Karina Pajari awoke alone one more time, her ‘date’ having left in the middle of the night as usual. Not that it was unexpected. Who would want to stay with a nearly washed up Razor girl with an expiration date? Men and women, none, had lasted long enough even to be remembered.
She got up and checked the calendar; today, just the Ashcroft Gala escort she had been doing for all fifteen years of her career.
She was in the shower when she could no longer suppress the pain, and the shakes started in seizure-like ripples passing over her entire body. Staggering, streaming water to the nightstand, her fingers fumbling as she dug out her auto-injector and checked that the ampoule was already inserted into it. Pressing it to her side with a click and hiss the cooling magic entered her system, and the shakes stopped, taking with them the burning fire her nerves had become.
Returning to her shower, the spray concealing her tears, she went through the morning rituals as if nothing was wrong. As she stood at the sink and mirror, her body reflected back, all strong and sure now. No scar or blemish marked her, her almost white hair and robust build all thanks to her Finnish-Russian heritage. Her short stature, giving the lie to what lay under the skin. She had always admired her body, the body that would all too soon give one final betrayal. She looked at the Pak and added up the time she had left. The shots were only lasting less than seven hours now, compared to once a week when this had all started a year ago. When the shots hit one-hour duration, they would no longer be effective. Just weeks. Just a few more weeks and the fire wouldn’t go out.
She would have to decide to live out her last days in agony, or OD on something. She had plenty of money to afford the best of drugs, not that it could do her any good.
=-=-=-=-
Looking back, it only made sense. Take a normal human, implant a hundred different brand new tech enhancements, and expect everything to be good. The risks had seemed perfectly acceptable to a sixteen-year-old dropout, eager for adventure. Now as a thirty-one-year-old she knew the true costs. Her muscles had been replaced with synthetic myomer giving her strength and endurance easily ten times normal. Her bones had been infused with Carbyne struts, a graphene mesh lay under her skin, both as armor and to let her use her strength without tearing her skin off, or crushing her bones. Her nervous system had been gene-tweaked to speeds almost beyond belief, matched by senses that could detect a bullet in flight and move in time to react. Her eyes looked natural but gave her a broad spectrum capacity and low light functionality. They meshed into the implanted IFF and aim-point targeting systems, that worked equally well with carried weapons, as with the implanted set. Both forearms had ten shot, 3mm antipersonnel, chemical lasers, that if she fired more than three shots a minute, she would cook her arms alive. The pads of both thumbs and pinkies combined to a variable strength Taser. The first through third fingers had molecule thin blades that could be extended from underneath the fingernails that were no longer Keratin but now battle-stressed polycarbonate fiber gripping claws for climbing.
Brain implants gave her a communications suite with full net access and private network connectivity. Skill chip implants gave her a hundred languages, a dozen martial arts and all the tactical and strategic resources she could download in advance, yet nothing gave her the knowledge to fix herself and her poor choices.
It was all a teetering house of cards, and someone had just opened a window letting the wind in.
Who could have guessed fifteen years ago that the human nervous system would burnout under the continuous loads, the Carbyne struts would inhibit the production of new blood cells from the bone marrow, all the implants leaking chemicals and metals into her system blocked vital neural transmitters and corrupted much that they didn’t block. Now without her shots, her nerves burned like fire, her muscles would tremble in convulsions until either they tore, or the underlying bones broke. Her brain was little better, accelerated and amped up she was becoming prone to fugues and epilepsy-like seizures.
The only thing that worked as advertised, her body had been sculpted to the limits of perfection, so at 31 she still looked a decade younger. The perfect bodyguard arm-candy, few would expect the real threat to be the 5’2” bit of fluff and not the hulking normal guards.
There was a reason there hadn’t been any new Razor girls in the last eight years.
=-=-=-=-
She was assigned tonight to Sir Leighton Ashcroft himself, owner and CEO of Ashcroft Industries. As they were approaching the Gala drop zone, she meshed into the private security net and perused all the local cameras and activity.
Announcing their arrival over the net,
“Dagger actual. Hawk on site, thirty-two seconds!”
The driver and front seat bodyguard assisted their passengers from the limo. Karina sliding out to meet Sir Ashcroft as he stood waiting. Her vision overlaid with a dozen tiny windows showing the security feeds in her peripheral vision. Resting her fingers atop his right arm, they started walking the thirty-three strides to the front doors. Her sensor suite hiccupped as they took the tenth stride, and she felt the stutter in the data feeds, as her direct observation failed to match the camera feeds.
“Dagger actual! Sensor jamming and feed looping. Alert 3!” But before any response came, the trap was triggered.
