by Taya DeVere
Slowly, Laura’s lips turn into a half-smile. She takes her hands out of her pockets, straightening the sleeves carefully. While Iris and Timothy both stare at her, she picks an invisible piece of lint from her spotless white coat. Then she crosses her arms on her chest and gives another sigh.
“I see. Just another dumb bucket of a woman then,” Timothy says, snark in his voice. He steps closer to Laura. “Not surprising, really. I mean, taxi driver is not exactly an occupation for the geniuses among us.” He takes another step. “A bit cuckoo, too, are we? Light all burned out up in the attic?”
The last step takes him so close to Laura that if she were to lift her knee, it’d land bullseye on Timothy’s crotch. If Timothy would look to his right, he would now see Iris pressing against the back of the passenger seat. But the man keeps glaring at Laura, clearly convinced that she’ll soon give in and take a step back. But Laura doesn’t move. She stares back at the man, that same half-smile lingering on her face.
“Though I got to say…” Timothy reaches out and places his hand on Laura’s shoulder, “This specific dumb bucket happens to have a surprisingly hot body,” his hand moves an inch lower, “for an older hag like you.”
When Timothy’s hand moves toward Laura’s chest, the woman turns her face toward the van. Raising her brows, Laura seems to send some kind of a silent signal to Iris. Not out of fright or anger, either. If anything, Doctor Solomon seems amused, like she’s a lion facing a tiny mouse that’s threatening to take her life. But nothing about Timothy Walker’s predatory ways amuses Iris.
A hot feeling swarming around in her stomach, Iris jumps out of the van, both guns pointing at her trainer’s surprised face. The calm washes over her mind again. Her gait steady and light, Iris walks toward Timothy. Doctor Solomon hasn’t moved an inch. When the man steps back from her, Laura lifts her arm to check the time on her watch.
“Hey, whoa,” Timothy breathes out, chuckling nervously. “Easy there, tiger. You even know how to use…”
Iris lowers the stun pistol, lifts the other gun, and fires into the air.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” The gun’s barrel points at Timothy’s chest. Iris keeps walking as the man backs up to get away from her. “Iris, stop! Let’s talk about this!”
Iris presses on, forcing Timothy back. “I think I’m all done talking.” She tilts her head and gives him a quick, crooked smile. “But thanks.”
“Okay, okay, okay.” He tries to stop, stumbling on his own feet. He falls on his ass on the hard snowy road. “Let’s just talk about this, okay?”
She stops right in front of his boots, looking down at him. After a pause, Iris shrugs, keeping the gun pointed at her trainer. “So talk. What do you have to say?”
The man raises his hand as if to block the gun that is pointed at his face. Out of breath, he squints his eyes at the bright sunlight behind Iris’s back. “It was a misunderstanding. Okay? This morning. With Tina. I just needed some time to break the news to her.”
“News?”
“Yeah. You riding Alfred. In the Cup. Of course it’s going to be you. I mean,” he pauses to give a small, nervous laugh, “We both know you’re ten times the rider she is. Tina’s got nothing on you. It’s just…” He stops and huffs, changing elbows to support his weight and block the sunlight with his other hand, “See, Tina’s unstable. Yeah, quite hysterical, actually. I took her in when her mother couldn’t handle her crazy ass any longer. Drugs, I think it was. Pills and booze, rage attacks, self-harm. That sort of thing. Who knows where she would be if I hadn’t stepped up and offered to take her in as a live-in working student.”
“I don’t. Care.” Iris says between her teeth. “About any of that.”
“Of course you care! You girls are friends, right? All those sneaky little meetings in the grain room…”
Iris takes a step closer, bumping Timothy’s boot with her steel toe. She raises the gun to aim better. She’s not much of a shot, but from this distance, it’d be hard to miss.
“Okay, okay, fine! Tina’s a bitch! I’m an asshole! What can I say?! You ride Alfred in the Cup. Okay? You ride him, make us fucking rich, and I’ll send Tina back to America. Or no, better yet. We’ll have Tina work the barn, and you can live in the house, rent-free. We’ll order a fucking chef to cook for us every day! Huh? What would you like, sushi? Because it’s on the house!”
