Ricky steadied himself against a sudden lurch forward as Junkyard’s delivery van squeaked to a halt. At once, Bartel slid the door open and hopped out, leaving Junkyard to follow Ricky as he stepped cautiously onto the dark, garbage-littered street. In seconds, Ricky found his bearings, recognizing the spot as a desolate field where Lafayette Park once welcomed families and joggers nearly a century before. It had been years since Ricky ventured so far out to the west, but he knew it well enough.

Bartel stood next to him, surveying the park under weak, diffuse moonlight. A moment later, a trim air car sped toward them from the south, barely clearing the rooftops of vacant or abandoned boutiques and hair salons on Bastille Street. Two figures stepped from the car as it settled noisily onto the ground, sending roiling clouds of dust into the hot, evening air. A slender woman dressed in an outfit more suited to cocktail parties than dispatching a contestant on a run for his life went quickly to Bartel, speaking through a cupped hand to be heard over the hiss of the car’s engines.

As a technician fitted Ricky with his camera and transmitter harness, the thin woman with close-cropped hair and a dour expression said, “We have a clean signal, so I can now tell you the completion goal for your Walk is the transmission complex north of the city—Broadridge, they call it.”

“I know where it is,” Ricky mumbled.

The official didn’t seem to notice.

“When you hear the tone in a few minutes, you can start. Do you have any questions?”

Ricky shook his head, and with that, the official and her technicians returned to the car and lifted quickly into the night sky. Bartel watched them go before turning at last to where Ricky stood, shadowed by Junkyard’s huge frame against the possibility of escape.

“You gonna start here, Slider, know what I mean?”

Ricky ignored him, focused instead on the route he would soon take to cross the field quickly. The old retail district could provide cover, he reasoned, and its maze of deserted, burned-out storefronts might hold up the chase units long enough for him to make the apartment blocks on the north side, but experience on the streets showed him something else. Ricky had been around long enough to recognize a trap when he saw one, turning instead toward the open expanse to the left. Junkyard understood and smiled at the idea of Ricky clearing an open field before a Chaser’s bullet cut him down, but Bartel moved close, pointing at the camera and transmitter array.

“They say you gotta leave them cameras where they are, Slider; if you try to pull them away, the deal’s off and that little jiggy under your skin will send out a nice, loud signal so’s the Chasers can find you quick, see?”

Ricky understood; touch the camera harness and any hope of protection for Helene and Litzi would be canceled for tampering, leaving them exposed to Boris’ retribution. Junkyard grinned stupidly and leaned close.

“You better run real fast, boy; they can get you easy through them nightscopes.”

Ricky said nothing, but Junkyard went further, determined to apply one last insult.

“Let’s see if that big mouth of yours is gonna help you now, with all them shooters waiting out there in the dark!”

Ricky refused to take the bait and Bartel moved suddenly in front of him.

“Don’t pay no attention to him, Slider; Junkyard, he’s just teasing, see?”

Ricky looked past the little Czech to where a pond once shimmered on bright, summer days. Dried up long before, the old reflecting pool made a wide, three-meter depression that ran nearly the length of the park. Within it, his best chance of getting across unseen and far better than the obvious set-up waiting for him in the shops, he decided. Bartel didn’t notice Ricky’s hands shaking uncontrollably at his side.

“If you make it through here, you got a chance, know what I mean? Run fast like Junkyard says and you could reach the other side without they seeing you. After that, well…”

Ricky heard Bartel’s words, but they were meaningless as the tension built. His heart raced with anticipation, but after ten minutes, Ricky’s eyes had adjusted to the low light. He saw his path; only the start signal remained before he could be off. A moment later, three clicking beeps sounded from deep inside his skull and Ricky bolted at once for the old fountain where it sat dormant in a stand of stunted beech trees. Bartel called after him, but Ricky didn’t hear as he made for the ancient, moss-covered stones on a dead run.

Alone at last, Ricky stumbled through ankle-high weeds as the ground fell suddenly away. He slowed to catch his breath, well below the dry shoreline of the old pond. With no way of knowing where the chase units were positioned in advance of the start, Ricky was running blind. It didn’t matter, but there was little doubt they were already moving to intercept. As he made his way cautiously between the bushes and small trees that grew from the fertile earth, Ricky felt instinctively along the back of his neck. Surgical tape still covered the incision where Doctor Cason placed the Zorich device, but after a moment, an irrational urge to tear open the wound and remove the thumb-sized chip had passed.

As he surveyed the hillside, Ricky decided to creep slowly and quietly in the hope he wouldn’t draw attention. If Boris’ words were true, it would take time for the closest chase teams to get their first position signal and begin to close the distance. Still, there were no guarantees the assurances of a fair start were genuine; they may well have placed teams across a wide swath of every sector beyond the beltway to form interdiction barriers he couldn’t avoid. And anyway, he thought silently, it was at least ten kilometers from the park to the tower at Broadridge; a distance he could never hope to cover at a full run. For the moment, he would have to keep the pace carefully measured.

Following the contours of the empty pond toward the north, Ricky made his way along the depression, stopping now and then simply to listen for a sign that might betray the Chasers, perhaps careless in their haste to run him down. In the oppressive heat, sweat poured from his face and he wondered if their infrared scopes would see his unmistakable signature. He knew Chasers were equipped with the gear they would need for the hunt, making it all the more important for him to reach the old habitat blocks quickly. Memories of empty, decaying units from the days when he roamed vacant apartments in his youth would help him better than a mad dash across an open field. Either way, Ricky knew, he had to press on.

Wandering along the border of the city’s dense population zones, habitat colonies swarmed with people, even late into the night. A sea of faces down on the streets once made excellent cover to mask a Walker’s movements as another among many, but the practice ebbed when errant gunfire from chase units resulted in bystander deaths. Organizers changed with the times by installing proximity sensors in every contestant’s Zorich device, along with a warning to stay clear of heavily populated zones or face execution by MPE officers patrolling the fringes. Ricky remembered Boris Konstantinou’s cautionary words in the last moments before his Walk.

