Archon's Queen

by Matthew S. Cox

  She stared off, wondering how much of the stuff on the shelves she’d brought here.

  “Look at you, gone out then? Oi.” Mason snapped his fingers in front of her face.

  She leaned on the counter. “I know, it’s a one-off. I’m not lookin’ ta go back to that life if I can ‘elp it. Too risky.”

  “Buck up, lass. You’ll get no trouble ‘ere.” He winked. “Figger I kin do bout eighteen hundred for it, if’n you’ll ‘ave it.”

  “That’s fine then.” Anna scowled in her mind. The store was asking for ten thousand. Still, what he offered felt like a fortune now.

  Mason slid the credstick back through the recess in the counter, past the bullet-resistant barrier, eighteen hundred credits richer than it had been a moment before. As it changed hands, he clasped his fingers through hers in the sunken channel, a silent offer of help. Anna thanked him, not moving until he broke contact.

  “Thanks, Mason.” Despite his slovenly appearance, she trusted him. One of the few men who’d never looked at her that way. “I appreciate it.”

  “Take care’a yerself, girl.” He grabbed a tool to detach the security tag from the necklace.

  Outside, she turned at the sense of a small sphere of electrical power. A volleyball-sized orb hovered, peeking past the corner of the building at the end of the street. Anna thought it strange an advert bot tried to hide rather than bombard her with things to buy.

  She thought it even more peculiar when it followed her at a distance, but paid it little mind.

  It was probably only a perv hacker checking out her ass.

  ubsequent a credits-only transaction at Plonk’s, Anna stopped at the market. She had popped for a case of Panda’s instant meals, the more expensive brand not made from OmniSoy, and a small white teddy bear. With one parcel under each arm, she approached the police line around The Ruin.

  Because she had zoom in her purse, she had half a mind to invisibility her way past the cops this time to avoid the hassle. Of course, they’d not be as dim-witted as the jewelers; they would notice their cameras burning out. All it would take was one lapse of concentration and she’d seem to appear out of thin air among them. That would invite unwanted attention. The voices in her head argued about whether she should pitch her head down and tolerate the derision she deserved, or avoid it altogether. Before she could come to an accord, a voice ahead of her shouted.

  “That’s her.”

  Her heart stopped. She looked up to see a half-dozen police, two female, with rifles aimed. The little white teddy bear trembled with her.

  “‘Old it right there, then.” The man in the center took a step forward.

  She blinked. “What’s this about?” What the hell are you doing? Don’t give them attitude.

  “Special request, lass. Drop the stuff and up against the wall with ya.”

  Anna stared at the road, dreading what she knew would follow. Perhaps all six of them would take turns this time. The nice sergeant was nowhere in sight. After stepping to the nearest wall, she set the crate of meals down and placed the bear on top of it to keep it off the muddy ground. The hunger that had been forming in her gut twisted into a knot of queasiness as she assumed the position against the grey bricks.

  They shuffled up to her, keeping a wary distance, which she thought rather odd. One of the two female officers approached, slinging her rifle and performing a cursory squeeze-down to check for weapons before peeking into her tiny purse.

  The officer’s visor flickered, bathing her face in green light. “Not seeing any weapons.”

  “Check again. These Cov vermin kin ‘ave plastic knives on ‘em,” said a man.

  Anna remained passive as the constable secured her hands behind her back. The cold metal about her wrists made her think of Tommy. Fear kept her thoughts from drifting into the realm of sex as the female constable searched her pockets reached under her shirt. Finding no bra, the hand retreated in an instant. Strictly professional. Anna endured it without protest, in fact giving the woman a grateful glance. It bothered her how nervous the officer was.

  Something’s not right.

  The woman spun her around and led her along by a hand on the elbow, taking her to the same room where Constable Brown had strung her up like a side of beef. Another slice of dignity sloughed off at the thought of it.

