Drewcker’s had everything that anyone could want at a convenience store: cheaply made snacks at cheap prices, beer and ice-cold bottled drinks tucked and sheltered in the refrigerators near the back, and it was one of the best spots in Hoffwell for the purchase of durable droppers… for those who cared. It just so happened that the store was a shithole, too. That was its identity. Part of the charm was going in and seeing the cohesion of un-mopped floors and breaking lights that were the homes of flies and moths. There was just one thing there that felt out of place, and it was the one thing that was consistently washed― a touch activated soft drink dispenser. Besides that, it knew what it was. Its owner knew, and its community knew.
Frey had been to the store a few times before, but never like he was this time. Years ago, he would find himself going there to buy six packs, as the workers typically weren’t uptight enough to make a guy put it back in the fridge if they weren’t eighteen yet, opting to ID them, and pretend they read the print wrong. Even that, was never like this time.
He walked in and said hi to the cashier, a young woman around his age, and casually went to the chip aisle to search for his perfect purchase… which turned out to be a large bag of Snack’n’Snaps. Score. Frey held the bag by his side, and eyed the cashier who was by the entrance. He breathed in, and looked behind him to the security camera in the top right corner of the store, then breathed out. Here we go.
Frey shuffled towards the camera while pretending to be looking at the different items for sale, before reaching the left end of the fridge, right below the camera. He subtly reached into his pocket while scanning the shelf up and down, looking at the flavors of milk from chocolate to blueberry stacked up in front of him, and doing his best performance of pretending to be disappointed in the assortment of drinks. He began to walk off, but before getting out from straight underneath the camera he tossed a tiny device up at it, a black gismo with six little legs like an insect no bigger than a piece of cereal. It didn’t fall back down.
He walked down the line of refrigerators, now standing by the beer. Not exactly a performance this time around, Frey pulled the door open and grabbed himself a cold bottle of Croq’s, while keeping mind of the camera at the other end of the fridges. He shut the door, and started looking up, down and around with his hands in his pockets. To an outsider, he looked like a complete fool, but to him, he was the best actor of the goddamn 21st century. Once he was under the camera, he did another quick flick of his wrist and sent a trinket upwards. Again, the device didn’t fall.
Around the store he went, standing under the other two cameras in the corners and throwing up the devices at the cameras, being as careful as he could be to not be noticed by the cashier, until only one camera remained by the checkout. Another short breath.
Frey strolled up to the counter and placed down the chips and beer for the woman to scan.
She gave him a smile. “Hey Frey, how are you?”
Frey shot one back. “Oh ha, yeah I’m good, things have been good recently.”
She scanned the beer and chips, inputting the total into the register.
“You know, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you here, you should stop by more.”
Frey smirked at her. “Well you know, I guess I’ve been busy, but as long as you’re the one ringing me up I’m sure I can find time.”
She snickered.
Frey asked, “Hey do you think you could grab me a lighter?”
“Sure thing.”
She turned around, and he quickly gave an upward toss while her back was turned. She flipped back around and scanned the lighter. He paid her quickly and made his way out of the store.
“Hey thanks, have a good one!”
“You too Frey!”
He slid through the door and breathed in the refreshing air of the outside city while he waited for traffic to clear so he could cross the street. However, on the other side of the road by the stairs that led up to the subway station a fiery-haired girl in navy cargo pants and a banana-colored top stood, and pointed at him. Two cups were sitting beside her feet. He was confused for a moment what she was doing, until she started to point upward, urgently using both hands, one of which was wrapped in silver. He looked above him, and there was positioned another camera pointed at the store's entrance. He nodded, and threw up one last device.
He looked back and saw her walking away and down the street. He followed, at a distance, beer and chips in hand. Several minutes, and a few streets later, she awaited him by the intersection beneath the tracks of the subway, sipping from the plastic straw of her purple beverage.
“Here try this.” Azura handed him an orange drink in a clear plastic cup. “I wasn’t sure what you liked so I just got you mango. Looked good.”
