The thief had decided, correctly, that Old Bridge was too small for him to lose the posse. He probably didn’t want to get too close to the bridge static, either. His plan was to shake off the posse in North Bank. He wouldn’t know the suburb well enough to plan a route, but all he had to do was make sure that no one who had heard the chant saw him running. Then he could slow down, dissolve back into the crowds, and filter back to whatever roof he was sleeping on.

He was a few seconds away from the Black Gate. The North Bank side of Central shone between its pillars. The lightless streets of Old Bridge disappeared into the fog on either side. I couldn’t focus my eyes on the line between the gray void over Old Bridge and the blue-star skyline above North Bank, so I didn’t try.

Once the thief was through the Gate, he could keep going on Central or he could turn onto Water Street. Central would give the posse he’d already attracted a clear line of sight. He could go east on Water, towards the brightly-lit, wide, straight streets of the inner subs, or west, into the shadowy anthills of the outer subs. Most of the Old Bridge posse would be too chickenshit to follow him out there, even if he didn’t know that.

He hit the Black Gate and flinched. I braced for the pressure drop, and while he skidded halfway into the intersection before he got his bearings and swung around to the west, I cut the corner.

I ran right into a broad-shouldered guy in a grass-green puffer jacket. He was already carrying the posse chant as loudly as he could. Bored, or just naturally a narc. I used some of my momentum to shove him and the rest to push off the concrete next to him and keep running. The narc swore, stumbled, and then took off after us.

The thief bolted for the first side street he saw, before most of the people in the intersection could register that the posse was for him. I’d shaved at least two seconds off his lead, but the narc was only a few seconds behind me. I spend an unholy amount of time running from tumbleweeds with ten times as many legs as the thief and the narc combined. I was confident I had better stamina than either of them, but I was also shorter than both of them by at least six inches, which dented my speed. The thief had been running the longest out of the three of us. The narc was the freshest, and he was right behind me. I’d catch up to the thief eventually, but so would he. More importantly, we were in Porfidu territory now. I didn’t have much time.