Her eyes held steady on the sensorium interactive.
Who was this 'he' Elise mentioned?
Tasìa tapped the control button for the windows to let in the night air as she pulled out of the salvage lot. On the highway at night, a breeze in her hair comforted her.
As the roadway ahead became soothingly monotonous, she once more engaged her concerns.
Surely it was not Leòn. Elise and her crew had not the time to force Leòn into generating a sensorium interactive within a mere few hours of holding him captive.
So who was he?
Elise did not work for men. At least not directly in a hierarchy where she took orders. She was very much willing to take their money in contractual terms but no one micromanaged Elise.
When she ingratiated herself into Tasìa's crew, claiming to be a demolitions expert and indeed proved herself to be quite skilled at it, the bounty hunter could barely contain her bossy nature, and she treated Tasìa's male crew members with contempt.
Tasìa tapped the sensorium interactive with her index finger. This guy must be paying the bounty hunter a fortune to get that bitch's cooperation.
As she rode the overpass heading east she caught sight of two new skyscrapers being built that were not there a little over eight months before.
She looked askew at the ultra-modern structures and their sea shell like design. Something about them did not sit well with her gut intuition.
Too far away to soak up anymore detail she turned away, and Tasìa sulked a bit;
Miffed that events had not allowed her to make the grand entrance she imagined by making some noise on the Zona Lobos, and then after meeting Leòn, do a street drag race on the west side of the strip, taking money from the squinty-faced low riders on Del Tesse Street.
It appeared this excursion into Vida Escondida was going to be all business.
Poo!
Though she had spent many years now living on and off in Vida Escondida depending on the heat her heists generated, Tasìa wasn't familiar with the boutique business of whom's service she now required - Grosse Prix Cyber Security. Leòn described it as a place to do business far from scrying eyes and ears but designed to fit in with the luxury amenities end of the Vida Escondida club, sports and casino scene.
Entrance into the establishment was not possible from the street front side. It was necessary to drive the Lamborghini into a subterranean back lot with a spiral ramp leading inside.
An overwhelming plethora of security systems scrolled their IDs and systems requests down the PalmEx PA console reader as they pinged the Lamborghini Huracán.
She could barely make heads or tails of the data on the screen as it flashed by - impressive! However, she set up a recording of the entire content of batched files to sort through later on when she got the chance to examine them.
The Lamborghini Huracán glided onto a platform deck when Tasìa stopped at the end of the spiral ramp. It lowered for several feet before the platform evened itself into a chamber. She could feel the air pressure change. A current flow circulated through that was comprised of air elementals.
The feeling that caressed her skin was damn erotic and left no orifice or pore on her body unstimulated. She wanted to light up the third Blonde Cerise of the evening to keep the horny under control but the console flashed a service message stating the elementals would extinguish any flame as part of their standard security procedure.
Leòn had warned her of the procedures involved. It was merely the first part of an anti-spore fumigation. No cyber security could be truly trustworthy without such drastic actions taken when doing private business in the Quadra.
After she entered the building, she would have to strip out at a private station, and a suppository would be inserted up her bum that dissolved into UV gel packs that absorbed into her bloodstream. Leòn said not to worry. The cleansing that occurred felt very pleasant and healing.
Tasìa smirked to herself in anticipation given her favored proclivities. It sounded like something she would be willing to pay to try out if offered as a service at a Fuego - Hell Fire Club.
Finally, the air pressure resumed to normal and the elementals retreated to whence they came. Up on the car's middle console a message read: You May Smoke Now.
"Finally," Tasìa whispered, her voice unnaturally high and falsetto for it to be coming from her throat. For her diminutive height and femininity, her voice was gravelly and low in range but the evening events played havoc on her nerves.
She lit up a Blonde Cerise as tumblers bearing scrub brushes surrounded the car. A thorough exterior cleaning was merely a byproduct of what was occurring.The vehicle was being scrubbed of nanospores with millions and millions of gel pack explosions that looked no different than phosphate base suds being administered at a normal car wash.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
The Lamborghini Huracán moved beneath the brushes that swirled in its every crevice. The last segment of the long chamber blew hot air from hoses attached to drones.
In five minutes, the process was complete. On rollers in which Tasìa had no control, the vehicle stopped in front of a circular doorway. The platform to which the car was fastened to turned until the driver side door faced the portal.
Through overhead speakers a voice called out to her. "Good evening, Ms. del Alma-Gris. I'll be escorting you through the security process. My name is Kip."
She jerked her head back. She couldn't suppress her giggles.
"Is your name really Kip?"
The person over the speaker cleared his throat.
"No. Of course not. My enemies in management call me Kip. So I am Kip."
"What is your real name?"
"Salvador."
Tasìa thought about it, then she adamantly shook her head.
"I'm afraid I already have a Salvador in my life. You shall remain Kip."
Salvador, aka Kip, chuckled to Tasìa's teasing nature.
"Thanks, Ms. del Alma-Gris, are you familiar with the security procedure? I can walk you through it if you are not."
"Thank you, Kip but I think I know what to expect."
A drawer pushed out from the wall. "If you would place any effects you have on your person in here."