The gun doesn’t shake. Her hand is so steady, Iris feels as if her body has frozen in its zen-like state. She stares at the man, listening to her body. No bubbling rage. No difficulty breathing. The anger she felt before is there, but now, it’s not controlling her anymore. She’s in control. Of her body. Of her mind.
“Come on, Iris.” Timothy says, mistaking Iris’s pause for hesitation. He sits up, wiping his hands together. “What more do you want me to say? What more can I say?”
Lips parted, Iris lowers the gun. She lowers her gaze and shakes her head once. “See, Tim. That’s the thing… Or the problem.” She looks up and lifts her chin. “I don’t want you to say a damn thing. Not one word.”
The stun pistol clicks as Iris aimlessly pulls the trigger. The dart lands next to Timothy’s left shoulder. She’s missed by half a meter.
“Fuuuck!” he yells frantically. “Aaagh!” Scrambling, his back against the ground, Timothy starts spider-walking away from Iris. “You bitch! You fucking bitch! You can’t do this to me! Don’t you know who I…”
The second dart lands in the middle of Timothy’s forehead. His whole body freezes. For a few seconds, he stares at Iris with bewildered eyes. Then he falls limp on the road, unmoving.
With the wind in her ears, Iris stares at the man. She feels nothing. No regret, no relief, no satisfaction. It’s not until Laura parks the trolly next to Iris that she snaps out of her death stare.
“To answer his question,” Laura says, her voice light with a hint of amusement. “Yes, I know who he is. He’s test subject ICE25778.” She pushes the trolly next to Timothy’s unmoving body and gestures at his feet. “Grab the legs. Let’s drag him over with the trolly. The van has an electric ramp.” Laura moves over and grabs Timothy by the shoulders, murmuring, “This should make dear mother happy…”
Iris hurries to lift the man’s legs. Slightly lightheaded, she enjoys the adrenaline rushing in her veins. “Your mother?” she asks, just to ground herself in the craziness of this whole moment. “Why would this make her happy?”
Together, they drag Timothy sideways onto the trolly. Once Laura lets go, and Iris works on the trolly, slowly pulling it toward the van, Laura says, “In addition to drinks by the resort pool, she suggested I try exercising outside in the fresh air. Something about it being better for the mind than hormone and serotonin balancing.”
Iris stops the trolly by the van. She leans in to look for a button to bring the ramp out.
“And I’ve got to say,” Laura says while walking over and pressing her hand on the pad attached to the van’s side. She taps in a command code, and the ramp pushes out from underneath. “I do feel kind of refreshed right now.”
Iris can’t help it; she bursts out laughing. Once the ramp has settled at ground level, she circles the trolly, then pushes on it, tilting it forward, so Timothy’s sluggish body lands on the ramp. Laura taps in another command, and the ramp lifts up. Once it clicks into place, Iris and Laura roll Timothy’s body in, put the ramp away, and close the door.
Even more lightheaded but still in a pleasant way, Iris calms down from her laughing attack. With a smile on her face, she follows Laura back into the van. The engine purrs to life. Iris sits in the passenger seat, buckles her safety belt, and looks at her new employer. A sigh of relief rolls off her lips.
“Now, are we ready?” Laura asks, both hands on the wheel.
“For what?” Iris asks. “To make the world a better place?”
The white coat ruffles faintly as Laura shrugs and gives Iris a small smile.
Iris meets her smile, then fixes her gaze on the horizon. “
Ready!” she says, her voice loud and clear. “What do we do next?”
CHAPTER 6 — CITY OF ENGLAND
Investigating her bleeding knuckles, Iris waits for the elevator to arrive. The Chip-Center is quiet, though it now has twice as many tenants since Owena, her friend—a man called Pickle—and the CFU leader Ef have moved in. Iris hasn’t bothered to talk to any of them. Passing the weird six-year-old in the corridor, all she had for the girl was a stern nod. But to Iris’s surprise, that’s all the girl did as well; she nodded with Iris in sync, never stopping or saying a word.
Ef is here to gather troops to take down Nurse Saarinen. Together with Laura and those in the Egg, they’re to come up with a strategy to stop the war that still rages in multiple AR-cities around the world. Together with City of Serbia, the United Inland, the black-market leaders, and the CFU, they are going to put an end to Nurse Saarinen’s dictatorship.
