Silver Lining
Chapter One
“Jump,
jump, jump, jump ……”
The chant was echoed by a dozen mouths and
a dozen pairs of hands clapped in unison to form a rhythmic, almost hypnotic
chant.
Mike Martins stood on the edge of the
roof of the Wilson Jones tenement block, His
toes were hanging over the edge of the narrow ridge that ran the length of the
building and he had to lean slightly forward to counter the strong wind that was
blowing out Cannibal Sector Three.
From this high vantage point Mike had a
good view across The Warren, the tangled sector of Downtown that he had lived in
for all of his sixteen years. Stretched
out below him were the complex maze of alleys and walkways, roads and
gangplanks. He could just see the inhabitants of the Warren hurrying
through the rain and darkness, all intent on business of their own and none of
them taking the time to notice the drama that was playing out high above their
heads.
Screams and laughter rose up from the
gloomy depths but there was no sign of where the sounds came from.
A Shiver APC crawled along a roadway only a few levels below Mike, a
steel shark making its way through a concrete ocean.
The Armoured Personnel Carrier carried a powerful spotlight mounted on
its roof but the beam was playing over the roads around it and never strayed
upwards. Half a dozen motorbikes
rose out of the darkness like phantoms from a grave, sped past the Shiver
vehicle and disappeared into the depths of the Warren again. The company police gunned the APC and rushed off in pursuit
of a foe that they had no hope of catching.
The Warren could have been designed with bikes in mind, it was made up
mostly of pedestrian walkways and narrow alleys that no car could hope to pass
through.
Mikes smiled to himself, privately
delighted by anything that would annoy the Shivers.
He knew that the company police were no friends to the Downtown gangs and
anything that kept them busy had to be good news.
Behind him, the chant was rising in volume and he knew that he would
either have to jump or back down. For
a few seconds he looked outwards, trying to peer through the gloom and rain.
He could just make out the dark shape of the vast security wall that
separated Downtown from the Cannibal Sectors.
Gigantic spotlights and huge fans were spaced out along the wall and
Shivers constantly patrolled it but none of these measures were enough to stop
the steady influx of Carrien and worse that crept into Downtown under cover of
the night.
“Hey Mike,” came a voice from the
crowd behind him. “You gonna jump
or you gonna spend the night standing there, admiring the view?”
Without turning round, Mike flipped the
finger at the questioner and bent forward to check the straps that secured the
thin bungee rope to his ankles. The
rope was only about a centimetre in diameter but it should be more than strong
enough to take his weight. He’d
checked it a dozen times before but this wasn’t the sort of thing that you
wanted to make a mistake with. It
was a ritual with the Cloud Runners, the gang that Mike had spent the last few
months trying to get accepted by, that any new member had to make the bungee
jump off the roof of the Wilson Jones building.
Not a problem you would think, but from the point where you had to jump
from, there was only a gap of a couple of metres between the walkways and roads
that spanned the depths between the towering buildings.
Too far to any side and the jumper would crash into unforgiving steel and
concrete. The Cloud Runners were a
very elite group!
Mike wasn’t the suicidal type but, more
than anything else in the world, he wanted to be a Cloud Runner.
It was a fact of life in Downtown that if you didn’t belong to a gang
you were a nobody. The Runners
weren’t a big gang, but they were well known and well thought of.
Anyone crazy enough to throw themselves off the top of a building with
only an elastic band round their legs had to be treated with some respect.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the dozen, slightly mocking faces of
the Jury. These were the Runners
who decided whether any prospective members had the balls that were needed to
join. They were all dressed in
jeans, sneakers and identical lightweight, denim jackets with a pair of grey
wings painted onto the back panel of them.
Only Cloud Runners were allowed to wear the jacket and Mike had wanted
one of them since the first time he had seen the gang running across the
rooftops of the Warren.
