Sunday, June 21, 2009

Blanks

The muzzle flashed, and there was a hard, high-pitched ‘crack’ accompanied by a thrumming buzz from the oddly-shaped handgun. Many in the crowd screamed, and they pressed back and away from the lieutenant.

The shot took Kailey in the shoulder, hitting with a hissing, fizzing shower of blue-white sparks, and spinning the girl halfway around.

She let the man go as she staggered a half-step back. Murmurs ran through the crowd, along with several disbelieving gasps.

“Well, that didn’t exactly go as planned,” the man with the gun said, almost to himself. Then he glanced at the cowering security man on the floor. “Now that I’ve got her attention, that’s your cue to get out of the way.”

Kailey’s red eyes stayed fixed on the gunman as she grabbed her left arm with her right hand, and gave a sharp tug, pulling her shoulder back into place.

The lieutenant took a step to the side, keeping the girl’s attention focused on him as the security man scrambled towards his compatriots at the edge of the crowd. The lieutenant’s eyes flicked once to the side, making sure the other man was clear.

Kailey took that opening, spinning, the bag dropping from her shoulder. She swung it hard, bringing it up and around, into the lieutenant’s arms.

His sidearm skittered away across the floor, as he staggered sideways, off balance from the blow.

Kailey let the bag go, turning again, her arms up, using the power of the spin to bring one elbow and then a stiff-fingered chop down on the man’s arms and shoulder.

He staggered again, but turned the hits aside, rolling with them, and brought his fist up, hard, slamming it into the girl’s stomach.

It was like hitting a brick wall.

It wasn’t like the girl’s abs were rock hard — although they were lean and solid and muscled from her years as a dancer and the subsequent years’ conditioning.

The gel-suit reacted to the impact as it had for the bullet, microbeads of glass aligning themselves as impulses from the embedded nanos reacted to the strike, momentarily turning the supple skin of the gel-suit into armor stronger than kevlar, then radiating the force of the blow away like ripples in a pond, carrying most of the energy away across the entire surface of the suit.

The girl gasped. An impact was still and impact, and the suit was somewhat less effective against blunt hits than pinpoint impacts from bullets or shrapnel.

It still hurt like hell.

The fraction of a second as she reeled from the hit was enough to let him move closer, inside her guard, wrapping his arms around her upper and lower back.

Then he pressed his lips to hers.

Her whole body jerked, the tension running out of her muscles, her arms dropping from where they’d been poised to strike, as though the puppet’s strings had been cut.

Her body gave another shudder, and her feet planted themselves again. With a twist and heave, she somehow managed to send the lieutenant sprawling across the floor, while she wiped at her mouth with the back of her sleeve, spitting.

The optic screens had gone clear, and Kailey regarded the man with a mix of disgust and gratitude.

Danz already had his cellphone to his ear.

“Yeah, it worked,” he said, and snapped the phone shut, looking up at the panting girl. “Well, aren’t you going to help me up?”

“You shot me,” she gasped.

“Well, I had to get your attention somehow, figured that would be the best way.”

“And… ugh, worse than that, you kissed me!” She spat again.

“And that stopped you colder than the bullet did. What does that say about me?” he said with a grin.

“That you’re a pig! Ugh!”

She turned on her heel to stalk away, but two men in police blues were cutting through the crowd, hands on the butts of their pistols.

“What’s going on here?” the older looking of the two asked.

“That girl attacked me!” the security man spat, from where he was sitting against one of the makeup counters.

“Oh, Christ,” the officer said. “You again?” Then he looked over at Kailey. “Miss, is this true?”

“Well, he grabbed me first and—”

Danz made to make a ‘shushing’ motion, but the security man beat him to it.

“She attacked me, threw me on the ground, eyes as red as blood!”

The officer stooped, glancing at Kailey’s eyes.

“They look brown to me,” he said, giving the man a sidelong glance. “Miss, I have to ask. Are you currently using drugs?”

“You don’t have enough pages in that little notebook to list all the drugs I’ve got prescriptions for,” Kailey said, holding her arm, and trying to make the move look casual.

“I mean … recreational use,” the officer said, clearing his throat.

Kailey’s eyes widened. “Why, no officer. Those kinds of drugs are bad. They could impair your judgement. Or perception. Make you do or say or see strange things.”

“Like… little girls with glowing red eyes,” Danz said, looking over his shoulder from where he was talking things over with the other officer.

The older officer narrowed his eyes. “What do you weigh? 105? 110?”

Kailey shifted her feet. Guenevere, deduct metallic enhancements from current body mass. Recalculate.

** 50.80235 kg **

She leaned forward and whispered her weight into the cop’s ear.

He glanced over at the security man, who leaned exaggeratedly on his ‘good’ arm.

“You let a girl half your weight put you on the ground?”

“She used some jujitsu crap!”

“Aikido,” Kailey said, then snapped her mouth shut.

The officer made a few more notes in his little notebook.

“And she didn’t even flinch when that guy shot her. Point blank, right in the arm!”

“Blank is right,” the lieutenant said. “Do you see any blood? Casings? Large, gaping exit wounds from the girl’s back? It was loaded with blanks, you nimrod,” he said, glaring at the security man.

“Miss, are you going to press charges against this gentleman?”

Kailey blinked.

“Um, charges? Me? I thought he—”

“If he grabbed you first — which I’m sure the store’s video surveillance will show — then you were merely defending yourself. Would you like to press charges?”

Kailey shook her head. “No, I don’t want any trouble. I was just trying to find the juniors section and he—”

The officer nodded. “And would you like to press charges against this gentleman?” He pointed his pen at the lieutenant.

