Doped up on glucose, Ali entered the ring a few minutes later. Dressed with an orange keikogi, she looked pale against Kowalewicz: a tall, blond, hot-dog-skinned man. “Ali versus Frazier!” the ringmaster announced over the microphone. “David versus Goliath!” A clever comparison as the first round of the fight proved it.

“Maybe I got carried away…” I sighed as I made my way back to the arena when the clock ticked down to three minutes.

On her resting stool, my partner’s face was bloody and bruised. But she kept a mock smile despite a missing canine tooth. “I fink he understood why we came for…” she pointed out, spitting a premolar.

“You think so?” On the opposite side of the ring, Kowalewicz displayed his platinum filed fangs. Under his deep eyebrows shone the demented flame of the hardened criminal galvanized by the smell of blood. On his green lips, I could read a death threat in three different languages. “Indeed. Good luck!”

“Not fo fast, you flee-ridden postife!” Ali reacted, pulling me back by the tail. “Don’t you have some advife for me?”

“I don’t know, uh… Wax on, Wax off!”

My human had torn off her top, displaying a wide collection of scars inherited from our last adventures, and proved to the world once again that my feline instinct was right.

The second round was nothing like the first. The former hired gun from Vesta may have mastered his art, but this time Ali dodged his blows without flinching. She managed to hit him in the stomach several times before using her speed and endurance to tire the heavyweight.

In the presidential box just above me, the Techno-Senator Balladur had stood up. Worried about his bodyguard, he kept calling the referee, shouting louder than half the onlookers. If Kowalewicz couldn’t close the fight in the third round, it was indeed over for him.

But I spoke too quickly. To the cheers of the crowd—which didn’t hold bounty hunters dear in its heart—my human took a stratospheric uppercut. The latter sent her waltzing into the ropes against which she was immediately tackled. Fortunately, Bartomiej Kowalewicz then made his one and only mistake. By massaging his reinforced vertebrae, our opponent let my partner go around him to finally perform the most wonderful German Suplex in martial arts history. Karl Gotch would have been proud, as the bodyguard ended up impaled through the wooden platform, folded like an accordion.

“Holy fuck… hif dead!” Ali cried with a hint of relief. “If it allowed?” The referee, petrified by the turn of events, nodded shyly. As I congratulated her on the victory through the noise of the flashbulbs, Ali stopped my praise to remind me of the essential: “Where if the Techno-Fenator?”

I looked up at the tiers. The ex-MP’s target was quietly slipping away. “I’m going to warn Braun. Get this dingus’ badge! Quickly!”

Leaving Ali, I bolted towards the phone booths in the lobby. I managed to turn the dial and reach an operator who was visibly lacking her joie de vivre. She put me in touch with Rasputin through a public channel. The Noah’s Ark was staying at a motel further south.

“Lee? What are you doing in a karate tournament?” Braun’s authoritative voice echoed through the receiver. “What about Balladur? Where’s Ali?”

“Ali might be missing some teeth.”

“What?” the Soviet reacted. “Wait—”

“Our homie Balladur is not heading home,” Winston interrupted us as he took control of the Interceptor’s radio. “He apparently received an ominous call and he’s storming back to the Black Haven.”

I let out a curse—not a habit of mine. Meanwhile, Ali had joined me; a frozen steak on her jaw and the access badge pinned on her visibly stolen Martian clothes. I shifted my ear so she could follow the conversation.

“We’re running out of time,” Braun went on. “Go get him there! We dispatched a special DIA agent over there to help you.”

“Arresting a Techno-Senator in the Black Haven? Are you mental? What’s the next step? Stealing Bill Clinton’s underwear?”

“That one’s easy,” Ali commented.

“This is idiotic!” I burst out. We were so close to Nora! Braun is ruining my plan! “We won’t do it!”

“We’ll do it,” my partner said, munching her steak. She took the handset and directly talked to the annoying Soviet: “Got our own special access. Don’t need your agent.” And she hung up.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked before we passed the antique carved doors of the hotel.

“We were going to the Black Haven anyway. It’s just a short detour. This place can’t be that big.”

 

“I can’t believe this place is that big!” Ali whined after a taxicab had dropped us off at the foot of Mount Olympus. One of the seventy-three round turbo-funiculars then took us to the mountain’s top, to the seat of the government shaped like a seven hundred stories pyramid. Despite the early hour, the Techno-employees in black plastic suits were already crowding the transports.

“Did your teeth grow back?” I asked my partner as she was ordering a baked apple pie on the smart-window riddled with info-ads and Max Headroom reruns.

“New ones could be molded from a machine in the locker room.”

“And these clothes?” I insisted, judging her ‘borrowed’ JNCO jeans and long-sleeved black t-shirt from top to bottom as we left the supersonic funicular.

“Hideous, aren’t they? I feel like the next few decades will be a lot less funky!” my partner concluded by crushing the gel-coated spikes that a teenage girl sported as a hairstyle. This one insulted her before running away on her chainless bike which blasted a very loud electronic music devoid of melody.

“Mars’ false utopia has always been too grim for us anyway,” I went on as we faced an eerie three meters high memorial of the Techno-President Hasselhoff spoiled by pigeons and graffiti. “Where is this DIA agent Braun talked about? Should we call him back?”

“That’s not really our style. Let’s proceed.”

After a drone dropped an aluminum package at Ali’s feet, she linked her wrist terminal to the Black Haven’s network thanks to special outlets embedded into the dark-stone statue’s pedestal. A slice of apple pie between the teeth and fangs, we tried to locate the office of the Techno-Senator we had lost sight of when we left the Ritz. Alas, already overloaded with connections, the network remained muted despite our too numerous attempts. Disappointed, we decided to go directly to the robotic counter near the huge doors of the Administrative Building.

