“Property of one of the most powerful companies in the galaxy,” Deidra reminded him, in a soft tone. She laid a calming hand on the man’s arm, a last resort. His hand snapped across her face. Deidra hardly grunted as her head spun sideways. She’d taken a thousand hits like that, for far less noble causes. She spun with the force of the blow, snapping her leg out for a kick that knocked the drunken man back, winded.
Devin chimed in with a nice, solid punch. Possibly the hardest he’d ever thrown. He impressed his knuckles a quarter-inch deep in the man’s forehead. The man stumbled back a few more steps and collided hard with the wall of a food cart. The whole structure rattled and swayed ominously.
“Go!” Devin barked at Deidra, who looked like she wanted to finish what the man had started. Before she could object, Devin grabbed her by the wrist and started dragging her along. The two split the crowd down the gray block path to go with the rest of Greymoor. A glance back showed the man in pursuit. He was well behind them and stumbling, though. She kept an eye on him, trusting Devin and her own feet to run the path of memory. They always had an escape route ready. The two turned a corner to an alley between two chipped-brick strip malls.
“We don’t need to take the Highroad, Dev. He’s not exactly on our heels,” Deidra reported. She watched the man’s burly frame vanish amongst the swirling tides of bodies. Devin led them deeper down the cold hall anyway.
“Who cares? We’re gonna get crammed either way, now! We might as well enjoy the view while we can,” he countered. They would have been fine, had they not struck a potential customer. But Deidra wouldn’t complain one bit, and neither would Devin. That guy deserved every inch of bruise he got, even if it meant a few days of dark silence.
“Alright,” said Deidra. She and Devin jammed their leftover paperwork deep in their pockets. When it was all stowed, Deidra took a knee with two hands cupped for Devin’s foot. Her support gave him the height boost he needed to reach a hooked rod hanging from the fire escape above. Devin yanked down the ladder. He and Deidra scrambled up the ladder with their hook, then pulled it up and locked it in place. Their pursuer tumbled through the mouth of the alleyway, bewildered at their disappearance. Deidra and Devin had already climbed to the roofs.
At the top of the spiral fire escape, a land of rooftops only slightly more colorful than the clay below stretched out. Each was connected to another by pieces of scrap metal, discarded ship wings, or rickety ladders. Peeled paint and rust were the esthetic touches of what these two called the Highroad. It was a place they shared with a few other local vagrants fortunate enough not to be owned by The Gold Standard, but not fortunate to have homes of their own. Up there, kids with as many patches as rips in their clothes gathered to trade and watch the planet Ares take shape. It was overhead even now, a hazy orb against the light of the Homeworld. It was left blank, an empty husk, at the end of the last Olympia Gold. Now, on the eve of the next, it changed a bit each day. A mountain erected itself here. A lake trenched itself there. Entire towns spread across the surface of Ares, all for the purpose of the glorious games. Two more shapes joined twenty others that had already gathered to see what was different today.
The Highroad was a place Devin and Deidra preferred to avoid. They’d see enough of Ares in a few days for a lifetime. Not just the glamorous battle these other vagrants wished they could afford to see, either. As servants of The Gold Standard itself, they would be down in the arenas after each match, to scrape the defeated from the walls. To retrieve fresh organs in buckets for transplant salvage. To scrub gore until they were bloodier than those who’d met the wrong end of a light-cannon. Devin and Deidra shouldered their way along the Highroad, eager to get away from this viewing stage for their personal, recurring Hell.
“Hey, if we make it to the other side of the Skyport, we might still meet our quota for the day,” Deidra smiled, to distract herself.
“Won’t get us out of the Cram, though, if that guy calls in the assault,” Devin shook his head.
“You think he can keep it straight long enough to call it in?” Deidra laughed, right up until one of the Highroad vagrants called out,
“Sentries!” He, along with every other one of the transients, scrambled for the nearest building ledge. It wasn’t exactly legal for them to linger there.
“Damnit, already?” Deidra hissed. She glanced around for the nearest escape route. “There?”
“Good as any!” Devin answered. He and Deidra bolted for the side of the roof, along with eight others. If they could get even a few more hours of sound and light before the Cram, it’d be worth it. “Ladder, or window?” Devin asked one of the others they ran with.
