The Chill Between Them (CasualVelociraptor x Alisa_Perne)

[CasualVelociraptor]

There were many vices to be had in the North Atlantic IceBurgh. It was true that the Bummock (the neighborhood below the water’s surface) wore its sins on its sleeve: under the table gambling, prostitution, and trafficking in junk augmentations, to name a few. Meanwhile, however, on the surface its overly glossy skyscrapers reached to the heavens as the arrogant cities of old had, in the same old scramble for money and status.

Had being the operative word, before the world was finally shaken into action and desperately resettled its stateless refugees here and in other such massive projects, with the goal of constantly refrigerating and reinforcing icebergs and other glaciers to keep the world from flooding any more. And yet Shiloh Mayer, who was decamping with her friends on the top floor of a very much under construction hotel (the sixth one here) never ceased wanting to climb to the top, even in the blasting near-Arctic air, to admire the view at night.

This time, however, as Shiloh had for the past week, she brought a small token- a worn baseball cap that was the last reminder of Connor Floyd, her best friend these past two years. She remembered looking at his gunmetal eyes (which she had in common with him; it was a mutation that was slowly becoming more commonplace, especially among the affluent), his silver alloyed hair (that she shared, although years of hard street living had darkened it with worry and dirt), and wondering if she could be brave enough to see if there was anything more than friendship there. If she could cross the gap she placed every time they sat together. Last week, she was going to finally not be a little chicken shit and ask how he felt (and, more importantly, if she was worthy of the signs he was giving off).

And then he was gone. A single bullet from IceBurgh Resort Security had been enough to snuff out his light. For everything and everyone was technically an employee of the IceBurgh Resort Corporation, even if officially “occupation deficient,” and so its private black ops goons kept them “safe” too. And sometimes decided they weren’t worth the trouble.

“Wish you were here,” Shiloh said now in her light Irish accent, patting the cap from the Before Times that Connor had kept for nearly ten years, since he was 18. A gift from his father. A shard, really. And then she closed her eyes and let the chill fill her lungs. The young transient didn’t care if her tears froze to her face.

Then Erika and Michael plopped themselves on either side of her, Erika snapping Shiloh out of her funk with a pat on the back.

The heavily-tattooed Asian woman then teased her by saying, “Look, I love ya, but can you come inside, Shy? Connor wouldn’t’ve wanted you to freeze your ass off out here. Besides, I rather like your ass where it is.”

Erika’s flirting was usually meant to lightly tease and make the melancholy woman laugh, even though the two women had had sex regularly in those halcyon days when the group just started forming, after Shiloh broke up with her boyfriend Kevin, but before Erika became exclusive with Michael and Shiloh started contemplating interest in Connor.

Shiloh laughed as expected, knowing that Erika wasn’t serious because they were barely keeping from freezing as it was. During the day, their body heat was easily maintained by rooftop parkour while illegally couriering the secrets of the rich, and as much Szechuan food (or other street foods from around the world, such as Latin American shrimp ceviche or Ethopian beyainatu) as they could afford each day. At night, when the temperature could drop precipitously, their limbs were preserved by varying but copious amounts of alcohol, weed, and MDMA; a couple solar-powered space heaters that were left unused by the crew after they left; an open shower that was also supposed to be for the construction workers, but was actually desalinated and heated for four hours each evening whether or not there were people using it, and that no one in the group had a problem with sharing at the same time; and of course, their shared body heat under emergency tarps.

Shiloh had been instrumental in advising Erika, Kevin and Michael about these survival tips when she first linked up with them three years ago, and then keeping the newbie (Connor) safe when he also became a courier two years ago. The Irish girl had learned how to shelter herself the hard way two years prior to meeting any of them, after losing her left arm to a freak blizzard that fucking coincided with the Second Troubles, and spending all the money she inherited from her bullet-riddled parents on a lifetime ticket to the IceBurgh and a cybernetic arm. Thankfully, he'd fit nicely within their group, sans Kevin.

“What she meant to say,” Michael sighed in his deep Haitian voice, wrapping an arm around his friend, who leaned her head on his shoulder, “is that we miss Connor too. But you knew he never liked to see anyone down for long. So let’s live while we’re still alive. That’s why I hope you’ll be cheered by this!”

Michael flourished a yellowing portable DVD player in his hands, along with a couple movies (both items probably reclaimed from some dump, which everybody knew and nobody needed to say), and Shiloh sniffed, “He would’ve loved that.”

“So? How about it? Let’s relax, get jacked out of our minds, and watch some stupid movies.”

“I know what my vote is,” Michael chuckled, then pecked each of his “two best girls,” as he often called them, on the cheek. He would do this to Connor too, and so it had become an expected and welcomed sign of affection. Something resembling normal for the four of them had been built out of little rituals like these.

And now Shiloh felt secure in what remained of her group, who had been there for her long before Connor had arrived and would be there long after he was gone, while they headed back down to the "flat," and prepared to forget their troubles, as well as relieve…stress later. For Shiloh, tonight that would be a solo operation, since she hadn’t been in the mood to have a nameless guest or guests over, and yet she envied that Erika and Michael would join together without a care in the world once the movie was over. If they didn’t fall asleep from the drugs, that is.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

“You heard the boss. Take em alive,” the commander of the spooks said after Yasmine instructed them over radio.

Some of them- particularly the guy who had been dealing with vomit- sighed. Yasmine (and the commander of their unit, who Lady Legato apparently trusted) never let them have any fun. Not like other clients they had.

“Then that means we need to disembark elsewhere,” another proclaimed as the hotel seemed to come closer to them. Otherwise, the loud helicopter blades would lose them the element of surprise. The pilot nodded in agreement and veered off to the right.

Soon, all the dozen Neo Varangians landed on the rooftop of an apartment complex across the street. Then, one of them pulled out a portable zipline setup from his backpack, tapped on the screen, threw a puck-sized object onto the wall, and watched as it launched a cable across the way before biting into the wall one floor below where the runners were set up.

All the contractors made carabiners pop out of their right wrists that allowed them to hook onto the cable. Then, after everybody made sure they were also hooked onto each other to prevent anyone from falling off, the zipline automatically pulled them along its length and through the windowless aperture until they were inside.

“Remember, everyone. Weapons on riot mode, and no blade arms after that last time- this means you, Dave.”

“Aw, man,” Dave sighed and put his Scorpions away.

From there, it was simple to traverse the stairwell, reach the door on the uppermost floor, and then scan it with infrared and confirm that there were two sleeping humans on the ground. It was difficult to know which ones these were, or establish where the third one was, but it didn’t matter. They were all somewhere on this floor and this was the only entrance.

“Activating Breach Protocol 6,” the commander whispered. “Mute charge requested.”

“They almost look cute, sleeping soundly like that,” one of the soldiers in the back said while they procured one.

The person they passed it up to muttered, “I heard these dirty couriers can sleep anywhere. Almost gotta admire ‘em for that, with how many jungle floors I’ve slept on.”

“Awww. Can we keep em?” someone else asked.

“Reminds me of this one op in Miami…” said yet another one.

“Hey, I’m sure that’s a yarn, but can you regale us over beers you’re buying?” the person who next got the mute charge asked before passing it up the line.

“Fireflies charged and ready,” the commander said, rolling her eyes at the tendency of her men and women to idle chit chat.

With that, she turned a handle on the mute charge, signaled everyone to stand back, and then blew it. The door disintegrated, along with the payload, but the shards of wood flew out in slowed motion, thus greatly reducing the noise. Then she stealthily crept up on a woman and a man sleeping in a makeshift sleeping bag, and with a yell of, “Here’s your scheduled wakeup call from the Front Desk!” unleashed a swarm of brightly flashing nanobots that also plastered onto and weighed down their bodies with a gluey substance. Between that and the dozen operatives tackling them, both Erika and Michael were swiftly subdued and handcuffed.

Moments later, Michael, yelled “RUUUUN!” at the top of his lungs, suppressing his natural inclination to mention Shiloh’s name, and then got his mouth covered in a quick-drying spray FastFoam, preventing him from speaking. Erika was horrified at the mistreatment of her boyfriend, but only gave stony, defiant glares up at her captors.