We were stopped in our way a few seconds later by two black MKs accompanied by a human officer with mirrored eyes. He wasn’t wearing a Marine outfit but the dark and red Gendarmerie uniform. “Halte!” he ordered in French, positioning himself a few inches from Ali and pointing a finger at her massive Desert Eagle tucked in her pants. “Where do you think you're going with this… king-sized absurdity?”

“I’m a bodyguard,” she answered while putting forward the hacked badge. “With king-sized insecurities.”

“Very well, Mademoiselle,” replied the officer after a diode lit up behind his glare-free eyes. “Please, forgive me for my impertinence. You cannot be too careful these days.”

Ali whispered to me as we left the patrol: “See? That worked! You’re a genius”

“Shocking.”

Enthusiastic, we joined the queue leading to the Administrative Building’s information booths. After long minutes of waiting, we were finally admitted by a robot with a troubling humanoid holo-face which kept freezing after every vowel: “Bonjour-Hi! What can I do for you, today?”

My partner waved back. “Salut! Ça va? I don’t know… Lee? What should we ask?”

“Bonjour! This is my feather brain partner’s first day,” I started by jumping on the desk. “We were told to report to the Techno-Senator Balladur. Is it possible for you to share us his geo-tag, his office localization?” The Black Haven was a pyramid with nearly a million employees spread over thousands of square miles. Without a geo-tag indicating Balladur’s main office, it would have been unthinkable for us to find our target.

“Le Techno-Senator Balladur? Oui…” the robot cackled as he tapped on its Minitel terminal. “Please, go to the central desk in the Legislative Building for further information. Follow the luminous marking 056A. Have a nice day. Au revoir.” The metal puppet then ordered us to step back in order to make room for the next person in line.

“Luminous marking?” I asked, looking at the glistening black tiles.

“Yes. They talked about that in Benson,” Ali advised me before purloining a Techno-Delegate’s wired glasses. “Check this out!”

“Amazing!” Through the lenses, I witnessed the multicolored filaments that make up the lit markers. “Can we borrow your lunettes for a few moments, my dear Madame?” I articulated in my irreproachable French.

The woman took back her ugly glasses and heaved a sigh. From the smugness that transpired from her every pore, I predicted that we weren’t going to get any help from this oaf. The Martians were anything but friendly. To get our way, Ali had to steal another pair from an easily seduced Techno-Intern.

“We’ve been walking for at least three hours! I’m exhausted!” she said fifteen minutes later, lifting the polymer lenses from her nose which had become sore from the weight of the uncomfortable gadget.

“And according to the board, we still have an hour to wait before our turn at the information desk. This place is a living hell!” I let out. “Can’t the glasses point us directly to the Techno-Senator’s office? Is his geo-tag publicly registered?”

“I’m doing what I can, but the wireless connection is jumpy,” Ali grumbled as she scrolled through the computer menus that were impossible for me to see. “Ah! Found it!”

“Balladur’s office or the food court?”

“Neither of them, sassy mop... I found how to associate this damn thing to my terminal. Because I will grow either an aneurysm or a solid strabismus…”

Thanks to my partner, we could continue the laborious procedure through a technology we mastered. Unfortunately, the sensitive geo-tag required a particular pass—which we couldn’t get as our badge had been reset in the process. To get the certification, we had to fulfill two forms that needed to be addressed at the Geo-tag Registration Office, in the Administrative Building. The first document could be found at the Visitor Center while the other should be printed and initialed in the Archives Building.

“Damn! We come from the Administrative Building,” Ali exploded, startling a group of Techno-Secretaries. “Why is it no longer the fucking 056A light marker to go back there? Why is it 807C now?”

“Take a chill pill, partner. I got some hacking skills, remember?” But the public connection went down, depriving us of the Techno-Intern’s access codes. “Sacrebleu! Glad to see our taxes being used efficiently!”

“We pay taxes?” Ali asked while taking over.

“Of course not. We’re not communists!” I answered. “Is it working now?”

Mount Olympus had been asleep since the dawn of time. The sonic roar shaking the hall that day came from my sapiens that had just erupted. “Imma melt a battery! This fucking shit is rebooting again!” she shouted, bludgeoning a robot-ashtray that hadn’t asked for anything.

“Don’t kill anyone or we’ll end our days in the Bastille. And don’t forget we have your sister potentially around too!” The glasses wired then in balance on the nose, I tried the best I could to reconfigure them with my cat’s paws as Ali, kneeling in a corner, pounded the waxed floor with her fists. “You locked the whole interface,” I said after using a few bypasses I stored into her wrist implant. “But I managed to obtain Balladur’s geo-tag. His localization!”

“How?” Ali grumpily asked.

“I’m a genius. You said it earlier.”

“You got lucky this time.”

“I’m a lucky genius. Now, check this out!”

The cul-de-sac that sheltered us lit up. Immediately, four slabs of tiles rose two meters from us. A rectangular box emerged from the floor and the elevator opened its doors to welcome its visitors.

“The geo-tag’s lock set off an automated guidance system,” I replied as the doors closed. “Ready for a tour in the TARDIS?”

“Nerd.”

The experience was unpleasant. The glass and steel cube twirled in all directions. It was like traveling in a washing machine which reduced us to the state of compote, before we arrived in front of the Inner System’s Techno-Senators’ offices.

Made of abstruse black plastic, the door of Edouard Balladur’s office was ajar.