by Jack Vantage
“I like the way you move. I like the way you look. I like you, Lecodia,” Dylan replied.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“There’s a lot I would like to know.”
“Did you see me moving?” She smiled.
Dylan smiled. “I saw you.”
“And?” she said, with eyes that hypnotised.
Dylan could see what she needed to be told. Her vanity was encouraged by the drug, fed by the drug. Her eyes might freeze him with beauty, paralyse him with temptation. Somehow, he kept his cool.
“Perfect. Like you were the only person who could.”
“Oh, thank god. So, I didn’t look bad?”
It was the drug, he could tell, her tone and expressions changed like the weather.
Dylan breathed a brave gulp. “Listen, me and you.”
“I’m not looking for anything but friendship. I need a friend,” Lecodia said honestly as she placed a hand on Dylan’s chest with delicacy.
“You’ve got one, trust me,” Dylan replied. He flicked his eyebrows up and down with cheek.
She smiled.
He felt another impulse build in his body. He wanted to kiss her, but every time the courage escaped him. The courage of starting the kiss, of making the first move and chancing the attraction, was more courage than he’d ever had to muster. It eluded him.
He didn’t know if he could take just being friends. Seeing Lecodia with someone else might tip him over the edge with nothing to break his fall. This was more than a crush, more than an infatuation. Something deep inside him whispered She’s the one.
The bartender stopped in front of them. “Hey guys, one minute. Leave your drinks on the bar,” he said as he walked away.
Lecodia said, “One minute for what, Dylan?”
“You’ll love it. Get ready.”
“Love what, Dylan? What’s going on?”
A glass rim raised from around the bar’s edge and cleared the drink glasses by a centimetre.
“Watch your hands.”
A glass cover slid over the bar’s top and sealed all drinks under its protection. The room’s clubbers stood and waited for something. Dylan moved from the chair and helped Lecodia to her feet. “Just go with it,” he said. “It’s really nice.”
A cool and composed computerised voice began counting down. “Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three!”
Lecodia looked around nervously. “Tell me what’s happening, Dylan.”
“Two! One! Zero gravity lockdown!”
The ambient tune grew louder, and the clubbers anticipated the thrill with hands beckoning. Gently Lecodia began rising into the air. She elevated to her tiptoes, like a ballerina had possessed her, and her mouth fell agape.
“Dylan?” she said, scared. “What’s happening?”
Dylan smiled. “My favourite part of the night.”
Everyone lifted into the air, floating into zero gravity. Dylan had done this several times, and every time it felt like the first. Weightlessness was a unique experience that he loved. Zero gravity feathered your body to nothing, an object, a free entity.
Lecodia’s eyes widened with a smile, and her legs floated up behind her. She straightened in the air horizontally. She clutched awkwardly for Dylan, but slowly she drifted away from him, laughing at the experience as she talked.
“Dylan, hold me. Hold me.”
“Ha, ha. Is this something or what?”
Clubbers floated the air. Dylan bumped into a tanned muscle head. A body of power bulged from his white shirt. His head was angular and raw.
“Give us a little push,” Dylan said. He pointed to Lecodia. “That way please.”
“No problem,” the floating muscle said, and nudged him.
Dylan bumped her body and pulled her close. She looked deeply into his eyes, and they spun mid-air.
“I want you to know that you have a friend, a good friend in me. I’ll always be there for you,” Dylan said quietly. “I’m glad I met you, Lecodia Ale.”
“Thank you for an unforgettable night, and promise we’ll do this again.”
“You can count on it.”
Chapter 11
Serendipity
The automatic exit door rose in front of Dylan. He looked to Lecodia, who leant her head on his shoulder as they walked into the fresh air, with a bleep from the credit readers on either side of the door. The exit was situated at the side of the club, around the corner from the hectic main entrance, like an alley but trendy.
Lecodia breathed deep and sighed on Dylan’s shoulder.
“We’ll get a sky-cab up ahead,” Dylan said.
