is what I'm offering. Take it or leave it. It's good money." I wave the blue notes and Yellow Eyes snatches for them and misses. "Nuh-uh. Phone first. And tell whoever is skulking around back there to come out where I can see them."
Nasty looks amused. He pats his leg, as if calling a dog, and a Porcupine hauls itself out of the darkness, limping forward on three paws, its quills rattling. It nudges his knee with its stubby snout in wary affection. Thick ropes of drool hang from its jowls. Its eyes are dull. Its back foot is missing. The stump has healed badly, the tissue grey, the spiky hairs matted with dried blood and pus. It smells of damp and rot, like the broken concrete of the hole it crawled from.
"What the fuck did you do to this animal?"
"It's good money," Nasty wheedles, mocking me. "You want some? We can get a good price for that Sloth. Rare animal, hey? Start with a finger. Or a paw."
"Whole arm even," Busi says, emboldened, edging forward. "You won't miss it. You won't even notice." The Porcupine watches me with its beady little eyes, and despite myself, despite Sun City Rules, I start backing out, slowly. Fuck the phone. Odi can afford to buy me another one. But Nasty has managed to get round behind me, blocking the exit.
The rain buckets down, the sound like the roar of a stadium crowd. Outside, chunks of hail plink off the concrete. Nasty takes a screwdriver from his pocket, the end sharpened to a point. It's filthy – if you got stabbed with that thing, tetanus would be the least of your worries. I've seen bad stab wounds. A gangster in prison got herself a kidney puncture compliments of her girlfriend. It took her weeks to die from the infection.
"Don't go yet, cherry," Nasty says, raising his voice over the pelting rain.
"If you'd told me it was a party, I would have brought cupcakes," I say. I open my fingers and let the notes flutter to the ground, anticipating the girl dropping to her knees to pick them up. This buys me a second of distraction.
I grab Sloth's arm and slash his claws across Nasty's face, before he can raise the screwdriver. He screams and stumbles backwards, clutching his nose and eyes. I don't stick around to evaluate the damage. I turn and slam into Yellow Eyes with my full weight, knocking him over the girl, who is still on her knees, picking up the notes. Her head hits the ground with a painful thunk. I don't have time to feel guilty. Sun City Rules: take out the leader and get out any way you can. I barge past the Porcupine, sharp quills snagging on my jeans, and go in the exact opposite direction Nasty is expecting, dropping into the jagged hole and the darkness of the storm drain.
On my knees, I shuffle forward down the tunnel past the tangle of blankets that smell of smoke and sweat and urine, one hand against the rough concrete for guidance. My sneakers squelch in the rivulet of rotten mud. I can't see a fucking thing, but I can feel the water sloshing around me. "I hope you're looking where we're going," I mutter and Sloth, still shocked, manages a squeak in response. The tunnel should open up soon to a central flow. There will be maintenance entry points that'll take me straight up to the street. I just have to get there before they catch me.
I can hear the distorted echoes of angry voices behind me. Hopefully, they're still deciding if I went left or right. Hopefully, they'll split up. Easier to handle that way. I scuffle forward through the dark, now on my feet and hunched. Water is soaking through my shoes, and at first I think it's because the tunnel is widening, but it's the water level rising with the swell of rain. Another reason to speed up this getaway.
Sloth grunts in warning a second too late as the tunnel opens out onto a wide and slippery plateau and I go skidding over the edge of it, drop two metres, and land hard on my coccyx, on the edge of a step. The pain is like a railway spike driven up my spine. It knocks the breath out of me. I lie there stunned, while Sloth whimpers and moans for me to get up.
I'm lying on the edge of a massive staircase that slopes