Aedre's Firesnake

by Rayner Ye

  "Maybe I can occupy cameras instead.”

  "Impossible. You can’t occupy technology, only copy it. Like you copied the android. I don’t think you could copy a security camera and connect yourself to its network."

  She narrowed her eyes. It couldn't hurt to try. The copied android received messages from a network, so why shouldn't a camera? “Let me occupy a camera in the basement’s furnace room in the south-west wing.”

  With curvature to her new vision, she scanned the room from a ceiling corner. An android was throwing soiled underpants into the laundry chute.

  Aedre turned her lens towards the door and back again, with a head movement. Going into technology like this opened an array of possibilities. Why had Sharr Shuvuu and this cosmic spider guy sworn she couldn’t occupy technology, when in fact, she could? What else were they wrong about?

  She went outside. “I did it. I occupied it instead of copying it.”

  "I saw,” he hesitated. “Sorry I was wrong.”

  “I wonder if anyone would notice me taking her to the basement.”

  “I don’t think you should. Go to the river you came from and take your evidence to the authorities instead.”

  “That’d take too long. How many more men will destroy her?”

  “You’re too soft. A lorry’s leaving in fifty. Your android maid’s in her closet. You decide what to do. I’m outside if you need me.”

  Aedre appeared in the closet as a maid-copy.

  The real maid grabbed Aedre’s arm. Her mechanical grip shot pain through Aedre’s upper body. Aedre twisted and dropped into a squat, slipping out of her grasp. She ducked between the maid’s legs and then turned the maid's ears from behind. The maid crumpled to the floor. Aedre threw some towels on her and, while autonomous, returned to room forty-two.

  The woman looked startled. Aedre shape-shifted to a camera and set its gaze elsewhere. Then she re-appeared as the maid. "Quickly, follow me. I can save you."

  "You vanished," she whispered, eyes wide and forehead wrinkled.

  Aedre stuffed her bed with pillows and grabbed a wig from a shelf, poking it out the duvet. Sweat beaded her upper lip. "Stay by the door—"

  “Yasmin,” the woman said.

  Aedre whispered, "I'll turn all cameras off in the corridor."

  Yasmin nodded and looked frantically around.

  When Aedre returned, they went into the cupboard. Aedre switched on the android.

  Yasmin took a step back, bumping into a shelf.

  Aedre put a finger to her lips, then touched the android's arm. "Please don't tell anyone about us. I want to help this slave escape." Aedre flushed with stupidity. What did she think she was doing?

  The android smiled. "Take me, too."

  Aedre’s jaw dropped. She shook her head. "I need you to do your duties for us to escape.”

  The maid looked at her shoes, then at Aedre. “Okay.”

  "Thank you.”

  “How will you get out?”

  “Through a laundry chute in the basement.”

  The maid placed a gentle hand on Aedre's shoulder. “If anyone questions you, tell them you're taking her to a memory wiping room. Androids want freedom too, though."

  "I don't think you would be given freedom under the Mayleedian equal rights act.”

  "Free me."

  Aedre looked around as if she might find an answer on a cleaning product.

  The android squeezed Aedre’s shoulder, her mechanical fingertips digging like claws.

  "Okay," Aedre lied in discomfort. "When I’ve found an escape route, I’ll return for you.”

  The android's hand lifted off her shoulder. "I’ll go about my duties slowly when autonomous to give you time to access your escape route via iris identification. You must disable the slaves’ internal bombs first.”

  Aedre jumped back. “Bombs?”

  Yasmin and YuFu

  “All slaves have internal bombs?” Aedre asked.

  “Yes,” the android maid said. “The deactivation device is in Bamdar's office. First, press the number for the woman you want to free, then hit enter. He uses it for escorts.”

  “Where in his office?”

  “The safe. In Bamdar's Biluglass desk.”

  “What number are you?” Aedre asked Yasmin.

  Yasmin shrugged and shook her head.

  “She’s number eight hundred and ninety-seven.”

  “Thank you,” Aedre said. If it hadn’t been for this android maid, she would have decimated Yasmin instead of saving her. “Eight-nine-seven. How long will it take to do this?” Yasmin couldn't stay in the cupboard too long.

