by Selina Rosen
Tarent looked across the dinner table at his daughter. He couldn’t stand one more silent meal with her. “Elantra... are you ever going to talk to me again?”
“No,” Elantra said plainly.
“Why not?”
“Why? We never really talk. We never really exchange views or opinions. You tell me what you expect of me, what I’m going to do with my life. I pretend to listen, and every once in a while when I can’t stand it any more I speak up, and you pretend to listen, and then you decide what I’m going to do with my life. I have lived my life in virtual reality, being entertained, taught, and nurtured by machines. Now I’m back here... I have no life. You have my life, and the computers will take care of me... You don’t care how I feel. I’m a possession.”
“Elantra, this is all just part of the brain washing. In time you’ll be happy here again...”
“Again! I was never happy here!” Elantra screamed. She pushed her tray of food away. “You want to talk? Let’s talk... So are you a business man or a crime lord?”
“Elantra, honey...”
“Are you a business man or a crime lord? It’s a simple question, Dad.”
“I’m a business man...”
“A legitimate business man?”
Tarent was silent.
“That’s what I thought.” Elantra shook her head. “Conner McVee tried to tell me what you were. I wouldn’t believe her. I defended you. So you tell me who played me for a bigger fool, you or Conner McVee.”
“Honey, business is business. They’ve never proved that I’m anything but a legitimate business man...”
“Save it, Dad. I know what you do. So... did my mother kill herself, or did you do that, too?”
“Elantra, this is really unfair! You’re not giving me a chance to defend myself...”
“Did you kill my mother?”
“No. She killed herself,” he said. Why tell her anything else now. Nothing can be proved.
“Why?” Elantra had never asked before.
“She was unhappy, she was unstable. I told you that...”
“You know damn good and well that’s not the answer I want. Why was she unhappy? Why was she unstable?”
Tarent sat there silently for a long time. “Your mother didn’t understand my business. She wanted to leave me and take you with her. I couldn’t let her do that. I love you, Elantra, you’re the only thing I care about...”
“You held her prisoner here.” Elantra got up, her chair helped her and she shoved it over. “You held her prisoner here just like you’re holding me now, and she finally killed herself. So you did kill her. Just like you’re killing me now.”
“Don’t say that!” Tarent screamed. “I’m doing all of this for you. It will all be yours one day...”
“I don’t want it!” Elantra yelled in a disbelieving tone. “I don’t want a crime empire. I want to be a doctor who works on real patients. I want to feel the water on my skin and the wind in my face and my lover’s body pressed against mine. I don’t want your fucking blood money.”
“It’s not blood money, it’s...”
“Father...” Elantra was pacing back and forth like a caged animal, and then she stopped and riveted her eyes on Tarent’s. “Did you kill Conner McVee’s partner? Did you kill Peggy Mishy?”
Apparently she had spent the last few days thinking about all this. He chose his words carefully. “Elantra, I don’t kill people, that’s your friend Hammer McVee...”
“Let me rephrase the question.” Elantra took a deep breath, stopped her pacing and turned to glare at him. “Did you have Peggy Mishy killed?”
Tarent took a deep breath, no sense sugar coating it anymore. Maybe it was time that she understood her true place. What she really was. He looked back at her unblinkingly.
“Mishy stepped into my territory, and I had his sister killed to teach him a lesson. That’s the way the business goes. You have to be tough; you have to be hard. You don’t want to admit it, Elantra, but you’ve got what it takes to run the business, and some day you and Buddy will...”
“I’m not like you!” Elantra screamed, shaking her head. “Do you have any idea how many lives you have destroyed? Do you even care? You say you had Peggy Mishy killed as if you were saying you had the droid clean up a mess. The woman was gang raped, killed and mutilated. Conner McVee...”
“Conner McVee is a police agent, Elantra. She is our enemy!”
