“Sorry guys, but I’ll handle the rest,” we heard as Meera, alias Zéphyr, smiled at us through the armored glass just before leaving the cockpit by the driver’s door.
We heard a clack. The doors and portholes of the taxicab were locked. Ali and I were now trapped in the back with the two flatlined and most wanted criminals on the ship.
“That doesn’t bode well…” I said.
“What a fucking piece of shit! Lee? Do you have a plan? I think the windows are bulletproof. I don’t feel like testing. Especially if it’s bouncing around with us inside, we’ll be turned into ground beef!”
“Did you forget who I am, my dear?”
I crawled under the seat, between a pair of Méduse shoes and half nibbled fried rat wings. It was time to demonstrate all my infiltration skills learned from Ninja Gaiden. Unfortunately, both the crab and the duck slowed me down and my belly remained for a few seconds stuck under the driver’s seat with my head on the brake pedal. How outrageous!
From the porthole, I saw Ali watching what was happening near the ship in front of us. Our eyes met for a brief moment and I could read on her lips: “diet kibble.”
“Better off dead!” I shouted while my paw finally reached the bottom of the dashboard, activating the mechanical opening of both doors and windows; as well as the loudest horn in this known dimension.
My sapiens immediately jumped outside, pointing her gun to Zéphyr. Surprised by the thunderous din, her target pivoted towards us, uncovered; turning her back to the human with the magnificent chin, who yelled: “What in the whole universe—wait! You brought us hunters? You were planning to double-cross us!”
The man shouted and his ZeG-4 produced a rain of bullets. It first hit the taxicab’s windshield, passing through the conductor compartment where I was. The rounds bent the armored glass, but it held. This wasn’t the case for the hood protecting the engine and the reservoir full of coolant which ended up covering the seat and my face. Fortunately, the sticky alcohol allowed me to escape from the trap and graciously jump out of the vehicle thanks to the window I had previously opened.
I landed outside and free. But, once again, a fire ring enveloped the ZeG-4’s cannon. “Oh dear… This is how I die…” It was too late. Perched on the rearview mirror, I couldn’t dodge. I meowed before closing my eyes.
Violently tackled, I hit the ground just before bullets obliterated the hood of the taxicab. Zéphyr saved me at the last moment. Other projectiles ricocheted off the metal money drawers on the floor and got lost in the ceiling, activating the fire sprinklers. This incident triggered a silent light alarm throughout the hangar while the mobster prepared a new salvo.
“Don’t hurt my pilot, you narbo!” roared my partner.
Ali, this time taken as a target, retaliated. She fired a single shot towards the rascal with formidable precision. No one could handle a heavy gun like her. She was my human. She was the best in her field: murder. And I taught her almost everything.
The leader of the robbers tried to reload the magazine of his weapon, unaware that his heart had been punctured a few seconds before. Adrenaline was doing its job, but his pressure dropped and the bloodstream no longer reached the brain sufficiently. He was already in a coma when his shoulders touched the ground. Luckier than the average Joe, he died a few seconds later.
“You folks, alright?” My voice was trembling, still in shock from this disaster. I was wet and frozen.
Zéphyr got up with difficulty. Next to us, one of the metal drawers was opened, revealing wads of green bills and a much stranger booty: an eight-inch gold diskette with suspicious Chinese symbols. Well… I couldn’t read them but Chinese symbols on stuff are always suspect, aren’t they?
Yet there were more important matters. Because, on the other hand, my partner has stayed on the ground. Blood was dripping from her black suit and mixed with the clear firefighting fluid falling like an endless rain. I tried to talk to her again but my voice got lost in a groan.
“Why are you whining, you big baby? It’s just blood.” With her nose’s tip in a red puddle, my sapiens smiled at me. Her left hand was compressing her left hip. It wasn’t that bad after all but she had scared me. And that deserved a scratch on the wrist that made her scream: “What the fuck?”
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“And the medical expenses? Have you thought about the bill? We don’t have insurance!”
“God, Uncle Scrooge! I hate you!”
“We won’t be able to fix the Kitty with your heroic outbursts!” I grunted to mask my joy of seeing her in one piece.
“I will kill you, Muppet! I almost died! I don’t give a fuck about your rusty can which flies like a brick!”
