In a C+C mood again. Hope to get back to writing by tomorrow:

    4

  Three o'clock in the morning and it was damn near
freezing

Sure, I was standing in a freezer, but it was the principle of the matter.
It just shouldn't have been that cold at that time of the day.

. My jacket had asbestos insulation in the liner, but that
protected better against high heat than it did against cold. In the
dry air around me I scented

scented? Sounds like he's become a giant air freshener. I'd think you'd be
better of going with  'smelled' or 'caught the scent'

  "Who knows. Some weak link in the chain. Maybe a
creaking bed spring sat on too hard. The return of a long extinct
fetish. It would be hard to say what motivates that man. But I bet
he knows exactly where the weak link lies. And I bet he's got a big
black cross tattoo right under it."

  "I never tattooed anything. I thought that was the problem,"
I said.

  "You have a problem with the whole system."

  "I guess that's the big joke then isn't it,

then, isn't it?

  Chris' mouth shut. He peered into the distance, and I did
the same. Sure enough, five tanks (three smaller ones, and two
heavy's) were turning up our street five hundred yards away.

Five? Not really a 'division' then. :)

We

all hit the ground and went silent. I watched.

  The lead tank was an S-class single gun eight-wheeler of
the type that were seen occasionally on the streets. They were
housed in under

drop 'in'

  With an earsplitting shriek, rockets spewed forth and a
second later exploded six stories below. One hit the lead tank and
set it on fire instantly. The other two hit the left Juggernaut but
failed to crack its armored breastplate. Simultaneously the other
heavy tank let loose with both barrels, though each shot was too
low and missed our building entirely.

Good time to make an escape.

  "Bring it up sometime. I bet she doesn't know about you
two fucking either. Karen hates the bitch now, ever since Alethea
dropped out to work for the family business. I've known them both
for a while, and believe me, Karen is the better choice. Better deal,
and she's guaranteed not to try to kill you in your sleep."

Karen: Unless it's slow. I girl gets bored easily,  you know.

  I couldn't think of anything to say. Alethea would never
intentionally hurt anyone. It made her cry when we watched sad
movies on the screen.

Although it turned out the only reason she cried during 'Old Yeller' was
because she wanted the rabid dog to kill the family in its sleep rather than
them getting him first.

There was no way what he said was true.

The way he said it.

  "Chris, you're nuts. No one is that good of an actor. I have
been a lot closer to her than you have, and I know everything.
She's just an young

a young

 >

  I limped away from the road, and got out of the tank
battalion's line of sight. Behind the building was all the flaming
metal and concrete that had fallen down in the explosion. Looking
for my parked cyc, I stepped around it

I'd say 'the debris' there. Sounds better to me.

  Chris stood up and advanced on me. His hands raised in
front of his face, and he assumed a fighting stance used by the
police in unarmed combat. I had little or no chance against him
right now, as his years of training had given him a body like solid
rock. But even still

even so (would be better IMO)

I shifted my weight to my back foot, and threw

my right up at his head.

  With a jerk of his arm he blocked the kick and stepped
forward, punching me in the jaw. I ducked his next strike and tried
to slug him in the gut, but he caught my sleeve with his left hand,
spun around, and threw me

tossed me (Since you use 'shoulder throw' after)

  "Who's laughing now, huh smartass?"

  "Zig! It's about fucking time you got here!" I shouted.

I'll say.

  "That's bullshit. I'm sure you didn't believe that."

  "I don't. But he did have a few good points. Apparently
he's talked to her today. I wanted to call him on that one too, but he
already knew that White was dead, and that it was you and me who
dun it."

  "Still," Zig said. "He could have heard that from any of his
connections.

Oh? How many people does Zig think know White is dead and who did it?

  "Of course. Grand theft auto in a public place after curfew.
Should I even ask?"

  "I was thinking you just might need help with the god head
over there." He pointed back toward Chris. But the spot where he
had been laying was empty.

He's a tricky fellow.

  The problem with everything Chris had said was that it was
starting to ring a little true in my head. Just as Zig had believed
Wells when the man had told him I was messed up, I wanted to
trust Chris' knowledge even though I couldn't bring myself to
admit it. Alethea was a little enigmatic, and I had to admit I knew
next to nothing about her past. Only that she had not liked school,
and that at some point she had run away from home before running
into Zig. Her parents were certainly the last people I'd trust, even if
I hadn't already halved their number. But as I said before, a case
could be made against her.

Nice to see he acknowledges that.

  The fact remained that there was no way anyone could have
faked the things she had said to me while we had been together.
She was too nice, to pure

too pure

  Then I heard the rumble of a racing engine close behind
and knew my mistake. It wasn't a car following me, it was a
motorcycle. And it was not far away, it had just looked that way
because its narrow headlights were close together. I hit the gas
again as I passed another side street, when he was suddenly upon
me.

Cyc chase time.

  With no where

nowhere

  The front tire of my motorcycle hit the thick glass wall with
a crash, and the next second I was outside. Chris followed me right
behind, and both of our cyc's were airborn for close to twenty feet
as we jumped the gap between the loading platform and the
speeding inner wall. I extended my left foot all the way forward
felt it absorb the impact as I hit a wall of rock traveling at around
220 mph. But I wasn't killed.

Still can't feel all that great.

  The side of the Turbine's inner wall that faces the city is
sloped down at a fifteen- percent angle from the vertical. Since it
travels so fast, the centrifugal force it exerts on anything touching
it is stronger than gravity. Hitting the basalt at a tight angle and
leaning to my right, I was pushed hard into my seat but able

but was able

 to stay

upright. Chris did the same a few feet below me, and a second later
we were still going. It was unbelievable.

  Riding almost perpendicular to the ground, my cyc
propelled me along the inside of the wall at a ground-relative speed
of well over three hundred miles an hour. Keeping absolutely
straight, I found my tires ceasing to slip. Buildings not a hundred
feet away whizzed past at right angles so fast I could not tell what
color they were. The whole city looked like it was above me, and
that I was speeding along in God's hamster wheel.

Heh. Good way to describe it.

  I risked a glance behind me to make sure the objects in my
mirror weren't too much closer than they appeared.

Heh

  His face showed that there was nothing else I could say that would
change his mind. It brought a small feeling of sadness, because we
both subconsciously knew the end of this scene already, and it was
one of the only ones in the play we wouldn't be able to change.

Hmm. So Chris is finally going to bite it?

  The individual metal girders came into view and I jammed
on my brakes, careful to keep from skidding out again. The
speedometer dropped from 120 to 20 in three seconds and I
launched myself up and out of my seat. I reached out for a bar to
hold onto, missed the first two and then grabbed a third. (I had had
recent practice at this game.) My fingers and arms were strained in
their sockets, but held. Then as my body caught up with me and
spun me around again I slipped and collided chest first with a
support pillar which finally stopped my wild ride.

Ouch, but he is alive.


 >

  Chris' faster cyc slammed into the back of mine, and they
both flipped over. Falling off immediately, he smacked against the
rock and rolled up off of it into the air with the two machines
following close behind. He head

His head

  Able to take deep breaths again, I coughed and let the spit
be sucked out of my mouth. If only Chris had not been so damn
stubborn. We had so many bigger things to worry about than each
other.

Hmm. Wonder if he is dead. You know what they say about not being able to
see the body. :)

Nice work. It appears the problem of Chris  is finally taken care of. It'll
be interesting to see what happens next.

D.B. Sommer




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