Copy, (An Astro Boy Story)

Chapter 18: ilicet

Cora was having difficulty breathing.

Her hands were clutched so tight on the hoverped handles that her knuckles had gone ghastly white and she scarcely had a coherent thought. One word kept cycling through her head. One name.

Astro Astro Astro Astro Astro Astro Astro.

They had to make it to him before Tenma did.

She willed the hoverped to move faster, even though she knew it was already going at its top speed. Zane was zooming parallel to her at the same rate, a stony, serious look on his face that he rarely ever had. Zane wasn't exactly Mr. Serious, but in this case, they were both in the same boat.

Toby road not far behind them, shouting out various directions as they went and taking seemingly random turns and shortcuts. They weaved between buildings, flipped tables and benches and startled a few early-birds walking their pets. At one time, they even had a few police hovercars on their tail, but Toby quickly helped to shake them.

Cora hardly noticed. Her thoughts were all on Astro, every muscle in her body tense and every nerve tingling as she prayed to everyone and anyone she could think of that she wasn't too late.

The city was starting to thin and the outer skirts of the once-floating island were coming into view. Metal was giving way to slightly churned earth and a few sproutings of real – not artificial – grass.

They were almost to the chute.

"Will hoverpeds work on the Surface?" Zane shouted over the wind in their ears.

"Don't know!" Cora yelled back. "Guess we'll find out!"

Before she could even punctuate the 't' in 'out', the chute loomed straight ahead and Cora plowed down it without a split second of hesitation, lifting off the seat a bit and holding on for dear life at the severe incline. The wind whipped in her hair, the small thrill of weightlessness filled her stomach –

And then the hoverped leveled with the ground and crashed with a spectacular face plant.

Cora was thrown over the handle bars, only half-able to soften her fall with a semi-somersault, landing awkwardly on top of her left leg. Two other crashing hoverpeds soon followed.

So hoverpeds didn't work on the surface.

Good to know.

She heard a groan and Zane's unruly mass of hair came into her view blearily. "Astro," he muttered groggily.

Yes. Astro.

She struggled to her feet. "We...have to keep...moving," she wheezed. Her chest seemed tight and it was hard to breath. The impact had jolted her pretty bad.

Zane made a face and grunted, but got to his feet as well, turning to help unearth Toby from the remains of his hoverpad. The three hobbled on in silent determination, running to the best of their ability and leaving the wreckage behind. Failure was not an option.

Cora was on fire. Her leg throbbed with pain from how she had landed, but she simply used that as focus, picking up speed and running almost faster than she had every before – and that was saying something. She dodged debris and junk and rock like they weren't even there, and didn't hesitate for shout nor sound.

Her breath was ragged and her lungs burned, but her will only grew as the silhouette of the orphanage came into her view, framed by the orangey glow of the rising sun.

"C'mon," she gasped, trying to push a bit more speed out of her tired legs as Zane and Toby huffed and puffed behind her, kicking up dust in their wake. "We're ...almost..."