Dawn of the Courtezan: Phase 01 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Page 9

  Tara grabbed the broom. Just in case she needed to break it over a knee and shove the sharp end through a security guard’s ear. Having it made her feel better anyway. Spencer Hotshine followed behind with the same idiotic smile he had worn for two days plastered across his face. His shoes squeaked rhythmically on the polished floor. Tara froze. She listened as the nearest observation node shifted in its base and focused on him. She frowned and gestured to be quiet. His forsaken puppy eyes stayed tied to her mind.

  No klaxons sounded.

  She grabbed his hand and led him down the remaining meters of hallway towards the flashing Exit sign. They hugged the wall. If they could make it to the stairs, it was only one flight down. Then right out the front door through the hospital lobby, smooth as a vapor hit. Exiting the actual hospital grounds would be more difficult. There would be drones. She would have to talk Spencer into handing over his holotab.

  They crept hand in hand. The red Exit door approached. Fifteen meters. Ten. Five. She crouched lower, pulling him down with her beside the door to the stairs. The magnetic lock glowed a cozy yellow. Spencer Hotshine swayed as he knelt.

  He drunkenly reached out and squeezed her breast, “I love you.”

  “I love you too, Spencer,” she said curtly and shoved his mitt off. “Right now we need to focus.”

  “Are we gonna live on the beach in Tucson 2.0? Tell me about the house again? How many palm trees are we gonna have in the yard?”

  She quietly put down the broom and rolled her eyes. She couldn’t believe it was actually working. She had never taken it this far with someone.

  Maintain the game.

  She leaned close and whispered in his ear, “Seven, sugar. We’re gonna have seven palm trees and a blue convertible Hovbeetle and a French bulldog named Sam. Remember?”

  “I remember,” he grinned.

  She put her hands on either side of his head and smashed her gaze deeper inside, “You were cute once, weren’t you?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean you are cute. Well, maybe in another life.”

  “Another life what?

  “Nothing. Listen sugar, I need you to scan this door open.”

  He tilted his head, smiling continually, “Are we going to have sex?”

  “Jeezus boy. Yes. Once we get free you can bounce me like a beach ball in the noon day sun. But we can’t ever have sex if you don’t open this door.”

  “Okay!”

  “So open it.”

  “Okay.”

  Spencer didn’t even know if his feet were on the floor any longer.

  All he could think was happy happy happy!

  This happy, amazing, sweetly hot as a toasted garden betty he was going to run away to Sonora with! She was the one. What would his mother say at their wedding? He stood, swaying like a Pleasium junky and pulled his ten centimeter holotab from his pocket. He placed his thumb in the center of the screen, then swiped the device in front of the door’s IR sensor. The LED illuminated immediately and a 2.5d staff holo of his face appeared.

  A cool computerized female voice only he could hear said, “Hotshine, Spencer. Please remember to leave any access cards in your locker while outside the secure wing. We’ll see you in fifteen minutes. Have a great break!”

  He turned to Tara like he’d just won the Federal Hololottery, “Let’s go!”

  He started to push through, but she grabbed his wrist, “Oh wait, sugar. Damn! I forgot something I need,” she said in an innocent tone, biting her bottom lip.

  He frowned, “What is it?”

  “A picture of my mom.”

  “Come on. Can’t you just print another off the cloud?”

  “No. She, uh, wrote something personal on this one. I’ve taken it with me everywhere since I was a little kid.”

  Spencer Hotshine swayed. He thought of his own mother. Her approving reflection stared back at him from the greenish-black well of Tara Dean’s pupils. Somewhere in his mind, a rational voice screamed.

  What am I doing?

  He closed his eyes. The flashing headache returned.

  Ping Nurse Fossbender! Ping security!

  It didn’t make sense. But there she was, before him. Right there, with her sweaty hand in his.

  I will always be yours. Help… they’re hurting me. I need you.

  She was the prettiest flower. He felt dizzy but wonderful. His brain hurt.

  “I thought you hated your mother. She put you in this place. She never pinged you.”

