Two anti-grav pogo sticks.
I grabbed them both. Wasn’t sure why except that that packrat center in my brain lit up at the site of them. Anti-grav pogo sticks were exactly what they sounded like: pogo sticks that used anti-grav technology to give you a bounce. Much more oomph than a spring, and they’re absolutely not appropriate for kids.
“Pogo sticks?” Myka yelled as I ran past her.
I reached the end of our tether and pulled her along. “They might be useful!” At the very least, we could use them as blunt weapons.
Myka turned on her sprinter’s speed and overtook me. Three flights of stairs to get to the roof. One flight up, I heard heavy footsteps clattering behind us. Sev Tech was catching up.
Two flights up, a glance out the window activated my panic mode. This roof thing wasn’t going to work out at all. The neighboring building was too far away for a jump.
Three flights up, I’d come up with a plan to make it work anyway.
It was one of those early brainstorming plans that a sane person would reject out of hand. But my sanity was questionable, and time was not on our side.
Myka slammed through the roof door and granted us access to the wide expanse of sheds housed on the roof. Hiding? Not an option. Cool hovercraft escape? Not gonna happen. Seduce the Sev Tech mercs to get them on our side? Okay, I’d just watched a vid with that premise, and it was dumb.
So my unbaked plan was the only choice. The gap between buildings was about four Ellys long. Way too large for your average person to jump. Myka put the brakes on as she realized this. “I thought it’d be closer.”
No brakes for me. I overtook her without pause as a gunshot blasted near my feet.
“Keep going,” I said. If I had to give odds, I’d give my plan a ten percent chance of working. Ninety percent chance of us falling to our unglamorous deaths.
My momentum forced Myka forward, and I tossed her a pogo stick. “Do what I say, and don’t ask questions. Hand that to me when I tell you to. We’re gonna jump.”
Myka’s response was that of a reasonable person: “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
I ignored her because the answer was obvious. But with Sev Tech taking potshots at us, she didn’t give any actual resistance.
I wasn’t doing advanced mental calculations or anything. This was pure, unfiltered “winging it”. On the plus side, the terror flooded me with more adrenaline, which would be a nice boost.
Almost there. The neighboring building taunted us, and I staggered my footfalls to make sure I’d jump off at the best moment.
As my right foot hit the edge, I slammed the pogo stick down like a daredevil.
Myka was a screaming anchor on my arc, and she created the most fatal drag imaginable. Didn’t matter. I’d assumed that’d be the case.
Solid building gave way to a cavern of air, and I focused on the neighboring building.
“Now!” I shouted. I flipped the switch on as I dropped the grav board and let gravity—ha! —do its thing. The second pogo stick hit the palm of my hand, and I jammed it against the falling grav board, giving a meager boost to our momentum.
Then it was up to gravity and the gods.
The gods took pity on us.
There must’ve been a fortuitous wind or some bizarre distortion of the rules of gravity on Ri, because we definitely should not have made that jump. But somehow we did.
I hit the roof but was pulled over the edge as Myka fell short. She dangled from the handcuff as I grappled to a dip in the concrete with my fingers. The cuffs sliced the meat of my hand, and Myka’s weight threatened to pull my arms from their sockets. Her body swayed, slamming against the side of the building as the Sev Tech goons gawked from the other side.
The only thing keeping me and Myka alive was the beveled design of the roof.
“Can you find a ledge?” I strained. The wind up here was a monster, so I wasn’t sure if she heard.
She kicked her feet, though, faltering as gunshots pelted the building around her. The mercs were back to shooting at us.
My palms sweat. I imagined my fingers digging into the concrete to anchor their hold as Myka’s efforts jerked me around in a violent spasm. Felt like she was about to tear off my arm to keep her company in her fall. I might’ve been screaming. Definitely grunting.
The weight lifted as Myka found purchase. No chance to savor the relief, though, as a shot hit me in the back. I gritted my teeth and butt my head against the grainy concrete. No part of my body wasn’t in pain.
