“Skidding was invented thirty years ago by the legendary Kade Voss, who put on a pair of rollerskates, attached handles to a pair of solid fuel hobby rockets, lit them, and aimed them down his home street. He will be sorely missed.”

  Jessie paused in front of The Frozen Lady, her motorcycle idling quietly. The warehouse was largely plain, but this one entrance had a glowing neon sign announcing the name of the club, with a blue image of a beautiful woman’s winking, pouty face surrounded by a rectangle that represented an ice cube. That was far from the tragedy the legend of The Frozen Lady was supposed to represent, as Jessie recalled.

  “Corporal?” said Evan. “We probably shouldn’t linger here. They’ll get nervous.” He cleared his throat, searching for words. “If we’re not supposed to interfere, the thing we’re not supposed to interfere with is supposed to start soon.”

  “Evan, just… no. That’s not how you keep plausible deniability. Shones, I hate this game. I hate looking the other way.”

  “Crime has actually gone down in this cell since The Frozen Lady opened up.”

  “I know, Evan. That’s the only reason I tolerate this bullshit at all.”

  Evan was silent for a moment. “You know Squid cleans them up? Some of them? The—well, I’ll just say they’re racers and save time. Drug addicts, homeless and abused kids and the like. He’s turned some of them around. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  Jessie narrowed her eyes. “I hadn’t heard that. Seems far fetched.”

  Evan shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. You follow skidding, Corporal?”

  Jessie glanced at him, surprised. “You do?”

  He shrugged. “Here and there. Mostly Grand City Circuit, but of course everyone follows them. I’m basic. Fun to watch, though.”

  “It seems like an insanely dangerous sport. I’ve seen the statistics.”

  “Oh, it is. The guy who invented it died playing it, and that’s a true story. Gotta admire what those maniacs can do though. There was a guy who could balance one handed on the lip of a pipe, then hold his stick up and give it a blast. Called it the One Gun Salute.”

  “It’s amazing that didn’t break his arm.”

  “I know, right?”

  “I didn’t mean it as a compliment. Who was it, anyway?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know him. He only played one season a couple years ago and didn’t even finish. Real shame.”

  Jessie’s jaw dropped slightly. One season? A couple of years? That did ring a bell. “Hold on. Evan. Tell me you’re not talking about Jett Fulgen?”

  “No shit! You’ve heard of him?”

  “I knew him, actually. We grew up together but he… well, he moved away when we hit middle school.”

  “You were friends with Jett Fulgen?!”

  “I wouldn’t really say ‘friends.’ Anyway, I haven’t talked to him in years.”

  “Still, wow! That dude was a genius. I think he would have changed the whole sport if he’d stayed on. If you ever see him again, can you get his autograph?”

  Jessie raised an eyebrow. “Why would you want his autograph? He didn’t even finish his first season. Which, if you want some insider information, is just like him.”

  “Exactly! It’ll be rare! Too bad about what happened.”

  “Yeah. I did follow him a bit when I heard he made the pros, just to see what the big deal was. He sure looked like he was in his element. There was some kind of accident, right?”

  “Yeah, not even him but his friend. They ruled it as a fall, but Jett claimed it was a coverup, some kind of tangle with an underground betting ring. I’m inclined to believe it, though it doesn’t speak well of people like us.”

  “Why do you believe it?”

  “Because Squid left the following season.”

  “Hold on.” she whirled on Evan. “Squid?”

  He pointed at the building, as if that were necessary. “Was his manager. You didn’t know that? Yeah, Squid left the circuit in a huff. Made a big speech about corruption and lack of integrity in the pro circuits. I assume he started the club almost immediately after he left.”

  “Wait… Squid was Jett’s manager? And Red keeps showing up here? Evan, what if Red—”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you believe that theory.” Evan scoffed. “All due respect, Corporal. Jett had a mouth. It was his on camera persona. And yes, he’s a sticker and Red’s also a sticker. But he was a model citizen. Red is a copycat and a charlatan. There’s no way… what?”

  Jessie couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud. “Jett Fulgen, a model citizen?”

  Evan bristled. “He gave to charity a couple of times. He met a fan who had been in a skidding accident and signed his leg cast and both of his arm casts.”

  “That’s great and all, but I could disabuse you of him being a ‘model citizen’ in five minutes. Using things he did during sixth grade alone.”

  “Well. Nobody’s perfect. Anyway, we really should go.”

  “Right.” Jessie shook herself, looking up at the sultry winking face of The Frozen Lady one last time. It seemed to taunt her. Like the building was keeping secrets. And maybe it was.

