Thousands of twinkling lights come to life as darkness slowly swaddled the Mega City. Kevin Wade raised his left hand to his temple and traced his fingers along his new eye piece, it resembled a 'T' lying on its side. He fingered its edges, feeling where it had been soft-grafted to his temple.
The upgrade costs were a risk of course, the extra processing power allowed him to perform more daring city drops, however if he died whilst doing one his soul would be transferred to The Order's shadow servers and he would pay his debt in the afterlife.
Kevin felt his heart beating tightly against the underside of his brakesuit. He hated this part, waiting for that initial feeling as he leapt into oblivion. He was standing atop of the highest SkyVac tube on a monochrome service platform ten metres long and only two across. Mottled pink clouds smudged over the horizon below the darkening grey-blue etched sky, darkening rain clouds swirled around a kilometre below his feet.
Wade closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds. As he let it out slowly, he felt himself transition into his avatar, Banzo707, City Dropper, a soft tone beeping in his ear told him that there were thirty seconds to go.
Wade opened his eyes, noticing the small globecams circling closer to catch the moment of the drop. They would follow him down to the depths of the Mega City, their job to record his fall for the FIM junkies. If it was a good drop there would be a lively auction for the FIM recording, so they could relive his terror at their later leisure.
Around two hundred and fifty metres to his right, a bright yellow beacon indicated where the endpoint would be more than three kilometres below.
Unlike the Topworlders Wade didn't have a filament that allowed him to control his autonomous biological responses, if he did, then he would use them at this point to turn off his fight or flight response, but then his FIM wouldn't be worth nearly as much. He bunched his fists into a ball.
Ten seconds.
He pushed his tongue onto the roof of his mouth, scraping it along his teeth, trying to rid himself of the metallic taste.
Two seconds.
He broke into a run, two globecams stayed with him, the other two tracked ahead of him as yet more fanned out on individual trajectories. He got to the end of the platform and dived up and out at a forty five degree angle. He pointed his arms straight up over his head, bringing them slowly down till his hands were level with his shoulders. He started to spin as gravity took effect and pointed him down towards the city.
The hood on his brakesuit folded up around his head, instantly linking to his eye piece to show him his first checkpoint around five hundred metres below.
Wade used the flaps on the suit to steady his spinning, he brought his arms down by his side as he shot head down towards a hole that from this height looked just big enough to fit into.
A fraction of a second before his body hit terminal velocity, Wade activated the large flaps of his brake suit as he flattened to a more traditional freefall position. The suit shaved off around forty percent of his speed as he shot through the pipe at thirty metres per second.
Wade's eyepiece gave a low melodic hum as he passed the first checkpoint, He brought his legs up underneath him in a crouch, he had failed the first attempt almost immediately in virtual and so was extra tense. As he came out of the pipe he saw his target, a suspension cables for one of the lower SkyVac tunnels.
The brakesuit would take the shock, keeping his bones safe, but that was the danger, he had to hit the cable so as to pitch him backwards towards the next checkpoint. If he hit it wrong or overshot there was a kilometres drop to the floor and the brakesuit wouldn't save him, at least not on the setting he had it. Which was the point, the bigger the danger, the more real fear he would be feeling, the higher he would be able to sell his FIM for.
Wade felt the cable flex almost imperceptably as he hit at exactly the right angle. He spread his arms wide again as he rotated backwards his head slowly pointing downwards again. He flashed past an open Skyway, at this speed he barely registered the people stood on it watching him fall. The next checkpoint was a covered dome Skyway connecting three buildings, below was a waiting cable whose only function was to act as a tool to swing him to the next checkpoint.
The skyway formed a neat triangle between the buildings, the space in the middle was around fifty metres. Wade used the brakesuit tentatively, the pitch off the cable above had pretty much centred him. He was sensitive to over correction, if he hit the skyway death would be instant.
His eyepiece lit up the monofilament cable tethered below the skyway. Wade stretched out his hands, the gecko function in the brakesuit gloves switched on long enough for him to grab the cable. Wade could hear the hydraulics in the suit working overtime as they cushioned the impact and prevented his arms from being ripped from their sockets. Wade let go of the cable exactly one and a half seconds after grabbing it, he had been flung out away from the triangular skyway above. He was low enough now to see the tops of the corporate buildings with their litanies of executive air traffic buzzing between them like bees going from hive to hive.