The gunshot wound burned my right hip, limiting my movement. I couldn’t pull myself up. My muscles couldn’t handle it.
Myka appeared next to me. She was scaling the fucking wall in her athletic shoes and knee-high skirt, eyes wide with terror but jaw set. She spared a moment to glare at me before she set site on the roof and continued her vertical crawl like a fucking mountain-climber. When our handcuffs reached their limit, she jerked at the restraint to get me to join her ascent.
Fine. We were doing a “push past the pain” thing. Ordinarily not my scene, but the continued shooting presented a compelling case to give it a try.
I clawed at the concrete above and slowly, arduously pulled my weight up using only my flabby biceps. Myka was already safe on the roof, and she pulled in a tug of war against gravity as my stomach hit the edge, then my hips, then a knee planted its flag as I shoved my arms into a full push-up. This was more exercise than I got in a year.
Finally I collapsed on the blessed surface that was the roof, panting as if I’d just punched through thirty steel walls. Myka also heaved deep breaths and glowed with sweat. Her expression contained a cross of anger, concern, and lingering terror.
Whatever. We were safe.
I Don't Believe in Authentic Earth Lemurs
The building was apparently a vertical zoo, currently closed. Real animals in habitats that rose up and up along a single guest path that gave disgustingly rich people the opportunity to view “authentic Earth animals”. The top habitat was a glass jungle enclosure for something called lemurs.
One hundred percent of the time, anything claiming to be an “authentic Earth” anything was a fraud that grifted rich people who wanted to claim status as connoisseurs of Earth culture. Those lemurs? Probably native to Cloogab. Definitely not from our long-deceased Earth. I doubted anything from ye old Earth still existed.
We crawled through an access door into the jungle enclosure and landed on an employee staircase that descended to intercept the guest path. Signs advertised that the lemur habitat was open to guests, so we probably wouldn’t fall victim to a wild animal attack.
My wound broadcast its pain more loudly as the immediate danger had passed. I sagged against a sturdy tree stump and pressed my hand against my hip. I’d only been shot once before. During the war, of course. The field medic, Cha, had made fun of me for crying like a baby.
Myka was all business as she eyed my injury. “Let me see it.”
I turned, yielding to her as she pulled up my shirt. I winced when her fingers brushed against hot flesh.
“Why were they even shooting at us? I got the data tab they want in my guts.” I spat the words out.
Something ripped. Myka, sacrificing the sleeve of her luxury blouse to press against the wound. Her hands were shaky. “The people in charge want the data tab. The mercs they hire are annoyed that we’re making their job so hard.” I inhaled sharply at the pressure of her hands. “You’ll need to get this looked at sooner rather than later.”
Well, that probably wasn’t gonna happen. She wrapped cloth from her other sleeve around my midsection in a makeshift bandage.
When I turned around, she looked on edge. “That jump was the dumbest thing I’ve ever been forced into.”
“Hey, it wasn’t my idea to go to the fucking roof! Besides, it worked.” Case in point, both alive.
“It was insane!” I’d never heard her so worked up. “And if you’d let me call in Cadinoff we wouldn’t have to hide
out with monkeys!”
Now her expression was so different from her expression as a kids’ entertainer. It didn’t intimidate me so much as intrigue me. She kept changing. Kept being different. “Since when does Glezos’ little sidekick do children’s entertainment?”
If she’d had both hands free, she would have crossed them. She frowned at the change in subject, then scowled. “Does it matter?”
“I just…I liked hearing you sing.”
My skin itched as the adrenaline rush kept shoving this need to keep acting onto me. Like I had to keep taking on the world, lifting all the transports, and fucking all the girls.
That last option snagged me as I looked down at Myka Benton, sweating and wide-eyed, frazzled and wearing my blood on her hands. Always centimeters away thanks to the cuffs, but way closer now. And as I looked down at her she looked up at me, and when our eyes met, I felt those somersaults in my belly.
I didn’t question it; I just kissed her. Her lips were soft and eager. Like she’d been waiting for me to do this for ages. A moan escaped from her mouth into my mouth. I pulled her towards me, and when I felt her body press against mine, I shuddered. What was it about this woman that was making me do this?
