Flicker

rey concrete and purple rust and worn black macadam are the colors that I wear. They flow from me; twisting, turning crazed in the harsh sodium glare, and I cringe from the wash of light and cower beneath an overturned semitrailer, shivering in the pain of exposure.

Fluted breath softly illuminating this private small ruined space.

Rust, steel, petroleum byproducts, rubber, lubricant, paint. All ring me. My outer shell flickers quickly before settling on a decayed brownish green, the muddy colors of the bottom of the world. There is a dripping from somewhere far off from my ear as rainwater loses potential energy given it in evaporation and seeks the water table in a constant patient trickle. The sodium light, I notice, is not steady; the bright brown/magenta cone is strobing slowly and irregularly. I crawl beneath a rusted plate of metal flooring and watch the pavement cracks bounce light towards me in the darker place.

The street is empty.

Fourteen tires and seven trashcans, twenty-nine cars or hulks thereof before the altar of the smashed hauler watch me quietly, passing no judgement in their resting time. Their usefulness by design long gone, they have found other ways to help; quieter, more passive but perhaps more vital than before, they hide me from the eyes.

My nakedness recoils from the dirt and water and cold of the world. I flicker reddish momentarily and settle back to brown. Voices flow in sinuous tendrils around the corners of my hideaway, small vortices of fear promising pain. A shudder wracks the shell covering me, which cycles slightly, uneasily in response.

Chroman-

The voices again. Following. Always always always. Unable to restrain my feet, I slide from behind the truckster and ride the colorwaves towards the curb area, moving in my natural random rhythm as the shell seeks mightily to shield me from sight. I feel the colors sliding, as usual, as the scenes of the street play themselves silently over me, washing in small waves of picture and pattern before the wall of the ruined edifice reaches out laughing to grasp my fingertips as my body folds itself into the natural depressions and curves of it to aid the shell. I am suddenly brickface, and the feeling is-peculiar. I cannot place the sensation. An image of daffodils washes through my mind and I cannot tell where it comes from. Before I can question, it is gone and I am left with bare stalks waving in my head.

Chroman, where to find you

Where you gonna run to

Save the spirit save the soul

Chroman sliding downtown heading for his hole

Find him seek him

feel him kill him

hang him cure him

wear him eat him

Chroman-

All the old songs, the songs of the hunting days. An older group, this, then. The wall creaks behind me in warning, the bones of the city stirring in recongnition of my presence, warning, hiding, watching when able. I spin around the corner to a scene of manycolored violence; blands pacing watching feeling for me, cans flying from unfocussed kicks, ruins vibrating to hostile feet with chi shaking stones from their beds. I freeze, instinct ruling, as the shell too stops changing and locks down. Unable to move and break the mode, I stand and watch as the only change comes from the shifting pattern across my eyes. I have time to thank the net that the retinal changers still function in lockdown.

Sticks, bars, guns, flame, the old ones all seek me in their hands. I can see the proscription from where I stand, and it makes no change in my heart and stomach to recognize the esteem in which I am held. No change. I cannot offer what they expect, and they cannot offer what might save me. Frozen in mode, my very being displaying its nature proudly for all to see, I watch the throng grow nearer still looking behind trashcans and ruins. I wonder, briefly, if they have an idea of what they will see when I am discovered. Will they see a shape they know, a pattern they don't, a sound they shouldn't? The mystery of the method of my demise heightens the morbid fascination as I watch the lead bland step cautiously from the curb onto the dead and barren street. The city strains, trying its level best, but cannot produce and sinks back with an apologetic sigh. I understand. I nod to myself to tell it so; that there are no vehicles to use is a truth long in place, although city's central at times steadfastedly refuses to acknowledge that its purpose is superfluous. It cannot help. It cannot die. It cannot heal.

Interest sparks within me as the leader rounds the hauler and spies my locked form. A wide smile on him, he advances, calling; there are answering hails from around the scene. Smoke drifts lazily across; I have time to notice he is sweating in the cold before the mode breaks. I break with it, pouring hard into conflict with his scream hanging only in the back of my mind; his eyes dulling over as his trachea hits the ground beside him with a terrible sound that cannot reach me now. I dance among them, the shell dances with me, laughing in colors as a trashcan, a wreck, the flames pour over me. I feel City laughing, somewhere below the streets where it still lives and dimly feels. I cannot laugh. I cannot die. I cannot heal.

Somewhere above the waste the sun beats futilely on the wall of toxins with clenched fists. Down below the sky changes color slightly, reflected flame changing albedo with the backlight clouds. Fortieth street is behind me as I flow uptown. There are no crowds gathered; no cars rush, and the street is quiet. In the middle of the intersection of Forty-second and Madison, a Cop sits silently with its signals hanging loose and forlorn. I hear voices. The fear returns.

Motion ceases instantly, the world freezing in around me as a squirrel's, long time since I saw one but I remember the inquisitive fearful pop motion as it played across a singed sward in the park. The avenue caresses me as I lie across a manhole, and flicker it through myself. Four of them round the corner, empty-faced. One carries food; the odor is strong through the paper sack he holds and the other three surround him, reduced to bodyguards of their sustenance. Power surges beneath, the shock is strong and the surprise no less as City's muscles flex beneath my gut. The manhole quivers, and I feel the flicker betrayed as eyes swing to my frozen form. I gaze back from behind a web of optic lies, protected thankfully from the full locking of our stares. Point man motions the others, who stop; he advances slowly, displaying the short sword he bears. I do not move. Staring at him, I feel the flicker wanting it, and feel the calculations start. Wondering, as usual, how they were emplaced within me, I rise from the ground as mode breaks and kill him, emptying his brainpan onto the cold concrete. I suppress flicker with an effort of will and dash the optic blindfold from my face, chromatics running down my cheeks as rain. The others stare, and flee; flicker moves to chase and I beat it down. I sit, and the blood washes from me in a sudden hot downpour. I raise my eyes to it, wishing for the pain, but there is none. I cannot hurt. I cannot die. I cannot heal.

