Reclamation: Interlude I

Emmex kept her eyes up and her the focus of her hearing behind her. The sirens had stopped but that didn't mean that no one was following her. Some street teams used “birds and the bees,” catchall slang for any flying drone, to keep an eye from the sky even if it meant violating the seemingly random jurisdictional boundaries that cut up the city into puzzle pieces. A few of them would even pay the work forward, contracting out to street teams in other sectors to finish hunting her down.

Somewhere deep behind the clouds above her, lightning flashed giving umbral shape to the coal gray void in a roiling eclipse. The thunder that followed was like the croaking roar of some great frog god that lingered on and on. The soft mist that had filled the air became a hard rain without any of the customary in between steps. Good, Emmex thought, that would make it harder for any eye to keep track of her no matter where it was.

The fat lump on her shoulder shifted uncomfortably in the downpour and that was good too.