Spares

“How did you get up here?” I asked, though I’d lost most of my capacity to be surprised. Howie stood in front of me in the darkened stairwell, armed to the teeth and pumped up in a way I’d never seen in him before.

“Up the stairs,” he said. “Sort of.” He should have looked absurd, perhaps, with spiked hair at forty and his considerable weight wrapped round with guns, but he didn’t. He looked pretty formidable.

“How did you know I’d come this way?”

“I didn’t. There’s guys of ours on all the exits looking for you. Just dumb luck you ran into me.”

“You knew this was going down?”

“Yeah. Vinaldi talked to me last night. I’m going to be working a little more closely with him from now on.”

“Congratulations,” I said, vaguely. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you would have fucked it up, and found some way of getting yourself killed in the process. Look,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “I’m not saying I necessarily think this was a great thing to do. But I work for Vinaldi. And something else. This was the only way I could think of it going down with you standing a chance of coming out alive. You were going to try to whack Maxen by yourself. They would have cut you in half. Instead, Vinaldi did it, and you’re still walking around.”

His face was dark, and I knew there was something else on his mind.

“But?” I said.

“But Yhandim and the others are going to come for you now, and you alone, Jack. They don’t work for Maxen anymore, and they hate you more than they hate Johnny. Those guys have been comrades for nearly twenty years. You killed three of them, and now the rest can’t get back into The Gap. They’ve got a hard-on for you like you won’t believe.”

I knew what was coming. Howie winced at what he had to say. “You got to run, Jack. You got to get the fuck out of New Richmond and maybe never come back.”

We heard a shout out in the corridor then, about fifty yards away. I reached out and shook Howie’s hand.

“Thanks,” I said, wishing there was some proper way of saying good bye.

Howie said it. “Get the fuck out of here.”

I ran.

I clattered down three flights, legs pumping like a wind-up toy, then fell out of a door onto 197. Stood there gasping for a moment, trying to work out where to go next. The nearest xPress was the obvious answer, but I had to figure that if Yhandim was already on the case, that’s the first place they’d head for.

I couldn’t think of anything. It had been too long. I ran for the xPress anyway.

197 looks the way the Garden of Eden would if they’d had access to nanofertilizers. I hurtled down a path through the middle of a park, past shrubbery so refined it was probably entitled to vote. Narrowly avoiding knocking down a gaggle of old people, I made it into the xPress and slapped the button.

The elevator stopped at 160 and I waited inside for a second, half expecting to hear the sound of gunfire or something equally discouraging. When none came, I poked my head out the door, and saw I was on one of the chichi shopping floors. Ahead of me stretched a long lane going East—and I knew there was another xPress half a mile away which would get me down below the 100 line.

I ran with my head up, partly to avoid the meandering shoppers and partly in the hope it would help oxygen to flood into my lungs. People stared at me openly as I passed. I guess they had people to do their running for them.

After a couple of minutes I realized I was going the wrong way, and at the next crossroads I veered over into the next store-lined street. My mind was on what I was going to do after the next elevator: I didn’t see Ghuaji until I was only fifty yards away and running straight at him.

He was pelting up the street toward me, the very picture of a man gone rabid. Blood poured down his face, and his running was crooked from the leg he was dragging behind. His skin looked like it had spent some time underground. None of this stopped him from pulling a shotgun from over his shoulder and loosing a round straight through the crowd at me.

There were screams and a couple of people fell, but by then I was careering into an alleyway between an ice cream parlor and Emeralds R Us. There was another explosion behind me and as I ran I gathered from the face of a young woman that Hell was following after. I didn’t look around. I figured I’d know soon enough if they caught me.

Then God threw me a bone, in the shape of some dweeb on a motortrike. He was tootling slowly down the lane, showing off to some giggling Mall-girls who’d never dream of shopping on Indigo Drive. I had him off the trike so fast he probably still thinks he’s riding it to this day, leaped on, and roared off down the middle of the street with my hand glued to the horn. The waves parted in front of me and I rocketed past hundreds of eyes all open as wide as the moon.

