02.07 O’Sama

     “Espy!”
     The lizard girl turned at the raconid’s sharp call, pausing on her way to the parking garage where their motorcycles were parked. “Yes Jasper?”
     He tried to read her expression and failed, her eyes and posture gave away little, and after the events of the day he expected her to be very irritated. “Are you okay Esp?”
     She gave him a look, cocking her head to the side. “Define okay.” But then she laughed. “No, its all right. It’s a lot to take in, that’s all.”
     “And Rika?”
     She was noticeably less serene when she answered. “What can you do? It’s just…”
     “Just?”
     “Just, I wish she’d think about things before she just does them! She’s taking over everything, and I hate it. I don’t want to have to ask her for permission to use my own phone! It’s my home. And now I’m going to lose it.” She sullenly scuffed her foot against the ground and then looked up, giving him a half smile. “What?”
     He smiled back. “Nothing.”
     “You must think I’m acting like a spoiled little girl.”
     “No, it isn’t like that at all. You’re right. Rika’s been a little selfish. I don’t know… to tell the truth I didn’t know whether to be worried or cheer them on when he came out of the bathroom like that.”
     “Jasper!”
     “No really! I mean come on. Shrike? But wouldn’t it be something if she did break loose… if she let go?”
     Espy frowned a moment, looking at her toes. Jasper let her work out her thoughts on her own, and finally, “I’ve been the selfish one haven’t I?”
     “No Espy. You’ve given her everything it’s possible to give. She’s growing beyond the shock. We’re just going to have to deal with her as best as we can.”
     She smiled again, but there was still something missing. “I haven’t given her everything.”
     Jasper smiled. “No, you haven’t. I should have told Janus we’d still only need two rooms. You know we’re going to be seeing him all the time now.”
     She sighed. “Yes. We’ll just have to deal with that too.” They both felt the insistent pull of time passing but Jasper wasn’t quite done. There was something between them, unsaid as yet, that he knew with a sudden flash of insight that he needed to tell her now. She started to turn away and he caught her hand.
     “We could go see them together.”
     She blinked. “What? Jasper … it’s going to be late by the time we’re done. If you don’t go check at the shelter it’ll be closed.”
     “So we can see Bart tomorrow. Unless you just…”
     “Jasper, if they are watching, if this is as important as it appears, then we have to move fast. And Jasper, do you want them to catch us both there if the Feds are looking? Remember we’re on camera together.”
     He laughed and squeezed her hand. She was right, and he knew that, yet still… “You’re sure?”
     “Come on. What’s with you? You’re all worried all of a sudden?”
     “Yes. I just have a feeling…”
     She pulled loose but brushed her hand across his cheek. “It’ll be all right. It’s not my time to go yet. O’Sama told me once, that I had a long way to fall. Things happen. But they won’t happen today, all right?”
     He gave a half-hearted grumble. “Why does it feel like you want to hide something from me?”
     She gave him a similar smile. “I want to be sure all right? I’ll tell you, I promise.” She stepped back too quickly and left him sighing.
     “Hey! Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
     She laughed, the familiar honest trill making him smile. “That too! Don’t worry! Go see Renslip, and take good notes!”

     She took off at a good clip, forcing herself not to run. Guilt was not a feeling she liked to harbor, but that was how it had to be. She had to admit to herself that it still scared her, his age to hers. And now O’Sama. If Jasper knew just how long that man had known her… well, there was no telling just what kind of conversation she was about to have, and she thought she’d known the curious old gentleman better than anyone.
     She found herself suddenly glad that Jasper had tethered his bike, and feeling a greater debt of gratitude for Rika, she jumped on hers from behind, sliding into the seat and marveling at just how steady the machine stayed. It fired up at her touch, and with barely a thought she was leaning, the cycle rolling forward smoothly with naught but the quietest purr to tell it was even running.
     She left the garage and turned in the opposite direction than the most direct route she could take. Checking her mirrors, snapping on the cycle’s radar, she found no sign of the one most likely to follow, and kicked off into the light traffic. It wasn’t that she was afraid of being followed, as much as the need she had to do some thinking. For a few blocks more she eyed the console, and after a moment switched the comm. unit off too. With no interruptions to disturb her, Espy aimed her cycle for the upramps. She’d loop around the sectors on the upper levels, clear her head and review what she knew.

