Be Wary Then, Best Safety Lies in Fear
We can’t do that again.” Not because she didn’t want to do that again. She very much did. But the moment had passed and the impossibility of them became clearer than ever.
Then again, Pinga fucked whoever she felt like. No-one would judge her but herself. No-one would even know. Why shouldn’t she have a fling for a couple of days while dealing with Pinga’s bullshit? Relax and put herself first, for once?
Because Pinga doing what she wants is why you’re here in the first place.
Lusa knew that should be sufficient, but it wasn’t the real reason.
The real reason was because she would want more.
More than Kerr was offering. More than Kerr could offer.
If she even was offering. This was probably just a quick fuck for her and she would likely come to the same conclusions herself. Best to leave it at that.
Rifling through a rack of antique tops that could only be described as fetish wear, Lusa found a neon pink XXXL crop top with the words Femme Daddy in bold white lettering emblazoned on the front.
Kerr was short enough that it could work.
The balled-up polyester sailed through the air.
Kerr caught it. “It’s from before BulitWeave, but at least you won’t be walking around topless.
” Lusa couldn’t help but feel a small thrill at the idea.
Kerr’s lips parted like she wanted to say something. Shocked, perhaps at Lusa’s sudden change in demeanour, but this couldn’t work. And Lusa didn’t think she could handle the devastation if she deluded herself into thinking it could.
“You hate me, remember?” Lusa knew Kerr had recently walked back on that, but she had been drinking, so it didn’t count.
“And you hate me.” Kerr wriggled into the oversized top that had an inexplicably small neck hole.
Lusa permitted herself a singular moment of lechery while Kerr couldn’t see her staring.
It had been too dark in the closet to see properly.
Somehow her breasts were even paler than the rest of her and Lusa didn’t know that you could have freckles on your nipples.
She regretted not tasting them when she’d had the chance.
Lusa diverted her eyes before she changed her mind. Her head popping through the other side, Kerr pulled the top over the rest of her torso. It did not fit well at all. Far too loose in the waist and strangely tight at the neck. No wonder it was still here after all these years.
Attempting to put her hair back into place, the dry air fought against her. Dyed black strands stuck straight up and waved like an anemone in the invisible currents.
Lusa tried to ignore it but her overwhelming compulsion to fix everyone else’s problems won out like it always did. She found a bottle of ancient lotion in the employee lav.
Kerr eyed it suspiciously. “What do you want me to do with that?”
“Don’t you live here? What do you normally do when your hair gets staticky?” Lusa offered the bottle again.
“That’s hand lotion. It doesn’t go on your head.” Kerr said flatly.
Removing the cap, Lusa shook the bottle until a smear of stale oil from some long extinct plant made it to her palm. She wondered if basic hair maintenance was a foreign concept to all of Tyton or just Kerr. “You don’t need much.” She rubbed the tiny dollop into her hands. “Come here.”
Kerr approached cautiously. Lusa felt bad at shutting her out so quickly when it was so obvious that Kerr was hoping this could go somewhere. But nothing beyond just sex could happen. And Lusa couldn’t do just sex again. Not with someone like Kerr.
Running fingers through her hair, Lusa stopped breathing. It was too intimate for two people who hated each other. Moreso than fucking in a closet, even. That could be explained by hormones. You didn’t fix the hair of someone you hated.
Lusa pushed the thought out of her mind. It wasn’t feelings. It was just her need to fix things. A need that kept getting her involved in things she shouldn’t. Like killing Piston and rescuing Pinga. Perhaps she should stop thinking of being helpful as a virtue.
“Thanks,” Kerr said a little too softly with eyes that were a little too wide and irises a little too beautifully blue.
“Why do you dye your hair? Why not use DocPods.” Lusa noticed Kerr’s strawberry blonde roots starting to show. She thought it might be something rude to say, to keep a wall between them, but it felt like she was trying to keep the conversation going instead.
Kerr looked up, even though it would be impossible to see her roots. “Not many of them left in good repair, remember? The ones we have are base models and we can only modify them so far with override chips.”
“What can they do?” Lusa shouldn’t be feeling this much empathy, but she couldn’t help it.
“Cuts. Fractures, that sort of thing.” Kerr pointed to her good arm. “The modded ones can repair tendons as well. You need a newer model to do limb regeneration. And the Styx control those.”
“Not hair colour?”
Kerr ran a hand through her lotioned hair. “It can, actually. But I’d be taking up space from someone else who needs to use it. The ones we have run constantly.”
Lusa turned away. She needed to focus on something other than Kerr.
However selfless Kerr might be, she still had Pinga.
And Lusa still had a job to do. “You were about to tell me where Pinga and Chalice were. Before we…” Lusa couldn’t say had the best sex of my life, not only because that would be terribly depressing, but it would tell Kerr that having sex with her was still on her mind. “Got interrupted.”
Kerr swivelled her head, looking for a place to sit.
She righted a chair with a broken back next to a pile of small boxes.
“This,” she picked up one of the boxes that read Memories of Hawaii Jumbo Coconut Oil Lube.
“Is where we are.” Kerr put the box in front of her.
“And over here, is the nearest access hatch.” Kerr placed a BYO Pussy kit a metre away.
“So, we have to go there.” Lusa reflexively checked her knife belt.
Kerr shook her head and reached for another object. “There’s a Styx-controlled industrial park they’d have to cross to get there.” She placed a FLAMING DRAGON COCK box where the Styx base would be. “And if it was the Styx that were here looking for them, they wouldn’t go anywhere near there.”
