I moved. I exploded. I started running almost before I knew it. An animal terror wrapped around my head, slowing everything down. My legs weren't working properly: they staggered across familiar territory as if I were drunk. Across the yard, back to the security lock. I had to pull up my sleeve twice with shaking fingers. One swipe of my UConn later and the skimboard came free in my hands. I immediately staggered and almost fell over. Idiot! I'd forgotten to activate it before I unlocked it. The noise of first one side and then the other hitting the ground seemed incredibly loud to me, like gunshots. I turned it over with shaking hands and flicked it on.

The front door opened. "There she is!"

I didn't think, I just moved. A flare of the engine and I was off, skimming down the street. Muscle memory turned me to the right. I saw the road back to the heart of Unilox stretching out in front of me. Lights from whirring skimboards and hovercars danced at the end like stars: I flew toward them, every inch of me reaching out for the safety of numbers.

Behind me, I heard the hovercar whine sharply. My heart stuttered. Think, Maddie, think. It was Friday. Late enough that most people would be out. I could lose them in the city traffic. Maybe. I gunned my engine, grimly thanking those hours I'd spent tinkering and the late nights I'd spent looking up how to mod custom parts. My own vanity was going to save me. If I'd had a normal skimboard, the hovercar would have overtaken me a long time ago.

But it was still just a skimboard, and the hovercar was still a hovercar, and the road was long and straight. They pulled up next to me. The heat from their windows burned as they folded away. The wind was roaring in my ears now, loudly enough that I could barely hear the suit even with his mic'd-up implants. I glanced across and almost choked. He really was wearing a suit. Above it, I caught the fleeting impression of sharp bones, low-set eyes, and sunken cheeks. "Madeline Anron," he said, and I heard my death in that voice. "I am a representative of ANRON Life Limited." His voice changed suddenly, modulating as his implant took over. "I need you to stop. I repeat, stop your vehicle now."

I almost did. He'd changed his implant to the same voice they played straight into our ears when they were making announcements. The voice that told us to get down and find cover, that the war was over, that Unilox would never be caught off guard again. The instinct to obey was so powerful I slowed before I even realized it. The hovercar drifted forward for a moment as I fell behind, and I caught a glimpse of the interior through that open window. The other suit was fumbling with something on his lap. Something that shone silver and black with text. It took a moment for me to place it. An EverCube. Like the one in my bag.

They were going to cut my skimboard.

I looked ahead. The bridge was coming up. Beneath it—down, down—the clear waters of Unilox River ran.

The world was moving and I was staying still. The bridge came and then we were on it, rails flying past and repeating. We roared along side by side and I felt the wind cut down to my bones. Mr. Soft finally clicked his EverCube together and aimed it. And in that one moment, I triggered my skimboard to leap.

Up and over the edge. The bottom of it scraped against the rail and sent me tilting crazily forward. I screamed. Cold air scalped my lungs. I coughed, and then I was falling. If I'd waited three more seconds, I would have run out of earth and fallen to my death in the river. Instead, the sightseeing trail that ran down to the riverbank rushed toward me. I tried to angle the skimboard back. I'd done jumps on it before, but nothing like this. My brain calculated the distance and spat out pain.

The skimboard dropped and then flattened out. It was like hitting dirt. Even the buffered shock of it traveled all the way up from my legs to my neck. For a moment, my head was thrown back and I saw the starless sky. And then my sockets pulled and I was thrown forward again, the bars digging deep into my stomach as the board spiraled forward.

I pulled to a shaky stop directly underneath the bridge. I had a few minutes, maybe less, before they reversed down the highway and came roaring after me. My mind was still gibbering in sheer terror, but when I closed my eyes, I still saw the lights of the EverCube staring back at me. My bag. I reached for it, still looped around the handles of my skimboard, and fumbled with the ties. My hand slipped on the edges of the EverCube twice. I pulled it out and stared at it.

I knew how to block my messages. I knew how to hack a broken washing machine keyed to someone else, and I knew how to shut down a malfunctioning skimboard entirely so I could take its parts. But this . . . I had never considered turning my UConn off. I knew theoretically that I could. MERCE had built our UConns, just as they'd built everything else I could touch. All I had to do was run the master shutdown sequence—the one that killed everything down to the cycling battery so I didn't fry myself when I was tinkering.

But this was my UConn. My connection to the world. To everything.

Above me, I heard a sharp whine.

My hands were covered in sweat. I seized the EverCube and tapped down with two thumbs, and everything cut off. Everything. My night vision. My implants. The night rolled into me. The whisper of the river became a rush. The city lights dimmed in the distance, and I smelled dead grass and the remnants of sun off the road. And then two beams of light scythed through the night, so bright I was blinded. There was no time to get used to this strange and foreign world. I pushed back on my skimboard and it seized, stuttered, and died.

Of course. It connected to my UConn and my UConn was dead.

I moved too late. The hovercar hit my useless skimboard and the force almost pulled my arms from my sockets. The EverCube went flying off into the distance. I hit the ground with a cry that slammed the air from my lungs. Fear tore through my exhausted muscles. I tried to get up and felt every minute I'd been on that treadmill and every second waiting through the Auctioning with my heart in my mouth. Then I heard the sound of the hovercar door yawning open, and footsteps.

