He went loose, his face slack. I blinked as he fell.

  I took a step back. What the hells—?

  I glanced around, but there were no windows here, nothing to fire a bullet through. I edged closer to the doctor, checking for wounds, for blood. Nothing. He looked dead, heaped bonelessly on the floor and not moving. His eyes hadn’t even widened, his body hadn’t even stiffened. He’d just fallen, eyes open, lips parted.

  My eyes darted, looking for a trick, for a camera, for something. I heard the vague sound of a vehicle crashing outside. There was a siren. I became aware of a bizarre new silence that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  Slowly, I checked the fallen doctor’s pulse. It was miraculously there, steady and normal. I rose, my palms held up in front of me as if to ward off whatever had hurt him. I looked at the nearest camera, in the room’s highest corner.

  “I didn’t do this,” I said aloud. “I didn’t touch him.”

  The camera gave no response.

  I’m being framed. That was my first thought. I turned to the door, expecting an army of blackshirts to thunder through it and brandish weapons at me.

  No one came.

  Maybe I should go get help? The man had collapsed. It was a heart attack, maybe, or something close. Had all of this just been a test? A way to prove I was a good person, someone who would try to help someone that dropped half-dead in front of me? Was that why Passenger-Side had made those comments about violence?

  I took a breath and opened the door back into the main office. “Excuse me—”

  Every person in the office was down.

  I went still. The receptionist, the office workers, everyone lay inert on the floor—including a dozen men I hadn’t seen before, each one armed with a handgun, an assault rifle, and a full army-style uniform made of shiny material, which I suspected was some kind of Kevlar.

  My brain shorted out for a second.

  It wasn’t just the doctor. Everyone collapsed.

  Including the dozen armed men on the floor in front of me. They’d come while I was in the room.

  Were they… were they here for me?

  I swallowed and turned to the secretary. She was down too, as if sleeping, slumped over her desk. I checked her pulse—normal. One of the fallen army guys—normal.

  I stepped over the soldiers and made for the elevator, pausing near the waiting room chairs. I frowned. The guy with the clipboard wasn’t among the fallen. Had he somehow done this? Had the soldiers been here for him?

  No one stopped me as I walked away. I peered into doors, searching the offices for anyone standing, and my pulse juddered with each new body I found. Every single person in this building had dropped flat to the ground as if all their strings had been cut. Their eyes were still open, they still breathed, their pulse worked.

  My instinct said don’t trust the elevator. I took the stairs down, and heard the elevator going up, a faint murmur behind the sodiprene wall.

  That meant someone else was still standing. It wasn’t just me.

  I emerged slowly onto the first floor, peeking through the stairwell door, expecting an alarm to go off. Hells, one should already be going off.

  It was quiet in the lobby, probably because all the noise was cast to implants so I couldn’t hear it. Dead-looking, silent bodies lay slumped, still lined up in their queues. They would never reach whatever thing they had waited in line for.

  Outside the building, the world was less quiet. Car alarms were blaring. More than one.

  I… I don’t think this was for me.

  Those men up there, with the weapons—they’d been for me, or maybe for the man with the clipboard. But this mass-knockout had nothing to do with me. It was some sort of bioweapon, maybe, or an electric pulse in their implants.

  Yeah, it must be that second one. That’s why I was fine, and they weren’t. It’s why the guy with the clipboard had vanished. We still didn’t have our IDs.

  A voice said, out of nowhere, “Oh, shit.”

  My head shot up. I had wandered absently into the middle of the marble-floored lobby, my eyes scanning limply over all the bodies—but when I heard that voice, I looked around so fast that it sent shooting pains up my neck. Gritting my teeth, I rubbed the sore muscle.

  “Don’t just stand there, human. Run.”

  I didn’t see the speaker. No one was standing anywhere in this room. In fact, the voice seemed to belong to a potted fig tree near the main desk.

  “You’re tenning me,” I said.

  There was a lime green bird perched in the tree, watching me raptly, gripping one of the giant-leafed branches for dear life.

  The bird cocked its head. “The Hunters can see heat sigs. My Hunter is upstairs. He’ll notice you soon. You should run.”

  As if to punctuate this comment, I heard a distant, vague boom. The stairwell door banging open, many floors above me. Someone was coming.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I ran.

  #

  My old self was back in business, long suppressed, near forgotten. The moment I got past the front windows of the building, I swung around a sodiprene pillar and rounded a corner into an alley.

  I was no stranger to alleys. As I darted for the building’s back door, images flashed across my memory, of red exit signs and stained, stinking dumpsters.

  Too late, I realized this City wasn’t like Old Detroit. There was no back entrance to this alley, no stoops or trash cans to hide behind. Just solar meters and rain-collection tanks and one truck, which was currently backed into a loading garage, its engine still running, its driver slumped over the wheel.

  I eyed the open garage door, but thought better of it. Fuck no. I’m not going back inside that place, I thought, kicking up cigarette butts as I staggered to a halt.

  I spun around. This was a dead end. My heart went ka-thump, a sound I could feel like a physical thing.

  Then I saw it—a red bundle. My heart seized. The necktie and the hyonic node were only two feet away from me.

  That’s when I heard breaking glass.

  It was big and it was loud. The front window of the building had shattered. I could see the shadow of the blown-apart glass expanding on the sidewalk ahead of me. I snatched up the node, then backed away again, dropping it back into my pocket.

  The feeling of it there—a weapon—made something harden inside me. I would get out of this yet.

  A new shadow appeared on the sidewalk, this one human. It wore a helmet. It looked first one way, then the other. It couldn’t be five feet away from the entrance to the alley.

  The guy with the bird. He’s still standing.

  A man’s voice asked, “Which way?”

  This voice was new, gruff, as if the man had swallowed sand, and had just finished coughing it up.

