Sierra bursts into the bunker clutching the bag, fur still on end after her close encounter with the cops at the apartment, she runs down the hall before running right into Brad, who lays a big hand on her shoulder.
“Sierra whats wrong, where is Cynthia?” She looks up at the man, peering up through his curly beard at his grey eyes.
“She's...safe, I think. The cops nearly got us” A cracking grating noise fills the room as Brad’s fist hardens and becomes rock. “Don’t break anything Brad, we’re good here I think. They didn’t see me”
“You two need to be more careful, what’ve you got there?”
“Some of the important things from the apartment, its busted wide open, they raided it” She places the bags on the floor, collapsing to her knees. She was utterly spent, the running about trying not to lead the police anywhere on top of driving Cy’s powerful analogue car had exhausted her. Brad picks up the bag and leads Sierra further into the bunker.
“You can sit down, have a coffee and tell us what happened” checks to see the door has been closed properly before walking into the kitchen, Sierra sits down at the table whilst Brad quickly puts together a coffee for her. Mike is snoring on the couch a few metres away. After a few minutes Brad sets down a steaming cup of coffee in front of her. “Drink up” She picks up the cup and takes a swig, feeling a little more energised. “So what happened” Brad asks, scratching his beard….
“Well…”
***
…”Right, well that is certainly not good, we better lie low for the moment, they have some kind of intelligence on us, and I don’t believe its from any of us. What's this Miura person like?” Brad looks like he is suffering from a headache from all the information, and Mike is still dead asleep on the couch.
“Shes Cy’s landlady, she seemed nice enough when I met her, and Cy is smitten for her. She could have given us away. She didn’t meet me until Christmas, she didn’t know Cy had taken me in, and she still doesn’t know about this” Sierra gestures to bunker and Brad and Mike. Brad’s brow furrows.
“I don’t think we can trust her then. We’ll have to try and let Cy know she can’t be trusted, but for now lets lie low and keep out of trouble, we’ve got enough food and supplies to last for a few months” Sierra nods. “We’ll hope Cy can get back whenever she can”
***
It was the next day, me and Miura had slept on a sofa bed in Bridget’s living room, it was a little embarrassing to be sharing a bed with a person who I was very much attracted to, but it had been one long previous day and tiredness had given way to sleep before I could even consider anything remotely lewd. In the morning Bridget had given me a set of overalls and brought me into the garage.
“Right, I need to deconstruct her first so I know how everything fits together before I use her as a base.” Bridget pats the van on the bonnet, clearly very fond of the vehicle. I understood that immensely.
“Do you have any stands or will I have to do the heavy lifting?” I look around the garage for heavy tools, Bridget facepalms, going red in the face.
“I knew I was forgetting something! Those are in the shed out back. Let me get the transport shark to move them. Thank fuck she hasn’t gone to school yet.” She scampers off. I leave the garage and use the elevator up to the living room finding Miura there, sipping a drink.
“Hey Miu, could you text Sierra and tell her I’m ok and that I may be indisposed for a couple of days?” I make a mental note to ask Bridget to send Miu back today. Miura takes out a phone from her handbag and begins typing away.
“On it” I nod a thanks and return to the garage, to which I find the van lifted up in the air on a set of stands courtesy of Šárka.
“Right, lets get to work. I’ll leave the hover engines or whatnot to your creation Bridget. Pass me a wrench and I’ll begin disassembling the undercarriage” She gave me an odd look, perhaps confused at the request.
“I might be a super inventor, but I still need to know how ALL the pieces of the van fit together. I need to get the engine block and the internals out first, before I can take apart the chassis to check on it and work off of that.” She passes me a wrench and opens the bonnet using the latch in the interior. The engine looked its age, for sure. But certainly not in especially bad condition.
“Well in that case we have to first disconnect all the electronics, shouldn’t be hard, and then all the mechanical connections and engine mounts. Then she’ll come out easily” she gives me a nod. I love older cars, they’re so simple to work with.
“Well that’ll be easy, the only electronics she’s got is the radio, and that’s just got two speakes right next to it in there. God this is gonna be such a sight. Move over Mr. Weasley, there’s a new last century flying car around.” I giggled, the Ford Anglia she was referring to was quite an important vehicle back home. I pull up the overalls and got down underneath the van.
“I’ll disconnect the driveshaft, and then we’ll be in the air in no time” And as such we got to work removing the engine. It was relatively easy going for me, the Volkswagen Transporter of this period was a very simple machine and my new arm made the heavy lifting much easier, we soon had the engine and gearbox out of the van and lying on the drive outside. This got me a small telling off from Bridget.
