Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets

by Jeffrey Cook

  Mina Cortez:

  From Bouquets to Bullets

  by Jeffrey Cook

  Published by

  Fire and Ice

  A Young Adult Imprint of Melange Books, LLC

  White Bear Lake, MN 55110

  www.fireandiceya.com

  Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets, Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Cook

  ISBN: 978-1-68046-036-0

  Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Cover Design by Caroline Andrus

  This book is dedicated to Kaylin Anderson and Mike Decuir, without whom this book wouldn't exist. Everyone needs the type of friends who will ask the truly important questions, such as: "What if no one truly did expect the Spanish Inquisition, including the Spanish Inquisition? How would that work?" Sometimes random moments really can become whole stories.

  MINA CORTEZ: FROM BOUQUETS TO BULLETS

  by Jeffrey Cook

  She'd never said, “I want to join the Secret Police when I grow up.”

  Of course, Mina Cortez hadn't known there were secret police. She just knew she'd rather be a ballerina than a florist. But in 2154, though the world has mostly recovered from the supervolcano, vocational education is still programmed based on aptitude testing. An implanted skill chip can give the recipient many things, but not longer legs. So Mina fully expected to end up inheriting her family's flower shop and landscaping business someday.

  Like three generations before her, she had the nose for it.

  She didn't expect one of her best friends to be kidnapped. She didn't expect to be inducted into a covert organization by desperate authorities. She didn't expect to have to be grateful for her other best friend's 'undead' Chevy. She didn't expect programmed spy information to come with the taste of aluminum on her tongue — or a burning sensation when she fought its impulses. She didn't expect fights, car chases, family secrets, bureaucrats acting as espionage cheerleaders, electro-magnetic pulses, or the frequent scent of gun oil.

  She definitely didn't expect to still have to deliver flowers while figuring it all out.

  Table of Contents

  "Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets"

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  About the Author

  Previews

  Chapter One

  Mina raced down the alleyway, dodging past people on foot and around a recycling bin. As her bike hit a long stretch of open path, she crouched forward and pushed herself faster. Her pulse pounded. She couldn't slow down. Her wrist-comm chimed to tell her how late she was running. This almost distracted her from a bright light flashing up ahead of her at the edge of the alleyway where it opened up onto the street. Seeing figures moving against the movement of the light, she braked hard. Instead of stopping, the bike went into a skid in the loose gravel and pooled rainwater, then tumbled. Mina hit the ground hard, momentum carrying her skidding along the alley floor just behind her bicycle.

  She came to a stop a few feet from the edge of the alleyway, her bike clattering down the dirty path. Mina saw a tall figure moving in its path. She had barely opened her mouth to shout a warning when the woman turned, lifted a foot, and stepped down with perfect timing to bring the bike to an abrupt halt.

  Mina pushed up to her feet after a moment, clutching her now-sore wrist. “I'm so, so sorry,” she offered, abruptly but sincerely.

  The big woman, easily a head and a half taller than Mina, scowled down at her. As she closed the gap, Mina noticed an area cordoned off by the police, just a few yards back from the edge of the alley, and a number of officers scrambling around setting up tape, a couple of cars currently blocking the street—the source of the lights she'd seen earlier.

  “Sorry,” Mina said again.

  The woman's eyes did not soften as she shifted, blocking Mina's view of the scene. “You shouldn't be here. Move,” she said directly, leaving no room for question.

  Mina quickly gathered up her bike and started away from the scene as quickly as possible. Her wrist-comm buzzed, and a voice called over it, “Incoming, get ready to go!”

  Mina looked down the street to see her best friend's car careening down the road with Amiko's typically lead-footed driving style. “Miko, there's police down here!” she called back into the comm.

  Vlad, Amiko's restored ancient model Chevy, screeched to a sudden slowdown, eventually pulling up at something akin to polite suburban driving speeds.

  “Get in!” called the cheery voice of the Asian girl in the fedora. Mina pressed two buttons on the frame of her bike and quickly folded it up to fit neatly in the back seat of Miko’s car. Then she launched herself into the passenger seat as the comforting scent of sandalwood and cloves hit her. Mina always appreciated Miko's post-tai-chi smell, but knew not to mention it. The younger girl was still a little awkward over the fact she did it alone each morning now.

  “Can you see that woman with the cyber arm? I think I already got my first two warnings.” Mina commented, only half joking.

  “Yeah, I see her not being happy.” Miko squinted. “How do you know she has a cybernetic arm?”

  “Would you drive? We're going to be late!” Mina said, punching her friend in the shoulder.

  Miko hit the gas, and the car launched ahead. The acceleration wasn't as smooth as any kind of modern car, and Mina was pitched forward midway through buckling herself in, since it didn't have automatically adjusting straps. “Damn it.”