Don’t worry about me, I thought wildly. This doesn’t affect you. Just get on with your shopping.

Four minutes of moving violations got me to the xPress. The door was open, for a miracle, and I just drove the trike right in—causing a degree of consternation to the young couple who were already inside.

“You’re not supposed to bring that in here,” the guy said. “It’s a violation of New Richmond road policy.”

From outside came the sound of a shotgun being fired and pellets tinkled against the outside of the carriage.

“You want your internal organs violated by buckshot?” I asked. The guy shook his head, terrified. I winked. “So press the fucking ‘down’ button.”

He did and the doors shut quickly enough, but they were glass and didn’t hide the fact that Ghuaji was only about a hundred yards down the path. Worse, Yhandim was now running alongside, toting a large weapon of his own. My contact with him had been minimal, so far. I wanted to keep it like that.

The xPress took me down a long way. The young couple expressed a keen desire to get out quite early on, but I encouraged them to stay by showing my gun. They admired its craftsmanship and eventually agreed that it would be a shame to say good bye before they’d had a chance to see me use it.

The elevator dropped majestically down to the 80s, and I stared out through the window at the huge atrium, ten stories of balconies draped with trailing green plants, like some biblical hanging garden. It had been one of Henna’s favorite places. I should have visited it more often. Too much time spent in the wrong rooms, as usual.

As the xPress started to slow I peered down below, without much hope in my heart. Sure enough, a guy with blue flashing lights in his head stood waiting for me. I don’t know how the fuck Yhandim got down faster than the xPress, but there he was. Maybe there are paths even I didn’t know. His head tilted up slowly and our eyes met, and in his was a hatred even I couldn’t match. Ghuaji looked up seconds later, and I saw a couple of others standing around them.

I reached out and slammied the “open” button as we hit the floor above. The xPress groaned at the deceleration, but halted and opened its doors. I shooed the youngsters out and then shot out the controls, hoping it would take the guys a moment to work out why the elevator wasn’t coming down. I drove the trike out, crouched down over the handlebars and steered it unsteadily along the balcony. The sound of gunfire within seconds told me my plan hadn’t worked; shells bit discouragingly large chunks out of the ceiling just above my head.

I stood on the pedal and went careering along the corridor as fast as I could until I found a stairway. Turned straight into it, and went bouncing down the stairs. By then I was beginning to fancy a cigarette, but I judged this probably wasn’t the time. I lit one anyway, figuring [might as well—it wasn’t as if life expectancy was a concern.

I bumped down turns in the staircase until I started getting dizzy, and then sped out onto 65. I just drove straight through the door, which was painful and foolish, but no one was on the other side. I hurtled along the main drag toward the next down elevator, cursing the lab-rat layout of the old MegaMall. Two hundred yards from the xPress I saw a police platform hovering fast out of a side street toward me. I didn’t know whether they were after me because of who I was or just pure traffic offenses, but it didn’t make much difference. With one hand still steering the trike I shot at the platform’s generator. More by luck than skill I hit it. The platform coughed and slewed into the pavement like a badly folded paper plane, spilling the cops onto the ground.

I dumped the trike outside the xPress, figuring that while it was fast, it also made me somewhat conspicuous. Then I stood thrumming and banging the walls, trying to catch my breath. I stopped the xPress two floors before I had to and made it across to another which got me as far as 24; as I tore out of the doors I heard shouts from up the street behind me but I didn’t look to see who it was.

I ducked into the store where I bought my Rapt, shouting to the proprietor as I entered. He nodded with weary recognition and stepped aside to let me through into the back of his store, where a hidden stairway no one knows about dropped me another floor and into a project level where nobody sane lived anymore. I was hoping that Yhandim would assume I was just heading straight down to the bottom, buying me some time.