“What are you kidding, I love mango, thanks!”
He held his beer and chips in the same hand.
Together they stepped up the stone stairs to the subway station above.
Frey took a drink. “S’good!”
Azura smiled. “Yeah this berry mix was the right call.”
Sitting beside each other on the black plastic bench by the tracks, they listened to the cars sing as they passed beneath them while they waited on the cart.
“You got all of them on the inside?” Azura verified.
“Yeah, got them all. It’s covered.”
“Alright, good.” Azura set down her drink, and flipped over her hand so her palm would face her with the blue holoscreen activated. It displayed a pre-set countdown for 24 hours, which upon looking at the time, 12:37 PM, she accordingly adjusted to 179 hours and 18 minutes.
“Okay, on the 31st at 11:40 PM, that’s exactly one week eleven hours and three minutes from right now, where are you going to be?”
“Yeah…” Frey sipped his mango smoothie. “is there any chance we could run through this one more time before we go full on, I just, I’m not sure what the plan is with the register.”
Azura blinked. “The register?”
“Yeah, I mean those things are locked up tight aren’t they? How are you gonna get anything out of there?”
She clicked her tongue and looked at the silver tracks before answering, “I’m gonna use a RAT.”
Frey darted his eyes, from the tracks and back to her. “Uh… okay, I didn’t know you could like―didn’t know you could train those to do stuff…”
“No,” she looked back at him. “a remote access trojan. It’ll give me control over the POS system that the register runs on.”
“Oh, yeah, of course… I mean, in all honesty I guess I just, I don’t totally get why it’s gotta be here. I mean off the top of my head I can think of some better locations across town if this is, y’know if this is the route you wanna go down.”
She turned to him, then gave her head a swift tilt back to the convenience store behind them, gesturing to it. “Did you get a look at the cash register in there?”
Frey shrugged. “Yeah, I saw the register. Why?”
“You don’t see registers like that anymore, that’s an older model, a HEX-UB1 from the early 30s. Hell, it still uses USB A.”
“Okay…”
“Now there’s a certain security vulnerability in the early HEX models that can be taken advantage of when there’s a manual cash input in the register, like, when workers would put a custom price at checkout on an item that hadn’t been put in the system yet. Once that path is opened, the RAT’ll cut straight through the system’s security like paper, but it can only work on vulnerable systems… like that one.”
“Totally, totally. I gotcha.” Frey relented for a moment, but came back with another thought, “Except, I can’t really shake this feeling like maybe there is something else you could be doing…? I mean I get where your heads at, but if you’re only going for a few hundred bucks here… I mean I can think of some easier ways to make that money.”
“Easier ways?”
“Yeah, y’know uh, less robbery-esque?”
Azura pursed her lips and started to slowly nod, while the trolley sped towards them from the tracks afar.
“You think maybe I shouldn’t?”
“Yeah maybe―yeah, probably, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t go through with this. Not a good idea.”
Her face dropped, a glimmer that may have once been there had faded away. “Maybe.”
“I mean hey, just think about Bear, right? He wouldn’t want you getting involved in some sketchy crap, or getting in trouble, or at least I think. I don’t know, I’d assume he wouldn’t? You wanna do something for Bear, I think helping you out would help him out.”
The sleek blue boxes that rode the tracks stopped in front of them, and the doors opened to pour out a handful of people going about their day, revealing the shining white interior lit so brightly and fully it seemed there couldn’t have been a single shadow inside.
Azura stood up and grabbed her drink. She said to Frey, “I can’t read his mind. Maybe he wouldn’t want this, but right now he doesn’t want anything. Until that changes, this way is quick. This way is safe. I’m in, I’m out, and the worst thing that happens is the hundreds of dollars that my friend got scammed out of, can get sent back to him.”
She stepped into the trolley, leaving Frey to stand by the bench. She called to him, “Where are you gonna be the 31st?”
He appeared uneasy, taking his time to answer, but as the glass doors closed, Azura made out his nod.
