“Ten minutes countdown,” said Antioche and shrugged.
“Ahh!” Bremusa gritted her teeth and pushed away from her.
Playlist: Video 32/67
“This must be it,” Bremusa said checking the readout on her phone again.
Antioche was covering the corridor.
They were at am underground hallway which ended on a heavy security door. It had a wooden finish so as not to clash with the aesthetics but seemed like a bank-vault entrance.
“Should be clear to go.” Melousa’s sweet voice was heard on the comms along with rapid keystrokes.
Bremusa swiped the access card that Melousa had encoded earlier, and the door opened. She muted her microphone and mouthed to Antioche, “Tell her good job.”
“Why?”
“Just tell her!”
Antioche sighed. “Good job Chubby! I’ll buy you a donut.” Bremusa scowled at her as she was walking past and into the secured room.
She froze.
“Um…” Antioche said, her foot in the air, not daring to move a muscle.
Bremusa was covering the corridor and jerked back to peek inside.
Two big security walker-drones were resting in their charging stations. They each had a huge machine-gun pointed on the floor.
“Melousha?” said Antioche without moving her mouth, or anything else.
“Yes dear?”
“Arr you shure they’rr inactivv?” she asked forming the words with just her tongue.
“Of course! Wait. Yes, I’m positive,” Melousa replied calmly.
Antioche gulped.
She stepped inside the room, fully expecting to hear the rattling of the machine guns and then seeing the business end of a meat grinder.
They walker-drones didn’t move.
The two Amazons took a deep breath.
They closed the door behind them and walked past the hibernated drones. For what it was worth, they stayed clear of their reach.
They got to the next door carefully and Bremusa tried to listen in for anything suspicious.
She shrugged and swiped the access card once more. As the door was sliding open, Antioche said, “This is the server room, right?”
And then they both stood with mouths agape.
“This doesn’t look like a server room to me,” whispered Bremusa and three pairs of eyes turned to look at them.
Playlist: Video 33/67
“I fell,” Aura said stating the obvious.
“I can see that. I’m actually recording it so I can laugh on my own afterwards. Try again.” Orosa picked up the fallen bike and nodded at her to climb up again. She had chosen this place specifically to keep the bike from getting dents and scratches, a patch of countryside with golden grass just outside the Spata area. The rest of the area was covered in vineyards, Zoo Parks and Discount Villages.
Also, she’d chosen this so Aura could land on her butt softly.
That too.
The day was bright but Aura should have been OK even without sunglasses, she was only going to run a few meters or so anyway. It was still too early for her to drive on the road.
She repeated the instructions once more. “Clutch, the most important thing. You squeeze it and the bike turns instantly into a heavy bicycle. Before you panic or anything, squeeze the clutch and all the force is gone.”
Aura recited, “Instead of closing my eyes and screaming my head off, I should squeeze the clutch. Got it.”
“It’s really not that hard once you get used to the forces involved. Just like riding a bike.”
“Then it’s not a good time to confess that I had to get up to six years old and get a scolding from my dad to learn to ride a bicycle.”
“I’m gonna sit in the shade. It’s hot. You fall as you may. Mind the cow.”
Aura managed a few meters at first gear. Orosa was watching her from the shade of a tree and had propped up her camera on her helmet beside her, recording while she relaxed.
An embarrassing number of falls later, she asked, “What’s with that sweet guy who has a crush on you?”
“What? No! He’s my friend,” squealed Aura while she was struggling under the bike’s weight.
Orosa raised an eyebrow and snorted. “Does he know that?”
“No. Nope. You are wrong. I used to like him back in middle-grade but… Hey! You ain’t recording this are you? Turn it off,” she yelled and ran towards her.
“Oh! I got a scoop. Lemme upload that a moment…” Orosa said while Aura had grabbed her neck into a chokehold. With a palm pulling her face aside she said, “If thatf how you react you muft ftill got a crufh on Oreftef!”
“Gimme that!” Aura screamed.
They fought and yelled at one another. Orosa laughed her heart off and Aura had turned red as a beet.
When Aura looked back into that moment later on, she thought it was one of the best of her life.
Playlist: Video 34/67
Aura’s mother came in the room, catching her in the act.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Aura was balancing on her chair, precariously pulling off the Viko poster from her ceiling. “I’m taking it down.”
“So you are giving up. One tiny scandal and that’s it?” mother asked.
Aura frowned and pulled the poster, tearing it in a neat triangle. She crumbled it up and threw it on the floor, then tore the rest of it.
“Oh,” her mother said.
“Do you know what your perfect suitor said online?” Aura snarled and stepped off the chair. She opened up her phone and showed it to her mother. In it, Viko was talking to a reporter, looking good as usual.
“No, Miss Nightingale wasn’t on the guest list. My house is open for everyone of course, if you’re famous you can join in for the best fun ever. I think I greeted her, but I had to talk to everyone as a host, you understand-” Viko said on camera, flexing his muscles as he talked and moved.