She felt the three smart slugs vectoring around the building on indirect pathing, caught on her Doppler feed. Feeling the slugs lock on and go to terminal boost, sending them from a subsonic glide winged micro aircraft, to supersonic darts as they tore their own wings off. Her ECM suite failing to disrupt their targeting. She grabbed Sir Ashcroft and picking him up, swung him behind her as she moved into the path of the three rounds. Moving to take the slugs on her heaviest armor, they hit first on her Houndstooth evening jacket, then her woven Kevlite dress, two of the rounds never penetrated her graphene mesh, the third exploited a weakness in the mesh and splattered itself against her Carbyne coated shoulder blade. Spinning, she hit maximum boost as she saw two teams of three gunmen that still failed to register on the cameras.
She charged, almost too fast to be seen, hitting the first triad, dodging between #1 and #2, her hands flicking out, the swipes precise, each finger blade 1mm offset from each other. Opening their throats in three parallel slices 30mm deep that sliced through the attackers Kevlite like it was paper. Planting a foot on a decorative planter, she kicked off back the way she had come, leaving the heavy planter rocking. She spun, bringing the other foot in with all her strength and the force added from her spin. She felt #3’s neck break.
Shifting attention, she then saw the other three were too far away for her to close in time; they would be able to reach firing position before she could stop them. Their auto pistols are already rising to bear. Gauging #4 and #6 having the clearest shots. Seeing both holding the guns in their right hands, she locked her aim-point on their left eyes and both arms moved forward, hands swinging up, out of the way. Two brilliant purple threads reached from her hands, searing circles on her palms, to the gunmen and the left side of their heads vanished in steam explosions. Twin numbers counting down recycle time appeared in her vision. Karina veered into #5’s line of fire and turned to close the range as a three-shot burst was taken harmlessly on the armor on her stomach, both Tasers going active. She briefly suffered a fugue as her body followed her last order, but she was no longer attendant.
Finding herself standing, panting over the twitching body of #6, Karina sent out over the net.
“Dagger actual! Two hostile fire teams down. Find the sniper and painter! Encounter time 4.3 seconds.”
The problem with smart rounds is the sniper could be long gone, the rounds hanging on loiter for minutes until they detected the painting laser frequency. The target painter could have been in any one of a thousand windows or shadowed recesses.
“Dagger Leader to Dagger Actual. Clear to move primary to cover?”
Suddenly, feeling the pain of the round that penetrated, not to mention the impacts of the other five. More distressing than that was the flicker of heat down her left arm and the first tiny trembles there. Five hours, five fucking hours…
“Dagger actual to Dagger team. Move Hawk to Fallback 1. Jammers and hacking active, so sight verify the situation. Someone grab my ready bag for Fallback.”
Arriving at the hotel suite the team took up positions, while Dan, Dagger Leader, pulled her aside.
“Damn. Taking six slugs for the client. Even for you, that was risky.” Dan growled quietly. Snugging a pressure wrap over a purpling shoulder, blood running from the one puncture, Dan pulled the flattened slug out.
“Everybody’s got to go sometime,” Karina replied, but the tremble in her voice made Dan’s eyes shoot up.
“You Okay?”
“Never better.” They had worked together for a decade now, and Dan knew a lie. He scanned her body and saw the tremor in her left arm.
“Damn it! How long have you known?” He whisper-yelled at her. Grabbing her arm, to still the shivers.
“A year…”
“A year?! Why didn’t you say something?”
“We both knew this was coming; both knew I wouldn’t grow old.”
“Didn't you trust us?”
“it wasn't Trust… it was, it was the pity I couldn't stand. The same pity in your eyes now. It would just make things too real to see that every day.”
Dan clenched his teeth, almost enraged, as he grabbed Karina’s ready bag. He tore open the velcro on her medic-kit grabbing the auto-injector he now knew he would find there, and the package of Ease ampoules. Freezing for an instant, as he saw the ampoule of Final Solution sitting there. Tears are gathering in his eyes as he saw the injector flashing 5 hours since last use.
“Damn you…” Dan whispered to her as he pressed the injector home, with a gentle hiss, a calming peace filled her veins. “Damn you for making me care.”
“Go home tonight and hug Marie and the boys for me, okay?” Karina failing to notice the stutter in her voice, that hadn’t been relieved by the Ease. “I can’t face them like this. Explain that I won’t make the twins birthdays this year.”
“They’re only six; they’ll be heartbroken if their favorite babysitter and auntie doesn’t show.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Lord Leighton had watched the entire procedure carefully. One didn’t become the head of the world’s second largest Biomedical and Pharmaceutical firm without being sharp.
