A rocket is fired from the rear.
It strikes the green and orange drone inches to my right.
He swerves, clipping me before exploding into the black sand-covered pavement.
I spiral out of control off course. The rest of the pack races past me, as I struggle against momentum.
Finally, my drone stops. I try to use my eye to find the quickest path, but I’m virtual, no upgrade in this body.
Fuck it. I smash the throttle sending a wake of loose sand behind me as I try like hell to make it back to the rings.
Soaring into the ally I crashed through, I get a glimpse of something, but don’t have enough time to process it. I’m knocked from the air hard as a wing from my Deltacraft is sliced off, sending me whirling to the ground in flames.
Before the transmission fades, I see what struck me, but I refuse to believe it. It’s… not possible.
Chapter 5
My eyes barely open. I am alive.
Black sand burns all around me for as far as I can see. My broken, blood-dried face throbs as the pulsating soreness captures me, refusing to ever let go. A thousand tiny needles dig to the center of my brain without mercy. Great purple welts tattoo my chest. I make a halfhearted attempt to lift myself, but my body declines, and I allow it. I lay here face down in the blistering sand. My eyes, barely open. I am alive.
The cloudless sky fades darker with every passing second as the auburn sun tries its best to hide underneath the desert hills. Never-ending rows of black sand in every direction. Behind me, the only city I’ve ever known.
“You okay, Palin?” asks Jacee hunched in the sand, legs crossed, still wearing the infirmary scrubs she had on early this morning. There is a sincere tone in her voice. Her eyes, wet, one’s bruised and swollen. Not far behind her, the metal archway of the south gate lurks overhead. Two sentry droids guard the city from underneath it. The dancing perception of their black metal frames waves astheir red eyes burn in our direction through the haze of the gate’s electric field, watching our every move, waiting for their opportunity to blast us.
“What happened?” I ask hoarsely. Throat still fucked.
“Lethe happened,” she says helplessly. Everything about her, defeated.
I give her a few seconds to sulk while I gather my thoughts and injuries. It’s not looking good for us.
“Are you okay?”
She doesn’t even lift her head as she replies, “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. We’re going to die out here.”
“We are not dying, especially out here. Not until I free Kalli from them if she’s even in there. That I promise.”
“She’s not, Palin.”
“What?”
“She’s not in their servers. She died before they could upload her into the Delta Project. The Suits were already in your room when I was coming back to tell you. I went on my lunch, had to bribe a custodian with 20 credits to let me in to check. She’s gone, but at least she’s not trapped in their prison.” As the words leave her mouth, her eyes cut to the ground.
Both anger and relief hit me at the same time. I thought maybe there was this small chance of seeing her again.. somehow. In a way, the news helps, gives me sight of closure. It’s okay. As much as it fucking kills me, I’m happy, happy she’s free and at peace.
“What are we going to do, Palin?” she cries looking me straight in the eyes now. Her feeling of hopelessness tugs at me, becoming contagious.
“Well, the first thing we are going to do is stop with the crying. We can’t afford it. You’ll be dehydrated in no time if you keep that up,” I answer, standing to dust myself off. A plan begins to turn in my mind, more of a suicide mission than a plan, but it’s our only shot. This is about more than me now.
“In my apartment, there’s a wrench and some pliers I took from the plant. Assuming they haven’t cleaned it out yet, I think we can sneak in and get them if we’re lucky.”
“What are we going to do with tools, Palin? Lethe has guns, really big ones.”
“We use the tools to crack a vending machine. From there we take as many sustenance pills as we can hold and run like hell. That should keep us alive for another few months, as long as we don’t get caught.”
She’s silent for a minute, thinking through the same probable scenarios I did, reaching the same grim conclusion. Eventually, she nods with almost no confidence in me or her own survival. Can’t say I blame her either. The Outlands can be pretty intimidating, breaking into a Lethe city even more. If I had to place my credits on either us or dying, I’d go all-in with dying. Then it hit me.
“Where do you think the men who attacked the infirmary came from?” I ask rhetorically.
The flicker of realization hits her like a bus. Her mind scrambles to process the glimmer of hope I just installed into her, into us both.
“This isn’t over. I need you to stay with me. We’re going to get through this, okay? If they can make it out here, so can we.”
She nods eagerly as if her life depended on it.
“What are you waiting for, you fee-fee la-la?” Kalli mocks. “It’s just sand, it’s not gonna bite.”
“I’m just - give me a second, will ya?” I cautiously reply. “You know I’m not that great at heights.”
“Fee-fee. La-la.”
“I told you not to call me that… What if we get lost? The dump is miles from here and… I just feel like something bad is going to happen.”
She laughs and points at me standing on the edge of the city’s wall, too afraid to jump.. “Nothing bad is going to happen. Bad and good…” she air quotes, “…are just different perspectives of the same experience. Things just happen. In the unlikely