Most viewers watching from their homes would recognize little in the darkness, but others might notice a familiar, local landmark through Ricky’s camera array and try their luck at finding and exposing him to the Chasers. The practice was discouraged, but some found the effort worthwhile for the temporary notoriety it could bring. Over the years, a few had paid dearly for their interference, strangled or beaten to death by desperate Walk contestants trying only to survive, and the word filtered out that civilian involvement would be made at the individual’s own risk.

Ricky looked toward the horizon to the north for a moment, gauging what lay ahead by only his memories. In the quiet, he knelt in tall grass to gather his thoughts and formulate a plan. It had been a long time since he was obliged to cross the beltway’s wide arc, but worse, he’d never done it at night. Ricky knew the landscape enough to know reaching the abandoned apartment blocks in the early moments was essential, if only for the heavy concrete walls that would operate to block his Zorich signal for short intervals and buy time to reposition before Chase team receivers re-acquired their target. Behind and to his right, the distant mega-towers did little to reassure him. On his own and isolated in the remnants of the Old City, there were no havens or opportune chances to enlist the help of others.

Ricky picked his way through the random growth until at last, the ground sloped gently upward; the edge of the park was near. As he cleared a sparse stand of sumac, the darkened silhouette of long-abandoned apartment blocks stood out against the haze. He forced himself to slow, fighting an overwhelming urge to simply run. Slowly and carefully up the rise until he crested a wide, concrete apron that once welcomed strollers and tourists having picnics near the pond. Ricky’s senses were alive, tingling and shooting adrenaline through his body in waves—a hundred yards to go and he would be in.

An expanse dividing the park from where the beltway began in earnest was a hilly, uneven field and across it, occasional foundations of old buildings. He walked carefully to avoid chunks of concrete and angular framework structures that once made homes for generations in a distant past. Lone pavers or cinder blocks hid in the grass to slow an already diminished pace and with each step, Ricky wondered when the snap of a rifle, or the chatter of an automatic machine gun would reach out from the darkness and end his life. It took longer than he expected, but the distance to the empty apartment blocks was closing and he hurried toward the blackened shapes.

As he slipped through twin doors that were once an entrance to the nearest building, Ricky stopped to rest. Pushed by fear alone, he made it across the park alive; only the sound of his labored breathing broke the silence when he stepped carefully around the clutter. It was deathly quiet, but the foul odor of mold and rotted carpet made his nose wrinkle as he navigated an obstacle course of rubbish left behind and long forgotten from the days when MPE patrols burned the squatters out like rats.

Ricky knew the Chasers’ electronic gear would zero in on a faint signal sent out by the Zorich device at irregular intervals—simply crawling into an unseen hole to wait them out was useless. Sooner or later, he knew, they would find him. He had to keep moving.

Through the gaping holes where windows had been, Ricky watched the faint moonlight filter in from above, casting strange, surreal shadows along peeled, decaying walls. As he slid silently through a covered breezeway and into the next building, Ricky’s skin tingled with fear and anxiety, unsure if the danger stalking him outside was worse than what he might stumble upon within. He fought to stifle the sensation of dread, but he’d seen more than his share of decomposing corpses in the tenements to be surprised when he tripped over the remains of a squatter who’d come to grief many months before.

Even in the pale light, the ghastly details were clear. Chewed by rodents, what remained of skin on the poor man’s arms and legs was dry and leathery, split into wide ovals to expose the bare bone beneath. His form had become more skeleton than body, sunken where his abdomen had been and clothed in moldering rags that seemed suited to a much larger man. His face wore a grimace of agony as tanned skin withdrew to reveal eyeless sockets and a grotesque, leering grin of exposed teeth—yawning as if from a final, silent scream. The dead man’s scalp showed patches of wispy, matted hair, still clinging to tattered, colorless tissue like unharvested wheat in a lonely winter field.

Turning away in disgust, Ricky’s fear was made worse by spent shell casings littering the floor around him as silent testimony the unfortunate and unknown man had been killed by point-blank gunfire. Had the Chasers misidentified him as a debtor making the Walk, or was he instead on the wrong side of a busted deal between thieves?

Ricky paused, holding his breath in a desperate hope to hear echoes of a chase team’s movement from somewhere in the ruins. Slowly and carefully, he continued onward through the block, slipping quietly from building to building until at last, he emerged from the complex. Beyond, a solitary grove of tall poplars stood motionless in the calm and Ricky remembered them from the times when he and Vinnie traded stolen goods with courageous Agros who dared to venture in through the wire. MPE cops were authorized by the Novum City Commission to shoot without warning any unauthorized Agro caught inside the city’s borders; concluding a five minute deal exchanging bottles of Topaz for fresh herd meat brought considerable danger, simply from being in the company of a border-jumping Agro.

After wading deliberately and carefully through tall grass surrounding the trees, Ricky felt better; if the Chasers knew he was there, an ambush would certainly have found him. Now, he thought silently, a straight run across barren fields would get him to the Canyons before midnight and from there, he reasoned, the inter-sector canals could be reached in only a few hours. Crossing them would be another matter, of course, but for the moment, he would enjoy the cover of the trees as he angled steadily toward the north. If he could find his way across the old crop fields undetected, the northern Industrial Zone and its maze of interconnected buildings, ventilation shafts and above-ground pipelines would degrade the Zorich signal and frustrate the Chasers’ efforts. Once there, his odds of survival went up considerably.

As he crested a gentle rise paralleling the first canal, Ricky could see the lights of the Zone in the distance casting a muted glow above the darkened buildings beyond. When he paused to search out the best path northward, he noticed at last a profound sense of thirst. It seemed odd somehow, but all through the blocks, his only thought had been avoiding the Chasers. Now, the sticky dryness in his mouth distracted and tormented him with each step. He stopped again, troubled by a pounding in his chest that hadn’t abated since he began the Walk, but there was more. Reaching with a sleeve instinctively to wipe away the sweat, Ricky looked and saw a three-hour march that would be unbearable without a drink of water.

The fields spreading out before him had been lush croplands in a distant past, once maintained in neat rows and pouring out a steady stream of grains and root vegetables that sustained the growing population until hydroponics bays and protein synthesizers augmented ever-growing trade with the far-flung Agros. In the decades since, most of the old fields had been abandoned, leaving a few parcels still cultivated and tended by workers from one or two of the surface cooperatives.

