Guava and Trail Mix
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Flat Out
Rating: PG/PG-13 (language, brief gore)
Challenge: Guava #20: I’m a big girl/boy now, Trail Mix #6: checkpoint
Toppings/Extras: none
Wordcount: 975
Summary: Pia Rees feels that she does not need help any more. She is nineteen, after all.
Notes: A little more information on the mysterious ground floor, and an introduction to Pia. 8)
The sound of the street-bikes ripped the air and hounded down every alleyway that darted off into darkness between the endless skyscrapers. These were the filthy, stinking roots of Britannia City and nobody was coming to save them. That day the Smog was thicker than usual: a great fat worm of fug that clung to the buildings around the tenth level. It was tinted dark green that day, which meant a bit of itching if anyone got too close to it, but it would be no real problem. All of the pollution had congealed into one disgusting smoky lump and when it turned palest green, it was best to wear a gas mask or not go out at all. Or if it went crimson...
Pia Rees grinned as the wind pummelled her flame-coloured mane in every direction imaginable. She didn’t care at all how it would look when she finished: all that she wanted to do was keep on riding, keep on flying, keep on living like there was battery acid in her blood.
It was all walls flashing by now; she leaned precisely into every corner and chains of people hung smoking out of windows and over the barricades, boredly watching the street-bikes whine past. There was anxious energy emanating from them, and the rusty heart of her lovely bike was ripping and roaring and raging. It had taken her months to find all the right parts, and further months to put it together-not that she had done that entirely herself. She was good with a bike, but she didn’t know her way around their metal veins and organs like others did.
The roads had been sealed off by the Firebirds just for this race: from the base of Brecknock Tower to Gratham Arcade was marked a clear route, with all crossing roads and alleys chaotically barricaded by the plentiful debris that could be found everywhere on the lowest of the lower levels: the ground. Things rained down from the hundreds of storeys surrounding them almost constantly, and the Smog as well as the thousands of towers as dense as a forest meant that very little sun reached the slums that was the ground floor. They never saw the sky down here: just the lights from the billions of windows stretching up into the sky, a pathetic reproduction of stars at night.
But they had one thing that they didn’t up there: they had their street-bikes. Strictly illegal, of course, but nobody really cared about what happened on the ground any more. They were forgotten. Sometimes, Pia forgot that other people existed in the towers at all: they may as well be deities for all they saw or heard from them. Occasionally a shadowy figure walked across a walkway far above their heads: sometimes there was a suicide. But that was it. Nearly stepping on a flat, messy corpse was not exactly contact.
Another crunchy gear shift as she approached the fourth checkpoint out of five. It was a tricky bit of road here, wobbly and disastrously uneven: everyone slowed down for this part, even the most experienced of bikers. Her front wheel fought against the bumpy ground furiously, leaping and bucking, but Pia was firm with her bike and did not let it do a thing she did not want it to. It was all about control. She grit her teeth into a sour grin. After this checkpoint, it was on to the Arcade for the finish line and the party that was bound to follow-
A figure stepped into the road. Of course, people could cross the roads at their own risks, but this one stopped in her path, waving. And she recognised him: it was Simmins, gesturing for her to stop.
She was going slow, but she still nearly overturned the bike as she hit the brakes with everything she had. What’s the asshole doing? her brain shrieked uselessly as smoke began pouring from the wheels-never a good sign. The bike spun and she grasped at the controls, but it was too late: something clunked, and her precious street-bike cut off. The metal was already cooling as it fell flat under her hands: no longer was she the calm, in-control street-racer, but a waddling fool straddling a dead bike.
Turning to shout at Simmins, she was surprised when he beat her to it-
“What do you think you’re doin’?” he exclaimed. She had been just about to ask him the same thing. Two bikes, engines rattling as their rusty bodies juddered over the pot-holed road, shot past.
“Pretty obvious, innit?” Pia spat. “What’re you doing?” She got off of her bike as another three bikes proceeded past the checkpoint and onwards to Gratham Arcade. It took her at least half an hour every time she had to start her bike: she knew that she was out of the race. She wheeled her bike to the side crossly, followed by Simmins.
“It’s goin’ to get bad at the Arcade tonight, Pia. The Vikes are showin’ up an’ everythin’. People are gonna die.”
“For fuck’s sake, Sim!” Pia exclaimed. “I can take care of myself!”
“You’re nineteen.”
“Exactly,” she snapped angrily. “An adult! Not that it matters to you. And look at poor Trev after that shock you gave him!” She ran an affectionate hand over her bike’s handlebar. It was rusty, it was ancient-it was hers.
“Trev wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me,” Simmins muttered. “Anyway, the pros went by ages ago. It’s not like you were first or anythin’.”
Pia sighed.
“I will be one day, Sim. That’s the point.”
She didn’t mind too much, she supposed. At least she got a bit of practise done-and Simmins was usually right about these things. He had his ear on the ground, did Simmins. Not that she was going to admit that.