He slammed the door shut behind him with a sound like thunder that rolled its way up the cramped and haphazard buildings of the city. He’d lost a shoe. Yuzuru’s socked foot found a puddle in the darkness and warm rancid-smelling splashed up his legs. It would have made him sick if he’d the time to stop and think about it.
The air was chill and a fog made of exhaust from the buildings’ heating units washed around his ankles like a ghostly tide. His heart clenched like a pained fist with each rapid beat and he felt the beads of sweat leaving tracks from the back of his neck down to the small of his back. He burned furnace hot in the cool night, and the air against his skin made his teeth float.
The echoes of commotion told him he was still being pursued. He tried to shoulder through the back door to a night club but bounced off as his body screamed at him in the language of nerves for the effort. Yuzuru kept running, realizing too late the door may have been a pull.
The crisscrossing alleys cut through the city like old scars. They were so deep and so narrow that no sunlight ever found its way to the bottom. And now, in the dead of night, it was a perfect darkness punctuated only by the irregular violent intrusions of neon and halogen. One such intrusion lay ahead.
A yellow lamp hung above a plated steel gate blocking his way. Scattered refuse along the walls offered not enough space to hide. With luck, Yuzuru could lock the gate from the other side. He reached his arms out as he sprinted full force and burst through to the alley beyond like a bat from its cave erupting into the dusk. He swung around to shut the door, and an electric flash in the darkness synchronized with a stab that bloomed in his gut. He stumbled back against a dumpster and sank to the hard, cold, damp concrete.
A face appeared in the shadow, lit from the seems in a pulsing blue glow. Into the yellow light stepped a man with the face of a machine, a mask of tiles and electric rage. The glow lit the lapels of his blood-spattered overcoat. Alastair.
Yuzuru uselessly held his belly as the warmth from his body leaked between his fingers.
“How does it feel?” Alastair asked. His inhuman mouth contorted into the analog of a smile.
Then he exploded into a whirlwind of multicolored voxels. They swirled like a dust devil, just briefly, before reforming.
This wasn’t real.
“A sim?” asked Yuzuru. “You’ve got me locked in a sim?” Virtual or not, the pain was real, and he grunted and gritted his teeth, sucking on foul air. “How many times have you killed me?”
Alastair shot him again, this time in the knee, and Yuzuru howled. It echoed back to him in mockery.
“Why? Why do you always ask that? Even if I told you, you wouldn’t remember.” He paused and stared, his expression impossible to read. “Maybe I’ll let the rats eat you alive. Next time.” He leveled his weapon at Yuzuru’s head.
There was a brightness.
He slammed the door shut behind him with a sound like thunder that rolled its way up the cramped and haphazard buildings of the city. He’d lost a shoe.
Notes: I used an image as a writing prompt for this piece. You may be able to find the image on the artist’s ArtStation page. Image by Lucas Leger, used with permission.
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