Memento Mori

3.5 - DEVILS KNOWN (PART 1)

LIFTING OFF in a wedge formation, we surf out of the alley and angle towards the nearest gap between the towers. I drift naturally to the front, leaning hard on the nose of my board. The thrusters respond with a subliminal hum that vibrates up through my tongue. Perfectly engineered electronics, gleaming chrome a foreign visitor to the rough edged underworld we fly past. I find myself leaning back as my speed picks up. Hair and cape billowing out together over my right shoulder, feet spread, the fetid air of the Vents smearing over me while a mist of acidic runoff blows through the vast chasm between the blocks, and my eyes rise up the neon-soaked ambiance.

A struggling hive of oppression brackets my vision in a vertical lattice of concrete dreams. A ravine of human greed, and I'm looking up from the bottom. Dozens of bridges knitting together the layers of the undercity cake, a smoggy river of rainbow lights worming between. Aether trails of ki and technology crisscross between the blocks higher up. Storefronts pour neon advertisements and cyan holoscreens like rainwater. So many lights to distract us from the darkness that stretches on to infinity below.

Looking even higher, I can't see the moon through the storms that wrack the surface. But through the crust of the city, spearing far above the Vents, I can see the heaven-aimed spotlights of the Metro Blockhouse sweeping the clouds. Somewhere in its darkened peak, our gladiator king will be sitting on his throne, watching us scurry through his sewers with a blind eye turned.

I slip the 6-Teba from its holster and aim it right at that faraway throne, holding it between my sights from a mile away. Finger loose against the trigger. Tightness wracks my chest, hatred wrinkling my lips. The view vanishes when I breathe out. The famous arena disappears behind a hovertransport and a club pulsing to an electronic heartbeat. My gun lowers. Hood flapping down my back, I brush aside my bangs and focus front once more, sinking into arrowhead shape.

The airboard's a prime piece of machinery. I've tried out some scuffed Innovator flying tech before, rocket heel augments and the like, but nothing that truly let me soar. The JOY classes that give flight-based powers never really appealed to me, either. They tend to come with the flashy classes. Not the kind of thing Venters usually swing for. But this? I could get used to this. The stomach-dropping giddiness, the sudden kick to my heart whenever I start to wobble, the sheer fun of feeling the humid mugginess smearing past my face as the board begins to whine...

I can already feel that I'm a natural with it. Weaving through the flow of infrequent hovertransports on a constant upwards incline, I slash over a crowded outdoor bar, cut the jets and grind off a pharmacy storefront, then kick the thrusters back on and grab the lip of the board, whirling through a cyclonic twist that spirals around a cross-tower bridge with millimeters to spare.

Oh, I could definitely get myself killed riding one of these.

My eyes rove over the towersides as I near the crust. The bottom of the overcity looms like a black ceiling overhead, blotting out the sky in a cascading carpet of geometric metal. Below it, the brightest blocks in the Vents swell with activity, drowning the morning's apprehensive atmosphere in a flood of nightly tourism. Packs of tourists and locals jam the cracked alleys and standing-room streets beneath a canopy of rough electronic music that breathes a heavy bass pulse into the air. A popular fighting club near the best takeout front in the Vents blossoms with noise as a money match intensifies inside. Crowds drift near, moths to the fighting flame. But it's not them that I'm looking for. It's the locals, the loners, the ones-and-twos-and-threes that walk with the familiar strut of knowing where you're going and how you're going to get there. Gang muscle from the remainders of the Eight all pressing in the same direction I am. Most of them stragglers or hungover, responding late to the summons. I search for the familiar olive green that marks Ulysses' fistfighters, but only catch glimpses of slate grey and the occasional pastel flair before the golden lights of the Kwa-Hon block finally rise into view.