  Jessie went to lift her kickstand, when she heard a sound that she first assumed was Evan’s engine backfiring.

  She glanced around. No, that wasn’t what it was at all. It was gunfire, and it was close by.

  It was coming from inside the club.

  More shots rang out in rapid sequence. “Ah, shit.” Evan pulled his sidearm. “At Squid’s? Tonight?”

  “Enough chatter, officer,” Jessie snapped. From the large rear holster on her bike she pulled her own weapon: her kinetic rifle. She switched it on and made sure it was fully charged.

  “Let’s move.”

  I didn’t think.

  Ok, that wouldn’t surprise some people. I acted on instinct, which sounds better anyway.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d had a gun pulled on me; it was at least the third. The first was a random attempted mugging soon after Wally and I got our apartment. The second was when I’d turned into the wrong alley to do my Red transformation and found a couple of gang members in a standoff. I hadn’t been afraid either time. In fact, both times I’d attempted, and successfully executed, one of those disarming hits from the movies that they tell you never to try in real life. It’s amazing what a runeband makes one capable of, especially when you have an alacrity rune or two in the mix.

  This time was no different. I wasn’t afraid for my own life. Maybe I should have been, but that was irrelevant.

  What got me was that this locker room was still crowded with other racers. I might not get hurt if that gun went off, but someone else almost certainly would.

  Faces flashed through my mind. My mom’s. Wally’s.

  No one else was ever going to get hurt while someone was aiming for me. Ever.

  I let go of Bullet Train. The position and angle were wrong. I couldn’t disarm him fast enough that way. Instead I lunged. I buried my right fist in Troy’s gut. Almost literally. My fist sank deep into the big ogre’s not-at-all-soft abdomen. I could actually feel muscles tearing and parting to make way. Troy gagged and almost instantly vomited over my shoulder, and his knees buckled. My left hand reached for his right, and I heard a sickening snap as I grabbed his wrist. The gun immediately dropped from his hand.

  What was this? It was like my strength had increased tenfold. Two might runes couldn’t do that. Three couldn’t.

  My vision flashed red. Then the voice started. As it spoke, its words also appeared in my vision.

  You have bonded a new artifact. Your class has changed. Experience has been transferred from your previous class: Runeslayer. You are now a Fire Guardian Initiate, Tier 1 Level 7.

  It sounded like it was coming from inside my own head, but it also wasn’t a sound at all. It was like thought, only louder, and I wasn’t in control of it.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  What the hell was a Fire Guardian Initiate? What the hell was a Runeslayer? Did that have something to do with my runeband? Was this voice in my head? I’d seen a couple of TV dramas about sorcerers. This sounded a bit them. Was that happening to me? What artifact had I bonded?

  This all passed through my mind in less than a second, and that was already too long. The gun hit the ground, and there was a moment of shocked silence. The stench of vomit and sweat filled the air. Then multiple other racers dove for the weapon. I had no way of knowing their intentions, so I also dove, shoving the others out of the way and punching one; his nose crunched under my fist, and I winced sympathetically. I could feel strength surging through me. Something much greater than what I was accustomed to from my band.

  Once most of the other racers fell back I found myself trying to wrestle the gun away from, of all people, Roxanne. Her eyes, crazy as always, were riveted to the shiny handgun. “Give it to me,” she whispered. “I need it.”

  With a sharp yank–I winced at what a sound that was almost certainly fingers snapping–I wrested the gun away from her. Not knowing what else to do, I pointed it straight in the air and pulled the trigger. The first shot was one of the loudest sounds I’d ever heard, and the rest were more subdued, as if they were coming from underwater. I kept shooting until all I heard was clicks.

  The room was smokey. Most of the other racers had crouched low and covered their ears. My hearing unexpectedly snapped back to normal, the ringing from the gunshots vanishing.

  Searching for a compatible lecti. Please wait.

  The voice sounded flat, almost robotic. Also, my HUD had changed. Instead of the simple blue bar representing my aethervoir, there was also a green bar near the top of my field of vision. The bars were actually labelled “Health” and “Aethervoir.” There were some other strange items that flickered in and out of my vision, like a display that wasn’t working right. I ignored them for now.

  “There,” I said. “Now no one can get shot. Anyone want this?” I flipped the gun around and grasped it by the barrel as I held it out. A few of the other racers hissed and winced sympathetically.

  Oh yeah. Guns. People don’t think much about it when they don’t have real hands-on experience, but those suckers get hot when they were fired. I could feel the heat of the barrel on my bare fingers, and some part of my brain registered that it was actually scalding, blazing hot. But oddly, it didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt kind of pleasant. Refreshing, even.