“Cynthia please keep the important pieces in the garage I mean against all odds there IS snow outside.” I shrug and heave the engine towards the inside of the garage.
“So now what?” I look at her for answers, creating a hover car isn’t exactly a common thing to do so I was relying on her.
“I need to know how much of the chassis can be disconnected, and how much is just stuck together. Need to check the wheels and axles as well. And once I have all that information-” she knocks the side of her head lightly with a fist. “-I’ll let this little shit do her work on how to proceed through the adapting. So come on, hop to it Cynthia, we’re completely disassembling a car.” She looked super excited at the prospect.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Well the good news…” I crouch down “Is that since this is an older vehicle I can take apart pretty much all of it. The entire body can come off of the frame pretty much. We are going to need more power than its standard engine to be able to lift it, and well...a method of lifting it into the air and controlling it would be necessary” I peer underneath the van. “Your Gramps did a good job of keeping her rust free for the most part, its a difficult thing to do when you live in a place which gets a considerable amount of snow per year” Bridget seems happy at my observations.
“And according to him we used to get a lot more snow 40 years ago. You’ve seen my blueprints. I can figure that stuff easily. As far as juice goes.” She pulls a box from a shelf and takes out this weird looking cube, it was about the size of a Rubik’s cube and was an odd white colour with lines and script decorating it. Something about it peaked my curiosity.
“I grabbed this baby from the nearby ruin. It’s got so much fucking juice in it it’s ridiculous. And I got four of them.”
“May I take a look at that Bridget?” I reach out my metal arm, palm outstretched. She hesitates.
“I’m not sure if grabbing it with your cyborg arm is the safest option. Even Dare has a layer of skin covering her metal bits.” She chucks it towards me, I catch it in my normal hand. There was something about the cube I was drawn to. I look closely at it, peering over the odd patterning on it, all of a sudden a small jolt of electricity passes between my antenna and the cube. It felt like an immense amount of energy was packed into such a tiny cramped space, like an overloaded battery.
“Wow, you’re not wrong about the energy packed into this thing. Theres something about it thats...odd. Its certainly not man-made” my arm was tingling, I don’t know why. She swipes it out of my hand.
“You say that, but the ruins it was in looked like Athena got an interest in Art Deco and built Athens like that. Still obviously ancient greek, but also… more. I don’t think it was aliens that did it” she places it back in the box and on top of the shelf. She quickly types some notes into a laptop she had nearby. “Right. Let’s get to it then.”
***
Later that day Clark opened a portal for Miura to go home, I thought it would be way too selfish to keep her here not doing anything whilst I work on this project. I waved goodbye to her and asked her to be wary of the police. They shouldn’t in theory be after her too much.
Bridget at work was an amazing thing to witness, once we had gotten the van disassembled I sort of became mostly irrelevant, and spent a lot of time just observing Bridget go. When Šárka was home she helped out loads with the heavy lifting, as well as Klára helping out as well. Then it was down to Bridget to design it, it didn’t take too long before she invited us over to see the design.
“Ladies, sister. Behold the hovervan. Now to just get the pieces in. And do some surgery on the pieces we already got here. It’s saturday tomorrow meaning you two” she points at Šárka and Klára “can be here all day to help. If you want to.” Her enthusiasm falters, she scratches at her desk with a nail. “How’s mom doing, Klára?” I had almost forgotten about the assault on her Mum. I feel the guilt creeping in that I did most of the damage in that instance.
“The hospital is keeping her for a couple of days more. I think I might be able to get her institutionalised for a month, under a pretense of getting her out of a cult mentality.” Klára responds nonchalantly, clearly not too worried about it. I peer in closer at the blueprint for the van.
“I have no words Bridget, no words. I hope it works” I smile, imagining an Amazon van just descending down with parcels and whatnot. “Imagine if you let companies use this tech, you’d revolutionise mass delivery” She blows as raspberry at me, dismissively.
“Cynthia you got your ass moved here by a kid that shatters reality by headbutting it to make portals. I doubt a fucking hovervan is more effective than a collective of folks like that.” This much was true, but I couldn’t help but think about how many people share his ability.
“But Bridget, how many people like Clark exist? Surely from a business perspective you’d want to have more than one delivery person for your entire company, efficiency and stuff” I suddenly feel a bit down, this was the type of situation I’d live for as an engineer. I wish I still had that job. Then I look down at my body and let out a sigh, at least I finally feel right.
