I CAN'T STOP hearing it.
The crack. The pop. The dull thump of her lifeless body hitting the ground.
I squeeze my eyes shut and bury a scream in my throat as I stumble through the tight confines of the maintenance shaft. Heart galloping in overdrive, so fast that my injured legs break into a run of their own volition. Then a flat-out sprint. I'm going so fast I ricochet straight off the hard corners, not even slowing to take the turns. My body does anything it can to burn off the insane flood of energy; nothing's enough. The Shatter scorches my nerves like liquid fire. My skin stings like it's coming apart at the seams. Sweat coats my arms and face in a fevered sheen. Every obstacle I slam into and trip over is a momentary pain forgotten the next time I blink.
The Orange is a man-eating labyrinth. All I can tell is that I'm going deeper, slipping into the darkest heart of the undercity. Anything to get away. But I can't get far enough to outrun the echo of the gunshot.
Again and again it beats through my skull. Crack. Crack. Crack. I slap myself before the scream welling inside me claws its way out. Hyped up on Shatter, my body doesn't hold back in the slightest. When I blink again, my whole face is aching to the bone; the pain jerking me back into reality.
The Orange routes all outgoing comm traffic through private servers. Trying to call Krey for help would just give away my position to anyone who's watching. There aren't maps for tiny passages like these, either. Right now, my JOY is only good for the augmented reflexes it's feeding into my hands through the neural link.
The corridor constricts around me like a narrowing gullet. Hot steam clouds scald my skin as I burst through at a dead run. Heavy feet slam against the ceiling overhead. Club music thumps through the concrete. Two more corners before it finally starts to fade. I'm somewhere in the cracks of the syndicate's funnel web, the deeper parts of the Orange where the overcity's rich and powerful come to make hidden deals behind a curtain of human avarice. Distant mutters, clinking glasses, running water, and sensual moans echo through the piping. I know they finally caught on to my presence when a klaxon starts bleating in the distance.
A corridor like this, machinery like the rusted pipes surrounding me; no one's been down these shafts in a century. Staying here won't get me out, though. I could be running in circles for hours before I find an exit to a different block. By then, Dynasty's enforcers will have cleared the entire Orange and started flushing out the maintenance tunnels, and I'll be swept right into their waiting hands.
I need a way out, as fast as possible. So the moment I spy a wheel-lock hatch in the ceiling up ahead, I shove my gun back in its holster and get to work cranking the wheel. My hands refuse to stop spasming until I clamp them around the wheel. Dense steel; must weigh a hundred pounds, maybe more. I barely break five feet and am built like a gymnast, not a powerlifter. A century of rust welds the wheel tight. Any other time I'd never be able to get it open. But the Shatter is a hell of a drug.
About to implode at any moment, I rip the wheel to the side with both hands, shearing away its resistance and spinning open the lock. Ancient hinges creak like a rusty motherfucker as I spin again. And again. Then the seal breaks and I'm shoving it open and almost exploding out of the hatch, pulling my body up and over the edge onto a plush carpet floor bathed by dim orange lantern light.
Lightheaded, I stagger to my feet. The familiar scrape of a blade being eased from its sheath comes from behind me. I'm already spinning, gun in hand, hammer cocked, barrel shoved between the eyes of a hunched Dynasty thug in a black-orange suit with one hand on the pommel of an ornamental knife and the other swirling with some premonition of an arcane spell. The Magus class- one of the most diverse in powers, and one of the most vulnerable to point-blank interruptions. Casting a spell requires him to speak a specific set of words: the more words, the more powerful the ability. I shift the gun down and jam it between his teeth, holding it as steady as I can.
"Hands off the toothpick," I snarl. "Get against the wall."
I don't know what I look on the outside by this point, and my mind isn't slowing down enough for me to think about it. Deranged is my best guess. Hopefully something that screams 'I will shoot you at the slightest provocation'. That and the gun are enough to make him start obeying until three men shout loudly from the corridor behind me, weapons priming. The thug twists away from the gun and tries to finish his arcana, ducking low under the barrel. I sidestep and trip him in the same motion, pop two electrolytic rounds into the side of his neck as he falls, then dive into a connecting hallway as a spray of slugs punches through his body.
