He opened his eyes, peeked around the corner, and stopped the recording in his pocket with a triumphant tap of his thumb. Cyan light spilled into the black lot. There was nothing but the jet black ’48 Piercer, the ten-year-old beige Glidester, the still-moist loogie from the nurse, two crushed cigarette butts, and confirmation on a story that was about to change millions of lives in Leon City.
Footfalls sounded from the direction of the hospital entrance. Gordon rolled his eyes. Probably just the nurse finishing her shift. Wait. That would make for a pretty short shift. He peeked around the pillar to find the altered-faced Doors sprinting right for him. There was no mistaking it this time. He’d been made.
Gordon bolted from the blown cover of the pillars and raced to the spiral ramp that descended to where he’d parked his car. Doors’ footsteps increased in speed and volume. The chase was on. He’d thought he’d gotten away with it. They’d driven away. It must have been some tactic to make their target think they were out of danger. It worked.
The next floor of the lot was drenched in advertisement light. Hundreds of cars parked in mile-long rows. Gordon ran. He’d parked at the far end of the lot. He didn’t know why but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Doors was close. No more than a dozen strides. Gordon scrambled to get his keys from his pocket while maintaining speed. He pushed the button to unlock his car door. It beeped and flashed in the distance. It was still there, at least.
Getting into the car, starting it, and driving off without Doors stopping him seemed an impossible task. He played it over in his mind a hundred times, but no matter what tiny detail he tweaked, the simulation always resulted with Doors’ hand around his neck.
The time had come. Doors’ metallic huffing and puffing followed close, but Gordon’s car was right there. The reliable ’43 Distancer. He could use a little bit of distancing right now. He pushed another button on the keypad. The hydraulic driver-side door hissed open. Gordon Kicked off his right foot to keep as much speed as he could when jumping in between his car and the one parked beside it.
He jumped into the seat, slamming his thigh hard against the steering wheel and hitting his head pretty good on the doorframe. Before even starting the car, he reached up for the door handle and pulled it down just as Doors’ metal face appeared in the side window. Sakero MoShun’s bodyguard slammed his fist against the window as Gordon scrambled to insert the keycard into the ignition. It entered. Doors struck the car again. Gordon glanced sideways to find a small crack in his window. He turned the key, the Distancer hummed, and Gordon slammed his foot on the propulsion pedal, even though he was still in park.
Durst shot up all around. Doors pulled his white undershirt over his metal nose and slinked away into the conjured cloud. The dust snuffed all light, and Gordon took the opportunity to shift into reverse and back out of his space. He reversed, turned, shifted into drive, and sped out of the lot.
Out of the dust, he yielded at the end of the landing dock and merged into traffic once there was room between oncoming aircars. He pushed out and stayed in the lane closest to the airwalks. Bright lights of the city nearly blinded him after spending so much time in the darkness of the lot. He blinked hard a few times to adjust. Ads rolled by as they always did, taking up the entire width of building walls or floating billboards that hovered over airways.
A blonde woman sat content on a couch in one of them, sipping at a glass of wine while her MoShun Aid performed multiple tasks at once. The all-new MoShun Aide 17, it said. The aides were helpful, but the advertisement exaggerated their true abilities. They couldn’t handle more than one or two tasks at once, but they did do them quite well.
The following ad was split into two panels. One was of a bleak board room where a dark, barren table sat ten workers, uniformed in black suits. A blank presentation screen hovered at the head of the table with nothing on it. The bottom panel showed the same room. However, now the workers sat upright and animated. They wore unique colors, and the presentation screen was filled with a hundred pictures of unrelated things. The source of the inspiration, according to the ad, was the case of Slupman’s cola at the center of the table. Each worker had his or her own glass of it.
Another set of lights caught Gordon’s eye in the rearview mirror. Two little red lights. They floated in the darkness of the car behind him, just above where the steering wheel would be. He wasn’t safe yet.
His palms glazed with sweat, tight around the wheel. His foot grew heavy, but he made sure to maintain his current speed below the limit. Another ticket would cost him his license. He couldn’t have that. He glanced in the rearview mirror once every breath only to find Doors keeping a consistent speed as well. He didn’t try to overtake as Gordon expected he might. Perhaps the bodyguard was wary of drawing any attention to their chase. He was likely waiting to catch Gordon in a dark, unpopulated place. Like the parking lot in the building where he lived.
“Joke’s on you, pal,” Gordon said aloud. “I can drive all night. I’m in no hurry to get home, that’s for sure.” He looked down at his battery gauge. Fifteen percent. He mouthed a curse and tightened his grip. He shifted nervously in his seat, glancing once more at the rearview mirror. Doors almost seemed to be looking at him through the mirror. Gordon shook his head. That couldn’t be. It must’ve just looked that way because of the strange eyes. Human eyes were developed with the whites the way they were so that it was easy to see where a fellow human was looking. Doors’ altered eyes didn’t have that. That’s all it was. He shifted nervously again. How was he going to get out of this before the fifteen—now fourteen—percent of his battery drained?