Shiloh, for her part, had woken up ten minutes ago from a nightmare, gasping for air. She’d carefully put her clothes back on and headed towards the bathroom, turning on the cold shower next to her to stifle the sound of her crying as she remembered the delivery gone wrong that had taken Connor from her. But the sounds of her friends’ arrests were unmistakable, even halfway across the floor plan, so she’d already bolted well before Michael told her to.

“Sweep the perimeter. NOW!” the commander barked when her enhanced hearing pinpointed the slamming of sneakers on articoncrete. Two of her goons were busy performing a standing restraint on Erika while four were holding Michael against a wall by his arms, leaving her and her five remaining free operatives to comb more than 10,000 square feet.

By the time they managed it, however, Shiloh had leapt out what would eventually become the window. Grappling lines were fired in an attempt to snatch the bird before she could fly away, but out of Shiloh’s augmented arm sprung a grappling line of her own that attached to a nearby crane and allowed her to leap and make a landing roll on the other building.

“Should we go after her?” one of the troops asked the commander.

“By the time we figure out a way over there, or call for backup, she’ll be in the wind,” the commander said. “We already have two of them. If they aren’t Tranquil, and the other girl, then we’ll make them squeal her name and where she’s gone.”

“AAAAAHHHH!” followed by “Michaaaaael! NOOOOO!” came from their original location.

The commander soon arrived on the scene and was about to give a sobering assessment of the situation (and perhaps beat one of her men senseless for killing someone in custody), when she noticed that two of the four men who had tried to contain Michael were now missing, and Erika was pointing a heavy pistol at them while in her underwear.

“Okay, there’s no need for this to get ugly,” the commander said. “Just put the gun down and tell us which one of your friends is…or was Tranquil, and nobody has to get hurt here.”

“Hey, morons, I’m the one who called in the tip to the IBRS guy on your payroll!” Erika exclaimed. “Michael was Tranquil, and he was with Connor the night he died, but you were supposed to just bring us in to talk, so Yasmine would see that he had nothing to do with what happened. Instead, you fucking made him into a punching bag, and he did what he had to to take you sons of bitches down.”

“Hey, you two,” the commander snapped at the remaining officers who had been assigned to Michael. “Is she lying?”

“H-He was talking smack about us, and being-“ one of the soldiers tried to explain, but then he got attacked by fireflies, as did his compatriot.

“I said on day one, I do NOT tolerate this shit!” the commander growled, motioning for the remaining officers to arrest them on the spot for excessive use of force. “Now, just explain what you told me to Lady Legato, and I’m sure she’ll understand.”

At that, Erika reluctantly dropped the gun, but only after looking out the window behind her and seeing only two bodies on the ground hundreds of stories below. With all the cars on magtracks in this city, there was some hope that Michael had landed on one of them instead, and that he and Shiloh had escaped alive. Either way, she felt deep regret in reporting on them like this. However, even though she feared Lady Legato’s wrath and that was why she had tried to handle this diplomatically, now that her forces had played hardball Erika would never say anything. Within minutes, she was on the gunship headed back to Legato Tower, and had plenty of time to think over her next move before she arrived.

Soon, the commander, stripped down to her sports bra and khakis after wearing heavy armor on her torso all day, brought the prisoner to the Lady’s private quarters.

“Lieutenant Jane Duvall, debriefing on operation.” Then she handcuffed Erika to a rack of BDSM toys on one of the walls and explained what happened. All the while the BioJack on the back of her neck tingled with a fear that she hadn’t felt in battlefields as far flung as Venezuela, Indonesia and Morocco.

A BioJack was a port that was required to be installed on all new residents of an IceBurgh near the base of the brain stem, ostensibly for easier diagnosis of medical conditions. Although, some whispered that political prisoners were lobotomized this way…and Lieutenant Duvall didn’t know how Lady Legato would react. And when two users connected with a BioJack compatible cable, they could share all sensations and emotions, and this would make any pain or pleasure inflicted on one hurt both of them.

From past BioJack interactions with her, Jane didn’t know if the Lady’s use of it- and any other instruments she planned on deploying- was supposed to be a punishment or a reward, for sometimes it was both, and either way made her feel nearly braindead herself the next day.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Before Jane could answer any of that, or at the very least plead with Yasmine not to asphyxiate someone who could be a valuable asset, Erika raised a shard of broken glass she’d been palming for so long that her hand bled, and jammed the pointiest end she could find into Yasmine’s cock to try to get her to remove it from her throat.

Instead, Jane pulled Erika off as she yelled for a medbot, then arrested the courier again while one was dispatched. Meanwhile, she had other Neo Varangians take their naked, screaming, kicking prisoner to the dungeon level. They did so via the private service elevator so the guests wouldn’t see anything untoward.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

“Certainly,” Jane said with as plain and detached a face as possible. She couldn’t necessarily blame Erika for giving her all to defend herself, when a face fucking from that monstrous cock with her nose blocked would almost certainly have killed her.

Stunts like this were why Jane, despite caring for her deeply when Connor had left, had kept her relationship with Yasmine mostly professional, apart from a few fucks. On the outside, she projected calm and power as an underworld boss, but inside was a thorny mess of feelings on a good day. Jane had enough of a hard time regulating her own emotions after years of war with drugs, both prescribed by company doctors and self-administered, so was ill-equipped to take on anyone else’s shit.

And so, once she called for the surgeon to make a home consult, got dressed, and instructed the guards to not let anyone in but him, Jane quietly left Yasmine alone without a word. This was not the first time such isolation had happened to Yasmine, but up until two years ago, whenever she was in pain, Connor would have been by her side.

Meanwhile, Shiloh had seen a holographic poster with her last known picture before she went off-grid and name on it, declaring:

“WANTED: Shiloh Mayer, Occupation Deficient

REWARD: 100,000 Burgh Bucks for Live Apprehension and Extraction to the Custody of Lady Yasmine Legato. Inquire at Legato Tower.”

Because the IceBurghs held more economic power than many countries, including the United States, which was suffering such hyperinflation now that 1 BB was equal to 1,000,000 USD, this would be quite the reward indeed, and bring out all sorts of characters against her. For most people, 100,000 BB would be just about enough to buy a week’s worth of fresh, non-printed food. She’d most likely get a lot of bread and pasta products to really stretch out the budget, maybe even with basic vegetables or some prime rib. Shiloh would kill again for that kind of food, that kind of money, the kind her silver mane would have afforded her back in Ireland before all this.

Her stomach growled at her for thinking about that, so she chose to focus on putting Connor’s hat on her head. It still smelled a little like his hair product, so it was almost like he was there with her, every step of this painful trek. Then she found a hoodie from the dumpster, black hair dye to smother out what little privilege she had left (which she then applied in an electric charging station bathroom next to a guy who was getting himself serviced), and then basic, slow AR contacts with half of what little cash she had on hand from the cyberdoc to change her eye color from metallic green to earthen brown.

Now, she reflected, there could be no mystery about who had attacked her group, and why. She’d only learned that Connor was the son of a crime lord when his real name and face was released by the news media upon his death, and she honestly had no clue that Yasmine would choose to direct her anger at Shiloh et al. But, misdirected or no that vitriol had already likely killed at least one of her friends, and with both of them captured or otherwise gone, she had to assume that she was on her own against a literal mob.

Isolation was no stranger to Shiloh either, but this time she was facing someone more powerful than any of the Irish Irredentist Legion goons sent to rob and kill her and her parents. She’d survived these streets for five years with little companionship even before becoming a courier, but those would be easy living on a beach in what used to be the Bahamas compared to being actively hunted like an animal.

Fortunately, the only thing she really needed to do was to keep on doing what she’d always found would give her life.

Run.

Running would make her lungs fill with fire, her legs rage and her heart jump up and down angrily. But she was already feeling these things now, with the only family she’d ever known gone forever. The only way to not be consumed was to layer more pain on top of it. And it was either that or blow her remaining cash on a sex worker or drugs. Instead, she knew she needed to run herself ragged in order to have a dreamless sleep before shoving terrible food in her stupid, worthless face and starting it all over again until she was caught and killed or died alone and afraid.

