PointingFingers
2024-05-27
Assault
She crashed through the door, her modified Colt 45 extended before her. Raygun, her partner, shouldered in right behind, flamethrower ready in one massive metal hand.
A bright white flash flared, blinding her for a moment.
"Freeze! Police!"
Her voice echoed in the cavernous space.
The empty space.
There was no evidence of the gzach still her informant had described to her with breathless detail. A few folding tables scattered around. One knocked over on its side. A few bits of yellow stained plastic piping near it.
There was one table dead centre of the room, right in front of her.
In the exact geometric middle of the tabletop was a black plastic box of some sort.
Raygun stomped forward and picked it up, turned it over quizzically. A faint flicker of light as databases were consulted. A buzzing of robotic disgust.
Holding the box out to her, "it's an old-style video cartridge. It uses magnetic tape. They haven't been made since the war."
Loss
This time, she was at the back door. Raygun at the front, keeping the door guard busy, pretending to have a delivery for someone that wasn't there.
No dramatic entry was required this time. Someone had blocked the door from closing with an empty cigarel package. She eased it open far enough to insert a dental mirror. After a brief look, she pulled the door open wider and slipped inside.
She found herself in a narrow corridor. It was lined with cheap plastic poster frames. Most of the posters had been removed, some violently, from the evidence of ripped corners and fallen glass.
One poster was intact.
It was a picture of her.
Full on, a snarl on her face, modified Luger in the regulation two-handed grip.
She shook her head and moved on, walking awkwardly. Doubled over.
The corridor emptied into a disused kitchen. Dust and cobwebs coated empty shelves. A trashcan was overturned in a corner. There was a magnetic knife rack on wall opposite her. There was only one knife still hanging on it, the blade slicked with fresh arterial blood.
As she watched, a fat drop slid off the point and "plipped" into a small red pool on the grimy floor.
She edged past it, cradling her modified Smith & Wesson.
Reversal
The man was tied securely to a thick board. It was moving slowly down a conveyor belt towards a spinning circular saw blade.
She was standing at the control panel, her fingers coming away from the "START" switch. Her other hand clenched the modified Desert Eagle. It was anodized a deep gold.
Raygun stood nearby, looking on disapprovingly.
The man on the board cleared his throat. Loudly, to be heard over the saw motor.
"Surely, you cannot expect me to reveal my plan in my hour of triumph?"
The man's index fingers were tented together. The rope had been passed around them to hold them in place.
She stepped away from the panel.
"No, Mr. Shond. I expect you to die."
Triumph
She was backed against the wall. Raygun was lying prone, in pieces, nearby. The kinetic attack had been too much even for its lightning reflexes. She had only avoided it because the robot had been in the way of that first volley.
Now, she had no protection.
Nothing between her and the hulking figures of her pursuers and their master.
He stepped out from behind them, and into the light. There was a neat vertical scar running down his forehead, stopping right between his eyebrows. He did not deign to be armed, leaving that to his guards.
Trembling, she slowly raised her pink and blue weapon, pointing it straight at him.
"Really, my dear, I hardly think that a modified water pistol is any sort of credible threat."
With one shaking finger, she pushed home a round magenta button on the side of the barrel.
For a moment, nothing happened. One of Shond's precision trimmed eyebrows quirked up mockingly.
Then, with click and a thud, a full size bipod fell down from the nozzle, bracing her aim. What had appeared to be a cartoonishly coloured water tank revolved and expanded into a multi-barrelled cylinder, filled with points. With a gentle whisper that began ramping up into a shriek, it started spinning. On the other side, a missile launcher was impossibly unfolding itself from its plastic nurnie coccoon.
A staticky hologram rezzed up and solidified into hard light. Targeting information, weapon status, ammunition level, overnight weather for Spider Breath, Montana. Six red laser dots launched out to designate the surrounding targets.
"It's heavily modified," she said. Then pulled the trigger.
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