Annebél glanced down at her chest for a closer inspection, and guffawed loudly.

"Ha! You're right. If some rando gaucho came up to me with that pickup line I would have smacked him, then grabbed him by his lapel, and planted my tongue so far down his throat he would have choked.

"With that ribaldry coming from you, I'll take that as an astute observation in-the-stead. Did I kill something? Oh, indeed I have killed, and if God be willing, I shall kill again."

"A furless tiger was it?"

Annebél nodded, enthusiastically.

"Yes. A big dumb beast. I was securing Augie into the back of an armored ambulance. I heard a whisper come from the surrounding air with the breeze on my back imploding most oddly.

"I turned around and a wrinkled-skin tiger-cat stood four yards away from me, and a second one of those fuckers was busy dragging off the Night Brigade punk that you paralyzed.

"Anyway, back to the beast. That insolent fucker, right there in front of me, roars at me, pisses me off in such a mad way. I make up the distance between the two of us, and I grab him by one of those sabered teeth, pushed him up, like this, and exposed his neck.

"Then I punched it so hard in the throat that one of his eyeballs pops half out of the socket. I followed up with six more punches until the fucker was dead. How dare he roars at me like that!"

"Damn," was all Tasìa could say in response. She had to engage in an attritive tactical melee with one that she finally could only take down with a high-powered rifle. Annebél just punches one in the throat.

Annebél gave the bars from the retractable gate careful examination. She pointed to the undercarriage support at the bottom of the gate.

"I see your problem. The ball bearing guide is out of sync with the two ball bearings lined up together on this end. Hand me that bedpost that is already bent up a bit."

Tasìa frowned.

"I thought it was hopeless because I blew up the pipes that fed from the air compressor."

Annebél chuckled, and she shook her head. She spoke at length as she worked on the bottom slide rail.

"Nah, if the ball bearings are set-in correctly it will roll without much of a problem. Not like you to miss something so obvious."

Annebél's browse frowned before she continued.

"I have two possible theories that would explain how you could have missed the solution.

"Do note, however, these theories are not mutually exclusive. The first one concerns the Veil of Maya which is the elusive nature of the illusive world that we live in. It is, to put it most bluntly, kicking your ass.

"Anytime that I'm set with a task more complicated than beating the fuck out of someone or something, I have noticed, like when I'm repairing a motorcycle, the very solution-set that seems rigid and fixed at any given moment that I engage the problem with any significant effort tends to evolve in the viability of the possible solution to it as I am noodling along at the problem.

"It is as if even the solutions that we attempt to impose on the world are distorted by the very nature of Veil of Maya and it is thrown back at us to bedevil us, to confound us, and to test our spirit. To let us know our place."

Tasìa nodded. That made perfect sense to her. The solution-set to the retractable gate problem switched at least three times as she worked on the task.

It was unwilling to settle on any given fix for the problem. She hoped that Annebél had better luck solving it.

What could possibly be stimulating its energia that the Veil of Maya refused to settle into a solution?

Before she went down that path she was curious about the other possibility on Annebél's mind. Given her explanation so far seemed to perfectly encapsulate the frustration Tasìa felt with, in truth, everything.

"What is your other theory?"

"You're drunk off your stinking little ass. And, -" Annebél looked around, "you missed seeing the details because you can only focus on one thing at a time but you cannot do so long enough on any single thing in the state that you are in to get a good read."

Tasìa had difficulty following that.

"Hey! That's ... I've sobered up ... mostly."

Annebél wrenched a support bar loose from the underside of the gate. The under-bar lay on top of the bedpost just enough for Annebél to slide out the strip of lining beneath it. She brought out a multi-tool, and smiled while glancing up, "This little baby is to me what that fanny pack is to you."

She slid a magnetized tuning fork to the upright position and reset the first two ball bearings in place before reattaching the strip.

Annebél continued to speak.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about your drinking in the middle of the day and how that has grown to be a problem. I was planning on setting up an intervention involving the boys."

Tasìa protested.

"Hey, come on now. I only drink beer during the daytime, and you have never even... Wait ... You're just fucking with me. You catch me drinking in the middle of all this shit that is going on, so now you're yanking my chain about it."

Annebél laughed, uproariously.

"Yes, I am!"

Tasìa slumped against the hallway wall.

