The wall was ten meters tall, pure concrete, with cameras armed with assault rifles mounted on top of it and barbed wire preventing any attempt at climbing over. There was a single, wide road inside and out that grew thinner as it approached the control point, its asphalt cracked and haphazardly filled in so many times it was impossible to tell which parts were original and which were fixed. I was doing breathing exercises while waiting in line, Century was pretending to be just a rudimentary drone piloted with a link instead of her true self, and Joseph was nervously drumming on the box, sweating bullets. The truck ahead of us moved, and I drove the car into position, grabbing the papers and getting out. I never liked being far apart from Century, but this was too delicate a situation to bring her in on, and a Journeyman having a support drone? Who ever heard of such a thing? Only those among the Bonded, and those numbered in the pair.
The office was stuffy, and hadn’t had clean air in it in years based on the smell, never mind the complete lack of sunlight and space. “State your designation and business.” The officer spoke up loudly. Well, ‘spoke up’ was stretching it; the cloud of smoke around his head was constant, and his throat had been visibly replaced. The problem with the model he’d gotten was that it was basically a shitty speaker, and so it would be more appropriate to say he staticked up. It was good then that the glass shield in front of him understood him enough to project his speech as text.
“M, I’m delivering a package of organs for transplantation.” I slid him the folder and the cash stick tucked underneath it, poking out just enough that I hoped he’d notice it and hide it afterwards.
“Scan and papers check out.” He nudged the stick with the folder in such a way that it fell down, but since I didn’t hear it hit the floor, I figured it fell into his waiting hand. “You’re free to go. Welcome to Dusklight.” With a quick nod towards him and a turn, I was out of the office and getting back in the car; the air within smelled a thousand times better.
“No wonder the dude takes bribes, the government didn’t even cover a good enough voicebox for him to be understandable.” The gate opened and I drove out, my thoughts occupied with where we’d park to let our stowaway get out.
“They can’t be that expensive, can they?” Joseph leaned forward, resting his elbows on the seats.
“Oh, you’d be surprised how high voices go for if you’re in the market to still sound humanlike instead of digital idol-like.” I would know; it took everyone in the Bonded pitching in to cover my transition. I should have come out before puberty hit, but I didn’t want to burden the community with my own problems. I reached for my throat, smiling slightly. That gave me an idea of where we should take our illicit cargo. “Hey, do you know any cyber clinics that you trust?”
Joseph scratched his chin. “Ughhh, yeah, yeah I know one. You do not fuck with the dame running the place, I can tell you that much, and the cops avoid that street like the plague because of her.”
“Ah, a woman after my own heart, and a perfect haven for our oxymoron of an illegal human. How do we get there?” I passed him my old phone so he could put the directions in, but then I heard a familiar whirring. “Shit.” I swerved to the side, narrowly dodging the hail of bullets the quadcopter let loose. In the rearview mirror I could see what adorned its front, a screen with an all too familiar smile-resembling arrow. “Rainforest found us!” I pressed a button under the steering wheel, the roof opened up and a shotgun slid out from between the seats.
“How?!” Joseph asked, getting the memo to grab the shotgun and get in position to fire.
“Scan must have alerted them we’ve got their shit! How many are we dealing with?!” I hoped to whatever higher power was watching that Joseph had the balance to handle my reckless driving while he tried to hit the drones.
“A big one and three small ones! They just deployed from the big one!” I could see one getting close to the front right wheel, definitely intending to break it. I swung the door at it, hard, knocking it out of the air and right under the wheel it was set to destroy.
“Seven left to deploy!” I called out, snaking around to be as annoying a target to hit as possible.
“How do you know that?!” Joseph asked, firing the shotgun at one that got close enough.
“Me and my cousin used to fuck with them for fun! Rainforest is too fucking cheap to improve their drones for ten wholeass years!” I did a u-turn to drive directly under it, giving Joseph a chance to fire.
He hit exactly where I figured he would. “So you just took out five of the remaining deployables! It uses them as plating! It’s got about five more rotations of ammunition and then it’ll try to ram us and flip us over!” I did another u-turn, smashing a deployed drone with the back of the car, sending it flying right into its compatriot, leaving the big one only two to deploy.
“Next time I drive under it, take out two of its propellers, on the same side!” I caught Joseph nodding with the rearview mirror, and sped up, driving underneath it once again.
He caught the two left ones and had enough time and dexterity to hit one of the right ones on the way out. I stopped the car and got out, watching the drone land. “It’s going to try to self repair, now’s our chance. Cent! Good Girl Protocol!” Century leapt out the car and flew over to the downed drone; the propellers that deployed from her thighs kept her much more stable than the drone had been. She landed on top of it, cracked open a panel with her beak and opened said beak to let an adapter slither out of her throat. She plugged right into the quad, and in short order the ever-present smile on its screen was replaced with a loop of Century dancing.
She unplugged herself and sauntered over to me, rubbing against my legs. “Good job, Cent! Is that a new one you used this time?” She nodded, and I scratched under her chin.
Joseph was looking a little bit uncomfortable. “So. Uhm. What was all that about? Good Girl Protocol?”
“Century hacked the rudimentary programming of the drone so it thinks it accomplished its mission and will return to base once repaired, preventing reinforcements from being sent our way,” I answered, returning to the car.
“Okay, that’s smart, but the name?” He was shrugging, so I rolled my eyes at him.
“You say it to a trans girl, she melts; it felt appropriate at the time. And I am not in the mood to change the name. Neither is Century.” I closed the door and waited for him to get in, sealing the roof in the process.
He was still shaking his head as he got in. “What kind of drone is your Century even in? Never seen anything like that.”
I got us back on the road to town. “She’s custom work, from beak to tail; I built every single part of her housing myself.”
“Damn, and you managed that with Journeyman resources?” I figured I might as well open up to the idiot, considering he’d helped.
“There is a fabrication plant, underground, that all the Journeymen communities know and use. We call it The Forge. Each community uses it for something specific that’s tied into their identity. Mine used it to build bodies for our Daemons.” I scratched Century under her chin, earning a satisfied chirp in the process.
“Huh, that’s honestly way cooler than the tattoos the local gang gets. Skin can get burned and you need to get it again if you want to stay in it, but you’ve got a whole spiritual thing tied into it.” Joseph cautiously extended his open hand towards Century, gulping nervously as he got closer. Century stared him right in the eyes before bumping her head in his palm, earning a relieved sigh from him. “I was kind of expecting her to be cold, not comfortably warm like that.”
“Well, she likes you, so I’m legally obligated to like you too. Where to to reach Doctor Scare-Off-Cops’?”
“Auntie Murphy’s is the fourth left and then the third right once we reach Oddington.” Joseph leaned back, his hands behind his head.
“Is the city block seriously named Oddington?”
“Not officially, officially it’s Section 69--”
“Nice.”
“And that’s exactly why all the queer folk congregated there and claimed it as their own.”
“Ah, odd as in queer. Who was responsible for the name, seriously?”
“No idea, it’s been that for sixty years.”
“To Oddington it is.” I shifted gears and sped up, hoping for a long hot shower at a cheap motel the moment I was done for the night.
Nooo, not the good girl protocol ?
We do be meltin tho hehe
Only later did my GF remind me it also works on puppies to make them rest but like, there's more than enough overlap
@Katie-the-Angel-Witch Yessu, quite enough for it to work with both explanations