  Precious seconds…

  “I know what I said. But now I need you to go back to my room and get the picture,” she implored. “And I need you to give me your holotab. Oh, and I need you remove all biometric recognition protocols.”

  Before he could reply, she leaned in and kissed him, deep and wet, her mouth opening like a morning glory at dawn. She felt him stiffen against her knee.

  Ewwww… No! Maintain.

  She forced herself to pull away a little at a time, the way lovers leave a kiss.

  He swooned as she flicked her tongue over his neck, “Okay.” He smiled as might a drunk pissing relief in an alley. “But why do you want my… here.”

  She gently took the holotab from his hands and held it up in front of him looking pouty, “In case something happens… sugar. Just in case. Please help me, please? I’m in so much danger. I need to get out of here so badly. You saw what she did. You know what will happen in the morning. They’re going to drill me! If that happens… I won’t even know who you are when I wake up! All our Tucson 2.0 dreams will die.” Tara had long since learned the trick of not blinking to make her eyes wet. A tear rolled down her face, “I mean, what about our lives together, Spencer? If I can’t even remember your name, then…”

  That was all it took.

  “Okay. I’ll get the picture,” he said. Spencer Hotshine felt stoic. He tapped through a couple of sub-menus and swiped his finger across the glass face of the holotab, releasing all biometric encryption.

  His combud replied instantly, “Please confirm you wish to remove all security protocols at this time.”

  “Yes. Disable bio-recog,” he said with a grin. “Full access all systems.”

  The voice in his combud asked, “Do you wish to remove external com tracking and hovcar access as well? Open security is not recommended.”

  Spencer repeated dutifully, “Yes, full access all systems.”

  The screen of his holotab blinked green and his combud said, “Biodrive 402 vocal ID sync confirmed with your device. Full access granted, all systems. Please remember to choose a biometric default as soon as intranet maintenance is complete. Thank you.”

  He looked at Tara happily, “There, it’s done. I’ll be right back, baby. I won’t let anything happen to your momma’s picture. I swear. I’ll be back in a zip!”

  “I’ll be waiting… angel,” she whispered with a hint of sadness.

  He leaned in for a kiss but she pushed him aside, “There’s no time. Please hurry back….”

  “I will.”

  He squeezed her hand and sauntered happily back down the long hall towards her room. The logic headache returned but he ignored it. All Spencer Hotshine could think of was love and making more of it! They would probably just do it right there in his hovcar in the hospital docking lot.

  So hot…

  Help… they’re hurting me. I need you.

  Tara Dean watched him amble back the way they had come. After he was a good ten meters down the hall she said, “Adios, Spencer Hotshine. It’s been fly!”

  He turned in time to see her backpack slip through the door. He frowned and found himself stuck, jerking like a bot caught on a bad subroutine. He went to follow. When he got to the locked door he reached for his holotab.

  “Where is my holotab?”

  He shook his head, confused.

  Where did I leave my holotab? Seven palm trees and a French bulldog…

  Then he winced and collapsed against the wall, his temples pounding w
ith a sudden, paralyzing ache that drowned out all sensation.

  Tara took the long flight of stairs three at a time. At the bottom she paused, cracked the door and looked across the hospital lobby.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Spencer Hotshine began banging on the door at the top of the stairs, “Tara! Tara! What are you doing?!?” His voice was tinted with panic.

  The tard!

  Tara could kick herself. She always had to have the last word.

  Greystone Behavioral Modification Hospital’s shining lobby spread before her, contemporary and opulent, open and grand in comparison to the small beige rooms and sickeningly cheerful, polished, blue cement floors that awaited patients in the hospital proper. Floor to ceiling windows, gleaming black and white tiles, a slick aluminum and mahogany reception desk, all punctuated by steadily glowing LED’s networked to the building’s primary sensor array.

  Tara Dean thanked her lucky skies she had never been chipped. If she was forced to undergo the morning’s scheduled slaughterhouse surgery… she would walk out the other side a piece of public property.

  A humdroid.

  No more secrets. No privacy except in daydreams. No daydreams. Combud installation was mandatory for the few SAMCL patients who didn’t already have one. Her soul would become a billboard advertising its new found mediocrity across the North American sat-net.

