Memento Mori

2.1 - HEART ATTACK

I BLINK out of the memory and back into bleary reality. Head throbbing, head bowed, head bleeding. A sloppy starburst of red-orange hair shields my eyes. Dark alley, bright lights, somewhere in the high layers closer to the overcity. Trimmed nails prying my eyelid back, someone else panicking. The boy. The not-Iros. Wringing his hands through his voice.

"She's up, Lain." He spits a curse, stalking back and forth across the tiny alley. Three paces from side to side. "Fucking fuck. She's with Sarah Morninghawk. Or was. What the hell were they doing in the Orange?"

"What's her head saying?" the girl asks. Only then do I notice the lightest mental fingers brushing over the surface of my thoughts. Trawling for information. The boy might not be one of Dynasty's, but he's still a Psi.

He crosses his arms and closes his eyes. "She's shot up like a sewer grate. It's all a mess. Can't get a single straight thought." His eyes open again; deep brown. "There's an army on her tail. That's going to be our tail if we sit here any longer."

"We already dragged her this far." I start to blink and the girl pulls away. Sloppy, sweat-damp hair falls back over my face. She looks me right in the eyes. Calculating, not threatening. "Hey. Mook. You on Shatter?"

I croak in a breath and try to sit up. They've got me wedged up against some rotting dumpster. Acidic runoff dripples into inch-deep puddles around the alley. Slowly blinking neon spits colored light near the exit onto the rest of the block, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare filled with nighttime pedestrians heading between bars and gambling houses and underground arenas. Faint citrine lights glow in the distance. We're still near the Orange.

The stimulus overload redoubles my headache as I take stock of my injuries one limb at a time. My fingers twitch restlessly. Still working enough to shoot a gun, I think. But the rest of me is banged up like I got ran through a water filtration plant on the wrong side of the tubes. Right shoulder's dislocated. Five different near misses tattoo my skin with dried and cracking blood. Burns up and down my sides, itching and tearing when I shift. That stab wound under my ribs still oozing hot and sticky. And one of my legs got fucked up somewhere along the way, deep in the hip.

That my JOY somehow survived the chaos is a surprise. That I can even think straight about it is an even bigger shock. Either I'm hyped up on whatever hormones the human body starts kicking out when it's about to die, or the Shatter's still doing something wild to my head. I'd put my money on the latter. How long has it been working, though? I doubt it'll last much longer.

I slowly wipe my bangs to the side, smearing the gore over my forehead as I do. The tightness in my chest refuses to decompress. Hitching in small breaths through my nose, getting a hand down on the wet concrete, I straighten up against the dumpster. "Where are we?"

"We don't have time for this." The boy returns to his pacing. "Lain, we're leaving. She's not our problem. They're going to be here any minute."

"I can fucken move," I growl. My throat aches from smoke and abuse, wrenching a violent cough out of my lungs as I try to stand and crash back against the dumpster. I reach out and snatch the girl by her wrist faster than she can jerk away. Gunslinger's grip, all steel. I yank her close enough to feel her breath against my face. "Don't be a bitch. Help me up."

Shimmering hair, short cut, rainbow hues shifting over a plain white canvas. Slim build, defined shoulders, tight grey skinsuit stretched over her wide chest. A bookie's calculating eyes stare back at me. Quick blinks while she runs the odds of helping me. The thin wire of her garrote knits between the fingers of her free hand. "We can't drag you again. How badly do you want to get out of here?"

The sound of Sarah's Sixer slams through my head. My fingers tighten like a vice around her wrist as the explosion in the docks blooms again in my mind's eye. "Just get me on my feet. I'm already on Shatter."