Quarters opened his eyes, at least, he thought he had. There was nothing. No light, no shadow, no hint of shapes around him. Nothing at all. He felt himself blink to be sure. As he reached up to his face his hand brushed against wet, rough rock. His eyes were open, there was just absolutely no light.

He felt around himself, trailed his hands along the rock above and to the side of him. He sensed the other wall rather than felt it. He couldn’t bring himself to step out further into the blackness. He was in a tunnel of some kind, a cave. A tomb. The thought entered his head and stayed there.

The moisture on the rock wasn’t simply water. It was greasy on his fingertips, slimy. He brought his hand up to his face and knocked his head on the roof as he shied away from the stench. It smelt like death.

Where was he? One moment he’d been running along the street, leading the gang back to the crash site, then he’d heard something, just as the flames from the burning wreck were warming his face, some sort of music. He’d turned around and…

He spun now on instinct but there was nothing, just more blackness. The familiar tune he’d heard began to creep around in his head, a worm burrowing through his mind. The blackness shifted slightly.

Quarters began to step backwards, away from whatever it was. A presence, a feeling. The music in his mind was twisting together now, wrapping him up and forcing any rational thought out. He turned and began to run.

The slime on the wall coated his hand as he guided himself through the ink. The walls were smoother now, as if worn down by something. Something large. With that thought the music in his head let in another sound, a scraping and sliding, behind him, getting louder. Getting closer.

Panic took him. He let his mind go and just ran. The walls around him were closer now, he could feel his arm being pushed in towards him as he ran. Then his head brushed the ceiling and he had to stoop. Then his left shoulder touched the opposite wall.

He had to keep moving, though he was slower now. The noise behind him had changed but was still there. Louder now, angrier. He knew that if he looked back he would see something slithering in the darkness.

He was forced into a crouch as the rock tapered down further, then onto his knees. Whatever was after him couldn’t possibly fit through here, not if it had been scraping the walls before. It would have to at least halve its size, stretch itself out. He felt something brush his ankle.

On his stomach now, pulling himself along with his arms. Face and body completely coated in slime and the stench of rotting flesh, squeezing himself tighter and tighter into the tunnel. The music in his head was all there was now. No thought at all, no panic, just the knowledge of what he had to do. The only thing he could do. Keep going, keep sliding until you can no longer move at all and the blackness is completely wrapped around you on all sides, like a warm, waiting mouth, swallowing you up and keeping you still as you slither down its throat.

And all there is left as the jaws close is a simple tune, fading away now into the darkness.

Cass hunched down behind the broken chimney and waited for the familiar hum of the car to come into range. She didn’t hear it, she didn’t hear anything anymore, but she could feel it, track its vibration in her stomach. This was the first they’d seen off Grid in months. They couldn’t afford to let it get away.

She closed her eyes and focused her mind. The outside world shut down to a sheet of black, a tiny pin prick of white light in the centre. Just worry about the shot. Make it straight, make it true, make it clean.

Across the alley on the opposite rooftop the rest of the gang waited for her signal. They knew from experience to trust her tuned instincts, follow her lead. How much things had changed from that moment, months ago now, when they’d first found her wandering alone through the dark laneways. When he’d first saved her.

Cass smiled to herself and felt the rain drip down off her curved lips. Quarters had grabbed her from behind and held her quiet and close to save her life. She’d like to see him try that now.

The hum was closer now. She fingered her crossbow and arranged the plan in her mind. As the car passed over the top of them, flying too low of course, not expecting anything this far off Grid, they would each stand, take aim and fire. They’d fix their ends to the chimneys and solid walls around them as the hooks looped over the top of the craft, then stand back and wait for the slack to be taken up. Then, with a high pitched twang Cass could only feel, the cables would pull taught, knocking the car off its plane and dragging it down into their web. Once it was on the ground there was no escape.

Quarters and the others weren’t the only ones to wander this far off Grid. They had to be fast to make sure they got what they needed before the competition came. Some they could discourage. Others though, especially the hunter gangs, were far too dangerous to argue with. It was best for everyone if they avoided any confrontations.

Focus. It comes.

She opened her eyes and stared at the chimney in front of her. It would do. There were deep cable gouges in its cement already, but it could take a few more. Just get the shot right.

Cass slowly stood up and peered over the lip. There it was. Headlights weaving back and forth in the murk, obviously lost. Flying lower than usual in order to find some sort of landmark to navigate by. All the better. Out here all it would find were dark concrete lanes curving away from the Boulevard.

She whistled and the others stood as one. Everything was ready. They wouldn’t miss.

Just then Cass felt a strange twinge in the back of her neck. Something about the car was wrong. Its movement, its feel, its sound, perhaps. She glanced across the rooftops and saw Quarters aiming his bow. He obviously didn’t hear anything. She put her bow to her shoulder and forced the growing tightness back down into her belly. Ignore all distractions. Don’t fuck this up.

The car was over them then, the fuzziness emanating from inside it washing over her. She felt rather than saw the hooks release and fly over the car. Five cables, all on target, their glowing lines shining like thin fingers pulling into a fist around their prey. Just as they began to squeeze however, the car jerked abruptly to the right and dipped away, down into the buildings.

Cass sucked in her breath. No way the driver could have seen them and reacted like that. And no autopilot program took that kind of risk. She watched the car try to right itself again and slide sideways, clipping its tail on the roof of another broken down, deserted house. The fucker’s going to crash anyway. Still, they could have done without the extra noise.