“No.” Elantra shook her head emphatically. “She is your enemy. She is my lover, and I’d be with her now if it wasn’t for you.” She turned on her heel and stomped from the dining room. She stopped in the doorway and turned to confront Tarent. “I suggest that if you want an heir to take over your filthy crime empire you build another one, because it isn’t going to be me.” She stomped out of the room, kicking the door that was opening for her.
Tarent watched as the door closed behind her. “No, Elantra, you will be my heir. Computer on.” It came on. “Computer. Call Doctor Peterson.” Dr. Peterson came on line.
“What can I do for you, Tarent?” he asked, seeming less than happy to see the crime lord.
“Smile, Peterson, after this you won’t owe me.”
“Well, I suppose that’s a good thing. So what do you need?”
“I want you to do a brain erase on my daughter tomorrow.”
“How thorough?” the Doctor asked.
“Only the last few weeks.”
“That should be easy. When do you want it done?”
“Sooner the better. Tomorrow morning here...”
“My equipment and staff...”
“Bring it here tomorrow. Be here by ten.”
The doctor seemed even less pleased. “That’s an awful inconvenience.”
“And killing your partner was inconvenient for me. Don’t make me get vulgar, Dr. Peterson.”
Peterson nodded his head. “I’ll be there. But this is it. After this we’re even.”
“That was the deal,” Tarent said. “Transmission close.” He laughed and leaned back in his chair. “After tomorrow she won’t even know who Hammer McVee is. My life can go back to normal.”
Tarent got up and went to his office. As he sat down, Squat appeared on the screen. “Boss, Jason Hunter’s at the front door.”
“Send him right up.” Tarent leaned back in his chair farther. A few short minutes later Jason walked in with Squat. “So?”
“Check your surveillance tapes,” Jason said cockily. “About two this afternoon.”
Tarent did, and he smiled. “But she’s not dead,” he said.
“She was probably wearing a vest, but I was using armor piercing loads, and it’s pretty obvious by the way she’s running that she’s hit bad. And there,” he pointed at the screen, “you can see where the blood is running down her leg. It may not kill her, but now that she’s wounded... it’s only a matter of time till someone brings her down, and I want part of the action.”
“Get out there and finish the job and you can have it all,” Tarent said. “The price is for a dead McVee not a wounded one.”
“But...”
“We’ve done business a long time, Jason. You know how I work.”
“Tarent, no one but me even got close to her...”
“Finish it, Jason...”
Jason left in a huff, and Tarent relaxed for the first time in weeks. Everything was going his way.
Everyone in PowersTower was asleep except Elantra and the droids. No need for human sentries, they were inefficient. They could fall asleep or miss motion. They might see danger where there was none, or miss danger where it was very real and present. Not so a machine. It could look everywhere at once, detect the slightest movement, and determine whether the moving form carried any threat or any weapons. A machine asks itself very simple questions – What was that noise? What moved? Who is that person? Are they supposed to be here? Are they an intruder? Are they dangerous?
It would never occur to the building dwellers that perhaps it wou
ld be easier to trick a simple machine than it would be to trick a human.
It had, however, occurred to Elantra.
She crept into her father’s office, and the door closed behind her. The machine saw only that she was not an intruder, and that she was one of the people who was allowed to enter Tarent’s office.
“Computer, exterior monitors on,” Elantra ordered. The computer knew that Elantra wasn’t allowed to leave the building, but it hadn’t been programmed to keep her out of this room. It had certainly never been programmed to deny her access to anything but the security systems and the secret files which only Tarent himself was privy to. The screens came to life.
Conner was nowhere in sight. “Computer, can you find Conner McVee?”
“She is not currently in our vision,” the computer answered.
Elantra sighed. She desperately wanted to see Conner. To look at her even if she couldn’t touch her. “Computer, play back sections of tapes made earlier today containing Conner McVee.”
There she was. Conner stood there watching the building. It started to rain, and Conner turned up her jacket collar and pulled her hat forward, but she didn’t move. The computer played roughly an hour of Conner doing nothing more exciting than standing around in the rain, and yet Elantra was not bored.