  Yasmin gestured with the back of her hand. “Don't worry. I'll wait here. Go.”

  “Androids are slaves, too,” the maid said. "Body and mind slaves."

  “Put me in Bamdar’s body.”

  The scene changed, and she was pumping in and out of a woman from behind. The Papsnen’s dyed red her tumbled down her pink back. Tense and horny, Aedre straightened her spine and pulled out her long throbbing dick. That was unexpected.

  She hesitated before speaking to the woman. “Stay there and don’t move,” she said in a deep voice. She walked into Bamdar’s office. Where was his safe? She rubbed a hand over his Biluglass desk to no avail.

  Glancing over her shoulder at Bamdar’s bedroom, she sighed. Ask the woman he'd been shagging?

  The woman walked into the office with a frown and wrapped a white silk robe around her curvy body and long legs. “What’s wrong, Darling?”

  “Ah, I need to get in my safe. Just remembered something I forgot to do.”

  “Oh.” The woman looked at Bamdar’s desk.

  Aedre stumbled towards it and raised her eyebrows at the woman.

  “What’s wrong, Sweetie?”

  Aedre smiled. “Nothing.” She touched the Biluglass. “Safe.” Nothing happened.

  She wiped the sweat from her forehead.

  The woman took a step towards her. “Don’t you need to say a code?”

  “Shit. I forgot,” Aedre lied.

  The woman giggled and nudged her. “Yiksafe?”

  “Yiksafe,” Aedre mimicked.

  A small safe rose from the glass. Aedre relaxed. “Thanks, Honey, you can go now.”

  “Honey?” The woman giggled again. “What’s gotten into you?” She walked away, hips swaying, to the bedroom.

  Aedre pressed her hand on the lid, and it opened. From a crystalline bed, lay five laser stocks and a device with numbered buttons, much like a holophone. She pressed a green button, and it lit up. Next, she entered 897—Yasmin’s number. Then, she pressed the yellow button, ‘deactivate.’

  A smirk crept up her cheeks. She should deactivate all Bamdar’s slaves.

  Aedre hurried to the bedroom where the woman lay, legs spread wide, revealing peach fuzz between lace knickers. Aedre glared at the woman’s blue eyes and beak of a nose. “How many slaves do I have?”

  The woman arched an eyebrow, closed her legs and rolled onto her side. “Millions.”

  “In this complex?”

  “Did you bang your head or something?”

  “I think I’m losing my memory, yes. It’s been happening a lot recently.”

  The woman frowned, stood, and put a palm on Aedre’s head. “You have about one thousand in this complex.”

  “Shit, thanks.” Aedre walked to Bamdar’s office. She pressed numbers ascending to one-hundred, deactivating each time.

  Her heart thumped at the thought of Yasmin with the android maid. The laundry would be leaving in forty-five minutes. She could escape in Bamdar’s body and take Yasmin with her. But he squirmed like a snake at the back of her mind. She shut the safe, returned to the bedroom, and took off her shirt and socks, so she was completely naked. “Tie me up.”

  The Papsnen smiled and opened a cupboard containing bondage equipment. “My turn? Really?”

  “Yes. But first, tell me what your number is.”

  “Honey. How can you for
get? I’ve been your favourite since you bought me in Nerthus and brought me here. I’m your number one.” The woman selected some ropes, stopped, and pouted.

  Aedre showed her the gadget. “Look.” She deactivated her number. “I free you. Take as much money as you want. You know where it is?”

  “Over there.” She pointed to a drawer.

  “Open it and take it. Any clothes here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Comfortable clothes with pockets?”

  “No. Only spray-on bodycon dresses.”

  “Wear mine. They should fit. We’re both tall.”

  Frowning all the while, she changed into black cargo trousers and a t-shirt and stuffed the money into a few different zip-up pockets. “It’s a lot of money, Bamdar. I don’t get why you want me to go.”

  “I want you to be free. I want you to be your own person. Don’t come back.” Aedre slipped the gadget into the woman’s hands. “This is how to free number one-hundred-and-one.”