She looked across at Quarters, who shrugged his shoulders elaborately and flashed a grin at her। The next moment he was sliding down the gutter to the street below. Why question good fortune? Just react. Even if it crashed they’d manage to salvage something.

Cass dropped the bow and slid down the tiled rooftop on her back. As her heels clipped the gutter she twisted and flipped in midair, turning her body to the wall and grabbing the pipe with one hand. Then it was just a straight slide down the three storeys to the street below.

Already she was faster than the others. She crouched down and waited for them to move in front as she’d been instructed. Her reflexes were sharper than theirs now. She was quicker, more agile, but she was still a newbie. She had to wait her turn.

As she waited for the signal she tried to grasp what it was she’d felt as the car had approached. Something had been off, yet familiar. Something that didn’t belong here. The puddles of water at her feet flashed back her reflection and she almost glimpsed it, another face through the water, reaching out to her.

She felt the pull in her gut and started to run. Forget it. It was time to feed.

The car flicked along through the raindrops, fifty feet in the air, seeming to wait till the last microsecond before swerving to avoid the assorted billboards and rooftops that reached up towards it. The autopilot didn’t need to see the obstacles to know they were there. Kane let it do the driving, it had far better reactions than he did anyway. Besides, he was lost in his own world, with its own distractions.

He sat in the driver’s seat, the cable leading from just behind his ear to the car input. The data port. Some still called them radios, but they were so much more. At the moment Kane was sitting around a campfire with friends on a warm summer night, drinking cold beer and smoking good weed. Looking up at the stars. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky in his world.

In reality he sat in the car seat with a slack, dazed expression on his face. His eyes were open and glazed over. He was fifteen minutes away from where she’d last been seen, and it was best to spend what time he could relaxing.

Besides, what was there to look at out there? Darkness and rain, the usual story outside the Grid. And if he dared get close enough to street level a lot of other, nastier things might flicker across his headlights. The car knew not to get too low though. It would stay out of range of the hookers.

Music began to leak out of the radio and slowly increased in volume, as if trying to make itself noticed. It was a simple tune, something easily remembered. Something that would stay with you.

Kane was lying back on the sand when one of his friends began to hum softly. Then another. When he sat up everyone around the campfire was humming along, staring at him with blank eyes. Then they all disappeared.

He shook his head to clear the last of the images from his mind and found himself back in the car. The fucking radio was playing up. Oh well, he could have it looked at later, they weren’t far away now.

He yanked the cable out from behind his ear and peered out the windows to see if he could recognise where they were. It took him a couple of seconds to realise the song was still in the air.

At first he simply couldn’t understand what was happening. He’d pulled out the jack, where was this sound coming from if not from there? The car didn’t have speakers, there was no need when every passenger could simply jack straight into their skull. What the fuck was going on?

Kane stared down at the dashboard and punched the radio’s face. The song only seemed to get louder. It brushed the back of his neck and made the hairs stand on end.

The blood in his face drained away and he began to feel ill. It was as if the music itself was sucking it out of him, pumping it back up into his brain, overloading it. He felt something tickle his ankle and looked down at the car floor.

Bugs. It was crawling with bugs. Cockroaches, caterpillars, spiders, swarming all over the floor, all over his feet, crawling up his legs. Kane yanked his feet up to the seat with a yelp but the moving blanket seemed to rise with them.

They slithered over his lap, over his hands and chest. He shook uncontrollably and tried to pull himself up out of the safety belt. He could feel tiny legs tickling his throat.

He lost control and kicked and writhed in utter panic. The car dipped dramatically as he knocked the autopilot off and the car began a lazy dive into the closest building. By the time the bugs were inside him the car had hit.

An explosion cracked across the area as the car disintegrated in a pyre of flame. It drowned out every other sound, even the song which slowly faded out and wandered away.

There’s no problem a drink can’t fix. That’s why he was here, in the same seat, in the same bar. This bar was his home now. An island between two worlds, it was the one place where everything was still possible. It was his place to dream.

He looked around, scanning the room. There were two others slumped over their drinks in the corner and a lone bartender needlessly polishing glasses. Otherwise, the joint was empty.

Of course it was.

He motioned with his finger. The bartender reached under the bar and came back up with a straight bourbon in an old fashioned. He slid it across with a nod.

He took his drink and stared up at the small black window in front of him. As he sipped the burn ran down his throat and turned into a heat that spread through his cells, making his whole body tingle. That wasn’t a good sign. When your body starts crying out for its hit like that it means something.

Means it’s time for another drink.

He looked up but there was already another full one sitting in front of him.

Outside it was streaming rain, a steady downpour through the darkness. Just like yesterday and the day before that. Just like tomorrow would be.

He looked down at his drink again and moved his hand towards it. An inch from the glass he stopped and switched his brain on for the first time in days, weeks perhaps. The glass slid across the bar into his palm, as if drawn by a magnet. No one else noticed, but it brought a small smile to his lips.

As he sat back and got on with drinking he stared out the window and tried to recall if he’d ended up here because he was trying to remember, or trying to forget. He could never be sure anymore. Not with all he had done, all that he knew.

He was riddled with rich seams of guilt. He was there to sink down into the mine and dredge them up, polish them into hard, shining jewels.

He stared out the window and began to dream.