“Can you believe it? Look at this!” Mel waved a rectangular device with an LCD display that looked like it had a roll of saran wrap inside.
“I don’t know what the hell that even is.” Kevin stomped along grumpily. Mel hadn’t let him help at all with her little black market shopping order and now she was taunting him with unknown otherversal technology and equipment. He stopped at a hot dog stand and fished around in his pocket for change but snapping fingers near his face pulled his attention.
“Hey, yo, no time for a snack break. Cassia put me on a stupid time limit so get walking.” Mel tugged at his sleeve and he trudged along after her. Ahead of them, Elaine was approaching the outer dome where the Pathfinder was docked. She’d been drifting along with them as if on autopilot since escaping the Singularity. Kevin thought maybe she was suffering some trauma and should speak with a therapist but then he realized they all probably needed a therapist and it felt silly to bring it up.
“Are you even going to explain what any of your new goodies do?” Kevin stretched out a hand and shook the tote bag that Mel had left the tattoo parlor’s basement with and promptly received a sharp slap on the back of the hand. As he pulled back his hand in surprise, Mel shot him a glare.
“When we link up with the others, I’ll show off my goodies. But they’re my goodies. Got that? I earned this shit through some damn hard work!” Mel turned to catch up with Elaine and Kevin sighed in frustration. Glancing at a digital billboard that displayed the time, Kevin turned back towards the hot dog stand.
“We’ve got a whole eight minutes and the ship is right there. I’m stopping for a hot dog, Mel.” A grumbling came from Mel’s direction and she flipped up her middle finger as she walked away.
Kevin watched her go with a scowl then ordered his hot dog from a man who was extremely wet with what he hoped was grease, not sweat. While he was getting the hot dog out, Kevin looked over at Mel and Elaine who were now standing awkwardly at the Pathfinder in its individual docking bay. Elaine seemed kind and had a sort of regal beauty about her. And yet, Kevin kept glancing back at Mel. She was certainly attractive as well but it was her wild recklessness that Kevin found himself drawn to and he hated himself for it.
“Here’s your hot dog, you dope. Now turn over your goods.” Kevin glanced at the vendor in confusion and recognized the barrel of a large revolver hidden enough behind the cart but obviously pointing at his gut. He started to glance towards Mel and felt another prod in his side.
“Stay put and we’ll do you fast.” A large overweight man in a track suit was now shoving the double barrels of a sawed off shotgun into his ribcage. Kevin sighed and cursed his bad luck.
“I don’t even have anything!” Kevin slowly turned out his pockets and gestured at himself. “Where do you think I’d be storing it!”
“Check his ass.” The vendor nodded downward and the overweight one responded with a sound of disgust.
“You think I’m gonna grub around inside this guy, you can go to hell Seymour.”
“Dammit, I told you not to throw my name around on the job! Now we have to kill him for sure!” The vendor started to come around the hot dog cart when a boot clocked into the side of his head and sent him stumbling to the sidewalk. Kevin ducked down and shoved at the barrel of the shotgun pointing it up into the air. Two blasts ripped through the bustling sounds of the marketplace as the shotgun fired into the air. Immediately, chaos broke out as people began to stampede for cover.
“I said no snack breaks!” Mel roared at Kevin as she splashed the overweight gunman’s face with hot grease. Kevin almost vomited at the sight and sound of his screams but Mel was already in motion. Kicking Seymour the vendor’s gun back towards Kevin, she clocked him twice in the side of the head with her fist before delivering a heavy knee to his chin knocking him out cold.
“Mel, uh…” Kevin began a stuttered apology but she cut him off.
“No time! Run!” Mel took off toward the dock with Kevin a foot behind her. As they approached they saw Elaine standing in the Pathfinder beckoning to them but her face broke into an expression of surprise suddenly as the door in the side closed by itself and the ship began to launch on its own.
Mel slammed her hand against the shut hull then leapt back before the airlock cycled to let the Pathfinder leave, screaming the whole time.
“Fucking Cassia! Dammit! This is your fault you moron!” She rounded on Kevin. “Now we’re stuck here and your girlfriend is floating through the ocean in a ball that only listens to a sociopath!”
“Did you say girlfriend?”
“I swear to God, Kevin.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
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“Right turn!” Mel shoved Kevin into an alley and sprinted after him. Mel’s outburst at missing their ride was short-lived as friends of the goons she’d incapacitated opened fire on them. Now they were hurtling through the market with bullets flying by, a less than ideal way to spend a shopping trip.
“There, go through there!” Mel pointed towards a door on the left and Kevin burst through it obediently. In the kitchen of a shoddy diner, voices shouted in alarm as they dodged through towards the dining area. Kevin leapt over a counter and was through the front door with the commotion in the diner drowning out any sounds of gunfire.