And run she did. Jumping over cars, wall running around crowds to their astonishment and fright, climbing up fire escapes, leaping across rooftops, making impossible flips while doing all of it, and ziplining with her grappling line up the sides of taller and taller buildings so she could make an increasingly risky bet with Death. All of it served to allow her to purge her building grief over Connor and white hot rage at Yasmine for ruining what little hope she had. That was, until it started raining and she knew she had to stop her parkour antics lest she slip on something and fall to her death, then descend down to somewhere that could at least pretend to be warm.

And when she found a tin shack next to a destroyed car under an overpass that appeared to be abandoned and scheduled for demolition, she stripped off all her clothes and hung them to dry in the “house” lest she get hypothermia, then stole an old blanket from the shack and used it to sleep in the backseat of the car. At least that could keep out the elements still, but she could only pray that her exhaustion would defeat the nightmares.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Jane snorted with a grin to herself as she saw the pathetic, bed-ridden woman laid low for once. For all her faults, at least this unfortunate groin stabbing incident had helped Yasmine be at least a touch more self-aware about them.

"Certainly better than when I was in the Turkish Civil War, I can tell you that much. But that...injury? That was still pretty gnarly, and I've seen people's legs blown off," Jane replied in a wry manner, attempting to lift the mood somewhat. "By the way, that bitch is getting the silent treatment from me. And I've been told I can get pretty silent. If she's not going to cooperate, at least she won't bother us."

Jane then folded her sinewy arms over her generous chest and asked, "So, uh...you said you had things to discuss?"

Meanwhile, that night, Shiloh had revisited the very rooftop where Connor died. It was a cloudy, moonless night, she noticed, although even the moon's light would not have helped soothe the fever in her soul. Not while she was fixating on the AR outline that used to be her friend.

She wished she could have had one more night, hell, one more minute with him to proclaim how she felt. Yet, she had spent so long getting over Kevin that she had been too much of a coward. And now she slammed her right fist on the flimsy, fake wood that held her weight. And now all the wishing in the world would do her no good.

"I'm sorry, Connor," Shiloh said to the empty hat that used to hold the head she adored most in this world. She couldn't entirely blame Yasmine for this. After all, she was feeling so much grief and had wanted to lash out at this world that only took and never gave an inch. The difference was, she didn't have an army of stormtroopers at her beck and call that could cause even more damage, of the kind Connor would surely have tried to stop if he was still alive. If Erika and Michael truly had been chased into the dark corners of the IceBurgh, killed, or worse because of her, then any kindness Connor had seen in his mother was gone. Now there was only whatever part of her Connor had fled from a year ago, and so, as her tears watered his final resting place, and the rain followed, Shiloh's heart declared war on the monster Yasmine Legato had become with a wordless scream of ultimate suffering.

Still, some part of her wished that she'd been able to meet Yasmine before they became enemies; perhaps if Yasmine could have seen them all through Connor's eyes, there would be something to her instead of hatred. Now she was angry at Connor for hiding so much of who he was, for making her have to take on an entire cartel by herself, and so she punched the outline until her knuckles were bloody. Then she screamed again, her grief carried on the indifferent wind along with her legs when she ran again.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

"I see that you mean it," Jane said, refusing to outright accept the prone woman's apology. "And I'll get this done."

The next evening, after getting the package from Yasmine, she met with her ex-boyfriend, the Beetle, and gave him the locket in a box made to be about as big as the reported dimensions of the box that was destroyed. It was a very tight, terse conversation; not only because that was her want, but because she still hadn't forgiven him for what he did. How could she, when six months ago, at the height of their (very open) relationship, he'd burdened her with a truth so dark, so horrifying that it would get them both killed if anyone else but them found out about it?

"You want me to give this to Shiloh? I- I don't know if I can to do that to her," he'd said. "You see, she broke into me flat three years ago, when she was just a starving wee pup, she was. I took her in like she was my own, gave her a job, some friends, helped her find her first boyfriend...she was my chance to make things right..." And it had given him such joy to have her, Kevin, Erika, Michael, Connor, and others living with him and learning from him that he’d rededicated his life to coaching couriers- both droppers and runners.

"Can it, Beetle. You'll do this, unless you want people to know why you really don't have eyes anymore," Jane snarled at the towering Scotsman, angry that she'd ever shown weakness to this sniveling old pile of failure that used to be a man.

"Look, I said I'm sorry. How long are you going to hold this over mah head, darlin'?" Beetle asked, desperate now.

"As long as it feels good," Jane chuckled to herself, the soldier starting to employ a little more than her usual steely efficiency in her face.

*****

One week after Connor's death

"I know it was a risk, but thank you for agreeing to meet me here, for old times' sake," the old runner smiled through cracked lips at Shiloh, then sipped coffee at the Grade A Distributors in Sector 1 of the Bummock (the neighborhood closest to the surface area), which sold all kinds of legal and illegal drugs, printed food and drinks, and recycled plaid and khaki clothing. The kind of thing that would've been trendy in Seattle before it was hit by a dirty bomb ten years ago.

Shiloh said nothing for a moment, choosing instead to lower her gaze towards her cotton tasting coffee so that the ragged hoodie and the brim of Connor's hat would block her from view. The NuCaffeine would make her jumpy, but it was at least some energy to run off of. And she needed to be jumpy; no less than twenty men and women had attacked her in the past week looking for that stupid million BB reward, meaning food and sleep had been elusive for her. She'd even tried to take the edge off with a sex worker, only to be attacked by them and have to flee wearing very little. If she only knew that Beetle had called off her pursuers so he could meet with her.

"Well, you said this was worth a million bucks, and I need that to buy off my bounty," Shiloh said. Alack, again! For if only she'd known that no amount of money would ever buy her freedom. "So, what's the job?"

"I'm gonna be straight with you, kid...you're not gonna like it."

"I'm not a kid anymore, Beetle. What's. The. Job?"

"It's the package you and Connor...lost. That night." What little color ran in Shiloh's face drained instantly. "Someone else- another dropper, I think- retrieved it and gave it back to the original client. Now this item needs to be delivered more urgently, and you're just the girl to do it, Shi-"

"Shhh!"

"Sorry. Let an old man have his bad habits," Beetle sighed. He'd never quite gotten used to calling her Tranquil, and what little he'd seen of her eyes had indicated she was anything but.

If Shiloh hadn't known that he had been lacking eyes for the past three years, she could have sworn that the crummy red photoprocessors looked saddened. Or maybe she just had gotten good at reading her old mentor's expressions based on the rest of his face. "Anyway, all the instructions are under the ribbon, like always."

"Thank you. You don't know how much this means to me, Beetle," the 23 year old waif said, then got up out of her seat and jumped into her former caretaker's arms, the first human contact she'd had since the night Erika and Michael disappeared.

"Yeah, yeah. Just...be careful out there, okay, pup? And if you're still alive, maybe I'll buy you a drink?" Beetle asked, sighing again as a long neglected part of his body stirred, and thankful that she hadn’t pressed up against it. His heart was more torn; he both hoped that it might turn out to be something more, and hated himself for even thinking like that towards a woman who he had nursed back to health, and who was young enough to be his daughter.

"I'll hold you to that," Shiloh said, cracking her first real, toothy smile since Connor died, then gulped down her coffee and left with the package in hand. Hopefully, this would lead to a lot of more positive firsts...

"Alright, it's done. Now can I go home?" Beetle asked Jane over the phone once Shiloh had left.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

"But...you know what, um, sometimes it's nice to just relax and have someone take care of you," Jane groaned as she came. "Oh, fuck! You really proved you can use other parts of your body. How about we discuss the tattoo thing if I can make you cum without the strapon?" Jane then wondered. Partially because she was curious, and partially because she didn't want to have to clean the strapon after just cleaning it. "Then we can discuss what we'll do to Shiloh once we catch her, over some weed and pizza?" Like the good days, about two years ago, when (while they were still employer and contractor, as they were today), they could laugh and just have fun without any pressure.

