by Jane Brooke
What it perhaps would be was an odious spectrum of night mares that few humans or Cyborgs for that matter could ever understand, let alone survive.
Though neither knew it at the moment, the upcoming darkness would be the beginning of the end for them, with THAT ending still unwritten by a Ozone Ranger and the cop Cyborg Girl that loved him.
Part 2
THEY HAD lazed in the Sun and blue skies of Virtual for a day and, then because Krull was Krull, they had returned back to their isolated loft world.
Forever stealing any down time for Krull for he needed it for rest and rejuvenation, Adray had allowed him to sleep through the approaching night.
Night was upon them, though the only way Krull could tell that was from the electronics he had scattered around his loft. Venus, with an ever ticking time clock in her head knew everything at virtually ever tick of real time.
Time, temperature, distance, weather, moods, lies, truth and above all Krulls Bio, Cerebral and Med Rhythms; she especially monitored those.
The fact that she would never die or really age a hundred of the man she loved life span crushed her great heart. She had a remedy for that. Krull being Krull, and so selfless, well in the end she knew she just might have to highjack him, literally, for her plan for his salvation to come to fruition.
Krull had awakened and it was night time. Venus was sitting there, a glass of chilled pomegranate fruit juice waiting for him.
Obeying her orders, he ingested her nutrient enriched secret potion. He got a good boy kiss on his shaved dome for following her wisdom.
They had geared up and had hit the streets again. They we’re on the hunt for King Mohammad and his secret Pink Panic Club again.
They had picked up some info from a drug addicted street whore female snitch named Candy Girl about the wear a bouts of The Kings number one lieutenant. He was a nasty little piece of work named, Master Assad.
Adray had laid Ten Script on the hooker, thanked her, monitored her and knew she would be dead in a month. If a deadly rape or a bullet hadn’t found her yet, Aids would.
It was, just one more-bad-roll of the dice for any female born in the wrong century and the wrong world.
Through the night, with the snow falling harder and it growing ever colder they searched for the first link in the chain of finding the Power Lord King Mohammad.
And, then:
“Well, what do we have here?” Venus asked.
Moving out of a fog shrouded alley as Krull smoked a cigarette, Venus towered over a small Arab man, a ragged brown and burnt skinned man.
A man she was levitating off the ground with one arm as she gripped his coat collar and she was all business. He was wearing ragged reflector clothes, goggles, no air breather and the standard silver shield coolie hat.
All the chinks and Arabs wore them, and he was now terrified. He had good reasons for that.
“Seems Gun here, has not seen Master Assad. Odd I think. I scanned him, he is lying.”
Krull sighed, and exhausted had no time for the usual cryptic bull shit Arabic/Chinese games.
The Arabs ran most of the illegal shit, down in THE ZONE.
Krull knew that this Gun character worked for Master Assad and was a notorious SLAKE grower.
Of course they were the killer snake like, two meter long reptiles, plated scaled skin, literally swimming jagged tooth threshing machines that through evolution had vomited out of the sewers of S. America.
CENTRAL BIO had figured they had metamorphosed from rats and cock roaches. First in the latrines and sewers in Bolivia and, then they had migrated north.
Nasty fuckers, they had rows of razor teeth and had eventually taken over the sewers, putrid rivers of the USA. They needed water to live, breed and were the one thing on the planet that Krull feared.
He had been down deep, in the cesspools, the sewers of La Paz, Bolivia, with his troops and a Sgt. named Adray Venus. Only because of her valor and ferocity with her twin swords had they barely got out alive.
The Slakes had flourished there; first time; no one knew they had even existed.
It had been a blood bath, and he had gotten out alive because Venus had saved his sorry ass. He remembered her Samurai like swords flashing, ripping, tearing a path through the blood of men, Slakes, and many 1st edition, low level Battle Droids that had gone over to the other side.
