The last member of the family finally recovered, we could retreat into an alley littered with trash where roamed rats as big as me. Behind us, on the avenue, the chaotic shooting continued between the two gangs. A television helicopter was the first to fly over the scene. It was immediately followed by the vans of an NBPD detachment escorted by surveillance drones. Their blaring sirens deafened us.

On the shoulders of his partner, Satori asked for a break to order an extraction from his portable terminal which he plunged into a public outlet. It allowed me to catch my breath and the two humans to reload their weapons.

“I wonder why are the Jews here...” Ada questioned, a shiny ammo at the corner of her lips.

“Well, I’m their banker…” cried the corpo, sweating in copious quantity.

“You’re fucking what?” Flatline let go; this time almost losing her legendary calm. Unbelievable! There wasn’t a single suit not involved in money laundering within this city.

Ignoring the civilians, the police quickly intervened with many asphyxiating gases. The latter forced the mobsters to entrench themselves in our back alley.

“Get the hell out of here! It’s already full!” yelled Ali, firing at will.

The gangsters’ retaliation passed over the shoulders of my partner, quickly calmed down by Ada. The mercenary had the same idea as me: “Abandon the banker here. They’ll leave us alone.”

Khelil also did the math. Taking advantage of Flatline being too busy looking after Satori and my associate reloading her weapon, he turned around to join his comrades despite the arrival of a police drone. We couldn’t react in time as another salvo of automatic pistols forced us to lie low in front of the emergency exit of a building. Alas, our burden of the evening hadn’t had the same reflex. Before the flying police spy dropped a new gas grenade, he lay face down.

“They shot him!” I meowed. “The police... the Janeiros... even the Undzer! They turned him into a colander!”

“Who cares?” Ali grunted. “If they have filters up their nose—or masks, they will show up any time soon and turn us all into homicide statistics!”

“Time is running out,” Ada said. Her visor split and slid up over her helmet. “Do you have anything, amore?”

“This drone scrambles all the communications!” replied the latter by furiously tapping the mechanical keys on his wrist. “I can’t ask from help on the web! The servers are fried!”

On one side of the alley, raging mobsters emerged from a cloud of tear gas. On the other, the flashing lights of a newly arrived NBPD vehicle were shining. A robotic voice transmitted through speakers ordered us to surrender. Ali decided shoot at the drone dropping static charges from the balconies over the electrical wires. The police responded by firing without any warning as the gas started to sting my eyes. I gasped for air. We were in big trouble.

Putting her rifle to the ground, Ada entrusted her boyfriend with rag legs to my sapiens. With her studded boots, the solo violently pushed us inside the building and slammed the emergency door before we could turned back.

“Damn, Ada!” Ali enraged, banging the closed panels. “You gonna get killed!”

Meanwhile, I landed against a soft and warm surface which smelled like a concoction of lilacs and vermouth with a little too much vinegar. There was also a hint of cigarette in the breath of the human who then shouted in my ears: “Ew! A disgusting rat!”

“Hold on, there! I demand an apology!” I replied outraged before I was chased from this pair of breasts suspiciously undefeated by gravity.

We had probably forced an entry into a love hotel as there were hundreds in City#91. But at the funk that came from the next room, I conclude it was probably a Hostess bar.

Soaked to the bone, I could easily pull myself out of a bouncer’s arms who came to the girl’s rescue. Her caliber in one hand and the engineer on her shoulder, my human didn’t leave time for her suit to wet the carpet in the same color as her jacket; she sprinted through the locker room while I was chased away with brushstrokes and Martian lingerie. We needed to flee as fast as possible from this place certainly controlled by the Yakuza. We couldn’t afford to add the Japanese underworld to the explosive equation.

“Satori-kun?” two entertainers with green hair whose costume consisted of not wearing one giggled at each other.

“Friends of yours, Big Brain?” I asked as we reached a room full of pachinko machines.

“Glee club acquaintances…” grumbled Satori before turning his head, hoping for the arrival of his partner. Yet, it wasn’t Ada Grant who passed through the cloakroom’s doors, but two police officers heavily equipped and supported by a giant MK android. “Kuso! They brought their buddies from Oedo! It’s the time to get involved with them with all these riots and the peace treaty.”

Knocking down plastic shojis, we landed in the club. Plunged into the pinkish semi-darkness and the vapors of dry snow, the Neo-Babylonian dregs sprinkled with faux Champagne the bare bodies of slightly underage men and women at minimum wage.

“Shouldn’t you be worried about Ada?” I asked by slowly slaloming the best I could between the legs of this debauched organic mass. Ali, who had stopped running, didn’t possess this delicacy and shoved everything that stood in her way: frightened dancers, angry bouncers and annoyed customers.

“She’s rock solid,” Satori replied. “Let’s just get away from the cops and go back to our condo to watch the Prince of Bel Air’s and Cyber-Macho’s episodes I taped!”

The hairs covered with alcohol and glitter, I could join the entrance hall of the club with the two sapiens on my heels. With a shoulder hit inspired by Harry Carson, my partner tried to break down the plexiglass of the security lobby. Alas, she miserably failed and bounced back against the Odeo Special Forces.

“Oh, for fuck sake!” my partner roared. Still dazed, she managed to turned back and knocked down one of the cops with a headbutt. “Lee? Where are you?” On her shoulder, Satori stole the officer’s weapon and pushed back the second one with two point-blank shots in his chest armor.

“Here! But not alone!” I yelled as the security was also dashing towards us.

Ali jumped in feet first against a cop that tried to get up, gathering momentum. She then slid between the two cyborgs guarding the exit while Satori took them down, aiming at their calves. After this incredible tactical move making me nostalgic of our time on Titan, we all ran to the doors. But, behind us, the MK burst through the plexiglass wall.