23 is pitch-black darkness, filled with nothing but burnt-out warehouses that long ago used to be the Mall’s staff quarters. Nobody lives there except the psychos and losers who’ve been cattle-prodded out of all the other floors. I ran straight across the heart of it, past fires burning on street corners. It’s truly rather frightening, to be honest, and I was very happy when I saw the light of the next xPress shaft ahead. I just hoped there was going to be one along soon. I didn’t want to hang around here long.

“Fucking stop right there!” shouted a voice, and I had a cardiac but kept on running. Then a shot whined past my leg and I realized running wasn’t going to cut it. I stopped and whirled round.

Two guys, both around sixty. One’s face was pierced and studded until it looked like a pincushion. The other’s had been in a bad fire.

“Look, what’s the problem?” I gasped, barely able to speak. My chest hurt like I’d cracked all my ribs at once and my legs were shaking. I kept my gun hand inside my jacket.

“No problem, sonny,” Burn-face said, his voice deeper than the rumble of a distant train. “But this is a toll road.”

“I don’t have any money,” I said, wondering why I was cursed to have the same things happen to me time and time again.

“Then you fucked,” said the pierced one, who spoke with a lisp and looked denser than three bags of shit in a one-shit trumpet.

I thrust my hands into the pockets of my jacket, and found Mal’s drive. I couldn’t barter with that. In the other pocket, the computer chip which held Ratchet’s brain. For a second I considered it, but no more. He’d helped me enough. I couldn’t let go of him again.

“Don’t suppose dropping Howie Amos’s name is going to help?” I hazarded, beginning to panic. I was losing time, and lots of it.

Burn-face shook his head. As a last resort I put my hand into my inside pocket and yanked out my wallet.

“Here,” I said. “You can have this.”

He took it, and flicked through. There was no more than ten dollars in it, but then he found my old own-Card.

“This’ll do,” he said, and they stepped aside. I didn’t volunteer the information that trying to use the card would get them more police attention than crapping on Chief McAuley’s head. I figured they’d find out soon enough, and it was about time they retired anyhow. I stabbed the “down” button, leaped in, and slumped to rest my face against the elevator walls as it started to drop.

It was when I stepped out on 8 that I realized my wallet had also held my only photograph of Henna and Angela. I couldn’t go back. Memory would have to be enough.

I ran through 8’s lamp-lit streets, past so many places I knew, past the beginning of the side street which led down to Howie’s place. As I tore down the main drag, toward the restaurant with the entrance to the chute, I felt like I was going in reverse, as if the video of my life had reached its end an hour ago and was now being rewound, spooling past everywhere I had ever been, back toward some point where it would end again. End, or perhaps begin.

I skidded taking the corner into the final straight and almost lost it, but managed to stay upright and careered toward the restaurant doors. I could see something was wrong: There were no tables outside and no lights on behind the windows. A solid kick on the door told me it was locked. I glanced around, saw no one, and shot out the lock. Then I shoved the door open and ran into darkness, turning to slam the door shut again behind me. I hoped to Christ Yhandim and his goons had gone the wrong way. If not, then this route might get me a few extra seconds. It wasn’t much; but the way things were going, a few seconds could make all the difference.

I threaded my way through the stacked tables and chairs toward the restrooms at the back, ears tuned for any sound from the streets outside. I was ready for it, and had in reserve a burst of speed which might just get me out in time.

What I wasn’t ready for was a lamp being switched on above one of the back tables. It dropped a soft pool of yellow light for a couple of yards, revealing a man standing by the wall.

“Howie said you’d be passing through,” he said.

“Hello, Johnny,” I replied, and swung my gun to point straight at his heart. “You’ve got two minutes to explain why you killed my wife and daughter for Maxen, and then I’m going to blow you apart.”

“When did you work it out?” Johnny said; slowly sitting back down. I stayed where I was, gun still held out, safety off.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe just now, maybe earlier. You knew about what happened with Maxen’s brother. I don’t think you heard a rumor. I think you heard it from him. All that talk about atonement. Then a choice of words which in retrospect was kind of precise. You didn’t put out the hit on Henna and Angela, but it was you who carried it out.”

