The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit

by Michael Anderle

  Either way, there wasn’t a decent goddamned solution to his problem.

  Ted lived on the Upper North Side, off of Saint Nichols in a one-bedroom apartment up on the top floor of a four-story building.

  He had gotten notice on his computer that his message had been received and he should expect a visitor. Ted reached for the pack of cigarettes he had purchased earlier that morning when he stepped out of his house to walk off his nervous energy.

  He swallowed hard when he noticed the package was empty. He looked down at the ashtray, full of twisted, half smoked and frenetically forgotten cadavers sacrificed to the god of stress.

  He was a nervous wreck.

  He considered grabbing the least wrecked cigarette when his buzzer sounded, and her voice came through his speakers.

  “Hey Ted,” she spoke this time in an almost normal voice, devoid of her occasional teasing. “Coming up!”

  He failed to notice that he hadn’t punched the button to allow her in the building.

  Purchase, NY, USA

  Ecaterina and Nathan were let out of the taxi just a block down from the PepsiCo Anderson Hill Road main building. The weather was annoying, but they lifted their coat collars up. Nathan grabbed Ecaterina’s hand and they started their walk towards the building.

  “How are we going to get in?” Ecaterina asked.

  “Easy, they have a center for customers to come and learn more about their product. That’s as far as we need to go.”

  “What? Why?” she asked as he waved at a security guard who nodded. Apparently, cars were a problem, but a couple walking in the light mist wasn’t a big issue.

  They walked up the long drive towards the main building.

  “I’ve got some new technology we’re testing, out of Jean’s team. Just need to get inside and let it go. Give it a few minutes to see if there’s anything we want and then leave. Grab another taxi and go to Joe’s Pizza in the West Village.”

  “So, you do remember,” she leaned her head on his upper arm.

  He wasn’t about to admit that he’d taken almost all of his dates there at one time or another.

  One doesn’t tell one’s mate about previous girlfriends. Especially when her version of pissed off was a whole new level.

  Nathan had wanted a Were for a mate. Now, a few years into his relationship with Ecaterina, he was beginning to comprehend a few of the subtle downsides.

  Like making sure he kept his mouth shut until he had thought about what he was going to say and analyzed that son-of-a-bitch for any landmines that might explode in his face.

  “Of course, sweetheart, there was no way I’d forget you, and Joe’s.” he told her.

  Mission accomplished.

  New York City, New York, USA

  Ted stood up and walked to his door. He might as well open it so that Tabitha would see him right away. No time like the present to get this party started.

  Like he had enjoyed the invitation.

  He opened the door and was startled to see Tabitha right in front of him, with her hand raised to knock. He turned to look behind himself.

  It was only five steps from where he was sitting to his door. He turned back around to see Tabitha peering around him.

  “Oh!” He stepped back. “Sorry, uh, the place is a mess.” Tabitha wrinkled her nose. He looked down. “Yeah, sorry, I smoke when I’m stressed too much.”

  Tabitha looked around the small one-bedroom. It looked like it had seen a better day or two. The messes in the areas she could see suggested that this stress happened recently.

  Tabitha stepped in. “No worries, Ted,” she said as he closed the door behind her.

  “Here, let me grab that for you, although I didn’t know you’d need to pack. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about your sleeping arrangements.” She lifted the suitcase and handed it to him. Her mind was still on something else and didn’t notice Ted’s sudden strain to hold it. He took it and set it down next to his brown leather couch.

  Just what the hell did she have in that thing? he wondered, quickly followed up with, and how strong is she?

  She reached into her long coat and pulled out a box. He walked over to stand next to her and asked, “What are you…” he stopped when a finger was pushed against his lips. His eyes crossed as he tried to stare at the finger’s sudden appearance at his mouth.

  But he got the message. She took her hand back.

  She opened the box of what looked like a thousand tiny balls. She took a pinch out and flung them into the air. Before he could ask a second time, her fingers pinched his lips together.

  He nodded that he got the point.

  She closed the little box and put it in her coat pocket. Her hand returned with what looked like goggles, but they didn’t have anything to hold them to her face. She put them on and then mumbled something Ted couldn’t quite pick up. Finally, she reached back into her coat and pulled out four silver orbs. She flung one towards his bedroom door.

  It never hit anything that he could tell. She walked past him towards his little living room and stepped up to the window. She put a ball next to the window and lowered his blinds. The orb hadn’t dropped when she released it, but stayed right where she placed it.

  He heard her mumble this time, “Seven? Seriously?” Ted didn’t even bother asking. He saw her nose twitch.

  The smoke in his apartment was probably annoying her.

