A surging wave of panic swept it all away, and my body came back online screaming with pain and still vibrating. I sat up and spun around the dark space, searching with shaking hands for my Roon, my fingers closing around it just as the rathole above me flipped downward again, the weakened light of the hover’s searchlights lighting me up. I didn’t pause to think or aim, I just raised the gun and spat three shots upward. The rathole snapped closed again and I spun and forced myself into a staggering, unhappy sprint down a narrow man-made tunnel. I wasn’t in the sewers, which had long been the underground highway for the criminals of Old New York. This was a tunnel built specifically as the escape route for this place. Good work, too, a tight fit but the air felt dry and sealed, the stone floor solid beneath my feet. I’d been in escape tunnels that had felt ready to come down on my head if I sneezed, so I appreciated a competent job.
I tried to pick up my pace. I figured I had an SSF officer on my trail, and the System Pigs weren’t like the Crushers they commanded-they weren’t easily scared and they weren’t stupid. I wasn’t going to have much of a lead. As I skidded around the first turn, I heard the rathole slap open again, and the heavy thud of someone dropping down onto the floor. The SSF officer, of course, would not have fallen like a sack of shit onto the floor and been stunned for a count of three. He’d undoubtedly landed gracefully on his feet, gun held firmly in one hand. The System Pigs annoyed me with their smirking perfection: They pushed people like me around, shook us down-it would be okay if they were really trying to enforce the law, but the SSF officers were just as bad as us-worse; they had that badge, and a budget behind them, which meant no one short of Internal Affairs could slow them down.
I knew what was waiting for me if this one caught me: a bullet in the head. There was no due process with them, no rules of law. They could do whatever they liked, so they did. The only question was, would I get a ridiculous speech before the bullet in the head, or not?
I kept running.
The tunnel wasn’t very long, of course. After about fifty feet more of twisting and turning, I stumbled to a halt just before a blank wall of earth. I looked up, and there, a few feet above me, was the ass end of a ladder bolted in place. Internally, I swore; there had probably been something nice and convenient to boost up on-an old stool, something-that the clever bastards who’d built the place had pulled up after them just in case they were pursued. For a second I stood there hating them with all I had, and then there was a bellow from behind me in the tunnel.
“You made me run!” the System Pig shouted. “I’m going to eat your fucking kidneys, asshole, for making me run.”
Thinking that my day was improving at a record rate, I stuffed my gun into my pocket, gathered everything I had left, and leaped for the ladder, catching the bottom rung with the tips of one hand’s fingers. Grunting through clenched teeth, I pulled until I could get my other hand onto the rung, and then reached for the next, legs dangling and breath whistling in and out of my nose. Arms trembling, I pulled one more time and managed to get one foot onto the bottom rung, pulling the rest of myself up just as two bullets smacked into the wall where I’d just been hanging.
“Motherfucker,” I heard the SSF officer hiss. I didn’t look back, I just kept pulling for my life. The only thing worse than being shot in the back by a System Pig would be getting shot in the ass.
I emerged, panting and sweating, into a damp-feeling space, a basement a block away, just outside the perimeter the cops had set up. It was dark, so dark I was blinded for a moment before dim shadows made themselves apparent. I didn’t stop to enjoy the view, I crawled out of the hole and pushed myself up, spinning fast to get a look around. I had no idea where I was, but the cop was right behind me and I didn’t have time to think up something brilliant. I oriented, squinting, and shot twice at the opening in the floor just to discourage him, and then spun around again, blinking dust and darkness out of my eyes. There were windows, high up and impossible to reach, and vaguely I discerned a stairway leading upward. Everything else was dark, mysterious. I started for the stairs, but at the bottom I paused-where was I running to? What was up there? I’d lived this long because I wasn’t some asshole running around blazing away, being stupid. If I was going to live another day I had to hold on to that.
Sweating freely, I jumped on the first step and heard a satisfyingly loud creak. I mimed running up the stairs, bringing one foot and then another down onto the ancient wood. Then I took a step backward, gingerly, and crept slowly back into the shadows, until I felt a wall behind me, slimy and cold. My eyes had adjusted to the murk, and I could pick out the rathole exit in the center of the room. Just as I came to a dead stop, gun up but held close in toward my body, the System Pig’s head appeared for a second, then dropped down again, trying to draw nervous fire. I stayed stock-still for a few endless seconds. I was a Gunner, I was a professional, and I was damned if this System Cop prick was going to fuck me.
His head reappeared. I felt exposed, and my heart leaped inside my chest. He stared right at me… but couldn’t see me. He was blinded, just as I’d been. But I could see him. It was the blond Pig from the street, with the dancing eyes. A chill went through me.
He swept the room with his unseeing eyes and then was up and out of the hole, moving fast. Gun up, he whirled around, calm, but in a hurry. I had the drop on him, I knew it would be easy to pop him… but System Pigs were always tougher to kill than you thought. They always turned out to be luckier than they had right to be. And scraping your living off the streets of Old New York, you lived by one basic rule: Don’t fuck with the System Pigs. The Crushers, sure. But the officers, no-too many hotheaded assholes had gone down in flames thinking they could just get the drop on a System Pig and walk away from it.
Wiser men, older men, like me, we bided our time. Besides… it seemed unfair, to be hiding in the dark, taking a sucker shot. Dishonorable.
He saw the stairs and went for them, dropping at the last second and coming up ready to fire. When nothing happened he didn’t hesitate, he sprang up and pounded up the stairs.
Slowly, I let out my breath, and slowly, I drew gritty, moldy air in. The cop’s pounding footsteps grew dimmer, and finally faded completely. I waited for a count of fifty, ready to cut the bastard down if he came back down the stairs, then slowly knelt, allowing myself to breathe in little shallow gasps, quiet. I felt the floor with my aching free hand and selected a good-sized hunk of rock, weighing in my hand before flicking it at the stairs. The rock struck the third step up and then thunked down onto the next step. It sounded like an explosion to my ears, but there was no response.
I took a deep breath, my chest shuddering with its force, and the spots in front of my eyes fading. I just breathed for a few seconds, filling my lungs, and then I sprang, rolling myself into a ball and throwing myself toward the rathole, ending up on my back, gun raised, sweeping it left to right. Nothing happened. It was just dust settling and my panting.
I stood up and took the stairs two by two, emerging into another empty shell of a building, nothing but rubble and load-bearing beams, plaster dust and the remnants of a million hasty camps. I could see the city beyond the walls, dark and empty, and a few blocks away the weak light of the slightly more populated downtown, familiar and, for what it was worth, home-a single room that I had all for myself. Not much but at least I didn’t share it like most of us, fifteen people at a time, or a room shared in shifts of six or eight hours. It was mine.