Chapter 11

Quill ran, the footfall of his boots booming on metal as he pounded across the catwalk. At the end, he leapt over the handrail, falling a half-dozen meters to the top of one of the warehouses on the outskirts of the main power generation station. He landed harder than expected, tumbling forward onto his back. He lay there for a brief moment, struggling to catch his breath as he pushed himself to his feet. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t a teenager anymore. His body wasn’t as light, or as strong, or as limber as it used to be. He needed to be more careful.

He jogged over to the roof’s edge and peered down onto the street in the distance below. Much like the others he’d scouted, it was crawling with enforcers, the lights on their hovercars and tank-like transports flashing red and yellow in the fading light of the late afternoon. The officers milled through the crowd, holding up projections of his crew. As he watched, someone turned and ran from a pair of them. They pursued, yelling and blowing whistles, until a third officer further down the street tackled the running man to the ground. A moment later, he was being hauled away in cuffs.

From this distance, Quill couldn’t tell if he knew who that was. But it wasn’t Sera, and that’s all he cared about. The Ministry could drag the entire rest of the Grid away in chains for all he cared, so long as she was okay.

A rapidly-approaching buzzing sound warned of approaching drones from somewhere behind him. Not bothering to look back, he sized up the gap between him and the lower level building ahead. It was easily five or six meters across. Wide, but clearable if he got a running start. He gave himself a ten-pace sprint, shoving off with his dominant leg when he reached the edge of the building. He sailed across the gap, tucking into a roll as he landed on the other side. Keeping his momentum, he sprang to his feet and kept running. A support truss of another section of Grid infrastructure rose up ahead. Sizing it up, he jumped for one of the metal cross-beams, pulling himself up and onto it. From there, he scrambled up the truss to a trio of wide conduit pipes that led further into the metal rat’s nest of the Grid’s reactor core complex.

Behind him, the drone buzz continued to get closer. If they were as close as they sounded, there was a good chance he’d been spotted. He needed to break line of sight, and fast. If one of those things managed to identify him, half the enforcers in the Bazaar would be on him before he made it a hundred more meters. At the far end of the conduit, he managed to find a tightly-woven collection of pipes, cross-beams, and transformer units a short jump away. He cleared the space and wound himself into it, finding an angle that gave him a clear line of sight back the way he’d just come, without giving anything following him much to see of him in return. He cleared his steam-pistol from its holster and trained it in the direction of the approaching buzz.

The buzzing grew louder and louder, until a hovering black craft maybe a meter in diameter flew into view. The spotlight on its front flicked about, highlighting areas he’d stood and run not ten seconds before. It held its position, idling in place as it scanned around, looking for some sign of him. His instincts had been right. Careful to move as slowly and quietly as possible, Quill shifted in position, bringing the buzzing black disk into the sights of his weapon. He exhaled. He squeezed the trigger.

The pistol hissed loudly as a jet of hyper-compressed steam burst from its barrel. The bullet tore a gaping hole in the drone’s side in a burst of sparks. The disk’s flight grew unstable, but its spotlight jerked onto Quill’s hiding spot. Quill fired again and the spotlight went dark. The drone, no longer able to maintain control of its flight pattern, twisted and flipped in the air, slamming into one of the large metal conduit pipes before tumbling like a stone into the alleyway below. Shoving the pistol back in its holster, Quill scrambled out of his hiding spot.

Several more times he had to duck out of sight as more of the seeker drones buzzed by. The one he’d downed had seemingly managed to broadcast his location before he’d silenced it. While it didn’t seem like they’d managed to get a view of him, the fact that someone was up in the reactor infrastructure shooting down enforcer eyes was more than enough to get him plenty of additional unwanted attention. Once he made it out of the complex and back to scrambling through the lower support structures toward Jakken’s shop, the heat had finally seemed to die back down.

Jakken was an old friend from way back. He dealt in all sorts of goods, from the perfectly mundane to the insanely illegal. Which he dealt in with you depended entirely on how you felt about the Ministry knowing about it. Keep a good secret and look the other way, the man could find you just about anything you wanted, if the price was right. Adding to his reputation, he also made a point of dressing in brightly colored robes, wearing elaborate fake wigs and beards woven with bells, and spoke in a thick Hajiman accent. If you wanted to do business with him while he was in costume, you had better be prepared to haggle with him. And to be accused of making him poor and homeless, no matter how much money you offered him.