  She followed nonverbal commands to a chair by the steel table, and sat. The officer left her to stare at her knees while one of the men set her purchases and purse on a shelf. The female officer traded her weight from leg to leg, inching backwards with each shift. With the other constables leaving, the woman broke into a run out the door, leaving Anna alone.

  The feck are they scared of?

  Paths of electricity in the lights above thrummed in her mind, as did wires running inches below the floor plate, and even near her wrists in the powered restraints. She let her unnatural senses probe the binders, smiling when she found the contacts to the hasp motor. A small jolt of power there would open them. She leaned back in the chair, hoping that by ignoring the thickening stone-like quality forming in her skull, the withdrawal would be less harsh.

  She focused on containing her fear and shame. If she blew out the restraints, she would be stuck in them for hours while the police scrambled for a tool capable of cutting them, an experience she did not want to relive. She played with opening them, but put them back on, afraid of the beating that would earn her when the police returned. Her body stiffened as she eyed the cameras in the corners of the room. Hopefully, no one had seen the cuffs open and close. Trembles took over; whether it was withdrawal or fear she could not tell. Popping the cuffs required a lot of precision control and tiny voltages. It wasn’t something she’d be able to do in a panic. If she wanted to run, she’d have to commit to it before the situation escalated.

  Murmuring voices hovered outside the door, too weak to make out. Anna wondered what the devil they wanted; she expected to be bent over a desk by now, not left alone in a room. In some odd way, being treated civilly felt worse than being used. She wondered if she missed a security recorder at Morris & Baker, or if Mason had tried to ‘help’ her by getting her off the street.

  No, this doesn’t feel right. If it was about the necklace, they’d be working me over already.

  Quiet as she could, she eased her weight onto her feet and crept up to the door to peer through a tiny square window low enough for her to reach on tiptoe. All six clustered in a group outside, chatting away as if they had some kind of monster locked in the office. The armored door was too thick to make out what they said, but their fear was palpable.

  A hovercar, gloss black with windows tinted opaque, circled around a few minutes later and settled onto the pavement about ten meters from the police, spraying them with rainwater. Both doors opened, disgorging two men.

  On the near side, a wiry man in his early thirties extracted a pair of dark glasses from his breast pocket, which he flicked open with a smooth whip-like gesture before sliding them on. Of average height with thin brown hair, the fluttering folds of a long black coat obscured his build. Military boots and gloves left only the ashen skin of his face visible, wrinkled with lines beyond his years.

  The other man was taller, a pillar of military training. His bald head caught the baleful light filtering down from the grey sky, a neatly trimmed dark moustache and goatee encircled his mouth. He wore the same coat, open unlike the smaller man, revealing a black armored vest bedecked with various small items. As he reached his full stature, the thin man turned to glance at him over the car.

  Anna gasped at the sight.

  Behind his left ear, a gleam flashed from a metal triangle the size of a pinky nail. The mark of registration, an implanted detonator designed to kill a psionic with the push of a button. Some bureaucrat in a plush office could determine risk exceeded benefit, or perhaps decide not to like you, and make a vid call. A minute later, a disinterested low-level military person barely out of high school would flick a holographic button and
kill someone they would never meet and knew only as a thirteen-digit code.

  Two lamps sputtered in the ceiling, shaken by the wave of fear that rippled through her. Somehow, she kept it in check; exploded lights would be impossible to explain. Someone must have reported her as an unregistered psionic―but who? She struggled at the handcuffs, too out of sorts to find the circuit path. Their transition from nuisance to captivity added to her panic and made the task even harder.

  “Fuck!” She gasped, trying to calm down, but could not.

  Anna sprinted to her purse, and leapt butt-first onto the shelf, straining to reach into it. Probing fingers found the hidden zipper and slipped through to the sheet of zoom. She peeled one away and scurried to her chair seconds before the door cracked open. Cold fingers slipped under the back of her skirt, pressing the derm into her left ass cheek. The thin man entered with a pleasant smile, followed by two police officers. The large, bald soldier remained outside, observing from a distance. She slid her fingers out, pushing at the derm through the fabric to squeeze the chem out of the soaked pad faster.

