>> Brink

  Neon streaks to blades of colour as we blur through this dark little Pirate paradise. Wind roaring in flat-back ears, to fill our lungs with midnight smells.

  Woks churning great piles of rice.

  Savoury kabab stalls, deep-frying things from the deepest abyss.

  Perfumers, and their eerily hypnotic wares.

  Through it wall, we bound free and giddy. Riding the rush of the fight. Regaining awareness with every hard breath. Every With nothing to dodge but the growing crowds as we follow the ceiling that hangs, low, above the buildings.

  A green arrow spins into existence ahead of me as Zipper marks us a path. But I ignore it.

  Too caught in the rush and hubris of the run. The flick of brick beneath palms and soles.

  I skid on a corner, and then on another. Kami screaming, far behind, for us to slow.

  I catch the scent of chocolate buns, and wafting rain. The musk and mash of a billion illicit brews. The bright signs above shifting from purple, to red, to green, to-

  I turn a corner, and the world just ends.

  The road. The ceiling. The buildings. The ground itself, terminating in a massive, three-story, wall of windows blown out into absolute nothingness.

  Into darkness. Into pounding rain, and hurricane winds.

  Ships pour in, overhead. Roaring with thunder, and dripping with oil. So loud. So very, very, loud. Sudden panic and chaos slamming through my head as I grind to a shredding halt. Panting. Gasping. Wide-eyed, and shaken. Battered back by the storm and chaos blasting in from that massive, gaping, void where the megaTower itself.... just....

  ENDS.

  Brutally. Instantly. As if cut off by a laser.

  I've found the outside wall of the massive, hollow, Arcology in which the Pirates built their home. And I still my breath upon the edge. Mind and body locked suddenly tight, as I stare down.

  And down.

  And down.

  Into the maze of battered megaTowers rising from the howling dark. Half dead, and rotted, and festered with eyes. Half blinding, and bright, and roaring with life. All ringed, and pierced, by gleaming loops of silver-steel track that shriek and spark with speeding trains.

  Each megaTower so massive that the floors are cities unto themselves. Filled to bursting with trading hubs, and markets. With plunder, and booty, and ill-gotten gains. With two billion people, and half as many creatures.

  This is The heart of Karrak. The heart of a Pirate Kingdom.

  Its outer darkness held back by a core of mad life, and madder death. Of machines no man should dream of. Tales no man should tell. Sins no man should know. And ancient, time-burnt, holos that stutter and jitter in the storm.

  Electric ghosts, caught on the wind.

  The towers are so close I could reach out and touch them....

  Even as I fell.

  And fell.

  And fell.

  I slam claws into brick as a screaming swell of wind roars up under my belly. Calling me to fly, and then to tumble. Forever. Into the belly of the night.....

  And some part of me does.

  A shadow of the might-have-been that kept on running. Skidding. Panicking. Only to skip and stagger, right over the edge.

  And down.

  Down, down, down, that sheer and sucking cliff. Smashing off ships and broken outcrops.

  Snapping bones, and shattering-

  "Hey, idiot. The world's up here." Kami’s eyes are wicked as she hauls me vertical. Dangling me over the dark like a limp puppet. “So.... What now…. leader? We still doing those cal-phonies?”

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  "CalZOnes, mate." Zip groans, fully aware she's doing it deliberately.

  "Cal what?" She smirks, waggling my terrified husk against the rain. And prodding my face with multiple fingers on multiple hands. "Hey? Hey? You in there, boss?"

  "Gnuurrh....." I mutter, eyes fixed to the hole beneath me.

  She swings me back in, and lets go. "Serves you bloody right for leaving me behind."

  "Spook? Mate? Hey, you okay?" Zip tilts his head at me, like a GMO. Flicking his eyes toward that vast, all consuming-

  No. Don't look.

  You're the bloody leader, Goddamnit.

  "Yeah." I groan. Disengaging my helmet in a whirl of parts, hidden my my hood. Tail lashing, oily, and embarrassingly fluffed behind me. "Liquid cheese. Sounds good."

  "You know it, mate! You're gonna love this place!" Zip whoops, already pulling up menus and maps like he's planning a food-themed war.

  Kami smirks a nod, eyes flitting between me and the inky-

  My whole body jerks as a needle-sharp speeder slices in from the dark. Thrust-compactors thrumming and thumping as it turns to park itself on the roof of a nearby garage. I take a shivery breath, and shake it off. It wasn't a trap. It wasn't. I just got careless, and...

  "Mate, hey, you sure you're okay?"

  "Fine. Fine."

  "It's not, like, the heights thing again-"

  Skidding. Falling. Flailing for whatever purchase I can get. Claws scratching, groping, reaching - feeble as a dream. As if the world just stopped being real. Oil and grease filling my nails. Unsettling my delicate balance. Right until-

  "I'm good." I grin with feeble cheer. "So. That. Uh? Burger thing?"

  "Calzone!!! Mate! Come on!" He bends almost backwards, groaning into his hands. "Like, it ain't even similar!"

