7

I see her in the distance. An otter weaving through icebergs. The wind rustles my hair, but my shades protect it from stinging my red rimmed eyes. I am a raven, soaring above her. Watching her from afar.

The way Rieka moves is angelic. She is as good at being swift as Tauren is at singing. She weaves and ducks through the mob of people, her hood pulled well over her so nobody thinks twice. A girl in a hoodie. Nothing more. No reason to be suspicious. No reason for your eyes to linger on her for more than a second. Unless your me. Unless you know who she is.

Rieka stops and glances over her shoulder as if she knows she’s being watched. She doesn’t know that the watcher is above her. She makes a hand signal, so quick I almost don’t catch it, and so inconspicuous that you would think she was brushing a fly from her forehead. My eyes dart around for the recipient, and I see a short man, covered in a cowl, with bits of ginger hair peeking out from the front. He imitates the hand signal without skipping a beat. Another Swifter. It must be.

Rieka changes direction, heading towards a massive store called Hubaricker’s. A sports store. The second Swifter stops and glances at his watch as Rieka disappears inside the store.

I’m perched atop one of the mega strip mall stores, on a vast bare grey expanse of roof. The sky is heavy with clouds. A storm is brewing.

The ginger slings his bag off and pulls out an empty glass bottle, then tucks in up his shirt. I watch as he treads through the river of people, moving like the wildebeest migration I’d watched on a documentary many years ago, towards the store I’m perched above. He pulls the bottle from his shirt and hurls it at the store. I hear it shatter against the glass as a siren blares and people scream. I duck down behind a stack of plastic billboards, and peer between them.

The Swifter is sprinting away, vaulting over benches and cars while two mall cops in beige uniforms chase after him. I’m confused. The ginger delves down a staircase out of my line of sight. A ground hog into its burrow. Not a minute later, another siren rings and I see Rieka barreling out of Hubaricker’s with a full backpack and a duffle-bag slung over her shoulder. There’re no cops to pursue her, only shrieking pedestrians to dive out of her way as she runs.

She runs like a saddled cheetah, up to the shop next to the one I’m on, and despite her load swiftly parkours up like a cat, then scrambles to the nearest cover. Which just so happens to be the stack of billboards I’m behind.

She drops to her knees and lets her loot fall from her shoulders, panting but grinning. “Hey.”

I’m on my feet. “Hey,” I nod.

She laughs. “Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” She asks, slumping against the jam-packed duffle-bag.

I open my mouth to speak but now words come out.

“Oh, chill out,” she says, exasperated. “Her you want something?” She asks, unzipping the bag.

“W…what did you…steal?” I stutter.

“Just a couple of supplies. Flash lights, batteries, gloves, water bottles, the usual. Hubaricker’s has been our target twice already. They really need to get better security around here.”

I don’t respond.

“Can you chill?” she asks. “I’m not going to hijack you and force you to work for Zorikan. Here,” she leans over and rummages through the bag, pulling out an energy drink and tossing it to me. I catch it unintentionally.

“Drink up. You’re going to have to if… hey, what happened to your leg?” she asks.

I glance down. I’ve already ripped off the bandage, but through the tear in my jeans you can see the ugly line of stitches.

“That looks bad, but somebody fixed you up real good. Who was it?”

I don’t know why I can’t speak. Nobody has ever taken my words from me. They’re my strongest weapon. The flame of my defiance. I’ve been stripped of them.

“Cat’s got your tongue,” she sighs, leaning back down. The walkie talkie at her hip buzzes and she puts it to her ear.

“Rieka do you copy? Rieka do you copy? Over.” A voice buzzes.

“Yeah, I copy, Varan.”

“Say over when you’re done talking so I know when you’re done talking. Over,” Varan hisses.

“Ugh, you’re such a dweeb, you know… over.”

“Thank you. Did you get the stuff? Over.”

“Yeah. Got it all. Did you want a sandwich though? Fries too?”

“Shut up. You should get back soon. Deqar just radioed me. We’re ordering pizza for dinner. Dining off the spoils of last night’s hunt.”

“Hunt?”

