Dr. Anya Von Fortclif walked into her local bar. It was really more of a nightclub. Loud techno music blasted over the speakers with people on the dance floor and lots of others at booths drinking and partying their nights away. She walks up to the bar where her favorite bartending droid stands, making dozens of drinks for the people standing or sitting at the counter. The droid notices her, and she raises two fingers in greeting. The droid nods and slides over a small glass with an ice ball in it and filled with whisky.
“Thanks,” she mumbles as the droid ignores her and goes back to work. Picking up the glass to take a sip, some random ass person bumped into her and made her spill. She cursed and whirled on the person who bumped into her and froze when she saw a gorgeous woman. The woman had short blond hair with blue highlights and blue and yellow eyes that drew her in without her knowing.
“Oh, my gods! I’m so sorry,” The woman said apologetically, and before Anya could say anything, the woman turned to the bartender and said, “E-excuse me! Can I get two of what she’s having?!”
The droid rolled its photoreceptors and put two more glasses of whisky with a ball of ice. Anya picked up her glass, “Thank you. I was hoping to spill my glass of whisky tonight. I just didn’t expect it to be my first glass,” she said jokingly.
The woman next to her chuckled sweetly, “Yeah, sorry about that again. My name’s Ford Sinn. Might I ask your name?”
Anya stuck out her free hand and shook Ford’s as she said, “I’m Dr. Anya Von Fortclif. Please call me Anya.”
“Anya. Love your name. Really captures your beauty,” Ford said flirtatiously.
Chuckling, Anya sipped from her whisky, “Ha, you’ll have to do better than that to impress me with just your words.”
Ford blushed a little and looked away, “Well, sorry if I’m not good at flirting.”
Anya placed a comforting hand on Ford’s shoulder and said, “No need to worry about that. It’s sweet that you’re trying.”
Ford sipped from her whisky and turned back to Anya, “Okay, how would you flirt with me then?”
Anya looked her up and down, finally noting the sleek red backless dress Ford wore that covered her chest and sides before meeting her eyes. Running a finger around the lip of her glass, Anya said, “You know the art of picking people up at a bar or club is a numbers game.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Too many people at the bar, and it’s hard to talk, to few people at the bar, not enough options. You need the bar to be filled with just enough people. Which is why it’s a numbers game, and since it is, can I have yours?”
Ford blinked a few times as she processed Anya’s words, and once she understood, she blushed profusely. “Damn, okay. That’s a good one,” Ford mumbled into her glass as she took a sip to calm herself.
Anya chuckled and downed the rest of her whisky, yelling, “Bartender! Two more!”
***
Two Hours Later
***
“You what?!” Anya exclaimed in shock as she downed her eighth glass of whisky.
Ford laughed as she finished her whisky, “It’s true! I’ve met Carman Lee! She was on the same transport cruiser with me, and we talked for hours! I forget what about, but it happened, and she’s so nice.”
“I love Carman Lee! She was my favorite character in Cyber Ninja Three: The Wreckening. She was so good!” Anya gushed.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Ford laughed again and looked at her empty glass before setting it down and leaning into Anya to whisper in her ear, “You know, It’s probably time to call it a night. Why don’t we call it a night at your place?”
Anya blushed and looked down at her empty glass of whisky before saying, “Umm, how about your place?”
Ford shook her head, “No, I can’t. I don’t have my own place here in the city, and I’m here on business. If my boss heard that, I went back to the hotel room with another woman and made a mess of the room again. I would be fired, but I’d like to keep my job. So, your place for tonight.”
Anya kept her focus on her glass and shrugged, “I don’t know.”
Then, her knees buckled slightly as she felt Ford’s hand between her thighs. “You know I’m not good at flirting,” Ford whispered in her ear, “But I’m really good at other more primal things. I’ll do things to you that you won’t even be able to imagine.”
Anya bit her lip as she thought long and hard about bringing Ford back to her place, which was difficult as Ford began to rub her entrance beneath her panties. She tapped her fingers against the empty whisky glass impatiently and mentally cursed to herself, “Bartender! We want to close out our tab!”
A few minutes later, Ford and Anya were out the door and quickly making their way to Anya’s apartment while Ford placed playful kisses on her neck as they walked. Anya only lived a block away from the bar in a highrise building that overlooked the city. They walked into the building and quickly onto the elevator, where Anya selected the twentieth floor after placing a security card against a scanner on the elevator control panel.
The moment the doors closed, Ford pushed Anya against the nearest wall and kissed her passionately. Anya pulled away after a moment of enjoying the kiss and said, “W-wait. There’s a security camera. Someone’s watching!” she then glanced up at the micro camera in the elevator.
Ford ran a finger along Anya’s jaw and shook her head, “I don’t care. Let’s give them a show.” She then continued the kiss, her hands running down Anya’s back to grab her ass.
Anya couldn’t help but reciprocate the kiss as the elevator door opened, and they both stumbled into the apartment. Anya kicked off her high heels as Ford did the same while working on the zipper to Anya’s dress. Before she could succeed, Anya pulled away, grabbed Ford’s hands, and pulled her toward the bedroom. They stumbled through the bedroom door, and Anya felt a gentle push on her back, making her fall onto the bed with a soft laugh. She rolled over to look at Ford with a smile on her face as she slowly peeled away her red dress, exposing her naked body covered in scars.
Gasping, Anya drunkenly exclaimed, “What happened to you?” then she tried to sit up, and a wave of lightheadedness washed over her, and she fell back to the bed.
“Oh, don’t move. You might hurt yourself,” Ford said as she walked past the bed to the closet, “Thank you for bringing me in. I really couldn’t have done this without you.”
“What … what are you … saying?” Anya asked as her sight began to blur and her words became slurred.
“Oh, just that I couldn’t have broken into your place of work without you. I mean, stealing a highly experimental chip from a high-security military research base is really hard. You were just the easiest way in.” Ford said as she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and knelt over Anya, “Now, be a good little girl and open your eyes.”
Anya tried to close them, but it felt like her eyelids had hundred-pound weights on them. A blue light shone into her eyes for a minute before disappearing, and Anya tried to speak again but only got out a garbled, “Wh-what …. ha-happen—”
“What’s happening?” Ford cut her off, finishing her question, “You see, I gave you a lovely cocktail I made myself, then turned into lipstick. It’s a flavorless, odorless, paralytic toxin. You have to ingest it so that skin contact won’t work. But that’s not the point, I guess. Due to how your security works, I need to keep you alive while I break in. You’ll experience loss of movement first, as you already know, followed by loss of sight, which you might be experiencing now, followed by loss of hearing and taste if you don’t receive medical treatment within twelve hours.
“But that’s not the best part of the poison. It takes twelve hours to put you in near complete sensory deprivation. The only thing that it doesn’t affect is touch. Once those twelve hours are up, the next part of the toxin kicks in. You’ll start to feel the poison rush through your body, bursting blood vessels and making your organs expand. Within twenty-four hours, you’ll experience so much pain you’ll wish for death. Then your lungs will burst and make you drown in your blood.” Ford finished explaining as she tossed clothes onto the bed, mumbling, “These are party clothes, these are formal, and these are work clothes. Zero organization, I swear.”
“Wh-why?” Anya struggled to ask, hardly able to hear her question as the toxin began to affect her hearing.
“Why?” Ford asked back, hardly audible, “Because I can. Because I am the Reaper. Because I allow you to die. Ah, these will work.” Then Anya’s hearing went, leaving her in total darkness, void of sight, hearing, and taste.
***