Every day at 5 p.m., find a new episode of Mortal Derby X on 20 Minutes , Rocambole's soap opera, the app for reading differently. This series of SF projects us into a post-collapse world, the king sport of which is Quad Derby, a confrontation halfway between Roller derby and Rollerball. Its author, Michael Roch, is not an unknown. He has already published science fiction novels and hosts the YouTube book brigade.
Summary of previous episodes: During a Quad Derby match, Molly Pop, star of this sport, is violently kicked off the track by another competitor. She wakes up in the hospital with prosthetics in place of the legs and hatred deep in the heart. What is not tolerated in the Cocoon, the only protector of the human species since the Great Collapse of 2030 ... Molly is condemned to exile. Barely out of the Cocoon, Tob steals his package and invites him to follow him.
EPISODE V - Tob
Tob rambine, he explains on the way. He remaps the mechanics, hacks the electrical circuits and silences the hungry rats which jump on him. He was born there, outside the Cocoon. He grew up in rust and sludge, home-made electronics and degenerative technology. Around the Cocoon, a whole dilapidated city has sprawled. First, by the arrival of migrants who crowded as soon as the doors of the Cocoon closed: the laggards had nowhere else to go. Then, by the gradual rejection of the recluses, the worst gift that the Cocoon can make to the outside world: to get rid of its bad elements.
- The requisitioners only know slabs outside. They phosphorize that the abandoned become isolated, forced from the cold, already exhausted, as they integrate into our city. The city is anarchy and the law of the strongest. What makes her stand up is the Roller-Quad.
- Do you follow Quad Derby ™ broadcasts?
- No, we have our Derby. But I managed to hack the Cocoon's internal connection. I blow my nose at the races on a visioboard. That's why, I gave you away. I knew you would land by the next Reclaimer.
- Are we much to descend from up there?
- About ten a month, with a ladle. Besides, he hesitates, I'm the rambineur of a Roller-Quad team and I was blowing my breath ...
- It's not for my package that you keep me with you.
Tob stops in the shade of a metal fence, before the duo leads to a wider artery.
- I did not save your bacon so that flagstone, you would have ended up raped and eaten raw by the ratigeurs and you will quickly notice that everything is bartered here.
Molly Pop jumps at his throat and tackles him to the ground.
- Listen to me, little genius. No one asked you to help me. I just want to get my bag and nothing, absolutely nothing, forces me to stay with you.
- A punch in the buffet, it's fast as a sleeping pill.
Through the therapy of the Hospitia, Molly feels the coldness of the two iron points freezing her ribs. She ponders how to get away, but a muffled rumor catches her eye. The artery in front is illuminated with a blood glow. Molly Pop gets up, approaches and discovers the city of which Tob spoke, active and noisy, bright like a thousand lights. If she wants to find Stevna before a fortnight, she will need help. Tob joins her.
- V'là Althen, the largest city in the Free World.
Then, he leads him into the first avenues.
Althen is an overcrowded shanty town. The buildings overlap and overlap, never on more than two levels. Reinforced concrete, steel sheets and bent pillars. Light fixtures, glowing tungsten propellers, spotlights with naked bulbs, fragments of street lamps cross the streets in all directions to bring maximum visibility. To believe that what its inhabitants fear most is darkness, because all the misfortunes leading to death are hidden there, and that the Men here below stink of misfortune. The rest are scents of canteens, fried foods, smells of refuse and used water. There is also the din, incessant, swelling each artery of the city, from one end to the other; the tumult of the crowd and the noise of the night activities.
"Gambille behind me," Tob told him. Fissa.
He hurried on, winding through the black alleys of people, taking care not to linger in the traffic jams formed by onlookers bartering their food, lest their eyes fall on the last ejected from the Cocoon. In a zigzag, they appear and disappear from everyone's sight in a fraction of a second, getting lost in the mass. Then, he enters a shop at the bottom of a recess, behind a boui-boui selling grilled rat. He digs out a black loden for Molly which she passes around with an arm to cover her therapy. Finally, he leads her down steep slopes, lit by glowing tungsten propellers.
- The Cocoon is placed on a platemard. We aboule at the local, on the edge of the ravine. Southern ravine. Will you deliver?
- It's at your house ?
- The whole nursery team at the premises.
- Which team ?
- I told you: I am the rambineur of the Roller-Quad team of Ravin Sud.
To be continued…
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