“Raid. Robbery. Hunt, whatever.”

“Varan, we didn’t hunt anything,” Rieka laughs.

“Ugh. I don’t care. Just get back here or I’ll eat your portion.”

“You’re going to get fat, you know.”

“You already are fat,” Varan mumbles.

“Aight. Peace out.”

“Peace. Over.”

Rieka yawns and looks over at me. “I’d offer you to come over, but you’d probably freak out and run away.”

“You need to go,” I tell her. “Dinner awaits.”

She shrugs. I could stay here a while longer. I’m not really a pizza girl. Plus they never order the one with mushrooms, so I can wait. I could chill here with you for a bit.”

I massage my neck. “No. Rieka, you need to stop trying to-”

“I get it!” she cries, “It was a one time thing. I know. I’m not going to freaking recruit you or something. I just wanted to hang out.”

I turn away from her running my hands through her hair. I so desperately want to stay with her. To wallow in her sweet smell. To cuddle under the moonlight. I don’t even want to have sex with her. I just want to enjoy her company. Have fun with her. Real fun. Not video games, or drugs, or any of that dumb shit that teenagers do. I want to feel thrill. I want the wind blowing my hair. I want to feel the way a wolf feels as it’s running beneath the full moon, it’s pack at its side. I want to… Zorikan shot my brother. Zorikan knocked me out and tried to cage me. Zorikan is a real bastard. And this shit over here works for him. I can’t. I don’t want anything to do with him. Him or his dumb ass Swifters.

I hold up the middle finger to her. “Screw off.”

“What?” she asks, startled.

“I said screw off. I don’t want anything to do with you or your Swifters. Get out of here. Get out of my life.”

“Ok,” she says cautiously, like as if I was aiming a gun at her. “Ok I’m sorry, Kallix.” She picks up the bags. “I know you’re going through shit. I just wanted to help.”

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“Don’t!” I shout. “I don’t need your help.”

“Alright. Alright I’m going,” she pads to the edge of the roof, ready to make her way down. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why you’re such a prick.” And then she’s gone.

~

Everything swirls in my head. Too many thoughts. Too many bad memories. Too many names. Too many bad possibilities. I’m overwhelmed. A fly in a hurricane. An ant in a centrifuge. I swallow a second pill, and thump my fist against my neck, practically begging the pain to go. It throbs on, feeling like its coiling my left neck tendon. I long to rip the tendon out and stretch it until the pain goes away. I try and crack my neck, but no satisfying pops come. I amble on like a zombie that can feel its flesh rotting. A zombie who knows it’s a zombie and wishes it wasn’t.

Pills and Poisons. I’ve never been to this club, but I’ve seen it before. One of the biggest drug holes in the entire West Sector. There’s no bouncer, only a scantily dressed woman splayed out across the stairs with an e cigarette in her mouth.

“You eighteen, kiddo?” she asks me.

I nod. “I need to… forget,” I mumble, stumbling past her. She pulls her bare leg away before I step on it, and push through the doors. The music smashes into my like a tsunami. Oddly enough, I don’t cringe. It’s not techno. It’s not rap or trap. It’s not smooth jazz or purple. It’s rock.

A smile spreads onto my face as the familiar sounds of real instruments fill my brain with their rapturous chords. Guitars. Drums. Piano. It makes my head bop and my body sway with the rhythm as I walk. It doesn’t take long for me to locate the bar.

I slide onto a stool, one hand wrapped around my neck with my fingers digging into the tender spots. “What are your prices?” I ask.

“No prices, lad,” says the tall, bald, tuxedo wearing bartender. “It’s happy hour. Take as you please.”

I order the first thing I see. A shot of blue and purple liquid, called Brain Cancer. I down it and order another, the synthetic warmth spreading through my body.

“You got to try some of this dude,” says somebody. I turn and somebody probably only a year older than me, with an ear to ear grin, his hands up in the air and his hips swaying to the music. His eyes are super dilated.

“You’re high, bro,” I chuckle.

“Whuuu? No’m not,” he protests, sipping his bright pink drink. “Name’s Jarreth.”