“Miss Pajari, Mister Simons. I can promise nothing, but that we’ll try. I believe we might have something to aid you. You saved my life tonight, now let me try and save yours. Alright?”
=-=-=-=-
Damn, but she hated being an invalid. Well, not truly an invalid, but these new medications stopping the deterioration required her to be on a constant IV. For short periods she could move about with an auto-injector strapped to her arm, but then she would have to return to the clinic.
The Limo pulled to a stop, and she climbed out. Immediately assaulted by the twins, both in cowboy hats, both belts holding a child’s version of the Nethack tools. Bending to hug them, she felt a quiet rage, one more thing her implants had taken from her, she could never have little terrors of her own.
“Auntie K!” Both screamed at her. “Da said you weren’t going to come.”
“How could I miss my two favorite net Cowboys becoming big boys today! You are both so big! What are you now? Twenty, maybe twenty-one?”
“Silly!” cried Peter with a laugh.
Patrick always more serious, pouted as he placed his fists on his hips and exclaimed, “Six!”
“Of course, how silly of me, you are six! Don’t tell your parents, but I have a gift, only for my favorite six-year old's.”
Walking the boys back to the oversized trunk of the Limo, she smiled at the driver, as two new bikes sat there already waiting the birthday boys.
“Bikes!” The boys screamed in unison. “Teach us to ride Auntie K, please?”
“I’m sorry boys; I won’t have time today. You will have to ask your father and mother. Speaking of which…”
“Karina! Didn’t we speak about this?” Came Marie’s half shouted voice.
“Yes, we did Marie. But it is a rule that all Aunts get to spoil the children. And we can’t go about breaking the rules can we?”
Wrapped in a big hug, Marie quietly said, “Tell me one rule, one law you have ever obeyed.”
“Umm, Gravity?” and they both laughed as Marie led her into the house, shouting over her shoulder, “Boys! Put those bikes in the garage for later. The cake is waiting.”
=-=-=-=-
At last the new procedures were ready, hypnotic blocks locked away the boost triggers, choosing a poem excerpt as her unblocking key, for an emergency. Her cybernetics were deactivated and powered down. Protein sheaths were grown around most of her implants to isolate them. The toxic chemicals that powered the lasers and Tasers removed.
Lord Leighton stood beside her bed as she awoke from the last of the new surgeries.
“Now, my dear Karina. My scientists say that nothing can heal all the damage, or remove the sources and implants, but provided you do not trigger a boost, and you live quietly. Well, they think you will have another thirty years!” His huge smile was infectious, and soon she joined him. Laughing deeply, as she looked forward to a future she had just reconciled herself to never have. She laughed until she cried, great hiccupping sobs of joy as she hugged him, for the first time not needing to be afraid for someone she touched.
=-=-=-=-
Karina spent days just absorbing the sun. She had to give up her bicycle as it was too likely to spike her adrenaline. Her car, the seizures, and fugues cost her, her license. So she walked, every hiking trail in the city and around it. She had met two couples on her rounds and was growing close to them. The first friends she could remember that weren’t also co-workers.
Almost three months Karina avoided excitement, stayed away from the addictive euphoria of boost. Daily, walking through gardens she had never had time for before. Now she watched people, not as threats, but people simply living.
Sitting down on a bench in a park, she watched life. Mothers with strollers. Toddlers, always discovering new ways to fall, looking to see if anyone noticed before they cried. Young children, always with far more energy than sense. Her smile incongruous with the tears running down her face.
=-=-=-=-
She had just entered the Mall, intent on nothing more exciting than a new pair of shoes. The screams, people cowering behind fountains and planters, all made that new pair of Jimmy Choo’s seem unimportant.
A teen couple sprang up from behind a planter and dashed for the doors. A sudden ‘brrrrrrrrrrrrrp’ left them both sliding facedown, leaving long streaks of red, their hands still reaching for each other. A loud voice rang out in the surprised silence.
“I told you all! No one moves!” A voice shouted from a Jewelry store.
A bleat of a sports whistle and a voice calling out “Time!” Sent the half dozen robbers she could see, into a flurry of activity. She would have let them walk away, would have allowed them to live, but the bearded leader reached out to a crying mother and pulled her infant from the wailing woman's arms. When the mother tried to grab her infant back, she was brutally pistol-whipped to lay on the unyielding floor, unconscious.
