by Selina Rosen
“Sammy, find Hammer some dry clothes,” Jakelord ordered.
“Thanks, guys,” Conner said.
“Yeah... Well, you owe me forever. Don’t fucking forget that,” Jakelord said.
“I won’t,” Conner promised.
Sammy set the clothes down by Conner, and she started to trade her wet clothes for dry ones. When she was done, she started to leave.
“Hammer...Don’t go back there, man,” Jakelord pleaded.
She smiled at him, an all-knowing smile, and he spat back, “I can’t collect on this favor if you’re dead.”
She put her nail belt back on and checked her weapon. She put in a new charge. “See you guys later.” She kissed them both and left.
Elantra had started to just walk up to the front doors and demand that they let her out, but good sense had kicked in and she realized that wasn’t likely to happen. She knew that the computer that hadn’t been told that she wasn’t allowed to go into her father’s office and dig through his files had been told that she wasn’t allowed to leave the floor, much less the building.
She sat on the bed in her room staring towards the window, trying to think of a way out. As if she hadn’t had enough to worry about, while snooping through her father’s files she ran into a transmission he had made earlier that night in which he talked to a doctor about having part of her brain erased tomorrow.
He wasn’t happy to separate her from Conner. He wasn’t even happy with simply killing Conner. He wanted to erase any trace of Conner from her mind. To remove those memories of the time they had spent together.
Time was running out. Conner was hurt and in danger, and if she didn’t do something quick it wasn’t going to matter anyway because her loving father was going to have her brain partially erased. By tomorrow evening she wouldn’t know what real food tasted like, or what it was like to run in the ocean. She wouldn’t remember even knowing who Conner McVee was, much less what it was like to be touched by and touch her. She’d forget what it was like to breathe real air and feel the water against her skin. She’d forget what it was like to love and to be loved. She wondered how removing those memories was going to effect the burning hot sensation she felt in her chest whenever she thought about Conner.
She was trying to think of solutions, but all she could think of was how hopeless the whole thing was.
She’d tried to call Conner, but the computer apparently had a lockout on transmissions to and from Conner McVee.
She wiped the tears from her eyes. There was only one thing left to do. She’d never done it before, and she was sure she had no idea how, but she was desperate.
“Hey God, this is Elantra. I’m in a real mess down here. Maybe You could help me out... This isn’t working. I don’t feel anything but stupid.” She thought for a minute. Conner had said something, what? Something about you had to have a tool to get a blessing. She got up and rummaged through her room till she found the clothes she’d worn home. In the pocket of the pants she found what she was looking for. She sat down on her bed again and looked at the screwdriver. “OK, God, I have my tool now, so here’s the deal. I want Conner McVee to be all right, and I want to get out of this building before they wipe my brain out, and if You’ll do that for me I’ll... build something... I’ll even build a baby,” she made a face. “If that’s what it takes. Just please let me get back to Conner.”
She waited. She didn’t feel anything, and no ideas came to mind. No lightning flashed, no thunder rolled. She looked at the screwdriver and started to throw it against the wall, but she stopped. As she stared at the screwdriver, a tingling went up her back, and she knew what she was going to do. She changed into the clothes she had brought with her from WrenchTown and shielded herself with all she had learned there. She grabbed up the clothes she had been wearing that day. When she walked out the door of her room she was a Constructionist.
She saw the camera turn to monitor her movements. She threw the blouse she was holding up so that it covered the camera completely, then she walked on down the hall, stopping only to throw her skirt over another camera. She skipped past the elevator to the staircase. It was an emergency thing, and in all probability it had never been used, except on the two occasions Elantra herself had used it to sneak out of the building. The door was like the doors in WrenchTown, manual, part of the emergency precautions. Down the hall she saw one of the drones patrolling. She tried to open the door quietly, but it squeaked. The drone turned just as she ducked into the stairwell. Registering that this was all wrong, it sounded the general alarm.
Elantra pushed the door closed quickly. There was no latch on it. She started to panic, and then she saw the light. It had come on when she entered the stairwell. She could reach it if she climbed up on the rail, which is just what she did. She took her screwdriver in hand and stabbed at the light till it broke and the stairwell was dark. As she climbed down, one of her father’s men ran in the door, and the light from the hallway backlit him. Elantra jumped on him and started stabbing at him with her screwdriver. She was surprised to find that she easily overpowered the man who was twice her size. Her time in WrenchTown had made her strong. Of course, it might have just been that the poor bastard was still half asleep. After all, he was still in his pajamas.
She must have stabbed him in the right spot, because he fell to the ground and didn’t move. Elantra heard men running down the hall. Now a louder siren was blaring – no doubt a full out alert. Who knew? It might have been a special Elantra is trying to leave the building! alarm.
“Great, I really am in a prison.” She closed the door again and pulled the body of the guard in front of it. She found his gun and took it.
She smiled in the dark. “Now I have two tools.” She took off down the staircase, using the rail to guide her in the dark. She heard the men trying to get in the door behind her, so she doubled her pace. On the next floor the light came on, and after a few seconds she figured out how to shoot the gun, aimed and fired. The light busted with one shot, but the gun jerked in her hand, which was a bit of a shock and she almost dropped it. She swallowed hard and went on.