Or that’s what Iris has been told. The truth is, she doesn’t really care. Not anymore.
Her chip is gone.
Her home country has been bombed to ruins.
The only person that ever took an interest in her, also gone.
She has no purpose in life. No one to push her forward, no one’s approval to gain.
The elevator door slides open silently. Iris walks in and, as if on reflex, looks for her AR-glasses to give the machine an order to go down to the basement. But as soon as she taps on her pocket, a wave of disappointment washes over her. She turns and slams her hand against the bottom button next to the elevator door.
“Mediocre…” she murmurs, “Useless…”
Once the elevator door slides open again, Iris steps onto the glowing red basement floor. In the middle, a brighter light illuminates a row of operating tables, computers, screens, and other gadgets. Iris is familiar with all of them. She just can’t search a database in her mind to use them. Not anymore.
In the distance between the smooth-surfaced, horizontal capsules glowing dimly with reflected red light, something moves in the dark. Iris reaches for her AR-glasses to zoom in, just to remember this is all the vision that is available to her.
“Shitty human senses…”
A man’s silhouette appears between the capsule rows. A smaller shadow follows, marching determinately next to the man. Suddenly, a bark sounds from the basement’s depths. Soon, a yellow dog jogs past the man and the child, heading straight to Iris with a tennis ball in his mouth.
“Wacko, stay!” Ef’s voice booms in the space. But the dog keeps coming toward Iris, now leaping forward with excitement. He stops a meter away from Iris, drops the tennis ball, and wags his tail. When all Iris does is stare at the ball, the dog gives her a forceful bark.
“Sorry…” Ef says and stops by the dog, then kneels down to scratch its neck. “He sure is cute and smart, but listening doesn’t seem to come with the package.”
Iris stares at the man with narrowed eyes. Owena stands between the man and Iris, scratching the back of her head and staring into space. Iris bends over to grab the tennis ball. She tosses it in the air and catches it, keeping her gaze locked on the excited dog.
“Wacko, sit,” she says. The dog sits, licking its lips.
“Wacko, lie down.” The dog does as he’s told.
“Wacko, roll over.” He rolls over, then sits again, alert and focused.
“Wacko, stay.” Iris brings her hand back and throws the tennis ball deep into the basement. It clanks against a red pod somewhere in the hall. The dog sits still, his eyes locked with Iris’s. “Okay, fetch,” Iris says, sending the dog off like one of Nurse Saarinen’s missiles. She stands up and crosses her arms on her chest, looking at Ef with a bored look on her face. “You were saying?”
The man gives Iris a grin. “Ah, yes. The dogs lived with you in Iceland. Totally slipped my mind.”
“Why would you remember such a thing?” Iris asks listlessly. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
The man holds his breath for a moment before he exhales and crosses his arms, mirroring Iris’s position. “I see. Just like little Owena here, you’re not into sharing and fluffy, feely things. I can respect that. But you’re still part of the team. And anyone in the team is important. So I do know a thing or two about you. And everything I’ve learned is,” he pauses, “Well, it’s beyond impressive.”
“Yeah?” Iris asks, no enthusiasm in her voice. “And which team is that? The Unchipped? The Chipped? The Chipped for the Unchipped?” She pauses to shrug. “Because I lost track a long time ago.”
Wacko’s claws click-clack against the tile floor. He drops the ball in front of Iris, then backs up and sits down, his gaze flickering between Iris and the fetched ball. Iris looks at Owena, then nods at the ball. “Aren’t kids supposed to like balls and games?”
Owena snaps out of her thoughts. Her hand frozen on the back of her head, she looks at Iris with a serious look on her face. “Like cartoons and hopscotch?”
Iris frowns, opens her mouth to reply, but when none of the comebacks seem appropriate, she presses her lips into a thin line and looks at Ef. “What are you doing down here? The mother hen sent you?”
“No, she did not. Mrs. Salonen is resting. Gathering her strength for the meeting.”
His words surprise Iris. For a second or two, she blinks and stares into space. Is the old woman not doing well? Is she sick? The thought hasn’t even entered her mind until now. It would be much like Mrs. Salonen to hide her own discomfort or sickness to take care of someone else. And for the longest time, that someone else has been Iris, whether Iris herself liked it or not.