Johnny didn’t say anything. Time was passing, but suddenly that didn’t seem important anymore. I had to understand. Dying seemed preferable to never understanding.

“Why, Johnny?”

“Maxen came to me, Jack. I was just a hood then, you know how it was. I was trying to get somewhere, but all the markets were sewn up. McAuley was tight with the old guard, and there wasn’t much I could do. Then some of Maxen’s guys came and found me, and took me up to see the boss. Maxen said he wanted into the rackets, that legit money wasn’t enough.”

“So you went in with him.”

“The offer didn’t exactly seem negotiable. I sat in a very small room with several guns pointed at my head and it occurred to me that I didn’t have much to lose. I say no, and he’s going to ice me there and then. I say yes, and I’m going to end up running most of New fucking Richmond.”

“On the end of Maxen’s leash.”

“We’re all on leashes, Jack.”

“So he greased the NRPD for you.”

Vinaldi sighed. “It wasn’t like I had carte blanche, but my competitors started getting a lot more cop attention than I did. I started clearing up floors, adding them to our collection. Maxen fed capital when I needed it, worked the brass when things got out of hand. It was going good until you got involved.”

He stared at me, his face tortured.

“Why’d you have to do that, Jack? Things were the way they’ve always been, just a little more organized. Maxen and I could have sewed the place up, and everyone would have been happy. Fewer people would have gotten killed in the crossfire every day, we’d have made lots of money, and everything would have been cool. If you’d come to me early on I’d have put you on the payroll. You were a good cop. We could have used you. Why did you have to get nosy? Why couldn’t you have just left it alone?”

I didn’t have time to explain, and I don’t think my explanation would have convinced even me. The truth was I didn’t know.

“Because I’m stupid, probably,” I said. “Or because I thought I was atoning for something myself.”

Vinaldi shook his head. “So what happens is suddenly we’ve got problems, because you and Mal are digging too deep. Doesn’t matter so much about me, because it’s generally known what side of the line I’m on. But for Maxen—it’s a problem. He can’t afford anyone to suspect that New Richmond’s premier white man is running all the shit.”

I could understand that. People like to feel that God and the Devil are different beings. Vinaldi ran a hand across his face. His eyes were hooded, and when his hand came away I noticed his fingers trembling.

“So Maxen comes to me and says he wants a show of loyalty, that I’ve got to prove I’m in with him up to the hilt. He tells me we need an object lesson. He already hates your guts because you whacked his brother in The Gap, but even he knew that had to be. If you hadn’t killed Cedrif he’d have been court-martialed anyway. But now you’re putting everything Maxen owns at risk, and so it’s got to happen, and he wants me to do it, Jack. It’s going to be my special job.”

Vinaldi breathed out heavily, and then looked at me steadily. “You made it easy for me, Jack. You took Phieta away from me. Maybe you thought I was just some typical wiseguy who kept a wife for show and screwed around on the side. Or maybe you were just fucking her to get closer to me. But I loved that woman. I didn’t know about what was happening, but Maxen had photographs and he showed them to me. Phieta was my wife, Jack, and she was running around with you. She didn’t love me anymore, even when you were gone, but I wouldn’t let her go. You know what happened after she took you out of town, to the Farm? She killed herself.”

The entire city seemed silent around me then, as if nothing else happening in it mattered, as if none of it had any bearing on me. All I could do was listen, and keep my gun trained on Vinaldi’s heart.

“After he showed me the pictures, Maxen pumped me with Rapt, and two of his guys took me down to your floor. They stood outside while I went in, and they took me away when I was finished. I didn’t know until I was actually in your living room that Maxen had deliberately overdosed me. I didn’t know what I was doing, Jack. It was just going to be a clean hit. Then the walls went away and I was back in The Gap and everything happened the way it did.”

My hand was shaking, my finger slick against the trigger. Vinaldi’s chest looked like the biggest target in the world.

“You go back there, don’t you,” I said. “To the seventy-second floor.”

He looked at me. “How do you know that?”

“Some kid I met. He’s seen you standing down by the window.”

