Chapter 1: Godsent

BASEMENT STUDIO, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (EARLY MORNING)

Maple eyes snap open to the pulse of a chime. Valerie sheds bedcovers and steps barefoot onto the floor. The clock reads 3:56.

The room is sparse, utilitarian. The red eye of the auto-drip winks out. Coffee can wait.

Valerie wears compression pants and sleeves, pulls on some grippy toe socks. THE TASK necessitates an athletic parka and running shoes, thin gloves and a tight beanie. Everything black. It’s always too warm in the boiler room, even in the cradle of autumn, but outside will be frosty.

Valerie takes a sip of water from the tap and leaves up the stairs, snatching up her key, her phone, and a pair of buds which she stuffs deep into her earholes.

In her wake the tap drips bullet shells into the metal basin.

STREETS, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (EARLY MORNING)

A bass line rolls into her ears, rolls the city before her eyes. Cookie-cutter houses with small yards return endlessly, lightless mausoleums with facades like skulls.

Valerie’s shoes hardly report a sound. That’s FORM. Lithe and light as air. She exhausts a cloud. The atmosphere stings her exposed cheeks; she pulls a bandana up over her nose. She’s a shadow now beneath the streetlights.

THE INSTRUCTIONS scroll down her phone--an address she’s already memorized but can’t afford to mistake. Five kilometers out. She’ll be there in minutes and know THE PAYLOAD when she sees it. The music drives her.

OVERGROWN LOT, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (EARLY MORNING)

A jungle grows between--and through--two ruined houses: skeletal branches growing out of eaves, a hint of transient animals within broken windowpanes. A rusted incinerator sits nestled in the overgrowth.

Could they be any more obvious?

Valerie doesn’t like the footprints she has to leave in the grass like she’s signing on a dotted line.

It takes all her weight to throw the latch and groan open the incinerator door. It’s too dark to see inside. She gropes around and finds purchase on something—THE PAYLOAD—which begins to glow a faint pink through its packaging. She stuffs it in her parka pouch, forgetting to zip it up.

The pink luminescence goes out.

She turns and freezes, sensing an off-beat hum beyond her pounding pulse. She depresses an earbud and pauses the tunes. Silence. Not. A motor. Neighbor? Mailman? She knows it’s neither.

The motor crescendoes.

STREETS, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (EARLY MORNING)

Valerie is halfway down the street before wheels squeal onto the asphalt. High beams cast her shadow long and alien. The engine revs, not slowing down.

It’s still too early for lights in the house windows. Valerie chances the first fence she sees, up and over. It’s the only yard with a dog.

Snarling, barking, and foaming at the mouth, only a chain halts the dog’s dead sprint at the intruder. Flood lights flick on in response to the motion. Car doors slam. Valerie is beyond the rear fence in a blink, tromping through thick foliage. This isn’t the city anymore.

NATURE PARK (CONTINUOUS)

The forest floor is carpeted with frozen leaves, every footstep a homing beacon. The only thing in Valerie’s favor is her head start.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Valerie ducks and weaves through bare branches, but all she can do in the low light is guess. Fabric snags, tree claws rake. The sweep of flash lights propels her on.

She nearly hits her head on the side of a rusted slide. A stray ray of dawn illuminates silhouettes of other dilapidated equipment: monkey bars, a merry-go-round, a swing set. A pair of ghosts ride the latter on a draft of children’s laughter.

Stumbling onto a trail of compacted dirt and wood chips, Valerie reengages her music and resumes the run. She’s invincible with the current song. Power for days. Nobody can catch her now.

But only if she doesn’t stop.

CEMETERY HILL (DAWN)

Dawn breaks beyond the hill, suffusing the clouds sanguine and orange. Gravel trails enchain the hill, between them grass gone autumn. Untold tens of thousands are buried here: on the hill, atop it, inside it, :.under it.:, occasionally marked by crosses and stone slabs. Sepulchers blister the hill.

Valerie runs with the dead.

Her phone throbs new instructions, but there’s no time to read them. She’s got to get around the hill and out of sight. Unwittingly, she climbs.

A report shatters the silence outside her mellifluous insulation.

They’ve got guns.

Valerie chances a glance as she rounds a bend: three men in long jackets, one of them shouting orders. They start to split up.

Faster.

Up won’t work. This hill--she’s got to get beyond it. Valerie leaps from the trail and lands on slick, slanted grass. She pulls herself into a protective curl as she tumbles, bruising something: an elbow, a hip. Finding her feet, she slaps her hoodie to verify that she’s still got THE PAYLOAD and shakes off the fall.

A thin band of manicured trees separates the cemetery from a parking lot. Valerie slices through it and doesn’t stop.

PARKING LOT (DAWN)

Long-abandoned cars fill the lot: torn up and missing pieces, hoods open and spilling wires like guts. Valerie doesn’t recognize the models.

She takes refuge behind a windowless SUV and checks her phone:

GET INSIDE

She almost laughs. The vehicles in this graveyard will take her nowhere.

Five seconds is too long a break. She peeks through the cab back the way she came. Still. Pausing the music, silent. The moment her head breaks the plane of the car a gunshot rends the faux tranquility, ricocheting off the hood, spooking a flock of birds from overhead wires.

Valerie throws herself to the cracked tarmac and army-crawls beneath the next truck over. She needs space, distance, obstructions, and earns them.

A combination of adrenaline and heavy guitar riffs grants the admixture of strength and ignorance required to run full-out, sliding over hoods and darting between cars against a blizzard of gunshots.

By the time she crosses the lot, the city is starting to awaken.

FOOTBRIDGE, HIGHWAY OVERPASS (DAWN)

Six lanes of rough highway run beneath the footbridge, traversed by semis and early commuters. All that matters is getting across it.

STREETS, OLD TOWN (DAWN)

Derelict shops of brick and cement and crumbling awnings line a curving street.

Valerie’s phone throbs:

ANYWHERE

She doesn’t think for a second she’s lost her tail, but they’re at least out of eyeshot. For now. She starts trying doors.

Locked. Locked. Locked.

The disused mannequin in the window of a boutique passes judgment--the kind that expedites you to hell.

LAUNDROMAT, OLD TOWN (DAWN)

The fourth door opens in to a slab of concrete littered with moldering dry wall. Machines line two walls, their glass doors hanging open or scratched and fogged up beyond repair. Bulging black contractor bags litter the floor, probably filled with corpses. Judging by the smell.

She doesn’t want to be here.

She stops the music. She needs to hear but hopes for silence.

Valerie crouches among the refuse and stares out into the street, not wanting to breathe in this filth but needing to breathe. Panting. Sweating. Nauseous.

A man trots down the street, panning right, left, looking right at her and not seeing her.

Another. This one stops outside the shop and starts speaking into a mic. She’s not getting out of here.

There’s another room. EMPLOYEES ONLY. An office or something. A maintenance hall. Valerie backs up toward it, keeping low. Now would be a terrible time for the rats to scatter.

She fumbles for the handle, not wanting to take her eyes off the goon on the mic. She’s just been SHOT AT. The reality sets in late, but sets in with the shakes.

Valerie backs into utter darkness and closes the door.