     She hadn’t been the only child raised on the streets of Greenshadows, tumbling happily across the back lots of the high rises just being built. But she was the only one to remember the area before the mega-plexes. She’d found herself left out, bypassed, mistrusted. She was only Espy, but to others she was the ‘tall girl’, ‘the lizard’, the ‘adult that never grew up.’
     Even before the plex grew to cover the stump-well, even before her mother moved their ‘home’ from Greenshadows to Undermarket, Espy was a creature that didn’t fit in anywhere. They had gone to Undermarket when the ‘soil was gone’. The Federal construction crews had paved the last yards, poured their plas-crete slips and pounded in the support pylons. When the survey teams had started measuring the remains of the stump Tyleet had seen the handwriting on the wall.
     Espy didn’t remember The Tree, or the dispersal. Many of the raconid had ‘come down from the high ways’ centuries before. It had been a right of passage for their kindred, to take a pilgrimage to the ancestral home before returning to the niches they’d carved in society. The last of them to be evicted, scattered by the Unified Enforcement Patrols, burrowed deep into the shelters and faded with the great tree’s fall.
     Tyleet told her of the great ships. The last two to be space worthy, cobbled together from the remaining skeletal struts from the shipyards and alien colony vessels, filled to the brim with planetary dissidents, anti-federalists and Lir, … Lir distraught by the death of The Tree and the assimilation of the whole planet. It destroyed Tyleet, this exodus, for with the dissidents went the father of her daughter, the one male whom she had loved and trusted.
     Espy’s first clear memory was of her mother, holding her close atop a high tower, pointing into the night sky. “There” she told her. “There beyond the last edge of the small moon. Those two stars you see are the great ships.” At the time she was too young to understand Tyleet’s broken heart. She’d told her mother, “All I see are stars.”
     But a few months later, there was too much smog for even that.

     When she was older, and they had moved to Undermarket, Espy had started carving a place in the world. She was PINless, homeless, and aimless. But it was not her wont to be so. She simply had stuck by her mother for the whole of her life. Tyleet had never made an effort to fit into Technocratic society. She had spent the ages sitting on her tail, hanging about the base of The Tree, waiting as close to the place she’d called home as long as she could.
     Espy never understood her mother. With the whole world to explore, it was unthinkable that Tyleet had chosen to never leave The Tree. All she taught her daughter, the legends, the theology; everything in Tyleet’s life revolved around His return and the One place that he would be sure to go. And when that place was gone…
     Tyleet had spoken with reverence of The One, The Hope of All, and His return to the world. There had never been a time Espy could remember that her mother’s faith in that event had wavered until The Tree was gone. And once that happened Tyleet just faded away.
     The fading: it wasn’t a thing to happen overnight. And at first Espy did not know what was happening. All she knew at first was that her mother stopped her preaching. Her constant carping about being ready, of preparing the way and helping Him upon his return just ceased. It seemed an answer to a long held prayer.
     But as the months of silence dragged on Espy found herself laboring under other prayers. Tyleet refused to take an interest in anything. She stopped talking, stopped going out, stopped eating… With alarm her daughter watched her strength ebb away, and when pleas fell on deaf ears she turned to others in desperation.
     Only … there were few others to turn to. Part of the price of her mother’s behavior over the years; part of the fears they held because of the history that Tyleet had so adamantly believed in for so long, was that they could not be open about themselves. It became a scary fact of Espy’s life that she knew so little about her true self, because of who and what she was.
     The word … the name … Lir. It was a certain ticket to destruction, if the people in power knew. They had destroyed The Tree. And as Tyleet told her daughter, if those people could do that, there was nothing they could not do.
     Yet Espy could not simply sit and watch her mother die. Someone, somewhere, had to know what to do. In the end the one person of any help at all turned out to be a little oriental gentleman she met completely by chance. Or so she had thought at the time.
     She had been eating at the noodle shop, ravenous after a day’s scrounging for credits, working to find some way to help her mother. And after the meal, she’d sat there despondent, caught between the need to return to her mother’s alley and the desire to run away from the brewing storm of emotion. It was then the old sing-song gentleman caught her attention, asking politely if he could sit at her table to dine. She consented, unsure why.
