Data Runner Read Free Page A

of the universe. Neither one of us believes in luck.
    Pace waits for me at the end of my driveway with two bladders full of water slung over his shoulders. Today is his turn. He and I are both members of the TerraAqua water collective, Chimpo and Dexter aren’t, so we take turns bringing extra water for them. Although that’s probably going to change very soon. In the last two billing cycles, Pace’s family has been past due on their fees, and with the overdue deadline coming up fast, I know their days are numbered.
    We tap fists. Pace is shorter and leaner than me and wears a constant quarter-inch buzz cut. Constant. Seriously, he must buzz his head twice a week to keep that length because I have never once seen it grow out of that quarter-inch setting. As for the barely visible stubble on his chin, I suspect it’s all his Filipino genes will allow.
    â€œHave you heard the news?” he asks.
    â€œI just saw it on the Free City newsfeed.”
    â€œNewsfeed? What are you talking about?”
    â€œThey just found another runner with his arm cut off?”
    â€œThey did?” Pace jerks back with surprise. Clearly this is the first he’s hearing of it.
    â€œWhy, what were you talking about?”
    The distraught look on Pace’s face says it even before the words. “Hermes offered me the job.”
    â€œCongratulations,” I say.
    Pace gets oddly defensive. “I don’t have a choice,” he says. “I’m not stupid. If it was just the TerraAqua fees, we could find some other way to get by. But now we’re behind on everything. I don’t really want to, but what choice do I have?”
    â€œIt’s okay Pace.” I understand why he’s freaking out, but he needs to get over it if he’s going to survive out there. “Maybe they’ll even let you run with Dex. Then at least the two of you can watch each other’s backs.”
    â€œYeah,” he says, instantly relieved. “Yeah, that would be good.”
    Worry is not the right description for the look on Pace’s face but neither is fear. Something in between maybe. “Come on, Dragon. You’ll be fine.” I slap him on the back and recite the parkour club’s motto. “There are no limits, only plateaus.”
    Dex’s words, not mine.

2
    Dexter Drake is the black kid in the white hoodie who plants his hand on the railing and kicks his feet high into the air, so high that all I see are his sneakers sailing across the clear blue sky as I hurdle over and push off the same. I’m half a foot behind him. I’m always half a foot behind Dexter. That’s a fact permanently cemented into our heights. He’s an inch over six feet tall, I’m five inches under—half a foot between us. Fifty yards back, Pace and Chimpo bring up the rear.
    Just ahead, a woman in designer clothes carries two big Fifth Avenue shopping bags in each hand as she chats away to the person inside her comm shades. Blind. Even though she can navigate her surroundings through the transparent image inside her lenses, she is completely oblivious to the world around her.
    Dexter points her out and gives me the motion to scissor around. This is one of the things he loves most, what he calls popping a bubble. Getting in so close that you shatter the illusion of their tiny little world. I’m sure most people would regard this as a bunch of kids making trouble, but what we do is neither rowdy nor unruly, it’s just the Dragons’ way of announcing that we too exist. We are here, and we deserve a bit of your attention, even if we do have to startle it out of you.
    Dex and I pick up speed and run straight for her. I mean straight for her. And soon she’s gaping at us and screaming something that must be shrill and unsettling to the person on the other end of her call who can’t see us approaching beyond the borders of their screen. Three steps away.
    â€œOh my