  He turned to watch her open his apartment door, stick her head out and then toss a ball out. A motion pulled his attention back towards his bedroom door, and his eyes opened.

  There was a little silver orb floating into the main room from his bedroom. He never thought about the dirty clothes he had hidden on the other side of his bed as he stared at the orb floating towards him.

  He turned to see Tabitha pull out a small tablet. “Kill em, Achronyx,” she said, and Ted heard multiple sparks, and a minute smell of ozone overpowered his cigarette smoke for a minute.

  The goggle-wearing face turned towards him. Now, they were a yellow metallic color; he couldn’t see Tabitha's eyes as she looked at him. “What are you really involved with, Ted?”

  Oh, fuck! he thought as the blood drained from his face.

  Purchase, NY, USA

  “Okay,” Nathan said as they exited the Pepsi building. “That was kind of cool. Although, renaming it Pepsi from Brad’s drink was easily a marketing win. Brad’s Drink? That was a horrible name.”

  Ecaterina grabbed his hand. Together, they had started a small but delicious effort to sneak Pepsi back into Nathan’s life and pay Bethany Anne back for her No-Pepsi-On-My-Battle-Station edict.

  With this recipe, they would be able to make little batches and keep them in their suite. Nathan had already ordered the necessary ingredients and loaded the request to the group on ships that were involved in the massive worldwide effort to grab last minute supplies. Fortunately, he would be able to run his purchases into a supply pickup just hours from now.

  No one the wiser.

  He turned to kiss Ecaterina. “Have I told you I love your devious Romanian mind?”

  “Is that all?” she asked, returning his kiss.

  “No, but you need carbs for the rest,” he said.

  New York City, New York, USA

  Ted looked at Tabitha. “Politics.” he answered.

  She mumbled something and even though he was standing just two feet in front of her, he couldn’t understand her, but someone did.

  “Bullshit,” she retorted. “You were on a normal case just forty-eight hours ago.” Her hand waved at his living room. “And, there were seven bugs in your home.”

  He looked around. “What?”

  She didn’t answer him. “So, you do have a girlfriend now, and what, she’s missing?”

  All of the blood left his face as he stared at her. “Tabitha, these people aren’t shitting around. They grabbed Monica, told me to contact you as best I could and pray that I could get you to come here.”

  Tabitha turned
to face him and the yellow shield dropped, allowing him to see her eyes. They didn’t look kind. “Who is ‘they,' Ted?”

  “Government, I think.”

  “That’s just fan-fucking-tastic,” Tabitha huffed. “And the building out of town, a ruse?”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s real. I’m supposed to get you over there.”

  “Achronyx, give me a view of the place outside of town,” her eyes were unmistakably watching something she could see, but Ted couldn’t. “Drop a set of psy-spies on that area, and see what we can find inside the building as well.” Her eyes switched from looking slightly to her left and up, to her right and down. “We have company.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Dark van, no windows, coming down the street.” She leveled her gaze at him. “Do I lay your ass out, or are you in?”

  “In what?” Ted asked, “Tabitha, those are bad motherfuckers out there who have a woman in trouble because she was interested in a guy who happened to know you, and through you, TQB.”

  Tabitha ignored his comment but did clarify her question. “Are you up for saving her, or do you want me to deliver her to you when I’m done?”

  Ted stared at Tabitha for a long moment. Once again, this was the other Tabitha, not the one who played around. “What will happen to her if I stay here?”

  “I’ll do my best to grab her and move her to a safe place,” she told him, “I’ll knock you out, and give you an alibi.”

  Ted’s face twisted. “Fuck them.” He headed towards his room. He noticed the orb following him.

  It didn’t look like Tabitha was going to trust him, and frankly, she had every right not to. He dropped to his knees beside his bed and reached under to pull out a case that was two feet wide and four long. It was a bit tricky to get out, but when he had it, he entered the combination and opened it. Inside was a bulletproof vest and two 1911s plus plenty of mags, holsters for his guns and a jacket specially fitted to help him hide the weapons. He pulled it all out and started getting it on.

  It grated on him to go against authority. This armament was the closest he ever got to doing what Tabitha had when she went vigilante here in New York in the past. He had been working on a case to uncover those who were cooking the New York Police Department computers to falsify the data in their databases by judiciously tagging some higher level crime with lower level flags.

  Unfortunately, his case hadn’t been sanctioned by his boss. Further, it might have been his attempt to do that which had attracted the attention of this group, and now Monica was involved.

  He didn’t like playing the hero, here. It had been more of a romantic notion than a real desire to play the uber-hero. But now, his half-assed approach was requiring him to go all in.

