Capital City Chronicles: The Island Read Online Free Page B

Junction above. Every road leading out, and every road coming into Capital City was above my head.
    I strolled the dark street, content with the rare psuedosilence. As much as most people avoided NerveTown, it was one of the safest places to walk alone at night. Two thirds of the people (if they could even be called that) were uninterested in anyone or anything outside of the Underground. The Wired Nervous they were called. Strange, grotesque white shells, they stayed locked up in their buildings and rooms and storage units, subsisting off feeding tubes and a plumbing system I never understood, or wanted to.
    The other third of the population were the Mobile Nervous. The same as the others, they were wired into the Underground at all times, yet they also lived and breathed out here in physical space, shuffling and skating along between buildings, filling feeding tubes, checking vital signs and otherwise maintaining the neighborhood. Their philosophy toward the human body was the same toward technology: constant upgrades, function before aesthetics and the discarding of anything non essential.
    I saw none of them out tonight, however. They most likely were focusing their entire attention upon the happenings of the Underground. Even the invisible universe of ones and zeros wasn’t immune to the events of tonight. I was alone out here.
    Taking my time, I walked the empty street, past the squat motel buildings, and into the block of storage complexes and garages. The BII garage was at the end of the block, surrounded by a high chain link fence. Coils of razor wire ran the upper edge of the fence, preventing anyone but the most dedicated from climbing it. But I wasn’t going over the fence, I was going through it.
    Between glowing clusters of storage units was a narrow alley, the concrete sloping down into a shallow, dried out aqueduct that ran perpendicular to the street. I stepped down into the alley, and hurried along to the backs of the buildings, where it angled into the back of the BII lot. The fence at this spot extended down into the aqueduct. It was only about an extra foot and a half, but it was perfect. The guard never bothered with checking this spot, only running his flashlight over it once an hour, if he felt like it. He couldn’t see where I had cut the fence over a year earlier. Every time it rained, a carpet of leaves, sticks and trash built up against the chain link and camouflaged the two loops of chicken wire I used to create the hinges.
    Crouched in front of the fence, I reached over my shoulder and pulled the mask over my head.
    It was time to clock in.
    A soft, crackling rip whispered from the flap of pre-cut fence as I lifted it. Holding it up, I shrugged off my bag and tossed it through. I side stepped in and gently lowered it back into place. Slinging the bag back over my shoulders, I watched as the one camera I needed to concern myself with arched away from my location.
    I ran.
    I had exactly six seconds before it reached the end of its field, which would give me just under four seconds to make it under the camera. I didn’t watch the camera as I ran; I had learned early on that watching the threat instead of the goal was how you trip. I also learned to slow down as I neared the sheet metal siding of the building. Slamming into it would have been the loudest noise in NerveTown, which, of course, was the opposite of what I wanted. All of these considerations were most likely moot here, considering the one nightwatchman that seemed to work every night of the year, only did just enough to not get canned. But one could never be too careful.
    Skirting the wall, I approached the back door. From my bag I pulled a small, hard black case. Inside was a blank keycard, at the end of which was attached a long cord that plugged into my PDA. When I reached the door, I swiped the card through the lock. In a matter of seconds, the PDA found a list of employees with access to this particular lock, which I then narrowed