She watched as a red car pulled up. There was a conversation that the antiquated audio equipment hadn’t picked up, and then there was a gun blast that it caught loud and clear. Conner was knocked into a wall, and she slid down it. It was like a horrible nightmare. Elantra felt her heart roll in her chest, but then Conner got up. She stumbled into the street, fired at the retreating car, and then she turned to the building and cursed Elantra’s father.
And Elantra hoped God would.
Her father had lied to her, even breaking his promise. He was still trying to kill Conner McVee, and from the way Conner was moving as she stumbled to her car, he just might have succeeded.
“Computer off.” Elantra tried to sit down hard in her father’s chair, but of course it didn’t let her. She started to cry. Her father hadn’t called the hit off. He’d never had any intention of calling the hit off. He had lied to her about that, just like he had lied about everything else in her life.
Conner had tried to tell her the truth about her father, but she wouldn’t – couldn’t believe it. Now Conner was hurt, maybe dying, and she was hunted. Elantra knew medicine. If she could find Conner she could help her.
Elantra knew now that she couldn’t trust her father to cut a square deal with her. He wanted Conner McVee dead, and he wasn’t going to stop until he had what he wanted.
She had to get to Conner; she had to help her. No matter what that might mean.
Chapter 13
Once again Conner found herself in Jakelord’s basement abode.
“You’ve got brass nuts, Hammer McVee,” Jakelord swore through clenched teeth.
“That’s what I keep tellin’ everyone.” Conner was shaking, cold and hurt. “You owe me, Jakelord,” she said through chattering teeth.
“We all owe each other,” Jakelord hissed back.
“Yeah, well, till now I’ve done all the payin’, and you’ve done all the gettin’.” Conner looked up at him, met his gaze and held it. He stared back for only a few seconds and then looked away. “You owe me, Jakelord. Come on, man, I need your help.”
One of his “boys” grabbed him and pulled him a ways away.
“Man, Jakelord, Tarent Powers is offering two million dollars for her head. I bet Mishy would pay damn near that much. We ice her and we could be wealthy, wealthy men. We help her and one of the big boys is going to take us out.”
“Tell your stupid little buddy that I can hear him, and even fucked up I could kill every one of you dumb fucks before he could blink,” Conner hissed, lifting the nail gun she held in her hand.
Jakelord punched the man in the face so hard that he fell to the floor with a thud and didn’t move, then he turned to look at Conner. “You giant pain in the ass!” He walked over to her and started taking her jacket off. “One of you dick wads find something that approaches sterile and get me some clean water and rags.”
Hammer smiled at Jakelord. “Thanks, Jake.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’ rub it in. I’m sure I’m gonna hate myself in the morning.” He took her shirt off slowly, then took a step back and made a face.
“What?” Conner looked down. The bullet, an all-powerful big motherfucker, was stuck into the vest and obviously into her body. “Well, fuck.”
“It could have been worse,” Jakelord said. “That big mother fucker could be floating around in there somewhere. So... is it true you screwed Tarent Powers’ little girl?”
“She’s hardly a girl,” Conner defended.
“Yes or no?” Jakelord asked with a smile.
Conner smiled and nodded. “Yeah.”
Jakelord laughed and shook his head. “Ya always were a crazy bitch, Hammer.”
A man walked in with a bowl of water and a bunch of rags. They both knew that when he pulled the bullet out it was going to gush even more blood. Jakelord stared at the bullet for a minute.
“So... what ya wanna do, Hammer?” Jakelord asked. “By the way... if you die I am taking your head to Tarent and collecting that damned reward.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Hammer took a deep breath, and looked down at what she could see of the wound – which was actually nothing. “I think the mother fucker is hanging in one of my ribs.”
“Beautiful,” Jakelord said. “Sammy, go get Doc Parker.”
“I need it out now. I’ve got to get back...”
