I sprinted past places I’d never seen, over lintels and past strange doors. I saw a rusted sign that said baggage, but then I was past it and still running hard. I remembered what Suej had told me to do and thrust my hand down into my jacket pocket. I pulled out the chip in which Ratchet lived, and held it tight. I didn’t want to let him go, but sensed that something else was calling the shots now. I placed him carefully on the ground. I ran.
I spotted a familiar corner, vaulted up a couple of steps, and found myself in one of the exhaust ducts.
They were gaining on me, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it. But at least I was going to try.
I ran past an endless wall of metal, pocked with a century’s wear; the sound of air rushed in my ears as I stumbled forward, tripping and careering down the tunnel. And always behind me, and getting closer, were men running after me with only one thing on their mind. Occasionally, a bullet whined down the dark tunnel past me. They hadn’t hit me yet, but they would.
I felt like the ghost in the machine, trying to find a way out. Trying to find the door to the outside, where there would be a sky above.
I ran, and I ran, but my lungs couldn’t take it anymore. My legs started going, the muscles melting into fire too insubstantial to carry me on. The footsteps were thundering louder, and my life had been too long and deep for me to find anything else left to give. I ran, but I began to fail, my feet losing rhythm, the shadowy, cold walls around me swirling into darkness.
My knees buckled beneath me and I stumbled, knowing that I had given it my best but that I had lost the race. My hands flailed out, desperate to find something to hold on to, something to stop me from just pitching forward forever onto my face.
And as I fell I felt a tiny hand grabbing hold of mine.
The hand was warm and tender, and the voice, when it came, was firm, whispering in my ear. A voice that had my own in it, and Henna’s, too.
“Come on, Daddy,” she said. “It’s time to leave.”
I didn’t question it, but tightened my hold on the little fingers pressed into my palm. I was dragged forward, the small, soft voice still urging me on. My legs found new strength, and the pain in my chest faded away to nothing or became so loud I couldn’t hear it anymore. My body wrenched order from chaotic failure, and began to work in time again.
I didn’t fall, but found a new rhythm. I ran down the tunnel like a child to the sea, until the walls were a blur and all I could truly sense was that tiny warmth and her voice drawing me on. As I ran I knew the footsteps were falling behind, still following but irrelevant now. All they had was hate to pull them on. There are stronger pulls.
I hurtled after Angela as if it would be my last run ever, and I felt ludicrously happy and knew that’s the way it should be. I knew finally that you shouldn’t lie down and wait for darkness, leaving quietly, slouching toward death. You should run, because the only real fear is that you’ll stop running, that you’ll stop doing, that you’ll come to an end before everything else.
As I ran I felt each second stretch to breaking point as it tried to hold everything that had gone before it. Nothing was lost, nothing was futile. Every thing I had done, every glance, every word, every breath—shone, huge and limitless and mine. My life didn’t pass in front of me—I ran in front of it. Nearly had been right. Memories are nothing more than a book you’ve read and lost, not a Bible for the rest of your life.
I saw a light ahead, and began to notice strange sounds reverberating down the long tunnel around me. I could still hear the footsteps of Yhandim and his men, but they were a long way behind me now. Sooner or later, they would catch up, but at least I would make it out of New Richmond. I trotted the last stretch of tunnel raggedly, losing rhythm again. The joy was fading, as if it had been a fuel I was now coming to the end of. The joy had been everything that Rapt should have been, and I wished it were easier to come by.
Angela’s form flickered in front of me, leading me up some staircase I’d never seen before. There was a rectangle of light at the end of the tunnel and I realized I had somehow come up another level, out of the exhaust ducts and toward the exit I knew.
The guys at the door stood there staring, mouths gaping. I was pretty impressed with my running myself, and half expected a round of applause. But as I got closer I saw that it wasn’t admiration in their faces, but fear.
The noise I’d heard seemed to be getting louder, ricocheting round the walls until the whole city appeared to shake. Before I made it to the door the men there had already turned and run.
I burst out of New Richmond, still pulled by Angela’s hand. I panted through the basement and up the stairs, barely yards behind the fleeing men, and then out into the Portal to find that everyone else was running, too.
I ground to a halt in the midst of chaos. Hundreds of people sprinted past me out of the buildings arranged round the walls of the city. For a moment I couldn’t understand, thought only that I’d started some new trend, and then a distant rumbling told me what in some sense I already knew.
I felt a tugging, and I let her pull me backward, away from the bulk of New Richmond and out of harm’s way. In my mind I could still hear footsteps pursuing me, though I knew they were still down in the exhaust ducts, that Yhandim and the soldiers who were with him were now probably being shaken off their feet by forces that were awake again.
When we were two hundred yards away we stopped, and I turned to see where she’d gone. A small shape leaped up at me as she always had, and I caught her and clasped my arms around her, and it was as if she were really there. I pushed my face into hers, smelling her mother and hearing my daughter’s laugh.
Then my arms held nothing but air.
People kept speeding past me, still tumbling out of buildings which would be falling within seconds. I gazed up beatifically at the bulk of New Richmond, at its two hundred floors and its countless rooms filled with life. As the ancient pulse engines finally fired into action I knew that I had nothing to fear from anyone who still chased me deep in the tunnels. The things that had pursued me were gone.
I shouted Ratchet’s name as I realized what he’d done, that the old repair droid in the basement had somehow found the chip and Ratchet’s mind had saved me once again; and I staggered backward, laughing my head off, as the MegaMall stirred like a mountain waking up after too long a sleep.
There was a moment of hesitation, as if old machineries were striving to remember the jobs they’d once performed, and then the entire city lifted up into the air. New Richmond rose up into the sky, higher and higher, until it was finally free of the earth. Looking for old paths, new roads, and a life it could have once again.
The sky has a frost around the edges today, but is a blue that tells that though winter may not be over, spring is on the way. I don’t mind either way, to be honest. Rain or sun, it’s just good to see weather again.
I had waited until the city had gone out of sight, standing amidst the spouting water mains and spitting power cables, then hitched my way down to northern Florida, to the beach where my mother and I used to visit. For a couple of days I just walked up and down the coast and slept in the dunes beneath the sky. Then I took a deep breath and found the condominium where my grandparents used to live. It looked older now, and battered, and nobody lives there anymore; but I found a room that was more than habitable, and that’s where I’m staying for now.