cyberfunk

001

The sky was the colour of light pollution. Swirls of cloudy orange infused with electric yellow-green from the city below.

This city was a billion lit up rectangles; hundreds of towering, glowing buildings clustered together, going up and up because there was nowhere else for them to go. Adspace clung all over them like barnacles, huge screens and holographic projections--corporate logos, drag-geisha, the curling fingers of a cyborg hand.

Roads cut through the buildings like the lines of a circuit-board, awash with the hum of a thousand neon lights. No space for their passage on the ground, they took off and soared in loops around the building tops.

On one of these aerial lanes, a lone biker slowed to fix his tophat and light his pipe, his bike cruising over smooth panels. His tailcoat flickered in the breeze. This late at night, at this altitude, it was almost quiet.

The biker was young, about seventeen, and his beard was drawn on, not real--some of his peers had undergone hair follicle transplants, but he'd decided against it when Stipdu's black-market job had wound up as ugly patches of cat fur all over his face.

He admired the view, the road's red neon hoops whipping by overhead, letting a tab of special magic dissolve on his tongue. It made him deliciously edgy.

He wondered when the others were going to catch up. They had plans for tonight. Big plans. Damage-to-property plans.

A helicopter circled overhead. It'd be watching him. For now, he'd be on his best behaviour.

'Canada!'

He caught the voice on the wind. He turned and saw his best friend waving madly, cresting the slope where the road behind him fell away back to earth.

Canada waved back. 'Tatsuo!' he hollered.

'Canada!'

'Tatsuo!'

'Canada!' Tatsuo waved even more frantically. More of their gang appeared. 'They're coming! Get out of here!'

Canada kept himself twisted in his seat, craning his neck to see. 'What?' he said, hitching the belt of grenades around his waist. 'Who?'

There was a flash, a crack and a cloud of black smoke and Tatsuo fell head-over-heels off his bike. The others swerved to avoid the wreckage.

'Tatsuo!' Canada yelled. 'Shit!' He turned forward to accelerate. He saw a split-second vision of a pale face with shades and a black fro, throwing his upper half backwards just in time to avoid the crowbar that cracked his headlight and took off his hat.

'Son of a--!' He glanced briefly back and saw a line of identical shades-and-fro bikers closing in on the rest of his friends. 'Impersonators? On our turf? Oh, now they're in trouble!'

He unhooked a grenade and lobbed it, not back, but ahead where more of them were coming from the other direction. The second line dispersed as the grenade went off.

Canada whooped, his bike taking him through the smoke and out the other side.

'Yo,' said a voice. 'You mizzled.'

A long metal pole hit him in the chest. His bike skittered on ahead.

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