     Perhaps it was her need to confide in someone, or the desperation of reaching the end of her rope. But when he took her hand in the middle of his meal and asked, “What trouble it was that clouded her bright eyes”, the dam she’d hidden behind for so long burst. She’d told the little man everything she knew to tell and then some, worried only at the end of it that she had told too much.
     Yet O’Sama had simply finished his meal, slurping his last noodles like a little boy, giving her a winsome little smile. It was just impossible not to trust him, and she had followed him from the eatery to his shop without question. He’d gathered a kit bag of odds and ends, and then gone with her to Tyleet’s alley.
     For a year afterward, O’Sama had come to see her mother, first talking toward her about anything he found prudent, and then with her. Tyleet went from brooding silence to chirping replies, and Espy was astounded the first time O’Sama got her to share a proper meal.
     Yet, for all of his success there was still something lacking in her mother’s eyes. And Espy could no longer stand to sit in Tyleet’s shadow. Instead she was increasingly roaming, putting forth her presence on the streets, doing something. She joined a local gang that had some promise, kept saving creds and worked on her strength and her learning.
     Through those months she kept coming back to see the pair. But though the two were often speaking of the future neither would discuss it with her. A widening gulf between herself and Tyleet seemed as though it would never close, and Espy was looking for a way out when she met Rika.
     She was looking for something better. The Enforcers, in young eyes, seemed to be that something. It was a chance that allowed her to climb much higher, and to join the society that Tyleet had shunned. And yet, in the end, she had come back, tossed out of the maw of that society by design and happenstance.
     She had long known what there was to come back to. Despite the manner of her leaving, she had never broken contact with O’Sama. As the only ‘family friend’ that she had, it was the only way to send word to her mother about how she was doing. And in return, O’Sama sent word of Tyleet to her.
     When Espy joined the Enforcers it was under their ‘service for a PIN’ contract. It was a move she’d had to make, both as the best to gain entry and the only way to hide her past. To protect Tyleet from accidental discovery, she had told the recruiters she had no family. Thus she was half the world away when O’Sama had sent her an email message that her mother had passed away.
     Espy had sat numbly at the public terminal for hours, remembering their last arguments. She had never told Tyleet goodbye. Her mother had gone beyond her silent waiting, reminding Espy of her duties, her binding heritage, and her responsibilities to ‘the one that was to come’. And though she had nodded in agreement to those duties she had never accepted the ludicrous demands as being real. Tyleet had not been fooled, and would not leave off her haranguing.
     How Espy had wished Tyleet would just shut up; would just cease to go on and on about The One, and how it was their duty to aid him. But she had never believed the day would come that her mother wouldn’t be the one waiting.
     And now … she had to admit there seemed to be some truth to the old legends that her mother had always told her. The idea of “one that had betrayed the Lir” was nothing new. Every culture that had come to her world had the concept of an evil being whose one great goal was to corrupt creation. And of saviors, there was always one the prophets told would return, someday…
     If there was a savior, a “Hope of All”, Espy thought he was only a decade late. Or was he? The more she thought about it, the more she had to wonder. Had O’Sama been a friend by accident? Or had he known her a lot longer than she had been aware?
     Espy pulled to the curb beside the plascrete and tin covered block long building she thought of as “Mein O’Sama’s” and thumbed the kill switch for her cycle. A cursory glance told her things were the same as ever; Doowin’s Chow Mein was running a brisk business while the rest of the shop front seemed a dying derelict. But the door to O’Sama’s Junk was open and beckoning, the glow of dim light calling customers to come within.
     A final look over the street left her with an uneasy feeling, but she wasn’t sure why she felt so. It seemed to her that she was probably just worried about the coming confrontation. So with a shrug and a sigh toward the inevitable, she dismounted from her cycle and went to the shop.
     Ducking through the beaded curtain across the entry announced her arrival with the tinkle of tiny bells. She stood blinking away the change of light and mentally identifying the scents in the air. O’Sama liked jasmine and sandalwood and always had a few sticks burning somewhere.
     A second tinkle of bells had her turning; to the right the little man was bowing through a similar curtain. His face brightened when he saw her and he came around his counter holding his arms wide open. She went to him, stepping into his hug, and she smiled at his greeting, but he knew immediately that there was something wrong.