It was true that we hadn’t had a fight for a long time.
“Guys—” intervened Zéphyr.
“What?” we said simultaneously.
“These three ruffians had planned to steal the diskette drive from me once I got back. I needed a hand, so… thank you… I guess.”
“You’re welcome, asshole!” my human dryly answered while sitting. “But you’d better run now…”
“What? Wait!” Although our transvestite driver saved me, I didn’t share the same ‘kindness’. “We’re not letting her go! Do you understand who she is?”
Zéphyr, known as the Data Maiden. This androgynous cyborg was a breakout prodigy wanted throughout the entire system for her link with the Data Brokers Guild. With an incredible bounty of C$800,000, she or he… whatever—as advanced cyborgs and other post-humans got rid of any sexual affiliation a long time ago—was the Knight of the Brokers’ chessboard. To be honest, I thought she was an urban legend.
“We had enough for today,” Ali declared. “Unless—” She winced in pain. “—unless you hope to go after her with this big fat gut of yours.”
“By the 79 moons of Jupiter! You shall pay for this, woman!” I meowed, my ears backwards and my hairs spiky. But soaking wet, my stand just made Ali and Zéphyr laugh. Disgrace!
“He’s so cute when he’s furious,” the thief joked. On her knees, the night-skinned androgynous thief was blotting Ali’s wound with a torn piece of fabric from her driver’s uniform. “But more seriously, yes—I need to go. With their bounty, you’ll be able to repair your vessel. As for the hospital fees, I will contact a good friend who will take care of you for free. She’s the ship’s chief medical officer.”
“Thank you,” I replied as she tried to help my partner get back on her feet before this one refused.
“It’s the least I can do, furry ball. I wasn’t interested in money. More important information is contained in this,” she said while picking up the floppy disk.
The golden diskette that Zéphyr shook to dry it off must have been worth a lot of cash for her to play a taxicab driver to ensure coverage. Of course, I had perceived that something was fishy. Ali may be the steroids-grown muscles but I was the gray matter.
Halfway to her Swift-0, Zéphyr stopped, looking down. “There was nothing personal, you know. We’re all just trying to make our way. The best we can.” And she ultimately left after adding: “Maybe we’ll see each other again! You seem like fun.”
Before fleeing away, the Data Maiden abandoned one of the boxes near the criminal’s corpse. Thus, she validated the theory of a robbery that had gone wrong. When the security arrived a few minutes later, we were the heroes of the day. And with a small bribe, nobody cared about Zéphyr’s missing Swift.
This whole story surely left a bitter taste in our mouth. A feeling of defeat and humiliation the swimming pool under the warm synthetic sun couldn’t appease, even a week after.
This experience painfully reminded me you can never trust cyborgs. It has something to do with the synthetic optics. Truth and lies hide in the human eyes; windows to the soul. This trick saved my life in the past. But with an enhanced being as sophisticated as the Data Maiden, it was like staring at a dangerous one-way glass.
“She undoubtedly played us like rookies, with her little face of a young innocent girl in distress,” I said to Ali right after the end of the daily Brett Maverick featuring a bank robbery. The old show was dispensed on a couple of giant screens suspended by drones.
Until then, Ali was sulking on her deckchair; with a brick of sour juice stuck between her breasts and a pair of straws between her teeth. Only inaudible grunts emanated from her mouth since the departure of the sexually unclassifiable mugger. “I wonder what information this fucking yegg could have been digging for in that casino,” my human finally mumbled as she squeaked her rainbow flip-flops.
“Admit it. That’s not really what puts you in such a state…” I answered, seated on my motorized buoy; a prize from my diet kibbles’ package.
“Duh!” the dormant volcano exploded, spitting out her plastic straws with infinite curls. “Because of this story, I’ll have nasty tan marks with these bandages! This is a nightmare, Lee! A fucking nightmare!”
I chuckled as my buoy slowly slipped towards the ledge. I closed my eyes as the pre-recorded sound of the waves crushing on some forgotten rocky shores lulled me before a roller-skating waitress came to bring us our Blizzard milkshakes.
“I swear that if we run into that ‘borg again, I’ll smack her fucking angel face,” Ali finally concluded, biting her plastic spoon.
Back to business!