  “Ok, no takers.” I dropped the gun and cleared my throat. The other racers were still staring at me in shock, but some of their faces twisted into anger.

  That's when I heard shouting and screaming from outside the locker room, elsewhere in the club. The omnipresent thump of bass music had stopped. Then, distantly, I heard sirens.

  Right. Guns were loud too.

  “You asshole!” one of the other engineers shouted.

  I snatched Bullet Train back up, made sure it was still powered on, and quietly pressed a button. The burst capacitor began charging.

  “You’ve ruined everything!” a podder screamed. They were all advancing on me now.

  “This place was a sanctum!” said a young female podder. She was in tears. “This was where we belonged!”

  A short distance away Troy was on the ground wheezing. He vomited again, and it was dark in color. Yikes. Maybe it was a good thing those sirens were approaching, for him at least.

  “Now hold on,” I said. “I didn’t start this. You all saw. I was defending myself.” I brandished my skidstick. “And I’ll keep doing it if I have to.”

  “It came from the locker room!” I heard someone yell from outside. Probably one of Squid’s security detail. “The racers! Go, go, go!”

  At that moment, Roxanne shrieked at the top of her lungs, because why not? The other racers took this as a cue, and most of them rushed me. I swept Bullet Train in a vicious arc, driving them back, but that wasn’t going to work for long.

  Then, suddenly, everyone froze. Their hands dropped to their sides and they just stood there, staring at nothing.

  I just looked around the room, not sure what I was seeing.

  What the actual hell?

  My head felt strange again, just like… just like…

  A new voice spoke in my head. It was high, almost squeaky, and lightly accented. Kind of like… a little teenage girl.

  “Hurry! I can’t hold them for long! I am new at this too!”

  “At what?” I yelled. There was no answer, but I figured the advice about hurrying was sound. I snatched my backpack up and ran.

  I bolted out of the locker room. Several toughs were standing there, also catatonic, guns held loosely in their hands. As I slipped past them, one of them shook his head and looked around. I continued out into the club proper, where the rest of the guests hadn’t been affected by whatever had hit the racers and guards. Several bystanders screamed, ran, or pointed. Against one wall I spotted the colorful little teen. She looked tired, but she was bobbing to her music again. She shot me a thumbs up. On a balcony above the dance floor Squid was staring down at me in utter shock. He was surrounded by a cadre of people, all in immaculate suits or fancy evening gowns. Many of them held whiskey glasses as they watched me curiously.

  My stick beeped. The burst capacitor was fully charged. I looked up. Squid’s penthouse didn’t span the entire top floor, and high above the dance floor there were a few skylights.

  “Stop him!” yelled one of the guards.

  “Get him!”

  And then, more distant, “GPD! Everybody freeze!”

  The guards were running toward me now, the racers close on their heels. A couple of podders engaged their shoes and weaved past the guards, trying to get to me first.

  I shrugged helplessly up at the VIP balcony. “Sorry, Squid!” I yelled. Then I gripped Bullet Train tightly, pointed it at the ceiling, and leapt into the air.

  As one might imagine, skid equipment can give a person some serious lift. You can jump amazingly high or far if you just angle your booster upward as you take off. But as for flying? Kinetic drive, or even fuel-based equipment, typically can’t put out enough thrust to cancel gravity completely with room to spare.

  Unless, of course, one has a mad scientist engineering savant for a roommate.

  The burst capacitor drained and stored energy from the stick’s power cells at the same rate as the drive running full blast, then released it all at once. Charging it for a few seconds while I coasted, then rocketing away with a sudden burst of speed, had become one of my favorite goodbyes to pursuing cops. This time I’d charged it for over a minute, close to the maximum Wally thought was safe, and I was aiming for one of the skylights. It was a concerningly small target three stories above my head, and I’d never used the capacitor like this before. Not to go that high.

  The entire club gasped as I reached the zenith of my jump. Luckily, whatever was happening with me extended to my legs, and I nearly cleared the second floor balcony before I squeezed the trigger and shot up like I’d just engaged my second stage rocket. I struggled to keep myself pointed at the skylight while also keeping my legs free of the skidwash. The blue haze put out by a kinetic drive wasn’t particularly dangerous, but it pushed hard on any object caught in it. Snagging a foot could knock me off course or cancel my upward momentum completely.

  I smashed through the skylight successfully. Unfortunately I also clipped my left arm against the side, ripping the sleeve of my hoodie, as well as the arm itself, on shards of glass. I crumpled into a heap on the roof for a moment, clutching the arm and groaning. For a sickening moment I thought I’d ruined my escape. You can skid on an injured leg more easily than a hurt arm.