Mrs Nightingale frowned. Then she must have remembered that it caused crow’s feet so she looked serene again. “What did you expect Aura? That young man is very meticulous about his image, who he associates with. After your little live session, he must have thought it was best to distance himself from you.”
Aura was furious, her face a scowl. She scratched her cheek, where Viko had touched her a few days ago. It felt dirty now.
“That girl Desha-” her mother began.
“Ambushed me! She planned it all,” Aura said throwing her arms in the air.
“Yes,” mother nodded. “That she did. But I was going to say, you should study what she does, how she acts. Her every public appearance seems casual but is meticulously crafted beforehand, she listens to her PR managers, she-”
“I. Don’t. Care. I don’t wanna be fake like that. I don’t want friends that match my public persona but are slightly less pretty than me. I don’t want a boyfriend just so he can increase my PR capital,” Aura said spitting out the words. “If you like her so much, why don’t you adopt her and leave me alone?”
“So, you don’t want a boyfriend,” mother said calmly.
“No!” Aura exclaimed turning away.
“How about a girlfriend?” her mother asked with the same voice.
Aura bit her lip.
Hard.
She didn’t dare turn around, so she rearranged some books on her shelf and tried to look busy.
Yeah.
Maybe that would work.
“Hm? Would that be suitable to your tastes? Would a girlfriend be enough for you to rebel, to tear down your father’s traditional image?” her mother asked with an innocent tone. It wasn’t really innocent underneath her wrinkle free mask.
Aura let out a weird chuckle. Still turned away, she said, “I… That’s silly mom. Whew, sometimes your imagination runs wild and laps ten times around the field.”
“Does it now? Yes, I must have quite an overactive imagination. Silly old me. Imagining yellow motorbikes with stickers on them, red helmets, matching blue
helmets hidden in your closet. Oh, my imagination does run wild! Jean shorts, slutty outfits, tight embraces on the saddle. A… How would you call it? Badass older rider? Teaching you all about the world?”
So. Fucking. Busted.
Aura shut her eyes tight.
She took in a breath, and turned to face her mother. “You should write a book.”
“Perhaps. The irony is, that Dionysos couldn’t care less about any of that. But if it were to bring down Tony’s sales, then, oh yes, he would care. Very much indeed.” Mrs Nightingale walked towards the door and leaned back to Aura, adding, “Any other family would be acceptive in this day and age. But the Nightingales, well, we are simply not allowed to do as we wish. I’m sure you have learnt that by now.”
Then she eyed the torn pieces and left.
Aura hurried and picked them up, throwing the crumbled-up Viko into the bin.
Playlist: Video 35/67
What stood before them were three women, in the most general of sense. They were young but frail, as if they weren’t ever allowed to move very much. Their hair was long and silver and they were wearing a plain white cloth that was both a hood and a tunic. They were sitting on a different pedestal each, which was made like a Greek column and topped with a cushion. The whole room was in white and light blue tones, an immense computer server behind a glass pane behind them. A thick bundle of cables came from that computer, splitting up in many smaller neat bundles and three of them ending in the backs of the women. The first woman was moving her hands in the air even as her attention turned to the Amazons, in precise motions as if commanding a computer interface only she could see. The second woman was also moving her hands in the air, in a different gesture. You could say that the first one doing a motion like weaving, then the second one was somehow snatching the invisible cloth between them and measuring it.
And the third one was doing one motion and one motion only, that of mimicking a cutting scissors with her fingers.
It was a minor motion, almost hard to notice. Just two pale extended fingers closing. Bremusa didn’t really know why she found that gesture spooky but she did. It was like all other sound was muffled and distorted, but she could hear something being cut by the gesture alone.
Snip.
“Who’s that?” said the first woman startled. She sounded hoarse and scared.
They were staring straight at the Amazons, but then Bremusa realised they weren’t actually seeing them, just responding to the noise. She looked at Antioche, since she was a bit slow to pick up on things she wanted to tell her not to open fire or anything, that these were blind women. Harmless for now.
Antioche was white as a sheet.
“The Fa…” she muttered. “The Fates.”
The third woman’s expression was totally different than that of the first. Meaner. She clipped casually another invisible thread and said, her throat hoarse and unused too, “I remember you.”
Snip.
Antioche let go of a slight yelp.
Boots pounded the floor hard and four fully armed security men appeared from where the Amazons had come. “Freeze! Put down your weapons.”
Antioche composed herself and said, “See what the problem is with infiltration? We would have walked over their bodies coming in.”
Bremusa yelled out a battle cry and charged the four armed-and-armoured men.
Playlist: Video 36/67
Antioche ducked left, because they always did that and they knew how one another would react. She began firing at the first man, who didn’t move in time and got in a lucky shot that floored him instantly. Even in cramped quarters the angle was wide, so she wasn’t worried of hitting her teammate.
Snip.
The soldiers had done one fatal mistake, they had come in the proper way, not pointing their guns at the intruders. Enforcers, police or otherwise, were always trained to never point a gun at something you don’t fully intent to shoot. They simply didn’t have the time to register a raging female charging them head-on and closing the distance with immense speed.