On Fiftieth street I meet another, seeing only the delay of his shell, watching as the image of the drunken lamppost flickers infinitismally with the movement of my head. I nod, and wash the flicker; an answering ripple of not-quite-color delineates a manshape before me. We drop back to crawl and slide away from each other in the City's dance.

Fifty-seventh street calls to me from the West, its broken vista opening before me as I scurry across. A wall of flame rises at Broadway, barricades packed with steel, stone, flesh and flame. From behind, the wink of proscription; the gun flashes, a distant cousin of the flicker, causing the pavement near me to dimple with the flat spang of impact. The blands wait, watching as I dart sideways. They rule there. Behind the wall, sounds, confusion; I feel mode locking down and turn my head so as to see them while immobilized. As mode takes me down into the gutter, fetid water flowing past my collarbone, I see a bland crest the barricade with gun in hand. He looks towards me. Not at me; mode won't let him. The gun is held at the ready, both his hands wrapped around it in a prayer for the dead that lie beyond his wall. I feel mode wanting him. I feel flicker dissecting him. I do not move; mode has not broken.

He clambers down the slope of debris expertly, sliding across without injury. Another rises into view behind him. I hear City's frustration. Beyond the wall, City lies exposed, its shell broken and its guts torn up. The subway doesn't run there anymore.

His gun quivers, betraying tension. I watch the muscles of his wrists stand out in fear and excitement, unknowing of the closeness of his death. Mode holds me and I beat against it, its excitement leaking into me at the nearness of his blood and the dullness of his shell. Mode breaks at the instant he locates me; the street rotates lazily away as the gun speaks. I feel the brief slap of kinetics across one knee as my hands rise and flicker laughs out. His time ends. Mine does not. Above, the other guard shouts and unleashes forbidden hell across the street, dancing eager marbles that sing of broken cohesion and doom. Mode takes me, then, pulling me back down the block and into the manhole in a broken choreography of evasion and maneuver as his rounds fail to connect. I feel them strike around me and nudge their way into City.

As I lower myself into the depths of City and the approving darkness, I feel the last bullet strike the back of my head. Flicker stops it a tenth of a millimeter later, the kinetics transformed into a splash of illumination around the darkness of the manhole. Broken wiring and dripping fluids leap at me in the strobing reaction, then there is only the thud of my fall and the plink as the spent round drops beside me. Hissing at the loss of color, I slide across the floor and into the tunnel that calls to me. The pain in my head is comforting, urging me on into the underdark.

There is no doubt about the sound. Above the clattering din of the Steyr, I could hear the sound. An instant later it is overlaid with the dull wet noise of Scot's body hitting pavement with the peculiar signature of death. Anguish rises in my throat for a moment, but no more; this scene is too familiar. Anger follows, and in a moment of blind fury I throw myself over the barricade towards the manhole and the site of that last impotent ricochet. I heard it hit him. I saw the flash. Fucking chroman isn't playing by the rules, of course; that's the whole reason for this godawful mess. New York altered, not just the limiteds but the whole fucking mod, a-fucking-1 on the lethality scale.

Shouts and hands try to restrain me, but it is too late, and I'm too far gone now-I know if I stop to return, out here in clear zone, I'll be roachfood. The manhole beckons, still dark. I dive for it without hesitation. The bottom is concealed by shadows, but I manage to roll and not hit anything important. The Steyr is clutched above me, safe and dry, and the bottom is fairly soft-perhaps earth, perhaps rot, it's hard to tell. The smell is the same as everywhere. I have a moment of panic as I realize I can't tell which direction the bastard went, but the world is merciful; there is only one tunnel out, through which I throw my body.

I suppose there's really no explaining why I went. No one goes under and comes back unchanged, if they return at all. I stop, panting heavily, and listen; the sound of slithery flight is audible. A deaths' head grin, and we're off again, fitted stones in the walls of the tunnels rushing by in he sound of my burning breath.

Around the next corner, there is a slight wrongness to the darkness, and the Steyr speaks of its own volition, projectiles whining down the tunnel. The muzzle flash lights a corpse hanging from the wall, its bleached, stripped skill still sporting a yellow hardhat and leather toolbelt neatly draped about its rotting midriff. The Con Edison logo is still clear above the eyesockets that stare peacefully through the madness. I snarl in frustration and brush past.

The bland is in the tunnel! I feel him following me, and mode makes querulous advances, unsure of how to respond. Flicker pours black around me and the shell displays it, gripping the darkness with all hands and wrapping it around me. I stop moving, hoping to entice mode into lockdown, but it doesn't work. The reset cycle jitters on, the environment outside that of mode's expert conflict programming. What to do? I feel City around me, urging me, but to what I cannot say. Fear elevates my gut and I blindly scurry through a right-hand turn. I can hear City's denizens about me as they rouse themselves from their sleep of maintenance. Chittering, scurrying, they wash past towards my trail, towars the bland following me there. They will see the proscription he carries. They will enforce City's directive. I stop, sliding in the muck, and wait. Much noise, much motion, then a brief blaring violence of the gun comes. Once, long, then again, then nothing. Silence. Moments later, the invisible masters of the underdark slide past me, unhurried this time. City feels to me, and I quiver with the realization. I can walk now. I look up as I do, searching for a manhole to lift me from the world. It is many blocks before I find one.

Fucking bots. The tunnel is alive with them, and they're too small and numerous for the Steyr to help- I waste its ammo in one long burst, waving it around the mob. Many fall, smashed backwards and into the muck by the impacts, and broken metal and plastic and silicon flies about me as the gun roars its hunger. Then it is empty, clicking softly on an empty magazine, as they are within feet of me. I turn to run, stumbling once and losing the now-useless gun before pelting back down the underground as fast as I am able. There are various crunching noises behind me, but when I look back there is nothing but blackness. The corpse of the Con Edison man grins at me in pity as I flee past it, fear driving my feet-there, there's light ahead, the manhole I came down...I leap convulsively, throwing my hands out to the sides of the hole and pulling myself from the earth in a quick usage of my last strength I burst from below, rolling on the street and shouting to prevent them shooting me in reaction and fear. There are answering yells, and as I run for the wall I hear bullets whine above me and an inhuman roar of pain/damage from behind. Then I am at the barrier, clawing, and I roll over the top, hitting my head painfully on a bit on unnamed junk before crashing to the ground and vomiting. Fucking chroman.