  “Okay.”

  “Before you leave, deactivate all other slaves who have internal bombs. If anyone asks you questions, tell them we’re playing a game, and you have my permission. After you’ve shut down all slaves’ death-devices, pack a bag of provisions.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do as I say! Bind me first.” Aedre grabbed Bamdar’s aurashield remote. “I’ll keep this for now.” She lay on her back and splayed her hairy arms and legs, which the Papsnen woman tied to the bed’s four corners.

  “Tighter,” Aedre said. She tried to free herself. Impossible. Hopefully, Bamdar couldn't escape, either.

  “If they catch me, they'll think I'm trying to escape,” the woman said.

  “Who's my most trusted man?”

  “What? Muftal, of course.”

  “Get Muftal...what's your name?”

  She stepped back. “How could you forget everything?”

  “What is it?”

  “Jess.”

  “Don't tell anyone about my memory, or I'll kill you.”

  Jess swallowed and nodded.

  “Don't tell anyone about my deactivation gadget you have, either.”

  She nodded again, eyes wide, and prepared to leave.

  “And Jess?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don't forget what you must do before you leave.”

  “Disarm them all?”

  Aedre nodded. Something scratched and tried to escape her mind. It twisted and writhed inside the small space she'd confined it to— Bamdar.

  When Muftal came, his red face became lined with worry.

  Aedre smiled. “It's alright. Jess and I are playing a sex game. Thought I'd let you know, so no one questions her.”

  “Okay, Boss.” Muftal’s nostrils flared, and he glanced around.

  “I've disabled her self-destruction device so she can go out and buy some sexy clothing. It's a loyalty test. I want to be left alone. No one must try and contact me. You hear?”

  Muftal nodded.

  After he left, Aedre turned Bamdar’s airSphere on internal mute, switched off voice command, and threw his remote on the floor. No one would hear Bamdar’s shouts.

  Aedre appeared as a maid in the cupboard. Yasmin breathed a sigh of relief.

  As she walked Yasmin through deserted corridors to the lift, she realigned cameras.

  When they approached the furnace room, two burly Native-Reds pushed a man in a wheelchair towards them. Their patient, so bruised and swollen, looked like a bloody pulp ready to season and put in the oven.

  "Hey, Droid!” a Native-Red with spotty hair said. “What are you doing with that girl?"

  "Memory wiping room," Aedre said.

  The zebra-haired one laughed. "Dumb ass going the wrong way. And they say droid maids are cleverer than real Native-Reds?”

  Aedre eyed laser guns clipped to their belts. “I give my intent to take over the Native-Red with spotty hair.”

  Once inside his body, she didn’t hesitate before shooting the mouthy muscle man in the head. His brains and blood exploded all over the wall.

  She gasped and looked away, trembling. She hadn’t planned on this! What a mess. Shame it wasn’t a vaporiser.

  Aedre, still in the strong man’s body, hauled his dead friend through the door, opened the blazing furnace, then she flung him in. How strange to occupy such a large body, tight with muscle. "Quickly, Yasmin, go through the laundry chute!”

  Yasmin stumbled into the furnace room and looked around in horror at the vanished maid and the new situation. She froze to the spot, probably unsure whether to follow the mobster’s orders.

  “It's me,” Aedre said. “I'm in his body now. I know I don't sound the same, but it’s me.”

  A groan came from outside the furnace room. The man in the wheelchair might die if she left him there. He was probably an innocent torture victim. Aedre rolled him in and pushed him down the chute. Then, she lifted Yasmin and pushed her in too. She slid after them.

  The three of them lay in a dark container. Wet towels covered in excrement, sweat and blood filled her nostrils, and a wave of nausea travelled up her throat. Her borrowed brain ached. The Native-Red freaked out from far away. "What's happened to me?” he called. “Why can't I move?”

  "Spider?”

  “Yep?”

  “Can you check if this guy’s alive? I can’t hear him breathing, and I can’t see in the dark.”

  “He’s unconscious. When you get used to the dark, can you put him in the recovery position?”

  “I can try.”