The Runner spent most of their time far
above the street level, travelling across the roofs and high points of the
Sector. It was said that some of
them hadn’t used a walkway or a road for years and from what Mike had seen of
the gang so far, he quite believed it. The
Runners had nothing but contempt for the people that lived their lives
surrounded and buried by the buildings of Downtown.
‘Burrowers’ the Runners called the normal citizens and it took
a lot for a new member to prove themselves worthy.
“For fuck’s sake Mike, would you get
on with the jump! We don’t have
all fucking night to wait here for
you!” came the same voice.
Mike recognised it as belonging to Danny,
the current headman of the Runners. Danny
had made it quite obvious that he didn’t like Mike and that he was waiting for
him to back out of jumping. Danny
was like that with virtually everyone. In
fact, the only person that he did like was Sheeala, the Wraith Raider girl
who had joined the Runners a few months ago. Sheeala
seemed to have been born on the city’s roofs and was constantly driving Danny
to more and more dangerous stunts. She
wasn’t here tonight, she hadn’t been in the Runners long enough to become
part of the Jury and it was obvious that Danny was in a hurry to get back to
her.
Once again, Mike squinted down into the
darkness that stretched out below him. The
rain beat down heavily on him and the wind forced the polluted water into his
face. He rubbed a hand across his
eyes in a vain attempt to improve his vision and took a deep breath.
He could just see the gap in the walkways that he was meant to be aiming
for and from this height, it looked like a damn small space to him.
15 metres below him was a three metre gap
in the mass of walkways that cross-crossed Downtown and as he stared at it, Mike
was convinced he could see it closing up. The
chant had faded into silence behind him and he knew that he had to jump now or
lose any standing that he might have with the Runners.
The wind died, almost as if the elements were helping him to make his
decision, and he leaped forward, trusting his body to the dark and heavy air of
Downtown Mort.
For a split second, Mike Martins seemed to
hang in the air, poised above the roof of the Wilson Jones building, then
gravity caught up with the jumper and dragged him down towards the crowded
streets. Mike felt more free that
he had ever done in his life and rejoiced in the feeling of the wind whistling
past his face. He forgot about the
bungee cord around his ankles, he forgot about the Cloud Runners and he forgot
about the test. All he could think
about was the thrill of flying.
Reality came flooding back to him as he
saw the tiny gap that he was aiming for. Time
slowed as he saw the portal approaching and Mike realised that he was too far to
the side. The wind must have picked up again and was forcing him away
from the gap and over one of the walkways.
He tried to stream-line his body, desperately hoping to get back on
course again and, for a moment, it seemed to work. The gap centred itself in his vision again and time went back
to its normal rate.
The Cloud Runners rushed to the edge of
the building and peered downwards as Mike fell earthwards, the bungee rope
trailing out behind him like the tail of a kite.
“I think he’s going to make
it,” muttered Owen, a slim black youth with crooked teeth and pock marked
skin. He liked Mike and would be
glad to have another friend in amongst the Runners.
Danny constantly hassled Owen, saying that it was because Owen was a
chicken but everyone knew it was because Owen was black.
It was strange that Danny could happily accept the alien Wraith into his
company but couldn’t come to terms with a black human.
As soon as the words had left Owen’s
mouth he knew that he’d made a mistake. A
foul smelling wind gusted out of the Cannibal Sector, ruffling his hair and
turning the rain into stinging needles. The
wind caught Mike and blew him back towards the building, away from the position
he needed to be in to pass through the gap.
He came so close to making it into the
Cloud Runners and, if he had been slightly luckier, Mike would have made an
excellent gang member. But luck
wasn’t with him. The wind was
just strong enough to knock him out of position and, as he passed through the
gap, his shoulder clipped the edge of the walkway.
Pain burst through Mike, starting in his shoulder and quickly spreading
out into every part of his body. Physical
reactions took over from his shocked mind and he curled up in pain, writhing as
he continued his drop through the air.
Once any jumper has passed through the
gap, they should be safe. Safe that
is as long as they don’t get tangled up in the rope.