“Get me out of here. I need rest,” she said sleepily.
Dylan made his way towards the front of the club, where a line of sky-cabs waited. They moved down the parked row and reached the front taxi, where the driver’s elbow rested on his window.
A middle-aged, grey-haired driver looked ready and alert for the night’s end. He picked at his teeth with a stick. “You guys need a ride?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes please. And can you give me a hand?” Dylan said, gesturing towards the door.
“No problem,” the driver said, exiting the cab and lifting the passenger rear door up into the air manually.
Dylan helped Lecodia into the sky-cab. She lowered on the black seat and closed her eyes.
“Can you wait one second? I want one last look at the club,” Dylan said.
“Take your time. I don’t think we’ll be busy till early morning with you party animals.”
Dylan moved the alleyway and stepped out from the side of the building. He looked rightward, at its main entrance, to where they’d entered earlier.
A huge queue of expectant clubbers still waited to get in and join the fun at a two hundred metres distance. His eyes cast forward, and over the city’s topography beyond the Zero G platform. The city glistened with a thousand lit windows. Some buildings in the distance were higher than the Zero G platform, and many were alive with laser shows that beamed the night sky with reds, yellows, greens, blues and rainbows. Like fireflies, sky-mobiles zipped about the city sky. Dylan didn’t want to leave. He wanted this moment to last forever in his memory. This night was the pinnacle of his ambitions; the girl, the club, the fun, and the friends.
“Happy Millennium, Quazar,” he said under his breath, and he noticed something high above to his left.
The sky was clear, and the stars were out, but two seemed to move.
There it was again. Flashes striking between two, like they were blasting each other. The objects were travelling fast—two sky-mobiles it looked like—getting closer and closer. Two more flashes hit the vehicles again, emitting tiny bursts of light as they struck each other, like particles of neutrinos reacting to pure water.
Dylan looked back to the taxi and Lecodia. The driver was reading the evening digi-paper in his seat. Lecodia was sleeping.
Dylan turned his eyes back at the sky and could make out the models of the sky-mobiles. One was a black, blue and white Authoritarian pursuit vehicle. Dylan had seen them in action on television. They could travel at hundreds of miles per hour.
The other vehicle looked like a transporter, a small transporter that could move and carry modest-sized items, usually used by delivery services. Its body was black and long, with a sealed carrier at its rear, that was a little higher than the cab where the driver and passenger sat.
They were blasting each other, fighting it out in the sky. They were getting a little too close for comfort, and Dylan stepped back. The Authoritarian vehicle began ramming the transporter, which veered and headed straight for the Zero G platform.
How cool is this? Dylan thought.
It was like the morning news live in front of his eyes, a real battle between the Authoritarians and the criminals.
The transporter began descending rapidly towards the platform. It was going to hit about a hundred metres in front of Dylan. He smiled like any teenager would at the sight of destructi
on and stepped back again as the transporter neared. He could almost make out the face of the driver, but the reflection of the Zero G club impaired the view. Then he noticed a limp body dangling from the passenger window of the transporter.
The Authoritarian sky-mobile pulled up and slowed, but the fallen vehicle aimed nose first at the platform.
The sky-mobile hit the platform, its front crumpling under the force, and it shook the ground. Parts of the vehicle exploded everywhere.
One object blasted from the sky-mobile’s impact, which flew through the air at Dylan.
He covered his face and lifted one leg up to shield himself from the flying debris.
The sky-mobile screeched across the platform and hissed with showering sparks. It aimed straight at the Zero G club’s queue. People scattered and ran for cover. Many dived from the wreck’s path.
Dylan peeked from behind his hand and watched the piece of the flying debris sliding along the floor. A gold briefcase stopped five feet in front of him. It serendipitously stared at him.
He lowered his leg and hands, then looked at the club’s entrance where people were recovering from the near carnage. The transporter’s mangled wreck smoked as hundreds of people surrounded it.