“Window!” she told him. Devin and Deidra sprinted out ahead of the crowd. They checked over the ledge of the roof, then spun to swing down through a long, open window on the side. Their shoes flattened on a top stair of cement. Bodies rushed in around them just before a spotlight ray shone in. Devin and Deidra ducked under taser spikes from Gold Standard drones. Three bodies fumbled down the stairs around them.
The two spiraled down the stairs just ahead of light flashes through the windows. They lunged down floor after floor. When the stairwell finally let out at the ground level, Devin stumbled. Deidra grabbed his arm. She yanked him down the alley for another busy street. The buzz of drones dove down behind them. They moved too fast to tell if anyone was still with them, but they had to get to the crowd. Light shone down behind their heels just as they leaped out into the street.
“Hey, are you two handing out-”
The woman never got a chance to finish her inquiry. Deidra barreled straight into her. She, Devin, and the rough-looking woman tumbled in a human knot that didn’t untie for about five feet. The Devin managed to pull himself away first. He jumped up, only to have a spotlight blaze over him from beneath a drone. The beige rectangle hovered over him a second longer to calculate its shot. By the time he turned to flee, it spat two electrically charged needles into his neck. Devin stiffened to a human plank. He thunked on the ground beside his friend and their thwarter.
Deidra peeled away from the woman while the drone loaded a new set of needles in its taser. She didn’t have enough time to get higher than her knees, which was just enough time to get a good look at the woman. Her head was shaved behind her right ear, which had a single golden loop in it. The other side was a cascade of golden locks. Between the two contradicting hairstyles were a pair of hazel eyes so bright, they looked amber. A tattoo of black flame flickered around one of them. A diamond stud glittered in the left side of her nose. Her lips hung open, pursed in a soundless question. In that instance of eye contact, this woman in a frilled leather jacket, with the glinting bracers of a grappler, looked just as shocked as Deidra.
“Galia!” a man called out to the woman from nearby. It was the last thing Deidra heard before two needles pierced her neck.
Chapter Three: Sign Here
Galia tossed her head back. She opened her throat to let liquid fire pour over her guts. The crowd roared up around. Her fist curled against the weathered wooden table.
“Come on, Rex!” one of her rival’s crew piped up. Rex, Galia committed to memory behind her vacuum-tight eyelids. The last drop of Grey Fire swirled down her gullet. She slammed her mug on the table, to a resounding cheer. The crowd gathered around her banged on tables and hooted while Rex let his mug down, face twisted with the sting of the drink.
“Yes, come on, Rex,” Galia chuckled. The heat of alcohol climbed up into her cheeks. With her skin tinged rose, any onlooker could see the slew of thin scars across her fair face. They could not, however, count them. There were too many. Galia hoisted her mug to the ceiling in a victory cry, along with her audience, then let it down at last. She threw a playful punch at the flushed Rex. He jerked his left hand to catch the blow, even in his impaired trance.
“Don’t kick a man while he’s down!” Rex laughed, “Honestly, I couldn’t hope more that you and your crew get into the games. A man like me against a maniac like you… that’s the stuff legends are made of.”
“Why wait for the games, then?” Galia popped him an eyebrow. She pushed her fist into Rex’s grasp. Both trembled against the might of the other. Galia let up only when a firm hand grasped her shoulder.
“Alright, big G. You made your point,” laughed Rey. The only member of her crew she saw as her friend was the only one she ever needed, and the only man who’s hand she’d abide on her shoulder.
“Reymond! Just in time to spoil the fun!” Galia laughed, and the tension in the room shattered to a million drunken pieces. She pulled her hand back from Rex. “I’ll see you out there, captain,” she said.
“Same to you, I hope,” said Rex. Galia shook to her feet. She let Rey help her to the entrance of the musty old tavern. As soon as the door shut behind her, she wiped the stupor off her face. She straightened up and pulled her arm away from Rey. It’d take something a little more potent than Grey Fire to challenge Galia’s tolerance.
“Fun should be number two on the docket, Galia,” Rey chided, though not without a certain reverence for her acting.