Kailey bit back a snicker. “No, I uh… work… with that gentleman. No charges for him. Today.”

He snapped the notebook closed. “I think we’re through here,” he said, motioning his partner.

“Hey, what about me?” the security man yelled, rising to his feet, pushing himself up with his ‘bad’ arm.

“You want me to write a report that a teenage girl, weighing half what you weigh, mopped the floor with you—”

“Don’t forget the glowing red eyes!” the partner supplied. “And bullets not even phasing her!”

“But that’s—” the man began, then stopped.

“I get one more complaint about you ‘apprehending’ a ‘suspect,’ and I’ll be dragging you in. Do you understand me?”

The security man paled, fists shaking.

“And you, miss?” he said, turning to Kailey. He lowered his voice. “If he ever does that to you again, when you take him down, give him a kick for me.”

Kailey picked up the duffel bag. “No, I don’t think I’ll be shopping here. Ever.”

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Shopping Trip

Kailey didn’t realize that she was being followed until she’d rounded the third makeup counter at the upscale department store. She went to another counter, caught sight of him in one of the mirrors.

He wore tan slacks, and a dark blue sport coat, with the store’s logo over the breast pocket. As Kailey made her way to the escalator, he increased his pace behind her.

“Miss,” he said, voice brusque.

She turned, and he kept walking until he’d interposed himself between her and the escalator.

“Miss, I’m going to have to take a look in that bag,” he said, nodding to the duffel she wore over her shoulder.

Kailey took a half step back as he uncrossed his arms.

“It hasn’t been opened since before I got here,” she said.

He frowned. “Miss, the bag. Could you open it, please?”

She could open it. And show him the drab grey Joint Projects flight suit. The carbon-filament gel-suit gloves, and matching ovaloid collar rig that, paired with the helmet aboard the XG, made the gel-suit spaceworthy. None of which civilians were supposed to see.

She took another half-step back, placing her foot to pivot and turn. “I’ll just leave,” she said, and turned to go.

The man grabbed for the bag, but she turned too quickly, and his hand closed around Kailey’s upper arm.

She was intensely aware of her heartbeat, it thudded too loudly in her ears.

Thump!

Her whole body shivered, ice lancing through her nerves, white-hot static racing nanoseconds behind it. Her optic screens flared red. She suddenly had the eerie sensation of being thrust away from herself, as Sensei overrode her motion control centers, impulses firing entirely through the synthetic nervous system.

Thump!

Her free hand crossed, closing over the man’s hand upon her arm. She let the momentum of his grab spin her around, and she kept going, her turn fluid, dance-like as she sidestepped around him, holding his fingers fast against her arm, bending them back as she flowed around him. His hold dissolved in a gasp of shock and pain.

Thump!

Kailey planted a foot behind his, driving her knee into the back of his, sending him awkwardly to the floor. She followed him down, her knee moving to his lower back. She kept her hand on his fingers, keeping his arm straight out behind him as he fell, the other hand moving to his shoulderblade, keeping that shoulder to the floor.

Thump!

Behind the surging rush of her heartbeat and the hissing static in her ears, she heard shouts, several cries of alarm. She couldn’t look around. Sensei kept her eyes locked on the man on the floor before her.

He tried to rise, and Sensei twitched Kailey’s hands, the man gasping as his body jerked with the pain of her hold.

“Stay still,” Kailey hissed, fighting her way through to her speech center.

Motion in her peripheral vision prompted a quick glance around and behind her. More men in dark coats were coming, two down the escalator, another from each side around the corners.

“The trouble you’re in just got a lot deeper, kid,” the man snarled beneath her. Again, he tried to rise, to push her off him, and again, Kailey’s hands moved, this time a bit further as they bent the man’s hand in ways it wasn’t quite meant to go.

“Tell them to back off,” Kailey said. “I can’t let you go while I’m being threatened. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Hell of a way to show it,” the security man gasped. “Just let go, kid.”

She wanted to. She wanted to close her eyes, take some deep breaths. Relax.

But Sensei kept her eyes open, watching the men advancing from the corners of her vision.

Static surged in her ears.

“-ley, we’re registering a Panic mode activation. What is going on?”

Wizard, help me! I don’t want to hurt him, but there are more coming. He won’t stop struggling, and—

“Kailey, you’ve got to calm down. Tin Man is on his way.”

Great but that won’t help this guy. Or the four others that are closing in. It’s going to turn into another Red Thursday if I don’t—

“Stop thinking, Kailey. You’re only feeding the adrenaline spike. I’ve closed your link to the motion control mainframes, but Sensei has already buffered up quite a bit of material.”

Wizard, this is going to be bad, I know it! I don’t want to hurt—

The communication link closed with a squeal of static in her head, and Kailey felt her right leg lift and snap sharply behind her.

The man beneath her grunted, as she shifted all her weight to the knee in his back, and her right heel connected solidly with the knee of the security man who thought he was sneaking up behind her. She felt him stagger back with a choked off curse.

There was a commotion towards the front of the store, someone shouting. Kailey’s eyes darted that direction and she saw a tallish man with short blonde hair pushing his way through the crowd.

The man beneath her thought to try to take advantage of the distraction, and he cried out anew as Kailey flexed his wrist back even further.

“Bitch!” he spat.

“Nobody but me calls her that,” came a voice from the crowd, and Kailey again looked up to see the tall man drawing bead on her with a sleek, oddly rounded handgun of some sort.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt too much, Hot Cakes,” he said with a wink, and then pulled the trigger.