Catalyst

fiction by michael werneburg

We hit the ground together, and I knew who it was. "No camera!" I shrieked. "I've got no camera!"

Cold steel was at my throat, and he held my hair in his fist. I could hear the whine of the Megalomedia drone, it must be right on top of us. "How are you going to place without a camera?"

I grasped the man's hand that was holding my hair. "That's enough! Get off me. The commentators said that you don't need a photo of the finish line. My photos of the markers are already uploaded. I just want to cross in the top ten. I've got nothing you can use, kill me or get off me!"

Harami said nothing but kept me fixed with an enraged glare then looked up to scout the area. He cursed and got off me.

I sprang to my feet. Goss stood only about four meters away. He still had that goddamn club in his hand. Then Harami grabbed me again, holding me in front of him with the knife at my throat again. Using me as a shield!

"Give me your cameras," Goss said.

"This guy says he doesn't have one." Harami told him, "And you're not getting mine."

"Is that right," Goss said, closing to no more than two meters and looking me in the eye. "No camera?"

"The photos are uploaded. I've got nothing. Look, pants, shoes, bike. No pouches, no panniers."

"Smart. You've run a smart race."

"I just want to place t-top ten." My teeth were chattering.

"Enough!" Harami said. "That's far enough Goss."

There! I'd seen Kuan, way over on our left. Who knows where she had come from. She was covered in blood and soot and looked like she'd just climbed out of hell. Something in her hand. The nerve weapon? My brain, in overdrive, seized on its name: Hawkins. But now she was hidden by an ornamental hedgerow. She'd crossed the open space so fast -- had Harami seen her? I was going to die here.

"Shut up," Goss told Harami. "They're calling you a catalyst, Tilescu. Say you've set off some kind of thing in the city."

"What?" I couldn't focus. What was he saying? As much as I'd been fearing this confrontation, I hadn't expected that that Harami would be so violent or Goss so talkative. "Thing?" I asked. Where the hell was Kuan.