Compelled by his nagging thirst, Ricky remembered occasional, solitary irrigation pump houses from early forays with Vinnie when they were young. He halted the journey northward in favor of a search to find one and within, a long drink he so desperately needed. Panting noticeably in the suffocating heat, Ricky turned toward the south for a moment. Far beyond, like glittering needles alone on the horizon, the brightly lit mega-towers of Novum rose to dizzying heights, so massive in their place they seemed to dwarf the surrounding sprawl to insignificance. He thought of the Agros and Diggers who no doubt regarded similar vistas with each visit to sell or trade their wares, looking on in wonder from the hilltops twenty kilometers distant. But his mission to find water ended the distraction quickly as he looked for telltale rectangles of groomed fields and with them, the promise of water.

He scanned from left to right, but there were only isolated groves of trees and irregular shapes of wild, overgrown expanse. Ricky went quickly along a narrow ridgeline in the bright moonlight until at last, he found the sharp edges of a uniform rectangle, lighter in tone than the surrounding, weedy terrain—a field, recently plowed under and dusted with the white powder made by an application of chemical nutrients. By Ricky’s calculation, it would take less than twenty minutes to reach on a straight line from the hilltop, but the ever-present worry his Zorich device betrayed his position to the Chasers spurred him to action down a gentle slope and closer to his goal.

The heavy grass was rough and stiff, but he kept a steady pace as he went along the hillside to a stand of pines astride an undulating field in the darkness and from it, the unmistakable aroma of freshly turned earth. On its short boundary at the southern end, a small outbuilding sat on an angle to the furrowed rows and an elaborate manifold of pipes and fittings that fed the drip lines. There were no lights, but the moon’s faint glow showed the way along a narrow access road.

He wanted to bolt for drain valves suspended from a feed pipe, but the caution his constant fears had made held him motionless as he surveyed the land beyond. Like a gazelle nearing the banks of a watering hole somewhere on the Serengeti, Ricky felt the conflict rise as nature’s primal need for water collided with his instinct to survive. He waited and watched. After a moment, and satisfied he was indeed alone, Ricky went quickly for the tangle of pipes, feeling each for the telltale chill he knew meant cool water within. A brass union with a simple wheel valve opened easily and Ricky stooped to let the blessed flood pour into his mouth.

After several purposeful gulps, his belly felt full and he knelt to let the spray gush over his head, soaking him to the waist in seconds. When he stood to position himself against the pumping station’s smooth, cement wall, he felt the rejuvenating effect surge through him. Dabbing his face with a sleeve, Ricky looked for a container to carry a supply he knew would be needed if he survived long enough to come within reach of the Broadridge complex, but there was only a plastic crate filled with half-empty solvent cans and pipe thread sealant. The pump house’s heavy door was locked, making it clear he would have to rely on another water source farther to the north. A last pull from the manifold’s valve might make a difference hours later, he decided, kneeling a last time. But as he straightened himself, an odd zipping sound was followed at once by a loud snap that startled him where he stood in confusion.

The second bullet streaked across the field on a gentle arc, exploding from a Chaser’s rifle where he crouched inside the tree line to the south, but Ricky’s sudden lurch found a hidden length of pipe, sending him to the ground in a clumsy fall. In other circumstances, it would’ve been embarrassing, but by an impossible moment of luck he could never calculate, the fall had pulled him from the high-speed round’s path. Instead of crashing into his brain, the bullet whizzed only inches from it, clanking loudly off the shed’s metal door.

At once, Ricky sprinted across a short distance to the tree line, diving head-first into a thicket. He hadn’t heard the first shot, which told him the sniper was still distant and a steady crawl through the undergrowth would get him to a narrow field quickly before they could aim and fire again. If, he reasoned, the adjacent stand of maple trees and ancient oaks could be reached, he would be past the access road and beyond the would-be killer’s view, but as he stood, a sharp pain finally overcame the distraction made by adrenaline and panic. He reached instinctively for the side of his head and found the bloody crease where a sharp chunk of concrete blasted from the pump house wall had grazed him, slicing neatly through the skin. He held a sleeve against the wound to stem the bleeding until it could clot, but he had to get across the road and back to the hill if he expected to elude a sniper team surely closing from behind.

There was no point in looking back as he trotted across the last level field, keeping a steady pace even as his heart raced from fear and exertion; if they saw him and drew a better aim, he would never know it until he fell. After ten minutes, the ground sloped upward, slowing him to a walk, but soon, he crested the first rise. Veering toward a second hill and pushed by fear and terror, Ricky trotted downward into a gulley where a dry creek bed meandered on a ragged, east-west line, bracketed on both sides by anemic willows swaying in the gentle breeze. Except for weeds and an occasional boulder, the path was sandy, level and nicely suited to his purpose.

Had the Zorich signal betrayed his position to them, he wondered? It was supposed to send out its beacon at irregular intervals, only to make a Walk more exciting for viewers looking on from their vid screens. He looked at the camera harness, imagining the scene in living rooms and bars across Novum as millions were taken with him on his desperate journey. Had water from the pump house manifold damaged them? In an absurd moment, Ricky wondered if the array still functioned; could his misadventure be declared void, merely for broken equipment? There was no way to tell.

For two hours, Ricky picked his way north, avoiding a sprawling apartment community for unskilled laborers at Tipton Downe they called the ‘Labyrinth,’ staying with his plan of reaching the Canyons before midnight. Another two hours at a steady pace, he figured, would get him safely through the mountains of cast-off rubbish. Once there, it would be nearly impossible for his Zorich device to send out a clean signal through a million tons of scrap metal and garbage, masking his position as he moved ever west toward the Industrial Zone.

Though it stung with each footfall, the wound on his head had stopped bleeding. The cut was superficial, but Ricky worried infection might become a worse enemy in time without any hope of treatment. It couldn’t be helped, he knew, but the thought troubled him just the same. After an hour, interrupted once or twice by brief stops to rest, Ricky noticed the air easing past his temples was cooler. He stopped and scanned the fields, hoping to catch his first glimpse of the Canyons. Standing toward the south, only to reassure himself the Chasers hadn’t found him again, Ricky paused a while, looking across the eerie, moonlit expanse.