     Holding her at arms length he looked closely into her face before sighing and letting go. “Ah, little daughter. I see that the time has come.”
     She gave him a raised brow and the ghost of a smile. “Lang Brian O’Sama. I left ‘little’ behind quite a few years ago. And it’s been a long time since I was anyone’s daughter.”
     He had flinched at his full name, and Espy knew beyond doubt that Rika’s files were true. It saddened her greatly. But the little oriental man took the initial discomfort in stride. “Ah Espy. Everyone needs a parent, and will always be a child to somebody. Yes, you have grown older, but you still have room to grow up. You are here to ask the final questions.”
     He had turned away and walked toward his usual table in the rear. She did not like the tone of his words. But how else could she approach him? It was a hefty accusation she had to throw in his face. But like her mother, O’Sama had always encouraged her to go straight for the heart of the matters on her mind.
     “Did you tell mother what you are? Did you tell her what you did to The Tree?”
     He had his back to her, but she saw the way his shoulders fell. At that moment it struck her how old he had to be, and how tired he was came clear by the way he climbed up to sit upon the high stool behind his counter. Something of the song in his voice was gone when he answered.
     “No child. Such knowledge would have taken her faster. I gave only the hope that you sought; the same that she had lost. The end for her was sooner than later, but it was not The Tree that ended her waiting.”
     “Are you suggesting if The Tree was still here that she wouldn’t be?”
     “Do you believe she would not have suffered the fate of the last Council-Lir?”
     “I don’t even know his fate! What difference does it make?”
     O’Sama rested his hands on the table and said nothing. Espy’s gaze wandered across the tabletop. She frowned. “Have you been selling your best stuff now? Where’s your burning bowl?” The gilt vessel with its white sand for incense burning was gone. And the more she looked, the more she found other of his favored possessions missing from their customary places. She turned around in a circle, making a mental tally of the changes, and when she was facing him once more, he had a sad smile.
     “Gone. Soon it will be gone. All that Tyleet loved and favored passed away. All you see, all you know, will soon be swept to dust. And I too will be swept away, but it is well child, for I am tired.”
     Concerned and confused, she walked to the edge of his table and leaned on it, studying him intently. Seated on his stool, surrounded by the parts and pieces of the past, he appeared a wizened scholar seeking some lost knowledge. But deeper in his eyes was a glimmer of something she hadn’t really seen since she last faced her mother. And this time, she knew.
     “You’re giving up. You’re going to die…” She spoke in a whisper. He reached across the table and patted her hand.
     “Child, you have long years yet ahead. I have seen the century pass. Your burdens need strong shoulders, and mine… It is time I laid them down. He who takes his troubles to his final rest, has failed at life, has failed his test. It is not giving up I do, but accepting fate while sheltering you.”
     “Stop it! Talk straight O’Sama. I’m not some chip addled raconid you can talk circles around.”
     He laughed. “Indeed Espy. Indeed. How is your boyfriend? I saw your future in his eyes.”
     Her tail jerked and twisted, she blushed and gave him a scowl. “Will you stop? Look, I’m serious. Who was the other guy?”
     “I will assume you do not mean Bartholomew. Therefore you ask of one who no longer lives upon this world.”
     Espy frowned. “No. We know about Renslip. Your other partner is working for Pulse Incorporated. That man … What is his name?”
     O’Sama shook his head. “There were many in those days child. All of them suffered the same fate. The spirit who once had lived is gone; the dead that walk will linger on. Take heart, we will not be among them.”
     “Why can’t you just come out and say what you mean? Since when do the dead walk O’Sama? If your research partner is dead, how can he still be running things?”
     “Because he is not Him.” O’Sama’s steadfast answer frustrated her badly. But he seemed to take no notice, dropping her hand to shuffle through the crumpled papers and garbage remaining before him. And he wasn’t done talking; he had more to tell and began with an urgency she had never seen in him before.
     “The first thing we found was that they are born with the powers. The last, that we are not as them. In arrogance and blindness we supposed ourselves their equal; that we could harness what was theirs, what they knew, and tame what they could not. But greed, lust, madness - these forever are the undoing of mere mortals.
