Chapter Text
Tommy Innit was going to die.
At this point there was little doubt. He could only run for so long. As agile as he was, as long as he had spent preparing for exactly these sorts of situations, even he needed a break at some point. Eventually his breaths would get heavy, his throat would get thick, and his legs would give out, and in an instant it would all be over. Nine years of surviving on the streets, of making an actual name for himself, for nothing.
There was no escape, not from this. The guards, with their artificially enhanced muscles and lungs, would essentially never tire, so not only would they inevitably catch up to him but once they did none of them would even be tired enough to consider maybe not beating him to a pulp. With his luck, those overgrown gorillas would be too hopped up on their power trip to stop pummeling him anytime before he was a smear on the pavement. Hip fucking hooray.
He heard the zhing of a bullet whizzing past his ear and realized with growing panic that he had slowed down while lost in thought.
Fuck. He really needed to remember to be more focused whenever he was facing imminent death. He could practically feel the heat of the guards’ breath on the back of his neck now. Or maybe it was just his imagination. He didn’t dare turn back to check.
Tommy knew what he would see anyway--from what he could tell from the pounding footsteps behind him, there were maybe seven or eight of the guards trailing him. They had been on a routine city patrol when they had come across him, which was just his luck because it meant that they were armed to the teeth and wearing their armored uniforms, the ones that looked eerily like ordinary business suits at a first glance. He’d had situations like this before, of course. Danger sort of came with the job, so it wasn’t completely unusual for a lone, off-duty officer to stumble in on him in the middle of a gig. It had never been a problem before--he would deal with them with a firm swing of his staff to their head, and by the time they regained their balance he would be long gone.
That probably wouldn’t work with an entire squadron of them though.
It really had just been dumb luck that they had come across him. Tommy had memorized all of the guard routes in the city, and he always, always, kept well clear of them, especially when he was working a job. It was bad enough crossing their path on an ordinary day, but having a squadron catch you in the middle of a crime? It was a death wish. Tommy may have had a shit attention span, but even he wasn’t that stupid. He knew to stay far, far away from them. Which was why he was so surprised when he looked up from picking the lock on the microchip storage facility to see a dozen of the fuckers charging toward him.
Another bullet whizzed past his head. Shit. If Tommy hadn’t been sprinting at literal breakneck speeds, the blood probably would’ve drained from his face.
He forced his legs to move even faster, pushing himself even further. He could feel it starting to wear on him now, his breaths coming in shorter gasps, and his thoughts became a singular stream of jumbled words as every instinct he had cultivated was replaced with panic.
--fuck fuck fuck bitches on my tail shit this is not good oh fuck oh fuck im dead im SO dead no no im a big fucking man i can handle a few guards, wait no i definitely fucking CAN’T--
In short, Tommy was screwed and he knew it.
To be fair, it had only been a matter of time. Tommy was a criminal, through and through, and Manburg wasn’t exactly known for its merciful justice system.
Technological marvel? Sure. Flourishing economy? Without a doubt.
But lenient with civil rights? Definitely not. The city didn’t even have a proper prison; either you were beaten to death on sight, held in a guard station before an immediate and brutal public execution, or you were dragged away to President Schlatt’s White House, never to be seen again. Tommy wasn’t sure which was worse.
With a start, Tommy realized he had somehow found his way into the upper-class district of Manburg. The Lights, they called it, for the shiny buildings that sparkled in the sunlight and the hundreds of thousands of lights that turned on at dusk, illuminating the horizon like a sky full of stars. Everything was clean and orderly and neat here, which meant that Tommy usually stayed far, far away from it unless he was working a job, because he stuck out like a sore thumb. Which was just absolutely perfect for his current situation, because why not make the guards jobs easier for them. He could have headed toward the slums of the city and faded into the background of all the other beggars and thieves, but of course, he headed to the one place in the city where he had absolutely no chance of blending in. His dark cape and ripped shorts were practically a neon sign above his head in the midst of the too-white clothing and shiny jewelry of the upper-class citizens he was running past.
It was getting harder and harder to keep up his pace. The footsteps behind him seemed even louder now. Tommy was undoubtedly fast, but he was a born sprinter--he was made for bursts of high energy and fiery impulsiveness. He wasn’t built for this type of endurance. He had maybe three more minutes before he straight up collapsed. Less if the guards caught up to him first. There was literally no way this situation could get any worse.
And then he heard it in the distance. A faint whirring. A buzzing in the air like a too-fast fan, rapidly getting louder. Closer.
Oh, fuck me. Literally, why.
Now he had the search drones on his tail? Couldn’t he catch a fucking break? I mean sure, he had been breaking into one of the most secure tech facilities in the city, but did it really warrant all of this fuss? Clearly they thought so, because the mechanical buzzing was echoing in his skull now, practically shaking the ground. If Tommy looked back, he knew he would see a fleet of the small silver robots careening through the air towards him, metallic heads searching the street for his puffy blond hair, fatally sharpened pincers ready to cut through flesh and bone. And fuck, if Tommy wasn’t suddenly terrified. Even with the guards, there had been a tiny hope in him, that maybe, just maybe, he could outsmart them all. The guards of the city weren’t exactly known for their sparkling personalities or considerable intellect. They were instruments of raw physical strength, and that was it. It wasn’t difficult to confuse them. He had outsmarted them before.
