>> Brink

A few blocks down, and we’re still a blur - so fast we barely touch the floor. My lungs pump in powerful rhythm. The greasy scent of deep-fried simFood wafting on the wind. I laugh, and bound free. Giddy and riding the rush of the fight. Getting back into my stride, with every second. Pirates leaping out of the way. Kami a furious little voice, far behind. Nothing but the growing crowds to dodge as I follow the ceiling that hangs, low, above the buildings.

A green arrow spins into existence ahead of me as Zipper marks us a path. But I ignore it. Too caught in the rush of the run. The pounding of rough brick beneath palms and soles. I skid on a corner, and then on another. A catch the scent of chocolate buns, and wafting rain. The signs above shifting from purple, to red, to green, to-

I turn a corner, and the world just ends. The road. The ceiling. The buildings. The ground itself, terminating in a massive, three-story, wall of windows - blown out into absolute nothingness. Into darkness. Into pounding rain, and hurricane winds. Ships pour in, overhead. Roaring with thunder, and dripping with oil. So loud. So very, very, loud. Sudden panic and chaos slamming through my head as I grind to a shredding halt. Panting. Gasping. Wide-eyed, and shaken. Battered back by the storm and chaos blasting in from that massive, gaping, void where the megaTower itself.... just....

ENDS.

Brutally. Instantly. As if cut off by a laser.

It's the outside. The outside of the massive hollow Arcology in which the Pirates built their home. And I still my breath upon the edge. Mind locked suddenly tight. Staring out of that broken window at a sudden vison of massive - battered - megaTowers rising from the howling dark. Ringed, and pierced, by gleaming loops of silver-steel track that shriek and spark with speeding trains. Haunted by ancient, time-burnt, holos that stutter and jitter in the storm. A dozen Pirate enclaves - so massive that every floor is filled with smaller buildings.

With scenes of light and life so close I could reach out and touch them....

Even as I fell.

White noise, and chaos rising in my head as a swell of wind roars up under my belly. Calling me to fly. To tip down, and down, and down - into the belly of the night..... And some part of me does. A shadow. A ghost. A might-have-been that kept on running. Skidding. Panicking. Only to tumble, over the edge. Down, down, down a sheer ramp of glass - into the tumbling depths. Snapping bones, and shattering-

"Hey, idiot. The world's up here." Kami’s eyes are wicked as she hauls me vertical. Dangling me about like a limp puppet. “So.... What now…. leader? We still doing pal-phone-bees?”

"Calzone, mate." Zip groans, fully aware she's doing it deliberately.

"Cal what?" She smirks, dangling me about. Prodding my face with multiple fingers on multiple hands. "Hey? Hey? I think Spook is broken."

"Right..." I mutter, eyes stuck on that hole.

"Spook? Mate? Hey, you okay?" Zip tilts his head at me, like a GMO. Flicking his eyes toward that vast, all consuming-

"Yeah." I groan. Gripping my helmet. Tail lashing, oily, and embarrassingly fluffed behind me. "Liquid cheese. Sounds good."

"You know it, mate! You're gonna love this place!" Zip whoops - pulling up menus and maps like he's planning a food-themed war.

Kami smirks a nod, eyes flitting between me and the inky-

My whole body jerks as a needle-sharp speeder slices in from the dark. Thrust-compactors thrumming and thumping as it turns to park itself on the roof of a nearby garage. I take a shivery breath, and shake it off. It wasn't a trap. It wasn't. I just got careless, and...

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"Mate, hey, you sure you're okay?"

"Fine. Fine."

"It's not, like, the heights thing again-"

Skidding. Falling. Flailing for whatever purchase I can get. Claws scratching, groping, reaching - feeble as a dream. As if the world just stopped being real. Oil and grease filling my nails. Unsettling my delicate balance. Right until-

"I'm good." I grin with feeble cheer. "So. That. Uh? Burger thing?"

"Calzone!!! Mate! Come on!" He bends almost backwards, groaning into his hands. "Like, it ain't even similar!"

"Both got melty cheese innit." I smirk, with my tongue out. "And simMeat... simVeg."

"Lotta sauces too." Kami's grim lips twitch. Cold eyes twinkling, just a little.

"And, like-"

"You two are killing me, y'know?" Zip grumbles, with a dead-eyes look of suffering. Demon chuckling, quietly, behind his mask in that reserved little way of his. The kind where he's sorta here, and he's sorta with us, but he doesn't quite join in....