     Remember this in your years little daughter: claim no more than your rightful due - years, learning, your life’s blood. To ask for more is to open the way to danger untold. To take more leads to far, far worse. When one owes a piece of their soul, the Betrayer repays by taking the whole.”
     She had thought till then that she’d heard enough. O’Sama’s tirade had returned to his customary sing-song rhetoric. But at the last he sounded like her mother. She leaned close. “The Betrayer O’Sama? Do you believe in Lir devils?”
     The little man chuckled humorlessly. “A people that aspire to supplant their protectors should take seriously the forces that their benefactors protected them from. To do less is to welcome destruction. We took the spirit of The Tree for ourselves, took the mantle of nature for our own and played at being God. Even now we reap the consequence; the end of our era draws near.”
     Espy felt her head swimming. “Took the spirit of The Tree? What do you mean? What did you do?”
     “We followed Lir legends, myths and stories, and tried to make them our own. All that your people attempted, we tried too.”
     “What!”
     “The Lir arrived upon this world, according to their history, cut off, friendless, alone. They walked their exile seeking always their kindred, a return to home. And always hanging over them the shadow of the Betrayer, and the hope of their savior, The One.
     Who knows what the trolloc thought when first they came, but to the humans, they saw themselves in a mirror distorted. Their God, their garden, their exile. It was not a wonder that the Lir welcomed them with open arms. Yet the humans to Lir were but excited children, and with dismay they watched as the world was recreated.
     The ingenuity of men and the broad back of labor that was troll; legend states that once the Lir allowed the Betrayer to destroy a lesser race that walked amid them. Since that time no creature has been allowed to languish under their care. To give the vanishing fauna of our world a chance to survive, the Lir took a creature from each level of the environment and gave to them the size of body, and strength of mind to be our equal.
     From the stratosphere came the bat kin - at home in the top of tree and mountain cave, but the only remaining flier to give birth to living young. From the arboreal, the raconid, caretakers of The Tree. From the plains, the fox kin called Lupis-Vulpis that already displayed art and organization in the keeping of their dens.
     And finally, from the under earth, the rodentia, too numerous to eradicate or control. They grew to many kindreds, some to remain beasts, and some to take their place amid the ranks of men. These last, the bestial, were the only remaining animals to survive in such a state. From these, raised and bred in captive farms, comes your press-meat. All too often they escape, and this I should have heeded.
     In my research, I attempted to follow the Lir. We took the knowledge of The Council, and by diligent efforts increased what these beasts could learn. But despite our work we could never duplicate by genetics the size the Lir had achieved, and the project was abandoned a year after it had begun.”
     Despite his departure from her question, Espy was greatly intrigued. Though her mother had oft hinted at the era in history he was discussing, there had never been much evidence to corroborate any of those events of which she had been told. And of course, there was simply the unknown history of the man to consider. So she followed willingly where he led her. “Abandoned after a year? Why?”
     O’Sama laughed. “Our subjects were much smarter than we gave them credit for. In the course of one night, having learned all they cared of what we had to teach them, they escaped. Despite our best efforts to recapture them, they fled into the under levels, where they have been spreading ever since.”
     She found humor in it and laughed with him. Somehow O’Sama seemed proud of his ‘children’, and recalling seeing the little creatures scampering through the back of his shop, she now understood his behavior a little better. Still… “Isn’t it wrong though, doing such things?”
     He nodded assent. “As I said, we played at being God. Yet there is something to gain I think. Even the smallest of creatures may influence the course of events. And if their descendants inherit a new world I hope they will understand that they can do something better with it.”
     “Wouldn’t the rest of us have to disappear first?” She said it teasingly and was surprised at the serious look that crossed his face.
     “Protect your loved ones as best you can little daughter. Best protect yourself. Remember these days well, that science is more than machinery, and just because we think we see, does not mean we understand.” A tinkle of bells alerted them that someone else had entered the shop, and O’Sama sighed. Espy started to turn and the little man caught her hand, giving it a final squeeze.
     “The answer to your question is hidden in the Core. Pay attention little daughter. Listen to your friends, and time your leaping well.” He passed a thin piece of plastic into her hand before letting her go, and she read the dismissal in his eyes. Something in his manner alerted her, and intuition told her to pocket the trinket and go.