They're pissed I lost the gun, of course.

Jitter is the word as colors blaze in brief triumph across the shell. I wait quietly; wait for it to pass. The repairs have begun, and the shell is busily at work. The tendrils work within me, now, as they have, and my knee and head are alive with the wavelengths of the effort. I cannot change. I cannot die. I cannot heal.

Repair, however, ah, that is different - the bits of me and shell groping expertly for each other as they reform and blend, identity vanishing in the negotiation and compact of the shaping. Another bit of me lost to pain; another bit of shell gained in agony. There is a flash of red, bloodying the walls, before a fading teal lights the passgeway and then recedes to comforting black and brown and wall.

I find myself thinking of the bland. I try, for a moment, to imagine what it must have meant to him to descend into City, to venture where no friends wait and the walls themselves are his enemy. I, too, venture into friendless land; but the walls whisper to me and the streets hide my form.

He followed. Down here. The thought will not go away, and even as mode drives me up from the sitting position I have waited in and flicker ghosts me through the subterranean ways of my world, I feel the thought waiting behind the bright gleaming traceries of mode, back where the flesh resides. Wait, I will it silently. Stay. Mode brightens in response, almost angrily, and pushes me forward in mind and body as I lose sight of the thought and the manhole. Browns and greens and greys and blues and occasional reds and yellows rush across me. I feel the brief aching of a bit of purple wrapped about the silent shape of a bland that City has taken and brought to itself-the sharp needles of the white of the bones beneath sussurate over the shell and over the flesh that sinks slowly beneath it in fear and pain.

The watchfire is low, which means somebody's going to get his ass kicked eventually. I don't even wonder who; probably some kid, clutching his gun and already scared of the world, will be given a reason to be scared of his companions. Welcome to the world, kid; where're you from? North Dakota? Well hey, welcome to the big city. How long you been here? Oh, the whole time, of course, but before that? Ahh, a school trip. Where are you now? Down by Tenth? Nice place. Not too close to the burn. I'm sure you grew older watching the River with longing and fear, but forget it; nothing's coming across. Nothing ever has.

I sigh and finish the cigarette, taking a small fierce joy in the damage it does. Look, world, look at me. If you're going to try to kill me, why, you should be happy I'm helping. The butt sails away at the flick of my finger, orange sparks and white filter spinning quickly across a sinking plane which swiftly intersects the pavement and vanishes. I stand wearily and head back down Fifty-Seventh towards dispatch, not relishing the bitching out I'm going to get, but resigned to it at this point. I'm not disappointed.

The reaming takes about twenty minutes. The Colonel isn't interested in my reasons, which is good, because I have no fucking idea what they are; I'm too busy staring at a point four inches over his left shoulder as he rages. The Steyr seems to occupy a large portion of his tirade. On the one hand, I can understand his anger and fear; there's no resupply here. On the other, I'm sickened by the priorities, event-driven though they might be.

Finally, of course, he lets me go, and gives me a chit for a reissue. I stick my hands in my pockets (the left hand goes through, actually) and head uptown to Seventy-ninth, deep in the heart of Humanhattan. The armory is - sick irony - in the old Museum of Natural History. Underneath dinosaur skeletons, men in black jumpsuits reverently handle the weapons that may place us beside them. This place is the safest in the borough, and the most dangerous; although it is one of the most important buildings to us, containing as it does most of our hardware supplies, it is also therefore filled chockablock with what the City calls 'proscription.' Proscribed items such as guns are a mandatory immediate death sentence in this new kinder, cleaner New York, and thus anyone even caught near this building in the event of a breakthrough will most likely die with bits of their insides resting on the pavement near their outsides.

Not a pleasant thought. Mine turn back to that morning, and the chroman I almost had. You don't see many of them around nowadays; they're the big guns, brought out when there's somthing special to do or kill, and City wants to make absolutely sure it doesn't get fucked up.

No one's quite sure where they came from.

I don't think anyone wants to know, either. Bot, droid, borg-could be any. Only thing sure about them is they aren't human. I take the Steyr from the armorer behind the display counter, where flint tools and stone pestles have been shoved aside to make room for a stack of handguns which rest haphazardly, gleaming dully in their coatings and small LEDs shining quietly near their breeches. I already have one of those, strapped to my leg; I don't think I've ever used it. If things get that bad, likely as not I'll not be able to worry about it.

The armorer droned patiently at me as he explained the differences in this model Steyr from the familiar GSE-9 I lost in the sewers. Slightly higher ammo capacity, and a different ammo entirely, caseless shells which allow it to fire faster since it doesn't have to eject the empties. This, more importantly, means it shouldn't jam nearly as frequently-not that the old one did either, after all the care I put into it. The thought of that many hours of my time and attention lying in a pile of rot or being pulverized by City's exorcists irritated me, and I gripped the new one tighter. It's charge LED is lit green, meaning its batteries are full. It can fire mechanically, if it runs out of power, but it's faster to ignite the rounds electronically; it saves the cocking and firing cycles.

Jesus, I don't know how I pick all that shit up. I sound like a John Bircher from Before. Shouldering the new weapon, I left the Museum. Not due anywhere until watch at dusk, I headed west, sparing a glance for the Park over my shoulder. The Park's fairly safe, as humans are still better at negotiating nature than machines; it's overgrown itself in the past few months, which helps, except for a few craters or burn scars.

Near the River, but not too close, I light my last cigarette. Some people hoard them; I don't, figuring the sooner I run out, the sooner I can quit. Somehow, though, that bastard Chance keeps resupplying me. Probably wants me to quit on my own, but hell, cancer's the least of my worries.

