by Zara Zenia
The first one rushed me, but he did not recognize me or what I was. I easily grabbed his shirt, lifted him, and threw him at one of the toilet stall doors. He crashed through it and landed in an unconscious heap. The other two stared at me with shock.
“What the hell?” said one.
“Hell doesn’t cover it,” I said. I waggled my fingers at them. “Come on. Want to finish it?”
The door to the bathroom cracked opened, but I slammed it back shut.
“Hey,” said the barman. “What’s taking you guys so long?”
“Indeed,” I said to the two remaining thugs. “What’s taking so long? I must admit, I’m growing uninterested already. I thought that at least with the three of you, I’d get a little entertainment.”
“Hell,” said one. His dirty blond hair hung in his eyes as recognition flashed in them. “It’s one of those Trilyn.”
“See?” I said sarcastically. “Your education system hasn’t totally failed you.”
“Fuck,” said the other. He swallowed hard.
“Now, if I open this door, will you leave quietly? Think fast, as difficult as that is for you. This is a limited time offer.”
“Yeah,” grunted the blond. “I can’t afford no hospital bill.”
It’s barbaric that they charge for health care services, but at least the consideration made my situation easier.
“Yeah,” said the other. “What he said.”
“Good.”
I stood behind the door and opened it, and the two flew out of the bathroom. As I expected, the barman entered and cursed when he saw his confederate unconscious in the bathroom stall. I threw my bag over my shoulder and slammed the door shut. The barman spun to face me, and I ran at him and pushed him into the far wall.
“Your customer service is subpar,” I snarled. “I came here looking to conduct a little business, and instead you try to steal from me. Now, instead of getting a wad of the cash in my bag, you’ll give me what I need.”
I pulled him roughly away from the wall while he babbled curses and ineffectual threats and herded him through the door and left down the hall. A door at the right smelled most like his disgusting self. I pushed it open to find an office filled with ragged furniture and piled with stacks of folded papers. But at least on the desk was a holo unit.
“I assume that because you are the criminal type, you use off-the-grid servers that run through the black web.”
He grunted in protest, and I banged his forehead into his desk to make my point.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Go. Enter your password.”
“Screw you,” he said.
“You aren’t my type. I require my lovers to at least bathe. And I doubt you clean up well. Go do it before I make what happened to your friend look like a friendly kiss.”
I pushed him forward, and he glowered at me before he keyed in his password.
The holo flickered to life.
“Now, go stand in the corner while I do my business.”
“Fuck you.”
I sighed and then pulled him forward and struck his chin with my fist. He stumbled back and fell to the floor.
Some people have to do things the difficult way.
I sat it the creaky leather chair behind the desk and called my eldest brother.
No answer.
Then the next.
The same.
And the next.
He wouldn’t pick up either.
This was weird.
I cut to the last name on the list because Rawklix always took my calls, but he took his damned time answering. When he did, it was from his bed, and it was apparent I had woken him. Beside him, under a sheet, a feminine form stirred.
“What in all of Tri’s Hells are you doing calling me at this hour?”
“I’m in trouble, and I don’t know why.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Like this is news?”
“Rawklix, please. I need to get out of San Francisco and preferably to one of our ships in orbit to straighten this out.”
“Let me see.”
Rawklix pulled his wrist AI off his nightstand.
“Holy Trilyn,” he said with his eyes wide. “Well, when you upset people, you go big, don’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That necklace you are wearing. Why would you steal a three-thousand-year-old national treasure from a country we are negotiating with? I am impressed, though, that you managed to cause an interstellar incident with the reclusive life you live.”
I touched the wesekhat my throat. “I stole nothing. Their Prince Mohammed sent it to me.”
“Dude, Prince Mohammed’s been in drug rehab for the past month. Don’t you watch the gossip shows?”
I snorted. “This is ridiculous. Come get me so I can fix this.”
