Dark Remnants (Street Games #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

    M street was busier than usual. It bustled with activity, the kind that feared daylight and only found true comfort under the cloak of night. Kyra, hunched in the shadows, wondered if the extra movement had anything to do with the rumors she’d been chasing all night.

    Women in skimpy clothing clustered in groups of two or three, waving at the occasional passing car or flirting with the nocturnal pedestrians going about their own nightly business. Gangbangers sported bandanas, chains, and loaded guns with equal gusto. Junkies and drunks sprawled on every curb and bus bench, or ducked into the shadowy alleys to use their product of choice. Two blocks down a group of hobos clustered around a fire in a barrel, talking quietly. It wasn’t anywhere near cold enough for a fire—summer was only beginning—but Kyra supposed even the jobless needed a water cooler to cluster around. M Street was one of the most poorly lit areas in the Slip Mire, which meant it was one of the darkest places in the city. 

    Kyra always made it a point to observe for a time before venturing out. She hadn’t been in this part of the city for over a week, instead spending time at the Carlotta estate on the opposite side of the city. The Carlottas, it turned out, might be a closer link to the person she was looking for than she’d initially realized. After having drinks with one of the estate’s employees, she had plenty of leads in her search. She knew she needed to return to the Mire before following up on any of them, though. She needed to be seen, touch base with her contacts, and get the gossip.

    Now, disturbing rumors circulated the Mire her first night back. She needed to find someone who could confirm the stories for her. From her hiding place under the eaves of a long-vacant business, she scanned the street for prospects.

    Run-down business fronts lined the broken, pitted sidewalk, most vacant. The few still in business had locked their doors long before darkness fell, and most sported iron bars on the windows. Between the shabby buildings ran alleys of various widths. The denigrated alley system made Slip Mire what it was: a depraved bruise on the geography of the state, forgotten by respectable people. Abstreuse City was already one of the most dangerous cities in the country, and the Slip Mire was the worst Abstreuse had to offer. Darkness of all kinds came with the territory. 

    Every shadow moved and whispered; people hunched together to do things they couldn’t do in daylight. Kyra pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her spikey, black hair and did a quick check to make sure everything about her person was in order. Her phone, cards, and weapons lay strapped tight against her thigh. She hid them under baggy black sweats, the same shade as her hoodie. It helped her blend into buildings and shadows. The Mirelings only saw her when she wanted them to.

    Emerging from the shadows, she started down the dim street, stepping carefully. The dark, indistinct lumps lining the sides of the alley turned out to be sleeping people as often as garbage. The smells of putrefying trash, urine, and human body stench hung in the air, omnipresent, accompanied by the gummy smell of filthy passages, traversed by thousands of second-hand shoes. The air even tasted gritty.

    M Street, like many of the larger streets of the Mire, had sufficient illumination to see by, though just barely. A few, widely-spaced streetlights shone from behind rust-colored glass, giving the light in this district a distinctly red hue. While the narrow alleys seldom had any lighting of their own, crimson light from the larger streets spilled in a short distance. It filtered through the steam pouring from grates in the ground. The headlights of passing cars added to the illumination, though their nearly white light was not very common here. 

    Two streets over, K Street was the metropolis of the Slip Meyer. A busy road with brightly lit, if run-down, businesses that stayed open all night and catered to after-dark patrons. Even a couple of casinos squatted nearby, along with a truck stop down near the highway.