LITMIR.BIZ

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and it took all her strength to shove it open enough to slip through. As soon as she did, brilliant spotlights snapped on all around, accompanied by the screech of sirens.

      For a moment she stood like a stuck roach, blinded and deafened.

      Don’t panic. Think.

      Above, to her right, G’Ren barely made a sound as he used a railing as leverage to swing down and across so that he landed on the terrace below.

      Nuri followed, beginning that dance between gravity and inertia.

      C’mon, you love it, don’t you, her inner voice teased. The thrill of the chase.

      Her entire existence narrowed towards the lightning-fast calculations she needed to make. A handhold there, landing the right toe just there with enough twist to roll forward and distribute the force of the impact – within three leaps she’d hit the paved walkway that meandered into the garden.

      Behind her, the skitter of metallic claws on stone meant they had a runner bot, most likely designed to resemble a dog, complete with fangs. As if in answer to her suspicion, a terrible, blood-curdling howling started up, in counterpoint to the siren.

      Security no doubt hoped she’d curl into a little ball, paralysed by fright.

      The muscles on her right back calf tingled with a remembered bite.

      Not today.

      Nuri grabbed the low-lying limbs of a spreading tree and skittered up to run tree to tree. Like one of those long-tailed skarris she’d seen in a nature documentary, which moved so fast they could run along branches that were in actuality too weak to bear their full weight.

      The wall wasn’t far now.

      Her night vision kicked in, and though the garden was dark, she could see well enough as long as she avoided looking directly into any of the torchlight eyes that flashed below.

      Metal claws scratched on paving. Her pursuers were much closer than she’d estimated.

      Damn. Damn. Damn.

      Her foot slipped and she made the leap a bit sooner than she wanted to, with a little less momentum to carry her over the gap. Nuri’s fingers grazed the branch, but she fell and only just managed to grasp another limb before she crashed into the trunk of a tree. The muscles in her left arm screamed in protest as her full weight came down on it, and her new handhold dipped alarmingly. No time to do anything but gasp at the shock. Below her came a high-pitched whine as an electronic sentry powered up a stunner.

      “Balls!” Nuri bit the word out and swung, desperately propelling herself a few metres as the stunner exploded into the branch a mere whisper after she’d let go. Her lungs and side cramped, but she powered on.

      Arms straining, she dragged herself onto a lateral branch that created a narrow causeway to the next tree, and dashed along, keeping her attention on the point in the wall where she knew the pod was waiting. Air singed her lungs with every breath.

      A bot crashed through the vegetation to her left, keeping pace, but there was no time to worry about that now. Only idiots got distracted from their objective. There were no obstacles ahead of her, and the only potential setbacks were parallel or behind her.

      Focus.

      A foothold, that branch. Lift. Jump. Pull up. Use that vertical surface to change direction.

      Nuri cleared the gap between the last tree and the wall, and for a few heart-stopping seconds she flew, the wind slapping her burning skin as she pushed out into the nothingness. Then: bunch and leap, into the waiting pod.

      The hatch whispered closed. She barely had a moment before arms had pulled her aside and another body slammed into hers, the familiar mushroomy smell of J’Veth, as they rocketed along the wall.

      The force of their acceleration flattened Nuri and G’Ren into the back of the pod, a tangle of limbs half crushed against one of the crates.

      “Hold on, you lot!” yelled Shiv, their pilot.

      Nuri braced her legs against the back seat. One of G’Ren’s arms was pressed over her chest, and his bulk cushioned her on her left. His slit pupils were so wide they almost filled out the orange of his eyes.

      The pod tilted sharply to the right and dipped, then righted itself.

      “Wooo!” yelled Shiv. “The boosters are working.”

      “We know,” groused G’Ren. “And if Nuri hadn’t dragged her feet, we’d not have to use the damned boosters. What were you doing in there?”

      The pod tilted again, doing barrel rolls around a series of tight bends, and all Nuri could do was shut her eyes and pray they wouldn’t make a sickening impact with a wall or another craft.

      “I got the pin,” Nuri said once they’d evened out.

      “For all that hassle, I should damn well hope so.” G’Ren twisted into an upright position. His skin was an inky blotch against the dark interior.

      Shiv’s overly large eyes gleamed in her bulbous silver-grey face as she peered at Nuri. “Can we see it?”

      “Let’s just get back to the Den, right?” Nuri gritted her teeth.

      The pod lurched sharply again.

      “Preferably in one piece.”

      2

      The Den was on the outskirts of the Western Calan City barrens, near the fens, which meant that the air was always full of biting insects. The barrens was a no-man’s land, where old wrecks and rubble created a haven for those who weren’t Citizens. Every year as Calan City grew, it pushed its barrens just that little bit further, a spreading canker that blighted the remaining wild lands. Yet to Nuri, this wasteland was home.

      She knew every little side street and alley between the stilt-legged shacks, and could run them blindfolded if need be. Stars above, she could run all the roofs too. The Den itself had been built from old trams – three, in fact – that leant drunkenly against each other to form an enormous tripod. It nestled between Mama Ria’s Tea Room (constructed out of old shipping containers and trimmed with the outer shell of a Heran ore freighter) and a Khu-Khut hive (four weird, mud-daubed cones nearly as tall as the Den, embedded with bits of broken glass).

      Shiv slipped their pod into the Den’s entrance without even a whisper of a bump, and they all clambered out, grumbling and grumping. Nuri stretched, feeling all the kinks of the run.

      G’Ren bumped past her, hard enough to make her stagger.

      “Oi! What was that about?” she called after him.

      The J’Veth drone flipped a rude sign over his shoulder and stomped up the stairs to the common area, leaving her alone with Shiv.

      Shiv’s third eyelid slipped slowly over her large black eyes, her tiny mouth pursed in annoyance. “What bug crawled up his cloaca?”

      Nuri shrugged. “I think he’s peeved because I took too long.”

      “You tipped off security,” Shiv said. “That’s not cool. I struggled to shake them.”

      “I know. Sorry about that.” Nuri huffed out a sigh and stretched, then she patted her pocket. The pin was still there.

      “I hope whatever it is, is worth it,” said Shiv. “Can I see?”

      “Um, I’d best go up to see the boss-thing,” Nuri replied.

      “Spoil sport,” Shiv murmured, busying herself with linking up the pod to its power source.

      Nuri hurried up the stairs, unaccountably nervous. G’Ren was most likely already telling Vadith everything Nuri had done

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