Night of the 3rd of July...
The dirt bike's dusty tires hit white concrete with a jarring impact, rattling the rider's teeth and sending a fresh shock of pain through her abdomen. There was a final rush of cold, sand-choked air behind her, but she didn't check to see if she'd been followed — not yet. There were people in jumpsuits and uniforms shouting at her, and the glimpses of black shoulder straps and metallic flashes she caught as she spun her bike around suggested some of them were armed.
They seemed to have a policy of yelling warnings before they shot, though, which worked in her favor, giving her enough time to blink through the blinding haze of the halogen-soaked platform. Rubber squealed and she shot through two officers, leaning boldly into the one leveling an assault rifle up to the moment he threw himself out of her way. There was a bright yellow barricade, a woman who'd just stopped waving her arms and started reaching for her gleaming blue rifle leaning against a glass wall, and just enough room for her bike to pass through the middle. She weaved her way through, clenching her teeth over her screams as the bike shuddered through the corners, rattling up into her ribcage.
Then she was free - free from danger for a moment, free to buy herself a few more, racing away from the portal platform under a warm blue-black sky, hazy with the light of skyscrapers, with airships or starships blinking in the dissipating clouds overhead. She was flanked by electric cars and office buildings, and when she zipped by a couple swearing at her as they hurried across her path, she chanced that look back at the platform.
The portal was long gone, and if anyone had followed her, they could easily be out of her narrowing line of sight. The figure silhouetted by the halogen lights in the center of the platform could more easily be a Stars End border agent struggling to make her retreating form, than a pursuer from another world.
The only things she knew were with her from the previous world were the blue dirt bike, the smell of desert dust in her hair, and the chill in her bones; from the world before that, nothing at all.
* * *
Twenty-nine hours earlier...
She'd never had an opinion on xylophones, one way or the other, until Diantec made xylophones the standard alarm on their smartphones. Picking another revealed eleven minor variations on the same melody, each played with a different instrument; she left it set to the xylophone because she reasoned she could live with hating them better than bells, 'strings,' steel drums, or Spanish guitars.
She slitted her bleary eyes open: the only sign of her ex was the duvet pulled halfway off the bed, still warm where she touched it. "Goddammit," she swore at herself, and reached blindly for her phone, unsettling a paperback thriller and a box of rubbers before she found the button to silence the alarm.
Then she counted to seven, released it, and looked at the message on her screen, a notification of bold white letters imposed over her blurred beachfront wallpaper. EMBASSY PARTY, ONE HOUR, it declared just long enough to be read before it faded.
"So much for my night off."
The dirt bike's dusty tires hit white concrete with a jarring impact, rattling the rider's teeth and sending a fresh shock of pain through her abdomen. There was a final rush of cold, sand-choked air behind her, but she didn't check to see if she'd been followed — not yet. There were people in jumpsuits and uniforms shouting at her, and the glimpses of black shoulder straps and metallic flashes she caught as she spun her bike around suggested some of them were armed.
They seemed to have a policy of yelling warnings before they shot, though, which worked in her favor, giving her enough time to blink through the blinding haze of the halogen-soaked platform. Rubber squealed and she shot through two officers, leaning boldly into the one leveling an assault rifle up to the moment he threw himself out of her way. There was a bright yellow barricade, a woman who'd just stopped waving her arms and started reaching for her gleaming blue rifle leaning against a glass wall, and just enough room for her bike to pass through the middle. She weaved her way through, clenching her teeth over her screams as the bike shuddered through the corners, rattling up into her ribcage.
Then she was free - free from danger for a moment, free to buy herself a few more, racing away from the portal platform under a warm blue-black sky, hazy with the light of skyscrapers, with airships or starships blinking in the dissipating clouds overhead. She was flanked by electric cars and office buildings, and when she zipped by a couple swearing at her as they hurried across her path, she chanced that look back at the platform.
The portal was long gone, and if anyone had followed her, they could easily be out of her narrowing line of sight. The figure silhouetted by the halogen lights in the center of the platform could more easily be a Stars End border agent struggling to make her retreating form, than a pursuer from another world.
The only things she knew were with her from the previous world were the blue dirt bike, the smell of desert dust in her hair, and the chill in her bones; from the world before that, nothing at all.
* * *
Twenty-nine hours earlier...
She'd never had an opinion on xylophones, one way or the other, until Diantec made xylophones the standard alarm on their smartphones. Picking another revealed eleven minor variations on the same melody, each played with a different instrument; she left it set to the xylophone because she reasoned she could live with hating them better than bells, 'strings,' steel drums, or Spanish guitars.
She slitted her bleary eyes open: the only sign of her ex was the duvet pulled halfway off the bed, still warm where she touched it. "Goddammit," she swore at herself, and reached blindly for her phone, unsettling a paperback thriller and a box of rubbers before she found the button to silence the alarm.
Then she counted to seven, released it, and looked at the message on her screen, a notification of bold white letters imposed over her blurred beachfront wallpaper. EMBASSY PARTY, ONE HOUR, it declared just long enough to be read before it faded.
"So much for my night off."