Interlude I

La Loba

"Still no contact?"

Felicité looked up from the workstation she had rigged together for her surveillance and data breach needs.

Weeks together now, the raw allure and exotic color of the bounty hunter's green eyes still gave her the shivers.

"None."

Elise leaned up against the desk. She shook her head in response with a snarl that appeared more repulsed than upset.

"The little shit has been in Asunción for six days now. Surely, they agreed to a time and place to arrange their next move."

Felicité folded her hands over her knees. She still reveled in what Elise said at the end of the third day after they spent it getting their operation up and running. The two of them found some private space to loosen up over lime and tequila shots.

Elise shot her the most beautiful smile before she said:

Skinny girls are not really my type - she ran her fingers up the length of Felicité's arm, but your skin is so healthy. No gauntness about you. You, I'll make an exception.

The cowgirl bounty hunter leaned over, face to face, and with lips at ready ...

... minutes after, Elise led her to the bounty hunter's RV home where they pleasured one another for seven hours straight.

It was not only a nice diversion but also her first sexual contact with anyone since she was first injected with the dire strain.

For a solid week after their first triste, they worked hard to find General Kutuzov's crew by day, and they made love by night.

Felicité began to think of the two as a couple. Elise was her girlfriend, or so she thought.

She did not mind being dominated by Elise's even stronger personality than her own, nor did she mind the gaucha's aggressive and overbearing physicality when they made love.

At the end of the day, Felicité felt used up, physically spent, inflammatorily sore in all orifices, and so very satisfied.

That changed the moment Felicité ran up to Elise, excitedly, and informed the bounty hunter that she had uncovered Kutuzov's signal array and where it lead.

Since that moment, Green-eyed Elise was focused on one thing and one thing only, the Hunt.

"No. No," Elise shook her head, physical disgust still gnarled on her lips. "It is not possible we have nothing. Someone must have noted down something."

Felicité answered, curtly.

"All traffic coming in and out of there is monitored. Every packet to its most minute programmed function is scrutinized by AI for any missing subtext.

"We know what's going on inside Kutuzov's network better than his IT crew does."

Elise chuckled.

"That little shit can be paranoid."

Felicité grinned with a thin-lipped and sheepish expression.

"The nuking of the IMCQ wasn't exactly fortuitous for our cause. Remember, I'm supposed to be in there."

Elise did not miss the remiss Felicité gave towards her tactical miscalculation in their attempt to lure Tasìa into finding and outing the pregnant Serbian assassin for them.

Elise shrugged, dismissive of any fault that was pointed her way. She laughed it off.

"I definitely did not see that one coming."

Felicité made a calculation before she answered. Elise seemed playful once more. Perhaps, if she made a stab at saying something supportive, her cowgirl would be up to some fun later on that night.

"Nuclear weapons are so horrible no one really conceptually believes they exist until they are actually used."

Elise grew silent though fidgety.

Felicité would have to prompt her

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Without del Alma-Gris' involvement, do we proceed?"

Elise shoved herself off the wall where she had leaned against it.

"Call up the plan on your screen. I want to see if all the moving parts are still viable."

Felicité punched up the hologram and projected it inside a display box embedded in a blue felt creche.

Kutuzov's bunker was now fully rendered and could be viewed from any angle. Both the bounty hunter and the data analyst peered at one another to see the other's reaction.

Both could see that there was a conspicuous absence.

"This can't be right," Elise seethed.

Felicité flipped through the standard settings for her screen display until nothing but the console command line remained. She ran a command to once more capture control over the internal cameras for Kutuzov's bunker.

She ran a sync-up to identify and report her target.

Each time an 'out of area' message returned.

"León Ballano is not there," Felicité stated.

"You don't think I can see that? You have it set to flag him whenever he leaves, correct?"

Felicité nodded, fiercely in her own defense.

"Of course! None of the electronic spotters picked up on any recognition of Ballano ever leaving the premises."

Elise smacked the glass table surface at her side in frustration.

"Without knowing his exact position in time and space we can't send the drones in. We can't risk killing him. We have to know!"

Elise slowed her breathing. When she calmed back down she continued to speak.

"I need a moment to think. Okay. Okay. Meet me back here in two hours. I'm going to alert my eyes and ears on the ground to see if we can get a fix on him."

Elise walked away muttering in a loud growl, "fucking delays. I thought you were on top of everything, Paz!"