As Jane decided to prove it by massaging Yasmine's balls, fingering her ass, suckling the very tip of her cock (carefully!), and confidently treating them both to pizza, Shiloh woke up from a power nap, which she'd taken on a hard desk in an decommissioned security post that still had blank monitors attached. It wasn't a bad place to crash otherwise, however. Perhaps, if this went well and she was able to make a little more money, she could hack into the monitors herself, maybe jury rig a discarded camera, and watch for intruders. More importantly, the package was still between her thinning arms, that still had enough strength in them to keep it hugged tightly to herself.

What was eerie, even as she ran out into the hallway where she'd come from, was how close this route was to the original one that she ran with Connor. Almost as if the client had...memorized it somehow? If so, then how had the IBRS not caught wind of this being a runner route and locked it down with high security?

But the questions faded, and the task at hand occupied her mind instead. And when she busted open the door to the air conditioning room with her elbow and jumped off a ledge towards a geothermal heat pipe that was attached to the wall, in her mind she could hear Connor's laugh from that last day of his life, as he joked about how he could stay snuggled up to the pipe forever. Then he'd slid down the pipe and cheekily raced her to the end of a maintenance walkway that was right next to it.

At the time, Shiloh had joked that he hadn't won because she tripped on an errant pebble, but none of that mattered one week later, as she took in the view and knew he would have loved it, then continued running towards the destination.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

“Yeah, thanks, I was really forgetting my own name, asshat,” Jane snapped, the weed induced paranoia getting to her as well. “Look, I’m coordinating everything I can from here, including having three helicopter spotlights on her, but I have no idea how anyone who ain’t been augmented is that fast of a she devil. And she ain’t even using the grappling line in her arm.”

It was true. Cameras and lights may have been all over her, and bullets may have whizzed by her, but Shiloh was speed itself. Walls, gaps, alleyways and random construction objects were her allies; her means of throwing off the scent and slowing down the horde sent her way. But even as she embraced a fetal Yasmine on the floor, Jane knew that Shiloh would get tired, or trip, or someone on her team would get a clean shot. She couldn’t keep up the rabbiting act forever.

Jane didn’t account for the Category 6 blizzardcane that, two days ago, had buried the entire Eastern United States in fifteen feet of snow, degrading the fighting between the Liberty Pride Militia and the overstretched US Army, Air Force and National Guard into chaos, and pushed a 116 degree Fahrenheit heat wave on everything west of the Mississippi, lowering the water table of rivers and lakes as large as the Hoover Dam it went. It then rampaged back up Canada and the Republic of Greenland at remarkable speeds, forcing even those relatively stable governments to evacuate their capitals (Ottawa and Nuuk, respectively) and declare martial law and supply rationing in the affected areas. It had been predicted to miss the North Atlantic IceBurgh on its way to the North Sea IceBurgh, Iceland and Europe, so she’d paid it no mind. Earlier this morning, however a blob of warm air from the North Pole pushed it down while moving to dry out the Siberian tundra, and so now the snow and howling winds bore down on them, limiting visibility.

The Neo Varangians pressed on undeterred, but soon the wind sent one of the helicopter careening into a tenement skyscraper, forcing the other two birds to ground themselves. It also knocked out the camera systems, communications and electric grid for the entire city.

This plunged Jane and Yasmine into bitter cold and darkness, and Jane quickly made her disoriented boss huddle under blankets with her for warmth. The redundant geothermal power system was online within a few minutes, making sure nearly a million inhabitants didn’t freeze in a matter of hours. Several thousand Occupation Deficient persons were probably not so lucky, and Shiloh had to be one of them, Jane assured Yasmine. But she knew these were empty promises when they had no way of reconnecting to the surveillance system, or contacting the Neo Varangians on the ground.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Soon, even the snow stilled as the mega blizzardcane moved on, the night commanding everyone- from Shiloh, who was squirreling beneath a pile of refuse, to Yasmine, who slept on natural silk sheets with a thread count that even the King of England (or what was left of it after the flooding and the Disunity Wars that crumbled the UK) couldn’t afford- to rest. All schemes, all fighting, all crime even came to a standstill for now.

Two weeks after Connor’s death

Erika had been treated for nearly a week in the Legato Tower Hospital Floor for hypothermia and frostbite. She was the only resident of Yasmine’s dungeons to not die during the Great Snow Day, as it came to be called due to the suspension of nearly all non-automated work for a day, and that was only because a geothermal pipe had reactivated in the wall right next to her and she’d shed her frost covered clothes and pressed herself up against it, even humped her bare pussy on the heated brick to climax, scraping her inner thighs and clit because she had been that desperate for some kind of contact from anything other than her hand. Still, her fingers and toes had to be rewarmed for a long time in many painful procedures, only for it to narrowly succeed.

After she recovered, the once extroverted Erika, driven to an indescribable rage over the loss of Michael, grief for Connor, worry for Shiloh, and near insanity from lack of human contact or light, managed to steal a pistol from a sleeping guard, shoot him in the left arm, and then lunge through the doorway of her hospital room and inject morphine into the back of Jane’s neck to slow the super soldier’s reflexes considerably and be able to take her hostage, with the Neo Varangians powerless to take her lest their fearless commander’s brains redecorate the walls.

And so it was that fateful night that Erika marched into Yasmine’s suite wearing nothing but a carbon fiber dress she stole off a rack in one of the stores inside the tower. Then she demanded through the closed bedroom door, “Yasmine! I know you’re in there. This bullshit ends now! Either you do exactly as I say, or I’ll kill Jane and then myself, and then you’ll never get to Shiloh. But if you agree not to hurt her in any way, then I can help settle this peacefully, I promise.”

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

If Jane had been less drugged, she would have privately reassured Erika that the Japanese runner had nothing to worry about. But Erika was willing to go through the fear and the pain, as well as give up all the leverage she had with the pistol, in order to save her. Erika had gotten Michael and Shiloh in a mess, Michael perhaps fatally (for there was still some part of her that thought Michael was alive…or rather hoped), and she had to do whatever it took to get whoever was still alive out of it.

“Crystal. If I fail to bring Shiloh to you, you can fuck my corpse for all I care,” Erika said as she BioJacked in and the sensation of being so deeply connected to another human being’s nervous system was causing her to shake. “But whether I bring her to you or not, don’t. Hurt. Shiloh. I should never have let Connor and Shiloh go on that job alone. It’s my team, I shoulda told them not to…”

Now Erika was breaking down crying while the BioJack, her emotionally exhausted body collapsing into Yasmine’s arms. “And now she’s all I have left to live for. I love her so much. I love her cheerful Irish accent. I love her soft face that I’ve kissed so many times. And I mean, she has the softest skin, even on her augment. I love the little squeaky moans she makes when she’s about to cum. I love how her nose twitches when she’s annoyed at something. I love her laugh- bold and loud and sweet. But most of all, I love how the wind plays with her hair when we’re running together on a clear day with a gentle breeze.”

Erika was about to go on about how she was her everything now, with Michael gone, but her mood had improved considerably, and soon enough the tracking program was finished installing in her BioJack. “Oh, that’s right! You’ll be able to see through my eyes soon enough. Perhaps then you’ll learn what running- not just ordinary running, but the art of parkour that we’re keeping alive in this crazy world- is all about. Was all about for Connor. Now if you’ll excuse me, I can smell myself, so I have to shower.”

Then Erika consciously turned on the tracking program so Yasmine could literally see her stripping out of the corner of her eye. After that, she smirked at the glass in the shower, as if to say, “You’d ever get bored of this? Really?” She had a feeling she was fucked even before Yasmine’s penis worked again, so she might as well enjoy the ability to tease the crime lord while she could. It would make even the head Yasmine ended up giving her that much better.

Meanwhile, Shiloh was rudely stirred from her exhausted, dreamless sleep after a police drone passed her alley by, its siren wailing while it chased someone else. The first thing she did that evening was to open the locket that had resided in the fake package. It had a very real picture of Connor, Yasmine, and another woman- perhaps Connor’s other mother?- on the left side, and then a note on the right.