But you can’t outsmart an AI, and especially not the search drones, which were lightning fast and designed solely for the purpose of hunting down fugitives and then systematically executing them in the most brutal way. He had seen them in action once before, when a man in the Eastside slums had knocked out a guard. Tommy had been ten, nibbling on a stale loaf of bread in an alleyway to the side of the sector’s main square, when an ear-splitting buzzing descended from every direction, buzzing and hissing like a massive horde of flies. He'd clutched his hands over his ears, stumbling out of the alleyway just in time to see two dozen of the bots descend on the man like flashes of silver lightning, cutting and stabbing and--.
Even over his hands clutched to his head, even over that terrible, ravenous buzzing, Tommy had heard the screams.
An instant later and suddenly the entire square went completely silent. All that was left of the man was a red stain and a single hand, sitting unassumingly on the pavement.
So yeah. He was done for. All his time spent slaving away to get his own little space, to cultivate his loyal customer base for his side job, all his time spent gaining power in the Unde--.
And suddenly, just like that, Tommy had an idea. A risky, dangerous, insane idea. An idea that redefined the meaning of stupid. Tommy grinned, despite everything. Those were his specialty.
A map of the Lights appeared in his mind, pieced together from years of illegal supply runs, and Tommy charted his new path, turning down an alleyway between two silver buildings, guards still hot on his tail.
His flash of excitement at the plan quickly died down into cool calculation as the reality of the situation descended on him. Fuck, this would be close. The guards were literally just seconds behind him, and if even a single one spotted what he was about to attempt, if any of the drones caught his escape in their lens, he risked exposing everything. Part of him argued that his life wasn’t worth it. Every hidden secret, every blessed reprieve for the people of this damned city was on the line. If Tommy fucked up, he would undoubtedly be ruining the lives of a good portion of the city.
The other part of him, the stronger, instinctual part, screamed with undeniable certainty that he wanted to live. He couldn’t go out like this, not when he was just starting to do something with his life.
So Tommy shoved the fancily dressed snobs walking through the streets out of his way and made another sharp turn toward a towering silver building a few hundred yards away. The buzzing of the drones was louder than ever now, bullets still whizzing past his head despite all of the innocent people in the streets. A few more seconds, Tommy pleaded to himself, just let me last a few more seconds. He repeated the mantra over and over in his head, pushing his legs to move faster even as his knees threatened to buckle. And finally, he reached the crystal-clear glass doors of his target, shoving through them with his last burst of strength.
The glass shattered behind him as he ran. The lobby of the tower was ornate, with tall quartz columns and a patterned tile floor. Far too expensive for the drones to ruin. Tommy knew their algorithms, and he knew that they were constantly running cost-benefit analysis of the situation, and he knew that destroying the lobby of one of the most prestigious buildings in the city far outweighed catching one rascal of a kid. There was no way they’d follow him. One obstacle down. The guards, however, were a different story.
He could still hear their heavy boots trailing him as he raced through the maze of hallways, but each second he gained another little shred of hope. He was so close. Another right turn. Pushing his legs to pump even faster against the rich carpets. He was almost there. Another left where two hallways met.
And suddenly, he was there. Tommy threw open the door to the men’s bathroom, desperately hoping it was still there, that he hadn’t somehow gotten the location of the entrance mixed up. He scanned the decorative paintings on the wall frantically; the first a mural of the Lights at night, the next a still life of a vase of flowers, and---there. He pushed the painting of a pair of massive white wings to one side and gasped his relief. It was there. The entrance was still there waiting for him. A small gap, maybe two feet wide, just barely big enough for him to fit through. Tommy heard footsteps pound just outside the bathroom door, and in a rush of panic launched himself through the gap, crashing into a small compartment barely the size of a clothes dresser.
The painting swung shut behind him, just as the door to the bathroom creaked open. A pair of heavy boots thudded across the room and froze in front of the painting. His soul left his body. This was it.
Tommy could do nothing more than hold his breath, his entire body quaking from fear and adrenaline. He wanted nothing more than for this whole thing to finally be over, for him to finally be safe, but one wrong move, one too-loud breath and the guards would certainly hear it, and everything would be lost. Not only would he be dead, but every criminal, every friend he ever had would be hunted.
The guard hesitated for one terrible moment, and then, “Move out. The street trash is gone.”
Heavy footsteps filed out of the room. The bathroom went silent.
Tommy waited for a minute. Two.
It was all Tommy could do to keep from letting out an arrogant whoop. Still, he let a shaky, triumphant grin cross his face as he finally turned to the other side of the tiny compartment, where a black, metallic chute descended into a dark abyss.
And no one had to know if quiet tears slid down his face as he slid through the pitch-black void toward the crime central of Manberg. The Underground, or as its residents loved to call it: Pogtopia.