AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
As I hit the street, I’m sweating. I’m scared. I’m fuzkin’ alive!
Nobody gets away from Rath. I’ve seen his playbacks when we’ve reviewed bounties. Thanks to Megaris’ surveillance system, I’ve seen a great many of his kills. I know his average time from capture to death is 14.2 seconds. I know Nobody. Ever. Escapes. But I have. I’ve beaten the first set of odds.
I leave him knowing that the auto-reset will activate in another couple of minutes and also knowing this trick will likely not work twice. He’ll have all his remote codes changed. I wonder who his new admin assistant is. Bryce, probably. Bryce is an idiot. I bet he uses the algo-key to change the codes. If he does, then I might be able to crack them a second time.
I run from my apartment, discarding my augs as I go. I should have taken them off as soon as I ran from work, but I was clinging to the idea that I could keep seeing Megaris as an elite, and they’d be useful to me. But I can’t keep them. And they won’t be useful at all. These things track me with every step I take. I don’t know if Rath showed up at my place because he figured I’d be there, because the retinal scanners at the front door clocked me in, or because my augs have been pinging this whole time. It could have been any of those things. Or all of them.
Going off-grid in Megaris is close to impossible for an elite. We are tracked by our bux transactions, by our augs, and by our eyes. There are scanners absolutely everywhere, taking our retinal prints and logging them. An elite is always on the radar.
So I drop my augs on the ground and stamp on them, heel first, crushing them into dust. It feels like I’m taking off my entire personality, erasing myself from existence.
With the augs removed, the city no longer has the flashing pink and blue ambiance, which made it unique. It is gray and brown. Unrelentingly grey and disgustingly brown. The sky does not glow with an ethereal purple. Clouds roll with a beige tint which is being pumped into them by thousands of smokestacks around the city. I never noticed them before. With augs on, the filthy emissions look like neon pink clouds, and the sky is an ever-rolling vista of pastel beauty occasionally blessed with sparkling rainbow rain. Every building gleams obsidian and is marked boldly with the logo of the corporate inhabitant. Without augs, those buildings are big, gray, windowless blocks, tagged and painted by scum.
The city as I see it now is undeniably in decline. Small green bits of plant push through a multitude of cracks in the sidewalk. A small white flower grows in the midst of horrendous cursing slurs scrawled onto pavements, never seen by elite eyes.
I’m seeing the world for the first time as it really is, and I do not like it one bit. I’ve been wearing augs for as long as I can remember. I wish I could put them back on, but there’s no going back. I’m scum now. Worse than scum. I’m wanted. Other scum will be rewarded if they turn me in. I’m what scum feeds on.
I keep my head down. With the hat drawn down low over my eyes, I’ll be able to avoid being ID’d by most of the drone scanners. If I could get some more bux, I could trade for a pair of scum-fake retinal lenses that give general access to low-tier facilities. I think my bag has a few bux, but I’m not sure because I was interrupted by Rath before I could finish packing. I have to get somewhere to take stock properly. I have to get off the street, away from the retinal scanners.
Megaris covers three hundred square miles and is home to over fifteen million souls. There are two million korabi, five million elite humans serving their needs, and eight million others. Scum. I am a needle in a haystack, the newest scum on Megaris’ many blocks.
Not all scum are equal. Some are scummier than others. There are neighborhoods where some scum live almost as well as elites. There are scum stores, scum traders, general scum services. They barter among themselves and trade in illegal currencies. I might be able to find an ally among them. I have to believe I will.
My knowledge of this city and its inhabitants might just keep me alive long enough to… I don’t even know. There’s no end game besides survival itself: one hour, one minute, one second at a time.
Three
Restarted
Rath
What a fuzkin’ brat.
She has locked me inside my body. All this muscle, and all this power is for nothing. I could have crushed her when I had her in my grip. All I can think about is the way she felt in my hands, how soft and rounded she was beneath my claws. She activated some ancient instinct to be careful with her, a whisper from eternity playing about my ears even before her fingers dashed across my nodes.