Vinaldi’s head dropped. “I can’t remember what happened in there,” he said quietly. “Not most of the time, anyway. Sometimes I dream about it, and when I wake up I go down and stand outside your apartment. You’re right about some things, Jack, and one of them is this: Sometimes you do things which won’t fit in any head. Things which are too big to forget. I gave you a hard time in front of Nearly about you thinking everything’s tainted, but you were right. I tainted my own life, and I don’t even remember doing it All I know is that the shit is there, and that it ain’t ever going away.”

I looked up at his face then, at the muscle twitching in his cheek. All the hate I’d nursed for him came crashing back into my brain, burning the image of his face into utter clarity. I saw his face so clearly that I realized it was my own, and as I started to pull the trigger it was with a feeling of utter relief.

The shot rang out in the darkness.

I let my gun drop, listening to the shallow breaths of a man who’d seen me move my hand at the last minute and fire my bullet into the floor. I stood there a while, until the echoes had died away and left us alone again.

“Why’d you kill Maxen?” I asked. “Because he’d decided he didn’t need you anymore and pulled Yhandim through to take you down? because the guys from The Gap were whacking your associates and girls? Or because of something else?”

“Jack…” he whispered.

“Get out of here,” I told him.

He stood, like an old man, and walked to the door.

“Good luck,” he said.

“If I ever see you again I’m going to kill you. Understood?”

He nodded once, opened the door and left.

I went into the women’s restroom, removed the panel, and climbed through into the pipe. Then I resealed the exit behind me, in the hope of putting off the inevitable for a little longer. I ran down the ventilation corridor as quickly as I could, ignoring a few bumps and cracks on the head. By then I didn’t seem to have any processing cycles to spare for worrying about a little pain. I was listening to the sound of pieces falling into place, seeing how they changed things and wondering how much difference it made.

But then I heard a faint clang behind me as they located the panel, and the shout from Ghuaji which indicated he’d heard my footsteps as I fled down the chute barely half a mile ahead of them. I hadn’t expected to elude them for long, but their speed was still a shock.

They were good soldiers. I’d lost them but then they’d found me, and now they were going to do their job.

My father only said one thing I admire. “The race isn’t over until everyone’s gone home and you’re left in the stadium by yourself.” He used to say it every time he lost a job. We would generally already be packing to leave for another town, and I never really understood what he meant. Not then, anyhow. But as I ran breathlessly through the dank guts of New Richmond I understood all too well. I played out the game to the last, darting through cross corridors, taking a deliberately bewildering route until I reached the main shaft, then putting my hands and feet on the outside of the ladder so I could slide down the floors as quickly as possible.

But I could still hear their boots thudding toward me, and as I swung off the ladder at ground level I knew the odds were against me. It seemed unfair, somehow, to have come so far, and for it to all come down to this. All I ever wanted was to escape from the noise, to find a little peace. I saw it then, that final moment, as if it had always been ordained. I saw the features of men who didn’t even really know enough to hate me properly, who were simply living out their programming; saw the random expressions on their faces as they crowded around me in those last seconds; felt the channels cut through me like shafts of ice. I saw myself dying in the bowels of New Richmond, and it didn’t seem too bad a way to go; and strangely, in that moment, I felt closer to my dad than anyone else in the world. However badly he fucked up he never gave in, until he chose to give it all up.

And then I saw something ahead of me, and the images fled as if they’d never been.

I was staring down the tunnel, half wondering whether I could find some new route, some way which would lead me toward gaps too small to find. I was paralyzed with indecision, my eyes flicking frantically over the smooth metal walls of the duct, when suddenly I realized I shouldn’t be able to see them at all.

There was a tiny light in the distance, like a single candle fluttering in the darkness. As I stared it seemed to come closer, until it was no longer a point but an orange glow. But it wasn’t coming nearer, just getting bigger; it had never been more than yards away.

The glow had a shape inside it. A figure.

I swallowed, feeling as if I had a brick in my throat, and whirled back to face the way I had come. The sound of the men coming down the ladder above told me what I already knew. There was nowhere else to run.