“Am Kal. Gimme some of that,” I say taking his glass from him and glugging half of it down.

It’s so sickly sweet that I nearly hurl. It’s sweeter than cough syrup but burns more that whisky. I burp, and the man lets out a high pitched laugh. Then a brown skinned girl in shorts that are so short I can’t see them from beneath her T shirt dances over to him, and hip bumps him.

“Hey duuuude,” Jarreth slurs. “This’s Trista.”

She grins and waves at me, then tips and falls onto me, between my legs. I’m instantly hard.

“Did you… did ye… did you want s’mof the stuff?” she asks, her breasts sliding over my crotch as she slumps down.

“Uhhh,” I wonder.

“Oh righhhhht,” Jarreth realizes. “Dude, you got to get some of that… that stuff.”

“Take me away!” I shout, the alcohol and the chemicals finally reaching my brain. I pull Trista up by the arm pits and wrap my arm around her waist, squeezing her cheek. She doesn’t even notice, holding her glass high in the air, and tipping it over herself.

Trista and Jarreth lead me around a bend, to a gruff man with a hot dog stand. Except there are no hot dogs.

“Me first! Me first!” Trista declares, slipping away from me and leaning over the stand.

“Hey Trist,” the man says. “The usual?” he asks, pulling out a needle.

She gleefully holds out her arm and he thrusts it in.

Bansilin. Ban-goddamn-silin.

Trist exhales with pleasure, then turns around and launches herself at Jarreth, wrapping her legs around his waist and shrieking.

“Have some duuuuuude,” Jarreth tells me over Trista’s shoulder.

I lean over to the dealer. “You got anything… natural?” I ask him.

He thinks for a moment, then reaches over and grabs a plastic bag and tosses it to me. “Eat up,” he instructs.

I empty the contents out onto my hand and see that it’s a bunch of tall thin mushrooms. Magic Mushrooms.

Another girl, with very dark skin and long flowy hair in a tiny black dress dances over to me, and then against me. “Hey, pretty boy,” she whispers over her shoulder at me.

I’m hard again as she starts to twerk. Images of Rieka flash into my mind, but I push them away, and move against her, thrusting like a dog. “You got anything faster?” I ask the dealer, not breaking away.

He nods and pulls out a joint. He lights it and hands it to me. “What’s this?” I ask, while the dark skinned girl goes wild on my waist.

“Angel Dust,” he tells me.

Angle Dust. Malyk said it was the best. Malyk, the friend of yours who you left to die. The one who saved Tauren while you fled and got sucked off on the top of a skyscraper.

Screw this. Screw everything. Screw the whole damn world. I put the joint to my mouth and inhale as much as I can.

The world starts to sparkle.

~

I groan. My back hurts. My lungs hurt. My head hurts. I reach my hand up and slide my shades off my forehead to cover my eyes. It’s still night. Or it’s already night. I’m not sure. The cold smoggy air tells me that I’m on a rooftop.

I roll over to escape the sharp edge of a step that’s digging into my back. I’ve got a new cut on my side, but its already scabbed over. I reach over to scratch my shoulder, and a thick, sticky substance smears off my hand and onto my shoulder. I groan again and look around.

Two people lay sprawled before me. Jarreth and Trista, I remember their names. I hadn’t been to far gone when I met them. Trista is lying, flat on her face, completely naked except for her giant, stained, grey shirt that’s been pulled over her head, revealing her entire backside. Her chest rises and falls slowly. I take a step forwards. I’m barefoot, but I soon find my sneakers and slip them on. I amble over to her, drop down and shake her. “Trista. Trista wake up. I can see your ass. And your pussy too. Put something on.” It’s not a bad sight to behold, but I should do her that much.

Trista lets out a long breath, and pulls her shirt down the slightest bit, letting her head fall onto the hard floor. Her tits are still pressed against the ground.

“Trista for god’s sake,” I sigh. “You’re going to get raped.”

“You want to rape me? Go ahead,” she mumbled into the floor.

“Ugh. I give up.”

“Take a good look at this ass, cuz it’s the last time you’re ever going to see it!”

