Read SHIAM Conspiracy- Book 1 for Free Online Page B

view mirror and turned the comm down just enough for his
shout to be heard.
    “So dude...where to?”
    “South side,” Zak answered. “Underworld.”
    “Oh, hey man.” The kid turned the music down
further, shaking his head emphatically. “I don’t go down into the
Zone after dark. And I sure don’t go nowhere near Underworld!”
    Everything south of Krune Street was known as
the Zone by the locals. It was where the poor and the destitute
were forced to settle. It was also where the predators of the city
migrated. It was a dangerous place, especially after dark.
    “You are a cab driver, aren’t you?”
    “Hey man, I value my skin and any holes get
put in it, I like it to be voluntary. Get somebody else to drive
you.”
    The kid turned and looked at Zak. He wore his
fear of the Zone openly, but the dilated pupils of his eyes weren’t
entirely from being frightened. Recreational drugs.
    “You’re here, somebody else isn’t,” Zak said.
He looked at the ID plate on the dashboard. It read Kam Shower and
included an exceptionally bad photo of the kid. “Look, Kam, I’m not
asking you to cruise the place. In and out...just drop me off. You
take me there and I won’t mention to your boss that you’re getting
stoned on the job.” He fished in his coat pocket and pulled out a
credit voucher. “Here’s an extra fifty for the trouble.”
    Kam reached for the voucher and Zak pulled it
back. “Underworld?”
    “Aw, man...I told ya I don’t want to go
there.” He looked at the credit voucher Zak was holding out, his
face twisted in indecision. Finally, the cash won out. He reached
back and swiped the voucher out of Zak’s hand, clicked the meter on
and the dome light went out as they pulled away from the curb.
“What the frag. Ya only live once, right? But dude, anything
happens and you pay my med expenses!”
    “Take the high way,” Zak said. “I’m in a
hurry. And keep the comm down to a gentle roar!”
    “Whatever you say, man.”
    With the pause in the storm, the ban against
multi-level driving had been lifted for the time being. Kam pulled
away from the curb, shifted the anti-grav into a higher setting and
the cab made a smooth ascent to a height of two hundred meters
above the street and levelled off. He turned south on River Side
Drive. This was the main north-south artery of Sol Kappur, running
parallel to the Serpent River. With the break in the weather and
lift in the upper level ban, traffic was a steady stream of
headlights on all levels. Residents, most likely attempting to
shrug off claustrophobic anxiety from the bad weather, were heading
out on the town tonight.
    They were travelling well above the four and
five story buildings that dominated the neighborhood. As the cab
travelled south, it provided Zak with a panoramic view of what many
people called the city with a split personality . Sol Kappur
proper glittered in stylized patterns of light, which gave no hint
of the neglect that actually existed on the east side of the
Serpent River. The skyline on this side of the river was low level,
no buildings over ten stories, and by day its dingy depressed
personality was exposed for all to see. Sol Kappur West, as the
inhabitants who lived on the west side of the Serpent River so
quaintly named their section of the city, was a dramatically
different story. Downtown not only reached up to the sky in rich
luster, but many of the buildings disappeared into the haze of
cloud, ranging over six-hundred meters tall. This is where the
mega-corporations chose to build their lavish offices, Grimrok
among them. These huge giants of the metropolitan area were
surrounded by lavish estates in the outer areas. Even though Sol
Kappur and Sol Kappur West were technically two segments of the
same city, they had come to exist pretty much independently of each
other.
    Lights from the far side of the river seemed
a thousand times more dazzling in the darkness. Gazing off into
what seemed like a spectacular wall of