Frey watched her from the outside. The lights shined down on her face sipping on her smoothie as the cart gradually picked up speed, and shot away towards Northtown, leaving him on his own on the west side.
A week would pass. The ache of the wound that had been inflicted on her remained unchanged, as did the city that surrounded her. She wondered how many others were in the same position she was, how many had become ill, been harmed, had their lives taken from them in the pursuit of a high.
Azura was on her way home from Patcheez when she saw Ren leaving his apartment, weakly holding his finger to his car’s door to unlock it. Her heart broke to see the face that before held such light, now appearing so dim.
“Ren,” she said to him as she approached his parking spot, “how’s it going?”
He looked up from the door handle. “Azura, hello! I’m alright… I’m getting through it all, how are you?”
“I’m good Ren. I know it will all work out. Where are you heading?”
“I’m just off to the hospital.”
She tendered her expression. “Would you say hi to him for me?”
He smiled. “How could I not?” The car door flipped open, and he sat himself inside. With a head leaned out the door he said, “I’ll see you around!”
Azura waved to his purple Balisan with a smile as it backed out and left the complex. Her expression reverted. She turned around and made the walk down the concrete path to her apartment and put in the agonizing code.
The apartment was quiet, the only stirrings she could make out were from the faint buzz of cold white LEDs that dotted across the walls. She wouldn’t have a better opportunity than the one then. It was time she got to work.
Lights running down the base of the wall activated as she traveled down the gray carpet of the hallway that was sliced between the kitchen and living room, passing her room and bathroom, until she reached a sleek white sliding door that marked the hall’s end. Though she was certain she was the only one there, she still paused momentarily before sliding the door, glancing to her left for a peak at the front entryway. With a slight pull, the door was open.
As she stepped inside, she held her hand to a touch screen on the left of the door. The ceiling illuminated and covered the whole room in a snowy glow, allowing her to clearly make out every messy detail. An unmade bed with a black metal frame and ocean sheets was on the right side of the room, a few steps away from a ball of wrinkled up shirts and a bra sitting by an open closet.
The room had one window, beside the bed, but it was covered by black drawn curtains that Azura wondered had ever been opened.
Placed to the left of the window was a massive metal work desk that stretched from the middle of the wall near the window, to nearly the center of the left wall in the shape of an L. On the lip of the L was an ultra-wide monitor and keyboard, with a computer beneath it encased in a black shell with highlights glowing neon blue, and a dozen wires crawling out of it above and below the desk, one of which went into a second smaller monitor on the desk’s inner corner.
Not far away from the other monitors, sat a charging laptop accompanied by a 3D printer. Right by them was an open space, or at least open in the sense that there wasn’t a large metal box with a plug coming out of it sitting there. Other than that, it was an unorganized mess of precision laser tools, mini screws and screwdriver, and unused metal supports that sprawled out of several seemingly prototypical gadgets with exposed circuitry.
Sitting comfortably under the workbench was a tower of drawers, which Azura pushed the chair out of the way to reach. The top drawer was home to a sea of mini drones and other small mechanisms, notably there was a glass container of a couple little six-legged mechanized bugs. She closed it.
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The drawer beneath it was more of the same, another home to numerous electrical contraptions which Azura could not speak to the functionality of. The drawer was closed.
The third drawer down contained some bits of paper and pens, scissors, and a knife. This was the drawer. She reached inside and nudged the knife, scooting it out of the way. She reached further back and pulled out a few sheets of paper with a clear shiny surface coating the front of it.
She closed the drawer, pushed the chair back, and left the room, being sure to turn the lights off.
Azura laid on of the glistening sheets on her desk as she sat down with a compass, ruler, and scissors handy. She flipped the sheet over to the plain paper side and set the compass to a radius of an inch and a half, carefully spinning it about its center point to draw a clean circle. Then, she slowly and cleanly cut away the rest of the paper, so she was left with one small circular sheet of the material, and the rest of the sheet as waste. She started again.