With the door slammed behind her, Felicité glanced contemptuously back.

No play time, not tonight.

She turned back to the screen. Felicité didn't care if the war criminal and his crew lived or died. There were elements within the Salvage that would pay them a fortune to be rid of Kutuzov once and for all.

But, Tasìa was different. Felicité had grown fond of the hyper-materialistic thief. Yet, Felicité knew Tasìa well enough to know that del Alma-Gris would never trust her again after that lie that she tried to pull off of still being in prison. Likely, del Alma-Gris checked the roll of casualties from the nuclear event to see if any of her friends made it out alive, and there was Felicité Antonella Paz's name as a glaring absence.

Felicité checked for herself. Her name showed up as a recent release from the facility. An overlooked detail someone in Elise's organization should have seen to cover up and have it deleted from the IMCQ's server files that very day she parted.

It was a trifling detail, however, easy to overlook. A trifling detail until it wasn't.

No, the Argentinian decided. There was zero chance of reconciliation between the two of them. She had the Agenda to consider, and whatever begging, prodding, prostate pleading, she would have to perform to get back in del Alma-Gris' good graces, it would undermine what needed to be done. With regret, she bit her thumbnail and she decided that with del Alma-Gris, she had no other choice but to cut her losses.

Felicité took a cigarette break. She leaned on the rail of the old water tower sixty feet off the ground. The inside tank had been long ago drained. It was where Elise's crew set up their operations.

She stared into the distance, at the SkyTether. That was where she ultimately needed to be if she had any chance at a human-based future.

To ever be free of the Manifest.

The Manifest offered you freedom of its grapples upon your soul if you did one simple seeming task for it. Betray the human race.

She had done just that in her career as an anarchist but it proved to be not enough to satiate the demands of the Manifest. Felicité had failed that mission.

Now the Manifest set her on course for another quest to prove her worth.

It spoke to her in dreams and told her of its battles with the entity that controlled the SkyTether. It called the battlefield the Resonance Front where AIs that controlled nanospores were set against the spontaneous intelligence inherent in electromagnetic distortion in an epic territorial clash.

Felicité did her due diligence in her research on the matter. She was amongst the most well-informed in the world on the secret struggle. At war were two competing definitions of topographical phase space and the proper administration of it when translated into an overlay atop reality's terrain.

When broken down into its simplest parts, it made little sense at all. Then again, it didn't matter if it did. There would still be winners and losers in the struggle.

"Man, the times in which we live," Felicité whispered as she flicked the remaining cigarette into the air.

Felicité briskly strode down the winding spiral of the steps. She still had time to indulge in one favorite activity that had taken the place of Elise's affections.

On the grounds below the abandoned water tower, Felicité kept residence in a single-wide trailer that sat inside the gated area where other shelters, including Elise's RV, inhabited.

She quickly entered her trailer and locked the door behind her. From a cabinet shelf, she removed a metal box.

On its tasteful decor were written the words, 'The Ultimate Synthesia Experience.'

Felicité opened the lid and retrieved the scarab inside of it. She giggled at the thought that Elise had no idea what it was.

One of the bounty hunter's scouting agents discovered that it was placed on order by that beautiful but scary-ass companion of del Alma-Gris. The agent intercepted the box before it could be delivered.

Elise had no clue what to make of it so she gave it to Felicité to further study the scarab, run a laser reader to analyze it, and figure out its purpose.

And that she certainly did!

Felicité removed the white jeans and tropical island-themed panties that she wore. Knowing how messy it was going to get, she retrieved a towel from the washroom and laid it on the floor.

With her back leaned up against the couch, and butt planted firmly on the towel, Felicité pushed her clitoris out from the vulva folds. She worked the scarab in position along the length of the hood.

From there the scarab did the rest. With a gentle pinch, it clamped down and began to glow green.

It took a minute to sync up with her nerve endings - 1134 of them according to her PA display - as it formed a matrix of indices aligned to her sensorium.

The PA gave a green light. Felicité chose to play Bartok's String Quartet No. 4.

She lay her head back and closed her eyes as the music translated into an enhightened stimulus upon her clitoris. The music rose up inside her and enveloped her as if it were an expert lover.

She last felt the wings flutter ticklishly against her pubic hair before being wonderfully lost in the tactile feel of exquisite music being played along her body electric.