Having gauged the distance between the stairs she now practically ran down them, and on the next floor almost into her father’s men. She stopped short. The two men heard her and turned, but they were in the light and she was in the dark. There was a brief moment of moral dilemma. She was a doctor, and doctors saved people, they didn’t shoot at them. But one of them had shot Conner, and at that thought her moral dilemma ended, and she shot at them. One of them fell, and the other ran into the hallway. She shot out the light, shoved the man in front of the door and took his gun, too. This one she tucked into the top of her pants. The other twenty-five floors down no one bothered her, and that made her wonder what would be waiting for her. No doubt they would have all gone to the bottom to wait, knowing that was the only way for her to get out of the building. But she had two guns and her screwdriver, and while she could shoot them, her father wouldn’t let them shoot her.
At the bottom of the stairs there was a doorway that led outside. It was locked. There was another door that she knew opened into the lobby of PowersTower. She stopped and thought. They could either be both places, or just one. The one door lead directly outside, that would be their biggest fear – that she would get out of the building. The other door led to the hallway, which would leave her with only one more door to go through.
She put her ear to the exterior door, a trick she had learned from Conner McVee. She could hear voices. She smiled and walked out the other door carefully, gun at the ready. She walked down the lighted hallway towards the front doors. She moved against the wall at the end of the hall, and looked carefully around the corner. There were two men there. She stuck her screwdriver in her pocket and pulled the other gun. Guns at the ready, she strolled out of hiding. They turned towards her and started to say something. No doubt to announce to the world that they had found Elantra.
Elantra smiled, aimed the guns at them, a
nd shook her head no. She waved her guns slightly, motioning for them to move away from the front doors. They looked at each other for a second, each one waiting for the other one to come up with a better plan than moving away from the doors without saying a word and letting the boss’s daughter just walk out. She shook the guns menacingly at them, and they moved away from the door silently.
She walked up to the access panel and poked at the buttons, but her code had been lifted from the memory. She had figured that it was, but there was no harm in trying. She turned to check quickly that the guards hadn’t moved, then she put one gun back into the top of her pants and grabbed her screwdriver out of her pocket. She used it to pry the cover off the panel. There were sparks, but the door didn’t open.
“Tarent, she’s in here!” one of the men screamed. Then he made a run for her.
“God damn it!” Elantra screamed. She turned and shot the man, and the other man immediately put his hands up and started backing away.
She held onto the handle of the screwdriver, shoved it into the door control box and started twisting it around. There was a huge shower of sparks, and then the doors opened. She ran out just as five of her father’s men ran around the corner of the building, and her father and half a dozen more men poured into the lobby behind her. She swiveled back and forth, trying to keep her guns on all of them as she walked slowly away from the building. She was momentarily shocked as even her father followed her out of PowersTower.
“Get out of my way, or I’ll kill you!” she screamed.
“Elantra, think about what you’re doing...” her father started. He moved closer. “I’m your father. I’m the only one who can protect you.”
“You can’t protect me from you! You had Conner McVee shot... I saw it!” Elantra screamed. “You want to have my brain erased... The only way you are going to stop me is to kill me.”
Tarent stopped in his tracks. He looked at his daughter in the light of the street lamp. Dark, beautiful and determined, she was no longer a weak-willed, innocent girl, but an independent, determined young woman, hell bent on having her own way. Driven by passion and by love, her only allegiances were to herself and the Constructionist cop that was Tarent’s worst enemy. “OK, kill her.”
“What!” Elantra screamed.
“Are you sure, boss?” one of his men asked. Elantra was already running towards the road.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Tarent said.
Suddenly the night erupted in gunfire. Not just from behind her, but from all around she realized, though she didn’t have time to think about the ramifications of it. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, and a lot of it wasn’t aimed at her at all. She shot wildly in all directions. Suddenly a car pulled between her and her father’s men, the door opened, and Conner screamed, “Get in!”
Elantra was already in the car and had the door shut before Conner had finished speaking. Conner roared off amid a spray of bullets. Elantra threw herself at Conner, kissing her over and over again, and making it almost impossible for Conner to drive. Three cars were already in hot pursuit.
“Damn it, there he was. Out in the open,” Conner mumbled as she pushed Elantra gently away. “I’m glad to see you, too, honey, but if we want to stay alive you’re going to have to let me drive.”
“Conner McVee, why did you take me back there?” Elantra asked, suddenly angry.
“What! You made me take you back there...”
“You knew what kind of person my father was. You should have refused.”
“Oh yes, like that would have worked,” Conner mumbled. She swerved and just barely missed a car that had stopped at a light – one that she didn’t stop at. Horns blared and cars automatically stopped before they could hit her. Unfortunately the computers didn’t work fast enough, and two of the cars that were chasing her hit the confused cars standing in the middle of the road. The third car got through though, and started firing on them. Hammer turned sharply and headed down a side street.
