With the bracelet in a safe place in an abandoned holosex box, it was time to rescue Ali in the final stage of the plan I had concocted. An operation irretrievably censored by the Data Maiden.
“I’ve already told you no…” she cut me off as I had tried again to convince her that the explosion of the Blue’s tanks was a perfect diversion to cover our escape. “Blowing things up is a weird obsession of yours!”
“Do your Braun impression,” I grunted. Sometimes, I could be as grouchy as Ali.
Zéphyr disappeared. The few images of the Soviet on the interweb’s news networks had allowed us the making of a basic but suitable holographic costume. “My name is Braun Rasputin and when I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.”
Excellent! She had captured that melodious harmony of condescension and authority that characterized the MP.
Once inside the police station half an hour later, there were no obstacles to the jail, as the offices looked more like a battleground. Everyone was running around in all directions through the thick cigarette smoke. Dial phones were loudly ringing without anyone taking the time to answer. Apparently, Braun had threatened to send to Kuiper’s orbital colonies all those who didn’t participate in the hunt for Zéphyr, who, by the way, was wandering across the high-security area. The guards were so afraid of the irritable Marine that, as expected, no one checked the cyborg’s ghost FID.
“Should be here, Sir!” an obedient officer assured us after leading Zéphyr and me through the high security floor.
“Appreciated!” answered the Maiden. “Dismiss.”
Behind the bars of her cell, Ali was doing a headstand with the little movement that the handcuffs allowed her. At her side, on a metal stool, Hemingwest was on the verge of a nervous breakdown; biting his fingernails until they bled. When he saw fake-Braun, a glimmer of hope lit up his eyes: “Oh my god! Did you catch—”
“Hold your tongue, Nigel! Ali can come out. You stay here,” Zéphyr coughed.
Hemingwest still savored this half victory. He was rid of my human.
“You’re now free, Agent Freckles,” I said.
Finally, released from their shackles thanks to the master thief’s talents, Ali took me in her arms. “Thank you, Agent Whiskers,” she replied. “But why is Rasputin helping us again?”
Alas, the relief was brief! Because the moment Zéphyr closed the door to lock it, the real Braun, red as the Kremlin’s Wall, burst in at the end of the corridor. All the sapiens cursed one after the other like a perfect symphony.
“Am I still high on Quaalude?” Ali asked before rubbing her eyes.
“Just run!” yelled the thief, still disguised as the Soviet despite the accumulating glitches. “We’ll explain later!”
The cyborg brutally reopened the gate, bending the bars. The door leaf instantly barricaded the way to the actual Braun. But this allowed Hemingwest, who had understood the situation, to escape as well.
“Hurry!” I panicked.
We bolted down the prison stairs to the ground tarmac. There, we vanished into a cloud of papers raised by a Techno-Police convoy. The federal forces were returning from the auction house. Bad timing!
“This way!” shouted Ali as she chose the direction of the coolant tanks.
Zéphyr had disappeared and, alone in the middle of the airstrips, Hemingwest decided to follow us. “Your buddy the ‘borg ran off, and we have all the cops of the district on our arses because of you!” yelled the execrable individual.
“Nobody asked you to come!” I said.
The feds were storming the place. Several shots rang as we reached the edge of the landing zone where the tarmac was separated from the adjacent street below by a high gradient. Unable to reverse my momentum, I almost fell off the cliff. Ali saved me at the last second by grabbing my tail.
“As I won’t be crucified after that! You left me no choice!” Hemingwest kept grousing after we took cover behind a tank of Blue.
“That or you’re after Zéphyr and her C$800,000 bounty!”
“Shut up! Both of you!” my partner roared.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Come!” she answered as she threw herself into the void and disappeared from my sight.
“She’s insane. I raised a lunatic!”
Meanwhile, seeing the shielded robots approaching, Hemingwest demolished the cover of the tank control terminal. “Bunch of wazzocks! You have to do everything yourself, here!” he swore. Taping away on the coarse plastic buttons, it caused the pump to overheat. Under pressure, the steel hoses inflated like balloons. With the small squared CRT screen of the console broken, Hemingwest had obtained the spark that would ignite the liquid.
“Scoundrel! The explosion was my idea!” I shouted as I jumped with him. Behind us, the tank exploded.
After landing on a pile of orange garbage bags, we joined my partner in a dead end protected from the sight of drones by a tangle of multicolored electric wires. In the past, it may have been a scavengers’ camp, as it was full of rusted body implants, old booze bottles and red biohazard waste disposal containers.
“I think I twisted something,” Ali admitted after failing to get back on her feet. Sitting on an empty beer barrel after pushing down a mummified disemboweled rib cage, she was massaging her sore ankle.