"Now, I guess I owe you an explanation as to why you found me like this - helpless and inebriated off my ass."

"Mon petite demón, I don't doubt that you have your reason. I'm listening."

Tasìa cleared her throat of a loogie lodged deep inside it and spat on the floor. From her lungs to her nasal cavities, it still felt rough from the smoke inhalation.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She explained it.

"When I destroyed the last drone, it blew up. My lungs caught a lot of smoke from whatever the shell of that living machine thing is made of and my lungs seized up.

"I couldn't breathe. I was close to dying, so as a last resort, I drank an entire bottle of vodka. It punched the snotty phlegm down. That caused my lungs to clear right up. But it left me buzzing even after I puked it all back up."

Annebél raised her tone to suggest she had doubts.

"Holy crap. Why would that even work?"

Tasìa shrugged.

"I don't get why anything works these days. There is a one-hundred-and-forty-seven-year-old man whose life force was sustained by cocaine shooting into his veins. How do you explain that?"

Annebél raised her chin and stretched her neck before answering.

"Well actually, that medtech told me the answer to that when I transferred Augie over to him and asked him about it."

That certainly caught her interest.

"I'm all ears, mon grande ange."

Annebél winced slightly. Tasìa realized her French must have sounded horrible.

"It's an alternative to cryogenically frozen storage. Called methylogenic storage and from what I'm told it is a much more optimal preservative solution for a viable corpse as it teeters between life and death. They have to implant a specialized synthetic organ into the patient, one like our Augie, that processes the cocaine.

"It prevents cellular destruction by being a persistent counter-entropic correction to the natural decay that would otherwise occur. Methylogenic treatment works especially well in preventing brain death because it intercedes at the holographical level of neuron functionality.

"It keeps the self that arises from this intersection of neurological activity in a steady, repetitive state of being.

"Given the properties of the substance suppresses memory formation, it prevents the patient from going mad or losing significant cognitive functionality like what commonly happens when they revive cryogenically frozen corpsicles.

"I've heard they've yet to produce one who wasn't a blubbering Frankenstein right out of the tube before they hook them into AI assistance to revive their personalities."

Tasìa shook her head in wonderment.

"I guess as an added bonus, you are not freezing your tits off. Well damn, sign me up for that, instead."

Annebél stood up and gave the gate a good shove. The bars retracted to collect themselves on the other wall.

Annebél smiled in satisfaction while she waved her hands towards the stairs.

"Shall we make our exit?"

Tasia clamped her bottom lip between her teeth.

"The medtech took Augie to somewhere safe?"

"Yeah. The medtech's corp is legit Their service calls for MVP mobsters are specially coded for assassination prevention so the original EMS crew let him through. He drove in a cool plus-sized hover-ambulance with mounted gun turrets. When they were safely on their way, I came to find you."

Tasìa glanced over to the barroom.

"So we are good to do our run on this place, then?"

"I still want to cut that bad bitch Sal down and do so before the evening is out."

Tasìa nodded.

"There are four things I like you to help me retrieve. It should take us no more than five minutes. Are you in?"

"Sure! I'm game."

Tasìa sauntered down the hall. Despite her thirst for vengeance, Annebél seemed curious enough to ease up her pace.

"Excellent. The first two items are here just around the corner."

Upon walking into the bar, Annebél puckered her lips and grabbed her belt supports. She was impressed with the carnage above them.

"Is that where the drone exploded," she asked.

"That it is."

Annebél turned her gaze towards the opposite end of the room.

"That's a funky little dance floor over there."

Tasìa nodded once more.

"I'm kind of falling in love with this setup. That luxurious shag! I'd like to do some ruttin' on it sometime."

Annebél shook her head.

"Only you ... The words that come out of that innocent-looking little mouth on you."

Tasìa grabbed a half-gallon bottle of mezcal and a bottle of Russian vodka, and she put them in a white netted laundry bag.

With a smirk set upon her face, she got Annebél's attention once more.

"Hey, check this out."

When she showed Annebél the title of the album she held up for closer inspection, Annebél shrieked with laughter.

"I'm an aficionado of being licked but not at all curious about doing the licking."

Tasìa answered, "So you don't say ... I'm curious ... Does the scarab stay on, or does it come off?"

Annebél gave a regretful frown.