     Greeting the new customer from his seat, O’Sama confirmed that decision. “Good day to you miss, and you sir, what can this humble servant do for you?” Espy turned fully from the table and met the gaze of the man who had entered. Dressed in a black suit, placing a pair of shades in his pocket, he seemed the very last person that would be a customer of the junk shop. But he smiled and nodded to her as she passed, even as he spoke.
     “Brian Lang O’Sama, you have the recorder?”
     Espy had gotten to the exit, though at the stranger’s words she paused at the curtain. She heard O’Sama move from his chair, shuffling tiredly on his way to his private back room. “Oh, yes. Just let me get it for you. Your employer should find it in order.”
     Knowing that to remain inside any longer would be to draw attention to herself, she pushed through the curtain and passed outside, despite her unease at hearing, “Good. He would find it disappointing to learn you had reneged on your part of the deal.”
     On the sidewalk she stopped short in the doorway, cold and afraid. Every sense she had was screaming how wrong things were, and she was torn between going back into the shop and fleeing as quickly as she could. Her eyes went wide as it hit her; the suit had used O’Sama’s full name.
     She was ready to turn on the spot when movement to her left caught her attention. Two Enforcer troopers were slowly making their way up the walk. She had no doubt that the two humans were legitimate, for they looked as though the blue uniforms suited them well. All the same, the way they were walking told its own tale, and she knew with sudden clarity just what was going down.
     Before she had a chance to react a shout from the right alerted the troopers. A third Enforcer stood at the entry to the dark stairwell, pistol drawn and aimed at her. The man called to his fellow troopers. “It’s that lizard from the bike jacking. You keep those hands down or I’ll cap you right here!” She read it in their faces, how inconvenient the timing of her appearance was to them reinforced the feeling that an official hit was happening.
     The two on the left were hesitating too long. She could not tell if the third man was with them or not, but the trio could see her building frustration peaking by the expression on her face. One of them raised his hands. “Okay now, just take it easy. We’ve got you covered.”
     “No!” She knew what the one had decided; knew what the others would say as they arrested her; knew exactly what was happening behind her. And as if on cue, a measured double popping sounded inside the shop. She heard the clatter of falling debris and the impact of a falling body. Time and tears broke across her face in slow motion. “No…”
     “What’s going on out here?” The tinkle of bells and clicking beads alerted her, giving away his position and speed of motion. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the black suited arm push through the curtain and she reacted. A step to the side and a half turn had her in position; she grabbed the agent by the arm and sank her claws into the dark cloth, hissing “killer” as she yanked him out of the door, off balance and into the line of fire.
     The gunshot sounded too close and too late. If there had been anyone not involved on the street they were gone at that point. But Espy was too focused on the immediate moment, time running in slow motion in her eyes. She felt the suit jerk as he took the shot meant for her. Both of them went down, the suit thrown toward the street and falling straight away, Espy rolling straight to the curb where she’d parked her cycle.
     Rolling upright, digging in with her left foot, she pushed off to leap straight up and out, twisting at the last to face the proper direction. She felt a brief hard impact at the end of her tail; a trooper was up and spinning, his hand reaching for his face. But she wasn’t taking tallies, she landed hard on the bike seat, crying out at the bruising shock while still using her forward lean to roll the cycle into motion, glad for the auto start built into the handles.
     The Enforcers were scrambling as her bike leapt into motion. The one with the drawn pistol swung with her travel and fired a second shot that shattered a lit sign across the street. The trooper that had been tail-kissed spent a moment to throw a fit before running back to their patrol sled while his partner saw to the wounded agent.
     The trooper that went to the sled jumped into the pilot’s chair, threw the air jets into motion and called their home station. He eased to the curb as he did so, hitting the siren and waving for the other troopers to hurry and board. The agent waved off the attentions of the one patrolman. “Go get that fucking thing,” he told them. “I’ve got to finish firing the place. Don’t let it get away!”
     Within minutes Espy found she was the target of a furious pursuit. It seemed the Enforcers had bikes on every corner; patrol sleds for every block, and armed troopers rushing down every alley. She was completely stunned by just how many sirens and lights burst into life around her. And it killed her to think the entire ambush had taken place because of their digging into O’Sama.