Chased by shouts, I hobble back into a sprint, magdumping all ten of my remaining rounds back over my shoulder. Someone screams and starts pissing themselves. I tear my attention back to the front as I reload. The superheated ammo cylinder bounces between my legs, dripping onto the carpet. I thumb in the next and spin it into place with one hand.
Ragged breathing pushes me to an adrenaline-crazed pace. Bullets zing off the walls and chew into the carpet inches away as more enforcers join the chase. Security cameras swivel and blink malevolent red eyes as they track my progress. Gas-powered tripnets clatter off ridiculously expensive, gold-plated furniture. They're aiming for my legs. Shit. I've seen what Dynasty does to the girls they catch. A shot to the head would be a blessing in comparison.
Intersection up ahead, brighter lighting, confused conversations and curious questions drifting around the corner. A stray shot rips off a tuft of red-orange hair as I swing left at the intersection and run straight into a cluster of half-naked women clinging to some tight-shirt executive and two of his private guards. I bowl through them like a ram, whipping the hilt of my revolver into the exec's forehead before shutting down his Ki Fighter before she can so much as summon a basic aura. She hits the floor in a jittering mess of limbs, followed by the second guard a moment later. But one of the girls gets me with a ringknife when I tumble by. The blade punches into the cutout side of my bodysuit, nicking a rib. I curse and nail her with a shot as I flip back to my feet and keep going, momentum unstopped.
Panicked screams and furious shouts swell in my wake. Even with the Shatter's insanity overriding my nerves, I can't run any faster, and I'm already not fast enough. I still have no idea where I am. Somewhere expensive, too deep to find a way out. Like Sarah, I can feel the water rising, clawing at my mouth. Hyperventilating, knowing my life is measured in heartbeats that are running out far too fast. Dynasty was slow on the draw, but now that they know where I am, every enforcer they have pulling boring guard duty in the heart of the Orange is leaping at the chance for action.
Some small part of me dies to dread as it finally starts to hit through the insanity of the Shatter. There's no escaping this. I'm going to die here. They're going to catch me, fuck me till I'm bleeding out of every hole, then butcher whatever's left and ship the pieces back to the streets as a warning. That knowledge is the only thing that keeps me running. I won't be a victim again.
Duelists with polished blades come sprinting out of side corridors to try and cut me down. Martial Artists stage roadblocks at the intersections. Elementals weave fire from the archaic paper lanterns and wield the metal of the corridors themselves against me, forming walls and barricades to block my progress. One casts a cone of lightning straight at me. I duck it at the last instant. Hairs raise across my shoulder before the cone screeches onwards and fries a brawler who just dove into the hall behind. New bullet holes leak ragged streaks of red down my calves. My side is wet and sticky with blood from that girl with the ringknife, pumping more with every jagged step I take. I'm dodging more encounters than I'm fighting. And they're content to let me lose myself in the maze. Harrying me, corralling me like a wild horse into the richest parts of the block. Blood-red carpets underfoot. Gold trim. Exotic lanterns and darkoak paneling. Richly dressed people behind the open doors I sprint past. Lethal bullets slap and smash through glass walls that look out over the beating heart of the Orange's brothels and clubs, chasing my frightened reflection. I don't even know I've started responding in kind until I aim over my shoulder, find a target through the whipping braid of hair, squeeze the trigger, and someone's knee explodes in the distance. There's a sick, paracausal disconnect to it.
I wing into a long straightaway with an ornate elevator plaza at the end. A bank of four different lifts, two more paths to the left and right at the intersection. One of the lifts is still open. Could be going right down to the Executor's front door for all I know, but I'll take any chance it's not. I'm about to will the energy for a final sprint into my legs when there's an off-pitch electric whine from behind me. I glance back to see a mechanized Dynasty enforcer priming a wrist-mounted explosives launcher from the corner I just turned. A red laser centers on the carpet beneath my feet.
All the Shatter's manic energy leaves me in a belated curse.
"...Shit."
My world upends when the cluster of micromissiles hits. They're soft explosives, but still, explosives. My vision lags as the kinetic explosion ragdolls me down the last of the hallway. Poncho burning, the stench of clothes melted to skin acrid in my nose. A sick pop in my shoulder as I hit the ground, flip once more, and slam back-first into the doors of the half-closed lift.
