Diamond Sphere by F P Adriani

Author:F P Adriani [Adriani, F P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-12-24T22:00:00+00:00

I was about to add more, but my eyes had fallen to behind Nell, to where some new people had walked into The Flamingo. I couldn’t tell if they were together as a group, but the posture of one of them seemed familiar to me.

She now stood at the bar as she ordered a drink. Her hair was short and red, and she looked a little too thin in her white top and black pants. She was also poised at an angle to me, so I couldn’t get a full-on view of her face. Plus, the place’s pink halo was still a pain in the eyes….

I stood up fast.

“What is it?” Nell asked, her head darting a look over her shoulder.

I slid my case to her across the tabletop. “Hang onto this and wait here.”

“What—why?”

I didn’t respond. The woman took her drink from the bartender; then she walked back toward the front door and slipped outside.

I was right on her tail.

When I got outside, I saw her standing in front of the next store over. Her head bowed a bit now, she held her drink in one hand as she smoked something in her other hand. The store was closed and the window looked quite dark, but her eyes seemed focused on whatever lay below her inside.

Out here, without the pink, I got a clearer view of her as I moved nearer.

“Millie,” I said in a hard voice.

Her head shot up. And, sure enough, I saw that shadow of a facial scar.

Now her eyes darted around to me wildly; then she dropped both her drink and her cigarette and shot off down the block.

I followed suit and she kept running and—goddammit, she was small but she was also very fast, like a human cheetah of the streets and alleyways. I wasn’t that fast, but I was persistent. Eventually, she ran out of streets and alleyways—or so much steam.

She ran behind a big cafeteria-looking place and now stood panting before a bubble door to the Heran outdoors. Momentarily, her body hesitated; then she glanced at me over her shoulder—and finally pushed open the door and shot through.

“AVISO!” a loud recorded voice said. “DAXON GAS TOXICIDAD! WARNING! DAXON GAS TOXICITY! AVISO! DAXON GAS….”

The dual-message kept droning on as I rushed up to the door. I hesitated longer than Millie had, staring out at her receding insane I-have-a-deathwish form; as far as I’d been able to see, she wore no protective suit beneath her clothing.

But her deathwish might also wind up being mine somehow, not just from the gas but from back on Diamond. Potentially no winning for me here.

“Shit!” I said, pulling my purple breather hood down over my face, then charging outside. As I ran, I grabbed for my suit-gloves inside my jacket pocket—but, apparently, somewhere sometime tonight, I had dropped one. So now I had to run after Millie with one hand bouncing in and out of my pocket.

And, wow, did we run. We ran and ran and ran, over the damp ground behind and through and under the outdoor mechanical workings for the indoors.

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