The largest one is the Chroman. I swear he looked at me, and I swear I could see his eyes, and I swear I felt something when our gazes met. Staring across the River brings no peace; all that is there is the blackened scar of Jersey, umoving and lifeless. I can't see over the ridge, and it's not often we can get far enough up the taller buildings to look, what with no power. Those who do, however, say there's nothing to see; the wreckage goes on and on, New York's own violent spasm of rage pushed outward from its borders - how far? No one knows. We're pretty sure something's still out there; every once in a while, lightning flashes from the ground over the horizon, and once in a great while sparks fall from high above. As I watch, I hear a hissing tearing rip, and I turn to watch the bolts of light zip up from the massdriver at World Trade, vanishing into the darkening blue. Out along their trail, there's a brief burst of light, and I can imagine the twinkle of shattered metal and plastic, perhaps interspersed with shreds of flesh, tumbling down to the now unforgiving earth. The cigarette doesn't last long, and I turn to head back to Fifty-seventh.

The colors ripple over the aether, and the bandwidth settles momentarily to quiet, the roar of City easing down into silence for a microsecond. Into the gap, a blizzard of data flows, colors and sounds and wishes and plans, as City's minions coordinate. The silence of the bands is that of the water gap, swept clean by interstellar hydrogen; the stellar passageway opened to us for a brief time. All too soon, it is over, and the chaos closes down over us again. I shut my ears and wait for mode; standing in lockdown I can see the shapes of small life fluttering across the pavement. I have not eaten since...I cannot remember. I cannot die. I cannot heal.

Bones of buildings, bones of blands, bones of brothers; all lie twisted in the world about me. I can see my world from the outside in my mind's eye; a shell of images making an exploded sphere; the inner surfaces that which my eye can see. Would it reflect from the back? Would I see myself questing out? I cannot say.

There is a call, and I drop to the ground, flowing northwards towards Seventy-ninth. I listen, tasting, hearing; the Park. I am wracked with fear before flicker excises it and mode applauds, pushing my curling form over the ridges of the bottom. The Park. Blands rule there, mostly; the life is overwhelming, and there is no City to help and hide. There is no color save theirs; and although flicker is adept at washing Park, Mode is not as facile at flowing through it. Sixty-fifth street curls past me in a wave of broken concrete, the nose of a long-dead Metro-North train thrust up from the downbelow of Park Avenue through the mall. Pressed there by some unknown catastrophe, the eyeless front of the train stares quietly and blindly at the sky, waiting for its peace. It does not look at peace where it is; it looks like pain stood waiting for us to pass. I do, wincing inward as it washes over flicker and I feel its anguish. Flicker does not, though, and neither does mode; both can only think of North, now.

The street is not flat anymore. Even the blands were never able to achieve that fully; but in their time, it was not cratered and split, broken and black. Jutting slabs offer flicker a friendly visage; we laugh past them in oiled splendor with blocks vanishing south of us. Past Seventy-second. A lone and solitary tree waits proudly before Seventy-seventh street, poking leaves at the painful blue sky. Flicker does not pay it notice, merely ingests and washes it across me. Mode breaks, a little thing, and a leaf falls to the ground cut at the stem. Four hundred ninety-six of its brethren wait to share its fate in the months ahead; to share the drop, the fall, the impact, but not the quick flashing shred of mode's disgust as the green pulp is spread in my path over the next five blocks. I cannot imagine what mode has done and why; I cannot imagine at all at this time. My fingers tingle, the last small pat of chlorophyll and water dropping from them to bounce slowly into a crevice in the hardened skin of the world.

At Seventy-ninth I turn, to the left, to see the walls and life of the Park rising up. Green and brown and blue and yellow and orange and life are the colors that the Park wears, and so too then must I. I do not slow; the wall is before me, with pocks and cracks and veins of grime. Cresting it in one smooth wave, I feel Mode hesitate and release me as I drop to a level of overgrown grass. Flicker absorbs it, paints it, sends it flowing over my shell, and I freeze, not locked but still, as I search the area with eyes. No one is there. No blands to be seen. Find the hole, said City. Block it up. Kill it. Make it Wall.

Park has a strange surface; soft yet sharp, green yet...complex, colors split and waving, changing shape and size and hue with angles to the sun. The blue above is painful still, but muted here beneath the Life of trees. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve and there are still more, more flowing into sight at each moment; these are but those I could touch with nary more than a step. Counting is pointless; slinking to turn past a tree a motion catches our eye, Mode and I, and lockdown comes in a juddering impact that nearly topples me. My eyes, released even in lockdown, question; a squirrel hops past. Relief is a color; I can feel it washing over my shell and settling inward to meet at my core in a brief pulse of warmth. Mode is not so certain; it does not release, it does not break, for long moments of indecision, then it breaks, finally, and the squirrel does not see its fate as Mode grabs it, singing with the heat of Function as it ends the squirrel and spatters its hot blood on my hands.

I cannot imagine what Proscription dictated that the squirrel must die. Mode cannot interpret the Park; perhaps what is Proscribed is different here. The hole is here. It must be made wall. Mode urges me on, over low hills and rocks and trees, towards a location City has given that I have never seen.

Atop one low hill, as I slide across it, I see a pair of Blands-too late to lock, and too far to break; I freeze as they turn ot the sound of my passage, faint, faint but present. One moves a gun from shoulder to hand, searching. My eyes track his, intently. I can feel flicker waving grass across me, and after a moment or two he gives up, turning to his companion in conversation. Plant courses through me; power, and longing, and the two thousand three hundred forty-one blades of grass that even now support the weight of my shell and I.

The blands are standing atop the Hole! I can see it, now, a manhole pulled back to reveal a blackness. Mode is relieved at the sight of the manhole, familiar database comforting with data. I begin to edge closer, flattening myself to the grass and ground. Within ten feet, I feel the first cold touch of Lockdown and give myself to it, feeling joints lock as Mode gathers biological and mechanical resources. My eyes must be visible simply through the speed of their questing dart; constatly checking both blands, the hole, the area.

Mode breaks.