Kilometers out from the urban core of the Novum metroplex, the landscape had become a haunting wasteland of destroyed buildings—gaunt, steel skeletons rising from the burned-out remains of their own foundations. Inside the more intact examples, squatters and outcast streeties no doubt slumbered in small groups and Ricky could see the flickering light from more than a few campfires as he moved, each reminding him to stay on the periphery to lessen his risk of discovery. But the land was mostly even and his pace became steady when finally, to his left, the jagged tops of refuse piles showed him the way; the Canyons were only minutes distant.

For fifty years, Novum’s scrap and refuse had been transported to the separators at recycling plants on the approaches to what was once the Industrial Zone’s thriving northern sector. Islands of debris had grown into mountains so that a wandering path between them took on the look of a deep chasm, earning the place its misapplied nickname. When he walked slowly into the complex, Ricky smiled, knowing the Chasers’ scanning instruments would be hard-pressed to find him there.

For half an hour he crept deliberately and slowly around each mountain of junk and garbage, emerging at last onto a field where a sparse thicket of longleaf pines formed a wandering line toward the west. Ricky made his way easily through the trees for a while until he saw the slim, uniform towers of the electrical distribution grid in the distance. At once, he recognized his place on the bleak landscape, remembering early adventures with Vinnie when the lure of exploration in their youth made accompanying risk irrelevant.

He smiled and nodded at the transfer station near Bell Town where high-tension lines zig-zagged suddenly south. It would be an hour to the Industrial Zone but beyond it, the transmission complex at Broadridge. Once more on the lowlands, the suffocating heat returned and Ricky quickened his pace, determined to make the old canals long before dawn.

Although he couldn’t know without a wrist comm, it was nearing 2:30 when the black shapes of the Zone emerged at last through the haze and Ricky stopped to survey his most likely way across the first canal. Several cantilever bridges, some wide enough for a land car, once carried heavy pipelines and conduit bundles over the canal. Others were merely remnants of open steel framework, but he knew better than to try for one without regard; the Chasers had surely seen his movement on their locator maps at the pump house, plotting the blip his Zorich device no doubt made for them. They would surely see what he intended and a simple matter of zeroing in on the small bridges with their gun scopes, waiting for him to make an attempt. There had to be a better way.

His head ached and the painful wound on his scalp burned, but Ricky waited a while in nerve-racking silence, searching for a safer path to the other side when suddenly, he saw it. Fifty yards distant, from the underside of a narrow bridge built to carry electrical conduits, a single beam lay hidden beneath the span it supported. V-shaped stays rose upward on opposing angles to meet the bridge’s upper surface and if carefully negotiated, the structure would conceal him from view as he made his way across.

With no way of knowing if Chaser units hid in the darkness, Ricky decided the risk of sitting a while longer was worth the effort; if one of them moved or made an inadvertent sound, he’d know better than to make for the conduit bridge. Settling between the last in a line of trees and thick brush, he knelt slowly, allowing his senses to seek out a telltale sign that might betray the Chasers’ position.

For fifteen minutes he waited and watched. Sweating in the heat, Ricky listened with every nerve alert and ranging, ready at any moment to slip quietly into the cover of the trees and a renewed search for another way to cross. Nothing moved; if the Chasers were out there, he decided, they couldn’t see him.

It was hardly surprising, but in the sweltering silence, his thoughts drifted suddenly to Neferure. Did she wait near the reeds that lined the river near Ma’at Palace? Perhaps General Nekhbet would’ve sent word that a malady had taken Apheru; a sickness without treatment. There was no way to tell her; no explanation he could make to explain his terrifying journey across a wilderness on the fringes of a city that could only exist in her distant future. Could she wait, or had Senenmut’s plans to install Thutmose already come to fruition? The desperate loneliness and worry swirled around him, unrelenting and never-ending; if the Chasers ran him down, he thought in grim silence, she would never know. At last, he shook off the daydream. Was he merely waiting out the last seconds of his life before blundering into their nightscopes, he wondered? Could he make it over the canal and find in the deserted buildings of the Zone a safe passage to survival? Either way, he knew staying in the tree line would ultimately be his undoing. He had to move—he had to try.

Slowly and with great care, Ricky crept forward, looking left and right with the same, barely controlled dread that accompanied him as he traversed the apartment blocks. Out in the open, he felt naked and the sniper’s bullets that nearly ended his life only hours before were evidence enough his caution was warranted. Before, as he hustled on the crowded streets of Novum, he knew his way around; he was the Slider. But here, on the edge of the Zone and forced to an unavoidable dash for freedom, he was only a terrified, lonely target for a Chaser’s rifle.

Edging ever closer to the borders of the canal, Ricky crossed the sloping ground to the conduit bridge. It was smaller than it seemed from a distance, but the lone support beam beneath was intact. Waiting a last few seconds, he fought back the urge to run, knowing sudden movement could give him away. At last, he reached the ancient, corroded structure and clambered downward, careful not to allow a misstep that would send him to a certain death below on the barren, concrete floor of the dry canal. It had been years since water flowed through its sheer walls and now, only weeds gathered in the sand and sediment left behind. Some of the man-made waterways had been maintained and used to shift flat-bottom barges laden with scrap metal to the foundries, but most had been drained and abandoned. A fall would be fatal, Ricky knew, and he moved with deliberate caution until finally, he crouched upon the beam, steadying himself by a cross-hatched structure that formed the bridge’s lower supports.

A hot, steady breeze ran through the empty canal and Ricky was grateful for any small relief it brought as he wiped the sweat from his brow, now pouring from his skin with a vengeance. His hands stunk of rust as he began the crossing, carefully placing one foot before the other, negotiating the narrow steel beam like a tightrope walker. Bent awkwardly in the low, cramped space, his progress was frustratingly slow, yet he pressed on. Fear had become his constant companion and it pushed him with little concern for the tight quarters.

