Page 9 of A Darkside Interlude
A man swore in English as she accidentally elbowed him in the side. A woman yelled profanities at Mari as she knocked a porter-bot, sending a box of fruit crashing to the ground.
She didn’t care. She had to get out of here and into the Dust Alleys. Once she entered the slums, nobody could catch her, because she knew that place like the back of her hand.
Mari risked a quick glance over her shoulder. Behind her, there was a slight gap in the crowd. A tall figure was closing in on her.
Shit. Are you fucking serious?
She lengthened her stride, her long legs eating up the pavement as she sprinted past Entropy, the Glory Strip’s most notorious club. Deep bass beats reverberated from within its walls, mimicking the frantic staccato of her pulse.
Keep moving.
Mari leapt over a pavement-crawling surveillance-bot. She dodged a low-flying camera-drone. She blinked as a holo-advertisement for some sort of weight-loss remedy played above her head, the animated figures seemingly suspended in thin air.
Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and her chest felt like it was about to burst, but she didn’t slow down.
Keep moving.
All she had to do was find an exit.
There.
Mari made a hard right and shot down a narrow alley. Her bare feet splashed through a puddle of something cold and foul smelling, but she didn’t relent. If her memory served her correctly, this alley led to a street full of loud-mouthed food vendors serving a wide and mouth-watering selection of Earth cuisine.
A side-route would take her through the Offcuts Market, and from there, she’d find the western edge of the Dust Alleys.
For fear of slowing down, she didn’t dare look back again. Somehow, she just knew that Mister Tall, Dark, and Brutal was behind her.
And if he caught her…
She shuddered and tried not to think about it as she fled through the crazy, winding backstreets of Darkside, where life balanced on a knife’s edge, and everything was unpredictable.
Chapter Five
That sneaky temptress thought she could lose him? Ha. She had no idea that Iskar had a finely honed sense of smell.
Her sweet fragrance guided him like a deep space beacon, cutting through the miasma of unwashed bodies and exotic aromas—food, fuel, chemicals, spices. As he raced through narrow, winding alleys, he would catch the occasional glimpse of her shock of blue hair as she rounded a corner or disappeared into a crowd of people.
He lengthened his stride, easing into a comfortable rhythm. People moved out of his way as he ran, perhaps sensing that Iskar wasn’t in the mood to deal with trivial interruptions.
As he followed her unmistakable fragrance, heading away from the Glory Strip, the scenery began to change.
Glitz and glamor gave way to decay. Here, the streets were narrower, and the smooth road surface was marred with potholes and debris. Warm light glowed from deep within tiny shops and eating places, spilling out onto the street through grimy windows.
The humans he passed were furtive and silent, mostly ignoring or avoiding him as he passed. They averted their eyes and kept to themselves, moving in small groups.
To Iskar’s relief, the headache-inducing beat of the Glory Strip had become a distant memory, replaced with an uneasy silence.
“Caught your prey yet, Commander?” Torin’s laconic voice came loud and clear across the comm.
“I am in pursuit,” Iskar whispered, increasing his pace. Now that the path was relatively clear, he could stretch out and run at full speed.
A Kordolian running at full speed could outpace any human. Of that he had no doubt.
He would catch her soon.
“I’ve attracted too much attention to myself after that little one-sided brawl,” Torin said, although he didn’t sound the least bit concerned. “I’m going to disappear to the rooftops for a while. Sometimes, the view is better from above. Meet you at the bike stacks in twenty chalens or so? If you get held up, let me know. I’ll wait.”
“Is this what you had in mind when you talked me into this, Mardak?” It had been a long time since Iskar had scoured the city-streets of any planet. He’d spent most of his life in space, and when he had to go landside, he usually traveled in a military convoy.