“Probably yeah, but I’m not going to sell this shit to companies until Jeff Bezos gets launched into orbit for his behavior. The whole lot of them, truth be told. Anyways, I’m gonna assign pages from the blueprints to each of you to work on. And then we’re gonna put Magda together.” Bridget shuts the laptop screen down and puts it under her arm, taking it upstairs to where I assume her printer is. I sit down on a stool in the garage, sipping at a drink of water, a tissue surrounding the cup due to my grubby slender fingers. It didn’t take long for her to return with a bunch of paper blueprints. I place my cup down on the counter and rub my hands together, shivering at the touch of the cold metal. I guess its time to work.
***
It took us about 6 days to get the van back in working order. I had been put in charge of most of the normal mechanical bits and pieces as well as reinforcing the structure of the van. I’d used extra metal piping to stiffen the chassis so it doesn’t flex in flight. The van had been entirely redesigned with a new engine and stronger undercarriage, as well as an entirely new paint job which Bridget absolutely adored. Long gone was the past identity of an old delivery van with aging paint, now it looked good as new in a More than Computer Mouse livery. I grab an old flannel and wipe the grime off of my hands.
“You should turn it on for the first time Bridget, its your van after all” I give her a thumbs up as the go ahead. She leaped into the cabin, almost bouncing off of the new seats, she twists the key and the new VW sourced engine started right up. It was no Wankel Rotary motor, but it did sound good, for a van. She edged the van out of the garage. I walked after it, the van suddenly goes light on its suspension and the wheels retract inwards. We were treated to a glorious aerial display, we cheered and waved as she zoomed about. After a short while she brought the van to a halt back down on the driveway. Bridget opens the door and yells out loud:
“Hell. Fucking. Yes. FUCK the police I drive wherever I want!!!” she raises her arms in the air excitedly, jumping out of the van and running towards me, suddenly jumping and wrapping her arms around me “Oh thank you, you wonderful cyborg lady, couldn’t have done it without your help.” I blush, she was crushing my chest a little.
“No problem Bridget, it was the least I could do. You saved my ass”
“I mean, how could I NOT save such a masterpiece. Blessed by whateverthefuck caused the emergence that behind is.” She lets go and I blush even harder, covering my rear with my hands. She steps back and turned around, admiring the handiwork. “Right, I’m gonna need your permission for appearing in the video. That’s gonna be released friday of the project. I think it’ll make the channel blow up” I look away, not entirely sure whether I should. I am a wanted criminal after all.
“I don’t know Bridget, I’m a wanted criminal. Would it be healthy for your channel if I’m here?” She puts a hand on my shoulder reassuringly, it had become a regular action these past few days whenever I had started feeling down. My emotions aren't entirely under my control anymore. I used to be able to suppress any sadness or regret, but ever since the Emergence first changed me its become harder and harder.
“Cynthia. You’re a gorgeous looking cyborg lady. Whose crimes are freeing wrongfully jailed Emerged. And leaving a dude paralysed, but he’s a cop. People are gonna ask when the next time we work together will be if you show up in the vid.” She lets go of my shoulder and clambers back into the van, parking it back into the garage. I walk in with it, peering at the fixed bodywork. She jumps back out and we resume our conversation. “Your choice though.” I take a deep breath in order to try and gather myself.
“Okay. I’ll appear in the video. They might wonder how you managed some of the more heavy lifting if I’m not in it” I smile slightly, honestly I felt that weird combination of happy-sad. Where you’re not unhappy but still feel like you should be crying. She patted me on the head gently and carefully between the antenna, twanging my antenna causes huge headaches, or so it seems.
“Which means I’ll need to record an end explanation bit with you now, and then we can party up the finished project I guess.” she gestured for me to follow her and we went up to her bedroom where she had her computer for editing and filming purposes. We very quickly shot the video, I was kinda bashful so I didn’t speak up too much, I just introduced myself and my part in the project. After that was done Bridget broke out the wine and we celebrated the completion of the Hovervan. She sent Šárka off to bed since she had school the day after, her sister was pretty much out of it, lying on the floor. I was sipping at a glass, enjoying the wine. I was never a huge binge drinker so I was still on my first glass, and only a tiny bit drunk. My mind wandered and I found myself accidentally turning on the TV. Bridget’s attention is caught by something outside, odd flashes of light were peering through the windows. I suddenly sobered up.
“Bridget is that what I think it is?” She nods
“Fuck me running, not again.” Oh fuck no, a second Emergence? This is not fucking good, I need to get back to England to make sure they’re all safe. Its going to be chaos.
“Bridget! I need to go back, Miura and everyone might be in danger” She was already halfway to her phone.
“Yeah, let’s get you back home.” I really hope everyone’s gotten to safety, and then the thought hits me..what if Miura emerges…