His stash point wasn’t far. The old trick had been taught to him by his mentor Chris Canard when he’d first started working at Triple G. “You should always have a stash point,” the old man had said on their first investigation together.
“A what?”
“A place where you can run to if things go south,” he’d explained. “Some stories at Triple G come with a lot of heat. If you piss off the wrong person, do you want to lead them to your home? Find a stash point before you dig.”
He’d done it ever since. This time, his stash point was a span of artificial grass in a little-used corner of Cloud Park. Getting there would be tough with Doors hot on his tail. He had to lose him, but he couldn’t speed, and he only had fourteen percent left on his battery, so maybe an hour of driving before his car stalled and glided to the asphalt roads in the lower district.
His only hope was to take a lot of turns and try weaving his way through traffic as much as he could. Maybe he could get lucky and catch a green light that Doors might miss. There was also the sound collector in his pocket. If the worst happened and Doors caught him, he had to make sure the steel-faced goon never found out about it. If he catches you, you're dead, fool.
He hit the brakes at a stoplight intersection. Doors stopped on his bumper. If only his battery had been fully charged. He was safe as long as they were both in the airways. Stopping at a charging station wouldn’t work. The platforms connected each charging unit. Doors would get a hold of him there.
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The turn signal displayed Gordon’s intention to turn left, but when the time came, he turned right. His face turned red. Like something that simple was ever going to work, but it was worth it to try anything. Doors’ turn at the stoplight was a short one. He followed.
Gordon shifted lanes and passed a few slower-moving cars. Doors matched his movements with ease. He didn’t let it discourage him. Doing nothing would lead to the same result, so he kept going. He picked up a bit of speed here and there, hoping Doors wouldn’t notice, never more than a few miles-per-hour over the limit. The next stoplight intersection came. Gordon stopped. Doors did, too. A green car idled between them. Gordon smiled. Progress.
He kept his speed a couple of mph over the limit from then on. A few sharp turns and a couple of near misses with oncoming drivers later, he came to another stoplight. This time, four cars separated the hunter from the prey. The battery was at eleven percent.
He continued with his strategy but now started looking for a place to ditch the sound collector temporarily. He needed a soft place to throw it where no one could easily find it until dawn when he’d come back for it. And, he supposed, if the night ended in as horrible a fashion as he kept imagining, the information he’d sleuthed would be out there, and he hoped the citizens of Leon City would do the right thing with it.
The rearview mirror showed only headlights and dark windshields between two rows of gargantuan buildings adorned with all sorts of lights. Five cars behind, the dark windshield was pierced by two red dots. I’m losing him. He couldn’t help but smile again.
He stopped at another intersection. He was going to turn right until he saw something to the left. It was a slender airway between two rows of residential buildings where the backsides of the buildings faced the alley. The drive was level to an airwalk filled with shops, little table sets, and restaurants. The layer below was what had caught his attention. Apartment patios.
He turned left when his time came and risked a bit more speed. He had to do it before Doors saw. He pushed on the pedal and zoomed down the alleyway. Hundreds of residents turned their heads his way as he passed. He had to slow down. Just a bit longer.
A blanket flapped in the night breeze as it hung on a cord beneath the airwalk a hundred or so yards ahead. It hung on a patio almost entirely taken by flowered garden beds. He checked the rearview mirror. There was no one behind him. Doors must’ve still been awaiting his turn at the stoplight. Gordon kept his speed and pushed the window down. He fetched the sound collector from his pocket, gave it a good luck kiss, and aimed for the soft soil of the garden.
When the time came, he didn’t use any strength. He just let go. With something as simple as separating his finger and thumb, the fate of the information he’d worked so hard for months to acquire was now in the hands of the wind. He’d misjudged. He watched in the driver’s side wing mirror as the bright blue sound collector card soared past the garden. He winced but couldn’t stop to look for it.
In the rearview mirror, he saw the hanging blanket move suddenly as if hit with something. Faint blue light pushed through it at the moment of impact. Then he lost it. Had it bounced off the blanket into the garden? Had it fallen to the asphalt far below, broken, or worse, in the hands of a lower district citizen?
All that mattered was getting away from Doors. Gordon’s pursuer had turned into the alley and risked even more speed than he had. Gordon cursed and stepped on the acceleration pedal. It was that or lose all the progress he’d made in shaking his pursuer.