     O’Sama … the agent that had shown at the shop had come looking for him, for someone with whom O’Sama had struck a bargain. She had to wonder if the little man was what she had thought him to be. She had to wonder if Jasper had gone into a similar trap. She had to pay attention!
     A blasting chorus of air horns screamed in her ears as she roared full tilt into an intersection, vehicles swerving and plowing into each other as she rocketed across. The howling Enforcer sirens followed hot on her tail, and her radar showed more red pinpoints in the traffic ahead. Scanning the sides of the street she saw a desperate chance and took it.
     She gunned her motor, screaming through traffic flowing slowly on either side until she found a good-sized break in the oncoming lane. Already close to overshooting her mark, she hissed at the sight of the next wave of traffic, led by a ground patrol vehicle, lights flashing as it led the pack. Already committed, she threw the cycle into overdrive and leaned left, over, over, so far over that her elbow was mere inches from the ground.
     The landscape altered dramatically; she was at a right angle to everything else on the four-lane. The buildings leaped up to block the skyline as the patrol car lurched forward to close the gap and come too damn close to running her over. Then the window of opportunity hove into view and she was rocking back to level with scarcely a wobble, running straight for the ramp and her ticket to escape.
     Only it wasn’t so easy; the ramp was a one way down from the secondary bypass on the level above. A car rolling down blocked so much of the lane she jolted to the right, so close to the guard rail she heard the hiss of each passing support post over the frantic beeping of her navigation unit telling her she was going the wrong way. She had just a glimpse of the car’s driver throwing his hands into the air before she was past. Behind her the car slid into the rail on her left, but the Enforcer sled on her tail took to the air and bypassed the obstacle.
     Espy hit the emergency lane running wide open, not brave enough to take the bypass traffic head on. Giving the Enforcers such an advantage would be tantamount to suicide; their sleds could run in hover mode up to four levels above her, and because the bypass was a secondary route there would be almost no traffic in the sky lane to impede them.
     Bypass traffic ran fast; the outer lane was but a blur to her as she jaunted the wrong way. The lane beside her filled with blasting horns and pointing fingers, drivers slowing down both to stare and to avoid Enforcer attention, while angering the clueless further down the line. She was close to being shut down; looking in the rearview she was startled to see nothing but a finned undercarriage of an air sled and she hit her brakes while throwing the cycle to the left. Tires squealing, engine protesting with a ragged whine, she laid herself as flat as possible, her left leg feeling the heat of the road, while her right arm received the warm downdraft of the patrol sled’s hover fan.
     Were it not for the bike’s ultra fine stabilizers she would have gone down completely. But the hydraulics responded with a hair trigger touch, and she was able to yank the cycle upright after sliding around to face the way she had come. There were more lights flashing; she couldn’t sit still.
     She thundered down the emergency lane, laying a black trail with a scream of rubber and defiance, leaving a plume of smoke from hot tires until the bike grabbed the road with everything it had, shooting her past the off ramp just as a second air sled crept into view. Up to the speed of the regular traffic, nearly bouncing off the road bed at every safety ripple, she threw the cycle between a pair of slower cars and shot down the center stripe, passing vehicles on both sides in a blur, hoping she met nothing too wide or changing lanes.
     There were motorcycles mixed in the crowd of vehicles she was running through. More lights and sirens joined her pursuers, and while she knew many had to be directed her way by the Enforcer Communications Network, it hit her hard. How had there come to be so many troopers on the streets? How long had she been living in a police state? And how long could she continue living in it?
     The nature of the scenery was changing; the bypass had run over the top of the worn down business districts straight into the heart of an industrial center. Open topped walless factories pumped out truckloads of goods to be loaded by line and crane right next to the exit lanes by which those goods would be taken out. The smokestack filled skyline had been replaced by massive rows of columns that supported the levels above, broken by corporate offices and the multi-tier parking garages for their employees. Espy found herself lost in a maze of plascrete and steel girders, split by the four-lane arrow directing her farther away from the Core.
     Where could she go? She had to get away before the Feds could get enough together to make a blockade, and down the straightaway it was only a matter of time. She needed a destination and she needed it fast. She needed … It suddenly dawned that she needed Rika. Of course! She stabbed at the button to turn on her bike’s comm. unit and called the hacker.
     “Rika! Rika come on, answer me!”
