Lover

by Valerie J. Long

  The brush-haired guy in the bomber jacket who had just entered had leveled his pistol and aimed at me. His index finger was already bending, and then the shot rang.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  I pushed myself away from the counter, fell down with my stool, the hot bullet grazed my shoulder—the nano armor preventing worse—I rolled off and dashed sideways-forward, barely out of the second projectile’s path.

  Powerfully, I jumped up, hit his chest with both feet. The third shot went into the ceiling, the killer went down. Surprised, but not finished yet, his hand with the gun was already jerking up again.

  But now I was standing above him. One kick let the pistol fly away, and then I bent down, grabbed his jacket collar with my right and pulled him up. I ignored his left hand searching for a knife. Instead my left closed around his balls and squeezed.

  With one glance at the blade that scattered to the ground, I casually commented over his screams, “That you guys never know when you’ve lost.” But his frightened look told me that I could relax my grip. Breathing heavily, my victim closed his eyes.

  Meanwhile, Gomez had overcome his surprise and drew his own weapon. He found no target, though.

  “Make yourself useful and collect his stuff,” I instructed him.

  He did as told. The killer’s pistol and knife ended on the counter, right in front of the motionless barkeeper.

  “One more beer!” I snapped at him to wake him from his shock freeze. The killer’s first shot had smashed my glass. If my Analogy hadn’t spotted him, the bullet would have hit my back.

  No, my bulletproof armor, I corrected myself. An ordinary caliber forty-five bullet couldn’t penetrate my massively reinforced nano material. That would still have required an explanation, but would have surely been better than a shot through the heart.

  “Coming,” the man confirmed and fetched a new glass. “Damn, you were fast. How can you dodge a bullet?”

  “Not at all. I’d seen him and dodged before the shot, otherwise you’d be mopping me up from the floor.” I examined the killer’s face and read a question from his eyes. “What shall I do with you now?”

  “Serve him his own medicine,” Gomez demanded. “He wanted to kill you.”

  “That’s his job. Nothing personal, or is it?”

  My victim slowly shook his head. “No,” he uttered.

  “Okay.”

  I let his balls and collar go. For a brief moment he looked relieved, then my blow hit his temple, and he rolled his eyes and dropped.

  “Good night.”

  Gomez stepped to my side. “Now tell me what I can do for you. To me, it seems, your odds aren’t all too bad.”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  “Your reflexes are incredible,” Gomez said. His car barely missed the lantern post at the exit. Hastily, he corrected his course.

  “Yours currently aren’t. Are you able to drive?”

  “So-so. We don’t have to go far.”

  “Where?”

  “Motel. I need a nap.”

  “If any, take one where you haven’t been yet.”

  “Yes, sure. I’m no beginner anymore. Trust me, I’ve checked Reno. You’ll find many people here who don’t like the Cartel. Mmm—what do you think, how did the killer find you?”

  “I assume Jesse told them who I’m searching where.”

  “And then they followed you.”

  “Unlikely.” I had traveled the largest part of the journey as blind passenger on different trucks. That was uncomfortable but inconspicuous. Shorter legs, up to about fifty kilometers, could be covered running. That reminded me of a different topic. “Do you know a supermarket? I’m a little bit hungry.”

  “Okay.”

  “A little bit hungry,” Gomez echoed with regard to my bag.

  “Okay, I’ve understated. It all looked so tasty.” Moreover, my nanos needed substantial supplies again. “Do you know where to leave your car? The Cartel knows your license number.”

  “I have a spare. Once we’re off the road, I’ll change them. We’re almost there. Oh, do you want your own room?”

  “I don’t care, why?”

  “Because I’d better take one for me alone, and you sneak in then. That way the landlords won’t know about you. I don’t ask for anything indecent.”

  “Good idea, and don’t worry about decency.”

  “There you are,” Gomez welcomed me while placing my supplies into a corner of the motel room. “What did you want to say about decency?”

  I already let my nano suit glide down my shoulders and hips, bent down—naked—over the bag next to him and retrieved an apple. “That’s my first chance in ages to sleep in a real bed. You’ll have to live with me not wearing a night gown.”

  His gaze already wandered across my body.

  “Temptation, your name is Velvet. Oh damn, now I need a cold shower. And I only wanted to have a nap.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. Just set your boner free, you don’t have to pretend. Go easy.”

  “Easy? With the darn hottest bride ever naked in my room? I tell you, that’s bloody hard.”

  “Well, if you’re so bloody hard, show me.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  I wasn’t overly lusting for Gomez, or for sex at all. But that I’d recline next to a naked guy with a great hard-on and nothing would happen—this world wouldn’t see that day.

  He was quite worn out from a long day and too much beer though. I couldn’t get more than a quickie out of him.

  I left it to my Analogy to guard my sleep, as it had been a hard day for me, too.

  When I woke up, Gomez was lying next to me and watching me with a sad smile.

  “What is it?”

  “You are. A dream I don’t want to wake up from. There I am, the most beautiful woman of my life at my side, and I’m too boozed to grab the opportunity.”