Dylan looked at the briefcase again, then back at the wreck, then behind at the taxi, where the driver attempted to look in the direction of the accident via craned neck around the building’s corner.
Dylan didn’t know why he bent over and picked it up. Maybe it was the impulse of wanting Lecodia, but he bent over and picked up the briefcase anyway. It was not heavy, just an average weighted briefcase. Dylan knew he should hand it in to the Authoritarians when they arrived, but who would know if he didn’t. What stopped him from walking away with the goods? Dylan always considered himself to be an honest young man, but something controlled him, something that longed for a little adrenaline, a little mischief, and a little danger.
Dylan held the briefcase and looked up to the sky. In the distance a squad of Authoritarian sky-mobiles swiftly approached the platform with sirens blaring and lights flashing. All were in arrow formation. The Authoritarian vehicle that caused the crash was nowhere to be seen.
He turned and walked to the sky-cab where the driver still stared, stunned, at the wreck some distance away. He sat in the cab next to Lecodia, who was fast asleep.
Exhilarated, the driver said, “How can your girlfriend miss something like that, ‘ey?
“That was crazy. He must have hit the floor at a hundred miles per hour,” Dylan said. “Hey, let’s get out of here before the Authoritarians lock down the platform.”
“Good idea. We’re out of here. That was something, poor passengers though, on millennium night and all,” the driver said.
“Not a nice night to go,” Dylan agreed as he held the briefcase to his left side and Lecodia’s hand in his right.
The sky-mobile rose above the club. The Authoritarians neared, and the driver moved towards the nearest sky-way. Dylan looked down at the briefcase and wondered what he’d just discovered.
Chapter 12
A Hit and a Miss
Regan concentrated on the sky ahead. He’d need all his driving skills to get out of this one, having been dragged off sky-way by the fumbling antics of his stooges that fought behind him. God knew how long before the real Authoritarians were on them. He was at the end of his tether with the pair.
“Grab the fucking thing, Timmy,” Nexus shouted from the rear of Regan’s Authoritarian sky-mobile.
Timmy precariously dangled from the passenger rear window blasting at a transporter sky-van that zoomed alongside.
Timmy held on for dear life. The exchange hadn’t gone to plan, much to Regan’s disappointment. Everything was fine, the switch point was established, the sky-mobiles established, but they saw something in Timmy’s eyes when they were due to hand over the goods. As he leant out with the credit swipe, the masked dealer blasted straight at him, missing him by millimetres.
Timmy retaliated by shooting the dealer in the head, who then got caught up in the window with the gold briefcase still chained to him. It flailed and bumped in his limp, dead hand out of the transporter’s front passenger window.
Twice Timmy’s fingertips had brushed the case, but every time he touched it, red laser blasts pierced from the rear cab of the transporter. The dealers were blind shooting.
Regan looked behind, his patience tested.
Timmy and Nexus blazed a shower of lasers back. Their green rounds burned their way through the transporter’s sealed rear cabin. Timmy leaned from the window again and tried nabbing the case.
Regan looked at the transporter and tried to navigate his vehicle as close as possible to it. He watched Timmy chance death and lean fully out. Regan was composed, in control, and five hundred meters from the ground.
“Timmy, grab it you fucking idiot!” Nexus shouted again.
“Regan, get closer! A little closer!” Timmy shouted over the rushing air.
Regan watched the force of the wind make each reach harder and harder for Timmy. The man’s strength was beginning to diminish.
“Nexus hold my feet, you fuck. I need to get closer.”
Nexus pushed down on his legs when another laser blast burned through the vehicle. It missed Nexus’s head by a whisker.
Regan matched every move the transporter made with lightning reactions.
“Hurry, we’re approaching another sky-way,” Regan said.
“Timmy, for fucks sake, just reach and grab!” Nexus pleaded.
Regan watched Nexus display another moment of insanity. He let go of Timmy and opened fire at the front cab of the transporter with a desperate blind shoot. Then he pushed back down on Timmy’s feet before he slipped out the window.
