I eyed the darkness around me. The System Pigs had an eye on the perimeter, obviously, and I didn’t know of any Safe Rooms or friends in the area. To my right, there was the bright glow of the hover, which had shifted position to illuminate the patch of ruined street outside the bar, where an intensifying firefight between cops-Stormers in their ObFu and the poor Crushers in their ill-fitting uniforms, clearly thinking they didn’t get paid enough for this shit-and the shrinking number of hardcases continued, the hardcases ensconced behind two ancient, rusting vehicles on their sides, internal combustion tech, useless except for emergency shelter. The Crushers might as well have been throwing stones at the steel barricades, but the Stormers had high-powered rifles, and were having more success.
I looked up, examining the low and ragged wall I’d just pulled myself over. I felt tired just looking at it, but it was my best shot at this point. The System Cops had almost certainly done a heat-signature scan on the interior of the bar and determined we were all on the run. Running out into the night wasn’t going to get me anywhere. It was back over the wall for me.
I took one last look around, squinting into the blackness around me. There was no way to tell whether some pair of night-visioned eyes was watching the wall, so it was best to just choose my moment by instinct and make my leap. I would have to make it over quietly and smoothly. If I ended up hooked on top of the wall flopping about like a dead fish, I’d just be target practice. The cops were making a statement here: An SSF officer had been killed, and the person responsible was going to be killed in turn, and any place that had given him shelter during the day was going to be leveled to the ground. I either got away completely unnoticed, or I was a dead man-if not today, then tomorrow.
I eyed the top of the wall, took a deep breath, and launched myself at it. Keep moving, keep moving. I tore my hands up on the sharp stone and metal, pain slicing up my arms and lodging in my brain. I heaved with everything I had and pulled myself up, rolling over onto my back. For a second I stared up at the night sky over Old New York, a crisscross of light chains, hovers moving in complex patterns, freight and rich people.
Keep moving, keep moving…
I rolled off the wall and landed softly but awkwardly back inside, instantly crouching and touching the floor with my bloodied hands. I stayed there, trying not to breathe, and peered around the place, listening for any sign that I’d been noticed. There was no change in the cacophony outside, but I didn’t relax, because strolling with her back to me was a Crusher.
Generally, you only feared the Crushers when they came in force; they weren’t the officers, the System Pigs, they were just beat cops with peashooters. I thought of them as just like me, just citizens of the System of Federated Nations who hadn’t had many choices and who’d made what seemed like the best of a bad lot. I only fucked with the Crushers if they fucked with me.
This one was obviously addicted to getting black market genetic augments. She had skinny, normal-looking legs and a skeletal face that hinted at someone who didn’t eat well, or often. In between the two was a broad, fantastically muscled abdomen and chest and two arms that rippled with every gesture. You could get an awful lot done to you-emphasis on awful-by black market surgeons these days, like night-vision eyes or a complete nerve-burn that inured you to pain. The lab-grown muscles were big business. They weren’t strong muscles, and they didn’t last forever-just like all the black market augments, they were inferior tech performed by half-tight asshats-but for a while they looked good, and for some suckers that was all that mattered. Looking at her profile again I figured this one had been diverting her grocery budget to augments for a long time now.
I froze and watched from my shadowed position at the base of the wall. I scanned the room again. No one ever opened one of these illegal places without an exfiltration plan, so I was counting on there being a secret way out. The System Pigs were well-trained-we were all terrified of them for a reason-and well-equipped, but they were arrogant bastards, too. I didn’t think it would have occurred to Blondie out there that one of us rats might actually have managed to slip down a hole and disappear. I studied the bar area, from which the owners had run the place. This was too obvious, of course, because even a dim Crusher like my Lady Hulk here would think to check it out for ratholes. Still, it would have to be a place you could easily get to from the bar, a spot you could roll into within seconds, before any System Pigs showed up with enough on the ball to take notice of such things. My eyes traced the shadows and cracks on the walls, on the floor, and I made out a curiously squared set of cracks in the floor near the makeshift bar.
I took a slow, deep breath, gritty and damp, and fixed the spot in my mind. My heart was pounding and my stomach was in revolt; I regretted every sip of the oily booze they’d been serving. I glanced at the Crusher, walking slowly around the room; it was surprising, sometimes, how long you could hide in plain sight if you kept your head. I was dressed for the shadows, of course-I was a Gunner, we spent half our lives standing in shadowed corners, waiting for someone to walk in through the door and be killed-and the Crusher was bored and obviously not too bright; I figured I could squat there in the dusty shadow of the wall until next week and not be noticed. But I doubted it would just be the Crusher and me for much longer. The Pigs were going to note they hadn’t scooped up anyone that looked like me soon enough, and while perhaps not very surprised at this discovery they’d at least do a final sweep of the area before giving up. I had to get out in the next few minutes, while my dimwitted colleagues continued to provide distraction and sound cover.
I considered. I couldn’t just toss a chunk of concrete and distract Lady Hulk; with the hollow punching noise of rounds denting metal, the angry shouts and the continuing roar of the hover, she probably wouldn’t hear it. I squatted, listening for a second or two, chewing on it, and the bullets gave me a sudden inspiration. I tightened my grip on my Roon and considered Lady Hulk and the noise outside. I thought it very probable that no one outside would notice one more shot fired, and Lady Hulk offered a lot of nonlethal targets on her huge, rippling body. I didn’t want to kill her; she was just doing her job. But she was standing between me and the rest of my miserable life, so she was going to have to take a bullet. I tracked her as subtly as I could as she paced, waited for a fresh volley of fire outside, and popped her in one shoulder. She went over like a wet sack and I launched myself at the rathole in the floor.
I hoped fervently that there wasn’t a lever or catch that had to be manipulated before the hole would open for you. This was the life: one goddamn thing after another. I hadn’t had a peaceful evening in fucking years; it was always this constant race from one emergency to another. Thinking that one more emergency might just kill me, I threw myself bodily at the floor just as two gunshots, sounding ridiculously small and harmless-pop! pop! — burped behind me.
I didn’t have time to think about my bad luck-though bad wasn’t even the right word, they’d have to invent a whole new fucking language to describe my luck. The floor split downward as I hit the spot, and I fell into empty space. A split second of panic free fall, and I hit the ground beneath hard, my teeth rattling in my head, my gun knocked from my hand.
My whole body vibrated, a humming sensation. One jittery heartbeat, two jittery heartbeats, I just lay staring up, my body made of stone and damn, it would be nice to just fall asleep, just fuck it all and close my eyes. Take a rest for the first time since I’d been five, the first time since Unification, when the world was separate nations instead of just the System.