I turned back and stared into the light. It seemed the thing to do. Maybe somebody knew that my time had come, and had arrived to lead me through. I kind of hoped it wouldn’t be Mai. I loved the guy, and hoped I’d see him sooner rather than later, but I didn’t want to eat noodles for eternity.

At first the figure seemed to be made up of many flickering wings beating in time, but then it started to resolve into solidity. When I saw who it really was my mouth fell open, as if it wanted to help shed some of the tears which were forcing themselves up through my eyes. Something had happened. The birds weren’t insane anymore. My lips trembled so much that when I said her name it was inaudible.

“Suej?”

She smiled, and I saw that the scar on her face had gone. She looked whole, and perfect, and I thought that no one should ever look less beautiful than that.

“We have to be quick, Jack,” she said, but the sounds behind me were forgotten as I noticed that as well as her summer dress she seemed to be wearing a ragged jacket, like those the Gap children wore.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “How did you get out?”

“I found some friends,” Suej said. “We’re making things different. The Gap’s closing. I’m the bridge.” She sounded proud, and serene, and I took a step forward, wanting so much to hug her. She held up her hand to stop me. I stared at it, marveling at the way it exuded light.

“You must go the other way,” she said. “Down to the lowest level.”

“But this is the way out…”

She shook her head. “Go the other way. And something else, Jack…You don’t need Ratchet anymore. You must throw him away.”

“No fucking way,” I said, but she interrupted me with a confidence she’d never had before.

“You must Then you have to run. And they told me to tell you this: You did more than you’ll ever know.”

I shook my head, not wanting to go, but her face was firm. It felt as if I were the child, as if she now held some truth to which I could only aspire.

Abruptly I realized that the sound of boots on the ladder was now much closer.

“But what are you now?” I asked quickly.

Suej smiled again, and lifted her hands—and then she was gone.

I plunged back into the shaft, suddenly in motion as if someone had just plugged me back in. As soon as I was into it, I heard a shout from above, and I leaped down to land awkwardly on the floor below. For a second I recognized where I was, from my Rapt expedition, and then as the bullets started to spang around me I ducked into the nearest tunnel and ran.

I sprinted past places I’d never seen, over lintels and past strange doors. I saw a rusted sign that said baggage, but then I was past it and still running hard. I remembered what Suej had told me to do and thrust my hand down into my jacket pocket. I pulled out the chip in which Ratchet lived, and held it tight. I didn’t want to let him go, but sensed that something else was calling the shots now. I placed him carefully on the ground. I ran.

I spotted a familiar corner, vaulted up a couple of steps, and found myself in one of the exhaust ducts.

They were gaining on me, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it. But at least I was going to try.

I ran past an endless wall of metal, pocked with a century’s wear; the sound of air rushed in my ears as I stumbled forward, tripping and careering down the tunnel. And always behind me, and getting closer, were men running after me with only one thing on their mind. Occasionally, a bullet whined down the dark tunnel past me. They hadn’t hit me yet, but they would.

I felt like the ghost in the machine, trying to find a way out. Trying to find the door to the outside, where there would be a sky above.

I ran, and I ran, but my lungs couldn’t take it anymore. My legs started going, the muscles melting into fire too insubstantial to carry me on. The footsteps were thundering louder, and my life had been too long and deep for me to find anything else left to give. I ran, but I began to fail, my feet losing rhythm, the shadowy, cold walls around me swirling into darkness.

My knees buckled beneath me and I stumbled, knowing that I had given it my best but that I had lost the race. My hands flailed out, desperate to find something to hold on to, something to stop me from just pitching forward forever onto my face.

And as I fell I felt a tiny hand grabbing hold of mine.

The hand was warm and tender, and the voice, when it came, was firm, whispering in my ear. A voice that had my own in it, and Henna’s, too.

“Come on, Daddy,” she said. “It’s time to leave.”