“Now what?!” He shouted back to Mel who shouldered past him and ran across the street dodging a pair of pedicabs zooming by with cursing drivers. Kevin followed quickly and after several excruciating minutes of running, Mel pulled him into a consignment store full of junk. Weaving through the store, Mel grabbed pieces of clothing, used makeup, and mismatched accessories before beelining for a curtained off changing room in the corner.
“Here.” Mel shoved half the pile into Kevin’s arms and began stripping. The space they were in was clearly meant for one person and Kevin inhaled sharply as Mel leaned forward to pull off her pants and her chest pressed against his.
“Erm, I could wait outside while you…”
“Now, idiot, they could be right behind us!” Mel flicked him hard on the ear. Kevin let out a squeak of pain and frowned at Mel but any protests were lost before they made it out of his mouth as she pulled her shirt up over her head. “Hurry! My god, they’re boobs Kevin and they’ll be the last thing you see if you don’t get a grip!”
Kevin shook his head clear and forced himself into motion, changing into the ensemble that Mel had cobbled together and pointedly ignoring his traveling companion’s bare body. Eventually he managed to mumble to himself, “Wouldn’t be the worst last thing to see.” And then Mel flicked his ear again.
They emerged from the dressing room looking ridiculous but Kevin was surprised to find that when he saw himself in a full length mirror, the outfit wasn’t too far from the fashion that he’d seen around them in Wraith Harbor. Kevin turned to Mel, impressed but held his tongue when he caught sight of her expression. Probably too soon for positivity.
“Let’s go, I know a guy who runs a dominoes parlor. We gotta get a ride out of here and we should know whose face I burned off.”
“Please don’t remind me.” Kevin nearly gagged at the thought as he watched Mel pay the shopkeeper. He stayed a half step behind her as she weaved out of the market area around the edge of Wraith Harbor and deeper into the center of the city. The city grew vertically closer to the core as the shape of the dome allowed for taller structures and soon they were winding through a mess of multistory buildings that nearly scraped the apex of the glass dome. Kevin shuddered thinking of the pressure that the glass must be holding back at this depth. He’d been scuba diving once on a family trip in college and had been under for only a few minutes before surfacing in a panic. Familiar claustrophobia began to creep in as he eyed the water all around them when Mel’s voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts.
“While we’re in here are you actually going to listen this time?” Mel had turned fully to face him and Kevin realized for the first time that they were standing outside what seemed to be a massive office building. He nodded while Mel looked him over skeptically.
“This is my world, Kevin. I know the people. I know the language. Follow my lead and we’ll get back to the surface.” She grabbed his shoulders firmly in a surprisingly tender gesture. Then with a nod she turned and led him through the front doors.
Inside, Kevin looked around a large open lobby lined with thick boxy columns. Several counters lined the entry and Kevin realized that this entry area was a bank of some sort. Everything was shockingly mundane down to the roped stanchions marking out the queue. His eyebrows scrunched up quizzically but he held his tongue. Mel’s world, Mel’s rules.
Mel ignored the bank that took up much of the room and walked to the left towards a wide hallway that led into a sort of cafeteria area. After crossing through a sea of tables and chairs, they took a revolving door into an indoor garden where office workers in business casual clothing picked at lunches or read books or, mostly, checked their phones. Kevin followed Mel in a sort of daze, nothing about this building made sense to him and each consecutive room left him more confused than the last.
“Ok, you need to wait for me right here.” Mel gestured to a bench that was situated against the wall outside a set of restrooms. The alcove they were in was off of a hallway that came from the indoor garden area and there was a bank of elevators along a hallway that ran perpendicular to it.
“Wait, you’re going alone?” Kevin’s brows knit together in concern before his expression hardened with frustration. “You don’t trust me. I made a mistake and now you’re literally benching me.”
“Kevin, yes, you did fuck up royally. But I’m making you stay here because this person I’m going to meet is dangerous and only meets with friends. And I don’t trust this jackass to not steal my shit which is why I’m trusting you to keep this safe.” Mel pushed the satchel full of her black market purchases into Kevin’s hands then nodded towards the bench. “If I’m gone longer than thirty minutes, go back to the bank lobby and ask for directions to the surface transit station, get a ticket to the San Francisco Bay Area dock then find Cassia and get the fuck off this Earth. Got it?”
Kevin nodded dumbly and sat down on the bench full of inner turmoil. For a second, he thought about refusing but as bold as he’d become in the last few days, the intensity of Mel’s words had pressured him into obedience. He watched Mel walk down the hall and get onto an elevator headed up, sighed, then leaned his head back against the wall and started counting the minutes.
Surely Mel would be fine. This was her world and she knew how to take care of herself. Kevin took solace in that fact and was glad to have her pulling him along in this strange new world. He was just starting to relax, having convinced himself that Mel could handle anything when an elevator dinged and a muffled commotion reached his ears. He glanced up and saw down the hall three bulky men in suits roughly pulling a bound Mel with a black hood over her face from the elevator through to a stairwell as she whipped her limbs against them uselessly. Before he could even move they were gone into the bowels of the building.