  His voice was deeper than she had expected from the look of him. “Good afternoon miss…”

  “M-Morgan.”

  She stammered, already feeling the effect of the drug. The subtle presence of something else joined her thoughts. When she looked up, the room melted as though she had stumbled into a Salvador Dali painting. Walls warped, the table liquefied, and the ceiling lamps descended on stretching cables. The tall man remained the only thing to keep solid form.

  “We have received a report that you might be off the books.” He walked to the left, entering a slow circling prowl.

  The surge of zoom made it hard to focus on anything. “I’ve not been to school since I was little.”

  Giggling, the white teddy bear waved at her. “Can we go home now?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?” The thin man’s voice slithered over her right ear.

  Twenty seconds later, she jumped. Something shifted in her mind, like a goldfish moving under her scalp. The thin man emitted a grumble of displeasure and walked a few steps to the right.

  “Sorry, guv’na. I’m not sure what you’re gettin’ on about. I’m just a piece of shite from Coventry, thought Old Bill wanted to take ‘is rights with me.”

  Random objects in the room changed, morphing into sexually suggestive things. The metal of her seat warped into steel hands forcing her thighs apart. Again, the thin man remained normal. The teddy bear squeaked as it dry-humped the box of instant meals, aiming for the mascot panda. She giggled uncontrollably as the black and white creature inflated away from the label and became a three-dimensional object, and let Teddy have his way.

  A disingenuous smile spread across thin lips. “There is no need for subterfuge. We are already aware of what you can do.”

  The zoom reached full swing; the dangling lights sang to her, the muffled voices of her breasts screamed as the devil in the Manchester United shield stabbed at them with its pitchfork, and the steel floor splashed like water as she kicked at it. The thin man’s face peeled forward, floating at her, still speaking as it expanded to four feet wide.

  “Very well then, we have other means at our disposal.”

  Like a dishtowel, his stretched face wound tight, spiraling into a twisted tentacle of flesh that lanced toward her while the body stood rigid. She leaned back in the chair as it speared into her forehead.

  Anna shrieked at the sensation of a warm spike piercing her brain. She thrashed about, splashing liquid steel at the man in an attempt to make him flee. Her hallucinated attack did little to stall him; his body agitated, a fidgeting man on sped-up backwards video. The flesh drill surged between the lobes of her brain, swishing around as though a hand squeezed the two halves like sponges.

  The teddy bear cowered, shielding its eyes from what must have been a gory sight. The panda screamed, diving for cover back into its label, once more a two dimensional picture. Anna shouted at the stuffed animal for help as hot blood rolled down her face and soaked her shirt. Lost to genuine terror, she strained at the binders and fell out of the chair. Ebon forms seethed up out of the floor and walls, crowding around her. Ethereal hands foiled her attempt to slide away from the tentacle. Her right foot hit something soft, and a demonic wail followed the sound of a body striking the ground.

  Shimmering black wraiths hovered over her; traces of fluorescent yellow glowed from the spot where their arms met the central mass. Sputtering, she tried to sit up out of the drowning liquid steel. The wraiths descended on her with keening cries.

  Her surrender to the high dose destroyed any rational thought of policemen in black with yellow armbands; she had to embrace the zoom to hide from the telepath. She had to let her mind go over the edge. The wraith-forms’ heads parted, howling spectral cries into her soul. Lost in the world her runaway mind created, she foamed at the mouth and went into a panicking tantrum.

  Another wraith glided over her, tearing her legs off below the knee. She screamed again, hyperventilating as the shadowy figure handed the severed limbs to another. When she looked back down, her skin regenerated into clean bare feet, which smoky hands pinned together. The black ghost conjured a tiny white serpent that coiled about her ankles and cinched tight, devouring its own tail. Off to the side, one of the forms moaned as it crawled along the ground in a strange ungainly posture, as if it could no longer float. It shifted its head to face her, roared, and a charblackened skull surged forth from the vapor.