“What the fuck have you done, Nexus?” Timmy screamed. “Aagghh! My legs, you twat!”
Regan watched the transporter angle downward. Its speed slowed as he checked his speedometer. He cursed. “You blasted the fucking driver!” He looked at his digital speedometer, which was dropping rapidly.
Regan looked to the transporter that was peppered with laser blasts. Its sealed back end was shot many times.
Timmy made one last useless lunge for the case, but the vehicle descended too quickly for him to reach and hold.
“You fucking cock! You absolute fucking cock!” Timmy shouted as he pulled himself back into the sky-mobile.
“Don’t look at me. You fucked up the deal. You flinched at the exchange,” Nexus said, demoralised.
“Can’t you aim the fucking blaster correctly?” Timmy yelled.
“Shut it, the both of you. The pair of you are fucking useless. I could have got a couple of kids who’d have done a better job!” Regan snapped. “Watch the fucking thing. See where it lands. See if we can get down to it.”
Regan veered and rammed the transporter hard. He nudged it in the direction he wanted it to go. Timmy and Nexus bounced around the back seat with each impact, then settled as Regan held a steady course.
“Yes, boss,” Timmy said, rubbing his stomach, which must have hurt from the window hanging.
“You fucking baby,” Nexus said.
Timmy punched him on the jaw. Nexus laid one back as they both began scuffling in the sky-mobile.
“That’s it,” Regan said. “When we stop, I am going to kill the pair of you. You are fucking arse holes. You are fucking losers.”
He wanted to lift his blaster, turn around, and blow the heads off the two imbeciles that had fucked up his financial uplift. He wanted to, but he restrained himself, at least for now.
They both stopped and pulled away from each other, tugging on their Authoritarian shirts, straightening them.
“I want a visual now, you fucking girls,” Regan continued.
Timmy and Nexus watched as the transporter careened towards a busy platform.
“If you can’t get the goods back when it lands, the both of you are fucking dead. One million credits dead, do you understand m
e?” Regan said without looking back.
“All right, boss I have a visual. Nexus get on the cameras, record every fucking face that’s on the platform,” Timmy ordered.
Nexus sat forward and folded a screen out from Regan’s square shaped headrest. Authoritarian vehicles were always square, everything from the dash layout to the seats to the sky-mobile’s body. Regan always used them for exchanges for numerous reasons. Firstly, the exchange could be covered with what appeared to be the law participating in a simple check on other drivers of the sky-ways. Secondly, it came equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance technology. Ten cameras surrounded the vehicle, giving the team an advantage over every aspect of the exchange. Like spider eyes, one false move and the trap was set.
Nexus tapped at the touch screen and ordered ten video images to appear. The transporter flew towards the platform and the crash was imminent.
Regan positioned his sky-mobile sideways for the best view.
“You got it?” Regan asked.
“I got it,” Nexus said concentrating on the image of the transporter. “It’s about to touch down.”
On screen the transporter smashed into the platform and screeched towards a crowd of people.
“There’s too many people, boss. We’re fucked. Wait. Wait. Turn a little to the right. I think we might be in luck.”
Timmy looked to the corner of the building, where a young guy stood on one leg.
Nexus said, “Is that what I think it is?”
“I can see the guy, but nothing else,” Timmy replied.
“Look closer, by his feet,” Nexus said.
“Mother fucker,” Timmy said, as he looked at the zoomed image of a young clubber picking up the case.
“Recording all visuals, boss. We got him. It looks like he thinks he’s in luck,” Nexus said.
“The little shit,” Timmy said.
“What building is that?” Nexus asked.
“The sign reads Zero G,” Regan said.
“What is it, a club?” Nexus asked.
“Looks like a fucking lunatic gathering,” Regan said.
“Okay, boss. I can take this image back to base and run a scan with the chip locator against all the people who have been in there tonight. His chip will have been read inside. Once the computer makes a match, we got the son of a bitch,” Nexus said.