Sour

His feet splashed through puddles of stagnant water, dank liquid splattering across his body and face, but Gellon didn’t stop, not even slowing long enough to prevent any of it from getting into his mouth. The risk of catching some kind of nasty disease from the ooze was hardly high on his list of priorities at that moment. Gellon would worry about that later, assuming that he survived long enough to do so.

Ahead of him a rat emerged from the shadows, its red eyes glinting balefully in the dim light of the underhive. The product of generations of vermin that had survived down here feeding on things that Gellon preferred not to think about, the creature was as long as his forearm. It hissed at him and crouched back, preparing to leap. His autopistol boomed once and the rat’s head disappeared in a splash of gore; its body skidding back into the darkness where sudden frantic movement and the sounds of tearing flesh told him that its kin were taking advantage of the free meal. The sound of the shot echoed through the corridor, and moments later Gellon heard the feral whoops and howls of glee that constantly dogged his footsteps change in intensity; becoming louder, triumphant.

The red-skins knew they were catching him.

The passage opened up into a much larger space. Although he couldn’t see much, Gellon could tell the chamber he had entered was immense by the feel of the air, the way his footsteps echoed, and a half-dozen other indicators that any inhabitant of the underhive would instinctively recognise. Immense machines loomed out of the darkness around him, pipes emerging from their innards to pierce the floor and disappear into the lower levels. Perhaps this chamber had once been a manufactorum, or some kind of processing plant. Now, however, the machines were little more than sculptures of rusted metal, draped in curtains of black mould and fungus. Gellon felt warm drops of liquid splattering on his head; falling from the ceiling far above, invisible in the darkness. He didn’t know what function this place had once served, nor did he care.

Gellon slowed, contemplating trying to conceal himself somewhere amidst the wrecked machinery, but decided against it. If the red-skins suspected he had gone to ground here they would tear the place apart looking for him. There were over a dozen of them, and he only had three bullets left in his autopistol. He knew he had to keep running, the certainty of that knowledge only surpassed by the awareness that he wouldn’t be able to carry on for much longer. Every muscle in his body ached, and his lungs felt as if they were on fire with every breath he took.

It was all that frakking idiot Henson’s fault. Everybody knew the red-skins couldn’t be trusted to trade with, that they spent so much time off their heads on powder-cut kesh that they would kill you without thinking, and would probably find it a great deal easier than trying to. Rumour had it that the last gang that had tried to cut a deal with them had been found reduced to little more than ragged chunks of flesh, identifiable only by the markings branded into the scraps of skin still clinging to the rotting meat. Henson, of course, had thought he knew better, and the rest of the spineless dredge in the gang had gone along with it, too enticed by the prospect of making some serious credits to actually engage their frakking brains for once in their lives.

He had objected, pushing it as far as he thought safe, but Henson refused to listen, and after a while Gellon had stopped trying. His words of caution had earned him scornful glares from some of the others, and one or two had called him a coward, too gutless to take the big risks. Juve idiots, too stupid to recognise which gambles weren’t worth taking, no matter what the stakes were.

They were all dead now, killed by the double-crossing red-skins. Gellon had only survived because he had made sure to stick close to the exit, and had started running as soon as it became obvious that the deal had gone sour. He wouldn’t miss any of the gang, except for Marla, maybe. She’d had quite a mouth on her, but made up for that by knowing exactly how to use it to keep Gellon happy.

He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The red-skins had entered the chamber, spreading out to take advantage of the extra space. Bullets whined past him. One struck a nearby pipe and greenish-black sludge oozed from the puncture. They were firing blind, and that meant they were desperate. Gellon grinned. If he could keep up this pace for a little while longer, then maybe he could lose them.

He looked ahead, just in time to see the floor drop away.

Gellon slammed his heels into the floor, whirling his arms frantically as he fought to arrest his forward progress. He skidded to a halt less than a metre from the edge, the vibrations caused by his arrival sending a piece of metal spiralling into the chasm as if to point out just how close he had come to falling. The gap was large, maybe four or five metres across, and deep too. Looking down, he could see that it pierced the hive for at least several levels before the darkness made it impossible to see any further. Glancing to either side, he saw that the chasm stretched away unbroken across the chamber. If he tried to run around it, the red-skins would catch him easily.

He had to take the risk.

Gellon turned and ran back in the direction of the oncoming red-skins, firing his last three autopistol shots as he did so. One fell screaming and the others slowed their pace, surprise briefly registering in their kesh-choked brains. That brief respite was all he needed.

Flinging his now-useless autopistol at the gangers and roaring in wordless defiance, Gellon sprinted towards the chasm as fast as he could and leaped into the void, arms and legs flailing in a desperate attempt to propel him all of the way across.

He almost made it.