Doors sped by the garden patio without ever slowing down. He didn’t see me throw it. It was something, at least. He raced as fast as his old Distancer could go down the rest of the alley. He’d never driven so fast before, and despite the dangers of getting caught by Doors or the cops, it was thrilling. He shouted a loud “Woohoo” as his wide eyes fixed onto the airway ahead, ready to react to anything. The wheel was harder to control at such a speed. Every slight breeze moved the car off course.
He finally slowed at the intersection stoplight. Doors was coming fast. Gordon went ahead and turned even though he had no right of way. The car he’d cut off sounded its horn, and Gordon waved a hand outside the window, feigning an apology. He stayed a few mph over the limit. Enough to get a ticket by a cop having a bad day, but not much else. Cloud Park was close. Close enough for his nine percent battery to get him there.
A few intersections later, with Doors only a couple of cars behind, a white screen loomed. Cloud Park: Enjoy the beauties of the past, within the safety of the future. An arrow at the bottom of the screen pointed left. Gordon followed it.
The park was about twenty square miles of fake grass and fake trees. There were baseball diamonds and tennis courts, but most folks just used it as a place to sit and picnic. For the younger folk, it was a good place to party even though such things were forbidden. It was also where Gordon had proposed to Marene, so he knew it quite well. He’d thought of the place where the proposal had occurred the moment Chris Canard had first talked about stash points.
He sped down the dark streets, a few inches above the asphalt, to avoid low-hanging plastic branches. Dim lanterns lighted the streets of the park. Unlike the rest of the city, where day and night were equally bright thanks to the sun beaming in through the dome by day or the advertisements at night, the park had tried to maintain an old-world ambience where night was dark, and day was light. Usually, Gordon loved the idea, but when speeding for his life through the slender, winding streets, he could’ve used a bit more visibility.
Doors wasn’t in the rearview, although he did catch a few beams from headlights here and there. He wasn’t alone. Gordon exhaled sharply. The metal-faced bodyguard deserved whatever he was being paid.
Gordon turned off every light on his car and slowed his speed as he approached his stash point. The lanterns that lit the other portions of the park did not spread to the stash point. It was why he’d chosen it as the place to propose. He’d pretended he’d simply led her to the strange part of the park, oblivious to how far off the usual path they’d gone. She’d started to panic, and of course, yelled at him, but it didn’t matter. He’d deserved it for scaring her, but it was all going to be worth it soon. He’d pretended to trip and fell forward. “My God, Gordon, can you even walk properly?” She’d said. He’d laughed and gotten to one knee. He’d asked her to marry him and opened the case to let the glowing ring shine in the darkness. It was a silver band with a sapphire on top. The gem had been implanted with a small light inside that only turned on in the dark. She loved it and said yes.
His reminiscing smile faded, and he turned into the artificial grove where there was just enough room for his car between the trees. Doors had just appeared in the rearview as he tuned. Gordon cursed. Had he been seen?
To be safe, Gordon left the car, ran far into the grove, and hid behind one of the broader trees about fifty yards from his car. Doors drove at a slow pace and stopped at Gordon’s back bumper. Gordon cursed again.
Doors exited the white car he’d likely stolen from the hospital parking lot and moved straight to the Distancer. He peered inside every window, then turned to look Gordon’s way. Gordon tensed but did not move. Only a small portion of his face poked out from the side of the tree. There was no way Doors could see him, altered eyes be damned.
The same odd sniffing sound he’d heard in the hospital lot filled the air. It was much worse in the tight quarters of the lot, but that didn’t mean it was at all pleasant outside. He walked around Gordon’s car then moved to the nearest trees. His movements were calm and slow, yet that made them more intimidating somehow.
Gordon kept his arms pinned against himself to keep the smell that had revealed his presence in the hospital lot away from the metal nose. Doors stood still, and the sniffing stopped. He couldn’t smell anything. The breeze must’ve been working in Gordon’s favor.
“You tell anyone what you heard at that meeting, and I will kill you. Understand?” His voice was metallic and loud as if the words had been spoken into some amplification device.
Gordon stayed silent and still as Doors turned and started for his white car. Gordon exhaled a held breath and closed his eyes.
A heavy crashing sound ripped his eyes open. Doors carried a plastic branch from a nearby tree and charged at Gordon’s Distancer. He slammed the branch onto the car a dozen times, shattering the windshield and the driver’s side window, both headlights, and severely bruising the driver’s side door, hood, and roof. He dropped the branch and drove away.
That’s why you don’t pay an insane amount for a ’48 Piercer. He left the shelter of the fake tree and carefully made his way to his ruined car. He’d have to find a way home in time to get a little sleep. Then he’d head back into the alley to find the recorder card. And after that? I declare war on the powers that run the dome. You’ve never been a smart one, Gord.