I scream forward silently, the first's Proscription bending and shattering with me as Mode hurls me forward. I feel a small touch of warmth as the second Bland dies, the only contribution to the world a few measly kilocalories of heat that had warmed his blood and would warm Mode for the next few minutes. I felt its gratitude. The first is on the ground making small noises of pain and fear while scrabbling at his ruined hand; I flow past him into the black to let the scent and sign of City earth envelop me. The tunnel beneath the Park traverses east-west; I glance down each but there is no sign of movement. City was not specific; I have no instructions as to direction, and I set out for the west and the enemy. It is a long journey; flicker almost restful in its slippery passage of black and brown and grey. There is no light save occasional cracks in the tunnel ceiling through which flow a dusty wan illumination and occasional inversed plumes of dust and grit. Blocks follow on blocks; I pour over the floor of the passage, looking up to see the corner blinding me.

Lockdown grabs in a stuttering wave of indecision before surrendering and allowing me to edge forward around the corner. There is no one there; but lights are visible faintly down the tunnel which exits the corner to run southwest for several blocks before fading into darkness and angle. There is nowhere to return to, and I continue on, wondering only now if the bland left at the entrance has passed on a warning. Steps and slides and motions and waves and walls and floor passing my hand; the feeling of earth and soil and stone and hiding darkness on the palms of Shell.

Mode considers, briefly (I can feel it) returning to the beginning of the hole and making it wall as previously instructed; I feel, however, that to make it wall at the far ends of the tunnel woud be preferable, and I remain in motion. The next corner turns the tunnel west again, and I crest its sideways ridge to find myself in a manhole, wires hanging from a ruined frame and conduits passing through the cramped space vomiting still lifes of sinuous faded color, greenish ends. Here, there is a brightness; the copper cladding and core of one conduit's wiring indicates it has been recently cut. Grasping one end at random, I move it slowly to find a black space behind it leading further to the west. Unable to even pause for decision now, I gird flicker about myself and quell Mode's misgivings long enough to squeeze into the aperture.

A cold shock of breeze startles us, and Lockdown holds me until it has passed. The brief waver of flicker's field washes momentarily from the brick and circled walls of the oubliette, before I look up and raise my arms in benediction to the exit.

The manhole yields with technological reluctance, leaving me to raise my arms through the resulting hole and lever myself up through it onto a street corner with no one in sight.

There are cars here. Actual, undamaged albeit no doubt nonfunctional vehicles await long-past owners in silent ranks of dust and faded brightwork; clouded plastic and tarnished aluminium. I examine them in passing as I seek shelter, noting the open fuel doors and empty, gaping holes behind telling of harvesting. Gasoline. City sighs, almost, within me, feeling the slight whispering sigh of energy now gone, perhaps to no more noble purpose than fire. Technology, civilization, City screams silently in my head, waste, ruin, squander. Fire was, for millenia, without it; now, its fruits go to kindle a flame humans have forgotten how to raise without technology's helping hand.

I keep silently silent, within myself, not trusting City's response if I mention that there is no reason to suppose it went for fire. The blands use vehicles, when there is need. City usually provides that need. I hear its eletromagnetic voice receding as its attention goes elsewhere, and I quiver behind the bumper of a sleeping beast before looking carefully for evidence of observers. There is none; and I must make the hole into Wall. I move to it; I caress the concrete and tarmacadam around it, and I gently flutter Shell's fingers over the steel ring that rounds it, before Mode rouses itself and shell rips the metal from the street in a rending screech and rumble of displaced stone and analog. Mode is in a rush, now, and I slide back to the curb, to grasp the sleeping automobile, and pull it after me to the hole before it can wake; to crush the front end and batter at the street with the engine compartment until there is a plume of dust and the pavement has crazed into thick squared-topped slabs, each with an iceberg of earth below it, and the sum have collapsed into the hole. The hole sighs and vanishes and leaves Wall. City knows, now, where the tunnel leads; and the denizens will follow me, will pull the walls of the tunnel in on itself in a small hailstorm of pebbles and soil and metal and concrete until there is naught left but the three-D shadow of a tunnel, a slight softness in the shape of a passage.

Look about; determine where, discover when. I am on the West Side, in the blands' neighborhoods. Humanhattan, they call it. Mode snorts savagely at the term. Looking back East, I see barricades between me and Park. There are no blands visible, but fires burn at several points. The sound of changing Hole to Wall was loud; will they come to see? I drop to crawl, comfortable closer to the stone and steel, and flicker washes greys and browns comfortingly over Shell. I turn and flow downtown, along the ruins of Broadway, hoping to find a hole, to flow down, and in, and vanish from the world.

Eighty-sixth street, rising in the distance; flowing towards me. South of it smoke rises, in many small pillars, from the unseen plains behind the barriers erected across the avenue. I quest about, flow lapsing some hundred meters from the intersection, and slip beneath another silent automotive protector. I cannot see- no. They are there. Shapes move along the top of the barrier, Proscription in their hands. I am north of Humanhattan. I am west of Park. The blands own Park. There are subway entrances on both sides of the avenue, forlorn cracked globes rising atop poles of ochred green that flank the once-past stairways down. There are great piles of steel and stone atop the stairways; blocked by humans, to deny us access to their levels.

Still. There are other ways into subway. Beneath a ruined bus, I find a grating that yields to my touch, shell punching through the corroded steel with the shriek of collapsing metal and debris. There are shouts, then, from the barrier a block downtown. Mode considers lockdown, I can feel it; but they are too far away and do not loose the dangers that they carry. I drop beneath the street, into dark, into City, into home.

Two levels down the tunnels wait. I stand, waiting, in the middle of the remnants of the track, listening for City. There should be, might be, relays left down here. Ears and eyes of City for trains long dead. Nothing but silence on City's bands, however, nothing but blackness so still and deep that flicker doesn't even bother to wash the shell but simply lets it sink to flat cold black as I drop and flow downtown. I glance up, once, as I pass the platform at Eighty-Sixth; but all the exits are blocked by debris and barricade. I can hear blands shouting orders and shifting positions, perhaps waiting for one such as I to rise above the platform's lip in order to Proscribe him.