"Unfortunately, I have to take it off while fucking. El Bicho gets way too excited with flapping its wings and stimulating me when I, myself, get excited. It's a shame though, the experience is mind-blowing with the connection we have but the experience is too intense for a third party to be anything but a superfluous nuisance."

Annebél appeared to be a million miles away as if transported to the ecstasy of the heavens. She then blushed and became self-consciously aware of her spiritual nakedness.

"I have said too much, already," she answered. "All in due time but only when you are ready."

Tasìa paused, ready to say something but decided not to.

What did she mean by that? Is the scarab alive?

Ultimately, she let it go as just one of many of life's unanswered mysteries.

Tasìa grabbed the rest of the vinyl albums - nine in all, and the rack in which they were previously stacked.

Soon after, when they climbed the stairs, Tasia was overcome with the vile air of death she had smelled earlier.

Annebél put a hand on her shoulder.

"You haven't seen it yet? Good. I'm going to walk over here. Now, keep your eyes focused on me. You don't want to see it."

Tasìa followed along as she was instructed. She saw the glare of hate fixed on Annebél's face as they passed the enclosure where Sal committed unspeakable evil.

Mon grande ange spares me but not herself.

Further down the hall, they came upon the aquarium room. Tasìa rushed upstairs and made a beeline to the safe room. She searched the cabinets inside and found four boxes of 12-gauge ammo.

There were other things she decided not to bother with until she spotted an unopened box of 16 Noug-Noug bars. Oh, damn ... It was the discontinued by-a-decade Schtick-Sticks. Noug-Noug Schtick-Sticks!

The ones with the comedian and the tall leggy actress in a school girl plaids from their long ago television show on the package.

Tasìa didn't care that the candy bars were old. She threw the pack in the bag and picked up the combat shotgun.

Annebél eyed it, curiously.

"Need one?" Tasìa asked.

The brawler nodded.

"My last one was a piece of crap. Something just says confidence about that one, though."

Tasìa handed it over. She cared so little about shotguns as opposed to precision arms that she knew almost nothing about the manufacturer, and Tasìa always had the reputation and competency of the manufacturer in mind when she purchased anything.

One last thing was on her list. Tasìa led the duo up the stairs. When they stood in front of the altar, Annebél eyed Tasìa and she smiled. Wickedly.

"Do you plan to take some of that coke?"

Tasìa shook her head and squinched her face.

"If you want it, you're welcome to it, but I'm at the point of my life where non-hallucinogenics don't interest me at all. I had great times, and interesting times at the Esconda Vida party scene, but the cocaine doesn't shake and rattle my spirit like it used to. No, I am here for this -"

Tasìa pulled out the funerary box and showed Annebél what was inside. Along with the Enigma machine she found twelve tin pill bottles beside it. She opened a bottle up and found that it contained ribbons of tape.

"I thought so. These cats don't rely on digital for anything."

Annebél gave her a curt smile.

"You're spooking me, lassie. A whole 'nother level of operatives have been working with the Javierras that I would not have suspected beyond my Bête being an intermediary."

Even with that warning, Annebél patted the tops of the tin bottles, wontonly.

She continued to speak.

"We may have the keys to the kingdom in our grasp, right here. You'll have to do quite a bit of cipher work just to access it though."

Tasìa was ready to show off. Her fingers drummed above the plugboard keys.

"Not a problem. I spied on as that thing keyed in the access code."

She typed in:

FirstBeast_EAC.

Annebél put her hand on top of Tasìa's.

"We need to take this with us. This is . . . something else."

She grabbed her multi-tool and switched in a bolt cutter.

"So.. you know something?"

Annebél nodded.

"It didn't stop with just the first Beast. The current Beast now reigns, right here, from his throne in the Sweet. I'm headed that way to buy some info on Sal. We need to get over there, pronto."

Val's PA lit up and vibrated against Tasìa's tailbone. It sounded out the Las Flores del Mal Deathgrind music from Annebél's satura music system.

Annebél straightened her spine, gasped, and went bug-eyed when she realized what she was hearing.

"How the fuck," she asked.

Tasìa grabbed the PA from out of her pocket and she studied the screen.

"Oh ... this is how the fuck."

The visage of Demona Hellöiste smirked right back at her. Tasìa raised the PA up for her friend to see.

"First," Demona stated flatly, "there shall be a detour."