  Anna screamed.

  She tried to fight, but her arms would not respond. Having forgotten she was restrained, her mind presented her with the image of bloody stumps of arms removed at the shoulder. The floor, no longer fluid, changed without warning as the wraiths flipped her onto her chest; her cheek discovered how hard it was.

  The apparitions attached themselves to her shoulders, changing into wings of tattered blackness that carried her aloft. Blurs of color drifted by; bound hand and foot, she believed herself a winged worm flying down a square cave past cackling lights. The journey lasted quite a long time in her mind, ending with her coming to rest on a soft pad. Anna wailed as her shadow wings tore themselves loose, dispersing into clouds of black fog that slid along the walls.

  Covered in sweat, shaking from fear both real and imagined, Anna curled into a ball and closed her eyes. Time sank away and the surface upon which she lay alternated from cloud to spider web to cotton candy.

  When consciousness returned, she found her mouth full of cheap paper-coated pillow. The initial rush of zoom had passed, leaving her sweat-soaked and shivering with trembles she could not control. Snot and drool foamed out of her mouth and nose. Unable to reach with her hand, she wiped her face on the mattress. Her muscles moved like dense bundles of rubber creaking beneath her skin. Belabored shallow breaths filled her chest with pain on every inhalation. Images in her eyes ghosted as every object became a trail of two or three copies superimposed. Contracted pupils left the room around her dim.

  She rolled on her side, realizing she lay in a tiny holding cell with metal restraints on her arms and plastic riot-ties digging into her ankles. Looking down at her feet, she grumbled and wondered where they put her boots. Anna fell sideways into the pillow, and stopped fighting the bindings. She stared into the hallway. The bars blurred as the four cells on the opposite side of the hall came into focus. All were empty. Despite her skimpy attire, the mega-dose left her roasting. She went limp and waited for the pain that throbbed through every joint to end.

  Anna remained on her stomach for what felt like hours, lifting and dropping her bound feet. When she could no longer tolerate feeling so helpless, she squirmed in an ineffectual attempt to free herself. A sudden spark of arousal at being tied disintegrated into an onrush of nausea. The zoom sat upon her power like a lead block, she could not feel the wiring in the restraints. This captivity bore no resemblance to how it felt being with Tommy.

  Her stomach churned, and she
choked back bile.

  She did not want to wear puke twice in the same week and attempted to sit up. Her muscle response came delayed, and she overcompensated. The erratic convulsion sent her tumbling to the cold metal floor. Anna shuffled about until she got on her knees, and moved with an erratic series of hops and slides, getting her face in position over the toilet a split second before she could no longer contain herself, and succumbed to a vomiting fit. The fragrance of chemical toilet in her throat only helped it along. Panic came on trying to breathe around the puke, and she gargled, coughed, and thrashed.

  Tromping boots and the hiss of a door leaked into her perception between agonized bursts of foul liquid expunging itself from her insides.

  “Hey, Virji, think she’s still away with the mixer?”

  At a break in the heaves, she lifted her tear-streaked face out of the toilet and glanced through the bars at a pair of constables. The taller one on the left squinted with anger, face reddening. Tall, bald, and with an excess of weight, his chin sagged over his chest as though his head were made of melting wax. Not as paunchy as Constable Brown, his body stored fat in odd places that left him looking as though an experiment in proportion had gone awry.

  The other was younger and athletic; an Indian man in his middle-thirties, with salt and pepper hair cut short and darkish skin. His stare almost held a trace of pity for her.

  “Unfortunately, lass, you managed to hoof Constable Hargreaves in the knackers while you were beaked up.”

  Anna tried to apologize, but only barf came out. Her face dripped with it, and no matter how she squirmed, she could not get a hand around to wipe her face. It streamed from her nose as she huffed at it, spitting. In her foggy reality, she might have begged him to clean her off, or perhaps the voice only existed in her mind. Again, fluid went where air should be, and she choked.