I ignore them, continue downtown, searching for a hole.

Lincoln Center. Still looks good, you know, even with all the stone and concrete washed with pigeonshit and acid rain. Several craters have been blown in the outer walls of Alice Tully Hall, and the Metropolitan Opera is missing most of its grand glass panels. The shape, however, is the same, and nothing large enough to destroy the fantasy lurks if you squint at it upwards and imagine the crowds and light and life Before.

Shit.

I wish for a cigarette, but perhaps this time I'm lucky, and none will turn up. Then I can quit. The Steyr is a weight against my side on its sling, a slightly different weight than its predecessor, which throws off the almost unconscious rhythm I've adopted to prevent the gun from bruising my side or making noise when walking.

Near the subway entrance at Sixty-sixth, there's a bench that has survived. I move to it wearily, sit, rest my legs. Around me there are a few inhabitants; a family of five sits beneath a makeshift lean-to and watches something cook atop a fire. Squab, most likely. At least the damn things are plentiful, and we seem to be killing them fast enough that disease hasn't been a problem in the pigeon population. Also, they're stupid. Which means that it doesn't take precious ammunition or fuel to catch them; just patience and a decent throwing arm will do the trick. I see, however, that the father has a longbow slung across his shoulders. The fiberglass and steel, once emerald green, still has the legend Stryker spelled across it in white lacquer; a trademark of the maker. It contrasts with the ragged jacket he wears, which falls across his arms as he rests them on the shoulders of his children who stand at his side and watch the flames.

At least they look well-fed. Starvation isn't really a problem, not as long as we have Park and the urban wildlife to live on. Even spices, staples and other goods are still in fairly good supply; there are so painfully few of us that those goods left in the city when it began still offer choices for our meals these years later.

I'd kill for an orange, though.

Across the plaza, several people cluster around the broken front of what was once a record store, apparently just socializing. I can hear laughter and the sound of metal as they trade toasts and jest. Humans are amazing.

The sound, when it comes, is unexpected, freezing my chest and bringing the Steyr up in a vicious snap of motion that arouses a twinge of pain in my arm. I force it to relax, and search.

Others in the plaza heard it, too- the rending shriek of metal stressed beyond its limits. People are drifting into open areas near the center of the street, weapons in hand, and - damn it - they're looking at me. I have the gun, I'm wearing black, I'm a protector. Fine.

I motion for silence, and wave the father back. He nods, bundles up his children and his wife and they silently run for the building on the east side of the street. Perhaps twenty others stop as they come near me, holding items ranging from a hunting rifle to jagged makeshift short swords. One boy has an aluminum baseball bat.

The noise has not repeated. We scan the plaza, carefully; then the boy with the bat whistles softly, tremblingly, and points. Following his gaze, we turn to the subway entrance, shut and buried- except now, it's twitching, pieces of concrete and steel pushed up from below and moving. There must be fifty tons of rubbish there, the pieces moving weighing in at a ton or so each. That's not good.

I wave everyone back, and they flow away towards Lincoln Center and the buildings. I strip a round from the Steyr's magazine to check the feed, catch it in the air from force of habit and need and place it in a pouch on my belt. The concrete continues to flex, and I wait and watch it.

This never gets any easier. Things that once meant luxury and safety and freedom now mean violence and killing and death; the palaces we built have come to take our lives, and every time it comes to me like this I stand in its path and shiver, clutching the gun to my chest in benediction as I wait to destroy.

Can I call it killing? Are they alive? Who knows. All I know is that we've gone from builders to renders, and the fruits of both labors surround us all the time now.

A large chunk of concrete, on the surface, shifts and rolls, exposing blackness below before rubble falls into the edges of the hole. There is no sign of steel or plastic or other bot-like materials, and I stare fixedly into the hole, waiting for it to appear.

The ripple in the pavement ten feet to the right of the hole nearly escapes my notice, but my heart sees it and suddenly the fear is back, familiar, cold and hard. I raise my face to the heavens, sound the warning-

"CHROMAN!" Shit, my voice isn't up to this any more. I'm not up to this, please, let me out- but there's no hope for that, and I think of Scot with his insides out and the rage returns to fill the void. The flicker was moving, slowly, downtown; it has stopped at my shout. There is a rustle from around the plaza as humans flee behind cover, and then the eyes open in midair to look at me in burnt gold liquid stares of implacability.

The Steyr is leaping, a live thing, and the cyclic rate is so high that I cannot control the gun as it sweeps upwards. The eyes vanish, air around their position flickering, and the bullets scythe through-nothing. He's moved. Shit.

I jump and roll, landing behind a low ragged line of concrete that might once have been a wall in the middle of Broadway. Looking over the top, I see nothing; so I brace the Steyr and wait, there, for the flicker to return.

When it does, it's behind me. Naturally.

The bland has seen me, heard me, felt me- I know not which, but his proscription speaks to me as he speaks to the sky, the old scream of fear/hate/warning/release. Mode dances me sideways, flicker washes cool and firm, the broken concrete flows about me, the bullets stop. I freeze, waiting, and see the human vanishing over a broken section of City's bones- I flow after. He cannot see me. He looks in the wrong place. I cannot feel him. I ache in the wrong place. The proscription quests, searching, sniffing, feeling, back and forth; I watch from behind as he scans the open spaces. This one is experienced; he has hunted others like me-

No.