     An anxious moment of silence later the radio crackled into life. The flat toned voice was a lifeline of relief. Espy? What are you doing in OverHall?
     “Running for my life! Rika there was a Federal agent at O’Sama’s. They killed him Rika! There’s too many patrols to count on my tail!”
     This is not good Espy. You are all over the public channels. They have your cycle tagged too. Why did you go to the upper levels Espy? You know that you should always go down.
     “Rika save the sermon and find me a bolt hole! Shit!” An unmarked car blasted a siren just as she came level with it, shifting sideways with obvious intent. She screamed as she weaved to avoid it. “Come on Rika!”
     You are going to have to lose the motorcycle Espy. I knew it was a mistake not to have Hammond change the color pattern…
     “Rika!”
     All right Espy. I have a route for you, loaded into the Navigation computer. Follow it exactly and you will make it out. You are going to have a long walk home Espy. Call when you can …
     The machine voice of the Nav unit was already telling her to get into the right hand lane, which was running bumper to bumper and not at her speed. Behind were a few Enforcer cycle units and the first of the airborne sleds; waiting with a turn signal was not going to cut it.
     She hated to attack the very people she wanted to help, but when necessity called… clamping her knees on the cycle, holding the handle tight in her left hand, she threw her right arm out, popping her blades free. Nudging the bike close to the cars she was passing she started tapping their windows, leaving scratches and spiderweb cracks in her wake. Each vehicle slowed dramatically as their drivers reacted to the assault, and after the fifth car fell behind she let her blades slide back into their recesses.
     Letting her speed drop she came even with the next car in line, a light framed twin seat model whose driver looked over and immediately did a double take at what she was about to do. Pacing the car, she mouthed “sorry” at the driver and leaned the bike right, lifting her foot from the rest, balancing precariously while aiming to stomp into the side of the car. She watched the driver’s eyes grow wide before he jerked the wheel hard to the right, and Espy followed, sliding into his space as he swerved into the emergency lane.  In the next moment she was out on the other side, gunning the cycle down the off ramp as half her immediate pursuers overshot the turn, carried down the road with traffic snarling into agitated congestion.
     Sirens howled after her, and though the new road twisted she could still see the flash of Enforcer lights in her rearview. The nav program was taking her right into the over-ramps across the industrial park, and where she had been lost before now she was hopelessly confused. Great bulwarks began flashing by overhead, a deterrent against the airborne sleds, but still she caught glimpses of pursuit, the red blips on her radar never far enough back to be lost.
     Still the turns came: Right, right, left, down, third right, second left. Twice the road bridged a sluice of dark industrial wastewater, and the corridor narrowed tightly beyond, just large enough for a single service sled. Dark spaces opened above her, yellow painted edges marking down draft airshafts.
     “Rika where are you leading me?”
     Espy this is across all of the news channels. The Enforcers think you have gone down a dead end support structure. You have a final right turn coming Espy.
     Indeed she could see it; the road was now a vehicle wide path that took a sharp jag between two massive plascrete beams, the space on either side blocked by mesh grates crawling with pipes and ductwork. Still running at a fast pace, she threw the cycle on its side to make the turn, twisting the throttle hard as she pulled back upright.
     “Now what?”
     Jump.
     “What?!” She looked up almost too late; the maintenance path crossed a drop over slotted plating and followed a circular turn around on the other side. There was nowhere to go and no time to get there; eyes rising, she saw the yellow rim of the final maintenance access chute, ladder leading up through the maze of pipes beyond. Easily ten feet overhead, she was just about to pass it by.
     Once more time slowed to a stuttering crawl. Cursing fate and being caught so, Espy slammed her feet hard onto the cycle’s foot pegs, causing the bike to bounce low before the sensitive shocks shot the body back upward. Legs and tail also coiling like springs, she leapt free on the bounce, letting the cycle go on its own path to destruction as she reached desperately for the lowest rungs of the access ladder.
     As the distance vanished she knew two things. First, she hadn’t missed the passage; her leap was going to carry her right inside the yellow-framed hole. But that was small comfort in the knowledge that she hadn’t jumped soon enough. Time lurched into its regular flow as momentum carried her to the ladder faster than she could prepare, and Espy flew into the plas-steel bars hard, crashing through them and into blackness.