Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds

his mouth beginning to curve up at the ends.
    Meroka grabbed Quillon’s arm and dragged him out into the night, just as the service revolver roared again. Rain hit his face, dirty and cold where it had sluiced down from the higher levels. For a moment the world was a moving confusion of cabs, trams, slot-cars and slot-buses. He stood transfixed. Then Meroka picked a cab and ran straight at it, making the driver slam on his brakes to avoid hitting her. She flung open the passenger door and stood by it until Quillon was inside, sitting behind the driver on the left. Then she climbed in after him, slammed the door and told the cabman to start driving.
    ‘Where we going?’ he asked, turning back to talk through the glass panel.
    ‘Just drive,’ Meroka said.
    Quillon looked behind. He saw the ghoul emerge from the station entrance, then walk slowly towards one of the other cabs. Then they pulled away, and a slot-bus swerved in to block his view. When it had cleared all he could see was a rain-washed confusion of moving headlights. The cabman kept asking where he was meant to drive, and Meroka kept giving him the same non-answer. ‘Just get us away from the station,’ she said.
    Quillon tore his attention from the rear view and fished out a ten bill. He tapped his wrist against the glass screen. ‘We can pay you. Take this up front.’
    The driver snatched the bill out of his fingers. ‘Still be good to know where we’re going.’
    ‘Hit a right here,’ Meroka said.
    The driver yanked at the wheel, guiding his pick-up shoe into the diverging slot, the vehicle jerking sharply as it followed the shoe. The cab sped down a side road lined by cheap hotels and low-rent tenements. This was not a prosperous part of Neon Heights, lying as close as it did to the edge of the zone. No one lived here if they could afford to live further away from the boundary, where the likelihood of being caught in a zone shift was much reduced.
    ‘Hit a left,’ Meroka said.
    The cab veered sharply, rejoining thicker traffic. Just as they cleared the bend Quillon saw headlights swing onto the side road. ‘I think we’re being followed,’ he said.
    ‘You think ?’ Meroka asked.
    ‘I saw the ghoul going for another cab. Someone’s behind us.’
    ‘Hit another right,’ Meroka said.
    The cabman shook his head. ‘Can’t do that. Takes us too close to the boundary.’
    She tapped the gun barrel against the glass. ‘Do it anyway.’
    He glanced around, saw the weapon and gave an unimpressed shrug, as if this was the kind of thing he expected to happen at least once a shift. ‘It won’t get you far. We’ll be off-grid in a couple of blocks.’
    ‘This cab got flywheels and batteries?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Then do what I said.’
    He made a right at the next intersection, diving down a dark street walled on either side by abandoned tenements, with the occasional vacant lot between them. The ride became rougher, and not just because of the bad condition of the asphalt under the tyres: years of dirt and garbage had compacted into the slot and not enough traffic came this way to keep the electrical path clear. The cab kept surging as the pick-up shoe lost traction current, the flywheel kicking in jerkily. Quillon glanced back. They had come quite some way down the dark street and nothing had turned off the main thoroughfare to pursue them. Perhaps he had been wrong about the other cab after all. He exhaled.
    Headlights swung onto the street.
    ‘It’s them.’
    ‘Which way is the boundary?’ Meroka asked the cabman.
    ‘Straight ahead.’
    ‘Then keep going. Cutter - see if you can take them out, prove to me what a badass you really are.’
    Quillon started to wind the window down and then halted, his hand trembling. ‘I can’t shoot at the cab. I’ll risk hitting the driver.’
    ‘Then fucking improvise.’ Meroka glared at him, her eyes wild and angry. ‘The slot. See if you can burn it out.’
    Quillon drew the angel gun from