She didn’t know what time it was. The deep of the night, for sure, a few hours before dawn. It didn’t matter. Not any more. That was the point of freedom – make your decisions, stupid ones, good ones, get out, do your own thing.

A man lurched into her way, grinning and drunk. He shoved up against her, and she smelled his breath.

‘Hello, young fish,’ he slurred at her, swaying. ‘Come to swim with me?’

He had plastek-looking hair, too clean, too sculpted. She kept on going, sliding past him, out into the middle of the street. The press of people swept him away, giving her more faces to gawp at. Fireworks went off in the sky, dazzling, smelling of chems, picking out high arches overhead engraved with skull-clusters and fleur-de-lys finials. Commercia chameleon-screens flashed and whirled, spinning pixelated images one after the other – a woman smiling, a man gazing at an altar, a Navy drop-ship wheeling across a starfield, troops in uniform marching under a crimson sky on another world.

For the first time, she felt a spike of danger. She had walked a long way, away from the friends she had come with. She had almost forgotten about them entirely, and had very little idea where she was.

She looked back and saw the plastek-hair man following her. He was with others, and they had latched on to her.

Damn.

She picked up the pace, skipping on her heels, darting to the street’s edge, to where the grand avenue, scarred with twin steel ground-tracks, met another one, cobbled and glinting, that ran steeply downwards.

If she hadn’t taken topaz, she’d have stayed, by instinct, with the crowds, where the press of bodies provided its mute kind of safety. But it got darker quickly, and the lumens faded to red, and the old cobblestones underfoot got slippery. The beat of the music felt harder – dull, like the military dirges they transmitted every evening over the communal prop-sets.

Down, down, down.

She felt a bit sick. She shot a glance back and saw that they were still coming, only jogging now, four of them, all drunk on jeneza or rezi or slatov. They all had those sharp, fake haircuts, smart dress, clean boots. Defence-corps trainees, maybe – officer-class, full of entitlement, untouchable. She’d come across the type so many times before. Hadn’t expected to find them down here – perhaps they liked to slum it from time to time as well, to skirt against the grime for fun, see whether it stuck to their uniforms.

Just as she began to worry, someone grabbed her by the arm. She pulled back, only to see a girl smiling at her, a girl her age, pale emerald skin, orange hair, a metal serpent-head stud in her cheek.

‘Come on,’ the girl said, her irises glittering. ‘I saw them too.’