Taking her nightstick off her hip, she intervened, finally. She pressed a button and flicked the whiplike extension. The squiggly laser-energy cord sliced Beefy Boy down the middle.
The two sides desperately fought to get back together again. She sliced the two remaining pieces into chunk meat with the whip.
And then she whistled for the dogs.
Wild dogs roamed the city streets, happy to gobble up the remains of killed-off bad guys. They were a specialized form of carrion carnivore that didn’t go after live humans. They had grown sufficiently upgraded by the nano they digested from their victims to have smartened up on how to play it cool and not become targets themselves for the police.
The dogs made short work of Beefy Boy. They came in about as much variety as the robots. An Irish Wolf Hound. A Boxer. A few genuine wolves, the rest mongrels, all about twice as large as an unupgraded dog. But then, some of those victims weren’t entirely dead when they got to them, and put up a fight, for which the nano upgrades helped, along with the size. Not to mention they needed to get out of the way fast of commuter buses and air cars zipping along on maglev tracks at breakneck speeds. The large mouths and canines and larger throats and stomachs were important to being able to gobble up people parts quickly enough to keep from joining the road kill.
***
Greta’s next assignment was pure road chase. The swirling ramps of a Guggenheim-inspired skyscraper that spiraled into the clouds, provided the track.
Several other bikers were already hot on the trail of the bad guy. They created clutter on the sheer vertical track rimming the building like colorful icing dressing a wedding cake.
The bedlam worsened as some of the bikers lost the delicate balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces, spinning out of control. They careened into other bikers, or worse, sailed off into the atmosphere without a parachute. Not that one would work from this high up; the atmosphere was too thin. Some bikers had been smart enough to mount morphing bikes, which cocooned themselves around the driver as soon as they sensed free-fall.
She zipped past two drivers. The air pocket she created pushed them over the side. She watched the bikes deploy helicopter blades that choppered them back on track, some distance behind her. It was fair to say they were no longer her concern.
She muscled through the pack of the fastest cyclists.
Maintaining the lead grew increasingly difficult with each upward loop of the spiraling track. After she got tired of switching positions with three riders in particular, all of them doing their level best to bump her off the track, she bided her time for her next chance to slip in front of them.
Once a gap opened, she sent the entourage riding her exhaust plume careening into one another exploding with expectorated lubricant, one of the bike’s many defensive weapons. The fire and smoke bellowing from the three crashing bikers bouncing off one another further thinned the herd.
The first bikers through the ring of flame either caught fire themselves, or were smothered in the plumes of white smoke billowing from the mangled bikes as the bikes’ defensive systems filled the air with fire-retardant sprays. The lingering cloud, reducing visibility to zero, caused still more wipeouts among most of the last remaining bikers.
The aces who skirted the debris, sailing through smoke and fire both, were likely going to be even tougher competition for the first place slot. None of them had actually seen the culprit they were chasing yet, though the bikes’ onboard computers insisted he remained well ahead of the fray.
The bikes trailing Greta didn’t wait to fend off her latest tactics. They took the offensive. Greta dodged automatic rifle fire, laser pulse rifles, and RPGs, all fired from the bikes’ built-in arsenals. Since some of the rockets had lock-on technology, the only way to shake them off was to offer up sacrificial victims. Luckily, there were still a few ahead of her who fit the profile.
The stunt worked. But the additional explosions did nothing to shake the remaining bikers. They were either as skilled as she, or their bikes were better outfitted.
The more she studied them, the more she realized these latest bikers fit a different niche. Mercs mostly. Hired out to people who wanted to sit at home and rack up social brownie points knocking off bad guys by sending even badder guys after them. A variation of the hero-by-proxy theme witnessed earlier with the radio-controllers wielding their fighting robots. She supposed these killers-for-hire deserved a modicum of respect, even if their motives were tainted.
Only seven remained: three out in front of her, she was losing heart about ever catching; three behind. Everyone was conserving weapons at this point to have something to throw at the bad guy. So they were down to simply fighting to outride one another, the better rider, or the better bike, or both, take all.
Greta watched the gap narrowing on their bad guy on the monitor mounted on her fuel tank. “Fuel” being a generic term that covered everything from various grades of rocket fuel to non-liquid combustibles, not all entirely legal. Her tank was filled with a proprietary mix, the cocktail not too different from what they used to blow up commercial buildings.
The first rider to get to the assigned target shot grappling hooks from his bike intent on finding purchase where they could—the tires, the gas tank, the spokes, the chassis, the engine—regardless of how much they fouled the workings of the bike. That ploy turned out to be less than inspired, as the lead biker pulled a stunt that Greta was ashamed to say she would never have considered. He jumped from his section of the ribbon-wall down a tier, to the spiraling twist below, sending the biker attached to him into the rim of the ribbon-wall. The trailing biker exploded on contact, the blast severing the lines to the front vehicle, but not before their bungee cord action whipped the lead biker back onto the upper twist of the spiral above, putting him back in front of the lead pack. A nifty trick. Greta wondered how much of it was planned out ahead of time, and how much of it was the rider riding the serendipity wave.
