Arena

It was past midnight, and I was either chasing someone or being chased - the details were vague on that score.

I was running in a tree-filled park east of where my folks live. In the real world, there is a small park where this park is, but this one bore no resemblance to the real world one.

There were stone steps leading down, and they came to an abrupt halt at a circular pit, carved into the ground. The pit was a couple of hundred feet across and some forty feet deep, with a leaf-lined floor. In the real world, this would not exist, and there'd be a long lake here instead.

Surrounding this pit were many old trees. Apparently, this natural arena had an audience - younger people, kids, young adults, wearing mostly rags. Apparently they lived in the area, staying out of the way of the cops.

I stood on the flat floor of this pit, and the locals dropped rope ladders down and clambered down to join me. Their leader, a pretty young woman, warned me that the cops were on their way already, and that if I was to evade them and live another night, I had to climb up one of the rope ladders and get into the trees.

It seemed that the cops on the ground were incapable of looking up, apparently. And the tree cover apparently masked our IR signatures, the noises we made, and even our scents from the dogs.

Halfway up, I could hear people approaching in a hurry, beating at the undergrowth. I could see the waving columns of light from handheld flashlights.

And the alarm went off.