Azura would spend the next half hour slowly and carefully sliding her scissors along the edge of her lines to slice circles out of the sheets, until she had more than a dozen. Once that was accomplished, she had little left to do but wait around, so that was exactly what she did.
She paced around her bedroom, running through every step in her mind over, and over, from one corner of the space to another, and back again.
It was 6:30. Azura was awaiting her sister’s arrival, it should have been any second then. She stopped her pacing for a few minutes and sat down on her bed while her foot tapped away. Soon she heard the click of the front door, and a subsequent, “Hey, Azzie.” from the front of the apartment.
From there, it was more waiting. She moved to her bed to lie down while ever frequently checking the time on her glove. 7:30… 8:00… 9:00… 10:30…
It had been an hour since Soteria had gone to her bedroom, Azura wasn’t certain she was asleep yet, she could only hope. The clock progressed closer and closer to 11:00. Azura lied down flat on her bed, tracking the patterns of paint on the ceiling.
10:57.
She peered out her window. There were no remnants of natural light outside, just the faint glow of the streetlight from the parking lot which sat to the far left of her apartment. Azura walked back to her desk to grab her circular cutouts, and opened the drawer to slide out a black thumb drive hidden beneath her contour palette. With a light navy jacket encasing her, she would place the drive and cutouts in her pockets before approaching her window.
10:59…11:00.
Azura slid the window open, and silently stepped outside into the empty space between her building, Building C, and Building D. Every noise produced was louder, more abrasive than before, the step of her shoe onto the dirt although quiet to the buildings’ residents, was more like a piercing crunch to Azura. She would be even more careful.
Azura’s hands still rest on the windowsill. Her room seemed almost alluring in its emptiness, thinking of the warmth of her bed while the night’s cold air bled through her jacket. Her finger lightly tapped, quiet and subtle enough that not even Azura noticed it. She was barely able to make out her knight plushie, which sat alone on the bed, cloaked in the room’s darkness. The time on her glove now read 11:01. Azura shut her eyes, then slid the window closed, and made her way to the parking lot.
“Yeah, right there. First floor building C.”
“Wow… you know it’s her?”
Two voices conversed in safety from the inside of their parked car near the back end of the lot of Azura’s apartment complex. They sat with their lights off, and the car still running. The car’s clock read 10:59.
“Kaz,” the man in the driver seat began, “yes, I know. What did I say? We wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”
Kaz just meekly nodded his head at him and looked back to the apartment.
The driver turned the car off. “Alright… ready to teach her a lesson?”
“Beck… are you sure about this?”
Beck frowned. “Remember what she said? ‘That’s right, you better run!’ are you gonna take that? I’m not gonna!”
Kaz shook his head. “No… we don’t take that! Let’s… do this!”
“And relax… we’re just gonna rough her up a bit.”
The two left the car and approached Building C, the light from the streetlights reflected off their bald heads. From their jacket pockets, they removed two heavy handheld metal sticks, which with a switch, extended outwards to the length of a foot. Perfect for teaching a lesson.
They reached the door to Azura’s apartment and paused there for a moment.
“Kaz, have you ever seen a door like this?” Beck asked, quietly, “It’s like a whole computer!”
Kaz stared, just as confused, but before answering, the two had their attention drawn elsewhere upon hearing the faint sound of footsteps to the left of the building. The two looked at each other, then behind them, and promptly walked away from the door and to the source of the noise. On the sidewalk just by the edge of the building, they witnessed a red-haired girl solemnly walking along the concrete by building D, and then across the parking lot.
She didn’t see them, but they saw her. Beck and Kaz shared a look, and silently followed the girl, making sure to keep their distance.
Azura traveled through the night, first on foot and then by subway to cross from the north-side to the west of the city, watching through the window as tall neon towers shaped into lower and less modern structures, lit by bulbs and lamps. They appeared somehow more solid than the architecture in the north of the city, like it had been carved or sculpted out of a rough material, rather than assembled out of a factory line. Azura saw no more character in it than her native area, but still couldn’t help but find herself imagining the thought process of the architects drawing up the buildings’ designs.