The biker in the number two position tried his hand at their bad guy. He sped up until he bumped tires with the lead bike, which sent him somersaulting—bike and all—and landed him immediately in front of the lead bike. The bad guy then returned the favor, repeated the same stunt, only with more control and precision, landed on the other guy’s front wheel to flip him into the wall. The shattered bike refused to explode; it trickled red instead from the biker’s blood, which mixed with jet fuel to etch an abstract painting against the wall.
The number three driver, now in the number two position, trailed their bad guy, deliberating his next move, possibly unnerved by what he’d just seen happen to the last two bikers determined to get at the mark. He opted wisely to drop back and let Greta have a go at him. Thinking possibly, until there was evidence their bad guy had no more tricks up his sleeve, there wasn’t much point in closing in.
Greta decided to get unconventional. She made no hostile moves toward the mark, other than trying to outride him. He kept cutting off her attempts to get around him. When she was parallel with him at last, she grabbed hold of him and hoisted herself onto his bike, letting her own bike fly into the ethers. The bike would autopilot itself home, after landing, cocooned in a protective shell, like a soccer ball in a game played by giants kicked too far afield.
She was determined to get this guy’s name. She pressed her fingers up against the control panel on the monitor on his gas tank. Got his face and his identity to pop up—a very handsome Dimitri Cordova. Wanted for reckless motorcycling, stunt driving without proper permits, jumping helicopters, rooftops far too far apart. So the guy was a no-guts-no-glory type. He’d gotten on her radar mostly because the people chasing after him weren’t good enough to keep from blowing their bikes and sending shrapnel through the windows of tenants who pay for the view, and not to be decapitated by exploding motorcycle debris.
She popped up her image and name for him, Greta Gelding, her address, and some full-figure shots in her fetching one-piece police uniform. She even dared to show
him her geisha alter with various shots of her Japanese tea ceremony lifestyle. She keyed in “Eight O’clock tonight?” “Yes?” “No?”
A drop of sweat landed on the “Yes” button. She wasn’t sure she should trust serendipity, but so far he’d managed to make it work pretty well for him.
There remained only the question now of how her geisha girl persona would respond to him. Once she was back in the apartment, she was a different person, someone he might not find nearly so fetching. She was the antithesis of a live-fast die-hard lifestyle. Maybe that’s what he needed. She could only pray.
She released her hold on his admittedly very sexy body, having felt the ridges with her fingers to confirm his six-pack abs. She crashed into the wall, still smiling at him, and then sailed off into the atmosphere. The smart fabric that had protected her against the impact of the wall at breakneck speeds, now granted her wings with which to fly, extending fabric between her splayed arms and legs like a flying squirrel. She had a long way down, and a lot of time to contemplate this latest plot twist in her life story.
For Gretchen’s part, along for the ride inside Greta’s head, she couldn’t stop wondering if Dimitri Cordova was Santini in another life.
***
Dimitri Cordova sailed through the force field to Greta’s apartment with his usual aplomb; she watched him, before he entered, drive out of the airplane dragging the banner “Hi, Greta.” Somehow, he had calculated the parabolic arc just perfectly. The force field agreed his IQ had to be higher than a hundred-sixty, too, as it didn’t zap him into oblivion on entry. He parked his bike alongside hers, completing the smooth motion he’d started in the plane.
They watched as the two bikes mated before their eyes, extending feelers at one another, exchanging information, and laughed.
“Just think; I went through all that to get past some performance anxiety, only to be intimidated into squeamishness by a couple of mating motorcycles.”
Greta grinned graciously.
He peeled off his helmet and shook out his long hair. She thought, Considering how short and sculpted my own hair is, if any aliens had them on their radar, they’d be very confused as to their sexes right now.
He dismissively eyed her from top to bottom. “You’re just the one I have my tawdry affairs with. My date tonight is with the sweet one, not the God-awful girl.”
“Trust me, she’s even more of a handful.” When he refused to budge, she said, “Very well, then. You can help me get into character.”
She rotated a slice of the obelisk holding up one of the orchids. Once fully turned, the slice disappeared back into seamless obsidian black. The closet holding her geisha outfit slid out.
He whistled. “I’ve seen outfits for carnival in Trinidad natives spend all year working on that take less work to create and put on.”
“I usually have the robots help me.”
“Tonight we get to see if I can release what’s inside.”
He fingered the outfit, intuited which part went on first, and quickly lost himself in her makeover, finding adventure in figuring out the riddle of how to dress a geisha, though he had absolutely no formal training. His success so far bode well for his ability to later use his imagination to unlock her body during sex. Even now he appeared to be learning which pressure points to release her sexual ecstasy, as he casually fitted the different layers of dress, her wig, and make up onto her, his careful touch as his fingers brushed up against her conveying more than mere problem solving.
An hour later it was done.
He was panting and sweating from exertion.
He stood back to admire his handiwork, when he got the real surprise. When his eyes met hers, she was no longer Greta, but the shy, demure geisha girl forever afraid of life.