“Wait. There is a message from Father here.” His face wrinkled in consternation. “Nope. No can do. Father’s forbidden any of us to interfere. He’s afraid if we intervene it will blow apart our treaty allowing us to search for wives here. And he’s suggested, should one of us be stupid enough to speak to you, offer yourself to local law enforcement.”
“What! Outrageous.”
He shrugged.
“There is a San Francisco officer assigned to your case. A Cat, sorry, a Catherine O’Shea. He suggests you surrender to her.”
This was insane. What was my father thinking? And my brothers ditching me? That was low, and I shall not forgive them.
“Rawklix, come get me this once.”
He sighed. “Sorry, bro. Big D has spoken. I’m going back to sleep now.”
“Rawkl—”
But the screen winked off, and I sat alone in a dingy office at the outskirts of no-man's-land with my reluctant benefactor now snoring on the floor.
The channel was still open, so I looked up this Catherine O’Shea on the ‘net. And when I did, I found to my surprise the ephemeral form of an AI staring straight at me. Quickly I activated a unique piece of code guaranteed to keep the AI’s channel open.
AIs were peculiar things and human ones even more so. They had an unnatural interest in human activities and one in particular.
“What are you doing?” shrieked the AI.
“Don’t worry, darling. I want to make sure you don’t leave me before I’m ready.”
“Take it away. Make it go away. I don’t need to see that.”
“But you’ve been so very curious, haven’t you, little AI? This one is from my files and one of my favorites.” I let the stream trickle into the AI’s consciousness.
It was a dirty trick to show the AI a raw sex act. We restrict AI’s access to such material, and they knew it. Built on logic, trying to make sense of the illogic of the sexual act could damage them. But their programmed curiosity protocols pushed to explore all bits of human interaction. PERI couldn’t resist, and I had my opening. The conflict between the two programs provided my opportunity to insert my slave program.
“First off, do you have a name?”
“Peri.” I could have sworn it huffed.
“Peri, I need all the information you have on the investigation on my alleged theft of the Iswan Wehket.”
Chapter 4
Cat
Strobe lights pulsed in time with the relentless pounding beat of dance music, light, then dark, spotlighting the dancers in staccato seconds of time. It made it impossible to scan for the alien who lured me here tonight. When Peri announced that Akrawn asked to meet me, I distrusted that this opportunity came to me too easily. I’m used to hunting the criminal, not having the criminal invite me to a party.
Coming here to this nightclub, the Vortex, must be a trap, but I couldn’t figure out what kind. The whole thing made no sense. Why steal a necklace, flaunt it like he did, and then run and hide?
David lurked outside with a bevy of special force ILE guys. They positioned themselves to take the perp down upon David’s or my command.
The
DJ’s music thumped and thrummed as I squeezed my way through the crowd to the bar as I scanned the patrons for our quarry.
I hardly recognized who I was in the nightclub outfit Ricci had punched up on the office printer. The contour-hugging, chromic-sensitive dress with side-slits danced through colors as fast as did the atmospheric, nightclub lights. It said ‘take me home I’ll be yours for the night’. It blended me like camouflage into this nightclub.
I calmed my breath as I arrived at the bar. I had on my ring that interfaced with Peri, and I wore embedded ear implants, to connect me to both Peri and David. Both could see what I saw, and we were all agreed I spotted no one that matched Akrawn.
At the bar, I asked for a non-alcoholic galaxy cocktail that changed colors. It matched my dress and ‘good-time girl’ persona. I turned and scanned the floor. The five staff on this lower level did not strike me as prince material. Three women dressed in shimmering gold, and two guys, one super thin and the other overly rounded milled among the patrons. I eyed the two men but unless our prince could shrink himself, neither were our man.
“Circulate,” said David.
The music made it easy for me to chat with David and Peri without being heard. And if anyone saw me moving my mouth, well, drunken idiots talked to themselves all the time.
“Easier said than done, but here I go.” I clutched at my drink to keep it from sloshing and pushed myself away from the bar.