As Mike fell, the rope managed to wrap itself around his neck and chest.
Normally he would have been able to untangle himself in time but because
of the pain in his shoulder, he could barely keep conscious, let alone think
straight. The combination of cold
air and rain was slowly bringing Mike to his senses but it wasn’t anywhere
close to being enough.
His fall was abruptly halted as the bungee
reached its full extension and tightened around his body.
The elastic rope stretched and tightened around the falling youth,
cutting through clothes and flesh alike. He
might have survived even that if it hadn’t been for the loop of rope that had
managed to wrap itself around his neck. When
Mike was dragged back upwards by the rope, his body was jerked over and sent
twisting through the air. The rope
around his neck tightened and there was a sickening, snapping noise as bones and
veins were crushed by the tight cord. One
violent shudder went through Mike Martins’ body as his life was ended and the
corpse was flung upwards by the momentum of the rope.
For many long minutes, the body continued
to bounce on the end of the rope before finally coming to a halt.
The corpse of Mike Martins spun slowly on the end of the bungee cord,
blood trickling from his torn throat and dropping onto the ground many levels
below him. Already a crowd was
gathering to watch the obscene puppet dangling on the end of an elastic string.
Death could always grab the attention of Mort’s population, even if it
was just for a short time.
It took
a few moments for the watching Cloud Runners to realise what had happened.
They had seen him hit the walkway on the way through, but Mike seemed to
have made it okay. It was only when
they saw him get tangled in the thin bungee cord that they knew another one had
failed the test. In the last couple
of months, four people had made the test while seven had failed so this wasn’t
a new experience for the Jury. Still,
seeing a life ending in such a violent way is never an easy thing, no matter how
often you have seen it happen. Owen
turned his head away and was violently sick over the roof of the building.
The stench and sound seemed to bring the
rest of the Jury back to life.
“Move!” shouted Danny.
“The Shivers will be on their way and we don’t want to be here when
they arrive!”
He turned and ran into the darkness, away
from the dangling corpse. The rest of the Jury quickly followed him, running over the
steeply sloping roof as if it was as safe and secure as any roadway.
Within seconds, only Owen remained on the roof, the others had faded away
as if they were never there. For
many long minutes he stood on the edge of the building, looking down at what had
once been his friend. Tears welled
up in his eyes and ran down his face, unnoticed in the rain.
Without realising what he was doing, Owen
moved up onto the same ridge that Mike had been standing on only a few minute
earlier. His arms were hanging
loosely at his sides and he could see nothing other than the rope stretching
into the gloom below him. Owen
remembered his test and how scared he had been standing on the roof and
listening to the Jury behind him. How
he had come so close to backing out and leaving the Cloud Runner forever.
In the ten months since he had become a full member of the Runners, Owen
had become more comfortable with living on the slippery rooftops far above the
city and now he couldn’t think of going back to being a Burrower.
Owen had no idea how much time passed
while he stood on the edge of the drop. His
whole being was lost in the memories of his experiences amongst the Cloud
Runners, both good and bad. He
remembered the hard time that he got from Danny, just because of the colour of
his skin; he remembered the thrill of leaving the Shivers behind as he escaped
from a robbery, running across rooftops that no Shiver could hope to follow him
on. He remembered Sarah falling from a gangplank onto a main
roadway and he remembered the number of vehicles that had crashed because of it;
he remembered the pride he felt when he was finally allowed to wear the jacket
with the grey wings.
Far below him the crowd was growing.
Violent death is a common part of Mort but it can still attract a lot of
attention when it’s done in a new and unusual way.
Parents pointed to Mike’s corpse, trying to scare children into
behaving, teenagers muttered about the thrill of being a Cloud Runner, the risk
of death making it so much more exciting. A
wailing siren and flashing light scattered most of the crowd as a Shiver APC
approached, impossible to tell if it was the one which had passed by only a few
minutes earlier.
Owen watched all of this going on but
didn’t really see any of it. He knew that the Shivers had arrived, and he knew that she
should get out of there but it just didn’t seem that important.
