Shiver

Part 1 - Chase

A city of stars.

Lights up high directing the eye up to the dim outlines of skyscrapers, leading to a vacuum unseen – much older, ancient starlight hidden by artificial replacements. Advertisements glow and flash in the midnight. In amongst the bustle of slow traffic and constant noise jumps a shadow, a fast, hungry shape in the terrific night. it dashes from spot to spot, trotting for a few moments, then moving along with nose to the ground.

The shadow pushes through the centre of a large building alleyway alongside the heart of the city’s pulsing network of roads, feeling the pressure rise around it, feeling the noise through its feet. It pauses, glances back at the past, spots something that haunts it, even shadows fear the chase.

It lay down still. The city around it races by; the pursuers reveal themselves and scatter themselves through the night, hunting, smelling, tracking up the alley. The fox knows the game is up, feels the panic of fear creep over it, running through its veins, pulsing through its heart as the dogs sound closer, hungrier with the scent of his blood in their noses.

It prepares itself for the final battle, teeth snarled, claws itching the ground scraping the metal beneath, its last attack vicious and short. It leaps, it grabs, tears, bites and bleeds and falls.

The hounds tear their meal apart, leaving a strewn carcass behind underneath the doorstep of a tall apartment complex. They are called off, the body left behind; nothing puts other foxes off as much as the smell of the death of their own kind.

The cars and buses shuffle their way along on the wide avenue, tall scrapers overlooking either side of the busy night traffic, staring down at the people, the animals and the scenes played out internally. A window, a man, watching the horror of the kill, wipes his nose and reaches for the coffee by his side.

He feels for the morning updates on his screen. Terror raids in New Livo, protests in the shanty towns on the outskirts of the UN controlled boundary. The cities husks of their former prime, locals leaving for jobs in the newer cities of grime and dust, the industrial centres reclaiming their glory years, the living conditions reverting to a pre-revolution stage of piss-poor gas lighting and no heating for homes.

He switched the screen off and reached for his news-piece, placed it in his ear and scanned the channels using his watch for anything about the new colony. Some small twitter tatter about small groups avoiding the tax on interplanetary travel, some new kind of metal discovered under the Martian surface, early signs of life on Titan found to be completely falsified. Just the usual shit.

He rose, dressed himself in simple green and black and collected his messages from the screen above his front door. Shovelling some pastries into his rucksack he left the apartment and headed into the bright lights.

Live on the new colonies, forget the past, become the future.

He travelled on the tram into the city centre, eying up the office building his company had taken over, eying up the competition across the street and the delivery cartons lined up against the porch of the building as he approached the night guard. He nodded, simply flashed his I.D across the man’s face and continued inside. The building was not well lit, the energy company’s bills had been rising to the point where if they didn’t make a big contract soon, they would have to work by candlelight.

The office was empty but for one worker, solitary in the dark gloom, sitting in his underpants and spitting toothpaste into a small cup.

“Hey Marshall, Shive’s up, you working late tonight?”

The man turned, faced him for a few seconds, then returned to brushing his teeth, eventually gobbing the mixture in his mouth into the small plastic cup, then pulled up his trousers and placed his hoody over his head.