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14 - Duplicitous Dancer
🕑 Added 2022-04-29 19:00:05 +0000 UTCBeatrice rummaged through another drawer. Next to the bed, a man lay on his side in the recovery position, one knee bent and his arm carefully inserted under him to keep his airway clear. Beatrice refused to leave him for dead, even if she felt he deserved it. She knew that one too many had succumbed to the potent cocktail of being left unattended face down in their own sick.
‘There is another person coming down the corridor, not sure if he is—’ Arthagia stopped speaking. ‘Beatrice. He stopped in front of the door.’
The comm panel trilled, freezing Beatrice in place. Her stomach violently contracted and her body became cold with fear.
‘Shit,’ Arthagia muttered.
Nobody else was supposed to be here; the plan was to get in and out without anyone being the wiser, and barring that, without her getting caught.
She’d read his file. She had no desire to tangle with fascists masquerading as a corporation.
The hotel room's door began to lightly chime the sound of a code being entered into a number-pad.
‘Beatrice. You’ve gotta get out of there,’ Julie hissed through her headset.
Pause.
‘Bee! Fucking move or you’re gonna get caught!’ Julie sounded ragged. Beatrice’s blood uncrystallized, flowing icily through her once more.
The mechanical airlock withdrew, silhouetting a man. “Hey. Jordan, you asshole… You’re not supposed to use the privacy lock unless—huh?”
Beatrice held her breath, trying to ignore the pound of her heartbeat in her ears, her body pressed tightly into a minuscule recessed closet across from the door, shrouded amidst the chunky forms ofthe hanging clothes.
“What the fuck?” She could see him now, not as large as her quarry, but certainly bulky enough to be Terran. “Jordan?”
A multitude of horrendous scenarios played out in her mind: the cold embrace of some stretch of dead vacuum outside a municipality airlock the most prevalent and likely.
The man warily moved to inspect the room smoothly drawing his piece, a nasty looking ballistic pistol from a concealed appendix holster. Beatrice could barely see him efficiently sweeping the room with his eyes, checking corners, blind spots, even under the bed.
‘Please don’t check the closet. You know that no full grown man could fit in here,’ she thought loudly.
The hallway still stood unguarded, but not for much longer. The door would automatically close soon as he moved beyond it.
As if the door were conspiring against her, it gave a faint hiss and shuddered as its internal mechanisms began to engage.
Fear turned to desperate clarity, and her artificial muscle fibers twitched spasmodically.
She exploded from the alcove toward the door, throwing a heavy coat toward the man.
The man pivoted toward the sound and Beatrice went low, sprawling onto the floor. The man’s rounds went high, stitching the coat with three rounds.
Beatrice thumbed the control in her hand, glad to have worn her dance gear as part of her getup for her ‘date’. Playing her role perfectly had gotten her this far, but acting wasn’t enough.
Now she had to dance.
With a pop, the Personal Propulsion Harnesses’s RCS boot’s monopropellant thrusters ignited, firing with an angry crackling sound that gave the man a start, just as Beatrices had hoped. Cursing, the man dove to the side, taking cover behind the bed.
A plume of condensation filled the air as she ungracefully caromed out the narrowing airlock door, canceling its close cycle and tumbling into the hallway.
“Fuck… Hey! Get back here you little cunt!” Her assailant yelled behind her.
Beatrice didn’t wait for further encouragement. She bolted down the hallway, legs hardly a part of the equation as she repeatedly launched herself airborne in the microgravity of Luna.
The Raffles Hotel had many wings for those with money, and they all converged at one point. Beatrice blasted towards the wide open space of the atrium and the open, stair-covered terraces below which she knew led down to the vast complex's entrance.
It took a few brief seconds - each of which dragged on for eternity - but Beatrice knew she couldn’t afford any delay; she vaulted the railing, launching downward toward the first floor of the hotel.
In the moment before her field of view passed below the floor, Beatrice glanced back. She was shocked to see her pursuer almost keeping pace, having only a few steps left to reach the railing above her.
His movements conveyed a deeper understanding of low-G movement than most born under full-G could ever hope to attain. His lanky body lunged forward with explosive, bounding strides toward her.
She barely caught herself at the ground level as her PPH’s emergency flight stabilization system kicked in, forcibly decelerating her into a soft tumble instead of a crash.
A confused couple stood gaping at her sudden appearance,
“Are you alright?” One of the women began to ask.
But Beatrice heard the sound of a boot kicking off metal above and opted to redouble her efforts instead of explaining herself.