The droids, all men, were 1st edition AE grunts workers, constructed internally of hard nonferrous metals, and wrapped in human skin. With basic human brains, they had been the expendable front line soldiers in all the wars. Basically, they were low level, powerful workers, many of tremendous durability and strength. They were the diggers, lifters, labors and workers and their numbers were down to ten percent of their original count.
Some were seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. Through the decades, especially after the far superior Cyborg Girls hit the scene they had been worked into oblivion. Yet still they held desires and many were used by men like King Mohammad as their enforcement muscle.
Central Command figured another decade until they vanished finally from the planet. No one would miss them. Evolution again had been perfect.
During the Hispanic wars it had been the Droids that had taken the greatest hit from the Slakes. At the end of that war Adray and Krull had been the only two of the platoon that had ever seen the light of day again.
Slakes were good eatin’ though and no one ever dared go to the sewers to get them, for ya never came back if you did.
There were though men, or Droids that grew them, nurtured them and, then sold or bartered them after feeding them human offal, which the slimy pukes loved. It was strictly black market stuff, mostly in illegal off shoot hot houses, for the Slakes we’re not fond of the cold.
But of course it wasn’t cold in the sewers and most on the streets called it Magic Meat.
The moniker had stuck.
Krull still had the scars from their vicious attacks when he had been fighting street by street, sewer by sewer in Bolivia, and there were no shortage of nightmares, which came more than not nightly.
Knowing that Gun was Master Assad’s number one, as Master Assad was King Mohammad’s number one, he felt little patience. Just wanting the night to end, be over, so he could get some TLC from his gal again, Krull was in a fucked up mood.
Knowing the shortest string between two eye balls was a hollow-point, he figured lets get down to it. So, he did.
Venus, watching, lowered Guns flip flops to the alley floor. Krull un-holstered his 357, shoved it into the terrified gimps mouth. Guns eyes, rabid pin balls, through his goggles, spittle spilling down his wisp beard, gurgled and stuttered.
Krull got up close, personal, and growled. “Fuck you, Assad, he in there?”
Krull nodded down the alley, where there was one massive carbon steel iron door welded into another Carbon steel wall. There was a blue strip of neon illuminating a hand ID pad welded into the wall.
Above that were two CCTV cameras, with blinking red lights on them.
“Gurgle gurgle, no no...no...nothin’, nada, nunca.”
Gibberish, street lingo, mix of Arabic, English, Jap and Spanish.
YANK TALK that’s what they called it. None of it was making Krull feel warm and fuzzy; none of it at all.
Spit and blood from a broken lip, terror in his eyes, Ozone Cops, one a pissed off looking Cyborg Girl cop, well never fuck with one of those. Especially Krull as then “Click” Krull cocked his magnum.
He had a cold isotope look in his blue eyes.
“Last chance amigo, Master Assad he in there?”
Venus leered at the fury in Krull’s face. She was one very worried girl, for no one, nada, had to tell her huge brain that her human man was:
Messed up, on the edge; burnt out, way burnt out.
Staring at a black iron tube, a hole in its end, a hollow point behind that, well sometimes that handgun barrel looks blue to a mutt.
It also looks like a fucking death warrant.
Instantly Gun nodded, nodded again, tears dripping down his burnt face, saliva, blood mix mastering in his chin whiskers as he stuttered.
“Si, ya, Master aaah...Assad wit da Slakes, ya, el dentro. Por favor, no kill Gun...Por favor. Arigato”
“Click.” Krull’s gloved thumb lowered the hammer.
Venus exhaled, wanted to touch her mans burnt face, skin, his blistered lips with her aquiline fingers. She didn’t, inhaled through her gills to calm herself, waited.
“I’m not going to kill you, but if you’re lying, she will.” He tilted his head at Venus.
His body vibrating, not from the cold, but fear, Gun leered at Venus’s green eyes. They looked back at him hard, cold, a drilled death machine look in them.
