A segment of something else I’ve been toying with… What do you think?
The Borderlands (working title)
The pristine white walls of the hallway were so bright that Park had to squint against the glare piercing her cybernetic eye as she made her way confidently toward her goal. Room 24, she repeated to herself as she checked the plates on each door she passed. Room 24.
Room 24 turned out to be at the end of the hallway, indistinguishable from all the other doors except by the numerals etched on the plate over the scanner. She stripped off her Company-issue glove and placed her hand on the glass plate. The scanner hummed, then there was a moment of silence before the door lock clicked and the door itself swung slowly open.
Park replaced her glove and stepped into the room. “You. On your feet.”
The occupant of the five-by-five cell, a man in his late forties with graying hair and piercing green eyes, stared up at her, hatred on his chiseled face, and did not move. Park laid a threatening hand on her sidearm, and he finally stood, his lip curling. “You like your job?” he asked her, pacing toward her. “You like dragging people down to the black room, watching them go in as whole people and come out again brainwashed shells? I bet you do, don’t you? You get off on it.”
“Shut up. Incubator scum.” Park reached around on the back of her belt and pulled out her Company-issue cuffs. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
The man stared at her for a long moment with an expression of deep contempt, and finally turned, putting his wrists together behind himself. She attached the cuffs securely, then took him by the elbow and led him from the room, shutting the door securely behind her. She led him down the hall, back to the elevator, and pushed him in none too gently, following him in and pressing a button on the control pad. Once the small room was moving, she reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and pressed a button on the tiny controller secreted there.
“Reading you, Park,” a woman’s voice spoke in her ear. “Jamming the signal now. You have thirty seconds. Move!”
Park reached out and unhooked the electronic cuffs, pulling them off her prisoner’s wrists. As he turned to stare at her in shock, she pulled her sidearm and shot at the ceiling. The laser burst melted back a panel of the ceiling, and she turned to her very surprised companion. “Gimme a boost.”
He stared at her, and she reached out, whacking him on the side of the head. “Now, Rich! We don’t have a lot of time!”
Rich took a knee immediately and laced his fingers together, and Park stepped into his hands. He pushed her upward and she slammed her fist into the panel, knocking it completely out, then reached up and grabbed one of the steel struts, pulling herself up through the hole. She flattened herself on the roof of the elevator and reached down with both hands, taking Rich’s outstretched hand and pulling upward with all her strength.
Once he was partway through the hole, she transferred his grip to the same strut she’d used, grabbing him by the back of his pants to help him up through the hole. “Careful!” he exclaimed.
“No time for that! Come on!” Park moved to the side of the elevator shaft, grabbing a rung of the service ladder and starting up.
“Fifteen seconds, Park!” came the voice in her ear, and she redoubled her speed, passing the first set of doors she came to and locating a ventilation shaft in between it and the next door up. She pulled the hatch open and swung to the side.
“In here! Quick!”
Rich ducked into the shaft and she followed, pausing to wriggle out of her jumpsuit as she did so. She handed him her sidearm, pushing the fabric back out into the shaft, then reached up for the face-concealing mask she wore. She pulled it off, shaking her thick red hair out, and grinned at Rich as she tossed it back out into the shaft before pulling the hatch closed behind her.
“Park?” Rich asked, his voice full of disbelief in the pitch-dark crawlspace. “What the hell?”
“It’s called a breakout, Rich. I’m sure you’re familiar. We need to get moving.”
There was a burst of static in her ear, and then the voice again. “Signal’s back on. You’ve got maybe three minutes before all hell breaks loose. Get a move on.”
She squeezed past him in the crawlspace. “Put your hand on my ankle so we don’t get separated,” she warned him, switching her cybernetic eye to laser vision, and started forward on her hands and knees. Rich’s hand came down on her ankle a moment later, and she began to move as quickly as she could, following the route laid out for her in her memory chip. Fifteen feet, then a left, ten feet, then a right, fifteen more feet, another right, five feet, a left, and then another hatch. She eased it open just a fraction and listened carefully. The hall beyond was completely silent, so she pushed the hatch all the way open and climbed out. Rich slipped out behind her and shut the hatch again, and she checked her internal map. “This way!” She headed off to the left.
“Park, where are we going?”
“We’re gettin’ the hell outta here, Rich!” She led him to a door at the end of the hallway, double checked her internal map, and nodded, reaching for the sidearm he was still carrying. Leveling the weapon at the computerized lock, she fired its deadly beam of red light. The lock melted instantly, and she shot again, a sustained blast this time which burned a hole right through the steel surface. Through the hole, Rich could see weak reddish light, and he gaped. “You’re kidding me.”