“Shut the hell up, ya ain’t worth shit to anyone dead... Oh, except for me.” Jakelord shook his head, then added in a low, almost scolding tone. “You stupid fucking dyke. You’re gonna get yourself killed over a piece of ass.”
Conner smiled crookedly. “It is an exceptionally fine piece of ass.”
“And you are exceptionally fucking stupid,” he spat back. “I mean what the hell’s wrong with ya? Ya got some weird thing for gangsters daughters, or what?”
“Peg was Mishy’s sister...”
“Speaking of Mishy, he also wants your head on a platter, and if he comes in here...”
“You’re going to defend me with your last ounce of blood because that’s the kind of really swell guy that you are.”
“I’m going to die like a big dog because that’s the kind of stupid fuck that I am... So you want to wait for Doc Parker?”
“I think I’m leaking my blood all over. We have to stop the bleeding.”
Jakelord nodded. “All right. Bullet out first or vest and bullet all at once?”
Hammer thought about it for only a second. “Better pull the bullet out first, then the vest off quick.”
Jakelord took a pair of pliers out of Conner’s tool belt. “These ought to do the trick.” He looked into her eyes, then leaned over and whispered right in her ear, “All I have to do is push instead of pull, Hammer, and this goes right into your lung. You croak, and I get two million dollars. Why do you trust me?”
“Because I’m the only person that does, and you know that,” Hammer said.
Jakelord pulled the bullet out. Then he jerked the vest off. He stuffed the gushing wound with rags. He had done this enough times that he knew what he was doing, and that this time it wasn’t enough.
Hammer wavered, the pain had almost knocked her out. She rocked in her seat, damn near dropping her weapon, and Jakelord steadied her.
Doc Parker wasn’t really a doctor, but he was the closest thing this part of SlumTown had. The only one of Willie’s kids who couldn’t hack a computer, he’d earned his keep by stuffing people’s guts back in and stitching them up. He’d been good at it, a natural, and it made him a good and almost legal living in SlumTown. He ran over to Hammer, bag in hand. He smiled as he looked at her bare chest.
“You know, Hammer, seeing you like this I almost forget that you’re one of the boys.”
He pulled the packing out, and more blood gushed. He shoved it back in. “Oh, that wasn’t a good idea.” He took a tool out of his bag that Hammer knew only too well, and she flinched. He smiled sadistically. “Yes, it looks like we’re going to have to zap all those naughty little capillaries.” He pulled the packing out again, sprayed the wound with a purple spray, and then started to cauterize the wound. The spray was supposed to sterilize the area and numb it. Hammer hoped that it did a better job sterilizing things than it did numbing them. “Your rib is broken, but not bad.”
“Your rib can be… broken… good?” Conner ground out through gritted teeth.
“Still a smart ass, hey, McVee?” He finished and put his tool away. He looked up at her and smiled, sadly this time. “You’ve sure got yourself in a mess. Hammer, for God’s sake... You deflowered Tarent Powers’ little girl. What the hell were you thinking?”
Conner managed a smile.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. You need some blood.” Doc Parker looked with meaning at Jakelord.
Jakelord rolled his eyes, then rolled up his sleeve and flopped on the table next to Conner. “Shit a damn brick, woman, if you aren’t the biggest damn pain in the ass.”
She coughed, and it almost killed her. Parker set up the transfusion tube – not for the first time, but this time Jakelord was giving blood to Hammer instead of Hammer giving it to Jakelord. Doc knew everyone’s blood type and all their compatible donors. He dressed Hammer’s wound with clean rags and duct tape as he transfused the blood. When the transfusion was complete he pulled the needles out and applied bandages with cotton balls to both arms.
“Thanks, Jakelord… Doc.” Hammer got shakily on her feet. “I won’t forget this.”
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Doc Parker asked.
“I have to go back,” Hammer said.
Parker started to protest.
“It’s better for all of us if she gets out of SlumTown before Tarent or Mishy finds out she’s been here,” Jakelord said.
“You at least need some dry clothes, Hammer,” Parker protested.
