Data Runner Read Free Page B

God!” she screams, drops her bags, and covers her face with her hands.
    Dexter leaps off the ground and pushes to the left. I leap and push to the right. And with a wisp of air that makes a strand of her hair dance, we sail around her in a way that touches no part of her but the electrons of her aura.
    â€œTop of the morning to you, ma’am,” Dex says with a tip of his cap.
    â€œHave a nice day,” I say, coming around the other side.
    The woman is still shrieking through her fingers when we land and keep going.
    Pace and Chimpo will not attempt this. In fact, after seeing us do it, they’ll go out of their way to give her an extra-wide berth. Pace may have the skills to execute such a stunt but he lacks the personality to get away with it. And Chimpo? That one still makes me laugh. Chimpo once attempted this on a very large suit who must have been a wrestler before he put on the tie, because in one fell swoop the guy dropped his briefcase, caught Chimpo in midair, and let out a giant guffaw as he lifted poor Chimpo over his head and body-slammed him into the gutter. Needless to say, Chimpo won’t try that again.
    Dexter heads for the subway station two blocks from the Free City magnet academy, the same one that used to be my stop less than a year ago. That gives me pause. I know it shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. Following on Dex’s heels, I have to wonder what my life would be like right now if Martin hadn’t lost his job.
    If things had gone according to plan, I would have graduated the magnet academy one year early with one full year of university credits already under my belt. That would sound impressive to most people, but that’s because most people get to accomplish things against a normal benchmark. I have Martin Baxter as mine. Martin who got his PhD at 20, authored his first major paper at 22, and formulated his proof for the nonlinear transgression of imaginary variables by the time he was 26. That’s my benchmark. Even still, entering the New England Institute of Technology—Martin’s old alma mater—one year early with another year of credits would have been a very respectable accomplishment. But then one day without so much as a warning, Delphi Advanced Microdesigns, the tiny outfit that Martin had co-founded, was swallowed whole by Grumwell. Grumwell, the one corporation that Martin always said he would never work for. And just like that my whole life changed. One day I’m setting up a physics lab in the best secondary school in the Free City, the next I’m the new kid walking through the blighted halls of Brentwood High.
    Dexter and I stop at the subway kiosk and wait for Pace and Chimpo to catch up. They’ve all done the track jump before. I’m the only one who hasn’t. You might even say that this is like my initiation, though none of us think of it in those terms. The Brentwood Dragons parkour club isn’t just a bunch of kids playing jungle gym. It’s an entire philosophy of movement. A system for navigating the world. For us it’s a way of life, and we are dedicated to it.
    As a rule, the Brentwood Dragons only ever take part in exhibitions of parkour, never competitions. There are PK competitions out there, but that isn’t what we’re about. As a team, the Brentwood Dragons hold true to the core principles of parkour, which are as ancient as any martial art. We’re like the Buddhist monks who believe that every movement is the thing that speaks for itself. The essence of parkour is a spiritual journey of self-discovery—to find one’s balance with nature, to find one’s balance within oneself. We’re not like the new breed of traceurs who are only in it for the money. What they fail to realize is how that mindset destroys the essence of parkour. That’s not us. We don’t train in secrecy. We don’t hoard our techniques into secret playbooks to use against our fellow