No one had to tell Gun what the beauty bots were capable of. They didn’t need any whisper reminders of their savagery as reminders that he would be cold dead if the pretty machine had chosen to snap his neck, one of their fav things.
“No...noo lies, senor Krull...Assad, inside...wi...with da Slakes...Ya in der.”
Venus, feeling her internal temperature rising, got into Gun’s face and snarled. “And The King?”
“Da...Don’t kn...kow...Por favor...Pink Panic...si...Ass...Asssad...Assa know...Very bad...The pink...Por favor...”
Krull swallowed his fatigue, said disgustedly. “Go. Get the fuck out of here.”
Gun turned and like a rat shuffled down the alley. At its end he looked back, saw Venus’s glowing eyes. He gulped, merged into the crowds along the stalls of the street and was gone.
Smiling a broken Cyborg smile, for humans we’re so vulnerable, so temporary, Venus touched her lovers face. She looked at him with such love, and above all concern and whispered.
“Krull, come, it is late. We go home, yes? There is tomorrow...Yes my man?” She spoke every language known to man, and often she had an accent when she spoke.
More and more she could see his mind had been drifting, falling, failing and so filled with pain and of course she had known why. More and more and even with their down time in Virtual he was not recuperating and now bit by bit he was diminishing.
She knew that Krull yearned for a new world, a clean world, an air world. He dreamed nightly of water, clean water, some place, any place where there was no violence, no-death and no-half human people that murdered at a consummate level.
But, where was that place?
They had talked, BRITISH MOON of course. But he was years away on that list, even though his heroics in the wars had given him some privileges, basic perks. Perks like the hermetically sealed warehouse/loft they lived in now.
But that wasn’t the truth and she knew that Krull knew it also.
Somewhere in her great female heart she had known that she had been responsible for him still living in a putrid garbage heap, called Miami. She was formulating an outrageous plan to save him, herself, and late at night as her man slept she had been working in the depths of the sewers on that plan. It was a last ditch bailout, her secret.
What she did not know was that sometimes secret plans change to a deadly and brutal reality within the tick tock of a girl’s genetically made heart.
Time was ticking, mostly on Krull’s human clock, she would see.
Though Central Command had tolerated him being with a Cyborg, don’t ask, don’t tell, still it was what it was; a human loving a half machine.
Few if any men ever really made the trip out there into the dark void, especially if they were dragging a SPEC-24-3 twist with them. Unless of course they became half human also, meaning robotics, bionics for severed limbs, where then they were considered half humans also.
All kind of rules could be bent for war heroes, for after all good PR, any PR was exactly that. Good PR.
Over their time together she had loved him so much that she had offered herself up as a one way ticket to The Crushers. You know, becoming a can opener, maybe a gear for a Magnetic Electrio Car, the kind they had in the BUBBLE WORLDS.
Maybe that would be a last chance lotto ticket to set her man free. Fuck, lots a Cyborg Girls had committed suicide and were still doing it on a daily basis.
Why not her, had been her reasoning.
Krull had had none of it, none of it at all.
Fuck, though in any other world and in any other eco system she would have been thought as exceptional, unique, valuable for so many different reasons, in their world she was no more than an expendable tin can with a brain. Until Krull had chosen to save her, with his love, that is.
Krull dreaming, distracted, his Breather lying on his chest blinked though his reflector goggles, blinked again, looked out towards the blue neon of Master Assad’s door. His flack vest felt heavy on his powerful and muscled body; that was just how tired he was.
He felt savage tonight. Cold, bone drilling cold, arctic cold, deep in his marrow and he felt perhaps it was time to shut it down, TLC time. It was brutal in THE ZONE even for Rangers, and for Bots. Everyone needed some love, a touch.
Why the fuck not?
But yet, not now for still there was work to be done.
Was he close to going insane? Of course he was. But it was sometimes hard to get The Ranger out of a man’s heart. It was that way for Krull.
