The Green City

Pale lightning, tinged green in the dust that hung over the city, struck at random, each hit sending out a cascade of white-hot sparks over the skyline.

Riding the lightning, that’s what it was called. They had so many words for misfortune, so many flavours in the world that was left, that riding the lightning hardly seemed to count.

But still she kept her head down, cowl drawn tight over her face. It wasn’t a pretty face, not off-world pretty- never that- but still it had all the markers that would bring attention to her.

She took the corners slowly, her limp, a permanent fixture from birth and by no means the worst of her deformities, threatening to send her down to the slick stones below. The streets were always slippery. Or slimy. A by-product of the never-ending storm above. That made running hard.

But then again life was hard. Why should running be any different?

In her hand she clutched the thing.

She’d found it down there in the sludge. At first her heart had leapt at the sight of something glimmering amidst the muck. She’d thought- hoped in truth, hoped beyond hope- that it was a bullet. There was good eating on a bullet. Pretty Boy Jack was always willing to pay for munitions, and if not him, the family was already ready to cash in. That hope sent her down on her hands and knees, painful though it was to clamber down, scrabbling for the glimmer.

When she’d spat on it and wiped it clean on herself, she realised with disgust what it wasn’t.

It wasn’t a bullet.

It wasn’t good eating.

Which made it worthless.

Despite that, she kept the thing.

Because the thing contained an angel.

That was why she hurrying now, despite the late hour. It was dangerous to be out this late. If the ion storms didn’t get you, press-gangs from the Shady Belle were always out recruiting, and all it would take was a bad glance and a wrong step to find herself in that hell.

But she risked it.

Because the family had to see the angel. The reverend mother HAD to see the angel.

“Coar ther girlee! Was a niice ting lik yu doin ut?”

She kept her head down, the harsh patois of the streets spraying spit across her feet. She understood, even though she knew instinctively the words were spat by a tongue not properly formed. They all carried the gift of the ever-lasting storm in different ways. Hers was the limp, and more besides, below the surface. She was a lucky one.

“Ios speekin to yu!”

She tried to keep going, tried even to increase her speed. She had to get away. Needed to get away.

But of course, need doesn’t matter in the green city.

Her foot slipped, the poorly fused bone coming down wrong in her socket. Sudden pain flared, and she fell.

They were on her in seconds and though she fought, in the end they took the angel from her.

The malformed man stared down at the thing in his hand. She’d fought, fought hard, to keep it from him.

But that was always the way. No matter the depth, everyone always had something they weren’t willing to lose. From the look of her, he’d have thought it would have been her looks. And she was a pretty thing. All her teeth, both eyes, both ears. Luckier than most.

But instead it was this.

He stared dumbly at the thing for a while, rain dripping from the soaked mop of hair on his head, running through his eyes and into the crook at his mouth. As always, the rain burned like kisses. Teeth crooked, he smiled.

He used those teeth to bite the thing. He spat in disgust.

Not gold. Not even silver. Tart, bitter. Something less.

Fumbling with dead fingers- they’d been dead as long as he could remember- he thumbed the catch.

And stared in amazement at the angel.

“Bootiful,” he murmured to himself. “Bootiful.”

Suddenly horribly self-aware, he dropped to a crouch, a cornered animal, and glanced around himself.

There were noises in the gloom.

But then there always were.

The moans of the crawlers.

The cries of the unlucky- or more accurately the unluckiest.

The zing of distant strikes, growing ever closer as the storm moved overhead.

But those were all background noises to him, as familiar as a mothers embrace. There was something sharper. Something that promised danger.

The night came alive with whistles.

“Murder! Murder! Murder!”

Desperate, his eyes raced across the buildings around him.

There!

A glowing red eyed winked at him. One of Pretty Boy Jack’s eyes. Always watching. Always whispering.

And now calling for his jackboots.

“Stand and be judged!”

“Ell I will,” he spat.

He leapt over the body of the once-upon woman and took off sprinting down the street. His legs worked fine and now they carried him whistling into the gloom.

But still the whistles followed.

Pretty Boy Jack only recruited the fittest. Oh his boys could talk, they loved to talk. And they could kick, especially when you were down. He knew.

If anything, the whistles grew closer. Winking red eyes tracked him through the city until, in desperation, he climbed into the rooftops.

If the streets were ankle deep in sludge and refuse, the streets above were scoured clean by the storm.

You could run here, of course you could, but each step threatened to send you plummeting to the ground below. And when you fell in the green city, you rarely rose.

As he feared they would, the whistles followed.

He kept the thing tight in his hand, the sharp edges biting into the corners of his palm.

“Stop there!”

The air crackled around them.

He kept going, leaping over gaps as they appeared. Lungs burning he pushed on.

“Nut getin dun fr sum stret filli,” he panted. “Nut me.”

He was chosen.

Chosen above all others.

A streetrunner, a skyrunner, from his youngest age.

And now chosen, chosen by an angel.

The thing burned in his hand.

The whistles were fading now, lost in his wake.

“Chosen!” he screamed; the thing held above his head in one tight fist. “Chosen, abuv al oders!”

The green city crackled and spat, the air crackling with heat. White light flashed, skin bubbled.

He rode the lightning.

The thing came to rest in a shallow puddle, the rain only a mild irritant to its skin.

Under its own direction, the clasp popped free, and an image shone out to the off-colour sky.

Pale skin, a gentle smile, eyes that glittered.

An angel.

Perfect.

The green city cackled, and life went on.