  He put on the heavy bulletproof vest and then his holsters.

  He loaded both pistols and locked their thumb safeties in place when he heard Tabitha’s voice. “Take my suitcase up to the roof, I’ll meet you there.”

  He turned to step out of his room to see her slide her coat back on. This time, she was a little bulkier.

  She had brought armor.

  “Give me two minutes before you leave. It will be safe by then,” she said as she locked on some sort of black headgear that fit on her goggles and wrapped around her head.

  A woman had walked into his apartment. Perhaps a badass woman, but still a woman.

  Ted wasn’t sure just what had just walked out.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Germany

  “Now that was a large purchase,” William told his friends as they paid for the materials. Fortunately, they still had plenty of ways to pay for the things they needed, and all the money transfers were being pulled from their personal funds. Bobcat had made a very smart, very strategic hiring decision over a year before. The team had ADAM doing all of their books and money transfers.

  The A.I. charged them in gold.

  It was getting on into late afternoon as they left the sales office. “Beer?” Bobcat asked his friends.

  Marcus shrugged and looked up and down the small street they had entered to get to the company’s sales headquarters. “What about trying a little pub, and ask them for great beer selections?”

  Bobcat slapped Marcus on the back as they started down the sidewalk. “Now that is a capital idea!”

  A few minutes later, the trio entered a nearby pub and sat down. Within three minutes, each man had two beers sitting in front of him.

  William looked down at the large steins and then over at his two friends, then back to the two beers.

  “Should we?” he asked.

  Marcus looked at his two beers and shrugged. “I’m willing, it’s for research purposes.”

  Bobcat grabbed his first stein and held it up, waiting for his friends to bump theirs together. “Here’s to research!”

  The three men drank their first stein. Bobcat finished first, William second and Marcus a distant, twenty-seven seconds later third place. They looked at each other and turned towards the waitress, lifted their empty mugs high, eyes alight with humor and called out, “Another round of research!”

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds

  Diane and Dorene, the heads of the Etheric Academy, were exiting the tram that ran from the outside to the inner core. The two had decided to check on Team BMW and make sure they were working with their team, but the guys had dropped to Earth with the Queen and were not available.

  Diane had made sure that John Grimes wasn’t anywhere around, so they didn’t accidentally meet him and her sister wouldn’t be tempted to pinch.

  Diane could play out the scene in her head right now…

  “There’s John!” Dorene would say, and no matter how hard Diane tried to get Dorene’s attention away from the guy, she would see her sister’s two fingers spasm unconsciously. Diane would remind Dorene of Jean’s last warning to toss her ass out an airlock, and her sister would settle down.

  For maybe ten minutes.

  Ever since they got their memory back of the episode with the Nosferatu in the mountains a few years ago, Dorene had been living life like she was young again. Well, physically they were. However, you would think that Dorene would have grown out of her pinching.

  But sadly, no.

  Diane smirked, yeah, she could understand the joy of the pinch. They had been busted in Europe for pinching inappropriately. Then, unlike now, they had older bodies and silver hair. It had been easy to be forgiven when they looked like everyone’s grandmother. Not so much when you now looked young, fresh and very available.

  Their real age didn’t provide them protection any longer.

  “So, no John?” Dorene asked, as the two walked from the tram station and headed inward. They had decided to swing by the park, and then try one of the two Chinese restaurants for a meal.

  They stopped as two small beeps sounded behind them. Stepping out of the way, they watched the two floating boxes marked supplies continue past them. The little cart with the two boxes was silent, except for the constant beeps to warn people of its existence.

  Meredith moved most of these boxes, or at least one of her sub-computers did. Dorene looked down and realized she and her sister had been walking in the transfer lane. It wasn’t a big deal, but when you heard the beeps, you were expected to move aside.

  “Guess I was focusing on John, never noticed we were walking in the package lane.”

  Diane waved her forward. “C’mon, let’s go. I thought you were over John a long time ago.”

  “How does one get over John?” Dorene’s voice carried down the corridor as the two women turned a corner. “That mountain of man meat…”

  Diane cut off her sister mid-lust statement. “Has a woman who creates new ways to blow people apart for the Queen.”

  Dorene’s voice came back a moment later, somewhat subdued, “Oh sure, bring up the negatives.”

  —

  Yelena was simply confused. Matrix and Snow had stayed with the Yollin captain, and he had prom
ised to bring them back to her place later when he was finished. He was enjoying the chance to explain more about his kind to the four-footed kids. That he accepted Snow had shocked Yelena.

  Then again, why wouldn’t he? He had been around Bethany Anne enough that if he was a horrible… being… Bethany Anne would have figured it out.