  The man’s outline was hunched over on the towels. Aedre checked his breathing. It rasped in her ear.

  “Can you hear me?” she whispered to him.

  Nothing.

  She tipped his chin back, put one of his legs over the other, and heaved him onto his side.

  “Doing that might save his life,” Spider said.

  She trembled. One saved and one murdered.

  Perhaps the murdered mobster had a wife and kids waiting at home. Maybe working for a mob boss was the only way he could support his family. What about the man she currently occupied? Would she have to kill him too? Both would have people to mourn them.

  Heat flooded her face as shame washed over her. How many more would she kill to save innocents? If the rain stopped over Haunted River, she’d be forced back, and this mobster would gain control. Would it rain long enough to free Yasmin?

  “Are you alright, Yasmin?”

  Yasmin whimpered. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m trying to rescue you.”

  The diesel engine finally rumbled to life, and they were on the highway.

  "Why are you helping me? And where’s the android gone?" Yasmin asked.

  "It’s still me. I can create bodies and occupy bodies. Let me explain more. I’m a simple humanoid, like you, but I’ve discovered a way of travelling and shape-shifting.”

  “You don't sound simple. More like a magician.”

  "It’s confusing, but you’ve seen me vanish, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen, the man whose body I’m in might kill you when I shift out. If I give you this gun, can you shoot him when I appear next to you?"

  Yasmin took the gun from Aedre’s hand. “He’s one of the many who raped me. I’d love to kill him."

  Something jammed around Aedre's neck. She grabbed at it—an arm. She struggled to breathe. “I intend to become myself.”

  Aedre sat next to Yasmin, and opposite the mobster. His gasping strained to a halt. The injured man’s outline bent over him, his arm around the mobster’s neck. He let go and looked at both girls.

  "Thank you for saving us," Aedre said to the injured man. Treating him like a hero might inflate his male ego and soften his temper. "We need your help to escape this lorry, so we can go to my friend's temple. He’ll offer us refuge."

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, I don’t speak Inarmuzzan,” he said in international Mayleedi
an.

  She repeated what she’d said in her mother tongue.

  "I can hardly see or move," he said in a muffled voice.

  "Who are you?"

  "A victim, like you. They stole my diamonds, which I’d worked so hard to mine, and they beat me because they couldn't steal more." He fell into a coughing fit.

  When he finished, Yasmin asked. "What's your name?"

  "YuFang. Let's get off this fucking shit hole! It stinks like death.”

  "Is that man dead?" Yasmin asked.

  YuFang slid his forearm around the man’s neck again. Bones crunched as he tightened his squeeze and twisted. "He is now."

  Interstellar Police

  The stink of dirty laundry within the lorry’s container burned Aedre’s nostrils. Yasmin’s leg pressed against hers as YuFang’s rasping breaths came in spurts over the rumbling engine. His shadowy form hunched over the dead gangster.

  “Spider,” Aedre mind-spoke. “Are you there?”

  “Yep. Watch out for YuFang. He kills too easily.”

  “Probably a gangster too. Don’t wanna kill another person, though.”

  “There’s chaos at the mafia hideout. Android maids have rebelled and are freeing slaves.”

  “That’s great! Glad I deactivated their devices.”

  “Great to an extent, but the place is on fire. Many have died. Mostly innocents—karaoke-goers, clubbers, and slaves. Smoke inhalation and crushing mostly.”

  Aedre’s heart rattled in her ribcage. She put her head in her hands and sobbed. She should’ve listened to Spider before and left with evidence—not meddled to save Yasmin.

  “What’s wrong?” Yasmin asked.

  “Feel awful I killed that gangster in the basement.”

  “He raped me.” Yasmin’s voice cracked. “Wish I’d killed him myself.”

  Aedre rubbed Yasmin’s back as YuFang sucked in a sharp breath. Whether from pain or shock, Aedre couldn’t tell.

  “Listen. Send those files to the Mayleedian Interstellar Police, MIP, before Inarmuzzan police ransack the joint for treasure and forgive Bamdar for a bribe.”

  “Send how?”

  “Go in person. That’s what my book says.”