I see you. I will find you.

Shiloh managed to find a discarded pen amongst her pile of garbage, one that still had some ink in it, then wrote on the back of the note-

GOOD LUCK.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

“Oh, mmmm…fuck!” Erika cried as she got her pussy eaten so expertly. It only made her wish that Connor was still here so they all could’ve met under better circumstances. Perhaps if he’d still been dating a dropper named Sarah, which he did for the first year of his time as a runner, she might’ve kept his head screwed on, and not allowed him to cockily accept a dead drop run through upper class employ territory. She was 33, so they’d all gotten jokes about liking them young out of their system when she visited, but Connor had been 28 when he died, and she’d helped ground him. Then again, it seemed that swagger ran in the Legato family, so perhaps Connor’s stubborn ass would’ve taken the job anyway. All thoughts of what might’ve been, however, were pushed away as Erika approached climax.

Meanwhile, Shiloh had been just about able to sell enough old components in a black market outpost in the alleyway across the skyway, which she’d crossed using a zipline, to afford a room in a sleepbox prefab hotel called Domna Despina for one night. Then she cleaned off the garbage smell in a very small omnishower, got dressed, and was then surprised by a hearty traditional sausage and white bean stew delivered by the most adorable elderly Romanian lady- one Alexandra Ciobanu, her name meaning “Shelter provider, Shepherd”- who ran the place.

That would’ve made sense to Shiloh if it had been explained to, as when Shiloh asked how much the food cost, Alexandra dismissed any notion of money and just told her to eat. After that, Shiloh did some light reading before bed, of a site she was too tired to remember the name of on a provided tablet. What she read, however, was terrifying.

“A medical journal has published a startling new theory about last year's sudden, shocking extinction of the orangutan [see our award-winning video of the last orangutan at this link]. They suggest that the virus responsible was not a new mutation, but a very old one - an ancient virus buried until now in high-latitude permafrost, set free by global warming. The virus may have plagued the ancestors of the modern great apes more than one hundred thousand years ago.

Several important questions remain unanswered, including &$%§& /// ERROR /// more importantly, the study suggests that, based on samples taken from locations around the globe, the &%%$& incubation period may ///

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Shiloh then closed her eyes, tightly wrapped the blanket around herself, and squeezed her eyes shut to try to force herself to go to sleep.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

“Ahhhh AHAHAHAHA,” Erika wailed as she came on Yasmine’s face. Then the poor girl passed out for a second. After weeks of being deprived of sex, getting an orgasm that wasn’t delivered by painfully grinding on a brick in a prison cell was overwhelming.

But Erika quickly recovered and followed Yasmine’s instructions to the letter, along with adding some flair to her work by tonguing Yasmine’s ass, for better lubricant than the shower could provide.

“You came to the right person,” she winked. “I used to peg Michael all the time.”

That was the only warning Yasmine got before her ass was swiftly penetrated in one powerful motion by Erika. Seeing that her asshole could easily accommodate such, Erika moved faster.

“Oh yeah, you like that, bitch? You like getting your ass fucked like a whore?!” Erika then growled as she held Yasmine’s breasts tightly and began rutting the older woman.

Back at the sleepbox, Shiloh wasn’t able to get a wink of sleep due to her neighbors fucking loudly. Then she knocked on the door of their sleepbox to complain, only to find a fully naked woman answering the door, her wolf-looking partner sitting behind her and smoking out of a very expensive looking hookah. Shiloh was stunned; she’d heard of furries before, even looked up some anthro porn on her phone, back when those were common and not a luxury for the ultra-wealthy. And the augments needed to completely transform him into…this must’ve been expensive.

“Are you gonna stare, or take a hit with us?” the strange woman asked.

Shiloh went inside without a word, eager to numb her pain, and the man wolfishly grinned, “Good choice.”

 

[Alisa_Perne]

Yasmine bit her lip, and hung her head in shame, "You mean it?" Yasmine asked, "You kept his last words from me all this time?" She stood up and walked up to Jane, she wanted to hit her, right in her pretty face, and break that pretty little jaw of hers. The one that perfectly framed her face and lips. This awful person who kept her sons last words to her form her, this stupid fucking, beautiful woman, "Yes." She said, looking down, "I will."

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

"My entire life. Our entire childhood in North Carolina, really," Jane said. "Before I knew what love was, or what I was, I knew I adored you, as Nathaniel and then as Yasmine. And...well, that sounds like a fair determination. I'll polish my kneepads just in case."

"I...concur," Erika said. Not like she had much of a choice other than to let them decide whether to end her beloved's life any time soon. "But also not something I can get involved in. You understand." Nor would she mention anything about spines and the breaking of them on super-soldiers' knees to Shiloh when they met, lest Shiloh get spooked and Erika get fucked to death. She was pretty sure she was trapped here either way, as Yasmine had mentioned. But whether this would be heaven or hell for her depended on Shiloh's actions the night of Connor's death.

Erika knew that Connor was the kind of person who always was what he claimed to be. She just had to hope that Shiloh was as well. Although, there had always been something melancholy about that girl, she thought as she ran from the Legato Tower to her billboard (refusing a lift by helicopter from the same Neo Varangians whose commander she'd just kidnapped, in case Shiloh was lying in wait by her billboard). She wanted to believe the best in the people she loved, but they all had pasts they were running from, literally and metaphorically. Her. Michael. Connor, clearly, who omitted his connections to organized crime. Why would Shiloh be any different?

As she was thinking all these things and making death defying leaps across routes made in her head like it was nothing, Erika didn't realize that Yasmine could see through her eyes the entire time. Instead, she hacked into the billboard to show her runner tag and whispered, "Please be out there, Shiloh. I've missed you."

Little did Erika know that Shiloh had been sitting on the edge of the billboard, waiting for hours (after Nana Ciobanu made her and the equally hung over man and woman she'd slept with- who she realized were named Erwin Burrell and Amaranta Van De Laar, respectively, and actually seemed like really cool people- eat a breakfast of Romanian goulash in their pajamas, with a loving smile creasing the laugh lines on her face) for Erika's signal. As soon as she responded, both girls took their preferred routes to Ogikubo's Noodles.

Somehow, Erika knew that Shiloh would get to the stand and order first. Connor liked to joke that she always did get a sudden burst of energy when she smelled food. But now she hunched over and guarding the all-natural, non-printed pork belly ramen, which Erika had introduced her to and Shiloh had claimed was "the best thing I've ever eaten," like it was made of gold; inhaling it rather than savoring it like she used to; and scanning the skies and streets for threats. Erika didn't blame her, but was worried about how Shiloh had been coping, especially with being on the run for weeks. She needed to resolve the situation now or Shiloh would lose her mind, she decided.

"Eriiii!" Shiloh beamed and kissed Erika on the cheek. "I thought you were dead. But I never gave up on you. I always came back to that same billboard, hoping and praying that you would send your signal and you finally did. So, how the hell did you escape Yasmine and her Neo-Gargoyle fucks?'

"I'm so glad to see you too, baby girl," Erika said, just about managing to suppress what she really wanted to say just one more time. A phrase from one of the Gaelic texts Shiloh adored so much from her homeland, and had often repeated to her.

"Mo Anam Cara," meaning "my soul friend". Which she desperately wanted to follow up with the one Japanese phrase she could still say, that she could remember her father saying to her mother with all the love in his heart. Before all the chaos, before they died telling her to run while she couldn't do anything but, lest the crowd kill her too.

"私は最初にあなたに目を置いた瞬間からあなたを愛してきた."

"Hajimete ata tokikara sukidata."

"I've loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you."

That (and her desire to eventually be Mrs. Erika Chambers-Mayer) would not serve the silver haired girl well, even if Erika meant it more seriously than the jokey, flirty compliments she usually paid to her fellow courier. Erika dove right into explaining that, no, she hadn't escaped, and that instead she had gotten Yasmine to see their side of the story. She also admitted and apologized for her role in telling Yasmine where they were after Connor died. Shiloh then stared at her half eaten ramen in stony silence, and only responded when Erika beseeched her.