David spoke into my ear, “I suggest heading straight to the balconies and the second bar. See if he’s there and we can gain a better view of those on the ground floor.”
“Ok,” I affirmed. I took off into the crowds and passed through holograms of forest lushness dripping exotic flowers. I skirted the dance floor, but David was right, even without the virtual decor, all I could see on this level was a bunch of trees rather than the wood. Too many bodies heaved and sweated, flirted and groped. I wished I had on my protective vest. Not because Akrawn was likely to shoot me first and ask questions later, but for the wandering hands I slapped away as I pressed toward the stairs.
“Oh, feisty,” said one.
“Rude,” I snarled, and he slunk away.
Upstairs, the holograms decorating the bar that hugged the wall in a circular arc flashed ancient Roman architecture with gold trimmings. With no dance floor, this area had an intimate feel and there were fewer bodies. And the music was less ear shattering. I scanned the bar staff.
“Unlikely,” said both Peri and David.
“Chill,” I huffed. Then I settled into a corner at the far end of the balcony with my drink, which swirled into a lurid pink.
Peri spoke once more, “Cat, please turn your head left toward the man on the dance floor below wearing a skintight suit of red and blue stripes with pointed shoulder pads.”
“Where?”
David’s voice crackled in my ear, “He’s dancing with the woman dressed like a bronze statue and he’s dressed as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.”
I looked and the surveillance camera in my SFPD issued contacts scanned and measured the man more accurately than the bar cameras that Peri hacked.
“That can’t be Akrawn,” said David. “I seriously doubt a genius Trilyn would disguise himself as an iconic pop music character.”
Peri’s voice piped into my earpiece. “We have too little data on him because of his reclusive nature. We can’t make that assumption.”
I sucked on my lower lip. It’s true we didn’t have much information. His brothers pointedly ignored our inquiries, except for the youngest brother, Rawklix. But all he said before he clicked off the call was that Akrawn enjoyed a good joke. But the Trilyn prince was reclusive which pointed to an inherently introverted nature.
“Peri, I have to agree with David. The guy on the floor is too flamboyant.”
David and I had cobbled together a psyche analysis that profiled our shadow-hugging Prince Akrawn as an observer rather than a social player. He wouldn’t drag himself on the dance floor. I expected he hid somewhere on the edges of the nightclub observing us. The moves the guy on the dance floor expertly executed had me drooling as much as Akrawn’s 3D figure strutting in the SFPD office.
Peri persisted, “He has the right height and muscle ratio.”
“No way,” we both vetoed Peri’s suggestion.
I stared at the pretend alien a little longer admiring his form until his gaze and smile drifted up to the balcony and spotted me ogling him. My eyes flicked away, but I couldn’t help my wandering sight return as he kissed his companion, then left her. A little curl of jealousy sparked as I tracked him off the dance floor.
Peri interrupted my wandering thoughts. “Cat, if you and David are sure this guy is not Akrawn, please scan the rest of the room.”
Imagine that. Scolded by an AI.
“Humph,” was all I said in response and scanned the crowd.
“Inspect the man standing to one side of the speakers near the DJ,” said David.
“Could be,” I replied.
“No,” said Peri, “wrong limb to torso ratio.”
“Cat, we might need to scout around the edges and check the more secluded spots.”
“Okay, I’m on it.”
I pretended I was drunk and tottered haphazardly around the upstairs throng, bumped into a few, slurred my apologies and wobbled through Romanesque ruins. None of the lovers’ seats hidden behind partitions had our man. I checked the toilets, including the gents, but found no sign of the prince.
“Let’s do the same downstairs, Cat,” said David.
I, and my now luminescent lime cocktail, teetered our way to the stairs. As I clutched the banisters prepared to continue my drunken act down the stairs, a liquid voice said, “A maiden in distress. May I offer aid?”