Wade felt like his heart was going to burst, his eyes were wide and his jaw was tense as he focused intently on his next checkpoint, a wide, flat metal support strut. Just as he approached he used his brakesuit to spin him round as he spreadeagled himself and hit the strut, which was angled at around sixty degrees to the ground, hard on his back, the gecko function kicking in again preventing him from bouncing off the support.
As he slid down the strut on his back, knees tucked up to his chest, he felt in his side thigh-pocket for his grapple gun, he got it loose and held it with both hands tightly to his chest. It was possible to make it down without his grapple gun, but the higher up you dropped it, the less likely it became.
His suit's gecko function was reaching its operational limit, it was almost time for his launch. He was level with the top of a building now, he was close enough to see the Vinkey Corp logo running down four floors on one edge. Wade readied himself, half a second later he pushed his legs out and down into the strut and pushed outwards, at the same time he fired the grapple gun, now he was falling belly-first again, far below he could see the first of what could earnestly be called street-level at the top of the Mega City.
The microfilament from Wade's grapple gun found purchase on a support beam somewhere below him in the darkness. He braced himself, this was the first of the death traps, the part of the course designed actively to kill you should you be less than millimetre perfect. The microfilament went taut as he fell past the point it had grabbed, the shoulders on his brakesuit once more working to negate the forces that would rip his arms off as the line snapped tight and flung him back up and forwards.
He fell through a gap only just big enough for his prone body, sound whizzed around his head as it bounced off the walls of the walkways he fell between. Wade fired the grapple gun again straight down this time.
The upper city flashed past him at near terminal speed, somewhere below the microfilament attached itself to what Wade hoped was the correct superconductor cable, it should be, it was highest one and it was slightly above his line as sight as he fell.
Once again he felt the line snap tight as he fell past the anchoring point, this time his swing was a lot more violent as the line separated itself from the gun. He wasn't quite ready for the force of it and the gun dropped from his hand, he thought he heard it hit something, but he didn't have much time to process as a quarter second later he slammed into his next checkpoint, a steeple belonging to a building buried in a tangle of s-con cables and old walkways.
Rushing waves of panic washed through Wade's body, they had only given him time for three practice drops in virtual, two of which he'd failed. On the drop he did pass, Wade still had his grapple gun at this point, which was probably the lowest part of the drop you could get away with not having one. However he did not have enough time to practice this bit. Which was the point, the sorts of people who could afford these FIM recordings wanted the person doing the recording to genuinely be fighting for their survival. That way they could experience a near-death situation without having to put themselves in actual danger. Wade suspected that was only part of it, the thrill of having enough money to make somebody go through this must also have played a big part.
Wade was sliding down the steeple feet first, facing inwards. If he had still had the grapple gun he would be firing at the face, which would eventually enable him to stand up and run round the other side for his next jump point. Instead he'd have to take the alternate and harder route. His eyepiece registered him missing his jump point with a high-pitched ping and an accompanying jingle to tell him that a new route had been plotted down for him. What little light there was down here came mainly from above, this was the upper parts of the Lower City, not much was here apart from the ruins of ancient buildings and unfinished regeneration projects.
With great reluctance Wade tore his concentration from the steeple face and looked down over his right shoulder. He spotted the next checkpoint around two hundred metres below and coming up fast. These were the sorts of jumps that were good to practice in virtual, the checkpoint was basically a thin slab of steel flat on the edge of a derelict skyscraper. Wade could see that he was going to have to slam into it face first then bounce off whilst twisting his body to face his next checkpoint a further fifty metres down, in what looked like a tangle of old gas pipes.
Wade had taken some Squirt before the drop, but only a tiny bit, too much and the drop became too easy. Squirt was a time dilation drug and without it performing a city drop would result in the dropper being smeared all over the various buildings, skyways, walkways, magtrain rails, ducts, pipes, cables and skyvac tubes they went plummeting past at near terminal speeds. Wade wondered briefly if any part of him would actually hit the ground in such a scenario.
At the exact split second Wade's instincts told him that the time to jump free of the steeple he was currently sliding down, he pushed his legs straight with all his might as he arched his back and twisted in the air. He fought to bring his legs out in front of him, catlike. The steel slab, bathed in virtual yellow light came up at him fast, he bent his legs to brace for impact. Half a second later his upper body slammed into the sheer side of the skyscraper.
Without a truly conscious thought, Wade activated his brakesuit to further cushion the impact and then deliver an opposite force, pushing him out away from the building as he fell.