I stumbled to my feet and ran.

I'd been running a minimum of an hour every day, five days a week, since I was eight.

Even now, I could run.

I dashed off the path. They could follow me, but it would be hell on their engine. I felt my lips pull sharp across my teeth and each bite of loose rock into my skin. I sucked in air and felt the fumes from the river burn their way down my throat. The hovercar snarled and spat behind me. If their grav-brakes slipped now, they would crash straight into the river.

The river! I changed direction so sharply I almost pulled something. Then I ran straight up the descent, almost vertically, toward the road. If I could beat them there I could do anything. I could cross the bridge and leave them muddling around, searching through rows and rows of identical dream houses. Or I could lose them in the spaces between the roads. It didn't matter. They couldn't track me now. I could hide.

My ears picked up faint curses. They were below me, far below. I climbed, feeling the reverberation of bones in my chest and the hollow emptiness of my lungs as I gasped in air. I reached the lip of the road and jumped, grabbing the edge and pulling myself up with shrieking muscles. I caught myself before I pitched forward and stood on shaking legs. I looked from the city lights back to the glow of the houses and then from the left bank of the river to the right, feeling each precious second drip past. Where could I go?

Below me I heard the hovercar thrum, reversing back onto the sightseeing trail. I looked again at the city and saw the tangle of Friday night traffic, and I grinned, a hard grin. Then I sprinted to the bridge. If I could just make it across . . .

My feet licked the ground, pushed off and flew. It felt like I was running through a world stopped for me, like somebody had hit pause. Hovercars hummed angrily around me, stuck in the snarl trying to get home or out to the city. I passed them all. I was going to make it. I was going to make it.

But as I twisted the corner of the bridge, a headlight fell on me from far away, like it had been aimed. They knew where I was. The knowledge of it pressed on me like a sparking cable. My body shook. I tasted a familiar burn at the back of my throat. But I couldn't stop now. I couldn't. I looked up. The road back to the city spiraled up, following the river before curving around and around until it hit the top of the cliff. The city apartments started there at the lip of the valley, just before it dove down into the Unilox CBD. Maybe I could hide somewhere there. Not in the city itself, with all of its security cameras, but on its edge.

I sprinted along the road until the bridge and its lights disappeared behind the bulk of the hill. And then I threw myself at the ascent and climbed, straight past the road, angling up to the path at the top of the cliff and to the ledge where I'd dangled my legs only an hour or so ago. I'd almost reached it when a hovercar whined too close beneath me. I froze against the hill and dug down into the base of the ledge, hoping they hadn't seen me.

The hovercar circled back. This time it stopped, and I heard the scuff of boots on the ground. My heart kicked up. It had to be them. It had to be. But my UConn was off. How had they found me?

Adrenaline sharpened my senses until I felt my blood pounding through my veins. I swallowed around the tang of iron. There was a distant hum in my ears . . .

Wait, no. It was below my ears. Without thinking, my hand automatically reached up to stroke my smooth red collar. My guts lurched. Of course. Of course they used our collars to track us. I clutched at my link to Unilox, the symbol of my citizenship, and my mind blanked. The EverCube was gone; I'd lost it under the river. I had no way to shut down my collar. It didn't matter where I hid. I had nowhere to go.

My fingers didn't know that though. They scrabbled across it: desperate, searching. A nail caught in the finest crack, and I instantly latched on and pulled, scratching at it like I was possessed. A tiny edge gave way and a panel popped open.

But I had no more time. The boots crunched closer. They were shining lights from their UConns now, bright enough to blind. I straightened. My body wasn't ready to give up yet, even though my mind was gone. I jumped for the edge of the road above me and pulled myself up just before the light touched my feet. Then I scrambled up and ran. I was still faster than them. They'd have to get back into their damn hovercar and follow me. I could lead them on a merry chase until even my enhanced body gave out. I could . . .

Another black hovercar accelerated around the corner, blocking me.

My mind slowed to a screeching halt. It had never occurred to me that they would call for backup. Of course they would. And now I was trapped. I looked desperately from one side to the other. The hovercar in front of me blocked my way to the city. And the one behind, now pulling to a stop, blocked my way back to the bridge. They couldn't have planned it any better. I'd been herded here, like an army pincering its prey.

I shivered. The cold wind slapped me across the face. There was nothing to stop it up here. We'd reached the top of the cliff, just before the ground sloped down into Unilox. There was only the ground below our feet, the empty space where it vanished, and the river roaring below. There was no escape. There was nothing.

The hovercars powered down. Four suits got out, two from each car. I focused on Mr. Sharp immediately, stalking toward me like a predator in the darkness. He held a case that I recognized from Ads. A case with a needle. He saw me look, and he smiled.

If I'd been thinking, I would have done something else. Maybe. I don't know. But I wasn't thinking. For the first time in my life, terror ate me alive and I did the only thing I could think of doing.

I ran three steps—one, two, and on the third one, I pushed off, launching myself from the cliff. For a moment, it felt like I was swimming through the air.

And then I fell down into the river, the poisonous river, and I let it carry me away.    

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading. You absolutely make my day with your comments and votes. So please, keep hitting that little star and commenting away! Thank you. ^_^

This is the end of Part 1 - Incorporation. Part 2 - Liquidation will begin in a few days.