The second soldier she charged was down before he could even see her bloodshot eyes. The machete bit into his kevlar, which was only meant to stop bullets, and as it was pulled out a gush of blood from a severed artery painted the wall beside him.
Snip.
The third soldier, the one standing next to the fallen man, managed to fire off a few rounds which clipped Bremusa on the shoulder but didn’t penetrate her armour. She brought down the machete and he dodged it, falling behind and around the cover of the door.
The fourth soldier aimed at Antioche but hesitated. She thought it was because of the Fates behind her, the soldier didn’t want to injure her accidentally.
He fired though, and right on queue the women screamed, the first two of the three. Klotho and Lachesis, the weaver of fate and the measurer of life respectively, stopped their work and put their frail hands on their ears and screamed.
Antioche fell behind cover and fired back, injuring the fourth soldier who was then knocked unconscious by Bremusa with a backhanded blow.
Footsteps fell hard just like before but they were going the other way. The third soldier had fled, obviously a smarter man who was about to call reinforcements.
“Yeah you better run!” said Antioche half-heartedly and as she moved her hand she felt wetness in her belly.
“Oh by the Huntress, you are wounded!” said Bremusa and rushed to her side.
Antioche was silent for a minute but then slapped her hand away. “I’m fine, it’s mostly flesh. I’ve been meaning to do liposuction for the love handles, how many more bullets do you think it will take for the same effect?”
“Don’t joke about that,” Bremusa said and sprayed her wound with a first aid blood-clotting liquid.
Antioche winced but got to her feet. “Go stick that flash drive where it’s supposed to. Give me your gun, I’m out.”
She gave it. “It must be on the room behind the glass,” Bremusa said and went past the Fates, who weren’t doing anything more than mumbling now. “Cover the exit, give me thirty seconds,” she said and slid the glass pane open.
A wave of cold air hit her, the air-conditioning of the server room. Also, the computers were loud. Like a small airplane’s engine roar. There were blinking LEDs and neat cables, in stacks of computers like closets. Melousa had called them racks, and Bremusa followed her instructions, located the slot she was supposed to and stuck the flash drive in it.
For a long second nothing happened, but then the monitor showed stuff happening and it seemed to load.
Bremusa smiled and said into her comms, “It’s in.”
“As I told you dear,” Melousa’s voice said. “When it says…”
“I remember,” Bremusa said looking behind her.
“Hello again, my apprentice,” the deep voice said in the comms.
“Theseis!” hissed out Bremusa and spun around.
The glass pane slid closed and Bremusa struck it with her machete. It scratched and cracked but it was still standing, a clean thick sheath of bulletproof glass.
“Time to lay down the law,” Theseis said in the comms and appeared in the other room. Lightning was coming out of her spear and crackling all over the place, wherever it could find a conductor to lick and burn it’s edge. Her skin touched the blinding arc of electricity but didn’t burn, didn’t seem to affect her at all.
She came down the corridor like a two-legged lightning storm, slow and confident, her cloak billowing from the sudden currents and heading straight to Antioche.
Bremusa punched the glass pane, hit it with the grip of her blade, kicked it hard but it just vibrated and didn’t break. She was watching across the Fates sitting in their pedestals, cables tying their insides with the server room. The sparks were blinding, casting long shadows from the three figures. Far into the back room Antioche was getting shocked, flailing wildly, unable to control her body. Two loud pops were heard, muffled over the glass door. They must have
been accidental discharge. The whole room next door lit up with sparks and deadly tendrils of plasma.
Theseis walked over Antioche, who was rigid and shaking on the floor, unable to react. She said something which couldn’t be heard over the electricity crackling in the room and lifted the tip of her spear over Antioche’s body.
Atropos, she who cuts the thread of life, opened her fingers mimicking a pair of scissors, as she had done tens of times since the moment they had come in this wretched room.
Bremusa’s eyes widened, and she screamed “No!”
At the same time, Theseis brought the spear down to Antioche’s chest and Atropos cut the invisible thread.
Snip.
Bremusa sagged and fell on her knees. Thick yellow smoke came billowing into the enclosed server room and she blacked out.
Playlist: Video 37/67
Bremusa’s head hurt, like the worst hangover ever. She was feeling cold and rigid.
She moved her head around, felt the world spinning and shut her eyes for a few seconds to calm herself. She felt like vomiting but had nothing in her stomach.
She shifted herself, arching her back and feeling a smooth cold surface underneath her.
She opened her eyes slowly, fighting through the blur in her vision, adjusting to the light. Cold blue light was shining on her from the ceiling. Beside her were two men in surgical overalls with their backs turned, watching some monitors.
She leaned down and realised she was completely naked.
She clenched her fists and tried to get up but she hit the limit of what her restraints allowed her, clanging loudly like hollow chains.
The doctor turned around and said, “Oh, the specimen is awake.” He leaned over her and shone a light into her eye, as if she wasn’t harassed enough already. He muttered some medical terms as if to himself and the other doctor was taking notes on his pad, tapping away with one hand with incredible speed.
MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets Page 51