She got off the subway once it reached Dominion and sat herself on the black bench at the station.
The time was 11:30. She waited.
It would take another 14 minutes of sitting, but the man she was waiting for arrived, walking up to her from the stairs coming from the street.
“Frey,” Azura greeted him as his face came more clearly into view from the light of the station.
“Look I did not mean to push it this close, man; I was aiming to come sooner but I mistimed it, y’know? Just mistimed it.”
She stood. “It’s okay. We still have time,” she checked her glove, and the timer from a week ago was nearly spent.
“Alright.”
They walked down the stairs and made the trek, so they eventually stood across from Drewckers. Its lights were still on, and through the window she made out the familiar face of a man behind the register.
“There he is,” Frey said, “You really do your homework.”
She turned to him. “Alright Frey, just stand here, try to be out of sight. It’s late, so there shouldn’t be much traffic, but if it looks like someone is about to enter the store, you send me a message immediately. Okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, okay. I can do that.”
Azura’s posture relaxed, and she looked at him with a softer expression. “Thanks for doing this.”
Frey smiled.
The camera’s red light flashed at them from across the street, blinking on, and off, on, and off, until Azura’s timer reached zero. At that moment, she tapped her control application on her interface, and the camera’s blinking became stagnant.
She started a new timer for five minutes.
“Good luck.” Frey opened his watch and began preparing a text message to send her.
Azura crossed the street swiftly, passing underneath the camera, then clicking a button on her glove’s interface. The bug dropped from the camera into her palm, but the camera’s light remained off. She opened the store’s door.
In and out.
The man behind the register was an older, larger individual, and had a thick and curly black beard which ran up to his sideburns and around the rim of his head, leaving a large hairless semi-sphere on his dome. When she entered the store, it caused him to take his attention away from his handheld for a second. The first thing Azura did inside the store was lock eyes with him. She knew he recognized her, by his immediate look of disapproval that festered under his eyes. All the better.
Azura scanned the building subtly, confirming that none of the cameras she could see were blinking while she made her walk to the corner of the store. She observed details in the building she hadn’t even noticed the other times she had been there, like the faint hum of music that played form the ceiling. Had that always been there? Azura wondered if it had been turned off before, perhaps it was just something they played during the night shifts, or perhaps she had been so stirred up previous visits she hadn’t bothered to take note of it. Either way, the night was different.
She reached the droppers and became static as their presence loomed over her, the red cardboard mocking her in silence. Her eyebrows rested comfortably, and her jaw pressed down firmly while she faced off against the row of plastic which seemed to grow weaker by the second. It really was just a cardboard box with some glass in it.
She glanced back at the cashier, who resumed the use of his phone. A quick touch inside her pockets confirmed that she still had everything she left home with, she had all she needed. She grabbed a dropper, and headed to the cashier.
“Hello again,” she said to him, getting his attention.
“Hi there.” He looked down to her, not showing a hint of a smile.
There was a stack of 16-ounce soda cups sitting behind the register, which Azura nodded to. “Could you grab me a soda cup?”
“Sure thing.” He handed her a cup.
She shot him a smile, and he just stared.
On the counter at the back of the store far back and to the right of the cashier, sat a huge shining crimson box with white lights running up its side, and a big touch screen which had a plethora of different soda brand icons scattered across the rectangle that covered the front side of the machine. Beneath it was a dispenser and a round silver base dotted with holes which allowed the liquid to drain back into the machine.
She swiftly grabbed one of the slices from her pocket, and cleanly peeled the shining layer off the paper with one end sticking to the tip of her thumb, then quickly crumpled the plain white sheet and tossed it in the garbage by the machine. With the clear circle in hand, she stuck it onto the drain, so every hole was covered, then placed her cup on it.