  “How should I know?” another voice replied. This one, I recognized.

  The guy in the helmet was talking to the parrot.

  “Don’t fuck with me, you overgrown nut louse. Be useful or I’ll feed you a beam.”

  The parrot sighed. Could birds even sigh?

  “I saw the target run that way,” he said.

  Me. He’s talking about me.

  I pivoted, lunging around the front of the idling truck because the cab was closer to me than the garage was, and I needed to get out of sight fast.

  At the driver’s side, I hopped up onto the step to make sure my feet wouldn’t be visible from the other side, and I ducked under the window, using the rear view mirror as a hand hold. I fell still against the driver-side door.

  If I could quietly open the door, maybe I could drive the truck out of here. It probably required a certain ID to start it, but it was running already. I just had to keep the driver close by, maybe keep his hands on the wheel—

  “Any munitions in that thing?” the rusty voice said, closer now. I clung to the truck, breathless. I didn’t know what this guy wanted, but he wasn’t here to sell lemonade.

  “How should I know?” said the parrot.

  “Check it, unless you want my next shot to blow half the block.”

  I stood frozen, rapidly trying to understand.

  The truck. He’s asking if he’s safe to blow the truck.

  Which means he wants to shoot at it. Which means he knows I’m here.

  Heat signatures. The Hunters could see them. I wasn’t hiding at all.

  I reacted, using every muscle I’d been building over ten years of hard labor to hit the ground and sprint toward the garage. The scuff of another heavy footstep moved toward me, but I would never know what would have happened next, because a totally new person stepped out of the garage as I was running into it. We crashed into each other so hard that the other guy hit the ground, while I spun away into the garage, barely keeping my feet.

  I whirled as the fallen man said, “What the fuck?”

  I met eyes with him, and I knew him. It was the other leech that had been waiting for his ID chip, the one with the clipboard. He really had survived the mass collapse.

  He must have hidden himself until now, and when the Hunter had left the building, he’d tried to run through the nearest side exit.

  It was the last mistake he’d ever make.

  The Hunter’s steps thundered toward us. I took the node out of my pocket and yanked off the red tie. I tapped the buttons on the side of the orb, and an access panel popped out. I twisted and slammed the whole thing against a metal railing beside me.

  “Who are—” a voice said.

  Fzzt.

  I glanced back to see that the clipboard guy was gone, and where he’d been, there was now a steaming, red-stained gouge in the cement.

  I turned and slammed the node against the railing again. The clang was loud, but all I could hear was the steaming of the obliterated man. The Hunter strode into my peripheral vision.

  The panel came off, exposing a pair of thin metal filaments. I yanked them free.

  The Hunter looked at the red stain. Then he looked at me.

  He raised an arm.

  I threw the node.

  It struck the helmet square on, and it exploded spectacularly, even brighter than the one that had killed the Black Ibis. I lost my feet, slamming against a railing and crying out from the pain, but my legs still worked when I slumped forward. Nothing was broken.

  With a whomp, the cloud of blue fire condensed again, sucked up inside its own vacuum. With no engine to explode, the fire was shirt-lived and contained, but it had still legt a crater in the cement, and the metal at the back end of the truck was twisted and rent.

  I staggered upright, grinning over the pain in my back—only for the smoke to clear, revealing the man in the helmet.

  He was on the ground. Sitting up. Shaking his head, as if dazed.

  There wasn’t a fucking scratch on him.

  I raced toward him, and when he turned to look at me, I kicked him, aiming my foot at the bottom edge of the helmet. His head jerked back, and he crumpled with a shout, but I didn’t stick around. I barely lost momentum as I ran into the alley.

  I could stay, and keep fighting, but I didn’t want to tangle with whatever weapon he was using. A bullet I could avoid in a tussle, but that gun was not shooting bullets. And the suit….

  If a bomb can’t damage it, then neither can a punch. I’d do better to get the fuck out of here.

  The kick should buy me time, at least. I threw myself into the street and rounded the corner.

  Behind me, the corner exploded.

  I staggered sideways as a three-foot chunk of sodiprene disintegrated at my back, sending salt and plasticky shrapnel hurtling past me. Somehow, I missed only one stride, then kept running, bleeding from shiny new scratch marks.

  The sodium in the material stung, and I released a stream of curses, barely reaching the next crossroad in time to dodge—

  Fzzt.

  A chunk of building blasted apart behind me once again. What kind of gun was that? Damn.

  I ran, my feet slamming the white pavement. I took every turn that I could, trying to get walls between the Hunter and me. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t catching up to me—but I wasn’t losing him either.

  At my next turn, a shadow swept the ground ahead of me. The damned bird was overhead, keeping tabs on his master’s prey. He may have warned me before, but he wasn’t talking this time.

  Then it hit me: I’m not getting away.

  I didn’t know the layout in this city. I didn’t think I could even make doors open. Without an ID chip, I might as well not exist here. The only thing keeping me alive was my legs.

  But I was tiring. I had no choice.

  I either fought, or I died.

  But that weapon…. Damn, I should have stolen the Kevlar off one of those fallen blackshirts. Then again, would it protect against that? What the hell kind of gun was that, anyway?

  Suddenly, the streets around me turned familiar. I’d been along this road before, earlier today. It was mostly businesses. Furniture. Luxury purses—

  The bakery.

  The memory hurtled forward. The parrot, flapping in front of the display window, marveling at the bakery. What had he said?

  They turned it into cake!

  Turned what into cake, though? Did it matter?

  “Bird!” I shouted, still running. “What’s in those cakes?”

  I vaguely heard a flutter, and I thought he’d gone, but no—suddenly he was next to me, mere inches from my head.

  “It’ll hurt him,” the bird said.

  Then it was gone.