On he went, finding at last a rhythm to his work. Nearly heel to toe, his steps quickened as he became accustomed to the process until finally, he drew within reach of the far side of the canal. The bridge supports had been lowered into a two-meter notch formed on each of the canal’s walls, but there was ample room to climb up and onto the surface without difficulty. When he found rough, dry grass on the fringe of the canal’s far side at last, he lay instinctively prone to reduce his profile, crawling painfully on elbows through the brush until he reached the cover of gathered scrub brush. Ricky was panting and near breathless, but still he waited. More sweat poured from his face, now covered in dust and the broken stems or seed pods of dead weeds. After a time, he stood slowly, looking for the closest break in a long, high wall that defined the physical border of the Industrial Zone.

Years beyond the days when activity was non-stop, the Zone had become a no-man’s land of huge, cavernous structures, abandoned and silent. Others farther to the south still clanked and hummed with life, but most were deserted in favor of automated systems that cranked out the bits and pieces in raw form, destined for finishing shops deep beneath the city. The wall, built to contain the noise of production, had crumbled over time and much of it victim to the devastating quake of ’74. Wide sections lay in ruin, affording a relatively easy transit into the complex and Ricky took his time clambering over a jumble of concrete and twisted steel, making his way slowly in the dim moonlight.

At last, he stood on level ground; against steep odds, he reached the Zone alive. As he paused to catch his breath, an odd clinking noise to his right followed another and another until he realized the sniper a thousand yards to the east was trying to zero on his position, walking each successive round ever closer until one found the edge of an opening, spraying Ricky’s arm and leg with stinging fragments as the bullet disintegrated.

Again, there was no report from their guns; each successive round whizzed through the air to impact against the massive wall only meters away. As he knew they would, the Chasers found him once more.

Ricky rolled into a tangle of woody brush along the wall, keeping low and squirming on his belly until at last, he sprang to his feet and dashed flat-out for the gaping space where the slabs of concrete had fallen years before. The Chasers were close, he knew, but crossing the canal would delay them before they could reach his position where he huddled, panting in adrenaline-fueled terror. After a moment, there were no other sounds of ricocheting bullets, confirming the snipers were indeed on the move. Though he couldn’t hear it directly, there was little doubt the hidden killers had already transmitted his location to other ground units, surely closing as he trotted across a narrow divide between the wall and a vacant metal-stamping shop.

Ricky stood for a moment, looking at an alien world. He’d been inside the Zone’s northern compounds only once, but his memories looked nothing like the scene that lay silent and menacing in the darkness before him. Eerie shadows made worse his apprehension, but he knew his best chance could be found within the hulking structure if he hoped to elude the Chasers. Time had once again become his enemy and he slipped quickly through a maze of old presses and shaping machines, grateful for their heavy, iron construction; no bullet would penetrate so sturdy an object.

Small mountains of a raw material he couldn’t identify piled high like dark pyramids beneath huge conveyors, long silent in the years since the Zone became an afterthought when the surface industries finally died. Weeds grew from every corner and tangles of bent, rusting metal that had once been important tools inside the factories now lay in haphazard groups across the whole of the complex; forgotten and irrelevant like the Zone itself.

So far to the north, Ricky knew the buildings were dormant. With few lights to guide his path, he decided to move through anyway, hoping to use the cover of an empty production line’s massive building to frustrate the Chasers’ instruments. But as he cleared the wall, aiming for a vast doorway built to admit enormous trucks and material movers, he saw it. In a gap beyond two adjacent buildings, a soaring communications tower at the Broadridge transmission complex reached into the sky like an enormous, solitary spire, rising above the horizon. There, he thought, and only an hour distant, his salvation bathed in the glow of its winking red lights warning air traffic of the tower’s position. Ricky smiled and nodded; the final stage was about to begin.

An imposing building three stories tall, the vacant assembly house had been abandoned for years, yet the skeletons of its glory days—massive forges and bending jigs—remained as testament to a bygone age, idle perhaps since a time before the Fall. A hive of thunderous activity no more, the huge structure lay silent and useless. Moonlight streamed through openings where its high walls met a slanted, angular roof, long void of the glass that once made spacious skylights. But the glow from above showed him a course down the length of the giant building and he set off at once for the far end.

The smooth concrete floor was a welcome relief to the tangled weeds and bushes he fought through since he began the Walk; here, movement would be quick and quiet. After minutes picking his way along the cast-off equipment and stacks of empty pallets, Ricky had only begun his transit before a sound stopped him in his tracks. From the darkness ahead and to his left, a yowling cry sent chills down his spine; the chase units, alerted by following sniper teams, had closed on the old compound. Like serfs ordered to disturb with whistling whips and sticks hiding game before a hunter and flush them into the open on fear alone, they went on with terrifying, mocking screams that echoed between the building’s high walls. It was clear they used the Zorich device’s intermittent beeps to generalize his position at last, Ricky thought, but perhaps the tiny machine’s effectiveness fell off as a precise locator.

Ricky stood motionless for seconds, straining in the dark to see movement inside the empty, cavernous building, yet there was nothing. He looked at once to the camera harness, knowing millions must surely be on the edges of their seats in anticipation of the kill. He had to do something to interrupt the clean signal and mask his escape, but how? If he took the bait and reversed course to avoid the chilling screams reaching out from the darkness, he would surely blunder into a trap. Instead, Ricky veered right, aiming for a narrow pedestrian entryway; if he could make it outside unseen, the massive walls of the structure might blind the Zorich signal and give him a chance to get away. Were they cheering for him in the living rooms and noisy clubs across Novum, he wondered, or would their interest only be satisfied when his head exploded from the impact of a sniper’s bullet? Was Litzi watching in horror from Ganny’s vid screen, deep beneath the surface?

In the fading moonlight, Ricky turned left quickly and started for the far end of the giant building, hoping desperately the Chasers lost contact. As he ran through the weeds that grew tall around the old building, something caught his eye. Far above, a flash through the spaces where skylights once lay told him what he already knew; the Chasers had indeed lost the signal, desperate enough to give away their own position. Careless for the effect it would make, they played beams of their search lamps across the abandoned machinery, hoping to reacquire their target visually.

