I couldn’t think of anything. It had been too long. I ran for the xPress anyway.
197 looks the way the Garden of Eden would if they’d had access to nanofertilizers. I hurtled down a path through the middle of a park, past shrubbery so refined it was probably entitled to vote. Narrowly avoiding knocking down a gaggle of old people, I made it into the xPress and slapped the button.
The elevator stopped at 160 and I waited inside for a second, half expecting to hear the sound of gunfire or something equally discouraging. When none came, I poked my head out the door, and saw I was on one of the chichi shopping floors. Ahead of me stretched a long lane going East—and I knew there was another xPress half a mile away which would get me down below the 100 line.
I ran with my head up, partly to avoid the meandering shoppers and partly in the hope it would help oxygen to flood into my lungs. People stared at me openly as I passed. I guess they had people to do their running for them.
After a couple of minutes I realized I was going the wrong way, and at the next crossroads I veered over into the next store-lined street. My mind was on what I was going to do after the next elevator: I didn’t see Ghuaji until I was only fifty yards away and running straight at him.
He was pelting up the street toward me, the very picture of a man gone rabid. Blood poured down his face, and his running was crooked from the leg he was dragging behind. His skin looked like it had spent some time underground. None of this stopped him from pulling a shotgun from over his shoulder and loosing a round straight through the crowd at me.
There were screams and a couple of people fell, but by then I was careering into an alleyway between an ice cream parlor and Emeralds R Us. There was another explosion behind me and as I ran I gathered from the face of a young woman that Hell was following after. I didn’t look around. I figured I’d know soon enough if they caught me.
Then God threw me a bone, in the shape of some dweeb on a motortrike. He was tootling slowly down the lane, showing off to some giggling Mall-girls who’d never dream of shopping on Indigo Drive. I had him off the trike so fast he probably still thinks he’s riding it to this day, leaped on, and roared off down the middle of the street with my hand glued to the horn. The waves parted in front of me and I rocketed past hundreds of eyes all open as wide as the moon.
Don’t worry about me, I thought wildly. This doesn’t affect you. Just get on with your shopping.
Four minutes of moving violations got me to the xPress. The door was open, for a miracle, and I just drove the trike right in—causing a degree of consternation to the young couple who were already inside.
“You’re not supposed to bring that in here,” the guy said. “It’s a violation of New Richmond road policy.”
From outside came the sound of a shotgun being fired and pellets tinkled against the outside of the carriage.
“You want your internal organs violated by buckshot?” I asked. The guy shook his head, terrified. I winked. “So press the fucking ‘down’ button.”
He did and the doors shut quickly enough, but they were glass and didn’t hide the fact that Ghuaji was only about a hundred yards down the path. Worse, Yhandim was now running alongside, toting a large weapon of his own. My contact with him had been minimal, so far. I wanted to keep it like that.
The xPress took me down a long way. The young couple expressed a keen desire to get out quite early on, but I encouraged them to stay by showing my gun. They admired its craftsmanship and eventually agreed that it would be a shame to say good bye before they’d had a chance to see me use it.
The elevator dropped majestically down to the 80s, and I stared out through the window at the huge atrium, ten stories of balconies draped with trailing green plants, like some biblical hanging garden. It had been one of Henna’s favorite places. I should have visited it more often. Too much time spent in the wrong rooms, as usual.
As the xPress started to slow I peered down below, without much hope in my heart. Sure enough, a guy with blue flashing lights in his head stood waiting for me. I don’t know how the fuck Yhandim got down faster than the xPress, but there he was. Maybe there are paths even I didn’t know. His head tilted up slowly and our eyes met, and in his was a hatred even I couldn’t match. Ghuaji looked up seconds later, and I saw a couple of others standing around them.
I reached out and slammied the “open” button as we hit the floor above. The xPress groaned at the deceleration, but halted and opened its doors. I shooed the youngsters out and then shot out the controls, hoping it would take the guys a moment to work out why the elevator wasn’t coming down. I drove the trike out, crouched down over the handlebars and steered it unsteadily along the balcony. The sound of gunfire within seconds told me my plan hadn’t worked; shells bit discouragingly large chunks out of the ceiling just above my head.
I stood on the pedal and went careering along the corridor as fast as I could until I found a stairway. Turned straight into it, and went bouncing down the stairs. By then I was beginning to fancy a cigarette, but I judged this probably wasn’t the time. I lit one anyway, figuring [might as well—it wasn’t as if life expectancy was a concern.
I bumped down turns in the staircase until I started getting dizzy, and then sped out onto 65. I just drove straight through the door, which was painful and foolish, but no one was on the other side. I hurtled along the main drag toward the next down elevator, cursing the lab-rat layout of the old MegaMall. Two hundred yards from the xPress I saw a police platform hovering fast out of a side street toward me. I didn’t know whether they were after me because of who I was or just pure traffic offenses, but it didn’t make much difference. With one hand still steering the trike I shot at the platform’s generator. More by luck than skill I hit it. The platform coughed and slewed into the pavement like a badly folded paper plane, spilling the cops onto the ground.
I dumped the trike outside the xPress, figuring that while it was fast, it also made me somewhat conspicuous. Then I stood thrumming and banging the walls, trying to catch my breath. I stopped the xPress two floors before I had to and made it across to another which got me as far as 24; as I tore out of the doors I heard shouts from up the street behind me but I didn’t look to see who it was.
I ducked into the store where I bought my Rapt, shouting to the proprietor as I entered. He nodded with weary recognition and stepped aside to let me through into the back of his store, where a hidden stairway no one knows about dropped me another floor and into a project level where nobody sane lived anymore. I was hoping that Yhandim would assume I was just heading straight down to the bottom, buying me some time.
23 is pitch-black darkness, filled with nothing but burnt-out warehouses that long ago used to be the Mall’s staff quarters. Nobody lives there except the psychos and losers who’ve been cattle-prodded out of all the other floors. I ran straight across the heart of it, past fires burning on street corners. It’s truly rather frightening, to be honest, and I was very happy when I saw the light of the next xPress shaft ahead. I just hoped there was going to be one along soon. I didn’t want to hang around here long.
“Fucking stop right there!” shouted a voice, and I had a cardiac but kept on running. Then a shot whined past my leg and I realized running wasn’t going to cut it. I stopped and whirled round.
Two guys, both around sixty. One’s face was pierced and studded until it looked like a pincushion. The other’s had been in a bad fire.
“Look, what’s the problem?” I gasped, barely able to speak. My chest hurt like I’d cracked all my ribs at once and my legs were shaking. I kept my gun hand inside my jacket.
“No problem, sonny,” Burn-face said, his voice deeper than the rumble of a distant train. “But this is a toll road.”