The warren he ran his shop out of was in a tightly packed section of the Grid too narrow to allow much more than foot traffic. This decision was deliberate. Enforcers on foot could be easily outrun in a place like this, if you knew your way around. Strip out of your costume once you’re out of sight, and none of the shellheads chasing you would ever be the wiser.

Quill scrambled down a large rusting support strut, cursing gently to himself as the edge of the beam he held nicked one of his fingers. Shifting his weight, he dropped the couple meters to the pavement, sucking on the side of his finger for a few seconds until the blood stopped. From here, he pulled up his hood, gave a quick glance around, and turned into the narrow street.

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In the south end of Grid 19, down past the water reprocessing plant and the lines of sweating millworkers lining up outside cafeteria windows, beneath the rusting sprawl of derelict solar collection arrays and between a narrow corridor of scrap metal and plaster buildings, Sera stood at a blue-awned street stall, haggling with a bearded man over paint.

“Thirty-seven.”

The man swore in a language Sera didn’t speak, raising his hands above his head.

“Thirty-seven! Nag-halash, you will ruin me! How can I feed my family if I take such a loss?! No. Forty-five. Forty-five is a good price for you, mizti.” He gestured broadly as he spoke, causing the red-orange robes he wore to swish gently against the pavement.

Sera shook her head, the faint buzz of a Joy high washing around inside it. The crush of humanity milling back and forth in the tight market corridor filled the air with the din of a hundred voices, and the mixed perfume of spices, and incense, and grime, and sweat hung thick in the air.

“Thirty-seven,” she repeated.

The bearded man swore again, looking around incredulous at anyone who would return his attention. Most seemed content to be looking literally anywhere else.

“Thirty-seven! Thirty-seven credits, she says! Halashti-ma, I will be ruined if I sell for such a price! No, forty-two is more than just.”

Sera smiled in amusement, and shook her head again.

“I will pay thirty-seven, and not a credit more,” she said.

The man’s face reddened, and he shook his head rapidly, causing the numerous metal beads and bells woven into his beard and braided hair to tinkle loudly. He spat on the ground at her feet, and stomped his foot.

“Pah! Nag-halashti megag! You wish to see my children sold to pay for my wives’ food. Thirty-seven! Why not rob me of my clothes too, if you so wish to see me destitute? Thirty-nine. I sell at a loss, for you. Nag-halash, look what I’ve been brought to!”

Sera’s grin widened, and she giggled.

“Thirty-nine’s fine,” she said.

The man’s face immediately went from furious to rapturous, and he clasped his hands together loudly. He bowed several times in quick jingling succession.

“Halash-meshla! A worthy profit indeed! You are a blessing from the gods, mizti!”

Sera opened the leather top-flap of her satchel and pulled out a brightly colored fabric pouch. She fished around in it and pulled out a small handful of battered coins, which she dropped into the man’s eager hands. As soon as they touched his palms, he deftly scooped them away in one hand and dropped them into an open metal lockbox below the makeshift counter in front of him. With the other, he stacked the half-dozen sealed metal paint-pots neatly out in front of the two of them.

“Was that good enough?” Sera whispered conspiratorially.

The bearded man grinned mischievously.

“It’ll do. I have a reputation to uphold, ya know?” he said, pointedly lacking the accent he’d spoken with moments before. “Though I’m glad you agreed at thirty-nine. I’m not sure how much more upset I could’ve acted,” he said. He picked up a faintly-luminous glass bottle and tipped it to his lips.

Sera picked up each paint pot and stowed it in her bag, careful to pack them so they wouldn’t tip over or pop open as she walked. She was in the middle of arranging the last one when the sound of a commotion down the street caught her attention. There was yelling. Someone screamed. She turned in the direction of the noise, then glance back at Jakken.

“What’s that?”

Jakken furrowed his brows and shook his head.

“Not normal. Can’t be good,” he said. He slammed the lockbox under the counter shut, locked it, and hung the long chain holding the key around his neck. “Looks like you’re my last customer for the day. Might wanna get moving.”

