Drek. Should have listened to her gut.

Glitch bolted.

She heard two reports of the gun a heartbeat later. The first shot went wide - the second slammed into her back, where the Kevlar-synth lining of her hoodie was reinforced, just above the left hip.

Glitch staggered. The primal need to survive surged through her exhausted system. She barely kept her feet as she broke into a dead sprint for the glass doors. A pair of wage slaves – two men in suits armed with paper coffee cups and data pads – entered at that moment. Glitch dove for the professional distance between them as a third gunshot split the air behind her. One of them barked a sharp reprimand at her; the other screamed as the gun fired again. Glitch darted through the glass doors before they closed.

The wind and exhaust of Neosaka assailed her as she hit the street. Glitch turned, rubber soles skidding on the pavement, to avoid rushing headlong into traffic. Cars sped past. Speed limits were a formality rarely enforced and the deadlocked traffic of rush hour hadn’t reached this street yet. Glitch fled past storefronts with flashing neon letters and huge, glittering holo-displays of perfect, anatomically-impossible models. She checked back over her shoulder and nearly slipped on the treacherous spread of cheap fliers and discarded food wrappers spread across the sidewalk. No sign of pursuit, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t coming. Early morning patrons stared at her through windows, and homeless people cocooned in rags pressed away from her against doorsteps and alley walls. Glitch ran until her biology screamed that it couldn’t go any further, then made it run some more.

The city changed after only a few blocks. Commercial storefronts gave way to towering residential flats. Most of the colors here came from gang signs and graffiti tags across the walls of tenement buildings and bus stops. Trash clogged the sewers, and drug regalia carpeted the ground near dumpsters.

Glitch’s breath came in ragged gasps. When she finally stopped to lean against a wall, her legs shook, shuddered, and then gave out from under her. Glitch sacrificed her palms and the knee of her jeans to the unforgiving cement of the sidewalk to keep from collapsing entirely. She stayed there on all fours, tasting the acid of adrenaline on her tongue.

Fucking corporations. Always trying to get something more than what you’d agreed to.

Whatever they’d wanted from her, they’d clearly decided it was cheaper to use a couple of bullets than a credstick, or just good old-fashioned asking politely. Not that she’d have said yes.

Her phone rang. The caller ID read only “[ _ ]”. Glitch leaned back against the wall and picked up.

“You did it! You fucking did it!” Handle’s voice crowed in her ear. “Didn’t believe my eyes when the cred hit the account! I mean, as your fixer I gotta say you’re an idiot for finishing that job, but I could use more of this sorta stupid in my life.”

“Hey,” Glitch started, but she was still breathing too hard for complete sentences.

“So listen,” Handle plowed cheerily along over her. “These kinds of -”

Static interrupted him.

“-by the head so-”

The call was breaking up.

“-crew around to collec-”

Glitch checked her battery. It had plenty of charge on it.

“-you’re gonna be --!”

Handle fell silent. It took her a moment to realize the call hadn’t dropped and he was waiting for her reaction.

“--ok?”

“Client just fucking shot me,” Glitch said. Her breath started to come more evenly.

“-at? You--.”

The call dissolved into angry static.

A shadow flitted across the wall opposite her. Glitch looked up. A drone - a long range CM3700 unit that news crews favored - buzzed past overhead in the direction she had come. It must have been deployed to the park as soon as reports of gunfire went out. No logos on this one though. It disappeared around the nearest apartment building.

“Glitch? Y-” Handle’s call started to come back. “-barely hear --- got shot?”

“Yeah,” Glitch pressed the speaker closer to her ear. “I don’t know what set the Mrs. Smith off, exactly, but -.”

The phone made a particularly angry crackle and Glitch flinched away from it as the drone reappeared at the end of the street and hovered there. Her call with Handle disconnected completely.

Glitch swore mentally to save on breath and scrambled to her feet. She kept her head down, hiding her face in the shadow of her hood, and took off running again. Time to go to ground.

The Arterix Subway Transit System was only a few streets away, at a busy cross-street too. It occupied prime real estate between a Madam Fuji’s Nail Salon franchise and a New Deli chain that sold sandwiches under the bright green, wireframe silhouette of the Taj Majal. Escalators stretched like the distended neck of some subterranean monster to swallow pedestrians into the neon-lit darkness below.

Glitch fled the violence of daylight into Arterix’s glowing maw. She skipped the escalator, and her feet beat a rapid tempo to the rhythm of her heart rate down the stairs. Wage slaves in work uniforms jumped out of the way or stopped and stared dumbly at her as she passed. Floor-to-ceiling ads chased her along the walls, waving, smiling, and gesturing for her attention.

Glitch kept her eyes on the accrued filth of the corroded ground and kept going. She vaulted the turnstile at the bottom, ignored the shout of the on-hand attendant, and skidded around the corner of the first cross tunnel she came to. She heard more cries of surprise and knew the drone had followed her underground. Glitch dropped onto the next metal bench she saw and put her head down. She studied the linoleum flooring pockmarked with blackened gum and scarred with the scuff marks of a hundred thousand careless passing soles.

The drone whizzed past her through the hall a moment later and kept going. Glitch lifted her head as soon as it was gone. A man on the bench across from her in a collared shirt that hung too loosely on his frame looked up belatedly from a datapad in the direction the drone had taken. He gave Glitch a startled “Did you see that?” look. Glitch sucked in as much breath as her lungs could hold and tried not to pant too heavily.

The drone returned. It bobbled to a halt a dozen feet away and stared at her. Glitch stood, and drew her barretta. Her hands shook spastically from the running. Glitch unloaded what was left of the clip. Bullets ricocheted wildly off the drone’s frame. The wage slave across from her yelled and scrambled away. The drone continued to gawk at her passively. No wonder news crews liked the damn things. Glitch turned on her heels and started running again.

She emerged from the tunnel onto a crowded station as the maglev train pulled in. The drone’s jamming tech preceded her - wage slaves all over the platform were holding their phones and shouting into them, or shoving them back into pockets and complaining. Glitch dove into the crowd and ducked down just as the drone also made the corner. Only a few people spared it a glance. Other early-to-bed, early-to-rise types leaving the tram got caught up in the standing crowd and started adding to the noise.

The tram doors, automatically timed for thirty second stops, buzzed a warning and started to close. There was an almighty scramble as everyone waiting remembered why they were standing there at this impossible hour in the first place. Glitch stayed low to the wall and braced herself to keep from being dragged away in the current of people. The drone’s operator made a guess and swung it through the tram doors an instant before they closed. The drone turned back around and saw her through the glass. Then the maglev bore it away at speeds that ensured this discerning drone would be on time to its next business meeting.

Glitch saluted the rapidly receding lights of the train grimly.