Daughter of Mars #71 (Blind Wish part 1)
Wet breaths puffed over the top of Risa’s head, washing the flavor of greasy salami over her hair. Bird’s bear hug crushed the air from her chest, pinning her crossed arms and trapping her weapons in their holsters. Risa strained to lean back from the sword point at her throat, staring down the length of gleaming metal at the man holding it.
NanoLED tattoos of glowing indigo circuit lines lit I/O’s paper-white hair cobalt blue where it draped in front of his eyes. Red still tinted his cheeks, the aftereffect of her kick. He shook with rage, glaring at her as though he wanted to make her imminent death hurt as much as possible. All the strength in her legs shoved against Bird as the tip teased a droplet of blood from her neck. She locked eyes with I/O, feeling more anger than fear.
These idiots shouldn’t be a threat. What the hell is wrong with me?
I/O’s malignant anger seemed to evaporate in an instant. “Now, play nice.” I/O tapped her under the chin twice with the flat.
He leaned back to give Bax plenty of room to raise the handheld stunner to her cheek. The scent of ozone filled her nostrils as the blue glowing tip neared. Primal panic took over. Risa thrashed and screamed. A lucky high kick knocked the stunner out of his hand yet again. Bax roared incomprehensible malformed words drove his fist into her gut. She let off a noise like a stomped-on goose, and hung limp.
Risa screamed inside her head, hating every ounce of feeling weak and helpless.
“I thought you liked ‘em feisty, Bax?” said Bird.
I/O frowned. “That’s not what this one’s for. Four hundred grand, boys.”
“Yeah, man,” wheezed Bird, grunting from the effort to contain her. “But they didn’t say we couldn’t―”
“Argh!” Risa yowled, and slammed her head back into the man’s teeth.
Pain exploded in a starburst at the back of her skull. She nodded and drove her skull into his nose a second time. Bird squeezed her harder, and she thrashed, growling and kicking. I/O grabbed her left leg and fumbled to contain her other wild limb.
Bird staggered; hot blood flowed down the back of her neck. Sensing his grip weakened, she forced her arms apart while letting her weight hang dead in his arms. Risa wriggled away, falling to the ground as Bax rounded another ham-fist. The punch caught Bird in the chest, turning his stagger into a stumbling fall. Risa, still fighting to breathe, kicked free of I/O’s grip. She rolled onto her front as she squeezed the trigger on the pistol under her right arm. Judging by the howl, the laser had scored a hit on Bax.
“Fucking bitch!” he roared.
“Enough of this,” said I/O, advancing. “We’ll still get half for a corpse.”
Risa dragged herself upright, one hand cradling her gut while her left arm gyrated in a desperate search for balance. Bax sprawled on the ground, both hands clamped around his left thigh. Blood and smoke oozed through his fingers from the half-inch hole straight through his leg. I/O swung his blade in a wide, telegraphed arc. Risa ducked at the cost of one or two hairs. Bird pulled a ballistic handgun off the back of his belt. It’ll hurt, but it won’t pierce. Risa instinctively held her fingers in claw posture, but her implanted blades refused to deploy. Expecting a bullet any second, she gritted her teeth and braced for impact. Air finally found her lungs as she leaned away from I/O’s backswing and pulled her weapons out. The usual floating crosshairs her cybernetic eyes provided failed to appear.
“Outta the way man,” yelled Bird, raising his weapon.
The sword went back entering the start of an overhead chopping motion. She shot a nanosecond glance to the right, at an alley offering cover, but to go for it would put her right in the path of the descending sword. With the grace of a matador, Risa slid to her left. The blade came down hard enough to spark on the plastisteel floor. Woozy from the stomach hit, she swooned backwards, raising her pistols. I/O brushed them aside with a twist of his sword, but not fast enough. Emerald laser light streaked from her left-handed weapon, through his shoulder, and into Bird’s cheek.
Before I/O could recover his sword for a counterattack, his chest exploded in a series of red spurts. A flurry of faint pops came out of the dark alley to her right. A red dot appeared at the center of I/O’s forehead, and the back of his skull exploded in a sluice of gore. He lingered upright for a second before collapsing in a heap. A rapid series of pops rang out in time with metal clanks on the ground; sparks appeared in a trail, walking over Bird as bullets riddled his body.
What the… silenced ballistic weapon?
Risa whirled toward the sound; her throat dried up at the silhouette of another man emerging from the alley with luminous green spots for eyes. She took a step back as the figure advanced. His arm went out to his right side, though his gaze never left her. He walked forward, firing two quick shots into Bax’s in the chest, and two more into his face.
Bax slumped in a heap.
Oh, shit.
She aimed both her guns at the new arrival, angered by the fear so visible in the wavering barrels of guns she couldn’t hold still. The man let the gun pivot on his finger, weight pulling the barrel to point upward. Another step brought Shiro Murasame into the light.
Shiro… Her heart thudded in her chest; she let her arms drop. Raziel, did you send him?
His lip curled into a cocky grin. “Hope I’m not interrupting. I’m sure you had that handled.”
She squatted, arms crossed over her bruised stomach, and gasped for air. “Uhm. Yeah.”
Shiro slipped his pistol inside his dark suit jacket. He glanced at the three dead men and offered her a hand. “Glad I went looking for you.”
He’s never going to let me forget this.
“How did you find me?” She coughed, rubbing her gut. “Bastard hit me right in the sweet spot. If I still had real eyes, I’d be seeing stars.”
“Call it a hunch.” He offered a hand, pulling her upright. “You don’t look so good.”
Thanks for noticing. She glared at Bax, and shivered. “Any chance of a ride?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” He held out his arm as if about to escort her into a private club. “Shall we have dinner at The Azure?”
I… no. I have to find Pavo. Risa wobbled to her feet. “I can’t. I’m in the middle of something.”
Shiro brushed the back of his hand over her cheek. She cringed inside, but kept it from showing. Red text appeared at random in her field of vision, errors about diagnostic failure. One panel suggested updating the firmware version of her NIU, but the Marsnet link showed as down. The self-check process crashed, and her eyes went dark.
Blind.
“Shit,” she whimpered, trembling.
“Risa?” asked Shiro, a touch over a whisper as he grabbed her arms.
“I-I’m blind.”
His arm slid around her back, supporting most of her weight. “The light went out.”
“That’s not good. Something’s wrong with me.” No. No. No. Terror, raked an icy claw over her heart. Pavo was dead, and she seemed to have one foot in the grave right behind him.
“You’re shaking.” He tried to gather her in his arms.
You’re not Pavo. She cried, wanting Pavo to be the one to carry her broken body to the medical pavilion. No… The shutdown of her augmented hearing came on with a sensation like cotton swelled up inside her ears. While her hearing had become ‘normal’, she felt deaf.
Shiro overpowered her pitiful struggle and lifted her off the ground. “Come on, Risa. You’re in no condition to be out here on your own.”
Her eyes didn’t reboot. After two full minutes of darkness, she stopped wriggling and let her head lay against what she assumed to be his shoulder. Soft bouncing motion rocked her as he moved. Never before had she felt so helpless.
Not even the night her father died.
Related posts:
Daughter of Mars #72 (Blind Wish part 2)Daughter of Mars #70 (Sanctuary part 2)Daughter of Mars #69 (Sanctuary part 1)
