B-CRUSH NIGHTCLUB

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Malin had forgotten how noisy nightclubs were and how annoying it was to make her way through the crowd that dived into the shadows, with no other light than a zigzag of multicolored sparks.

What would have been nice to forget was the stifling heat generated by a large number of people crowding together in a closed place; wide but closed.

Still, going through B-Crush brought back memories of good times, and not even the urgency of her mission or the clumsy attempts at seduction by some could erase that hint of nostalgia from her face.

It seemed like a lifetime had passed since the last time she had entered a nightclub, carrying only the innocence of a teenager and a desire to have a good time, without having to worry about her obligations or her performance of duty.

Someday you’ll get back to this, dear, she told herself. Now she had to think about what Juzo had asked her to do.

Sneaking in the back door had been an easy task; when you can fly, entering through open courtyards didn’t require much strategy. Now came the tricky part, finding the suspect.

She checked the computer on her left Auriga bracelet. Perhaps the Eddanian woman she was looking for or one of the others who had followed them from Pannotia wore bracelets just like hers. But there was no little blue light on the screen announcing the presence of another person in the room wearing one of those.

Well, she had no choice but to make use of her own eyes.

She tugged at the neckline of her black T-shirt to ventilate her breasts, brushed her hair off her forehead, and walked among those who danced, careful not to receive an accidental slap. Many faces, none had anything to say other than, ‘I’m having a great time!’ or ‘I’m so high!’

Frontal perspective had several things against her, though; she lost an important angle of vision when surrounded by people. It would take her a long time to cover the place, and it was easy for the enemy to slip through the crowd. She had to find a way to broaden her visual spectrum.

The ceiling, after the floodlight harnesses, was a huge dome in the shadows, full of crisscrossing beams that ran down the walls like spider legs. She looked for the darkest corner in the club, where the light bombs came with little intensity, and she found the perfect hiding spot. In that sector, two of the beams that curved towards the ceiling stood up, and between them, there was a narrow space where a thin person could fit, someone like her.

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Spreading the thruster’s wings just a few degrees, covering the silver aura they emitted with her back, she rose about thirty feet from the ground and got a wide view of the disco; she could even see a platform that towered over the main hall. Holy damn! Was that place crowded! Where did all these people come from? The dance floor was so packed with people she wondered how she’d gotten through it. There were people on the platforms, on the catwalks, on the stairs…

“The perfect place to hide.”

What would his father think of these people who wanted nothing but to have fun? She thought that her old man, bitter by nature, would surely have blown up every nightclub on the planet if he could, and if the law granted him the right, he would have done it with those people inside. The old man despised carefree youngsters, and she despised him. Why bring him to her memory and at that moment?

Keep him away from you, dear, she repeated to herself.

She opened her eyes wide and running them through every corner of the huge place, she took mental snapshots from which she extracted hundreds of faces; faces she studied with the speed of blinking. That was an art she had learned in the military academy, and her father had made her train it. Yet another reason to thank that stubborn old man?

Malin hovered for a few minutes, but as far as she could see, there was no one in B-Crush that she knew or was familiar with; no one that could be linked to the enemy. Still, darkness was an inescapable factor; the margin of doubt in her analysis was quite large. She descended. As she stepped on the ground, she came face to face with a stranger who had seen her fly, a skinny guy with long sideburns who was staring at her with a joint hanging from his mouth.

“Forget it,” she said, “smoking that won’t be enough to get you that high.”

Determined to carry on with the mission outside B-Crush, Malin headed for the exit. She put her wrist close to her lips and spoke through the communicator, “Juzo, I’m leaving the club. I found no one.” She waited for an answer that didn’t come. “Juzo, do you read me?” She took the bracelet to her ear in case the noise had covered her partner’s voice. Nothing. “Juzo! Are you there?”

She started to fret. Her Auriga was low on battery, but the radio should be working fine; her partner should copy her. Something had happened. She got worried. Pushing people out of her way, she quickened her pace.

And someone grabbed her arm.

“It’s too late for your friend,” a woman’s voice said in her ear.

She remembered what Adam had told them, about how he had earned the scratch on his arm; but before she could turn to discover the identity of whoever was holding her—if indeed it was the woman Adam had described to them—an electric kiss tickled the back of her neck, and she knew she had seconds left before she passed out.

She turned to face her attacker. She saw her. The woman was just as Adam had described her: tall and imposing, bald, without eyebrows, violet eyes, with a malevolent look that crossed all darkness and long crystal earrings.

Malin tried to stay lucid to see her better, to do something, anything. But it was impossible. Darkness won and snuffed out her senses.