I didn’t question it, but tightened my hold on the little fingers pressed into my palm. I was dragged forward, the small, soft voice still urging me on. My legs found new strength, and the pain in my chest faded away to nothing or became so loud I couldn’t hear it anymore. My body wrenched order from chaotic failure, and began to work in time again.

I didn’t fall, but found a new rhythm. I ran down the tunnel like a child to the sea, until the walls were a blur and all I could truly sense was that tiny warmth and her voice drawing me on. As I ran I knew the footsteps were falling behind, still following but irrelevant now. All they had was hate to pull them on. There are stronger pulls.

I hurtled after Angela as if it would be my last run ever, and I felt ludicrously happy and knew that’s the way it should be. I knew finally that you shouldn’t lie down and wait for darkness, leaving quietly, slouching toward death. You should run, because the only real fear is that you’ll stop running, that you’ll stop doing, that you’ll come to an end before everything else.

As I ran I felt each second stretch to breaking point as it tried to hold everything that had gone before it. Nothing was lost, nothing was futile. Every thing I had done, every glance, every word, every breath—shone, huge and limitless and mine. My life didn’t pass in front of me—I ran in front of it. Nearly had been right. Memories are nothing more than a book you’ve read and lost, not a Bible for the rest of your life.

I saw a light ahead, and began to notice strange sounds reverberating down the long tunnel around me. I could still hear the footsteps of Yhandim and his men, but they were a long way behind me now. Sooner or later, they would catch up, but at least I would make it out of New Richmond. I trotted the last stretch of tunnel raggedly, losing rhythm again. The joy was fading, as if it had been a fuel I was now coming to the end of. The joy had been everything that Rapt should have been, and I wished it were easier to come by.

Angela’s form flickered in front of me, leading me up some staircase I’d never seen before. There was a rectangle of light at the end of the tunnel and I realized I had somehow come up another level, out of the exhaust ducts and toward the exit I knew.

The guys at the door stood there staring, mouths gaping. I was pretty impressed with my running myself, and half expected a round of applause. But as I got closer I saw that it wasn’t admiration in their faces, but fear.

The noise I’d heard seemed to be getting louder, ricocheting round the walls until the whole city appeared to shake. Before I made it to the door the men there had already turned and run.

I burst out of New Richmond, still pulled by Angela’s hand. I panted through the basement and up the stairs, barely yards behind the fleeing men, and then out into the Portal to find that everyone else was running, too.

I ground to a halt in the midst of chaos. Hundreds of people sprinted past me out of the buildings arranged round the walls of the city. For a moment I couldn’t understand, thought only that I’d started some new trend, and then a distant rumbling told me what in some sense I already knew.

I felt a tugging, and I let her pull me backward, away from the bulk of New Richmond and out of harm’s way. In my mind I could still hear footsteps pursuing me, though I knew they were still down in the exhaust ducts, that Yhandim and the soldiers who were with him were now probably being shaken off their feet by forces that were awake again.

When we were two hundred yards away we stopped, and I turned to see where she’d gone. A small shape leaped up at me as she always had, and I caught her and clasped my arms around her, and it was as if she were really there. I pushed my face into hers, smelling her mother and hearing my daughter’s laugh.

Then my arms held nothing but air.

People kept speeding past me, still tumbling out of buildings which would be falling within seconds. I gazed up beatifically at the bulk of New Richmond, at its two hundred floors and its countless rooms filled with life. As the ancient pulse engines finally fired into action I knew that I had nothing to fear from anyone who still chased me deep in the tunnels. The things that had pursued me were gone.

I shouted Ratchet’s name as I realized what he’d done, that the old repair droid in the basement had somehow found the chip and Ratchet’s mind had saved me once again; and I staggered backward, laughing my head off, as the MegaMall stirred like a mountain waking up after too long a sleep.

There was a moment of hesitation, as if old machineries were striving to remember the jobs they’d once performed, and then the entire city lifted up into the air. New Richmond rose up into the sky, higher and higher, until it was finally free of the earth. Looking for old paths, new roads, and a life it could have once again.