She bolted through the lobby, dodging slot machines and bounding up and over the gaudy decorations that filled the unnecessarily-tall room toward the second floor exit. There, she encountered an issue. Her pursuer apparently knew the hotel better than she did, as he was already falling in a graceful arc toward her prospective exit.
His face left her blood boiling: such smug conceit sealed her fast growing hatred for the skinny merc.
“Nice try, but you’re fucked, bitch.”
Thinking quickly, she decided to play into his trap; feigning a desperate scramble mid-air, as though she wanted to avoid landing in front of him. His triumphant smirk told her he bought her performance. He readied himself to catch her, his arms opening wide with a determined set to his eyes.
She kicked off of the air using her thrusters to spin her around her center of gravity, bringing her feet towards his face. Beatrice blasted her assailant with enough monopropellant to knock his head into the door with an uncomfortable crunch. The force of the blast sent her shooting back toward the first floor, just as she intended.
However, Beatrice's perfect landing never came as unexpectedly, her left leg gave out under the force of her touchdown. Instead of turning her downward momentum into a graceful roll; She went tumbling like a pinball off a bumper.
In her desperate scramble to right herself she bowled over a waiter. Their tray of drinks spilled in arcs of liquid across the aisle between the slot machines, and various shouts went up as patrons were doused in a rainbow of fluids.
She came to rest at the foot of a planter filled with Birds of Paradise in eternal, bioengineered bloom. Beatrice's legs felt like a mixture of liquid rubber and fire.
‘Fuck, not now! I don’t have time for your shit today body!’ she thought as she desperately tried to will the pain away, but her legs still felt weak and ached like she had run a thousand kilometers.
Huffing a deep breath she persisted, Beatrice hauled herself to her feet, only to see three angry-looking lunie security guards running toward her from the direction of the service desk.
Again, she launched away from the ground this time purely through the power of her gear - out of their reach - onto a slot machine and continued climbing ungracefully higher up into the jungle of sculpture-work above her. She eyed the door again. The lanky man was…
She bit back a curse. He was already fucking trying to shake off his concussion.
Her quads ached as she scrambled over a sculpted bird's wing, and she felt warning bells go off in her brain as her leg struggled to hold half her weight.
Beatrice almost screamed with frustration.
There was a spate of shouting below her. A few crashes, and the sound of screaming patrons. Anger. Indignation. Then another crash, and the screams turned fearful.
An alarm began to blare, and Beatrice knew her window to escape was quickly closing.
Bracing herself - this would hurt - she left her perch.
A light above the door flicked red as she soared toward it - of course they’d lock it Beatrice thought. No time for locked doors now, not at all. She boosted hard, flipping off her RCS lock, and spun at the last moment, slamming the left reinforced boot thruster assembly of her PPH’s heel-first into the glass door.
Pain.
She landed in the concourse outside in a shower of tempered glass. Her body screamed at her. Icy lighting bolts crackled up the nerves in her left foot into her leg. There were small cuts all over her lower body.
A grunt came from behind her, but it was distorted. She blinked hard and squinted against the artificial boulevard lighting.
Someone spoke to her. She looked at them. A woman, passerby - her eyes wide and concerned. Her lips moved again, and she pointed at Beatrice’s legs. She became aware of something warm and wet on her thighs.
There was more sound from behind her. Shouting. Cursing. Beatrice turned and saw the lanky man bodily shoving a lunie security guard away from him.
Turning to face her, murder in his eyes.
Beatrice didn’t wait.
Throwing off the gentle hand on her shoulder, she tore off, desperately stumbling down the thoroughfare. She had to get away. Before her legs both ran out of juice.
She should have brought the spare battery pack!
She bounced off of people. There were so many in the way.
She barely felt it. Beatrice was adrenaline and endorphins and failing batteries and flight.
She felt her pursuers gaze on her, the laser fixed on the space between her shoulder blades. She wasn’t fast enough!
She gave up on trying to fight through the crowds and, fighting a spell of dizziness that had her struggling to reach the right stance, her PPH launched her up to the level of the mezzanine restaurants above. She crash landed on an open table, the flight stabilization slowing her impact and scattering patrons and food, but gained precious distance and time.
She launched herself again. Higher. Further. Faster. Practically flying down the arching, enclosed promenade. Buildings blurred past. Her legs throbbed. She staggered on landing even with the flight stabilization system working overtime, bruising her shoulder against a wall. The shouts were almost out of earshot.
It had all gone wrong.
…No.
Everything except for the installation she had been so careful to execute first. If it went unnoticed. If it still functioned. If it revealed anything.
If anything tonight could go right she hoped it would be that.
Heartbeat in her ears, body failing her, she hobbled down a ramp into the lower levels of the city.
