Claustrophobia

Chapter One - Before Boarding - 1

Z9 drove on air. Her kar, a Viper Air BlackSpirit, didn't react to her controls and inputs as much as predict them. She didn't simply drive the machine; she connected with it on a strangely biomechanical level. It seemed telepathic, though Mark23 had never mentioned any aspect of telepathy with the kar. It was just beautiful, nothing more and nothing less.

She was on a deserted highway, one of the roads cutting across Region 37 or somewhere similar. Z9 didn't know. She had lost track of where she was ages ago, simply feeling herself glide over the world as it passed her by on a conveyor belt driven by a simple application of pressure by her right foot. Civilisation drifted past like iceberg dreams. She drifted past civilisation like a spirit herself.

Tonight, not for the first time, she found herself with the image of Xerou Evangra in her head. She saw her from where she had first seen her, in the shadows as the Black Queen emerged from the hotel bathroom. She saw each bead of water, still steaming, trace its way down her skin, traversing the ridge of the scars from each time she had been struck, over and over again. It was these scars, more than anything else, which had deceived her. Scars coupled with the belief that evil did not breed evil, and that pain did not linger beneath the flesh, in the very blood brought forth.

She saw a single drop of blood rise to the surface and take just a sip of the air that Evangra would have breathed in that small, dark room on Prosterothal, where women, men, creatures, hybrids and all other living things were taken or bred into the eternal grip of sexual slavery. She saw the blood take in the poison from the air, distilled malice and misery, and slip back into the stream, winding its way through the body until it reached the heart. There it deposited its rich, dark chest of wonders, and slowly the blackness began to consume the heart of Evangra as a virus consumes the host. She saw the light leave the eyes of someone once beautiful and become the eyes of someone not to love, but to lust over.

Z9 fell back in the seat a little, feeling it wrap around her, the most loving hug she had received for years. She turned on the heater with a wave of her hand and the kar began to shimmer as the air warmed. It did not warm her, but she felt a little better nonetheless.

Outside the high-rises of Region 37 left her as she came to the fringes of 35. She didn't know where she was going, or where she wanted to go. She hadn't known since she got in the kar, and she couldn't even remember when she had climbed inside. As the blue ribbon began to loom in the distance, a kar or two joined the highway from junctions to her left. These were not as sleek and refined as the BlackSpirit, just the simple models for ordinary people. She was in a Region for ordinary people after all. Whatever 'ordinary people' were.

As one drew alongside her, she glanced in through the windows. She could make out only a dark shape, an outline of a person. It stayed level with her as they cruised towards the Regional barrier ahead of them. Z9 tried not to focus on it, but the kar seemed to be ethereal, somehow there and yet not there. A ghost, a spectre from tomorrows to come.

'Z9,' a voice said. The ghostly, static-like voice of Carmen sounded through the hull of the kar.

'What is it?' Z9 replied. She hadn't seen Carmen since a week or so before, when she went to see him and his new girl. Carmen had told his new partner that he worked for Celestrian officials, but couldn't tell her exactly who. Z9 had been introduced as a colleague in a different department. Z9 had liked the girl he was dating. She seemed sensible enough, with intelligent brown eyes behind thick glasses. She had been offered a six year visor to treat the eyesight problems, but had promptly refused, saying that she preferred the glasses. Z9 had to agree that they had given her a certain studious quality.

'Your files on the other four targets are coming through now,' Carmen said. Z9 looked down, expecting to see his face floating above the Halo-Core, but he wasn't there. His voice seemed instead to be emanating from the kar itself, a strange experience Z9 had never had before.

'Where are you?' Z9 asked, 'And why can't I see your face on the Halo-Core?'

'New tech. Mark23 rigged it up,' Carmen said.

'And I thought I asked for the files to be info-pilled.'

'Z9,' Carmen said, like a mother to a child. 'You're already in info-sleep. Look ahead of you.'

On the barrier of energy before them that separated the regions from one another, four dots of light appeared. Two to the left of her, and two to the right.

The kar that had been beside her had been joined by a friend. Two more had joined her right. As they broke the barrier, the kars either side of her drove straight through the balls of light, which swarmed the vehicles like insects trying to devour a corpse. Trying to concentrate on driving at the same time as watching with fascination as the scenes evolved around her, she watched as the four kars dissolved into nothing but pixels of data, before rearranging themselves as floating Halo-Screens beside her.

'Ok,' Z9 said, flicking the heater off again, 'I believe you. I'm info-sleeping.'

'Always takes a while to re-adjust, doesn't it?' Carmen said.

'I don't like info-sleeping in the first place. Never quite feels the same as actually sleeping.'

'You are actually sleeping, Z9,' Carmen said. 'You're just also thinking at the same time on a more productive level.'

'Carmen, or dream-Carmen, if you prefer,' Z9 began, 'I go to sleep for one of three reasons. One, I'm tired and don't want to think. Two, there is someone else in bed with me, usually incredibly good looking and pretty damn good in the sack, or number three, I'm completely shit-faced drunk. Info-sleep doesn't come under any of those categories.'

'You may not like it, but you chose to do it,' Carmen replied. Z9 had to give him that one.

She flicked a switch by the side of the steering wheel which locked the steering straight. She set the thing to keep a constant speed and looked ahead to see how much further the straight was. According to her dream, the straight road was of infinite length. Z9 liked that.

'Leave me be now, Carmen,' Z9 said, turning to the first board to begin reading.

'Understood. Just make sure to do a better job than you did last time,' Carmen said. Z9 scowled.

'Fuck you.'

Carmen replied, though it was not Carmen's voice.

'The offer's still open for that,' Evangra said. 'Anytime.'

Z9 brought her fist down on her Halo-Core and the voice cut out. She screamed in fury and went to throw open the door to the kar. Her fingers danced on the handle. Sweat rolled down her imagined forehead.

She pulled her fingers back and slammed her head back in the seat. Two stray, lonely tears ran parallel tracks down her cheeks. Z9 stifled back a sob of anger. Her body shook violently and she gripped the seat with whitening knuckles.

She let herself wash out the fury for a few moments before, seeing that the screens were still there, began to attempt to work.