  Hire this humdroid to clean your loo.

  Hire this humdroid to suck your cock.

  Hire this humdroid and live forever in the shadow of benevolent Vision.

  She would rather die a criminal than live in an imaginary Utopia.

  Tara Dean took the deepest breath of her life. She wiped a stinging bead of sweat from the corner of her eye and stepped into the shining lobby, making straight for the main Exit. The polyrub soles of her boots tamped quietly over the cold marble. Ahead, the towering, three meter tall double doors to the outside world were mirrored panes of solid walnut. A plaque on the wall beside the doors stated how they were salvaged from a 20th century barn in a nod to the agricultural history of the hospital’s Kansas locale.

  Tara sniffed.

  She could hear the IR node lenses in the walls making micro adjustments to follow her trajectory. Scans were confirming her identity and logging the time. So far, so good. With no combud to scan, the sensors read the Ipv7 address from the holotab in her pocket instead. She was Spencer Hotshine. The hospital computer wouldn’t process the location conflict errors until his break ended.

  A searchlight beyond the tall windows lit up the skeletons of the topiary bushes and leafless maple trees framing the front walkway. The winter grass was flat and yellow. The searchlight’s random sweeps made it clear at least one of Greystone’s private security drones was active and airborne. She waited in silence for the searchlight to move on. When darkness returned, she pulled Spencer’s holotab from her jeans and passed it in front of the door’s sensor.

  The ambient illumination around the door got slightly brighter. A pleasant female voice in the ceiling said, “Greetings, Spencer Hotshine. You have eleven minutes, twelve seconds remaining in your break. Please reactivate your combud’s biometric protocols before returning to work. Enjoy your time.”

  The LED on the security panel shifted from red to green. A magnetic seal on the double doors released the door on the right. It pushed in slightly with a rush of fresh air – the first outside air she had breathed in thirty days. The crisp January wind smelled of dried pine and smoke. Some farmer nearby had been burning leaves.

  Tara closed her eyes and drank it in. For a moment, thoughts drifted back to the Kansas of her childhood. She remembered giggling with her father as he ignited piles of winter leaves in their backyard using a camper’s laser, the rush of skyward sparks at dusk. The wave of sadness that came with this thought caught her off guard. She opened her eyes.

  Reminisce later, idiot.

  She stood and forcefully shoved the door open. Bak! The walnut panel struck something metallic, leaving only a narrow opening. The door immediately began to push closed. Tara Dean flipped her body sideways and slipped through, at last standing beneath the free night sky.

  She was greeted by a computerized male voice emanating from a two meter tall robotic door droid, “Greetings, Spencer Hotshine. You have a scheduling conflict. This egress cites a deviation from your normal break schedule. Please submit to retinal scan crosscheck before proceeding.”

  Tara Dean had not factored a door droid, “Fuck.”

  The black and gray robot let the large wooden door swing shut and seal magnetically, “Fuck is not a recognized response.” It took a mechanical step closer to her, “Your combud may be in need of service. Initial biometric scans indicate you have shrunk by 22.86 centimeters, Spencer Hotshine. Please step closer for retinal scan crosscheck before proceeding.”

  “Fuck me…”

  “Fuck me is not a…”

  “Oh, fuck off!” she yelled and kicked the door droid square in the waist, toppling it.

  Before the robot struck the cement, klaxons began to sound. Every light inside Greystone Behavioral Hospital burst to life.

  The door droid squirmed and rattled awkwardly on its back.

  A row of LED’s in the head designed to appear where the mouth would be blinked angrily, “Security breach. Hotshine, Spencer. Apprehend. Hotshine, Spencer. Apprehend. Please remain still. You are in need of assistance.”

  “Piece of shit,” Tara gave the door droid a final kick and bolted across the short winter lawn towards the staff docking lot.

  She was fleet of foot and had long since memorized a layout of the hospital grounds.

  As she sprinted towards the far end of the docking lot, leaping a short manicured hedge, a bright swath of light illuminated the ground three meters around her in every direction.