Hemingwest approached her to examine her wound, but soon revealed his true purpose. With a shard of glass in his hand, he had pinned my human against the garbage heap. “My family will have to play some undesirable connections to make people forget about this little merry-go-round,” he said. “Between the feds and Yggdrasil, I’m getting tired of you, blondie!” He then squeezed Ali’s neck tighter between his fingers; his glass blade a few centimeters from my copilot’s throat. Yet he quickly stopped; a look of surprise on his face.
My partner’s body disappeared beneath swirls of pink smoke that blinded the bounty hunter before Zéphyr emerged under the holographic features.
“What a plot twist!” I yelped as my friend pushed back the aggressor who felt on the ground.
The Data Maiden stepped over the scoundrel who had tried to assassinate her, feet on either side of his head. Picking up the shard of glass, she then sat on his torso with the full weight of her heavy metal reinforcements. “Looks like I’m paying my debt to the Kitty today,” she concluded.
And Nigel Hemingwest would never be a problem again.
We later found the authentic Ali at the entrance of the lot where we had parked the Kitty. After apparently blasting a vending machine to steal some soda cans, she was vegging out on the top of a broken intraweb public terminal, as phlegmatic as ever under the false yellow sun.
Until she saw Zéphyr.
“For real? You teamed up with fucking Angel Face?” she exploded, crushing her can of Campa Cola with her hand.
My partner jumped off the stale. With her gun and badge still at the police station and her clothes lost when she was arrested, she was wearing some dirty rags and a pair of flashy cowboy boots she probably found in a dumpster.
“I almost died,” I answered, thinking about the wet market. “He saved me. Rescued you. Therefore, he’s a hero and a boon companion.”
She laughed sardonically. “Big deal, furry ball! I don’t know what you guys did, but you’d better explain yourself quickly! Pigs are everywhere!”
Indeed. The shielded robots and Braun’s men were patrolling the area, preventing us from accessing the Swallow. Following the Data Maiden, we had to quickly hide among the shelves of the closest liquor store.
“How about a sleepover at my place?” Zéphyr proposed before my partner tossed a brick of Scotch to her face.
“You can go fu—”
“I can order pizza, you know…” Zéphyr interrupted her.
I could hear Ali’s brain rebooting. The cyborg had said the magic word, and moments later we were in her suite, without proper transition but enough booze to throw a majestic party.
“I feel naked without my rod,” my human managed to grumble while cleaning the tomato sauce stain on her right cheek. I heard her exaggeratedly sigh as she lay on the giant satin bedding before snatching the bracelet lying on the nightstand.
“I’m sure the police will get it back to you within a week,” I reassured her. “They’re not going to alienate the Alliance for a few tanks of Blue. I don’t know what Soviet-boy was thinking. We’re private contractors protected by the Techno-Constitution!”
“You forget your little burglary session, Arsène Lupin!”
“Nobody will ever learn about this…” I replied
She pouted while I turned on the stereo in the glass cabinet to celebrate her release with some music.
“This crappy bracelet isn’t even rad,” she complained, the glowing jewel around her own wrist. “Why all the fuss? Lady Diana wore it or something? It looks tacky. I hate it.”
Previously busy taking off her costume, Zéphyr reacted once back in the room: “It’s the second part of a puzzle. It contains a microfilm with an encrypted key fragment that belonged to the Lost Triads. Remember the Danaë?”
Finally freed from her holosuit, the Data Maiden stored it in the tub. From the cloud of steam escaping from the bathroom, I saw that despite her artificial body, the poor androgynous cyborg was boiling in such an outfit.
“Get outta here! A treasure hunt?” my human said with stars sparkling in her eyes. “Like in the Goonies? With gold coins and pirate ships? I’m not falling for that!” She then grabbed a brick of brandy and almost drank it down in one go.
Zéphyr laughed before adding: “It’s the truth. But it’s rather the Ark of the Covenant. This is the kind of trinket that could melt Nazis. If used properly.”
I greeted the reference with a nod. “I can see you’re a cyborg of culture.”
Freed from all clothing, Zéphyr helped herself with a glass of distilled water filled to the brim with tetrahedral ice cubes that she pressed against her forehead. After all these transformations, I preferred her original appearance. And by the way she looked at her, Ali shared my opinion about this metal-skinned post-human wiggling under the melody of Kang Susie broadcast on the radio.
“Well, the theft is excused in this case, right?” I justified myself about the Kitty’s first and last step in crime.
Our new friend, amused by our comments, came and sat down next to Ali. She then moved her fingers towards my partner to retrieve the booty. But when Zéphyr touched Ali’s skin to grasp the bracelet, they both froze as if a magnetic field prevented them from separating. Petrified, they silently stared at each other. My sapiens was lost in the ivory cyborg’s eyes without reflection.
“Lee?”
Uh. Oh! I knew that intonation. It wasn’t long before I’d be evicted without further trial. I was going to spend the evening watching Cyber-Macho at the hotel bar or the food channel with Germaine; and they were way better options. For human coitus, cyborgs involved or not, was a disgusting spectacle.
Back to business!