“No, it’s curiosity that brought me down,” Ef continues. “Checking out the famous London long-term storage pod farm,” he says, craning his neck to look around the enormous, dimly lit space. “I knew it’d be ominous, but damn,” he shakes his head, “I guess I didn’t realize the immensity of it. Or how many levels deep this place goes.”
Iris sucks her lower lip in, then forces her feet to move. “You’ve seen stasis capsules before,” she says and heads straight to the operating tables to pick up a CS-key. After a few seconds of staring, she curses under her breath and starts tapping on the device, unable to access any folders or data through the database that was once her chip-mind integration. This is going to take fucking forever.
“I’ve seen plenty of stasis capsules, yes.”
“So what’s so different about this place?”
“No, you’re right,” Ef says. With his hands crossed behind his back, Ef walks over to where the red pod rows start. “It’s all creepy as fuck. I guess it’s just the way these bad boys look.” He knocks on the top of the closest pod, “They look… sealed. As if they were never meant to be opened again in the first place.”
Iris shrugs, opening a list under a heading called ICE. “Maybe they weren’t,” she mumbles.
Behind her back, Wacko barks again. Iris turns around to see Owena staring at the dog, then at the tennis ball, then at the dog again. Iris lowers the computer in her hands and takes a step toward Owena. “Just pick up the ball and toss it.” The girl looks up at Iris, her round, enormous eyes blinking. “Pick,” Iris says, her voice slightly softer. “And toss. Go on. You can do it.”
Owena steps toward the ball, bends over to grab it, then brings her arm all the way back to toss it. Before she does, she looks over at Iris, almost as if to ask for a final okay.
“Just toss it. It’s okay if it doesn’t go fa…”
Owena throws the ball in the middle of Iris’s sentence. It takes off with so much power, it looks like a machine of some sort launched it, not a six-year-old girl.
“Holy shit…” Iris says aloud.
“She might not have the chip anymore,” Ef says, now standing across the operating table that Iris stands by, “But all that strength and knowledge is still with her.”
Iris swallows, watching the small girl stand statically in place, waiting for the dog to come back. “Is she…” she clears her throat, her eyes l
ocked on Owena’s hand as it scratches the back of her head again. “Is she doing okay?”
“She’s better now,” Ef says while picking up one of the CS-keys from the table, flipping it around in his hands. “Better here with her friends than in some bunker with a murderous lunatic.”
Iris frowns, now looking at Ef’s face instead of at Owena. “When are your troops entering City of Spain?”
Surprise washes over Ef’s face. His lip twitching, Iris is sure he’s about to make a teasing comment like “Look who’s finally back in business!” or “Oh, so you do want to do some actual work and not just to beat a stinky punching bag all day long?”
But he doesn’t say anything. He even wipes off the smile and the surprise on his face. This makes Iris like the man a tiny bit more than she did before.
A moment later, he answers Iris’s question. “During the next outing. Owena here tells us Nurse Saarinen does leave the bunker occasionally, though not too often. The next time she does, we’ll be ready.”
“And that’s it?” Iris says, snark in her voice. “Boom, the Nurse is dead. Everything is fixed. Life is good. Good conquers evil. No more mass murders or drugged up, mindless people giving each other one or two-star ratings?”
“Quite the opposite,” Ef says, smiling. He puts down the CS-key and looks at Iris with friendly eyes. “Once Nurse Saarinen is out of the equation, that’s not the end but the beginning.”
“Of what?”
“The real work. Rebuilding. Gaining trust. Healing.”
A snicker escapes her lips, but Iris can’t help but ask, “And how the fuck are we supposed to rebuild anything from this shit-storm? People are so far gone. Brainwashed. Weaker than they’ve ever been. As far as I know, they can barely wipe their own asses without taking a pill or looking up instructions on the AR-net.”
Ef bursts out laughing. Wacko’s bark fills the room as he returns to Owena, this time shoving the ball straight into the girl’s hand. The faintest smile visits Owena’s face as she gets ready to throw the ball again, this time in a slightly less robotic manner.