He knew his opportunity would be brief; once slowed by the sudden signal loss, the Chasers would realize and dash from the building. He had to reach the far end before they understood their mistake, and then a streak across the compound to an old warehouse might give him enough cover to frustrate the signal again until he was in the clear. Dorval Road was less than a kilometer ahead, and a steady jog for twenty minutes would bring him at last within reach of the transmission complex and freedom.

Their shrieks had stopped, but before him, more discarded scrap metal frustrated his pace as he neared the corner of the structure. A quick glance behind showed no movement and he pressed on, slashing nimbly left and right through abandoned machines discarded long before to rust away in the open air. As he slipped deftly through a tangle of junk, another fervent look behind brought a sudden sensation of excitement he may yet elude them. But as he drew closer to the end of the building, another flash of light from around the corner stopped him at once. There, only meters beyond, a Chaser’s helmet lamp panned slowly across the gravel surface of the compound. Without a thought, Ricky moved against the building’s towering wall, nearly hugging it as he eased slowly forward, seized by the sudden rush of adrenaline and a lifetime of fear that would no longer be ignored.

Ricky peered with one eye cautiously around the building to find a single Chaser, seemingly distracted by the brightly lit instrumentation fixed to a sleeve of his tactical uniform. Ricky waited and watched with breathless, terrified anticipation, expecting at any minute to see the Chaser’s companions following close behind, but there were none; his tormentor was alone—and isolated.

It was unusual to find such a thing; Ricky understood enough about the Walk to know Chasers always worked in groups of three or four. This one, he thought, had interpreted the signal loss correctly and moved away from the group on his own. Ricky realized with stark, sober clarity the Zorich device would go active the instant the Chaser rounded the corner and clear of the thick wall’s interference; he would have only one chance.

Ricky slid silently around the end of the building and in a sudden, unexpected explosion of speed, he lurched for the Chaser even as the locator alarm chirped out its first warning. The momentum of Ricky’s movement took the Chaser off his feet and both landed on the ground with a sickening thud, knocking the wind from his pursuer’s lungs. With a single, swift movement, Ricky reached first for the Chaser’s arm, slamming it against the gravel surface in a skillful stroke to obliterate delicate homing equipment. Rolling awkwardly to his feet, Ricky clamped his arm around the Chaser’s neck, pulling in the tightest headlock he could manage. Below, he enveloped the writhing Chaser firmly with his legs, ignoring the pain of constant punches as the struggling man tried desperately to free himself.

With all his might, Ricky held on, even as the Chaser tried to shout, releasing instead a muffled growl. From years of frustration and anger made worse with each successive disaster in a life that had become a definition of weakness and failure, Ricky held on, intent on choking the life from the Chaser as each second ticked by. With his throat constricting under Ricky’s headlock grip, the Chaser couldn’t cry out and his destroyed locator would never again announce Ricky’s position to the others. For a full minute, the death struggle went on until at last, he felt the Chaser’s body go limp. Still he held on, refusing to believe what he saw before him until slowly, he released his grip and stood.

There was no moment of reflection—no remorse or regret he had killed a man with his bare hands. The Chaser’s final exhalation simply told Ricky what he needed to know; his escape was possible once more. He rolled the man’s lifeless body to one side, careful to position it facedown in a strange compulsion to avoid seeing his face. In an absurd moment, Ricky realized it had been his first violent act since the days as a raw teenager struggling for relevance in a world of street gangs. The Walk, and demands made from people who were brutal by nature, had pulled him back across the divide between normal and perverse; Ricky Mills rejoined the violent ones in the middle of his desperate fight for life.

They pushed and prodded him for years, people like Bartel, but he had never shown the fire of resistance that seethed beneath the surface. They looked and saw a timid man—a coward who accepted in silence what he couldn’t change by force of temperament, but his aversion to force and muscle was deliberate. Commerce and trade are rarely conducted by such people to any degree of success, Mister Anthony once told him, and fear is not always as effective as greed, perversions or weakness. At once, Ricky saw Junkyard’s face in his thoughts, smirking and pouring out threats that chewed away at his pride. Now, in the dark outside an abandoned factory, he nodded silently with defiance and a powerful will to live.

After a moment to catch his breath, a sudden panic took him when Ricky realized the other Chasers could stumble upon him at any moment. Across the grounds to the northwest, another massive building loomed in the dim light; if he could reach it and continue along its far wall, he thought, Dorval Road was only a short walk through the woods that once defined the Zone’s border. When the other Chase teams found their lifeless companion, Ricky knew, their determination to even the score would become all the more intense.

He searched frantically for the Chaser’s long-barreled machine pistol, slinging it over his shoulder before sprinting toward the next goal, expecting at any moment to hear the shouts of the Chasers before inevitable gunfire that would surely follow. In seconds, he slid neatly along the second building, astonished to find no others from the chase units had discovered his work (and the strangled corpse he left behind).

Near breathless after the life and death struggle, Ricky made his way along the warehouse’s outer wall, slowing up an incline in knee-high weeds that pulled at his clothing with stiff, saw-like blades. At last, he moved through a narrow stand of ancient oaks paralleling Dorval Road. For ten minutes he walked, looking again at the Chaser’s gun in order to remember how to fire it. It was surprising, but Ricky took another moment to consider again the little cameras fixed to his body by the organizers in his last moments near the fountain at Lafayette Park. The Chasers were cut off from the video feeds to preserve at least a small semblance of fairness, yet millions surely watched the spectacle with fistfuls of crisps and glasses of Topaz, shouting out scorn or encouragement Ricky couldn’t hear. There was little doubt Boris watched—Bartel and Junkyard, too. Were they disappointed with his persistent survival, Ricky wondered? Had the Bosses conspired to alter the betting house transactions, convinced he would ultimately fall to a chase sniper’s bullet?

At last, Ricky saw the lights of the Broadridge tower once more, bathing the darkness with pulsing washes of red as its warning lights blinked in slow, measured cadence. Gleaming like a lighthouse against the desperation and terror that followed since his flight began, he felt the surge of purpose pushing him onward. One last, determined dash across the divide between the Industrial Zone and the communications complex separated him from deliverance.