“Then where would they be?” Lusa was getting tired of hearing about where they weren’t.
“Over here.” Kerr picked up another box but pulled it back before she placed it. “Ooh, I have this one. It’s a much newer version though.” She waved the box so Lusa could see.
Lusa knew she shouldn’t look, but Kerr had practically begged her to with that comment. The box read GudVibz XXL Strapless. “Seems a bit big for you.”
“I’ve never had any complaints.” The edge of Kerr’s lip twitched upward.
She should drop it, but she couldn’t let something this ridiculous go. “It’s the size of your forearm.”
Holding out her artificial arm, Kerr twisted it this way and that. “Sure. But I wear the other end.”
Lusa turned so Kerr wouldn’t see her flush. Now she had to think about Kerr wearing a silicone cock and it was her own damn fault because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She hadn’t even known she was into that. “What’s over there?”
“ScripDominion’s old vault. There’s no access hatch that connects it, but if they needed to run, there’s no better place to hide.” Kerr did not sound as optimistic as she should.
“There’s a catch, isn’t there?” Lusa skimmed her fingers across the tops of her knives faster.
“We’re near the edge of town, remember?” Kerr shifted her weight like she was apologising. “The old part that wasn’t worth paving over. If they went there, it’s because there was no other way to go. And if they shut the vault, there’s only one way to open it.”
“Which is?” Lusa counted her breaths, keeping herself calm.
“Convince Model 2 to do it. It used to run everything here.”
“And if they didn’t go there, where would they be?” Lusa hoped for the best, despite Pinga’s reputation for making the worst decisions. And given the situation they were in, Chalice’s decision-making capabilities didn’t seem all that great either.
“Back in the tunnels with the other Chargers.” Kerr took a deep breath, “We should head there first.”
“Isn’t the vault closer?” Lusa needed this situation resolved as quickly as possible. She had no desire to head into a nest of Chargers just to come all the way back here if Pinga wasn’t there.
“Yes, but the longer we hang out here, the more likely we are to attract attention from the Styx.”
Lusa had heard stories from her aunt Alana about the inner workings of the Styx, at least back when she had been a member.
Arms, drugs, extortion. The trafficking was new.
Gangs filled the holes that society left and corporations were only too happy to wash their hands of the unwashed.
They could police themselves with whatever baubles they could afford or scrounge together.
Lusa doubted they would have any incentive to let her retrieve Pinga and be on her way, regardless of who her parents were.
“Is there any way we can get there undetected? I know the system of access tunnels ends near that hatch.” Lusa pointed to the BYO Pussy box. “But isn’t there a system that runs in this area?”
Kerr wobbled her head. “Not really.”
“What do you mean by not really?” Lusa narrowed her eyes.
“I mean,” Kerr flexed her fingers nervously. “There are tunnels. They had to get power and water to this area when it was occupied. It’s too cold to run them above ground.”
“But…” Lusa prodded.
“But there’s no power running through them anymore. And power is the whole reason we were underground to begin with. That’s why they called us Chargers. We hacked and recharged our implants after corps stopped paying for subscriptions.”
“Are there monsters down there or something?” Lusa curled her lip. “I still don’t see why we can’t use them.”
“You don’t understand.” Kerr stood up straight. “It’s not that something dangerous might be down there, though there might be. It’s that nobody has mapped any of it. We could be wandering around down there in the dark for months.”
“I thought cities had blueprints for all infrastructure” Lusa ran her thumb across her lip. She noticed Kerr staring. “At least, that’s what I learned. Is that not true?”
“If it’s true, it’s probably stored away in Model 2.”
“And she won’t talk to me unless I help get her what she wants,” Lusa mused. “Fuck.”
“She?” The way her freckles danced when Kerr frowned was too distracting. “What does she want?”
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have it.”
Kerr kept staring, waiting for Lusa to continue.
“Fine. She wants a DocPod. Late gen, with expanded RAM ports,” Lusa said defiantly. “You don’t have those.”
“But the Styx do.” Kerr let the words hang.
They both knew that the possibility of acquiring one was ridiculous.
Breaking into Model 2 was one thing. Stealing a piece of tech that weighed almost a tonne from a rival gang was quite another.
Lusa wasn’t going on a suicide mission and Chalice was running out of time before the Adlets arrived.
“It’s not going to happen,” Lusa said after the pause had become uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would become such a disaster.” Kerr looked genuinely ashamed at how things had turned out.
“You’re sorry?” Lusa glared icily.
Bracing herself, Kerr looked like she expected Lusa to attack her. Which, fair, but Lusa had more control than that. For now. Her chest rose and fell while she skimmed her knives, until the anger evaporated. Kerr relaxed.
Perhaps Alana knew some way to get past the Styx. She might not like her, but Pinga’s life was at stake. Lusa’s monocle flashed No Signal. The nearest geostat wouldn’t be in range for another hour. She would be on her own solving this for now. “How far away is it if we take the bike?”
“Five minutes, maybe?” Kerr tried to hide it, but Lusa could see her fingers twitch.
“If we run into Styx, what can we expect?” Lusa fastened the straps on her jacket.
Kerr picked at her fingernails. “They drive weaponised vehicles. Even if they can’t target your biosig, they can fire enough rounds that it won’t matter.”
Lusa stared at the dusty floor while she thought. “We’ll need to ride either way. What’s another five minutes?”
Panic flashed across those beautiful blue eyes, but Kerr straightened her face. She stood and held out her hands for the helmet. Lusa hoped it was because she thought Lusa was brave rather than stupid.