"I mean, before Yasmine sent in a battalion of armed mooks to hunt us, I get it. You were scared about her doing just that, and wanted to settle things diplomatically. You always were arbitrating fights between us over the littlest things. But after? After they chased me for two weeks, after they made me sleep on a pile of trash, after they killed Michael? How could you work with Yasmine now?" Then Shiloh realized, and her mouth hung open in horror.

"How many times have you fucked?" she asked, knowing that Erika could get very doe-eyed about somebody she'd just slept with. However, Shiloh knew that Erika had been been hurt too many times by randos these past three years, and it made Shiloh angry that Yasmine was tricking her best friend in the same manner.

"Look...once, but that's not relevant. I promise you, Yasmine's changed."

"Really convincing performance there, Eri," Shiloh said, slowly clapping her hands with contempt written all over her face.

"Hey!" Erika cried, taken aback that Shiloh would act like this.

"Don't hey me, Erika. I know you're hurting after Michael, and you want to have some semblance of a normal life. But Yasmine destroyed me. I have no money, I've practically slept with one eye open for two weeks, everyone I've ever loved has either died or betrayed me by her hand, and all because...what, she thinks I'm responsible for Connor's death? If she knew Connor at all, or cared about you in the slightest, she would know that wasn't true."

"Oh, Shi," Erika said, her heart breaking for her best friend. The Japanese girl held the Irish girl's freckled face, thumbs tracing over every beautiful dot, and continued, "I told her as much, honey. She understands. She just wants to hear from you about Connor's last night alive, and his last words to you."

"Oh, NOW she wants to hear me out?! What, so she can trick me again and kill me herself? Maybe she should've said that before she tried to trap me with a bunch of assault rifles pointed at my face, or sent three helicopters after me in the middle of a fucking once in a century blizzard," Shiloh raged as she thought about his last words before he died, knocking away her hands with her arms., nearly knocking Erika out of her chair.

"Hey, Shiloh, I know you're a regular here, but you're scaring away my customers," Arakawa-san, who ran the shop named after his late father, tried to say.

Undeterred, Shiloh slammed her fist on the table, rattling both their bowls, and demanded with a pointed, gloved finger, "What reason would I have to hurt Connor?"

"It's not me you have to convince of that."

"Why do I owe Yasmine anything?"

"Don't do it for her, then. Do it for me. If you have nothing to hide, then just tell her what happened, and we can live comfortably with her, and never have to worry about money or food ever again." Together died on her lips.

"I wish it was that easy, but Erika- I...I've met some people. They promised they can help keep me safe."

"But Shiloh! If you do this, you'll be throwing everything away."

"I came to this city to start over, and although I care about you, there's nothing else left on the surface for me, so I have to do that again. I'm sorry, and I will miss you and always appreciate that you tried to help, but go back to that phallic tower of hers with Yasmine's offer and shove it up her wrinkly old ass, along with whatever else you like to put up there," Shiloh said, then dropped her remaining noodles on Erika's head. Not only did it give her a moment to run away and blend into the crowd while Erika was busy clearing the lukewarm broth and ingredients from her eyes, but it also short circuited her BioJack, cutting the feed.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

"It will be done," Jane nodded. "If she laid a hand on Erika, or Connor, or anyone else, that Irish leprechaun will pay, I promise you," she added, then demanded over the radio to the unit. "All Neo Varangians! Priority level Alpha objective: lock down Pacifica District and secure the safety of Erika Chambers. Secondary, low-level objective is to take custody of Shiloh Mayer. Only engage with lethal force if she does." The last thing she did was have her armor delivered by drone, then jumped out of a window to a waiting helicopter.

With that, the manhunt was on. And bring a whole army, Jane did.

Within moments, a YellowZone was established with the cooperation of IBRS forces, and no one was allowed in or out, but no one was suppressed, lethally or otherwise, even when they pushed up against the lightly electrified AR perimeter in anger at being blocked from commuting, and received static shocks in their cars or to their persons from it.

In the midst of it, some witnesses reported that a woman who matched Shiloh's description was seen arguing with two other people, a man and a woman. But Shiloh had apparently disappeared into the Metro, the underground transit system between the surface and the various Bummock Sectors. No one, not even Resort Security, could enter the area between stations while trains were shut down without the cooperation of the various underground communities such as the Fourth Reich and the IceBurgh Soviet Socialist Republic, and since Shiloh had been deemed low-level, and no one could find the people she had supposedly been fighting with to establish a lead on where she might be headed, that was the end of that.

Shiloh Mayer, if she'd ever properly existed in the first place in the eyes of the city apart from her BioJack, was declared legally dead later that day by a tired, underpaid bureaucrat in the Guest Tracking Department.

Erika, on the other hand, was fortunately found in a bathroom washing out the food from her clothes about an hour after the lockdown started, so the YellowZone was lifted and Pacifica District was returned to something resembling normal. However, she would never be normal again, not truly, even when she finished crying all the tears she had over Shiloh.

When Erika got back to Yasmine’s room, she explained what happened and that Shiloh hadn't hurt her, nor could she. She also begged Yasmine to let Shiloh go; there was no way she ever harmed Connor, and now she was no longer a threat. So, she hoped, they could grieve their shared loss together, and build something new.

Together.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Jane had been in the bathroom, but quickly washed her hands and helped Yasmine steady herself as she was called in. "What happened?"

"She's just feeling emotional still, about Connor," Erika said.

Jane nodded sagely and sighed, "I heard all of that, by the way. It's okay if you want to be in love with her. I think I made my one and only condition pretty clear," Jane smirked and grabbed Erika's ass, which elicited a gasp and a purr from the Japanese woman. "I just want to be your only wife. The main person who takes care of you when you're old. Cause I can live for a hundred years with these augments and still look like this. But you're still gonna look like a supermodel to me, even when you're 100."

"Wow! Sign me up for that," Erika joked.

"Trust me...you really don't want to go through the US Army's augmentation program," Jane chuckled to herself, even though she knew Erika wasn't serious about it. And she was giving the kid some slack; knowing that Erika's dad had been an officer like Jane made her respect Yasmine's younger companion a little bit more.

"The thing is," Jane said. "I wish I could help with the legacy thing. I've always wanted kids. But, ya see...uh...can't have one myself. They sterilized us. Somethin’ ‘bout hormone imbalances or such shit, according to the eggheads. I consented and everything, but that was back when you were dating Jessica and I was pretty resigned to finding anyone else, let alone someone I could have kids with."

"I...just...haven't thought about it, honestly," Erika said. "But..." she trailed off, rubbing the back of her neck. "If we have the chemistry after having sex properly, I'm certainly fertile enough to try for a kid with you. No promises yet, but I think I'd be happy to help you out with that."

"Any kid of yours would be lucky, Yasmine. Plus, we're gonna have three moms around here. It's gonna fucking rock," Jane said with a fist pump.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

"I think this is what Connor would've wanted. To have his cougar mom bag two young hotties," Jane joked. Even though she 46, only one year younger than Yasmine, and they could both easily be Erika's lost lesbian moms, they were all adults here, and were really into each other, so who was anyone hurting? Certainly not the three of them, who did indeed enjoy an amazing movie marathon over Japanese food; Jane hadn't eaten it much despite being in a town with a high percentage of Asians from all over the world in it, and Yasmine wanted to celebrate Erika's culture, so Erika placed a massive delivery order for sushi rolls, ramen, AND sashimi from Ogikubo's. Arakawa-san nearly had a heart attack, but to his credit, he closed down the restaurant (because with an order like that, he could afford to!), and got it to the Legato brand drone that picked it up in about an hour.

