Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity by Robert Brockway Read Free Book Online Page A

free and clear.
    Between the haphazard piles of detritus, the vaulted ceilings, and the constricted aisles, it was impossible to place the thing’s exact distance from him by sound. With every new, wheezing breath, Red anticipated the cold hands seizing at the back of his neck. With every new fall, he expected the heavy plastic chassis upon him before he could stand again.
    The creaking and groaning of an immense pressure bearing down on old structures, the dull-edged acoustic roar of the water mains, the rhythmic thwacking of the filtration plants, reverberating deep within the structure’s bones, the hollow pattering of countless leaks, and just below it all, the steady metallic tock of Reggie, advancing.
    Red tripped again, and his hands caught in a large and unwieldy construct -- shelves, perhaps, or the skeletal frame of an old ultralight. There could be an ancient air-dock around here somewhere, he thought, from back before they started the Reservoir and nobody thought they’d build higher than a few hundred stories. He tweaked, pulled, and wrenched until the wide, unsecured mass came free from the ankle-deep water. It was awkwardly shaped, but strong, and weighed virtually nothing. He hurled it into the corridor behind him, his bloody hands slipping painfully across the ragged metalwork. It landed a dozen paces back, and clattered to a stop. Red allowed himself a shred of hope: It might have blocked a regular ‘bot indefinitely, but Reggie’s human arms could probably maneuver it out of the way. Still, if he could just buy a minute or two…
    Red turned to take a step, and heard the robot’s spokes clang against the shelving.
    It hadn’t been more than a few feet behind him.
    There was a long, wet scrape as the shelf began to slide, and everything inside of Red froze. Silence. Then a sharp ping as it finally caught on something. The thing was stalled, for now. Red took a deep breath, expelled all of the panic and desperation welling up inside of him, and in spite of his survival instincts, every one of which screamed for him to run, he slowed his own pace to a careful crawl. His headlong flight and subsequent falls were only losing him ground. He wouldn’t move much faster than his pursuer this way, but every minute the robot spent on the shelving, and every minute Red maintained a steady, stable pace, would be a minute gained. He paused, and listened. There, ahead and to the left: That was where the turbines sounded the loudest. The four great central water pipes were bolted to the exterior of each Post, and that was where he needed to be – not lost in the ruined aquatic catwalks, risking dead ends and collapses --  if he was ever going to find a way up.
    Red heard the twanging of plucked metal, as Reggie bent and began picking at the obstacle. He hesitantly extended his own foot, and then planted it. And again.
    Time was measured in tiny, agonizing, crawling steps. Their chase progressed, one deliberate movement at a time, like a waltz in slow-motion – Red one two, Reggie one two, Red three four. He kicked his way around a vast glass sphere blocking most of the walkway, and planned his next move: Eventually, by following the turbine roar, he would emerge from the catwalks into one of the Four Posts. Their only common intersection was at the interior corner of each mega-structure. Also located at every corner: Stairwell access. It wasn’t certain, but it was hope.
    Red stretched a leg out in front of him and felt around until it contacted the flat surface of a wall – not the curving glass of a catwalk, but real, solid, steel wall. Explorations to either side confirmed it: The entrance to a Post. He placed his hand against the surface, and began inching sideways, feeling for the frame of a door.
    His path took him closer and closer to the turbines. As he closed the distance, Red discovered an entirely new dread: Though the constant, unceasing pocks of Reggie’s advance had unnerved him, he could at