It was maddeningly slow, picking his way through the thick underbrush on the far side of the Zone that paralleled Dorval Road. It seemed to go on forever, knowing the ground units were surely close behind, yet he was hesitant to make for the road too soon and the likelihood a Chaser patrol speeder would catch him out in the open. He continued onward, trying to avoid those heaviest thickets where the noise of his passing would make locating him all the more easy for his pursuers.

When he paused to wipe the sweat away with his soaked shirt sleeve, Ricky saw a narrow gap where a pathway led up a gentle hill and beyond it, the smooth pavement of Dorval Road. Doubtless worn down by occasional Agros who ventured in through the northern wire, he thought silently, the pathway was a welcome relief to the halting march his escape became through the dense growth.

The way was trodden down to bare dirt, but each step sent a puff of powdery dry dust into the air, making Ricky frown, knowing it could be seen through a Chaser’s nightscope from a distance. After a moment or two, the path exited thick bushes and out to a broad stretch of high grass, mostly open and clear all the way to the road. Carried onward by a growing sense of excitement, Ricky crossed the distance in minutes until he could see the dark shape of pavement appeared, winding like a great snake beyond a hill that formed the eastern side of the Broadridge compound. As he went, he couldn’t help but gaze upward at the Tower, now looming so close he could count the cross-hatched beams of its structure in the crimson light.

Nearer to the northern wire, temperatures eased and a gentle breeze brought cool relief as Ricky trotted along the deserted pavement, grateful no one thought to line it with glaring streetlights. He felt a dull, constant fear of exposure, but slowing would only give the Chasers time to intercept and kill him within sight of Broadridge. By this point, he reasoned, they doubtless knew the communications complex was his goal and they would surely aim directly for it. Again and again, he looked desperately over a shoulder, but only the rooftops of factory buildings remained in view. A powerful, instinctive compulsion to run returned, but Ricky resisted and held pace as the last stretch of road drew near.

Through gentle bends to the left and then right, Dorval Road descended through a heavy forest of tall pines and only the sound of his footfalls broke the eerie silence. He jogged onward, now comfortable with a steady trot until suddenly, he stopped. From the web belt around his waist, a voice called out.

“Mills, can you hear me?”

Ricky said nothing as the hair on his neck stood on end.

“Mills? If you can hear me, say so, damn it!”

It made no sense—had he suddenly lost control, given in to the fear? Again the voice spoke, muted like a cloth held to a comm unit’s microphone.

“I’ve locked out the transmitter feed and isolated it to a single frequency; they can’t hear this, but it will be noticed if it goes on for too long.”

Ricky looked again behind him, suspecting perhaps the Chasers were playing a cruel trick in order to satisfy the bloodlust of viewers eager for more than a simple rifle shot at range.

“I can see you on the video,” the voice continued; “just cough or something, okay? The cameras have microphones and a small speaker, so we can communicate for a short time.”

Ricky cleared his throat loudly.

“Good. Now listen very carefully because we don’t have much time.”

“Who is this?”

“Never mind that now; they’re waiting a short distance beyond, do you understand?”

“No, I don’t! Who are you?”

“If you want to live, follow my instructions, all right?”

“What the hell is this?”

“Listen to me, Mills; they’re waiting for you near the gate at Broadridge. The Chasers figured out where you’re going and they sent a team ahead by air to cut you off; they’re waiting to ambush you before you can reach the compound.”

“I don’t know who you are, but if you think I’m stupid enough to…”

“Elden sent me.”

Ricky felt his senses tingle. Like a lifeline thrown suddenly to a drowning swimmer, just the old man’s name held a possibility for survival and Ricky grabbed at it.

“I’m listening.”

“Two Chasers are hiding behind a little shed just outside the gate. They’re waiting for you to make the top of the hill.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Elden asked me to keep you alive. Do you want to live?”

“Yes!”

Again, Ricky’s head swirled with confusion. Had the organizers made a special arrangement for the audience? Had they set him up to be gunned down within sight of the Broadridge complex, merely to heighten the excitement, or perhaps alter the betting odds in order to realize a higher profit percentage, he wondered?

“What do you want me to do?”

The voice guided him back into the trees and beyond them, a ravine fell off sharply toward the secondary canals. A steep angle would be difficult to negotiate, but it could shield Ricky’s movements until he was safely past the gate and gifted with a clear shot. If he went slowly, the voice insisted, the Chasers would have no chance when Ricky opened fire.

“You have that lone Chaser’s gun now; you can survive, but you have to get them first. You need to kill both of them, understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good luck, Mills,” the voice said, and the connection was restored to the network studios.

There were no other options; Ricky had to accept or reject the voice’s commands. If the truth was as his hidden benefactor said, and the Chase units had indeed made an ambush from which to cut him down, Ricky would have one last chance to stay alive. If the words were a contrived lie, it would make little difference. He decided to accept the risk.

Well below the upper edge of the ravine and out of sight, Ricky went carefully through a tangle of bushes that covered the ground beneath the trees. Working his way along, he tried his best not to make a sound and betray his position. The Zorich device could not transmit through the earth between, giving him time to crest the rim before its signal went live again. Above, the spire of the Broadridge comm tower became a silent beacon of hope, calling to him as Ricky crept up the ravine’s incline. When he saw the bright lights bathing the area around the wide gate, two Chasers huddling behind the small outbuilding confirmed the unseen voice’s warning; they watched in the opposite direction, still unable to establish a clean signal.

Ricky raised the dead Chaser’s gun slowly into position, pulling it tight into his shoulder. Even in the dim light, the safety button was obvious and he thumbed it off the way his uncle taught him when he was only a boy. He remembered shooting at cans and old appliances out near the southern wire long before, never knowing the skill would one day stand between him and death. It had been years, but Ricky remembered.

Concealed behind an enormous oak, he peeked again, watching for the moment the Zorich device went live, but there was no movement from the Chasers. Ricky looked through the gun scope and found them squatting along one side of the little shed, bathed in the gate’s light. Calming himself first, he took in a deep breath, aimed and fired. Round after round hammered out at the confused Chasers who spun to meet an enemy they couldn’t see. One fell dead almost at once as the bullets slashed through his torso, but the second man stumbled toward the nearby shed before trying a sudden break to the hillside beyond. Ricky’s final volley found its mark and he collapsed at once.