Sera closed the flap on her satchel and clasped the buckle. She glanced back in the direction of the noise. Foot traffic was already beginning to stream away from whatever was going on, and the unmistakable buzz of an approaching drone was now getting rapidly louder.

“Be safe, Jakken,” she said, giving him a nod.

He opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was was replaced with a curse when a black disc enforcer drone roared past, only a meter or so over their heads. It came to a stop over the intersection a short distance away, rapidly turning this way and that is if searching for something. It turned back the direction it had come, the articulated spotlight on its front flitting from the face of one bystander to another in rapid succession. All at once, something instinctual screamed inside of her.

It’s looking for YOU! Hide!

The thought flooded her body with adrenaline, but it came a second too late. The drone’s light flashed in her face, then froze.

Oh gods, no…

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Quill was turning onto the far end of the corridor Jakken’s shop resided in when an alert siren suddenly blared to life in the distance directly ahead. The blood in Quill’s veins ran cold.

Oh gods, please don’t be for Sera! Please!

The mass of people that had been milling around the corridor and haggling with street vendors transformed into a rolling tidal wave of bodies as they all collectively tried to get as far away from whatever was causing the alarm as quickly as possible. Quill fought through with difficulty, nearly getting knocked off his feet a couple times as runners, not looking where they were going, attempted to run through him rather than around him.

As the bodies in front of him thinned and he drew closer to Jakken’s shop, he finally got a clear view to the area in front of the store, and he stopped short in horror. The drone emitting the siren hovered a couple meters over Jakken’s storefront, directly above Sera. She was surrounded by a half dozen enforcers. He stood frozen, unsure what to do. As he watched, a metal ball dropped from Sera’s hand, and she shifted her stance into one he recognized all too well. She wasn’t going down without a fight.

In a sudden flurry of movement, she twisted in place. The metal sphere, connected to her hand by a thin metal cable, whirled around her and struck one of the nearest enforcers in the head with enough force that the faceplace on his helmet shattered. He spiraled in the air before crumpling to a heap on the ground.

Now two of the other enforcers moved on her at once, from two different angles. Using different parts of her arms and legs, she rapidly redirected the sphere back around her body before snapping it forward with immense force into the chest of one of the enforcers. The officer was propelled backward into the wall of the building behind him, and didn’t look like he’d be moving again anytime soon. Twisting her body tightly, Sera rolled the cable up around her body, causing the sphere to rapidly redirect into an orbit around her. She shifted her arm, causing the cable to redirect the orbit from horizontal to vertical just as the sphere reached the maximum force of its arc. Quill instinctively flinched as the metal ball smashed down on the head of the third enforcer with enough force to sound like a gunshot. The officer’s body smashed into the pavement so hard it bounced, a flower of red splattered beneath it. Then, all at once, Sera was running, the remaining enforcers caught so off-guard by the sudden change in tactics that she managed to get a decent head start. And she was running right for him.

For the briefest of moments, Quill felt a thrill of pride in his sister.

Then the drone over Jakken’s shop spun in place. Its front carapace opened, and with a loud pop, something flew out of it. Quill watched, horrified as the stun-wire bolt struck Sera in the back. She made it a few more steps before the wire now connecting her to the drone flared orange in an electrical surge. All at once, she lost control of her limbs, slamming heavily face-first into the pavement.

Unable to help himself, Quill screamed out for her. He moved to run for her when the drone’s spotlight flashing in his face brought him screeching back to reality. One of the enforcers pointed at him while two others lifted her limp body off the road. Another in the distance readied a stun-lance.

You can’t save her here, something inside him said.

Don’t be stupid. If you fight now, you will lose.

Every single fiber of him begged him to stay. To be the hero. To keep her safe. That if he let her go now, he was never going to see her again. He felt like he was going to vomit.

Run, Quill.

He watched as the drone prepared to fire another stun-wire. The end of the enforcer’s stun-lance flared to life. He had to save her. He had to.

Someone grabbed firmly on his back and spun him around. Jakken’s face was wild, but determined. He shoved Quill past him.

“Run, you swiving idiot! RUN!” He shouted.

Not giving his brain another moment to change its mind, Quill ran, tears and sobs pouring out of him as his feet pounded the pavement.

Behind him, he heard the fading sound of Jakken’s voice yelling obscenities at the enforcers. Then a loud pop echoed off the corridor walls. Then silence.