For Adray Venus, she needed her man, a touch, kisses, her Nanominium skin pressed against his skin, his human dick inside of her cunt, mouth, food, sex, passion and perhaps a little madness in each other arms.
She sighed deeply, for at least a Cyborg gal can dream about things like that; can’t she?
Again, they would opt for Krull’s Hermo warehouse/loft, disinfect in the Powder Showers. After, bath in water, distilled and filtered water, hot water, real water, sex on their minds, tenderness too, sexual savagery too, why the fuck not.
Krull was like that, a coin flip, so tender, sometimes hard, crazy and violent and at other times brutal. She thrived within every moment of it
If Krull was spent, she could use the MACHINES, he watching, maybe not. It didn’t really matter one machine fucking another. After all it wasn’t about her to begin with. It was always about her man for her.
Orgasms, his, hers were good things in a world with so little pleasure and she, all spindle, muscled six ft. two of her, all mismatched of rare elements of her, could be insatiable and she would do anything for him, and she did. All she knew at the moment was that she again needed Krull. She needed him bad; needed him real bad.
“Krull...Krull.”
Blink, blink, blink, Krulls eyes were agitated and cryptic. There was nothing new about that.
Finally her voice broke his barriers as he shook his head, stared directly into her incandescent eyes. Adray’s eyes were soft, tender, caring, he needed that. Yet, he was manic tonight. He needed to find King Mohammad, war lord, drug lord, of Section 58-28. Why, it was easy that answer, if indeed there were any easy answers left in his dying world.
Drugs were rampant in THE ZONES nothing new about that. The war on drugs, well that had always been an illusion and a joke. Fuck, people wanted their highs, needed to alter reality anyway they could and nobody was going to stop it.
They were tolerated, black markets flourished, eyes turned, Blue Skies, Red Meanies, Purple Pleasure, they had all the cool names. Highs, mind fuck you highs, lows, mind altering shit, mood makers, mood breakers, bend reality, virtual reality, anything to keep the savages modulated, drugged, anesthetized.
Keep them from storming the bastilles, THE SHOOTS the Guard Turrets’ protecting the THE BUBBLES. Keep them at bay and puke the wall up and defend it. Anything to make them forget just how dead they really were. A
nything to keep them from those that paid the bills.
Drugged out zoned out zombies were far better than hyped up, static, wild eyed maniacs prowling the streets. Though there were no shortages of them, staring at THE BUBBLES with new eyes, wondering what fresh meat actually tasted like in side of them, human or otherwise.
But Kind Mohammad had changed that gig and he had changed the rules. The new drug, its nick PINK PANIC was all the street rage and it had been a game changer.
A Psycho Tropic Mood Elevator, it was a real ZOOMER as the street called it.
Pink Panic was cellular DNA and Chromosome mood breaker that rumbled into the neuron count, straight lined within seconds into the Cerebral Cortex, fueled it, powered it, bent it, savaged it, and then made it hyperbolic violent.
It had caused unequivocal violence, as well as carnage along the streets.
Sex was un-fucking believable on it, all night, all day and all the time.
Who needed sleep when you could fuck, be fucked forever. Any senses of reality had jettisoned THE SHOOT the entry tubes into THE BUBBLES as well as memories and any hints of being human as well.
The shit made that old school drug from The Da,y Crystal Meth seem like green tea. It also made men, women, droids, especially Cyborgs feel invincible, ego maniacs, real monsters, capable of complete carnage. They would do anything to get it, and they did. It took more than a clip of 357 hollow point slugs to take down the lunatics that were BLASTING with it and that had been a bad thing.
THE ZONE had worked in its surreal way because though almost anything went, meaning prostitution, theft, robbery, homicide, it worked because the pukes were doing it to themselves.
It didn’t work any longer, when the killers, smugglers, criminals began hanging around THE BUBBLES hi jacking the trains, attacking BUBBLE guards. Then, killing them if they would not turn out and, then hacking into the globes, killing the one per centers; nope, that was tripping across the line.