On the touch screen, Azura clicked the first option near the screen’s bottom, a big circular diet cream cola logo. She prepared another sheet and placed it over the logo precisely so it could not be seen. The sheets were dielectric, specially designed by her sister with a blend of silicone. They were not always useful, but they certainly would be this time. Azura pressed the soft tip of her gloved finger to the silicone-coated logo for a second, which prompted the machine to start pouring the soda into her cup. While it was filling her cup, she aggressively rubbed the sheet with her finger as fast as she could, and with as much pressure. After a few seconds, the cup was full and she removed her finger, yet the nozzle kept dispensing the cola.
Since she was on the other half of the floor, she repeated the same routine as before, standing under the other two cameras and collecting the bugs. Only one remained, which was at the register.
She returned to the register with her drink and dropper.
“This all?” he asked.
“This will be all.”
He scanned the dropper, then after a few clicks of his keyboard and the opening of the cash drawer, he said, “That’s $26.”
Azura shrugged. “Alright… hey,” she looked back at the soda machine. “I think your machine is still pouring.”
He turned around to see his floor covered in soda coming from the machine, coating the ground and counter in a sugary mess.
“Aw, shit!” he closed the cash drawer, and Azura heard it lock shut with a click. He hustled over to the machine trying to identify what was wrong with it while simultaneously soaking his shoes in cola.
“Don’t go anywhere with that!” he shouted from across the room, “we got cameras! You’ll get caught!”
“Of course!” Azura responded, and his attention remained on the malfunctioning machine.
Go time.
With the drive curled in her palm, she looked to the register’s side panel, which had its mouse and keyboard plugged into the two available USB ports. Though the wires were tangled, she tried to trace them back to their respective devices, and unplugged the mouse, in its place inserting her drive. A quick glance down at her glove’s interface showed that the drive’s connection was uninterrupted, all she had to do was run the program.
She leaned over the counter slightly so she could find the ENTER key on the keyboard, then she pressed it down without moments pause.
Go time.
Azura looked back at her glove’s interface, ready to access the register, except something was off. It showed no signs that the program was running. She was sure she pressed the button… did she need to double click? Nervously, she clicked ENTER again, and checked her glove’s screen once more… nothing.
“God damn it…” she heard the man muttering to himself as he still tried to fix the machine. Azura swallowed, and tried to control her breathing as her heart began to beat ever slightly faster. She had run the program before, why wasn’t it working? Did she grab the wrong drive? Was the machine not the model she thought it was? No, of course not. She knew she did her research, she knew from her sister’s software experience about the exploit.
She scanned the keyboard and the register quickly, she only had about another two minutes before she set the cameras to come back on, and there would be evidence that she was at the establishment. She could always bail… regroup another time but…
She looked at the mouse and made out the faint green glow of a light from inside its panels. Her eyes shot to the port. How stupid… she was going quicker than she realized back when tracing the cords.
In a hurry, she reached her hand to swap the cords when suddenly the man called, “Hey!” and her heart stopped.
“I’m gonna go get something from the back to clean this up, I’ll be back in a second.”
“O―okay!” She shot him a thumbs up, and he went through a door to the back.
She refocused, unplugging the mouse and plugging in the keyboard then one final time hitting ENTER. Azura checked her glove, and the program was running. Her breathing stabilized.
From there, with her customized interface, she could open up the cash drawer on the register with ease, and after hearing a soft click, open it was. She was able to see how much money was currently in the register from her interface, $419.29. She wanted it all. She scraped through the drawer, and stuffed her pockets until the register was barren. She closed the drawer, and in the nick of time the man came back out with some towels and a mop.
“Hey you know, I think I’m just gonna go, I’ll leave this stuff by the counter.”
He stared at her from across the room and waved his hand as if to say sure, whatever. “See you around.”
Azura watched him set the towels on the counter as he used one to try to clog the dispenser, which soon would surely run dry. With the subtlest smile, and while his back was turned, she used her glove one last time and let the bug on the camera above her drop into her palm. She saw in the corner of her glove’s projection that she still had a minute and forty seconds to spare. Azura proudly put her hands in her pockets. Now, she could go.