Meanwhile, Shiloh was having a very different meal. She'd managed to avoid some predatory Nazis that lurked in the Metro and hitch a ride on the back of a train from Pacifica Station down to Bummock Sector 4, and was hiding out in a dumpster in the back of a gentleperson's club, eating some buffet items that were half gnawed and still left in their styrofoam containers, so were probably safe-ish to eat. It was waste like this, Shiloh had decided, that was slowly killing the world, so if she could hide out here for a few days until the heat around her from Yasmine died and eat all the free food she wanted, maybe she might make a difference. That, and she was hungry as fuck. She decided she would rather be a dumpster diver with integrity than live comfortably having murdered and robbed an elderly Romanian woman with a fake will, like Amaranta and Erwin had suggested at Pacifica after Shiloh's meeting with Erika. (As for those two, hopefully her anonymous tip to the Romanian mafia had yielded results. She had vowed never to kill anyone, but who else really had the power to protect such a fragile woman? Besides, Shiloh wouldn't be involved...directly.)

Then an old man flipped up the lid of the dumpster and pointed a shotgun at her, forcing Shiloh out with a yelp, the poor young girl shaking in her running shoes and smelling like a skunk that had been left out in the sun too long to him. Then he noted she had a nice body and offered her a job...

One month after Connor's death

Yasmine wouldn't normally go to the Bummock if she could help it, but the stitches had been taken out, her penis was working again, and she desperately wanted to use it again. Of course Jane would be down when she returned home, but Yasmine also wanted one more night of freedom to really have some fun before she threw herself into trying for a baby with Erika and getting coached in parkour took up the rest of it. And so, what harm was there, necessarily, in going to a club like Prime Eight in Sector 4, that was really hopping? Part of it was because they'd finally gotten natural chicken wings and other food that didn't taste like rubber, but a lot of why they'd been able to get the money to do so was because of a new batch of strippers. It was a team effort from the men, women and others who danced here, but one name in particular came up a lot.

Brona.

And lo and behold, Yasmine had gotten there just in time. The girl with the silver hair, hued with purple, was dancing to Work B*tch topless. She was also really working the pole like Yasmine wanted her pole to be worked, and according to the bookie was available to be booked for private dances at a rate of 10,000 BB an hour.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Shiloh would have touched herself right there and then, and perhaps mounted Yasmine's cock in abandon of the tatters of her principles, if she had met Ms. Legato under very different circumstances. And when Yasmine's dam finally did burst, and oh did it ever burst (on the bed, on Yasmine's body, and on the floor), Shiloh's blush extended to Brona's face, thankful that the lack of light hid it. Then she kissed Yasmine, helped her clean up and get dressed again, and cheekily waved goodbye to her. After that, Brona gathered up the team for a staff meeting after the old man announced his resignation upon hearing the size of Brona's offer to buy him out, which she said would happen by the end of the week.

Unfortunately, one of the strippers drunkenly said this to the wrong person, who then said it to a friend, who then said it to another friend...who then said it to Erwin Burrell and Amaranta Van De Laar. Smelling blood in the water, the two small time con artists came over to the club after closing, when they knew Brona would be the only one here, the wolf man pushing aside the bouncer with animal strength.

"Brona. Nice to finally meet the Bummock's newest millionaire in the flesh," Erwin grinned as Amaranta locked the door behind her. "Or should I say Shiloh? Lots of people reinventing themselves these days."

"That's the beauty of this city, hun," Amaranta said as Brona put on a classic she used to run to all the time- Ultraverse by Erik Ekholm.

"I don't know anyone by that name. What do you want?" Brona snarled.

"Whoa, down girl," Amaranta interjected. "Erwin just wants to talk. Hear the man out."

"You see, I think you need a little investment capital to get off your feet."

"Don't you already have enough money after fleecing an old woman?" Shiloh now demanded, slightly raising her voice as the beat of the song did about twenty-five seconds in.

"She left it to us, as I recall," Erwin chuckled, too savvy of a criminal to say anything directly. "She was going to include you in the will and make us one third partners equally, but then you pulled a magic trick and vanished into the Metro. Still, I appreciate the Romanian guys you sent to check in on us; turns out, they understood how important we were to Alexandra.” Meaning, they likely conned their way into not getting killed.

“So now we manage Domna Despina in her memory, and now that we’ve gotten experience in the hospitality industry, the guys have asked us about opportunities to expand. All we need is a little taste of this high growth market- say, a 20% stake?- to to ourselves."

"Are you alone?" Shiloh asked, curling her fists behind her back.

"Yes. Why?"

"Because this is what I think of your offer, dog breath," Shiloh huffed, then activated the smoke machine at exactly 59 seconds into the song.

*****

The next day...

If Yasmine came back to Prime Eight, she would see a floor covered in broken tables, shattered glass, and blood, with a dozen severely suspicious strippers operating cleaning bots on the floor, or scrubbing the things that just would not come out.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

"Yes. A thousand times yes. I can't wait to be with you, my dear," Brona smiled. Within seconds, the sorrow she had named herself after sank in, but that was then alleviated for the time being by the money appearing in the fake account. "I just saw it. Thank you! Bye."

Once Brona hung up, Shiloh returned behind her eyes as she knelt down to Erwin while he panted, broken and bleeding, from his chair. "Heeeey...yoo hoo." Then a whistle. "Look at me. You're not allowed to pass out yet. First, you gotta tell me if you told your little Romanian friends about any of this."

"Go...to heeeellll, Shilooooh," Erwin said next to his already unconscious girlfriend.

“You first,” Shiloh said and kneed him in his furry balls. “Anyone else would just kill you, but I’ll call your boys up, and you can see what they think of failures like you, huh? Especially failures who lied about ripping off and then murdering sweet old Romanian grandmothers.” This is what Shiloh hoped would balance the scales once and for all; the Romanians would mete out whatever punishment they deemed fit and she’d wash her hands of all of this unpleasantness.

“Wait, wait! Don’t- don’t go! Please! SHILOH!” Erwin screamed as Shiloh left.

*****

The next day, when Yasmine returned to the club, Jane and Erika were seeing it through her BioJack as a half dozen Neo Varangians flanked Yasmine with guns on their hips. The super-soldier had laughed when Yasmine told her and Erika about this, and they both agreed that this was a scam of some sort, and that Yasmine would never be seeing the money- or Brona- ever again. For as powerful and experienced as Yasmine was in the criminal underworld of the surface, she was naïve by the standards of the Metro, let alone the Bummock, simply because the surface was more about white collar crime, and was therefore the shallow end of a much deeper, darker pool.

Whoever this Brona was had clearly been in the dirty, bloody, knuckle dusting world of one of the less politically powerful but more feared ethnic gangs here at some point in her life. Certainly not the Ethiopians or the Thais, because her race didn't fit. But Jane said this was the kind of tactic the Irish or Polish would employ, so she was going to have people look into either of those backgrounds.

Carefully.

The same stripper from yesterday greeted her at the door again- this time with an SMG in the face. This made the Neo Varangians’ assault rifles come out, which prompted all the other strippers who had been packing heat for years as a standard work precaution to draw their weapons. (When the brawl took place, they'd all been asleep, but had guns under their pillows, and waited by the doorways in case anyone tried to attack them, as was their training for surviving a robbery, not knowing that their new manager was beating the crap out of the intruders.)

Antonio soon waded into the middle of this, calmed everyone down to lower their weapons, explained who Yasmine was for those who hadn't seen her, and said, "Last night...I'm sorry to say this, but the Romanian mafia attacked here last night. Some of the wounded are upstairs if you need to see for yourself...we fended them off, but that was a feint. They also attacked a cafe and, and...oh, I'm sorry, it's just too hard to say. Th-those monsters, they gunned Brona down in cold blood, man."

"That tracks," Jane sighed while seeing five other people surrounding Antonio in a hug. "There was a shooting at a cafe at about one in the morning, and while the IBRS hasn't released the name of the victim, her physical description matches the one you gave for Brona. I'm sorry."

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

After Jane said she was on it and disconnected the BioJack link, Antonio cleared his throat and said, "I've helped manage the place. The old man originally looked into grooming me as a successor until he heard from Brona that she wanted to buy him out. I can't compete with that, but I never wished Brona ill. And even though she was only here a month, I adored her. We all did." Some of them, including him, had even had sex with her, although it was more of a method of stress relief between coworkers than anything else. "So unless anyone feels they can run the place better, do I have your trust to rename this place Brona's and manage it?"