  “So how did you know she had a cyberlimb?” came the question again. “It had to be a good one.” Miko was unperturbed as usual.

  “They're getting way better with the synth skin, but it's still always a shade or two off,” Mina replied as she finished buckling in. A block later, just outside of standard police-scan range, Miko hit the gas again, tearing around a corner. Anything modern, outside an emergency vehicle, wouldn't have let them get over the local speed limit. But Vlad was from another time, excavated from an old parking garage that had been buried in the quakes. One of Dr. Kimura's research digs had found it in almost prime condition from the sealed environment. He and Miko, in one of their last father-daughter collaborations, had spent more than a year testing and restoring it to working order, and using his University clout to get the permits for a fuel-based hybrid vehicle without self-correction. The 2040 Impala was way before the safety-assurance regs.

  “So, why aren't you in school?” Mina asked, tensing a bit as Miko raced around a corner. No matter how often she rode with her best friend, Mina never entirely got used to Miko's driving habits, especially when she was in a hurry.

  “All for one,” Miko teased. �
�I checked your GPS co-ords. You weren't going to make it.”

  “And now we're not going to make it,” Mina muttered back.

  “Oh ye of little faith.” Her best friend grinned, kissed two fingers, and pressed them to her “Saint Elwood” bobblehead, another relic—and Miko's hero. “Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail us now.”

  Mina rolled her eyes, and then shut them tight and clutched the handle harder as Vlad jolted up to top speed, only slowing a slight bit around corners. Thankfully, early-morning traffic around the back streets was light, and Miko kept away from main thoroughfares when speeding. “So what do you figure the big police fuss was?” she asked as she drove.

  Mina's knee-jerk reaction was to tell her to watch the road, but she'd gotten mostly used to her friend's driving by now. “No idea. Plain clothes, no burning smell like with big accidents—some kind of raid, maybe. The big lady didn't want me looking, and I wasn't about to question it.”

  “You and your nose.” Miko smirked. “If you weren't on your way to Russia for the Bolshoi Ballet, you could ask them for a police dog chip. That'd get you out of delivering flowers.”

  Mina slumped a bit lower in her seat. “I'm not going to Russia,” she muttered.

  “Are you sure? You've worked hard for it, and I don't seem to recall you having a chipping date yet. No one deserves a magical-ballerina microchip more than you,” Miko shot back.

  “You know I haven't. You'll be the second to know.”

  “I'd better be. And until you get it, I'm not going to let you give up.”

  “They don't need short, stocky ballerinas in Russia. In New York, either. Face it. You're stuck with me.”

  “The horror,” Miko teased. “Seriously though, 'til you get it, you don't know for sure, right?”

  Mina shook her head. “You're impossible.” Despite the words, she couldn't help but smile a little. They both knew that if she'd gotten into any other ballet academy, she definitely would have heard by now to start getting ready for the move this close to chipping. While its decision date was later, the Russian academy's standards were certainly no lower—especially for international applicants—which made it the longest of long-shots. Still, being a ballerina had been Mina's goal since they were both tiny, right up until she never got that last growth spurt.

  “Okay, almost to school. Get ready to run.”

  Mina blinked out of her brief reverie as they reached the school lot, her comm giving her the two-minute warning. The car jolted, not quite jumping the curb, but catching the edge of the turn in with one tire. Miko had to park out near the back of the lot near the staff and rec vehicles, since Vlad wouldn't fit in any of the main spots.

  “Can you drop me off at the shop after dance class?” Mina asked as they were pulling in. Thankfully, there wasn't enough space for Miko to even try a fishtail parking job. She'd never quite managed one, but that didn't stop her from trying.

  “Yeah, no problem. Got to run Scott home anyway so he'll be on time to watch the munchkin. We'll be going right past. Besides, this is the last time we're running him home, so you should definitely come.”

  “You really think he's going to be in the first wave of microchip assignments next week?” Mina asked leaving her bike in the back and jumping out as soon as they'd come to a stop.

  “Sure of it,” Miko called, pulling herself directly out through the car window and taking off after her towards the school as time ticked down.

  “True, with his parents' clout, he's bound to either end up getting a first wave job, or assigned to the lunar colony,” Mina called back as the neared the school.

  “No way he's going back to the moon after all his parents did to raise a kid ... not on the moon,” Miko answered.

  The Szachs had, in the interest of their kids' socialization, not only transferred off the colony to Seattle, but stayed out of the child-sparse neighborhoods of their own socioeconomic bracket. Of course, in the girls' opinion, it had paid off. They'd met the Cortezes and Kimuras. Who wouldn't want to send their son trick-or-treating with five-and six-year-old Miko and Mina Mouse? Oh, sure, the parents had become good friends, too, eventually collaborating on park restoration projects—Dr. Kimura for the historical reconstruction, the Cortezes for the landscaping, the Szachs for the cash—but the kids had become the inseparable Mouseketeers.