  I grinned and looked down his body. An impressive morning wood rose against me. “What, you’re too boozed now to grab the opportunity?” My hand felt for his balls, stroked his shaft, wrapped around it and held it tight like a club. “Large and firm. Just the right thing for a tight, wet hole demanding for attention.”

  A naked man sufficed for Jo to lose her self control? No, thanks to my Analogy, I had better self control over myself than any other human. If I wanted, I could shut my sexual demands down entirely. Was it a professional reflex then? No, it wasn’t either. Jo, the whore, was a role of the past, a closed chapter.

  Perhaps it was hedonism, the longing for a compensation for the last weeks’ violence and tension. After such a lot of excitement, my clit had deserved it, especially as his tool looked so tasty.

  I turned on my back and placed my feet far apart. “Come. Do me.”

  “What? No foreplay?”

  “You’re hard, I’m wet. Fuck me.”

  He didn’t have to be told twice. I simply let him shag and enjoyed. In my eyes, Gomez simply wasn’t the type for romantic tenderness, but rough masculinity, and I wanted to have him that way. Oh boy, he had a big cock! I didn’t want it differently—I didn’t need his scratchy beard near my clit. Instead I took him once more in doggie position, from behind into my hole, nicely all the way in and out again.

  Twice in a row in one morning was enough. His stamina was almost exhausted. So I rose and took a shower. When I returned, his erection had faded, but his penis still looked good.

  “We should eventually do that again.”

  “I’m your man, Velvet. Anytime.”

  Darn, Jo, focus on the job, I had to call myself to order. Nevertheless, I mused how it might be if he didn’t put on his trousers now.

  “I want to go into the ZONE.”

  “I could have guessed.”

  “You don’t need to come along. I need a driver for my retreat, like last time.”

  “And perhaps some fireworks?”

  “Not now. I’ll only scout. The party will happen later, with more invited guests.”

  “O
h. No solo mission this time?”

  “I’ll tell you when it’s time.”

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  “You didn’t return last time,” I noted.

  “You know, I’ve asked myself whether it’d been a good idea to ask you in the first place. It simply doesn’t fit you.” Gomez kept his gaze on the road. I caught myself letting my gaze wander to his crotch again and again.

  “No.”

  No, that didn’t fit me, and no, this wasn’t the right moment to think of sex. I didn’t feel guilty, though—so many years I had utilized my body for the pleasure of others, why shouldn’t I pursue my own pleasure now?

  Because it distracted.

  “I’ve told my client, listen, man, you don’t want that. The Velvet as a killer, that’s not controllable. Thereafter, the topic was quickly discarded.” He batted his wheel. “Damn. What kind of world is that, where old Gomez should find a killer? I steal goods, not lives.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s a fucking, bloody hell of a world. When did you hear a child’s laughter last?”

  I had to think about that. Children? Brothels or the gambling table were no place for children. On my raids, I took care not to meet anyone. My leisure time was spent in hiding. I met other people late at night in bars of dubious reputation or in a dark alley.

  “Twenty-five years ago, perhaps.”

  “See?”

  Children’s laughter. Damn it, when had little Jo ever had reason to laugh?

  “Where do you want to enter? Houston?”

  Good question, Gomez. “If you were interested in Jelly stuff, where’d you go?”

  “Mmm—to the Smithsonian museum in Washington. But that’s not what you mean, do you?”

  “Authentic goods.”

  “Yes, sure. I wouldn’t want to go there, but most of that stuff should be near the front line. I don’t think that there’s anything left worth salvaging near the lander, moreover, it’s surely much too hot there.”

  “Conclusive.”

  “Along the foremost frontline, there was a systematical cleanup shortly after the Invasion—before the mob claimed the ZONE. So you’d have to get in somewhat deeper. Probably the same way the Windwraiths went in back then.”

  “Conclusive, too,” I praised. “So I’ll have to cross the river coming from Houston, get to the far side of Baytown, and then I’ll see what I can find.”

  “You’ll need a vehicle. You can’t do the entire area on foot.”

  “Did I mention that I run marathons? Don’t worry, I’ll get along.”

  “Okay. In how many weeks shall I pick you up?”

  “Give me two days. Then I should have found something.”

  I couldn’t hold out much longer in the ZONE if I wanted to maintain my camouflage. Invisibility demanded power, running demanded power, and what should I eat or drink there, where large parts of the landscape still were radioactively contaminated?

  “Two days, okay. Where shall I pick you up?”

  “Downtown Houston, there it’s most safe, and there are the best places to hide.”

  “Not somewhere near the ZONE’s borders?”

  “I don’t know where I’ll get out. Perhaps I’ll have to dive, and end up in Galveston.”

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  My second visit to the ZONE began as smoothly as the first. Of course, the gangs had changed their security measures, of course, they were watching more closely. But what could they do?

  Their best idea was the moat across the main road. It showed that they didn’t rule out the possibility of invisible intruders—that is, armor suits. They only hadn’t thought the problem through, as the moat could easily be crossed in one leap, or you could simply climb across the next wall to the side.