As all the employees of what used to be Prime Eight enthusiastically nodded their assent, Darya blushed, but gave an awkward thumbs up to consent to being a stand-in for Brona. She wasn't a very popular stripper because she didn't fit the body type or genitalia requirements of many of the pickier clients, so she'd do this for Brona, as the fellow stripper had slept with her when everyone else treated her as their dorky sister. However, she was also honored someone as hot (rumored to be well endowed) as Yasmine Legato wanted to fuck her, as Yasmine had been her celebrity crush for many years. She had hoped it wouldn't be because of Brona dying, but Darya figured Brona would be cheering her on from the grave.

*****

Three months after Connor's death

Plenty of people, as it turned out, lusted for Yasmine in the same way, but the only person who got a dicking from her in the two months after Prime Eight was rebuilt as Brona's had been Jane. Darya had wanted to, but was busy managing Domna Despina after Yasmine bought it from the Romanian mafia as a peace offering. Erika had also been hankering after Yasmine, it was true; but she also didn't want to rush into anything, until the wounds Yasmine had inflicted on her and Shiloh as well as the loss of Michael had scarred over her heart.

Tonight, if things went well on this date, then everything would change, Erika hoped. She was now waiting at a table at an adventurer restaurant (meaning a restaurant with samplings of food from all around the world, since most specialized restaurants that weren't dirt cheap had folded due to the tight availability of fresh ingredients, and adventurer restaurants filled the gap by allowing one to sample different cuisines at a premium, usually as an eight course prix fixe menu) called Tanase for Yasmine to arrive.

Erika figured she would be there, since she owned the building, but after seeing Yasmine help Brona's successfully relaunch, as well as place Brona's and Domna Despina under Prime Eight Entertainment as a small but profitable subsidiary of Legato Enterprises, Erika had also encouraged her to throw herself into a new project: developing the parking lot behind Legato Tower and Polar Commons (the mall next to the Tower) into Gaia Park, the third pillar of the newly reorganized Legato Campus. Yasmine had wanted to call it Legato Resort, but the Council vetoed it on grounds of trademark confusion, since the land rested on the North Atlantic IceBurgh Resort. And according to their UN charter, they held the exclusive rights to call anything a resort on an IceBurgh. As revenge, the Council held up her regulatory approval in a mile of red tape until she caved. Once it had been approved, Yasmine decided it would be focused on rides and shops themed after various world landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Great Wall of China, but also a nature preserve for all sorts of life.

This would take approximately two years to build at a projected cost of three billion dollars, and employ thousands of occupation deficient people as well as thousands of new refugees who would pay for food, housing, clothing, etc. And so IRC- the Resort Corporation, that ultimately was the house in this situation and stood to benefit from everything, criminal or not, that took place in its walls because it was quickly becoming the safest place on a fraying world- had not really wanted to put a stop to Legato's plans, because nearly all development (even the container ships full of people that were being assimilated as Container District) was good development for them. They had just wanted to make sure she remembered her place in the larger ecosystem they controlled, then give her her little fiefdom.

This meant it was certainly possible that Yasmine could run late, or have to reschedule entirely.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Without another word, Erika pulled Yasmine down to the bed, made sure she lay down on her back, and positioned her hips over Yasmine's penis.

"Does this answer your question?" she asked, taking a deep breath before connecting the BioJack cable between their two ports. When she deflated her lungs (something that Yasmine would truly feel in addition to seeing from both hers and Erika's perspectives in their implants), Erika lowered herself onto Yasmine and became one with the crime lord through the tentative joining of their sexes.

"OOOOOHHH WOOOOW! This is way different than an android!" Erika panted, even as only the tip penetrated her. "I, I need a moment to get used to you." It was truly surreal to really understand, inside and out, all the blood pumping into her- wait, Yasmine's, whoa- penis. She could even sense the sperm churning in her balls, ready to unleash all their reproductive power into her mate for a singular biological purpose.

Then she thought Fuck it and slammed her hips down to engulf Yasmine's unyielding meat. Even just the throbbing of the whole length against her walls, without any movement other than that caused her to shake from pleasure.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Erika was slowly stirring to awareness as she heard her beloved wake with a start. Then she heard a loud crashing sound, ran to the edge of the roof despite being naked, and saw a wrecking ball flying backwards through the air, away from the parking structure that was about to be demolished. It then crashed into the (thankfully empty) lobby of Legato Tower, destroying several windows and then landing on and leaving a huge crack to spread like a spiderweb across the elegant marble floor.

A couple pops of gunfire ensued from two Neo Varangians who appeared to be in the parking structure, but those were quickly silenced and then followed up by a flare cutting through the inky black and a declaration on a bullhorn, made for all sleeping soundly in their hotel rooms and condos to hear:

“Tonight begins your reckoning, Yasmine Legato! I am vengeance! I am the night! I! AM! DEIRDRE!”

Moments later, the flare exploded into a hundred foot tall image of a fiery bird that coated the exterior of the garage. More gunfire rang out in search of this Deirdre, but like the image she’d created, the interloper vanished.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

“I’ll go back out as a courier for as long as I can, and try to ask around about who Deirdre might be,” Erika said. “And before you say anything, I can have a couple people tailing me, but they need to not be obvious about it.” She then left before anyone could say anything; she really needed the air and to not be here for the interrogation.

After Erika left, four people in tattered clothes were brought in and handcuffed to each other and to the couch: an elderly Black woman, an Indian man, a scared White boy, and…

Holy shit, Jane thought.

Beetle.

 

[CasualVelociraptor]

Thankfully, the old woman was just about limber enough to be able to dodge the flying club, and Jane was able to use her peak human strength to shoulder carry both of the younger men out of the suite and give herself plausible deniability for whatever happened next.

“Perhaps you’ve seen me face around this city, but I’m just one of the bugs living under your feet, that you feel you can squash at any time,” Beetle snarled. Then he popped a boner to try to throw Yasmine off when she sat on his lap, even after she knocked out one of his teeth with that wallop of a right hook.

“Oh, are they now?” Beetle played dumb. “Found ‘em in the garbage, love. And I mean, yeah, I saw her, but she was a little blur of leopard, that’un. Didn’t get a good look at her face, is what I’m sayin’.”

Of course, Beetle was lying through his teeth. He had looked into Deirdre’s eyes for two months with so much love as he’d let her stay at his place, and stitched together the tatters of Shiloh and Brona into this new woman that he hoped would save the soul of this cold city.

Then he’d seen one last time last night.

Oh how long he’d looked at those silver eyes that captivated him so as, at her request, in the dark and with no possibility of anyone seeing them, he made love to all of her last night like he’d ached to for so long, with only grunts and groans on their mind to conceal their identities, and then ejaculated into a vial for her plan B.

That night as he held her, Beetle had made a vow to protect whatever she called herself like she, grown up so much from when they’d first met, had done for him during her stay.

He knew he was going to die for her tonight, whether Yasmine or his inoperable brain tumor (created by all those implants) got to him, to kickstart her campaign as she remotely watched through his eyes and spied upon their enemy.

 

[Alisa_Perne]

"And die you shall, you defiled my wife, then murdered her with black market abortion pills!" She spat on him then started to pull on his implants, you could hear the tearing of skin, you could see the blood starting to seep from the sides, she gave a grunt as she put her knee on his chest and leaned back, the implants started to lift, so did the skin, and tissue beneath, "This is what happens when you betray Yasmine Legato." she said tugging harder, the implant came out, so did his brains, so did half his face, in a glorious visceral spray of skin and blood. She stared at the bloodied corpse of a man for a few seconds before cutting off the broadcast. Calmly, albeit covered in blood, Yasmine uploaded the entire video, including the mans confession of his murder to the holo network, by six am tomorrow, it would be broadcast throughout the entire holoboard network, over, and over and over. Top of the hour, every hour, for 24 hours. Dierdre would get the message, and so would the rest of the world. She then poured herself a glass of champagne, and stood on her balcony, blood covered, smiling over her city.