Her heart pounding, lungs panting, she made a decision and whispered the unlock poem to herself. Robert Frost speaking to her heart as he never had before.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
A shudder ran through her body, hypnotic shackles falling away. The flashing indicators of her cybernetics booting up. The old familiar friends returned, power flooding her limbs, displays waking, targeting circles highlighting weapons and vulnerable locations. As she was reveling in her return to power, a pair of ‘brrrrrrrrrrrrrp’ rang out, clerks and customers falling bloodied. The bearded leader is whipping the infant around without a care, holding the back of the infant’s jumper like the handle of a briefcase.
Karina boosted like she never had before. Her lasers flashing red, their chemical cells drained. Charging she passed a dropped pen, scooping it up she planted it in the temple of one thug, snatching his gun out of the air as he fell boneless. Four bursts later the MP5 clicked on empty, four of the thugs hadn't yet had time to start falling. Bearded Leader was turning like he moving in molasses, his arm slowly turning to bear, she reached out and cushioned the infant's neck and spine as she delivered a crushing snap kick to his sternum, rupturing the leader’s heart.
She started cooing to the infant when a scream penetrated the roaring in her ears.
“You killed him! You bitch!”
Karina barely had time to dodge, still taking a portion of the hit. Karina tucked and rolled, sliding the infant like a puck to rest next to her mother. As she returned to her feet, a flashing hand caught her shoulder opening three all too familiar slashes in her graphene mesh. She had never fought another Razor girl, never fought anyone that had full augmentations. She dropped into a defensive stance and barely blocked the other hand. Hands flying, each strike countered by a block, in a crashing bang of impact. Kicks dodged or blocked. Karina saw the tremor in her opponent’s right arm and focused her attacks there, someone else suffering a breakdown. Not able to take the time for pity, the fight ran on for what felt like forever. Then as the other threw a right-hand punch, her arm flinched with a tremor and exposed the armpit. Karina’s hand flashed out and severed the muscles and tendons there. With one arm useless it didn’t take long for the second opening and Karina’s knuckles impacted the other’s temple, stunning her for a second. A second at these levels of boost was an eternity. The spin kick shattered the other razor girl’s ribcage, the broken splinters driven like bullets into the lungs and heart.
Not waiting for the police, Karina walked off, flagging down a cab as she exited.
“Don’t get that blood on my seats! I just washed them!”
Looking at the seats that were anything but clean, she sighed,
“No worries, the bleeding is already stopping. Take me to 13376 Natchez Way, and wait there for me for a minute please?”
“Whatever you want Lady, your credit identifies as good enough to buy the cab.”
Karina dashed into her apartment and slapped pressure patches on her bleeding wounds, pulled on her favorite dress, and grabbed her bugout bag. Returning to the cab,
“Take me to the best scenic overlook of the ocean.”
Arriving at a quiet point, she saw the skies were only lightly clouded, as the sun was nearing the horizon. She tapped in a $5000 tip and climbed out.
“No need to wait. I won’t be needing a ride back.”
“Whatever you say, Lady. Thanks for the tip!” And he peeled out, happy at a good day.
Walking out to the point, she saw two benches placed before a low wall. Sitting, she watched the gulls wheel and play, the wind carrying their cries to her ears.
As she sat there a few hours, other spectators coming and going, her teeth started chattering. Warmed only by the fire burning up her nerves.
Pulling out her phone, she hit the #1 contact.
“Karina! Don’t do this! Come back in! Leighton thinks they can help.”
“Don’t worry Dan. I see now. It wasn’t truly living anyways. I live for the boost; it makes me feel alive. These past months were a true gift. I have never had time just to live. It was always that day’s operation. But that life was never mine. I was just borrowing it for a while. I would have come to hug you, Marie and the boys, but I wasn’t strong enough. Hug, thhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” suddenly having a small seizure. Blinking her eyes to clear them, she opened her bag as she continued talking, “See? Hug them for me, hug them, Dan, hug them every night. I would come and hug them… but… but, I can’t remember their names!” and she hung up sobbing. Crushing the phone in her hand was trivial. Grabbing the injector, it took several tries for her trembling fingers to drop in the ampoule. She sat and waited. Thinking of her life, as more and more holes appeared in her memories.
As the sun touched the horizon, the sky erupted in reds and oranges, a long, brilliant tail reaching from the sun across the ocean. The gulls quieted, returning to their nests. The reds deepened to purples, the oranges to reds. Then the sun slipped below the waves, the purples and blacks growing to overwhelm the sky. The only sound on the overlook was a quiet hiss. Then as color fled the sky and the black filled it, black filled her as well.
The emergency vehicles poured into the small lot, lights flashing, radios blaring, but they found her long gone.