I realize, then, that he has hunted me. Scream of warning as Mode recognizes him too, the bland who followed into the underdark, into the tunnels, whom City could not kill because he was too quick. Danger, Mode wails, This one knows you knows us sees flow kills. Flicker, unsure of what to do, washes slightly, and although I know Flicker is utterly silent, I watch the back of the bland's head freeze, his (gun) stop moving. He knows I am here. He knows. How. How how how could he, the concrete grey and black and white that drapes me from his view remains, flicker, still and quiet now, hiding me. I wait for Lockdown, but nothing comes; Mode is frightened, a new and terrible thing- it waits for me. I wait for it. We wait for him. He turns, slowly, stares past me, searches the area-

Shit. I know he's back there, I can feel the fucker. There's nothing to be seen, though; he must not be moving. I can see a few people furtively sliding out of the plaza at the edges of my vision, stragglers in the hunt for safety; the Steyr complains, I imagine, denied a target, it wobbles back and forth across my vision, floating, lost. Wait-

Mode break please please break now save me move me work me heal me-

There is no answer; Mode is cowering, deep within! What has happened? This is new and strange, and fear takes its place, and perhaps a hint of anticipation- it will not break, he will not die, Mode will not kill, perhaps then I-? Unable to move, not Locked but still for fright, I blink slowly-

He blinked. I can see him. There, right in front of me- why isn't he moving? His eyes are open now, gold, and I can see them, and he's four feet away and not moving and no-one's ever been this close to one and seen him and not died and I don't want to die and I need to shoot I'm close enough and the Steyr is fast enough I might get enough kinetics and mass onto him to punch through that damned armor before I go down but if I don't shoot then maybe he won't kill me although there's no good goddamn reason why not-

Strange. My eyes are open, and flicker has not washed them; I see the bland staring at me, in my eye, eye to eye, contact! The fear, the colors of the pain and fright, flicker ripples in shuddering empathy to the sweat pouring form him and the slight quiver of overstressed muscles and adrenaline. I cannot die. I cannot hate. I cannot heal. I cannot-

Holy shit. His eyes, they're so still- I still can't see the rest of him. I really have no idea what to do now, so I do the last thing I expect-

I lower the gun.

Proscription drops! I will not die, a sad and listless wail from deep within, and with its passing Mode leaps forward, reassured, and screams for Lockdown- cut off from City, it has been disoriented, confused, but here, a target! A purpose, the blands who must be hunted killed and driven from the City for proscribing and for death and pain and want. Mode freezes my limbs, my eyes, flicker, my organs, my colors and my fear, and waits, tasting death-

I will not let you. The words are rusty, forgotten and tasting of moth wings and slowly sliding algae; they rise within, stand, tower, tall, Mode turns inside me, faces them, breaks-

There's no warning at all. His eyes are looking at me, and I've lowered the Steyr to point at the pavement, I don't know why, but it's too late. A quick flicker of a blink, then, and suddenly I'm thrown backwards, my eyes watering and dazzled from the sudden cycle of pure intense primaries, and I can't find the damn gun as I struggle in the dirt and rock and grass and weeds. My right hand, scrabbling wildly, touches plastic; I grab, and pull, and the gun leaps to me, and I blink water from my eyes as I stare upwards from my knees, searching for a target. The chroman is there, in front of me, slightly contorted, on one knee, arms lifted as though over a beam running behind his neck. One droops to the ground, the other points skyward; his body is twisted at the waist and he is weeping colors, red and gold and blue and green and cyan and magenta and pale pale yellow all flowing from his eyes to the street, but he's not moving. As I watch, the flow of color slows and ceases. He shudders, once, then, and freezes in place, a neutral bronze, but slightly indistinct, out of focus; a forgotten photograph in a memory, resting just outside the focal point.

A moment's pause.

Then I vomit. Again. Damn it.

The world grows still and cold, and bland, the colors leaching from it into my eyes and through the parted hands of flicker to run slowly down my body and pool on the pavement, Mode angrily standing, beaten, over the shattered landscapes inside me. I cannot even see what my eyes do not face; they are only passing one color to me now, the remnants of the color photograph of the world, drained of all but the sepia of daguerrotype and the white of the sun. Mode snarls within me, shakes me from inside; I retreat, further, into Shell, displacing flicker entirely, and Mode shakes its head in fury and takes to wings of electron aether, flowing off into the air from within my head and returning to the broken open arms of City via a half-destroyed cellular tower still forlornly wailing from the top of the Weather Star, which when last seen working was showing the orange of a perpetually rainy day.

Standing up, wiping my mouth, I hear the cheers of the people swarming back into the plaza, and I shake my head to clear it while reaching for the Steyr. Its metal weight is comfort; I hold it against my cheek and revel in the coolness of the metal before turning to examine the chroman. He's still there. Reaching, almost, for the earth and the sky, eyes turned slightly sideways to stare in the dirt. The colorful pool of his holosystems is fading now; I'm not sure what to make of that, but he shows no sign of arousing.

Gingerly, I reach forward and touch his face on the cheek. There's nothing there; he might as well be the bronze metal he's mimicking, except that the surface of his skin (or whatever) is precisely ambient temperature. Not even an energy gradient to announce him.

"Jeeesus, man, that was sweet!" The voice is young but weary, unable to work up the enthusiasm it wants. I turn; it's the father, his bow slung over his back and his children waiting near the edges of the square with a woman (their mother? I can hope) knelt over them. He has stopped perhaps five feet away, the nearest of the returning thin crowd, and is examining the chroman.

"No, it fucking well wasn't sweet, it was fucking vile is what it was." I'm tired, as well; the bitter tone in my voice makes him draw back, slightly.

"Look, man, you got him. You got him. He ain't going to kill nobody, any more; not my kids, not me, not you. That's sweet, all right? That's life, and that's sweet." He unlimbers the bow as he talks, but doesn't string it. He reaches across the space and touches the chroman's flesh, poking him in the side. There is no reaction whatsoever. Shrugging, he retrieves the bow and reslings it across his broad shoulders.

"Yeah, I guess, although I didn't do it. He just stopped."

"Ain't never heard of none of them stopping, not unless they were dead."

"He look dead to you?"

The other cocked his head professionally, and examined the still form again. "Well, he sure ain't alive."

"He's not dead. I've seen them dead. I've made them dead. This one isn't dead."

"Then why're we still here, mister?" A new voice, from the crowd. There are perhaps thirty of them, in a ring centered on the chroman, perhaps ten yards in radius.

"Yeah, why? He isn't dead, then what is he?" Bowman chimes back in.