It was almost as if it was all happening to someone else.
As he stood on the edge of the roof, staring down at the faceless crowd,
Owen thought how easy it would be to take one step forward, to end all his
troubles. All his life he’d been ignored, taken for granted. He
thought it would be different when he joined the Runners, but Danny had ruined
all that.
Instead of life suddenly becoming easier,
nothing had changed. Owen was still insulted and abused because of the colour of
his skin. He still had to
constantly prove himself just to be accepted by people who should have been his
friends. Danny had managed to turn
all the Cloud Runners against him, it was Danny who started all the rumours and
stories about him. It was Danny who
was the cause of all his troubles, but there was nothing Owen could do to get
back at him, nothing he could do to even the score.
Why should he bother struggling through
this miserable life when all the cards were stacked against him?
No-one had ever given him a break, he’d never been lucky, so why
continue with this pathetic existence? The
one friend that he might have had in the Runners was a bleeding corpse on the
end of a bungee cord. His one
chance at having an easier life was gone. It
would be so simple to step forward and fall towards the crowd.
People would notice him then, they would pay attention to him even if it
was just for a short while. He had
to die sometime, so why not go out in style, make a big impression in death even
though he’d never been able to do it in life?
Owen managed to drag himself back to
reality and looked down at the corpse and the crowd below it.
“Yeah man, what a way to go,” he
mutterer to himself. “This’ll
put the Runners into the history slugs. Wait
up Mike, be with you soon.”
He took a deep breath and ran a hand
through his wet hair. Closing his
eyes, he took a step forward, away from the roof, and was grabbed by the jacket
collar and dragged back onto the sloping rooftop!
“What the fuck do you think you’re
doing, Owen?” shouted a voice
into his ear. “We’ve got to get
out of here. Now!”
Owen blinked up at the face that was
hovering over his own, not knowing what had happened.
He’d expected to fall to his death but instead he was on the safety of
the roof, looking up at someone who’d rescued him.
Somehow, he’d fallen onto his back and was lying with the rainwater
running down his neck and over his feet.
Standing over him was Jason, one of the
Cloud Runner’s Jury. He seemed to
tower over him like a giant and Owen couldn’t quite grasp the truth of who or
what he was looking up at. Jason
was tall and well built, but nothing like the huge thing he looked like from
this angle. His long black hair was
soaked by the rain and lay in rat’s tails around his face, framing the blue
eyes and sharp nose. Owen had never
had much contact with Jason but he knew him to be a short tempered and violent
man.
Jason grabbed the shocked Owen by the
front of his jacket and half lifted, half dragged him to his feet.
“The fucking Shivers are already in
the building and on their way up,” he snarled.
“You can stop and chat to them if you want, but I am out of here!”
He paused for a moment and took a long,
hard look at Owen.
“I know that Mike was your
friend,” he said in a softer voice than Owen had ever heard him use.
“But he’s gone. If you
want to stay up here and get caught by the Shivers, or throw yourself off the
damned roof, it’s up to you. It’s
not going to make any difference to Mike though, he’s dead.
Dead and gone. Killing
yourself ain’t going to bring him back but if you want to give up, go ahead. It’s not my problem.”
Jason leaned over the edge of the roof and
looked down at the body dangling from the rope and then back at Owen.
“I reckon we’ve got about one
minute to get out of here before the cops arrive. You
coming or staying? Your choice man,
but choose now!”
Owen stared at Jason for a moment, unsure
of what to say or do. He wanted to run, to disappear into the safety of the night
but he couldn’t, all he could think of was his dead friend.
He stared into Jason’s eyes and saw the fear that lay in them, fear of
capture, fear of the Shivers. Everyone
liked Jason, thought of him as being damn close to perfect.
He was handsome, strong, brave – everything that anyone could want to
be, but he was just as scared as Owen was.
“Okay,” Owen muttered.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Good call!” shouted Jason as he
scrambled up the roof and ran into the darkness.
