As Fodor leaned into the storage compartment of his truck to retrieve some more bandages and other medical supplies, he kept their conversation going.
"So Tasìa, for seventy-three seconds you lost a heartbeat. What was death like?"
Tasia wiped Alisha's face and neck down with a moist towelette to keep her calm. The greatest threat to the American was not the four gunshot wounds that she suffered but staying out of shock.
What a Hell of an evening for her.
The threat of decapitation, of being burned alive, their fire fight against one another - it all took a toil on the spook's mental well being.
She turned her attention back towards Fodor.
"How was the After-Life, you ask? Either I passed through the Valley of Death, or I had a dream heavily influenced by what my Anewed Elders taught me with my own personal likes, dislikes, and my own peculiar blindspots and prejudices thrown in the mix.
"But if real, I saw the literal Harvesters of Souls whom once walked the Earth. Man, I got to tell you. They really don't like us."
When he returned, Fodor squatted down beside her. A set of lights patterned from orange to green lit up the right hand corner of the console. She discerned each light represented a sector related to the phase-beast patrol.
As Fodor worked the keys, buttons and switches on his console, he explained what he was doing.
"The bounty hunters have retreated and removed their static field. I'm going to send all but two of the phasies back into the cage. It isn't good for them to be out in low resonance space for extended stays."
As Fodor finished his explanation, Alisha grabbed Tasìa's left hand.
"Your aunt, she is the guardian of the SkyTether. Why did she let them get so close?"
From the paleness of Alisha's eyes, it appeared she was going into delirium.
Who did she let get close?
"Stay with us, Alisha," Fodor pleaded. "I have a sedative patch."
Fodor finished up his work on the console. He leaned over towards a bag, grabbed an index finger by index finger sized patch, and peeled off the back cover of it.
The lacey, black dress Alisha wore possessed a loose, wide collar. Fodor applied the patch on the American's left shoulder.
Tasìa jerked her head to confirm the back cover Fodor had sat on Alisha's belly listed as an ingredient a steady micro-dose of lysergic acid. That did not surprise as it was used to help maintain the mental health of those who suffered shock.
But the fact that the American Spooks had easy access to the most regulated controlled substance in all of the Quadra was the real eyebrow-raiser.
Tasìa shook her head.
"Man. I wished I ran into you a few weeks ago when the Mani- ," Tasìa paused and stuttered before she continued. She had put her cousin's condition at the back of her mind. "When the Manifest was riding me raggéd. It would have saved me a shit ton of grief."
Fodor grinned and shrugged.
"I most certainly can imagine. Actually, I don't have to imagine it. I went through it, too. I had no resources available to dose at a time that I felt that ting and itch that occurs when the Manifest is deep inside you.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"I was on a mission in the Piamonte Roja region. We were somehow ambushed. We all came back in a bad way. I was under quarantine for a week as they pumped me full of lysergic derivatives to flush the Spore out of me."
Fodor shook his head, and he continued.
"It was a very strange time in my life."
Tasìa helped Fodor remove Alisha's ruined chic silver jeans and matching panties. He averted his eyes. Which was just as well.
He had not noticed the sack-like patch attached to the inseam inside the panty waist band. Tasìa felt inside the seam with her thumb, and she found a small spiral of ribbon used for an analog computer. The same sort she came across earlier that day.
What was Alisha's connection?
Tasìa slipped the spiral of ribbon in her pocket before she cleaned off the urine that now reeked from Alisha's pubis mons with a pair of lemon scented baby wipes.
It amused Tasìa the modesty her cousin now displayed given the big bulging eyeballs that he could barely keep inside his sockets when he peaked at her boobs. She decided to tease him.
"In case you are wondering, she is as waxed smooth down there as a baby's cheek, and she's a total inny. I'm a bit envious to be honest."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Well," Alisha commented, "I heard you. You are not going to give Fodor a play by play analysis, right?"
Tasìa jerked in surprise. She assumed Alisha had slipped into unconsciousness.
"I'm just giving Fodor the business. Trying to ingratiate him into the family."
Alisha giggled. "No worries. Thanks for the compliment, and at least now I no longer smell like piss."
She lowered Alisha's dress back down, folded the seam to mid-thigh to restore her modesty.
"You're up," Tasìa said as she slapped her cousin on the back.
Fodor went right to work extracting the bullets from where they impacted. He frowned as he recovered a bone fragment from Alisha's left knee.
Fodor winced.
"What," Alisha demanded.
He held up the bone fragment with a pair of forceps.
"It's about one sixth of your patella. We have the titanium here to replace it, but you are no longer safe at the Flamenco Rosa."
Alisha blinked in wonderment. Tasìa placed her own index finger over Alisha's wrist. It was a hard and swift pounding that pulsed through the vein beneath.
"Relax," Tasìa softly suggested. "You'll overly exert yourself. I have equipment like you wouldn't believe even existed. I just have to have it shipped to Asunción. It'll take a few days though."
Alisha looked straight at her.
"So you are cool with looking after me until I'm back on my feet?"
"Sure. Not a problem."
Tasìa felt the beat in Alisha's wrist slow down within a few seconds. The tension in her arm released. The nimble little thief was careful not to disturb the elbow wound as she lay the arm back down.
As the American spook watched her, Tasìa thought of what Alisha said as she was still in shock.
Your aunt, she is the guardian of the SkyTether. Why did she let them get so close?
"I can see the question on your pensive little mug," Alisha teased. "Why did I sabotage the Resonance Cage?
"The bounty hunters wanted me to give them access to it as a condition for extracting me. But I feigned the routing numbers. The only way their authentication would go through and not raise alarms is if I rendered the cage inoperable."
Tasìa squinched her face up as she attempted to wrap her brain around the logic.
"Is there something I am missing here? Why did you want to meet them. Why did they need to get in the cage?"
Alisha shook her head.
"I got word about your friend, the Tier-One Neural Net Specialist. She was previously a resident of Ward Ocho. Elise sprung her for some specialist work. It was an erratic move on her part.
"That Argentinian shouldn't be here in Asunción. That is long standing policy. Manifest of her classification are always saboteurs. She is here to turn the city over to the Spore."
Tasìa gazed at her with a jaundiced eye.
"It's wheels within wheels with you, sister. This mission wasn't one authorized by Tatiana nor Demona, right?"
"No, neither."
"Okay. Your true allegiance wanted you to get close enough to Felicité that you could neutralize her?"
"Yup."
Tasìa sighed; before she could continue with her questions, she was lit up by the lights of an approaching vehicle. It was Annebél's Jeep.
She turned back to Alisha.
"Would you like to tell me who you are really working for?"
Alisha gave a wane smile as she shook her head.
"I'm afraid I can't."
Tasìa stood up as she asked the next question that she deduced from earlier events in the evening.
"Is it the Beast?"
Fodor's head jumped up and Alisha suddenly looked at her crossly.
"The fuck how did you figure that one out?"
Tasìa grinned as she shook her head.
"Relax. Get some rest. We'll talk shop tomorrow."
Tasìa turned to the Jeep as the lights dimmed. Annebél smiled back at her. She raised a thumb up.
Tasìa's heart fluttered sweetly. Beauregard passed yet another test.
Her best friend came back alive.