“Nice,” I mumble, moving to Jarreth. He’s got a duck shaped pool floater around his waist, is wearing pajama pants, and a tiny blue waist coat.

I poke him with my foot. “Wake up, bruv,” I tell him. He doesn’t stir.

“Wake up you idiot,” I tell him, shaking his shoulders.

His chest is rising and falling ever so slightly. He’s barely breathing.

“Jarreth,” I groan.

“Shut up!” Trista hisses, spreading her legs more.

“God damn,” I mumble, stepping over him.

I spot my hoodie… Rieka’s hoodie, lying over the edge of the roof. I stumble over and pick it up, the untouched smell making my chest flutter. Pills and Poison is across from us, still open.

“Is it the same night?” I wonder out loud. I look up and see that the moon is full. I can’t be. The moon definitely wasn’t full when he came. That meant he’d been out for a day. Good. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to go. I stumble back to Trista, her ass shining invitingly up to the heavens. I don’t want to leave her here. Not like this.

“I’m going to do you real good if you don’t get up.”

“Do your worst, slimy bastard,” she mumbles.

“Sorry darling, tanks empty,” I tell her.

She doesn’t respond.

I look around, until I see a large plad coat. Pick it up, recoiling at the waft off piss, and toss it over Trista, covering her up best I can. “Good luck,” I tell her.

“Suck me off, you twat!”

I laugh. “Goodbye.”

I break into a run. My legs are sluggish but sturdy and once I get my adrenaline pumping, I’m flying over the rooftops. The toxins are still heavy in my body, and the hangover is fresh, but it doesn’t stop me. I’m running, leaping, vaulting, soaring, flying.

An air vent protrudes out of the roof. I launch myself to it, gripping it and rolling over, landing with a second roll and speeding off again. The sounds of the city night plague my ears, but in my mind, I’m in a forest. A wolf weaving through the trees, chasing the his prey.

I launch myself over the gap between two buildings and land with a flawless roll. I can smell my prey. I can smell the trees. I can smell my packmates, denned not far from here.

As I run, I see a line of kids. Circus animals, marching pristinely with their little tablets clutched close, their dumb ass uniforms and perfectly parted hair. I am the wolf, slinking past the sheep pen. One of them gasps, looks up at me and points, but by the time the others have looked, their teacher, their shepherd, their jailor, has given him a passive aggressive warning.

They should be at home. They should be eating dinner with their families. They should be running under the night sky with their friends. They should be in a field, with dirt beneath their fingers and the smell of grass filling their nostrils. Not the stench. Not the smog. Not the grimy roads and roaring, belching vehicles. Climbing trees, not locked in a digital world. It’s nauseating.

I leap over the gap, land in a puddle, roll keep running. I’m nowhere near tiering. I duck under a metal rung, dive through the metal contraption beneath a water tower, wall jump over a metal link fence and barrel forwards. My heart drums in my ear. A war drum, calling me, the sole soldier against an army of silencing drones. I’m nowhere near catching my prey. My pack has left me, and it’s harder for a lone wolf to catch the dear, but not impossible. It’s not impossible.

I see the gap. It’s too big for any man. Fortunately, I’m a wolf. My speed picks up, my muscles overflowing with adrenaline. I know no limits. I pump harder, faster, stronger. The gap surges nearer, the ground between me and it falling away like the crumbling pastry’s my mom used to bring me for my breakfast on schooldays. It is my enemy. I will overcome it.

I reach the edge and am about to leap, when I hear a gunshot, and I falter as the bullet ricochets off the ground, and inch from my foot. I’m flying through the air. An eagle thrown from its nest too early. The distance to the other side reduces, until I knock against the sharp, concrete right angle edge, ribcage first. I hear a crack, and pain explodes in my chest. I grunt, and with no hand holds, I slip from the edge, falling two stories down and landing on my back. The world spins, turning the full moon into a spinning CD.

I can’t breathe. I can’t move. All I see is the moon, and the stars swimming around it, like drugged fish.

The bastard found me.

Zorikan has caught me again.