“See you back at the Warehouse.”
Owen hurried to catch up with the fleeing
man, laughing wildly as the cold rain beat down on him.
Less than a
minute later, a skylight burst open and three, armed and armoured figures
stepped out onto the roof. The
green armour of the Shivers stood out against the grey rooftops as the three
cops quickly looked around. Heavy
Browbeater rifles were in their hands, ready and willing to be used, but there
was nothing for them to be used on.
One of the company police spoke into a
throat mike, his voice muffled by the helmet he wore.
“The roof’s empty sarge,
Anybody that was here is long gone.”
“Get the evidence pulled up,” came the
reply. “I don’t want to waste
any more time in this dump than we have to.”
As the Shivers reached down and started
heaving the rope and corpse upwards, one muttered to his companions, “Stupid
kids, always trying to show off. Can’t
see why they don’t just stay in the dry and watch the Vid like everyone else.
Just makes work for guys like us to do!”
Far below, the remaining members of the
crowd wandered off, looking for something else to grab their attention, the
death of the bungee jumper already forgotten.
*************************************************************
I sit and
watch the termites below me, secure in their pathetic lives.
None of them know that I watch them, but all fear my gaze.
They tremble when my invisible shadow passes over them, shivering without
knowing why. By day, I sleep in my
lofty home, hidden away from the harsh and unforgiving light that reminds me so
much of the flames. The flames
remind me of the pain but I can’t remember where the pain came from, what the
flames destroyed. There is so much
of my past that I can’t remember but it plagues me in my dreams. I dream of a great burning that has ended my past life and
begun the present one.
I know that in my past I was scorned and
ignored by the termites that jostle and fight below me.
They dare not ignore me now! They all know my name, the name that was
waiting for me when my new life began. I
can’t remember where the name came from, but I know that it was gifted to me,
that I was thought worthy of it. I
have lived up to the expectations of my name, I have far surpassed them.
My name is enough to make the brave cower in fear and there are very few
of the brave left in Mort.
By night, I leave my sanctuary and stalk
through the city streets, hunting for victims.
I can remember trying to educate the termites in the past and now I teach
them a new lesson. I teach them of
their mortality. I prove to them
that their lives are fragile and delicate things that should be cherished and
cared for Those who have seen me or
heard of my work are thankful that they still have their lives, are grateful
that they were not chosen by me. I
give them a great gift, I give them a love of life again.
I make the termites remember the thrill of living and they worship me for
it.
Their worship takes the form of fear but
it is still worship. I represent everything that they wish they had.
Strength, power, freedom. I
personify all of these values and I prove that there is more to life than
following the orders of Slayer. I
prove that it is possible to live outside the laws of the great SLA Industries.
My name and face are seen on the Vid as often as those of Slayer himself
and that makes me a hero to the termites. They
see me stand alone, untouchable, and they worship me as they worship Slayer.
I pity the termites.
I try to educate them but I hate them more with every passing second.
They give their souls over to the pursuit of profit and then are shocked
when they have to pay the devil’s price.
In death, they are so surprised by the endless torment that lies waiting
for them, they beg to be released from their sentence.
The termites do not realise that they have chosen this path for
themselves and there is nothing I can do to change it.
I am not the Judge, simply the executioner, the Ferryman for their souls.
There was a time when I would have given
up this mask that I wear but I know now that the mask and I are one, there can
not be one without the other. I do
not know which controls the other but I do know that they sustain one another.
I place the mask over my head and everything becomes much clearer.
I no longer worry about the termites or about Slayer, I simply hunt.
Even then, I choose my targets with care, I only take the ones that will
make an impression on the rest of the termites.
There is no point in teaching lessons if there are no pupils there to see
it.
The time has come for me to enter the home
of the termites again. It is time for the next lesson.
The city of Mort is my classroom and its inhabitants my pupils.
Every night the eager pupils wait for the next lesson from Halloween
Jack.