EDGE OF DAY

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The skyline of metal and glass towers rose into a grey-pink smog. Within minutes they were on the capital's outskirts and still no sign of police. The highway they were coming in by was totally empty. It probably hadn't been used in twenty years. The Loop's magnetic grid joined the cities and the electromagnetic pods driven by droids served for journeys within the city's perimeter. The old tarmac highways were relics of another era, like the coliseum in Rome and the chateaus of France.

Will slowed the motorbike as they came over a bridge to an intersection. The pods crossing the intersection moved on three lines, taking up most of the road, but Will turned, weaving between them.

They cruised down a street with tenement buildings and shop fronts. Will's head bobbed between his wrist and the passing road names. She couldn't figure out what he was doing. Why he didn't just use a guidance system?

The handful people walking dogs, or crossing the road, were droids designed to make human towns look populated. As Day observed them, and they stopped to stare at her and Will, she realized it was the wrist-monitor that made wandering the streets impossible for humans. More than a minute outside and the monitor activated an emergency warning like it had done when she'd left the kitchen and stood outside in her backyard. It was the monitor that had made her pass out, not the lack of oxygen.

"Where are the police?" she asked. They'd been outside for fifteen minutes, Day's third long exposure to the real atmosphere in the space of a few hours and she could feel her lungs starting to strain.

"Hang on," Will said. He was focused on the information on his wristband and the task of locating their destination.

Some of the passing pods had people in them, who stared and pointed. Occasionally, a child waved. Day wondered what she would have thought if last week she'd seen two people riding through Boulder on an old fashioned motorbike. She'd have thought they were droids.

"I think it's down here," Will said slowing, and turning down a street with a historical red-bricked building encrusted between silver-mirrored monsters. They veered around another corner and almost crashed straight into a hover-bike. The hover-bike levitated sharply upwards, avoiding the collision by a few centimeters.

Will hit the accelerator hard. Day clung to him as the hover-bike swung around. The hover-bike raced after them, blue light flashing in the casing around the wind blades.

"Stop your vehicle." The droid's voice broadcast over the street.

Day's stomach rolled. Will responded by going faster. He wove between oncoming droids and road posts as though they were in a video game. He kept accelerating and breaking. They turned sharply, skidding down a narrow alley. Day glanced back and saw the hover-bike follow.

"We can't outrun it," she shouted.

"Here," he said, passing her something.

"Watch the road!" she screamed, taking the metal thing he was offering so that he'd look ahead instead of at her.

'The disc fixes onto your eye. It's your scope. Once you've lined up the target you press the red button. The charge will automatically find your target.

Day's hands began shaking. "Will..." she croaked. Her hands fumbled with the small metal gun, which looked more like a tube than a weapon. "Will..."

"Have you got the eye scope on?" He shouted glancing back at her.

"I... I..." The motorbike crashed through metal fencing and they skidded onto another busy street. Trembling, Day held up the disk against her eye wondering how on earth it attached. Little pinchers darted out form the disc and dug into her skin. Suddenly, lain over her normal vision of her right eye were hairlines of light.