Blinded by Light: Season One, Episode Four of The Sunset Chronicles by Paul Stephenson

Author:Paul Stephenson [Stephenson, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hollow Stone Press
Published: 2021-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Lois fought against the darkness even as it threatened to envelop her, spat blood onto the ground and pushed herself up, noting the various cuts and bruises littering her body. Pain seemed to swallow her whole.

Above her, sirens sounded. Nobody had been foolish enough to follow her over the edge. They’d be coming, though. It wasn’t hard to back up and come down the hill.

Her clothes hung tattered and torn, strips of them soaked in her own blood. A quick examination of her face with her fingers found more than one source. Fuck. If she had any chance of getting through this, she’d need to melt into the city’s residents. Difficult when you look like you’ve fallen down a mountain.

Slowly, willing each of her limbs back into motion, she started forward. She slipped off her shoes, one of which had lost a heel somewhere along the way, and ran.

Her best bet was to get to Findlay’s apartment. He’d know what to do; he had evacuation protocols. All being well, he already had the chip she’d left in her door frame.

Unless Sunset had the chip.

Stumbling forward, she tried to walk as casually as possible. This was the commercial part of town, but the residential quarters were not far away. Sunset had severely rebuilt Atlanta once they bought it wholesale; they lay it out exactly as a committee of HR representatives would. A city with no life or soul to it, but rigid lines of delineation.

Findlay lived in the section of town designated for those in service to Sunset—those running restaurants, cleaning apartments, working in the schools, the hospitals. Much more than half the city’s population, an ecosystem of their own in some regards, but nobody was under any illusions—they were there to service Sunset. Or to serve those who served. Most of these worked for Sunset subsidiaries—Sunset had every contract for miles around sewn up. Schools. Hospitals. Hell, even the vets were Sunset subsidiaries.

Nobody could get an apartment unless they could show their worth to the community, and nobody who worked in this half of the city could cross over to the other side without a Sunset employee ID. It was economic segregation, but that didn’t make it much different to other cities across America. Just more efficient.

Lois ducked down an alleyway between buildings, wary of the coverage of the network of floating eyes in the sky. She’d need to stay out of their sight if she could.

Lois may have lived here for a few years, but she didn’t know the city well. Findlay had told her where his temporary apartment was, but only in reference to its location being on her pod circuit journey to Sunset. The pod rail was fifty stories up, so it was a pretty useless reference frame.

She tried to get her breath back, get her bearings. Hover pods traversed the sky. She couldn’t see them, but could hear them. No doubt looking for her, along with the eyes. She found a window and checked her reflection.

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