Everything's spinning, reeling, like I'm five drinks too far gone. A half-dead wheeze, not air, pours out of my lungs as I force back up into sitting. Blood chokes my throat from a cracked tooth. While my mind reels, my body keeps moving automatically. Years of hardcoded training guide my fingers as they unconsciously eject the spent cylinder out of my revolver and chamber a new one, snapping it into place with a flick of my wrist. Concussive vibrations hammer against my blown-out eardrums as I unload in every direction. Paralyzing bullets and electrolytic rounds claw into the corridor around me. A hardpoint bullet drills into my cheek, ripping off the skin as it flies into the wall. Thunderous footsteps stampede from where the micromissiles launched. A huge man, hate in his eyes, hate for that street rat with a gun who humiliated him so easily. That meat-cleaver museum piece rearing back for a decapitating strike.
Then I'm pulling myself the rest of the way into the lift, nails breaking against the tile as I scrabble out of three different lines of fire. I'm shooting back all the while. Blasting the tiny compartment with deafening flashes of light and scorched ozone as I empty the rest of my ammunition in a panicked attempt to stop Carto Bask from closing. He's almost on me. Charging five feet with every step, bounding like a panther with fresh meat in sight.
A hard steel door interposes itself between the two us the moment before he hits. The entire elevator rocks backwards as Carto slams into it, driving the blade so far through the door that it tickles my throat. I scramble and get my back against the far wall right as he shears the blade to the side, ripping open a ragged foot-long tear in the metal.
He's roaring murder as my hearing pops back into existence. Savaging the outside of the lift like a berserker hewing at an ornery tree. The lift's two other occupants gape over at me. I flip my gun and line it up on the most dangerous: a thin boy half out of a slave's sheer silk robe, around my age, dark teal hair bound in a loose tail, long bangs hiding catlike pink eyes. The last marks him as an Iros: Dynasty's elite caste of Psi-classed servants, supremely skilled mindbenders who can skim thoughts or melt you into a puddle of hormones with a single glance.
He plucks the pink contacts out of his eyes before I can shoot. Outside, Carto sawanother tear in the door, then gets his fingers in the gap and starts physically ripping an entry hole. The not-Iros shrieks down at his companion, a girl with shimmering hair who has some piece of Innovator tech jacked from her JOY into a power outlet low to the ground.
"I thought you said no one was onto us!" he shrieks, now-brown eyes darting to the rapidly growing hole. High-bred accent, ripped straight from the fanciest overcity penthouses.
The girl snaps back in monotone. "No one was onto us." Her head jerks towards me, the walljack slithering back into her JOY. "They're after her."
A wire-thin garrote slips out of the sleeve of her acidproof bodysuit. I jerk my gun at her in response, then pause to put a hole in the side of Carto Bask's throat when he's a hair too slow to jerk out of the way. He goes down gurgling.
I cock my head at the girl, try to say something snarky, and just end up coughing out blood. She dives back into jacking the lift's holopad.
Further down the fire-wreathed hall, another figure comes striding straight through the wreckage left by the missile barrage. The thin man with the jackal helmet. Sarah's Sixer in his hand, aimed right at me. His first shot threads the needle-thin tear in the door and breaks the front sight of my revolver before ricocheting into the wall. The second almost clips my jaw, and the third misses the not-Iros's crotch by a millimeter.
I pull the trigger in reply and summon nothing but a dry click and the residual sizzling of taxed, superheated metal. Beside me, the girl mutters a curse under her breath and slaps a hand against the lift's manual override. In the gap between the narrowing doors, I watch as the Dynasty gunman lines up one final shot. He pulls the trigger just before the second layer of doors slam shut with a hydraulic hiss. Then we're gone. Racing upwards at triple digit velocity, racing away from the syndicate's claws.
The terrible sound of the gunshot echoes through my head while I slump down the wall, smearing blood over the ridiculously expensive woodwork. A rattling, pinging-metal silence falls over the lift. Eyes wide open, tears flash-fried by gunpowder, I sit there and hitch behind tight-clenched teeth, reliving the horror over and over again. The woman who taught me how to shoot, more my mother than the nameless memory who came before; she dies a hundred times in my mind's eye. My hand tightens with every repetition.