BEEP!
Azura felt her left hand vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out, and a notification appeared on the glove’s screen.
Frey Kemi
PEOPLE COMING!!!!
She heard the door open to her left, and as she looked up, time slowed. She felt the drum of her heart hasten, as she witnessed two familiar men enter the store, two men she never wanted to see. They stared directly at her.
In that moment, every ounce of confidence drained from her face like the liquid from a bottle that had its bottom cut off. Her lower lip dropped, as every possible outcome of her coming interaction played through her head.
Azura held a tight grip on the drive and bugs in her jacket pocket, and thought to just walk by them as if nothing was happening, before she met a firm shove back from the man with the beard.
“Woooaaah there,” Beck teased, “what are you doing out here tonight?”
Azura blinked, and felt her drum set begin bang in her chest.
“Yeah, what are y’doing?” Kaz repeated.
“I was… I was just on my way out can I get by you?”
Before they were blocking the door, but they began to push forward and forced Azura closer to the register.
The cashier took one look back, then continued to work on the machine.
“No… I don’t think so,” Beck and Kaz were smaller than Bear, but the same wasn’t true for Azura, they were both taller and wider than her. She was nothing to them.
They had their arms by their sides, and aggression in their eyes. “You know we saw you out there talking to Frey. You two got a little hustle going on? You both scammers?”
She could feel her throat drying as she protested, “What? No!”
“Not true,” said Kaz.
They closed in even further; she practically had her back to the counter now. “Yeah that’s what you’re doing here isn’t it? You’re running a scam on this guy now, you two?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about get the hell away from me!” She tried again to push past them, but was shoved back and slammed into a rack of chips with a CRASH. She screamed from the impact and soon crumpled to the floor, her back stinging from the force of plastic racks driving into her, but it didn’t take long for the pain to vanish as a surge of energy and panic flooded her body.
“HEY!” the cashier shouted, “What the hell are you doing over there?!”
“Teaching this girl a lesson!” Beck pulled out a switch stick from his pocket, and as Azura frantically tried to push herself off the ground, he drove the blunt metal into her skull just below her eye. She let out another painful cry, as the two both began to push and shove her down in between strikes of metal into her body lying curled on the ground.
40 seconds were left on her timer, ticking down to 39, then 38. With the small focus she had left in her, she desperately tried to access the settings on her glove’s interface, but soon felt the strike of a foot to her chin, and the crush of the Beck’s shoe on her wrist.
“HEY! YOU ALL GET THE HELL OUT OF MY STORE, NOW!”
“Come on, make us!”
Though her vision blurred, Azura could barely make out the face of the cashier, engulfed in rage and still standing in the mess of soda that she inflicted on him. As the sting of the beating continued, she saw his arm begin to glow a beautiful golden hue, and some sort of shining object begin to manifest in his hand.
The cashier started to charge over to the scene, but amidst the slippery puddle covering the floor, his body flew into the air…
CRACK!
…and hit the ground with an impact that filled through the entire room.
The stinging relented.
The two stopped their rampage and looked at the man. He was still.
“Holy shit,” Kaz muttered.
As the pressure on her wrist lightened, she pushed the disarmed button on her palm, then squeezed the exposed ankle the stood next to her.
“AAA!!!” Beck screamed as a shocking surge of electricity pierced into his leg. His balance went out, and he fell to the ground.
Azura shot up with all her remaining strength and ran out the door.
The two men remained, Kaz shyly looming over the injured cashier. Soon, the cola stopped streaming from the faucet.
Azura made out Frey hiding on the other side of the street with a terrified look on his face, and she yelled, “Come on! Let’s go!”
Together, the two ran off into the night, and as the timer on Azura’s phone reached zero, the lights on the cameras came back on, surveying a scene of three men in a convenience store, one groaning on the ground, one worriedly pacing, and one lying motionless in a sea of sugary cola.