A car roared out in front of her and stopped, effectively blocking her way. “Hang on!” Conner spun the car around and started back down the street she had just come up, heading straight at the car that had been following her, and into oncoming traffic. She wove expertly in and out of oncoming cars.
Elantra sat back in her seat and relaxed. She felt safe for the first time since she had returned to FreightCity. “I was never so happy to see anyone in my life, Conner McVee, and not just because my father and his men were trying to kill me...”
“Your father! I thought it must be Mishy’s boys.”
“No, I think they were shooting at Daddy. There were bullets coming from everywhere...” She stopped, suddenly remembering that she had been shot at. She started checking herself for bullet holes and found none. “Wow! I didn’t get hit, not once.” She took her screwdriver out of her pocket, held it up and said. “Thanks, God.”
Conner put the strange action down to stress and concentrated on driving, jerking in and out of traffic. Elantra looked back. They seemed to have lost their tail, and she told Conner so. They started down another street, and up ahead of them they saw a roadblock.
Conner spun around, and they picked up another tail. She swerved to miss an on-coming car and didn’t quite make it. There was a crunch of metal, and they were thrown sideways. Conner hit the accelerator hard and sped away, the mess she left behind stopped their pursuer, but it would only be a matter of time before they picked up a new one, and the car was making dying noises and spewing steam. Every road out of FreightCity or into HammerTown was blocked, and not always by thugs. More and more the roadblocks ahead were police agents.
If the car was in bad shape, it was just a little bit worse off than Conner was. If she had been a hundred percent, she never would have hit that other car. The situation was desperate. She wondered where all the cops had come from and why they were helping the bad guys instead of her.
“What the hell is going on?” Elantra asked when they had seen their sixth roadblock.
“They’re keeping us from going into HammerTown. We have to lose the car. It’s on its last leg, and it’s like a beacon out here among the self-driven models.” They seemed to be alone for the moment, so she pulled into an alley, turned the lights off and parked. “The only thing I can’t figure is how they got the police involved. Maybe the computer can enlighten us. Computer, run police bands.” She sighed and leaned back in her seat.
Elantra moved closer to Conner. She noticed even in the dim light that Conner’s face looked strained, and there was sweat on her brow. “Conner, I saw you get shot. How bad are you hurt? Should we go to a hospital?”
“I had on a vest, I’ll be OK.” She took Elantra’s hand and held it tight. “Everything will be OK now that we’re together, if we can just stay alive long enough to get out of town.”
“I have guns,” Elantra said. “I stabbed a guy, and I shot some guys and took their guns, and I have two...”
“You did what? You have what?” Conner said in disbelief.
“I have guns,” Elantra said, holding up the one she was still clutching in her fist.
“How did you..?”
“It’s not rocket science, you basically point and pull the trigger,” Elantra said shrugging.
Conner smiled. It was the first time Elantra had answered one of her unfinished questions.
“What’s wrong with your computer?” Elantra asked.
Conner looked at the blank screen and sighed. “I’m being scrambled.”
“By who?”
“It’s a Brakston Agency computer, so that means it could only be one person. James Rank.”
Earlier that day...
James Rank entered the code that would scramble Hammer McVee’s computer just as Jason Hunter walked in.
James looked up at Jason with utter contempt. “Did you shoot Hammer McVee?”
“I figured she’d come whining to you...”
“Yes or no. Did you shoot Hammer McVee?”
�
��McVee shot at me first. It was self defense...”
“That ain’t the story Hammer tells. Be warned, Hunter, Hammer’s promisin’ to kill you in a slow and painful way, and if she thinks I had anythin’ ta do with it, she’s goin’ to kill me, too.”
“Did she say so?”
“No I made it up! Of course she said so. Why else would I scramble her computer? I don’ want her to be able to find me. I don’ mind telling ya that I’m scared shitless. If ya done or said somethin’ that implies that I wanted Hammer killed...”
“All I tried to do was talk to her. I told you, she shot at me first.”
“You better pray to God that yer tellin’ the truth, because if yer not and you have brought the wrath of Hammer McVee down on our heads...”
“You’ll what, Rank? Slap my pee-pee till it’s red! Fire me!” Hunter laughed. “This agency is dead, man. The Corporation’s going to pull your charter. Don’t you get it? Hammer McVee has made you a laughing stock, Rank. We’re all going to be looking for work anyway.” Rank screamed something at him, but he didn’t really hear what it was because he was already heading out of the building and making plans.
Jason Hunter looked across the parking garage at the entrance to the Brakston Agency. He cradled the weapon in his arms. He had been a little surprised at the ease with which he had purchased it, but then it wasn’t meant to be a weapon, it was meant to be a tool, and in Hammer Town when you wanted to buy a tool they were only too happy to oblige. He waited for Rank to step out of the building and fired once, twice, three times just for good measure. Rank went down, and he roared off.
“Computer on... Computer! Alert to all agency bands. Am in pursuit of Hammer McVee down North towards Towsend. She just shot James Rank.”
In less than five minutes every police agency in the area was combing the streets with a shoot-to-kill order on Hammer McVee, while James Rank lay in an area hospital fighting for his life, and his assailant traveled through the city unmolested.