  Fast drone. Probably armed too. These aren’t COD’s…

  She leapt over another short hedge row without breaking stride. She juked and flipped between the closely docked hovcars, trying to make erratic course changes, but the drones were too fast. Their computerized trajectory algorithms predicted her path before she had even decided on it herself. She was only able to escape the light for a few seconds at a time. She screamed in frustration. It was the middle of the night, there were too few hovcars to hide behind. She tore across the open asphalt.

  Tara Dean clutched Spencer’s holotab in her hand, shouting at it breathlessly, “Prep hovcar, spool to fly. Full manual, protocols off, firewall external access, FLOAT NOW, NOW!!!”

  Across the docking lot, fifty meters away, a silver Ford Mustang spooled to life. From that distance, Tara could barely hear the stabilizing fans engage, lifting the Mustang off its rubberized docking mounts. She ran harder, faster. The lot was bigger than she had realized, and Spencer had docked his float at the far end, out in the open with several empty spaces on either side.

  Tara was pleased to see that it was last year’s 2079 Mustang GT with eight 600 kg geothrusters and a single, massive 8,000 kg propulsion fan. It would be damn hard to fly her down in Spencer Hotshine’s high school graduation present.

  I’ve gotta make that hovcar or I’m gonna be an unconscious turnip…

  “Tara A. Dean. You are in violation of the terms of your incarceration. Arrest your movements or we will be forced to disable you.” The computerized male voice was menacing, pealing in night-splitting stereo from the comport on the nearest hospital security drone. The bright searchlight beams were now narrow, focused and locked, no matter how fast she ran, juked, jumped, ducked or hid. The last twenty meters of docking lot were wide open asphalt.

  Nothing but me out here.

  She ran like only a madwoman can.

  “Arrest! We will fire in five seconds. Four, three, two, one…”

  The pounding of breath. The muffled thud of each sprinting step. The shaking of her small body. The hovcar was less than five meters away. It was unlikely that… a thudding pain struck her from behind, spinning her like a hammer punch. Ou
t of the corner of one eye she saw the glass housing of a tranquilizer dart fall and shatter on the asphalt.

  Botulinum darts!

  The projectile had glanced off her backpack.

  “You have been neutralized,” barked the drone. “Arrest your movements at once to avoid bodily harm. Central nervous system failure is imminent.”

  Tara jumped the final rubber docking divider and screamed at the idling Ford, “Pilot door open!”

  The Mustang’s silver door cracked with a pneumatic hiss. The hovcar was already engaged, floating sixteen centimeters off the ground, ready to fly. The force from the levitation fans was so powerful that her clothes were blown flat against her body.

  “Arrest! Arrest your movements or we will fire,” called the nearest drone, though she could no longer hear clearly over the electric roar of the turbines.

  She flung her backpack into the passenger seat and for the first time turned to look at the security drone. She had seen a thousand, million drones in her life. But this time she really looked. Up close they appeared like small, squashed, black blimps. They were about a meter in length and were covered in a scaly, black Kevlar housing. The drone’s sensor array formed a thin, illuminated belt around its midsection that oscillated rapidly through varying shades of red. The bright white searchlight shone fiercely into her eyes from the center of the drone’s belly. Tara ducked behind the safety of the hovcar’s door and extended the middle fingers on both hands.

  She was carefully mouthing the words, GO FUCK YOURSELF… when the hovcar shuddered violently. The roof caved in, causing the shotgun side window to crack.

  The Mustang rocked again as what appeared to be a gray fox jumped squarely onto the hovcar’s hood. The creature stared at her with a single radiating blue eye.

  Cyborg.

  She studied the animal in shock. There was nothing but an empty, metallic cavity where the other vidorb should be.

  There must be another on the roof.

  The fox’s paws crumpled the Mustang’s hood in four separate spots.

  If she had been able, over the din of the hovcar’s turbines, she would have heard the security drone’s computerized vocal subroutines tripping over command lines as data flooded its sensor array, “Arrest! Unidentified biological org… termination requ… possession of fusion basssssss… arrest!”