me in the liver with a blunt fist. I gasped into the pain, momentarily forgetting my eyes bulging in their sockets thanks to the vortex tainting my equilibrium.
Sprawled on all fours, I rubbed my temples in a futile attempt to massage away the congestion. I worked my jaw up and down, then plugged my nose and blew hard. Anything to equalize the shifting pressure in my skull.
Nothing helped.
Despite my troubles, though, I wasn't completely incapacitated. Over the sound of my labored breathing I heard the guard sprinting towards me. He yelled something about not moving, and me being under arrest, but leprechauns were doing a jig on my eardrums, and his words weren't making it past the bouncer.
I scrambled on hands and knees to where my pistol had slid away during my fall. I willed my arms and legs to crawl faster, which is about the most degrading form of transportation I can think of for a man my age and reputable standing in society to do.
A pair of shins appeared in front of me and kicked the pistol away as my fingers grazed its smooth reflective surface.
That was my last hope. Funny how many times I'd thought that about a gun in my lifetime. In a future life, I'm hoping for a docile career. Perhaps something behind a desk.
No guns.
I'm tired of guns.
I plopped onto my ass. No point in crawling anymore, if in fact there ever had been. Might as well face whatever came next with a sliver of dignity.
With legs splayed out in front of me I looked up into the gun, hoping the guard wouldn't turn my brain to pudding with a low-intensity blast to the face.
He stood over me, an action figure pulled from a movie poster, his face a study in grit and determination.
I opened my mouth to say something about surrendering when a spiral of air struck the man in the side. He was blasted clear into and past oblivion before I registered the surprise.
The guard slammed into the side of a t
erminal before dropping with a grunt.
"Huh?" I mumbled, turning left to find the source of the shot.
Raines straddled a Hummin'Bird with a dented frame, a plume of air rising off the still-hot muzzle of her pistol. I staggered to my feet and tried walking in a straight line, a task I soon realized was impossible on jellyfish legs. I gave up and settled for a drunken swagger.
"Nice ride," I said, throwing a noodle leg over the back of the Hummin'Bird. "Where'd you get it?"
"Found it lying around." Raines gunned the accelerator and we went from zero to holy-fuck in the time it took me to swallow my tongue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
First Date With A Killer
Luck has played a larger role in my life than I'd care to admit. So it's not like my indignation has firm ground to stand on when I throw snake-eyes. When you play the cards you're dealt so loosely, you're bound to take some bad beats.
Though perhaps that comes with the implication that I had business playing the hand in the first place. Most of the time I don't, but I still do.
Call it a character flaw.
Those were the thoughts that consumed my attention while standing on the roof of the Vault with my hands stretched towards the sky in some form of sun salutation. Balanced precariously upon the edge of the building, my heels teetered half off the precipice—which I could say, given the state of my waning equilibrium, was positively too close.
The tattered remains of Lou's suit jacket danced in the breeze, possessed by the wind whipping off the side of the building.
I'd step away from the edge, but that would bring me closer to the five Peacekeepers who had, in no uncertain terms, told us not to move a fucking inch.
I respected that request on account of the rifles they used to enforce their words. My gun lay well out of arm's reach on the black asphalt. The sun glinting off its silver sides made it look cheap. A toy for adults running around playing games nobody knows the rules to.
Something about that was funny. It wasn't funny, I knew that. But the whole day, from start to finish, was absurd to such a degree that laughter was the only sane reaction.
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