He was in a nosedive now, arms above his head pointed like an arrow, heading for his next checkpoint, which he saw as a small yellow dot, barely bigger than his outstretched hand. Most of it was obscured by an old walkway that had appeared to have been sheared off around halfway along its length to leave it hanging like a panting tongue on a hot day. In the second and a quarter it took him to fall to the checkpoint Wade used his brakesuit to rotate ninety degrees, giving him a better view of where he was heading.
City drops were designed by high level Quantum AIs. First they took a 3D rendering of an area within a district in the Mega City. Typically the area would be roughly cylindrical, with a radius of around a quarter of a kilometre, and a height of no less than three kilometres. They used a mixture of modified globecams and maintenance nanobots to plot a course from top to bottom. The best courses were ones that had a good amount of death traps. These were invariably, but not limited to clusters of barely-held wreckage, mainly under the levels of what one would consider the Top World of the Mega City.
The more drops there were, the greater the appetite for death traps as this increased the adrenaline of the dropper to what FIM junkies described as; orgasmic.
Once a Q-AI had designed the drop, it would either be put out for tender amongst the droppers, or privately sent to preferred players whom would then get a chance to practice it in virtual. Depending on who was proposing the drop would determine how many practices were allowed before the real attempt.
The checkpoint was small and hung above what looked like a nasty death trap, it looked like one of the failed support stanchions for the walkway above. Wade saw that he would have to grab it and swing free of the sharp tangle of wreckage that had wedged itself between the building and some abandoned magtrain lines. Again he could hear and feel the brakesuit's hydraulics working overtime as he grabbed the narrow stanchion at just the right place.
To Wade's shock the stanchion creaked and started to buckle with his weight. His mind was on maximum alert as he scanned the gloom below him, his next checkpoint was still not showing up via his eyepiece. A high pitched keening emitted from somewhere above his head as the stanchion from which he hung began to give way. As it did so, it begun to swing out and away from the walkway above to hover above some particularly nasty looking spikes. Just before the stanchion snapped Wade saw his next checkpoint come into view a further four hundred metres below.
He used all his might and some aid from the brakesuit to swing his legs forward with as much force as possible, letting go of the stanchion less than a tenth of a second before it gave way. His face was a tight grimace as he flashed past the complicated snarl of sharp, twisted steel alloy.
He could see now, the checkpoint was a mesh of wires at the bottom of an old stone shaft that looked like it had housed some carbon scrubbers at one time or another. The brakesuit kept his speed at below forty metres per second, just about slow enough for the tangled mess of wires to break his fall allowing him to grab one of the cables and swing out towards his final checkpoint.
Wade crashed through the snarl of cables, briefly thrashing his arms about to grab hold of one of the sleek black lines. All of a sudden he was swinging out towards The Dome, the wire wasn't quite long enough to get him above it, for the last thirty metres or so he dropped using his forward momentum to land on all fours.
The slope on the roof of the Dome allowed him to get up and run down and around it at a fairly steep angle. The last portion was sheer though, if he had still had his grapple gun at this point he would have fired it up to one of the supporting struts of the magtrain line and swung out to a fancy ending. Instead he was going to have to do it the rough way.
As he neared the sheer portion of the Dome's roof, he spun round to slide on his stomach, his arms stretched above his head, his feet pointed, ready to react to the small lip that rimmed the lower part of the roof. As he hit it, he activated the hydraulic pumps at the front of his brakesuit and pushed off into a high backward somersault. The drop was another thirty metres to the ground, the brakesuit took most, but not all of the force of impact.
He remained crouched, motionless. It was done.
He stood up, and there she was. The author's of this particular drop had decided there needed to be a sexual element to this.
Wade knew who she was, PinkGus24, she featured in a lot of the sex FIMs. He walked towards her, she had had the full suite of pheromonal upgrades. Even though he knew this intellectually he still felt his lust rising.
His eyepiece pinged to let him know there had been bids for his drops already. Two bidders weren't interested in the sexual side, and offered to pay him right then and there if he transferred the FIM immediately. Before Wade could reply another three bidders guaranteed him a price at least twice the size if he went through with it.
He shrugged and carried on walking, the ever-present globecams lifted into the air, buzzing and crackling quietly on their tiny Z-P engines. If anyone wanted to see the rest of the action, they would have to buy the FIM.
PinkGus smiled at Wade, her silver/pink hair glistening wet.
Oh well thought Wade, at least this time my prize is more than just a few creds and the right to keep on living.
The vibrant hum of the Mega City above hushed to a distant murmur as the two of them stepped inside the prepared room and closed the door.
End Drop.
Mega City Tales is a collection of short stories based around the universe of my upcoming novel; Soulhunter. Follow and subscribe for more adventures!
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