“Fire escape, can you believe it?” Park replied. She reached through the hole and pulled the door open. “Come on.”
He followed her tentatively out onto the rusted metal grating and waited as she dropped the first ladder. “What the hell floor are we on?” he asked, pressing himself up against the brilliant white wall of the building, his fingers clawing at the slick metal siding.
“Sixteenth,” she called back to him. “Which is why we need to hoof it! Damn it, Rich, why are you still standing there?”
As she spoke, a siren began to whine somewhere in the building. Startled out of his temporary paralysis, Rich shook his head hard and grabbed the railing, forcing himself over the railing and onto the ladder. He counted floors as they descended – fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve – and Park was just dropping the eleventh-floor ladder when the door they’d exited through burst open and two hulking figures in Company Security uniforms stepped out onto the metal grating. “Shit!” Park exclaimed, looking up briefly before swinging over the railing and jumping down to the tenth floor. “Move, Rich! Kid, we’ve been spotted! Where are you?”
“In the alley, Park,” another voice spoke in her earpiece. “Coming around to your location now.”
“Make it fast!” As she spoke, one of the security guards above them opened fire. They both ducked out of the way, dropping down another floor, and then another, and then another, ducking shots and ignoring shouted commands to halt. From around the corner, the roaring of a hydrogen engine could be heard, and Park breathed a sigh of relief as a very familiar scuttlecar zoomed into view. “Seventh floor, kid! Seventh floor!”
The engine on the scuttlecar roared, and the car lifted straight up into the air, the side hatch opening upward with a hiss of hydraulics. “Go, Rich, go!” Park shouted, and Rich moved past her, climbing onto the railing and ignoring the ground – which, for a moment, seemed impossibly far away – to leap into the car. He heard Park scream behind him, but didn’t have time to wonder why because he was being dragged away from his landing spot, and she was sailing across the gap behind him.
“Go, kid!” he heard another familiar voice shout, and as the side hatch began to close down, the hydrogen engine roared, and everyone who wasn’t strapped down was thrown toward the back of the scuttlecar.
“Ow! Jesus fuck, get offa me!” At the angry shout, Rich rolled backward, off the two bodies beneath him. A very furious, very disheveled and very bleeding Park pushed herself up on her left arm, finding a place on the floor to sit and pulling her right arm around so she could look at it. “Bastards got me. Minh!”
“Got it, Park,” came the calm voice of the other passenger in the scuttlecar – a slight, dark-haired young man with brown skin and almond-shaped eyes. He moved to her side, reaching into a side compartment for a first aid kit, and pulled out bandages and a small tube of salve. “Rich, go buckle in.”
The older man moved to the front of the car, slipping into the passenger seat next to the driver, a blonde and baby-faced boy of about fifteen, who shot him a wicked grin. “How’s it going there, boss man?” the kid quipped, never taking his eyes off the viewscreen as he zipped between buildings and over people and groundcars, taking sharp turns and occasionally doubling back on himself in an effort to elude their pursuers. Rich chose not to answer, instead focusing on buckling the harness and then craning his neck to look over his shoulder as Minh bandaged up Park’s arm. “How bad are you hit, Park?”
“Not bad,” Park replied. “Just grazed my arm. Should be good as new in no time.”
“Thanks for saving my butt,” he offered.
She looked up at him, her brown eyes twinkling as she grinned. “No problem. Hey, I couldn’t just leave you sitting in there, could I? You’re the only one who knows where all the good safehouses are.”
Rich laughed. “Yeah, that’s true.”
Minh finished the bandages on Park’s arm and the two of them moved to strap themselves into the jump seats in the back. “Pedal down, kid,” Park advised the driver, and he shoved the throttle up, blasting out of the back alleys and onto a main street. Zipping above the steady ground traffic, picking up speed on the straightaway, they began to pull away from the pursuing vehicles, all slower and more cumbersome ethanol-powered units. The kid laughed as he slammed on the brakes and turned a precise ninety degrees, slinging them all around in their harnesses before shooting off down another alley. None of the pursuing units could brake or turn quickly enough, and the sound of crumpling metal and shattering plastiglass echoed around them as two of the three crashed into one another while the third, barely missing the pile up, crashed instead into the side of a building. With a whoop of victory, the kid sent the scuttlecar zooming through the alleys, zipping this way and that until they were finally in a completely different sector of the District.
“We’re clear,” the kid finally said. “Any stops in the area?”
“Not today,” Rich said. “Just get us the hell out of here.”
Spinning the steering wheel, the kid turned the scuttlecar north, heading through increasingly poor, increasingly filthy, increasingly dangerous areas before finally jumping the car up and over the ten-foot electrified fence that separated the District from the Borderlands.
July 13th, 2008
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