It was her everything. Her singing. Her scaling of walls. Her dimples and legs and everything else. All of it. She was a mystery, a puzzle, and I knew then that I wanted all of her. I wanted to figure her out, as long as that took. I wanted to see her smile—her real smile.
She leaned into me as I leaned into her, both of us pushing and taking and wanting and needing. I drank her in, lips tasting her mouth and her throat, reveling in the little noises she made in response. My free hand tangled through her hair, as my other hand wandered down her body to mirror her own roving hand. Conscious thought wasn’t there at the moment. Just desire and need and hunger and her soft body pushed against mine in such a way that all I wanted was to touch more of her. I nudged a knee between her legs, desperate to see her pleasure.
She jumped back with a shriek. So suddenly I almost fell forward. She stood wide-eyed with her free hand at her mouth. Then she laughed. I looked behind me.
Weird yellow eyes surrounded by coal black fur blinked at me. A fucking lemur sat on that tree stump, watching the show while chewing on a piece of fruit. Our dispassionate audience was not at all impressed by the performance.
Making out in the middle of a zoo habitat was not the greatest of ideas.
“We need to go.” Because Sev Tech mercs were probably working their way up to our level as we snogged. Because kissing Myka Benton was confusing as fuck. Because a lemur was staring at us.
Myka looked breathless, but she nodded. I took her hand and led, searching for the perimeter of the habitat and the door that would take us to the employee area. Hopefully, the Sev Tech goons would be going up the guest pathway. To be fair, I wasn’t concentrating much. As I found the employee door, all I could think about was Myka’s hand in mine. About my lips against hers. About what it might be like to…
Stairs. Lots of stairs. We flew down, and I kept hold of her hand the whole time, even when my palms grew sweaty. We reached the bottom and found the exit to the street. The station was still within sight. We hadn’t moved far, had we? It felt like light years.
Myka squeezed my hand and nodded through the crowd. “Sev Tech mercs.”
Myka didn’t hesitate as she pulled me into the nearest storefront—some photography place. I couldn’t tell if the Sev Tech mercs had seen us or not. They both wore shades, but they were facing our direction. Their pace wasn’t speeding up, but then, we were winded and not athletic.
The lobby was underwhelming and cold. This was some cheap fly-by-night joint, cashing in on the station nearby without attention to quality. An employee—an honest to gods human—walked up with a tablet. Not even a hologram! What type of Hightower business didn’t have a pushy holo-greeter?
I took in the ordered row of doors behind him and noted that each guest got a room. Good place to wait out the mercs.
“Welcome to Dream Photographs, what dream would you like—”
“Anything.” I bounced on my heels.
He didn’t look up, and he was tapping the tablet way more than required. Probably playing a game. “Romantic beach, mountain vista, formation of the galaxy, field of puppies—”
“Field of puppies!” Myka blurted.
I looked at her.
She shrugged. “I like puppies.”
The employee swiped at his tablet. “Okay, Room Four is ready for you. Photographs will be taken automatically. Puppies are real, the grass is not.” He looked up. “Why are you two handcuffed together?”
I was already pulling Myka to Room Four. “It’s a kink thing,” I called over my shoulder.
If the employee had an objection, I didn’t hear it. We were safely in the studio. Or, well, we were in a holographic field of tall grass. The image of a sun cast rays without the warmth and blurry, knee-high grass spread as far as we could see. A close look revealed chasms of pixelation that wavered with a non-existent wind.
“This is so cheap.” I walked right through the blobby, green prairie, footsteps sounding on the hard cement.
Myka looked at the horizon. “Where are the puppies?”
As if summoned, a door opened, and a flurry of puppies sprinted across the studio, zeroing in on the lone humans. Myka dropped to her knees, and I had little choice but to do the same. Only a second later we were overwhelmed, assaulted by wiggly masses of fur and slobber and fucking delight.
