Chapter 5 #2
I gritted my teeth. “I’m just stressed because they didn’t put the little umbrella in my drink, thanks for asking. Where were you, by the way? I wasn’t feeling too hot for a while there.”
As I informed you, I was performing an upgrade. The process requires me to go into standby mode while the updates are underway.
“Well, it very nearly shut me down.”
I apprised you that I required a noticeable increase in energy requirements to update.
“Noticeable increase? More like turn me into a pile of sludge.” I crawled out from the dumpsters before I threw up. Once I cleared them, I heard the hum of drone rotors. Glancing up, I saw a drone hovering directly above me. I clenched my jaw and mentally cursed.
There is a drone hovering eighteen feet above your head. A second drone is currently three blocks away, but on a trajectory to this location.
“Thanks, Captain Ob—wait, how’d you know that?” I jumped to my feet and launched into a sprint.
I upgraded my sensory protocols. I use your senses as input devices, but fortunately for both of us, my protocols provide me superior use of your sensory system.
“Then how about you use those superior protocols of yours to get me out of here?”
As you cannot outrun surveillance drones, remaining on the street is ill-advised. I highly recommend you go somewhere where there are no drones.
I reached an intersection, only to step into full view of the second drone.
I skidded to a halt, twisted, darted to my right, and sprinted down the next street.
“Good luck finding a place like that around here.” Drones were the most abundant rodents in Dreswick—they could fly through any building and could swarm the market.
They were everywhere except for… the Crawl.
I made another right and headed back toward the wharf. I was breathing hard. While I might not have been coughing, I sure wasn’t used to cardio.
There is a security vehicle three blocks south of your current location. They are likely monitoring drone footage. I advise you to take the road to your left, toward the market. There, you may be able to temporarily evade cameras among the customers.
“We’re going underground,” I said.
Are you being figurative?
“Nope.” The Crawl. Dreswick’s underground.
Urban legends said people who ventured there never returned to the surface—stories told probably to keep kids from going down there.
The Crawl was a labyrinth of tunnels that comprised the planet’s original colony.
The colony had a real name once, but Crawl had stuck since the very first tunnels weren’t large enough to walk through.
That colony had long since moved topside after terraforming took hold.
And the tunnels were officially closed and sealed, but that was more of an official stance than reality. And I knew of one of the entry points.
I sprinted across the intersection. Now, only a block down to my right, was the gray AV. They weren’t driving fast—they probably assumed they had me. Two drones flew a bare dozen feet above my head.
I’d seen the entrance to the Crawl once before, back when I was just a kid prowling the waterfront, and I hoped it hadn’t been sealed off since then. I ran through the parking lot, my mind racing as I tried to remember the nearest stairs to the water-level walkway below the docks.
The enforcers are closing in.
I couldn’t hear the electric engine of the chase car, but I didn’t doubt Byte.
I didn’t bother looking for the stairs and instead ran to the nearest pier.
It was an old, half-rotted dock slowly being eaten by the river.
The boards creaked and the entire dock wobbled underfoot.
I grabbed onto a vertical support beam and shimmied down, glancing at the AV entering the loading lot.
It accelerated now that they realized they were about to lose direct eyesight of me.
I dropped the rest of the way, tweaking my left knee when I landed hard. I forced myself to take off running, trying not to limp.
“Help me find the storm drain, Byte,” I said.
I have identified a large draining system in the opposite direction.
“That’s the one.” I spun around and ran the other way, then noticed the open tunnel a few hundred feet down. The walkway was narrow—barely two feet wide—so I couldn’t run at a full out sprint without risking falling into the water.
I could be of better assistance if you improve your situational awareness.
You are too focused on the space directly in front of you.
You really must look around more. At least I can leverage your sense of hearing in a three-hundred-sixty-degree arc.
The AV has stopped, and the enforcers are now on foot.
But the drones pose an immediate threat.
“I don’t know how the hell you know that. I can’t hear any of that,” I muttered as I reached the tunnel. It was a cylindrical pipe about ten feet across. Connected to the city’s storm sewers, every night’s rain poured out and into the river.
I am utilizing your senses. I heard the autonomous vehicle through your ears. You are incredibly inefficient at leveraging your own senses, or else you would have also noticed the drone only six feet behind us.
I glanced over my shoulder to see a surveillance drone, only then noticing its buzz. I really wished I had a slingshot on me right then so I could take it out. But I didn’t, so I couldn’t, and I ran deeper into the tunnel.
Storm sewers usually didn’t have doors, but on TerraSoft-11, the bean counters figured they could save some money by using the tunnels dug out for the first colony, before the planet had been terraformed.
The colony’s tunnels—those that couldn’t be used for drainage—were sealed, but of course, anything that can be sealed can be unsealed.
I skidded to a stop, nearly missing the door in the unlit tunnel.
The round crank-handle was the only thing that stood out in the darkness.
I didn’t know why they hadn’t simply filled every doorway with concrete—maybe they thought the old tunnels could make good emergency shelters—but I didn’t care.
I began cranking, surprised at how smoothly it turned.
The enforcers have entered the walkway. They are clearly following the drone’s feed.
“Figured as much.” I swiped at the drone, which had stopped to hover a mere two feet behind me, but it was too fast. I didn’t like that the enforcers would know I went this way, but any idiot could figure that out within a minute of walking this tunnel.
The wheel clanked, and the thick door popped open. I hustled through, trying to pull the door closed before the drone could get through, but it was too fast. I gritted my teeth as I closed the door.
A zap sounded behind me, and I spun to see the drone smoking on the ground. Approaching was a figure cloaked in a hooded cape fashioned from a brown wool blanket. Though the hood concealed his face, I couldn’t miss the blaster he held.
“We got a runner at 41C,” he said, but there was no one else around.
I returned my focus to sealing the door, trying to ignore him and hoping he wasn’t going to shoot me in the back. I turned to face him as soon as the door clanked fully shut.
“Move,” he ordered.
I stepped to the side, and he swapped his blaster for an iron bar, then slid it through the wheel to lock it in place. He turned to face me, and I caught a glimpse of brown skin beneath his hood, though he was clearly keeping his features hidden.
“How many?”
“How many?” I echoed before realizing his meaning. “Two enforcers. They’re right behind me.”
He gave a small nod toward the iron bar in the door.
“It won’t hold them if they’re hell-bent on catching you.
But unless they’re carrying explosives, it’s going to take them some time to go grab what they need.
And I’ve never met anyone they wanted that bad yet.
” He then motioned to the dimly lit stone tunnel that seemed to go on forever behind me.
“Welcome to the Crawl. Now, get going and don’t drag anyone into your troubles or else you’ll be gutted in your sleep. ”
That is troubling. I sense he is being honest.
I did too. So I ran.