Lost Worlds Read Online Free Page B

did you track me?
she typed, heart hammering in her chest. Nobody had
ever
managed to penetrate her own computer firewalls before. She’d thought she was impregnable.
    Child’s play
, came the response.
Not even worth the time to explain. Let us get to the point – you are committing industrial espionage. You have two choices – face
legal consequences, or agree to do something for us. We could use your particular skills.
    Tara took a deep breath. This was scary. If they knew
who
she was then they would know
where
she was, and that could lead to all kinds of unfortunate consequences.
    She glanced again at her bedroom door. Somewhere out there, in the halls of residence, her college friends were drinking, dancing, talking and otherwise having fun. And in here she seemed to
have awakened a serpent.
    Still there?
The text appeared suddenly. It almost seemed to be mocking her.
    She reached out to the keyboard to type a response.
    Like a stone gargoyle, Gecko crouched on the parapet that ran round the edge of a block of offices near the river. It was the highest roof he could get to by free-running.
Free-runners were honour-bound to only use physical means of getting from place to place. Lifts and escalators were forbidden, and even stairs were frowned upon.
    He supposed that he could actually climb up the
sides
of buildings, like a rock-climber, and get to higher roofs, but it would be risky – he might fall and kill himself. Yet it
wasn’t the risk that stopped him accessing the higher roofs; it was the fact that climbing slowly up the side of a building like a cockroach wasn’t
beautiful
. Free-running was an
art form. The running, the leaping, the rolling, the sliding and the controlled falling that ended in legs compressing like steel springs – they were like moves in a tennis match, or brush
strokes in a painting. Each one had to be fluid and beautiful in its own right, simplicity hiding strength and complexity, but, also, they had to fit together into something greater than
themselves. Climbing up a wall, fingers and toes scrabbling for cracks to hold on to, that had no beauty, no style.
    His gaze scanned the distant horizon: a mishmash of buildings in different architectural styles, all of which went together to make up the London skyline. On his right there was a clutch of new
tower blocks that had sprung up in the few years since he had moved to London: the Shard at London Bridge; the Strata apartment block at Elephant and Castle, with three wind turbines set into its
roof; and the office block on the site of the old Baltic Exchange that was known as ‘the Gherkin’ because of its strangely bulbous shape. Gecko could think of other names for it.
    He sighed. He knew that he was just trying to distract himself. He needed to make a decision: should he agree to work for the Eastern European criminals who wanted him to be their sneak-thief or
should he just pack his few possessions and disappear, move to another flat in another area?
    The problem was that if he just moved a little way away, they’d find him again, and next time they wouldn’t be so polite. He supposed he could move out into the suburbs, or even to
another part of England, but how would he be able to practise free-running then? He’d seen the outskirts of London – places like Pinner, or Nine Elms: rows and rows of two-storey houses
like Lego blocks. Where was the challenge there? He supposed he could move to a different city, like Liverpool or Manchester – they had a whole set of different-sized buildings with their own
different challenges – but they also had their own criminal gangs, and pretty soon there would be someone else looking down at him, making gun-shapes with their fingers. He could find
somewhere smaller – a town or a village – but he’d probably be able to get from one side to the other via the rooftops in ten minutes. Where was the challenge? Where was the
art
?
    He shook his head. Good sense told him that