She nodded. Tasìa placed the sensorium interactive and her money purse down. She added the .357 Iconoclastic and its holster clipped on to the inside of her jacket, the two stilettos made for throwing and three moonclips containing .357 rounds were fastened inside a bandolier which she pulled around and up over her head.
Kip whistled at the selection.
"Surely your guests are armed more often than not, right Kip?"
"Right you are, but rarely are the weapons so well hidden. I did not spot any of that on you. Plus those knives, the metal work is outstanding"
Tasìa ignored the compliment as she felt a clarification was in order. "Did not spot? Yet, security is your forté?"
"Yes, and when we get beyond surface physical inspection you're instruments would have been revealed."
She was reminded of Lt. Colonel Sol sending over to her the full spectrum scan read-out the drones did that revealed where her weapons were hidden on her body.
"Fair enough."
"If you were to walk through this door?"
The portal dilated, revealing a short walkway to a private chamber.
"Enter the chamber, remove your clothes." Kip commanded.
Tasìa let out a teasing gasp.
"This keeps getting better and better!"
"I can assure you of your privacy. Your scans are machine read only until your clothes are returned."
"Well, poo to that, Kip! I was wondering if I was going to get the same whistle for my body that you gave for my weapons."
He laughed out loud. No mere chuckle this time.
"You're going to get me in trouble Ms. del Alma-Gris."
She entered the long booth and removed her chic outfit. Not much of it was ruffled from the evening excursion likely because she had the outfit treated for durability by a specialty shop.
A mere smudge on her gunmetal gray leather pants that she removed with the wet thumb treatment and it was good as professionally dry cleaned.
Perhaps, she should get all of her clothes treated, even her non operative wear.
The laceration on her jacket from the roo attack was the only thing out of order. For now, she put the jacket on a hook by the full mirror.
When she slipped out of her thong, a diamond razor dropped from her underwear band and fell into her pubic hair where it slowly slid down closer and closer to her vulva mound, splitting through dozens of hair follicles along the way.
Oh shit!
She gasped and then screamed.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!"
Tasia bent backwards; her hips thrust forward with her pubis mons curved upward, as she tried to settle the razor wire's trajectory away from her flesh.
Kip's voice came up on the intercom.
"Problem?"
The diamond razor-wire wobbled, balanced perfectly and set between three follicles just above where her flesh crinkled.
She held her breath to hold in her panic. Given the thick enfolding of her flesh, the kinetic potential unleashed would cause severe laceration if the diamond razor-wire fell.
"Yeah. I have a sliver of razor-wire that dropped into my pubic hair."
Kip was quiet for a moment before he spoke.
"Diamond razor-wire? That material used to make garrotes?"
His tone let out a small note of suspicion.
"I'm not an assassin, Kip."
"Of course. It would be none of my business if you were. I'm looking up information on the substance as I am obviously unfamiliar with it. It is a nano machine made of a mezzo-carbon that exploits kinetic discharge to create maximum surface wounds. You definitely do not want to get it on your skin."
"This is going to sound more sarcastic than intended, Kip, but tell me something that I don't know. Would you, please?"
"I'm getting to that part. Carefully move to that side station on your right. I set off a light to blink where you should stand."
Tasìa shifted over to the station whose stand raised four inches up from the carpeted floor. If she simply walked it with a upward thrust of her knees it would have shaken the razor-wire loose.
With deliberate grace, Tasìa set her left toes even with the four inch high lifted edge. She pulled her body forward until she stood above the toes, and finally she came to rest in a crouch at the center of the platform.
The station was set up like a runway model's bench with several pull out tools mounted inside tethered dispensers lined at mid level in front of a multi-surfaced mirror that gave front, side, and top views of herself.
Tasìa studied the slither of razor-wire from its many perspectives. The lodging point was a mere centimeter from her vulva flesh. The path it created through her patch of hair was aesthetically unappealing in the extreme leaving a tangled, haphazard composition to what was before simplicity in its presentation and prettiness.
It was a testament of the diamond-wire sharpness and resilience as straight razors were utterly rendered useless, bent, warped, and mangled when she attempted to shave the thatch when she was much younger.
Its resistance to being shaved seemed supernatural until a specialist at a popular health spa and physical therapy clinic in Vida Escondida became interested in the unusual phenomenon. The clinician ran a full spectrum analysis on a set of hairs plucked from her inner thighs and intergluteal cleft where she normally had her hair removed.
Her hair turned out to be the same gradient of coarseness and strength as the silk armored vest used by Ghengis Khan's horsemen to stop arrows.
She learned to accept it as just another part of her unique nature. Plucking was not difficult so keeping groomed was not a problem. Even still, full waxing had no appeal to Tasìa.
Not my scene.
"Ms. del Alma-Gris are you still with us or did you cut yourself and you are now bleeding to death. Please respond, I'll have to do a physical check on you if you don't."
"I'm all right, Kip."
"Okay. Good. I'm going to turn on the vacuum appliance and an LED light in orange above it so you don't have to sort through the other appliances. I'm certain you can take it from there. You may want to inspect the rest of your body thoroughly before you do anything else, afterwards."
"I will do that, Kip."
The vacuum revved up loudly. Tasìa forced herself not to react to the noise.
Just a few steps forward, Tas and we are home free.