A janky hover-camera was snapping candid shots. I ignored it. The puppies fought over who got to lick Myka’s face. Myka was laughing, eyes bright, petting first one puppy, then the next, then as many as crowded her. She looked at me.
That was it. Her real smile.
I was idly giving this one spotted puppy a belly rub, and I got kinda lost watching Myka. She was beautiful when she was happy. I’d never noticed. Her eyes were bright, and all semblance of subterfuge vanished. She looked sweet. Like a person who laughed all the time and found the joy in life no matter what. The holo-sun’s rays were fake, but the glow around Myka wasn’t. She shined.
I leaned past the twirl of puppies and caught her lips in a kiss. One of those firm but quick kisses. When I pulled away, her look was inscrutable. To be fair, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling at that moment either. No, what I was thinking was impossible, but in that swell of happiness I didn’t care.
Myka tended to a golden puppy dancing on her lap. “I’ve always wanted a dog, but it’s just not feasible with what I do.”
“What she does”. Being a contractor, at Glezos’s beck and call, prepared to travel at the snap of her boss’s fingers. All of Myka’s loyalty and devotion went to Cadinoff. There wasn’t room for a dog.
I flopped a puppy’s droopy ears, considering. “I could dog-sit for you.”
She gave me the look that suggestion deserved: Mocking skepticism. Of course I wouldn’t dog-sit for her. I hated her.
The field vanished, and we were left in a small, bare studio. The puppies skittered on the floor as they started carousing away from us, called by some unheard signal. Then it was just Myka and me and a lot of confusion.
Myka cleared her throat. “We should get to the station.”
“Right.” Because we were in the middle of some shit.
As if in silent agreement not to discuss things, we exited the studio. We’d only stepped from the door when that employee popped up.
“Would you like to see the selection of photos?”
A family exited Room Three. Mom, Dad, and a boy and a girl. The kids were being boisterous, so Dad was yelling at them. Must have lost his patience during the formation of the galaxy. My stomach flipped. I hated when people yelled at kids.
“No.” Myka answered the employee.
My attention was stuck on the family. The boy was a being a little shit, like kids often were. The Dad, a hefty guy, snatched his son by the back of the neck and wh
ispered sharp words. The boy’s face furrowed up with a sickening expression as the Dad stood straight, grip still tight on his son’s neck. When the boy staggered, the Dad violently shook him like he was rolling dice.
Myka tugged at my hand. “El, we need to go.”
That kid was marched to the exit. He knew what was gonna happen when he got home. He knew, and he couldn’t do anything about it. It made him so angry to be so helpless. He was also scared, and he hated being scared. It was all over his face, and my chest ached with my pounding heart.
“Elly.”
The entry door slammed shut as the family left. Myka hadn’t noticed. I unclenched my fist and took a deliberate breath.
“We need to go.”
We did. I let Myka lead us to the station and onto the train. Everything was a blur until we sat on a grubby seat where a split in the upholstery spit up curls of padding. I wanted a smoke. A smoke would clear things up. Or a drink. Or a something.
I knew the statistics, okay? People who grew up in fucked up homes like mine created their own fucked up homes when they were adults. I knew this. It’d been hanging over me since I took that elective on “Family Dynamics” while at Becker. I’d wanted to understand the shit my dad did, but it’d just made me paranoid I was gonna be like him.
And I was. He was angry. I was angry. He was an alcoholic. I was far too well-acquainted with that poison. I shouldn’t because it made me like him, and I saw him when I look in the mirror because, dammit, I looked like him too. His brown hair, his stupid small nose, the way his face reddened when he got mad. I knew it. I’d beat my wife. I’d beat my kids. I’d—
“Are you okay?”
What a weird question for Myka Benton to ask, but I guess today was a weird day with Myka. Something about her was getting to me. This whole night was like being with a completely different person. I’d only seen her as a corporate drone. But now, with her singing to kids and flailing in zero-g and loving puppies…suddenly she was a person. And she was a person I liked. A lot. That was fucked up.
“I don’t know anything about you.”
The Henderson Helios: A Sci-Fi Adventure Novella Page 6