Panoptic

Panoptic - Chapter 01

 Blood ran down his scalp. He wiped it and tried to rise, but the guard kicked him in the chest, then pressed him into the ground with his boot. Soro struggled under the weight and looked for a way out. All he could see was the man's shadow, a mere silhouette against the brightly lit cherry blossom tree. As he looked up, the guard raised his baton, another shadow against the pink and purple blossom.

The shadowy baton fell from the radiant tree, a fragment of black blossom, rotten before its time. Soro watched it fall, seeming as slow and graceful as drifting blossom, and pictured the moment when it would strike, and raise a red flower from his skull.

The instant seemed to expand, as if a god, in his black humour, wanted him to appreciate the wonder of existence, in the very last moment before it was extinguished. His mind sped free, and sought safety in the past.

...

He pulled up in a dingy side road, the tarmac a flickering wash of grey and green in the light of old, rusted streetlights. The air smelled bitter, tainted by fumes from the factories on either side, their spartan concrete lurid with graffiti. A huge blue-skinned Cyclops gazed at him, his eye winking in the flickers of the lights. It was so beautiful it made his fingers itch, but the street lamp flicked on and off with a broken rhythm, the promise of a ruined shot. He tasted copper and sulphur, and the acrid stink of burnt plastic.

He left the rental there, hoping it would still have all its tires when he came back. The night was quiet, the air still, warm and muggy, too humid for spring. He wiped perspiration from his brow as he jogged along silent streets towards the New Verity compound.

He didn't mind running, but something felt wrong, more than just the uncomfortable warmth. He felt odd, out of place, the same kind of feeling he always had when he'd been spotted on a job. But that couldn't be it. He'd parked five blocks down from the compound, to be sure he wasn't seen making his approach.

He knew the value of stealth.

But still he felt that gnawing irritation, eyes on his back, searing the skin. He tried to shake it off. He'd been on a hundred night jobs, a thousand. He'd crawled under fences and snuck over rooftops, and he'd always captured his prize. He didn't need to get the freeping critters over this, a simple vegetable snap.

Pum pum pum.

He narrowed his brows, but he kept running. Leaves rustling in the wind. A hot engine cooling. Marshmallows falling through a time warp. Not footsteps.

Not footsteps.

Pum pum pum.

He flinched, halted, turned around. He swept his eyes over the street, from the graffitied walls to the shadowed back doors, the scratched, rusting lamps. He saw a scrap of shadow lurch behind the nearest, dented and bent, the victim of some sloshed driver. He peered closer, and tried to ignore the beating in his chest, the cold moisture that trickled down his back.

It moved again. Small, lumpish, quick.

His shoulders, hunched before, now relaxed, and he sighed. "Squiz!"

There came no answer.

"Squiz, I know it's you. Allons! Get back to the car, camerado. Wait for me."

No reply.

"I know you hate it, but you have stop following me. People don't understand. It's dangerous. Allons!"

A small dark shape detached from the lamp post, hesitated, and darted away into the night.

Soro waited until he could no longer hear the sound of scampering. Then he turned, and hurried on his way.