“What in the hell…?”
“What?” Alexei said. He sat up, wiping the blood out from under his nose.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
“See what?”
Another wave of nausea hit and I doubled over. The air rippled in front of me for a second, growing stronger until I clenched my teeth, and swallowed bile back down.
The rippling stopped. The nausea stopped too, just as abruptly, and I found myself staring down at the rigging’s deck.
“See what?” Alexei asked again.
“Nothing.” I looked back down over the city.
Light flickered and one of the city blocks got its lights back. The towers lit up again, and then one by one the blocks surrounding it came back to life. Within seconds the cascade reached Ginzho, and the district blazed back into brilliant, bright color. The graviton plates hummed back to life, tugging the edge of a stray rag in one of the rig’s buckets toward it.
Vamp, the power’s back on.
I see it. We don’t have full control yet, though. Get off the street and get inside.
“What happened?” Alexei asked, his eyes wide. “What was that?”
I didn’t answer him. I just stared out over the city, watching as it came back to life. The sound of overlapping horns and squealing car alarms drifted up for a minute, before easing off, and shifting back toward the reassuring blanket of urban white noise that was only marred by the odd siren.
“Come on,” I said.
“What?” Alexei asked. “Back on the wall?”
The power’s back. We can’t stay up here all night.
He nodded. I gave him a few moments, then opened the gate in the railing and stepped out onto the plates on the other side. I closed my eyes as my center of gravity changed again, feeling a nervousness as I crouched there that I hadn’t felt in years. When the shift was complete, I stood, and waved for him to come out with me.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I took his hand, and coaxed him back out onto the plating. He squeezed my hand tightly as I guided him back toward the gate, and the chaos down on the ground below.
Chapter Fifteen
Back down on the street, things had gotten tense. Several aircars had hit each other during the blackout, and while no one crashed a lot of people were pissed off and the street cops had already called in backup. Fallout from the collisions had rained down onto the crowd and a section of bumper had crashed through the middle of a street vendor’s cart. Sirens filled the air, and as Vamp’s app reinitialized I could see red markers popping up all through the district like someone had knocked down a hornet’s nest.
“Come on,” I said to Alexei. “We have to get off the street.”
“Are we still going to Baishan Park?”
“Yes.”
The streets were gridlocked. The gate hub was clogged, people piling up at the portals while others wove between the crowds looking for news on shop-front LCDs. At the gate, we were already looking at a twenty-minute wait, and it was getting worse by the minute.
“…did you see it?” I heard someone ask as we passed, but when I turned to find the source, I couldn’t figure out who’d said it, but I then realized that quite a few people looked rattled, even scared.
They saw, I realized. When the power dropped, some of them saw something, just for a minute. Not long, but long enough. Long enough to scare them.
The chatter on the street had gotten tense, and confused. Several people pointed up, shouting about something. From down the street, I heard a woman scream.
“What’s happening?” Alexei asked.
“Nothing. Come on.”
I took Alexei by the hand, and he followed as I scooted down the nearest side street. A moving walkway hummed on the other side that would at least get us out of the central square and we hopped it. We nestled in between two groups of clubbers and watched the mobs on the sidewalk stream by, riding the conveyer past the bridge to the nearest metro station. It was as clogged as the gate hub. People were backed up onto the street.
Just then the screens lit up along the shop fronts all flipped from running ads and logos to display a security alert. Governess LeiFang appeared on the screen, her face calm.
“Due to an unforeseen emergency,” she said, “a curfew has been imposed, effective immediately. Citizens will be allotted an hour’s grace period to return to their homes, so for your protection and ours, proceed there immediately by order of Hangfei security.”
I snorted, looking at the mob blocking the metro stairs. An hour was a joke. There wasn’t time for anyone to get home. They’d be lucky to find a room to bunk in.
We started down the next alley over, heading off the main streets and into the maze of the inner-block sprawl. I followed the GPS route to the first turn and met with a chain-link fence that spanned the narrow gap between the two buildings. On the other side, past a long row of old bicycles down by a big metal trash bin, I could see a group of people facing several security officers who held them back.
“What’s happening?” a man screamed, his voice cracking. “What’s happening to us?”
One of the security men grabbed his arm, and the man tried to pull away, still screaming as scaleflies drifted around the fray.
“Calm down!” the officer ordered.
“I saw it above the skylane! I saw it! It—”
The officer jammed his stunner into the man’s ribs, sending him sprawling down onto the sidewalk.
Next to them, a square-jawed woman turned and looked right at me. I saw the recognition on her face, even as she raised her finger to point.
“Hey!”
“Sam…” Alexei said in a low voice, pulling my hand back the way we’d come.
The officer began to march down the narrow alley, her black poncho slapping against the row of bicycles as she passed.
“You are wanted by Hangfei security!” The woman yelled. Several other officers broke from the pack and began to follow her. Eyebot painted each of their faces in the display, and as information began to scroll under each of them several orange blips appeared on the tracker heat map.
“Sam, let’s go…” Alexei said.
I backed away, ushering Alexei behind me as they approached us. We darted back out of alley and farther in between the clusters of buildings, ducking around the corner as they scaled the fence to come after us.
“Shut off your phone,” I told Alexei. “Now. Hurry up.”
He did like I said and I did the same as we scrambled down the narrow alley between rows of trash bins as the footsteps approached behind us.
I spotted a series of boarded basement windows at the base of the sidewalk ahead and ducked behind one of the trash bins to kneel in front of one. I sat back and knocked the panel loose with my feet, then ushered Alexei inside as the board clattered onto the ground.
He went, and I slipped in after him, landing hard on the concrete floor then hugging the wall beneath the window as the officers stormed past outside.
The single open panel didn’t provide much light, but I could see a bunch of furniture arranged in rows around us, covered over with dusty tarps. Far across the room I could make out a sliver of light that might have peeked through the edge of another boarded window.
I took Alexei’s hand and we made our way carefully between the rows of old furniture. As we got closer to the light, I felt something squish under my shoe and grimaced, not sure I wanted to know what it was.
Something smells, Alexei said. It was true. The air had begun to develop a musky, sweaty kind of smell.
I forged on to the sliver of light and sure enough, another basement window had been covered with a wooden panel. I managed to pull it loose, and electric light shined in from outside.