  I took it as a warning anyway, to watch out for traps or other tricks even more attentively. Perhaps the first obstacle had been created in such a simple way to lull intruders into a false sense of security, while the truly nasty measures were installed far less obviously?

  Block by block, I worked my way through the town. I had given myself a time limit, but that was no reason to become careless. The first day was still young, the sunrise distant.

  What struck me odd with this car, parked at the curb? I froze in mid-movement. The car itself was dirty and partially dented, but on first sight, no less roadworthy than thousands of similar vehicles in and around Houston.

  The walls of the storage hall to the right were perforated in several places, and the roof had caved in—a war ruin.

  On the other side, a long faded sign promised fast tire and pipe repairs. A few old tires, worn down to the steel belt, were left. The garage was burned down.

  Why should someone want to park a car here, of all places? There was truly no lack of space. This made no sense.

  I could have chosen a different way, but I wanted to learn how the trap was constructed. I had to know how good they were.

  What did the trap need a car for? Its mobility wasn’t asked for. But it was a pragmatic energy source with voltage converter, control computer and—distance sensor!

  What an ingeniously simple trick.

  I saw no laser, heard no ultrasonic—this device worked like a radar, based on electromagnetic waves. For surveillance of buildings this technology was disapproved for the electric smog it created, but for road traffic it was still common.

  Now that I knew what to watch for, I could prepare for it.

  Ghost. Can I receive radio or radar signals?

  —Negative. No respective receptors available.—

  Can I develop such receptors from nano material?

  —No information available.—

  Mm. Okay, that only meant there was no prepared design for it. But I commanded nanos for the remote programming of other nano components—and even a grav wave detector!—and from the first turn I knew what senders and receivers for electromagnetic waves had to look like.

  The sender wasn’t important, as I didn’t want to address the problem of energy supply here and now. In my imagination I assembled a receiver from nano components—a rather trivial task.

  Can that work?

  The question was superfluous. If I knew what the component should look like, I could build it outside of my body with the aid of my nano manipulators. So my essence’s nano agents could as well build it inside my body. I only had to build them in a way that induction detectors wouldn’t react to them and that they wouldn’t show in body scanners.

  —Completed.—

  Indeed. Now I could hear the permanent signal around the parked car. Now I also understood why it was parked here—because this way, no local would accidentally get into its range. Here they had no business. Whoever wanted to use this road probably had to announce oneself in advance.

  I couldn’t simply sneak through the signal range, as I wasn’t invisible to the radar signal. Perhaps it wouldn’t react if I was slow enough, but perhaps wasn’t enough for me. So I had to avoid this obstacle. The time invested had still paid off, as I’d now be able to spot such traps in time.

  Chapter Seventy

  Gomez had been right in some regard—on no account could I scout the entire ZONE on foot within a few days. With an estimated radius of eighty miles, that was an impossible task. Only if I knew where to look did I have a chance.

  Gomez had already narrowed down the solution quite well—Baytown and vicinity were out of the question. There was no undiscovered material, but that wasn’t the reason. The area close to Houston was ZONE light, little radioactivity, many habitable buildings, many gangs, and thus many witnesses.

  In the north, the frontline had been narrow, so most material there had been collected after the Invasion. The Jellies hadn’t moved east, as they had rightfully expected a trap like the European one there. Oh yes, I had asked around before I had started this mission.

  To me, it was clear that I had to search for the Cartel west of the drop zone, somewhere in that part of the ZONE where the Wind
wraiths had cleaned up among the Jellies that the Tsar had left behind. The place had to be small enough to provide it with tight security, large enough to harbor such an installation, and preferably spared the radioactive contamination and severe battle damages.

  The eastern shore of Trinity Bay recommended itself—for the Jellies this area, as a dead end, had been strategically inconvenient. Anahuac at the northern end of the Bay, shielded by the likewise-named lake, seemed quite appropriate to me. It was twenty-five miles beeline away from the eastern end of Baytown, or thirty-five miles by road, not much less for me if I didn’t want to cross a swamp area or swim the old river—and I didn’t want that, not for the wet feet, but of course for the negative effect on my camouflage.

  In the end, I was left with the Interstate 10 bridge between Cove and Wallisville, at the same time a good place for a checkpoint.

  No lonely car was parked here—and that would have surprised me, as I now entered another group of players’ territory, who surely didn’t communicate with the Baytown gangs frequently. After all, this group should operate secretly. So they didn’t know the newest tricks.

  Instead, they had come up with their own tricks—it began with a laser light barrier across the lanes. Tremor sensors followed, and later I spotted a well-concealed camera. The Cartel didn’t want to block traffic on the Interstate, but only know about movements early on.

  On the Farm to Market 563 South, which arched around Lake Anahuac’s eastern shore, the measures became more prominent—to shy off chance traffic, the track had been skillfully broken up. Some distance on I saw the wreck of a tank that surely hadn’t lost its way during the Invasion, as that would have been illogical.

  Still nothing indicated that I’d be approaching a heavily secured center of organized crime. I expected anti-personnel landmines, tripwires, cameras, all kinds of motion detectors, perhaps even dogs near the village limits—accordingly I took my time.