As Sarah’s shoes led her away from the problem at hand, the juxtaposition provided her with a little bit of amusement. She had been on her way to do the right thing, when this happened; it’s not as though she thought that running away would be the answer to her current problem. As if evading the police, who definitely just wanted to chat about what her idiot brother had done, was a smart move, it was that right now, with what was in her possession, Sarah knew a simple conversation wasn’t going to work in her favour.
What was in Sarah’s possession wasn’t illegal. Not technically. They weren’t illegal in themselves, it was more how she came to have these particular Strip-tech™ that would probably lead to questions that she wasn’t prepared to answer. At least not to a couple of beat-cops, who would likely get their jollies off flogging a female first, and getting answers second. Sarah was prepared to speak to the right people, not that she knew who they were - but she was on her way to find them.
The Strip-tech™ that Sarah quickly affixed onto her LENS made her flight quick and easy, as the nanites flooded her system. While the police had their own form of nanites that helped them keep up with whatever new and cutting edge Strip-tech™ was on the market, the ones Sarah was currently using weren’t technically on the market. Not the usual market in any case, likely just the blackmarket, and so she figured with a fair estimate that she would have an unfair advantage in her escape.
The nanite-infused shoes gave Sarah a bounce, pep and speed that was unnatural for anyone from Earth (with the current gravity levels). Against the backdrop of her escape, Sarah could have been compared to a character from an old platform game, bouncing up and down, springing side to side in search of fruit or coins. When attached to appropriate items, the little strips fed streams of nanites into whatever they were on, causing changes in the mechanism and functions of the item. In this case, the strip on the shoes made Sarah feel like she was positively running on air, albeit fairly fast.
As one of the cops started gaining on her, Sarah used her LENS to enhance the effect of the Strip-tech™, which changed her movement from that of a 1980's video game character, to a violent sort of rushing. The change in momentum made her feel like she was in the slipstream of a rocket, the speed of which, in turn, changed the wind and rain from mere annoyances to whips and piercing daggers as she torpedoed through them.
When they’d first seen Sarah, the beat-cops had paused, as their LENS’ had quickly evaluated her and flashed in a tell-tale sign that she was recognised, and wanted. Though Sarah had never done anything illegal herself, being associated with her brother Jax was often enough to make her guilty by association. Taking the hint as the cops drew sidearms, Sarah had turned to enact her escape. The cops shouts telling her to stop had bounced off her like water off her Strip-tech™ enabled jacket. So, here Sarah was, running down the street, zigzagging through everyday patrons in an effort to ditch the cops chasing her. Ignorant to their yells, she grew a little concerned when the number of voices behind her had increased: they had called for backup.
Sarah had not tried this particular release of Strip-tech™ before, and in an ideal situation her first run with them wouldn’t be running through dank, undesirable parts of the city, and yet here she went. She zipped through the mouth of an alley, and the welcome aroma hit her like a gut punch. A combination of piss, booze and gasoline from burning barrels made Sarah’s eyes water and her throat burn. Edging faster still, Sarah heard the wind in her wake collapse stacks of crates, bins, and tents. A cacophony of angry yells from the homeless people sheltering under what were once tarpaulin huts echoed around her, intermingled with sirens and the sound of rushing wind in her ears.
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Once she reached the end of the alley, Sarah allowed herself a breath of comparatively fresh air as she stopped. The blitz through the pungent darkness had taken her less than half-a-dozen seconds, but the sudden cessation of motion carried Sarah an extra few metres beyond her intended destination. Failing to account for inertia, Sarah was carried onto one of the old asphalt roads that was mostly out of use. This side of the city was largely abandoned, with old petrol cars rarely in use; the roads were uneven, filled with holes, caked in rubbish and barely tended to. The only element that looked like it had some semblance of care were the footpaths.
As she stood, the rain now a light drizzle against her still-form, Sarah tried to quickly decide which way to go to get home - or the place she classed as home anyway - New Haven Hospital.
Though the name clearly said hospital, it was far from it. Upon its conception and construction in the wake of the last pandemic, the building had been set up to fail. Too far away from the city centre and too gaudy with metal furnishings and a grey-scale colour scheme, it resembled a prison more than a place for recovery and care. The state-of-the-art equipment installed never had enough staff to manage it efficiently, and as a result the floors were shut down one-by-one. Security measures failed to prevent damage and disruption to the services, and the result was an underutilised hospital that became a ghost town.
The surrounding streets slowly stopped being maintained, and before long the mayor decided it wasn’t worth trying to fight the vagrants, bums and druggies who sought refuge within its dystopian-esque walls. At least not worth it yet - there were ongoing threats about coming in to clean up the hospital, to force everyone out. There were a couple of times when the mayor and her forces had done just that, forcing the people living there onto the streets. But there had been no management, not enough resources to keep them at bay, and so the area soon became overrun again, and Sarah and Jax found their home amongst the others who had nowhere else to go.
Sarah looked left, mentally trying to map out her current location against where she thought New Haven would be. The storm clouds were sitting low tonight, obstructing the cityscape - normally there were some directors, a recognisable mottled building here, a laughably large lion statue there, but not tonight. Nothing flagged, and Sarah couldn’t pinpoint anything that would even remotely help her get back. While she tended to hang out in the company of people who some deemed undesirable, she didn’t frequent the area she was currently in. Even these people were beyond saving, and wouldn’t be welcome at New Haven.
Sarah looked right, and scanned the skyline again. But there was still nothing recognisable, nothing that triggered an immediate ‘oh - there it is!’ response. The delay in her directional indecision caused her back to rise in stress, and her heart rate increased as her anxiety spiked her adrenaline once more. She heard the cops start a tired shuffle down the alleyway behind her. There was yelling from the homeless who were trying to fix their shelters, and Sarah cringed that it had been her that had destroyed their attempts at abodes. The storm was beginning to obstruct sight beyond a few metres ahead, and she knew if she left now she could likely be out of the cops eye line before they made it to the end of the alley.
Left or right. Left or right. Neither way looked familiar and her time was running out. If in doubt, go right. That’s what Jax and Sarah had always said to each other, and so that’s where she turned. As she went, careful to stay on the path as best she could to avoid the potholes of doom on the road, she engaged the Strip-tech™ in her shoes once more. The world flashed by, with the rain smashing into her like a raging river crashing over rocks.
A bridge loomed overhead, a way to cross the disgusting waterway that snaked alongside her. Sarah looked to her left, aiming to cross the road to scale the wall of the bridge. She sped across the first half of the street and was beginning to cross the second half, when she stopped suddenly. Or rather, she was stopped suddenly, when an old, unexpected petrol car collided with her. The impact threw Sarah and the last thing she saw was the murky canal rising up to meet her.