  Then the pain subsided. It happened surprisingly quickly. What was going on tonight? Might runes did accelerate healing a little. Not as much as resilience runes, but no rune build could account for healing this fast.

  But I wasn’t using a runeband anymore.

  Health is at 92%. Aethervoir is at 78%.

  Holding up my right wrist, I could see the three symbols on my runeband were completely dark. The voice said I’d bound an artifact. You could only have one, and runebands counted. So when it had happened…

  But the key question remained unanswered: What artifact? They were always some kind of gem-studded jewelry, and I certainly hadn’t come in contact with anything like that. Not a ring or an earring or an anklet or a… a necklace.

  I drew my mom’s locket out of my hoodie and examined it. It was a cheesy faux gold thing. The charm was heart-shaped. I’d also never gotten it open by any means I tried. My mom had said something cryptic like “It’ll open when you need it to.” I’d actually hated it when she first gifted it to me. Then I’d clung to it because it was the only piece of her I had left.

  Now it was broken.

  I gawked at the stupid thing in horror. The heart had several cracks. This wasn’t an artifact of the Anteschismatic Empire, was it? Had it become one when it broke? That made no sense at all.

  Aether connection is occluded. Unable to locate a suitable lecti. Still searching.

  “Yeah, keep me posted,” I muttered.

  I could hear thumping from below. Someone was climbing the stairs to the roof, and not to make sure I was ok. I heaved myself to my feet and skidded over to the edge of the roof. I was blinded by a spotlight.

  Oh shit.

  “Red!” said a female voice over a megaphone. “You are under arrest! Come quietly! You are a person of interest in a shooting, so you are no longer classified as nonviolent!”

  I backed up until the spotlight no longer shone on me and crouched down. I yelled back, “Yeah, I’m gonna pass! Some other folks in here wanna kill me, and you can’t reach me before they do! Plus this day has really sucked! I’m not in a cooperative mood!”

  “So much for that lower crime rate,” Jessie muttered. She ground her teeth and forced herself to relax her grip on the megaphone, lest her artifact enhanced strength crack it. In her other hand she held her kinetic rifle, ready to snag Red off the roof if he appeared again.

  What had happened? Squid’s had gone from its reasonably quiet nightclub front to an utter hellhole in a matter of minutes. She and Evan had done a quick sweep of the ground floor while she radioed for help, and the regular GPD were quickly setting up a perimeter.

  Panicked guests were still pouring out of the place. Among the disheveled crowd were a few suspected crime bosses. They were being detained for questioning, but Jessie had a feeling few arrests would be made. The only man being escorted to a police cruiser in cuffs was Lanahan himself. He’d quickly surrendered and promised to cooperate, asking only that his patrons and the racers be left alone. So far no injured or dead had been discovered as cops swept the lowest floor of the building. Neither had any skid punks been found.

  No skid punks, that was, until Red, the last man Jessie wanted to see, had shown his stupid masked face on the roof.

  Damn it, who was he? All she saw was his covered face, goggles, and helmet all wrapped in a hood. He was a smartass for sure, but…

  She put the megaphone back to her lips. “The GPD promises your safety. Come back to the edge of the roof. We will bring you down using kinetics, and our gunners will protect you from anything–” She lowered the megaphone. “And there he goes, never mind.”

  Red shot off the roof in a blue blaze. A couple of officers took shots, overeager now that the prohibition against using force had been lifted, but he was too far away and moving too fast. Sparks lit up the sky projection, and sections of the simulated night sky began to flicker with static.

  Over a dozen other skidpunks followed Red, also rocketing over the police perimeter without a second glance. They were yelling. Red apparently wasn’t kidding about his standing among the other racers.

  “Come on Evan!” she said, running for their bikes.

  “Come on?” he squeaked as he followed. “We’re gonna chase down Red?”

  “We don’t have much of a choice, now do we?”

  Evan sighed. “I know that, I know that. But… he’s Red! Ain’t no way we’re gonna catch him!”

  “You leave that to me. Focus on bringing the other racers in.”

  “O-okay, if you say so!”

  Jessie put her hand to her headset and clicked her radio on.

  “This is Officer Faxton!” she said with a note of resignation as the two Elites mounted their motorcycles and sped away. “I’m in pursuit of the suspect known as Red! I repeat, I am in pursuit of the suspect known as Red, as well as several other street skidders! I need all units with two cells of L4-G10 not already mobilized to pursue and assist!”