  "Both got melty cheese innit." I smirk, with my tongue out. "And simMeat... simVeg."

  "Lotta sauces too." Kami's grim lips twitch. Cold eyes twinkling, just a little.

  "And, like-"

  "You two are killing me, y'know?" Zip grumbles, with a dead-eyes look of suffering. Demon chuckling, quietly, behind his mask in that reserved little way of his. The kind where he's sorta here, and he's sorta with us, but he doesn't quite join in....

  I loosen up as we pad (in Kami's case, clomp) through the endless Pirate bazar. Past hundreds of chop-shops, burger-bars, wreckers, mechanics, and half-built ships leaking oil all over the place. Gleaming Pirate choppers rumbling, throatily, as Pirate kids scurry back and forth. Stealing whatever they can. A reminder that nothing in Karrak is ever as safe as it seems. Even out here, in the markets, where casual tourists get to keep nearly all of their kidneys.

  If not their wallets.

  It's a beautiful place, in a weirdly wonky kind of way. Pirate prizes streaking in over our heads to line up in auctions, or drop off at buyers. Sellers with too many arms sizzling "fresh-caught" monsterMeat, right off the QIZ. Guaranteed 'no mutagens', or your money back. Though, probably not your nose.

  We pass a massive, armoured, humanoid figure with a built-in cockpit. Thirty feet tall, and ribbed with red stripes. Its visor bright with gold. Its jet-systems wide open - leaking cables, like half-slurped spaghetti.

  "Damn. Y'know, that's an Aristo-class mek mate?" Zip whistles up at it, yelping as I pretend not to see. "Hey! C'mon! Like, just a little look!"

  "Nope." Kami chuckles, focused on the pair of slightly-mutated Pirates waging a slap-fight at its metal feet. Something, something, you-put-the-bloody-engines-in-backwards-you-idiot.... by the sound of it.

  I flitter a smile, and a shake of my head. Letting myself be lost in the eternal weirdness of Karrak, as Zip giddily tells us everything anyone has ever known about mek fighting.

  Half of which I'm pretty sure he's just making up.

  But I don't care.

  Onward we go at the same slow pace. The street widening out into a market square full of junk-shops and pretzel venders. Our virtual guide pointing out weaponised drones and speeders. Jury-rigged fighters, built from former civilian ships. Rusty old salvage-ships, which barely cling to actual flight by their fingernails.

  Often with way too-many, terrifyingly casual, pirate kids clung to loops of dubious cargo-rope netted across the sides.

  "Oh, look at that." Kami announces, sorta awkwardly, as we pass by a long row of shops with thickly barred windows. All racks of engine-parts, and jetBikes in various states of 'not riding that'. Which ain't exactly unusual in Pirate Town.

  Except....

  We stop in front of a thick metal grill that pulses with weak greenish light. The window behind it different - and strange. All velvet drapes, and little pillows. Each boasting a few, glowing, fragments of originTek that gleam beneath the thick glass. Whispering secrets of the ancient past. Of knowledge lost to humanity….

  There's more across the square. All kinds of dubious little shops slapped right in there, willy-nilly, between the wrecker-shops and discount noodle bars. All filled to bursting with esoteric devices. Unsettling shapes of blackest stone laid, potent and strange, upon velvety cushions. Intricately cut. With glyph-like circuits that hum and thrum with ominous light.

  Others hang in the air, as if stuck there. Awaiting a purpose long gone. While others orbit above strange cones and tapered square pillars.

  You know. The kind that come to a sharp point.

  A lot like a bloody obelisk.

  "Mission complete, yeah?" Zip snickers.

  "Yeah." I laugh, weakly. Shaking my head.

  "Bloody odd place for a fake magic shop." Kami snorts, eyeing the open-air Raman-bar beside it. Clouds of musky smoke steadily bleeding from slits and gills in the fox-headed man crouched on the stool outside it. Tail-brush swishing as he taps at screens only he can see.

  "It's Karrak, baby." Zip smirks. "Weird is, like, what we do. Y'know?"

  "Karrak, my ass. I'm gettin' hungry here." I groan, eyeing the menu.

  “Hey! Whao! Calzones, mate! Remember? Way better than soggy street noodles.” Zipper’s avatar insists, teleporting sideways to block out the bar. “Plus, like, I sorta haven’t scoped this joint-” He cringes. "-y'know?"

  “Right, right.” I fend him off. “You’ll get ya greasy pizza-goo-sandwich thing.”

  Kami shrugs. “All comes from the same nutriSlop bag.”

  “We hope.” I remind her. “Anyway. Zip. Where's this inside-out food thing?"

  His smirk lights up. “Hah, that’d be-” His avatar freezes, right in mid-motion. Jittering strangely. As if suddenly stuck.

  “Zip?” Kami folds arms. “Are you pissing about?”

  But the image shudders. Glitches. Twitches. And then vanishes - leaving only a ‘No Signal’ bar.

  An instant later, Zip’s tiny spy-drones smack into pavement.

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