"Look, I don't know. That's what scares me. This could all be an act. He could be waiting for all of us to get close enough to grab," -a subconscious shuffle back, all around- "-or he might just be recharging or whatever it is they do." I found my hands automatically reloading and recharging the Steyr for want of a task. Habitually, I looked about me for the brass to collect, but remembered then the caseless ammo in the Steyr and forced my nervous hands to sling it at my side. I examined the chroman again. He hadn't moved.

"So what d'we do?" Another member of the crowd.

"Fuck that; he's dead. Where's my family?" Bowman turned and made his way through the ring, heading for the ruins of the ASCAP building where his children and companion waited. I wondered if she was his wife, disturbed that I didn't know and couldn't assume. I addressed the remaining crowd.

"We don't touch him. I'm calling it in; the boffins'll be out to collect him. I don't think we've ever gotten one that wasn't blown apart before it stopped trying to kill us." I pulled my link from my pants as I finished, and waved everyone back to emphasize the point. They began to drift away towards their bonfires and campsites, with frequent looks over their shoulders. I opened the link, and called it in.

After a few seconds making the comm op on duty understand what I had, a very excited voice came on and ordered me to stay right where I was and await pickup. I said "Yessir" but really meant and where the fuck would I go? Closing the link, I sat on the remains of the median wall and contemplated my frozen opponent, trying to decide if that'd been luck or skill.

I couldn't in any way make the answer come out skill, and then I saw the red and white paper winking from the trashed car behind the chroman. Unwillingly drawn, I moved over, hoping it wasn't.

It was. Shit.

Sighing, I worked the twisted door off the car, wincing at the squeal, and reached in to pull out a plastic bag still mostly covering what turned out to be some half a case of Marlboros, with only the outer two packs ruined by damp.

Cursing bastard chance, I lit his offering and stared at the ruined sky.

That was exciting. I promptly forgot the sheer bowel-watering fear, and retained only the sense of something new in my life, when thinking of the memory. That's all I had; after the frantically gesticulating brainiacs snatched the chroman from his statuesque pose on Broadway, I was sent back to wall duty at 57th, where I guess the whole episode started. Life became boring once more, which viewed from one point of view was a good thing. There were fewere chances to get myself killed. On the other hand, nothing interesting happened, either; and I found myself sitting atop a mound of ruins, detritus and trash, staring intently into the flickering night while waiting for something manmade and familiar to come and kill me.

It wasn't fun.

Not like I've expected 'fun' out of my life. I don't really think I'd even thought about my life as anything other than 'something I stood to lose if I screw up' for quite some time; and then, of course, is when I lost it, just to make the point to me in my small wrecked corner of the world, with the cosmos laughing.

Wall duty; atop the barrier, looking, waiting, watching. Nothing moving on the cracked asphalt killing zone of the street, save some rats and other living hunted vermin which existed in strange kinship with man for the first time undoubtedly. I watched the pop-pop scurrying of the rats as they moved about on their eternal errands of food and sex, seeing traffic patterns in their movement along the gutters, and was busily lighting one of the last Marlboros from the Lincoln Center find when the dark amorphous shape settled from the nighttime sky and folded itself about me quickly enough that I'm not sure if anyone heard my scream.

Then I was pulled, muffled, across the surface of the street and felt myself fall down a drop which could only be a too-familiar manhole, and the knives came out of the blanket which surrounded me to take my blood and disjoint my body and I think the last thing I did was feel cheated that I didn't even get the fabled replay of my life to date before the rushing black closed in and my last word was a resigned and quiet

"Fuck."

Then it was dark and quiet save for the eager snapping of the knives and the sucking rips of my flesh, and not even I was there to hear.

When I awoke, I was gone.

The feeling was one I couldn't identify. There were several I could; the absence of the comforting pull of the Steyr; the absolute blackness, the pain in indescribable places. All were ones identifiable. There was another, however, and it wasn't one I could remember ever feeling. It felt-odd, really; and not constant. Imagine the signals in your brain for light and smell and taste and touch all crossed, one step out of sync, the nerves playing musical chairs with your sensorium until the colors tingled the inside of your nose while smells lightly brushed across you.

That wasn't it. But it was close.

I tried, experimentally, to move; and move I did, stretching my limbs out in a tight shape of fear and exploration. My muscles moved in the right directions, but with a rippling sense of wrongness that I couldn't identify, although once I reached the limit of my motion, the pain lessened, somewhat.

The light was sudden, blinding, and uneven; one side of the chamber flickered slightly. The white and blue glare came from all directions at once, searing painfully across me, and I huddled into a crouch instinctively, to shield myself from the pain, and buried my head in my arms-

Which weren't there.

I screamed and fell backwards, waving my arms frantically; all that was visible was a slight distortion in the blinding light. My body, completely hidden, shuddered with the new sensations as the flickers of the light thrummed through me. My brain caught up, finally, realizing the answer the the question I'd wondered at before.

City didn't create chromen.

It modified them.

I tried to scream, but a new voice inside my head that I couldn't remember ever hearing laughed with a raspy sound and took control of my muscles, freezing them solid in invisible braces of steel, and the last flickering distortion that marked my body vanished as I became immobile.

The lights dimmed quickly. The door opened.

Without conscious volition, I dropped to the stranger's knees that were once mine and...didn't quite crawl, but made my way out the door, pulled along by the strange agenda in my mind. Some ten minutes of tunnels, portals and ladders later, I pushed at the bottom of the manhole and slithered up into the nighttime world of New York, and recognized the 57th street barrier, from the wrong side. Just as that registered, there was a shout and a chattering roar. I tried to shout, to scream, to freeze myself and wait for the clean end of the bullets, but instead my traitor sinews pulled me away from the barrier in uneven, random jerks of motion, and none of the projectiles connected.

You can't go home again, the voice tried to whisper but brought it across only in concepts, the words obscured behind the rasping ghoulish humor, and perversely, it let me cry as I huddled behind the wrecked bus. It didn't help to watch the bright purple trails of tears run down my (chroman's) body and soak into the broken earth.

God, please, let me die.