In the silence, even as the shots echoed through the trees, Ricky felt as if his heart would explode. A ringing in his ears seemed almost painful, yet it was made only by his heightened fear and excitement and not the hot, smoking barrel of his gun. As Ricky approached, the second Chaser writhed on the ground with the pain of gunshots across his legs, screaming out coughs of agony into the dark night. Ricky stopped and aimed once more, silencing the noise with a single shot through the back of the man’s helmet. As he stood and looked at the lifeless bodies—and their blood spreading slowly across the bare dirt—a buzzer sounded from the gate. Behind it, several bright floodlights nearly blinded him and Ricky waited in confusion, shouldering his gun again until he recognized the Walk organizers moving toward him. As the first figure reached him, she smiled and aimed him toward a camera drone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, here is Richard Mills; only the sixth Walk survivor in the event’s thirty-year history!”

Incredibly, no one seemed to notice the two men he shot to death moments before. Instead, a crowd of mobile video teams swarmed suddenly around him in the glare of camera lights, each offering loud congratulations and vying for his reaction. It had been a long time since a Walk contestant made it through alive, they said. “How do you feel?” one asked. “What will you do next?” questioned another. They gathered around him, wondering with smiles and excited nods how he knew the Chasers waited in ambush for him. Ricky felt numb and spent, unbelieving his nightmare was truly over. A uniformed MPE cop took the machine gun slowly from his hands, but Ricky wanted only to go home to the little flat off Morrissey Square.

An organizer held him for a moment as a medical technician treated the painful wound on Ricky’s head, but the words sounded strange and distant. He felt himself trembling more in anger than from fear as an air car arrived from the south, settling in a cloud of dust on the wide approach to the gate and Broadridge beyond. There would be plenty of time for interviews, an organizer announced suddenly, but Ricky didn’t notice.

“Is it finished?” he demanded.

After a moment of thunderous laughter, the organizing official—younger even than Ricky—held his hand in hers as she turned him once more toward the jostling camera crews.

“Of course it is.” She smiled. “You’re safe now! When you’re ready, our driver will take you home. Again, our congratulations to you, Mr. Mills!”

Bandaged and still numb from his ordeal, Ricky went quickly to a waiting air car. When it lifted above the trees and turned gently toward the south, he felt like a different man; a fallen impostor—a criminal—in the shape of Ricky Mills. Compromised and made subject to the whims of others, he had run a gauntlet few ever survived. As they sped across the Zone at treetop level, Ricky Mills looked at his image reflected in the air car’s window and saw a stranger peering back through lifeless, tired eyes. It was over and minutes later, he would walk down the deserted alley off Rademacher Way profoundly lucky, but very much alive.

From the glass dome that formed the roof of his penthouse where it towered above Novum’s central sector, Victor Jamison blinked a few times as the program went to commercial. They sat for a moment, allowing the images to fade completely as Granville slowly raised the lights. Ross spoke first.

“Victor, I have to admit, that was one of the best we’ve seen in a long time.”

Kirtland nodded his agreement.

“You’ve outdone yourself; this one was truly exceptional!”

Jamison sat for a moment, nodding at last to his assistant.

“Thank you, Granville. If you wouldn’t mind, I believe refreshments are in order.”

“At once, sir,” the attendant replied, turning for the door. Ross stood and rubbed his eyes.

“I thought he was finished, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Kirtland nodded, “he was dead for sure, the clever bastard!”

Ross waited while Granville walked quietly through the group with his tray, handing out aged Topaz in shallow, oblong glasses.

“I wasn’t sure if your description of the new cameras and transmitting gear was mere boasting, Victor, but I can see now you were right; the image and replay fidelity is remarkable. I could actually hear this one’s heartbeat, pounding in his ears. We’ve never enjoyed this level of immersion!”

Jamison nodded, but when he turned away at once, Ross continued.

“Well, we spent enough money on them—they ought to be exceptional. The masses get to watch on their little vid screens, of course, but none of them were treated to such a complete show. It was fantastic—really fantastic!”

“Who is he, Victor?” Kirtland asked, sipping his drink slowly.

Jamison didn’t hear the question.

“Victor?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Edward. His name is Mills; Richard Mills. My man Konstantinou tells me he’s an ordinary urchin—a small time street hustler who operates out of Sector 4. It would seem he’s developed an uncontrollable desire for Starlight, so…”

Kirtland and Ross laughed loudly, each knowing the rest of the story, but Jamison seemed distant.

“Well,” Ross continued, “it’s going to make for a wonderful advertising tool.”

“Indeed,” Kirtland replied. “That single kill near the factory was most gratifying, I have to say, but it would’ve been better if this Mills person would’ve run across one of the females. We really do need to address that, at some point, Victor.”

“He’s right,” Kirtland decided. “We should look into sending more women Chasers next time.”

“Yes, of course,” Jamison replied at last, but his words were distant.

Kirtland heard the change in Jamison’s tone.

“Is something wrong, Victor? You seem distracted.”

Jamison shook his head with a frown.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “It seemed odd to me, especially when we lost the audio feed for a moment or two there.”

“Oh, that was probably a small glitch in the transmitter, Victor,” Ross said. “It came back up right away, but there were bound to be bugs in a new system.”

“Perhaps,” Jamison replied, “but only a moment later, this fellow Mills suddenly moved back into the trees and found his way past the Chasers to catch them unaware; it just looked funny to me.”

“Funny, how?”

“It seemed strange to me he would make that conclusion out of thin air; Mills was heading straight into their ambush.”

“Maybe he smelled a rat, Victor; he did a pretty good job eliminating that Chaser inside the Zone, didn’t he?”

“I suppose so.”

“Let’s enjoy this moment, Victor; the ‘nets are going to pour royalties at us from the advertising revenue on the live feeds, and probably twice that amount in replays.”

Jamison smiled and reached for his drink.

“You’re probably right, Levi,” he said. “Here’s to the Walk!”