Placa del Fuego by Tobias S. Bequel, read by Mike Allen for issue 34 of Clark's World magazine.

Tiago would normally have taken his cut of the picked pockets and stopped right here at the seaside plaza.

On the very edge, past the vendors on the cobblestone sea walk,

Tiaga would sit with his legs over the rocky sea wall and look out over the harbor.

Today he only detoured through the plaza to throw the crowd in between him and the woman chasing him.

He'd gotten a brief glimpse of her before the running started.

Tall, dark eyes, dark skin, dark leather jacket and micro-fiber pants, careful dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail.

She was fast in the crowd.

She wasn't dodging around legs using the ebb and flow of the masses to see open routes like Tiago, no people who got in her way

were just thrown out of the way.

Too strong, she was some sort of soldier, Tiago thought, refocusing ahead. He might have gotten

himself into a bit of a situation. Slipping onto the sea wall path, he sprinted harder, deciding that she was covering the gap in the crowd.

To his right, the harbour was filled with ships and their cargo, anchored and waiting for a spot to clear on the docks.

One of them was throwing out a parasail, the windfoil bucking in the inconsistent harbor wind,

but then filling out, rising up into the air hundreds of feet overhead, and then some.

The ship began to pick its way out of the harbor, headed between the tall forest of wind turbines

at the harbor's edge, a dangerous move to unleash a windfoil

in the harbor, but suddenly Tiago noticed other ships unfurling sails in haste.

A cloud of brightly colored perifoils leapt into the harbor sky like butterflies

swarming from a shaken limb. This was worrying enough that Tiago slowed somewhat and looked to his left.

The warehouses, three and four stories tall, dominated the first row of buildings, but behind

them climbing tenaciously up the side of the mountain, homes and houses colorfully dotted the

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