Picking herself up, Ali turned around, her free hand on the hip. “That’s cheating, dude! I already weakened it!”

“Oh, you totally did…” Satori snickered.

Luckily for us, an alarm sounded and a metal grid made of Deus ex machina alloy fell on the MK before he could follow us. I cheered, snapping with my claws the robot’s antenna. “That was close, but we're saf—”

“Watch out!” someone shouted.

Behind us, a DeLorean almost collided with the two luxury trucks. Behind the wheel, Ada squealed the landing gear of the car before deploying the butterfly doors which knocked down the pole of a holographic sign.

“Just like old times. Isn’t that right, Bambi?” joked the mercenary by making the fuming thrusters roar.

“Why is every minute worse than the last one with you?” I meowed, jumping towards Ada’s shoulder.

“Welcome back to City#91, guys! The most violent megalopolis in all Solaris!” Satori uttered. Ali had dropped him off in the back before diving in head first. Meanwhile, I had returned to the copilot’s position alongside the solo. “By the way, my techie ears can hear a sweet VIN 530. Can I drive, kudasai?”

“Out of the question, amore,” his partner replied while taking off. “Those pedals aren’t made for noodle legs.”

“That’s blatant ableism!” Big Brain complained.

“May I?” I queried, thrilled by the refined dashboard.

Ada smiled before brushing my chin. “Nope. Too small, buddy.”

“How about me?” Ali asked, passing the head between Flatline and I.

“No!” the three of us cut her off.

Grumbling profanities, my partner sat back before loudly fastening her seatbelt with an ungraceful knot.

Jiggered by the solo, the radio sizzled. It was the police frequency. “All units call. 444 to the city center area. Shooting on 28th Avenue. Gang presence reported. Request for backup. Do you copy? Over.”

“Here Central,” replied an AI with its metallic tone. “Negative. This is the Yakuza sector. We have a 507 downtown. Union riots still ongoing on 13th, 18th and Huygens Plaza. Potential overflows on Market Street, Meiji Island and the Cronus Bay Bridge. Out!”

The Japanese officer’s reaction was less polite than his request. But this news was reassuring: the brutal NBPD was more than busy to ignore a 444.

The DeLorean was later abandoned on a ring road bridge. Homeless people could bone it up to buy cigarettes or a quiet night in a sticky holosex booth. Soaked with rain and sweat, we all went back by cable car to the Kitty, which turned out to be the nearest bed; apart from the Marina’s capsule hotels.

“What an eventide!” sighed Satori once inside the airlock. “My legs are shaking…”

From the cockpit, I heard the dull sound of a punch against the flesh. A couple of minutes later, the computer specialist, a red hump on the forehead, joined me after the two women banished him from the hold to dry their clothes.

I was leaning on the radio, listening to the alarming news from downtown. Our adventures with the local underworld would quickly be forgotten because of the numerous deaths the riots brought out. According to the night reports, the peace treaty was only a mirage. The Technocracy would soon arrive to impose its victory on Titan by the force of its ruthless Marine.

“So long for the Wind of Change,” Flatline sighed while climbing the ladder. Sitting in Ali’s inclined chair, she began to remove from her arm the magnetic ammunitions fired by police drones. “On the bright side, we’re going to have a lot more work to do,”

Her partner came to the rescue with pincers brought by Ali before expressing his concerns: “I don’t think you guys should stay any longer on Titan. If you want to visit Ali’s dad, you gotta to do it this morning.”

“Are you ready for this, partner?” I asked.

I saw her turned her back and raising her thumb as she reached the ladder.

 

Tannhäuser Gate was an amphitheater of dark stone and white sand. Being one of Saturn’s old cemetery, most of the steles dated from the first settlers. We hardly met anyone there but a group of monks in orange toga crossing our path at the bend of an alley lined with real cedars. Wearing a gray functional dress, Ali bought them a small package of incense with notes of tangerine. Then, we went to the lower levels; mostly occupied by ancestral altars covered with moss.

Ali’s father’s anonymous haka was hidden in the shadow of a black limestone mausoleum. No name was engraved on the sotoba, these wooden planks intended for his family. It was common among bounty hunters to avoid post-mortem revenge.

“Are you sure it’s this one?” I asked as I approached the vault. “I’m still fuming I missed the funerals.”

“You were busy trying not to die.”

“You never know how much lives you have left—I mean, being a cat,” I joked. “Just in case, I chose not to let go.”

Ali silently wedged the incense into a modest receptacle in the shape of a kitten. It was the only ornament of the tomb with a small frame housing a Polacolor photograph miraculously preserved after all these years. However, after a quick analysis, its deposit seemed pretty recent. A bracelet of ivory beads rested on it.

“Strange. This can’t be Big Brain or Flatline,” I said. “Who else could know about your dad? He didn’t have any friends.”

“I don’t know,” Ali replied, brushing the dew off the frame.

The snapshot depicted a smoking middle-aged man with a short gray beard. Ali’s father was scary with his steel eye patch and his deep pink scars. One of them traced an ear-to-ear furrows on his black skin, intersecting on his broken nose. His shoulders were so large that they took up most of the width. On the left one, stood my tiny self.

“Look at this fluffy ball,” Ali joked. “So cute…”

“You mean ‘breathtaking’ or ‘stupendous’, human. The opposite of the scruffy little demon you were!” Under Félix’s right arm hid my future partner; still a child, but recognizable by his blond locks, blue eyes and oversized soda cup.

However, Ali, her dad and my past-self weren’t the only ones on the picture. To the left of the bearded colossus stood a second little girl, properly dressed, with long brown hair and caramel skin. She disappeared without trace the same night as Félix, obliterated by the fire that came from the skies.

Her name was Nora. She was Ali’s sister.

 

Back to business!