Daughter of Mars #76 | A Plea in Darkness part 2
Before Risa could shove the grate open, one of the gang members offered each boy a skewer. She drew a breath in surprise. The sight of a gang known for violence showing kindness mesmerized her.
“I want you to watch over Kree.” Risa reached up and slid her fingers through the slats, letting her arm hang. “Don’t let them turn her into whatever it is I am.”
What you are is nothing to regret. Raziel’s voice existed as a whisper in the back of her mind, devoid of its usual paralytic charge. You grow weary of the conflict. If not Risa Black, then who?
“That’s not fair.” Her grip on the slat tightened until she expected to see blood. “You can’t have her in my place.”
You misunderstand me. The child is too young. The cause demands action now, not in ten or twelve years. Someone must bear the burden.
Images of the last moments of Pavo’s life replayed in her memory. “Okay. You win. Keep her safe and happy. I’ll do whatever the Front needs… as long as it doesn’t kill civilians.”
Keeping the child safe perhaps I can influence. You are better suited to keeping her happy.
“Me?” Risa wiped a tear as she scoffed. “She’s already lost one mother, and I flirt with death every day. I couldn’t do that to her again. Kree deserves better than me.”
Assisted pneumatic struts hissed as Risa shoved the grate away and up. Her sudden motion startled the SecSpiders, who reached for pistols and submachine guns. The boys kept eating, though their eyes locked on her as she emerged. Risa stood, closed the vent cover, and faced them. Opportunism and lust in their expressions melted to the sort of face she’d have expected from a rat staring at a tiger.
“Make a wrong turn, tí-zhèn?” The man behind the grill let his hand slip away from the pistol at the front of his belt. Yellow irises glowed stark in contrast to his dark brown skin. “Y’aint here for us. Your kind of badness be too much cred for the likes of ‘dis ‘ere.”
“No,” said Risa, walking away.
A different man whistled after her. “Oh, what I wanna do to that ass.”
Risa stopped, leaving her back to them. “Come get it.”
Eyes closed, she relied on her Wraith implant. Six figures drawn in wisps of grey appeared. When did seeing in 360 degrees stop feeling strange? One figure got up and took three steps towards her before hesitating and twisting back.
“Hey, you fuckers just gonna sit there?”
The Spiders aren’t known for preying on women; guess every group has a winner.
“Yep,” said the grill man. “Code don’t abide nothin’ bout stoppin’ suicide.”
The two other figures fidgeted, but made no move to stand.
“Feh,” said the ganger, returning to his seat. “Thought she was offerin’.”
Grill man laughed. “Yeah, to kill you.”
She stood motionless for ten seconds. When none made a move to get up, she walked through a once-wide passage, narrowed with stacked trash containers and loose debris. The din of a crowd grew in volume as she neared the end. Bits and pieces of conversation reflected off the walls from people going about their daily drudgery. The aroma of the Spiders’ street meat had scratched at her hunger, letting it peek out from under the weight of her grief.
A spark leapt a synapse in her brain, raced along a neuron to a point where a nanometer wide platinum thread touched it. At the left corner of her vision, a virtual holo panel unfurled like a scroll with a pattern of thin blue lines against a transparent cyan background. The word ‘calling’ flashed and danced in the middle.
Risa wandered among the crowd, paying them as little mind as they did her. Six steps later, Aurelia Imari’s face appeared in the rectangular frame.
“Risa? Where the hell have you been?” The woman leaned forward, sighing. “For shit’s sake, I thought the bastards got you too.”
“I had some hardware problems.” Risa trudged with a sullen, downcast stare and a blank expression. If she had been wearing anything with pockets, she’d have stuffed her hands in them. “Have you found anything?”
“Can’t talk here, but not much.” Aurelia glanced to the side. “That’s odd. I’m not getting a trace on your location.”
At least I know that works. “New NIU, maybe it’s still upgrading its firmware.” She caught a whiff of bacon on the wind and altered course in that direction. After stopping short to avoid a collision with a large man in a suit, she ducked into a dingy little eatery that appeared to have more grease on the walls than in the food. Another panel opened with the Elysium City navigation app. “I’m on Tier 2, Sector 34 commerce square.”
“Alright, I’ll meet you there.”
Risa slid into the last booth, with her back against the wall. A thin open walkway separated the row of tables from a display case full of various vat-grown lunch meats, and led to a pair of bathrooms in the back. Her vision zoomed in on the shirts of one of the men behind the counter, centering on the logo.
“Apparently, I’m in some shithole named ‘Bob’s’. Judging from the war going on in the men’s room, maybe I shouldn’t eat here.” Sometimes enhanced hearing is a curse.
Aurelia laughed. “The place looks like hell, but the food’s good. A lot of MDF officers swear by it. I’ll be there in a few.”
“Hey,” said a man in his early twenties, in a Bob’s apron. “What’ll you have?”
Aurelia’s virtual image faded as she disconnected the call. Risa looked past the waiter, above the counter where five holographic displays cycled through different offerings. She pointed at something resembling an omelet on a bun. “What’s that?”
“Bacon-mageddon. Eggs, quarter pound of bacon, plus whatever else you want on it.” He smiled. “One of our favorites.”
“Ugh… Omni-bacon smells so good but it congeals too fast.”
He gasped, and placed one hand flat on his chest. “Madame, how could you imply we serve such an atrocity? I assure you, our bacon is real.”
She raised an eyebrow. “This place has vat bacon?”
“We do.” He dropped the false snobbery, and gestured at the oldest man behind the counter, who appeared to be fifty-ish. “Jimmy says ‘the fancier a place looks, the less they spend on the quality of their food.’”
Risa took a moment to look at her surroundings; striated maroon-brown grease on the metal wall, scratched and dented furniture, and a ceiling full of exposed LED bulbs. “If that’s true, the food here ought to be worthy of angels.”
The man bowed. “Then you’ll have to tell me what you think.”
Related posts:
Daughter of Mars #75 | (A Plea In Darkness part 1)Daughter of Mars #74 (Blind Wish part 4)Daughter of Mars #73 (Blind Wish part 3)