I loosen up as we pad (in Kami's case, clomp) through the endless Pirate bazar. Past hundreds of chop-shops, burger-bars, wreckers, mechanics, and half-built ships leaking oil all over the place. Gleaming Pirate choppers rumbling, throatily, as Pirate kids scurry back and forth. Stealing whatever they can. A reminder that nothing in Karrak is ever as safe as it seems. Even out here, in the markets, where casual tourists get to keep nearly all of their kidneys.

If not their wallets.

It's a beautiful place, in a weird - wonky - kind of way. Pirate prizes streaking in over our heads to line up in auctions, or drop off at buyers. Sellers with too many arms sizzling "fresh-caught" monsterMeat, right off the QIZ. Guaranteed 'no mutagens', or your money back. Though, probably not your nose. We even pass a massive, armoured, humanoid figure - with a built-in cockpit. Thirty feet tall, and ribbed with red stripes. Its visor bright with gold. Its jet-systems wide open - leaking cables like spaghetti.

"Damn. That's an Aristo-class mek, mate." Zip whistles up at it, yelping as I cast my gaze down. "Hey, like, keep looking. I want to see this-"

"Nope." Kami chuckles, focused on the pair of slightly-mutated Pirates waging a slap-fight at its metal feet. Something, something, you-put-the-bloody-engines-in-backwards-you-idiot.... by the sound of it. I shake my head. Just admiring the ever-present weirdness of Karrak, as Zip giddily tells us everything anyone has ever known about that mek. Half of which I'm pretty sure he's just making up on the bleedin' spot.

But I don't care.

Onward we go at the same slow pace. The street widening out into a market square full of junk-shops and pretzel venders. Our virtual guide pointing out weaponised drones and speeders. Jury-rigged fighters, built from former civilian ships. Rusty old salvage-ships, which barely cling to actual flight by their fingernails. Often with way too-many, terrifyingly casual, pirate kids clung to loops of dubious cargo-rope netted across the sides.

"Oh, look at that." Kami announces, sorta awkwardly, as we pass by a long row of shops with thickly barred windows. All racks of engine-parts, and jetBikes in various states of 'not riding that'. Which ain't exactly unusual in Pirate Town.

Except....

We stop in front of a thick metal grill that pulses with weak greenish light. The window behind it different - and strange. All velvet drapes, and little pillows. Each boasting a few, glowing, fragments of originTek that gleam beneath the thick glass. Whispering secrets of the ancient past. Of knowledge lost to humanity….

There's more across the square. All kinds of dubious little shops slapped right in there, willy-nilly, between the wrecker-shops and discount noodle bars. All filled to bursting with esoteric, almost-magical, devices. Orbs, and cubes, of blackest stone - cut with colourful glyph-like circuits, that pulse and hum with ominous light. Some laid, potent and strange, upon velvety cushions. Others hanging low in the air, as if stuck there. Or orbiting, gently, above tapered square pillars.

Y'know. The kind that come to a sharp point. Like an obelisk.

"Mission complete, yeah?" Zip snickers.

"Yeah." I laugh, weakly. Shaking my head.

"Weird-ass place for a fake magic shop." Kami snorts at the GMO fox-man smoking it up at the open-air Raman-bar beside it, tail-brush swishing as he taps at screens only he can see.

"It's Karrak, baby." Zip smirks.

"Karrak, my ass. I'm gettin' hungry here." I groan, eyeing the menu.

“Hey! Whao! Calzones, mate! Remember? Way better than soggy noodles.” Zipper’s avatar insists, teleporting sideways to block out the bar. “Plus, like, I sorta haven’t scoped that one-” He cringes. "-y'know?"

“Right, right.” I fend him off. “You’ll get ya greasy pizza-goo-sandwich thing.”

Kami shrugs. “All comes from the same nutriSlop bag.”

“We hope.” I remind her. “Right. Anyway. Zip - where's this inside-out food thing?"

His smirk lights up. “Hah, that’d be-” His avatar freezes, suddenly, in mid-motion. Jittering strangely. Stuck, silent, right in mid air.

“Zip?” Kami folds arms. “Are you pissing about?”

But the image shudders. Glitching. Twitching. And then it vanishes - leaving only a ‘No Signal’ bar.

An instant later, two of Zip’s tiny spy-drones smack into pavement.

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