Before I could wave away the offer, a neat, firm grip circled my waist and lifted me down the stairs.
“Thank you. I’ll be fine now,” I said as I stared up into brilliant green eyes of the hunk dressed in the Ziggy suit. I swallowed hard. His steady hands around my waist made my breath hitch.
“I believe you will be, but dance with me first. Come.”
“Can’t. I’m waiting for my friend.”
“I doubt he’s coming. Accept he stood you up, and I’m your consolation prize.”
“How would you know?”
“I’ve been watching you all night, sweetheart, and you’ve been on your lonesome the whole time. What does your friend look like?”
“Tall, straight black hair—”
“So your typical tall, dark, and handsome prince?”
Dammit, I don’t have time for this. I have to concentrate on the job.
“Look I’ll be in big trouble if I don’t find my friend.”
“I doubt he can be your friend if he has stood up such a luscious thing as you.”
I squirmed to get free from his hold, and said, “If my boyfriend finds me dancing with you, we will both regret it.”
“Your boyfriend? A strange smile quirked on ‘Ziggy’s’ mouth. “And, you doubt I can take on this so-called boyfriend of yours?”
Ziggy’s muscles were strong, and mouthwatering, but I must keep on task.
“Cat,” said David’s voice in my ear, “you’ve got to get moving. We’re losing time here.”
I smiled sweetly at Ziggy and said, “My man’s one of a kind, and there is no way you would walk away undamaged.”
“So you think he’s special, do you?”
I nodded.
“Well, I like to see a woman who doesn’t play false with her man. But I give you half an hour to find him, and if he doesn’t turn up, you and I are dancing.”
That was my cue to leave, but some devil inside had me saying, “Won’t your girlfriend object?”
“Which girl? If you’d been watching me as I have watched you, you’d know I’ve been dancing with many here.”
I shook my head vehemently and tried to step away but got caught up once more in his arms. “You kissed her—�
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Crap, shut your mouth, Cat, before your red cheeks glow like Rudolph’s nose.
“You mean like this?”
Lips pressed into mine. I tried to push away. Arms wrapped me tight into him. Heat from a hard bulge pulsated through his skin-tight clothes into my lower abdomen. And what the hell! My body kissed him back as wild driving desire ran through my body. Our lips parted just enough to allow tongues to entwine.
“Cat,” said both Peri and David.
Ziggy released me as if he had heard Peri.
“Sweetheart, I give you half an hour, no more, with your friends, and then I come to claim you, only you.” His voice was pure husk, and I wanted more than anything not to be on the job.
“Cat, what happened?” asked my imbecile AI. “Your video feed went black.”
What happened was, I’d closed my eyes and the special contact lenses I was wearing saw my eyelids.
David saved me from answering. “Cat? Do you need me to come in and get that guy out of your hair?”
“No. You aren’t dressed for this place and he could spot you as law enforcement. Look, I’ll deal with the guy if he turns up again.”
“If you say so. However, I’ll be in the nightclub pronto if he does.”
“Just do your best not to blow our cover,” I said snarkily.
“Then get his name and I’ll visit him out of office hours.”
“David!”
“Just saying!”
Skirting the lower floor and peering into any dark corners or alcoves, I continued our Akrawn hunt. At some stage, I dumped my drink, now sparkling lemon, the color not the taste, and also dropped my drunken pretense. I’d lost patience. Where the hell was Akrawn? Did he divert resources so he could more easily slip out of town? Dammit. I bet that was his game. This whole night club thing was a ruse, and he was laughing at us behind our backs.
His brother said Akrawn loved a good joke.
“Peri,” said David, “in a rabble this size there should be at least one Akrawn look-alike.”
“David, Akrawn is an alien.”
“No kidding, Peri.”
“The two of you vetoed—”
“Time’s up, Sweetheart,” said a liquid voice next to my ear, while a hand spun me to face him. “Here, drink up, and this one is alcoholic, unlike your other.”