For a brief moment his face seemed to sponge up her pain until it could hold no more. He blinked, his eyes watering. He held out his hand to her, his touch even gentler than before, as if he were holding a butterfly.
As he walked alongside her, he studied the empty room, searching for something. His foot found another release mechanism hidden in the floor. He triggered it, then stepped back to allow the dining table and cushions to emerge unimpeded. “I know what it is to live by way of an alter ego. My other self isn’t shy, but he enjoys hiding in plain sight.”
Continuing to decipher her apartment, he found the levers which triggered the kitchen to take form in the barren space of polished lacquer and mirrored surfaces, which he must have realized she used to rehearse her Japanese tea ceremonies.
The stage set, Greta, as geisha girl, had what she needed to come to life, and slipped into one of her pre-programmed routines. She boiled tea, set the table, served the tea, and then mimed for him how to sit on his knees on the cushions and drink the tea, and make casual conversation.
He smiled the whole time, taking apparent delight in her doing her thing. And he seemed to enjoy aping her actions and absorbing what she had to teach him.
“You don’t fear much, do you?” She lowered her eyes to give him a chance to lie rather than feel uncomfortable that she might read the truth on his face.
He chuckled. “I just don’t stop to think about it. If I’m too busy having fun, there’s no room in my head for fear.”
“Fear is a good teacher. It helps me to see around blind corners.”
“I guess I see how it can be mind-expanding.” He sipped his tea. “You know, I have to imagine everything that can go wrong, too, when I drive a bike out an airplane. I bet I can see even further around those blind corners with the courage of my lion’s heart.”
She smiled.
“If you want to hide out from the world, you can do it just as easily by chasing after fun as after fear. So maybe you just need to ask yourself why you want to hide out from the world.”
She sipped her tea, and set down the cup. “It feels more private, more intimate. I can love myself without the distraction of the emotional neediness of others.”
“I wasn’t expecting that answer.” He caressed the top of her hand. “So maybe you’re ready to graduate up to loving yourself in the face of some distractions.”
She smiled. “Maybe.”
Gretchen, along for the ride in Greta’s head, felt the scar separating her personas dissolving.
Her work here was done—for now.
***
Gretchen awoke to find herself stuffed backstage, the performance of Macbeth in progress, act four. Apparently, they couldn’t grasp the concept of a catatonic witch, and had replaced her. She was surprised she could place where she was in the play, from her stand-in mouthing her lines onstage.
WITCH 1
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Gretchen begrudgingly shed layers of costume, having missed her chance to escape herself for a few hours. But then, she supposed, recalling what she had just learned during her lapse into MonstroCity, the whole point of this lifetime was to get more comfortable in her own skin.
She went looking for Mort, found him passed out in the steampunk era. One look at the plane he was assembling in his hands, after recalling his having voiced earlier his thwarted desire to be a fighter pilot in this life, and it didn’t take her long to put two and two together.
“Mort! Mort!” she shouted, trying impotently to rouse him.
EIGHTEEN
Each time Santini drove his broad sword down on his opponent, the clashing of metal against metal sent shock waves throughout his body. He was also realizing in short order that he swung a sword in a slightly geriatric manner, being both out of shape for this kind of combat, and too broken down ahead of his time. When he brought the flat side of his sword up to his face in time to prevent his opponent from taking his head clean off with the dulled edge of his sword by brute strength alone, he was nearly glad he had insufficient force behind the gesture to block the blow. He needed a break, even if that came in the form of being knocked unconscious.
He went sail
ing to the ground.
Covered by the knight’s armor from head to toe, the fortifications did nothing to protect the soft body inside. He bounced around in the tin can.
As he drifted off into unconsciousness from the impact of the hard earth against his head, Santini thought of the last time he had a sword in hand.
***
Santini had been battling Simone, the leader of the opposition army, for hours now, each having to periodically rest on his sword for a while before resuming battle.
The battlefield beyond the castle walls was strewn with bodies on both sides of the confrontation as far as the eye could see. His two closest companions alone remained, perched on their horses, waiting rather impatiently for him to finish up with Simone.
Simone was no believer in endings, however, only new beginnings, as he continued to prove, round after round of fighting; his sword had left so many nicks in Santini’s blade, he could saw wood with it.
When Santini finally landed his blade in Simone, he cut straight through him.
The halved Simone, split right up the middle, continued fighting with the left side of him still attached to his head and still holding the sword.
Santini jumped on his horse. “Continue battling, if it makes you feel any better.” Simone swung his sword in a valiant effort to kill Santini. When that failed, he threw the sword at him. Santini ducked. Then Simone reached for a rock.
“Thank God we didn’t have to fight a field full of warriors like that guy,” Mort said.
Santini and Mort flanked Gretchen, as the three rode slowly towards the castle before them. He and Mort were wearing Knights Templar tunics with a blazing red cross on white woolen fabric, their swords at their sides. Gretchen had a hood over a long cape which draped her and the horse. It didn’t take words passing between them for him to realize she was a witch in this lifetime, a powerful one, accompanying them on their dangerous mission, lending aid and counsel, as always. He went by the name of Merek, Mort by Carac, and Gretchen by Gloriana.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 136