  The pair came to a stop, then moved through the front door scanners at normal speed, their comms beeping an indication they were clear through security and not so late as to need to head anywhere besides class. A good start.

  “I know he requested not-Luna, but if he got something that high profile ... those are some of the top jobs going if you've got the computer brain.”

  “Pft, he's in the running to be a chip programmer.”

  “Hardly anyone gets to be a—”

  Mina gestured for silence. “A chip programmer. He'll stay in Seattle for that. I've got to keep one of you, and you're going to Russia,” Miko answered self-assuredly as they stepped into their first period Social Arts class.

  * * * *

  Body wash. Being hit by the scent as she walked into the room half-full of teenage boys was one of Mina's least favorite things, but it was better than being late again. They entered just before the first bell rang.

  “Hats off in class, Miss Kimura,” Mr. Phelps said, without turning from getting the lesson holo up. Miko cheerily set her black fedora on her desk before getting her keyboard and holo reader out and set up. Mina, too, opened up the display at her desk for the three-dimensional lesson presentation.

  “You need to stop cutting it so close,” Scott Szach whispered from his seat in the aisle next to theirs. He plugged his input wire directly into his cybernetic eye, letting him process the input and respond purely with eye movement.

  “My fault,” Mina conceded. “Parents kept me up doing inventory half the night again—” The horticulturists behind some of the city's biggest projects were in high demand in general, and she was their only daughter. Which also meant it was generally assumed she'd end up, like her mother before her, a shop assistant and delivery girl from the end of school until her parents' retirement. “—and wouldn't let me borrow the van.” That was common enough, too. The van was an occasional perk for big deliveries. Mostly, there was the collapsible emerald-and-lilac bicycle. “Miko would have made it easy if she hadn't gone back to get me.”

  “Yeah, but where would the fun in that be?” Miko replied with a wink, all three shutting up when the teacher turned back around.

  Mr. Phelps stepped away from the holographic display on Pacific Rim relations to address the class. “All right, I know a lot of you are in the clutches of short-timer's syndrome, especially among our seniors. First chipping wave begins next week, and a few of you may not be here tomorrow for prep.” Half the class looked at Scott at that. His family already had top-level security clearance, clearing some of the hurdles more easily for top-end microchips, and everyone knew how easily he breezed through even the hardest tests.

  While no one knew quite how the chipping centers chose the order for students to go in, and there were occasional surprises based on particular pressing needs, for the most part, the highest security level chips went first. These were the lunar colony engineers, the political science specialists, military officers-to-be, and high-end programmers. Everyone figured Scott’s aptitudes were likely to put him in with the first or last of those, and Mina and Miko preferred the last.

  “But even if you don’t expect to be with us when this is done, take down the assignment anyway, and I’ll be optimistic about my chances of receiving it,” Mr. Phelps continued. “In the vein we’ve been working on, this week’s assignment is a six-page paper on how history continues to affect our lives. Since our seniors all have their chipping dates in mind, let’s be a little more specific. There’s bound to be some surprises, of course, but a lot of you, by now, probably have some idea what you’re going to end up doing for the rest of your lives.”

 
; It was a reasonable statement. By senior year, almost everyone had been through all of the possible aptitude tests, with any talents or affinities that might help contribute to their future jobs already decided or found out. The last year was mostly for general subjects that the national education and chipping boards determined were essential for everyone, like history and the various social interaction courses at their most advanced levels. It was also a time for precise specification of assignment and for double-checking, now at the age where any hidden physical talents able to emerge would have. The latter had been Mina’s primary hope for some time. A few latent genes might kick in from the other side of the family. Even just an inch or two, and she thought she might be able to make up for the rest with effort and top marks in all of her physical education classes.

  “With that in mind,” he went on. “The Decimation event, just a little over a century ago—how did it impact your career? And no cheating—your career specifically, not just 'It rocketed skill-chips from experiments to a basis of society,' people. Someone tries that every year; it will get an ‘F’.”

  Half the class groaned. Miko, on the other hand, was already intently typing away. Mina stared at her screen a few moments, then became one of the people raising their hands. Mr. Phelps took a moment to draw up her student file in his chipped knowledge base, then pointed her way. “Miss Cortez?”

  “What if... it doesn’t? If you can’t really see any impact?” she asked hopefully.

  With a couple more seconds to find the right information in her file, the teacher smiled. “Your parents own Emerald City Flowers and Design, don’t they? Carried on from your maternal grandfather... and your great-grandparents, right? Don't they consult on the park restoration projects? Plus, some of the flowers you still use were probably strains and hybrids designed to survive the environmental changes with less sunlight and fresh water available, right? You could do something with any of that.”