“He pays well,” coughed the cyborg.

  “No, he doesn’t. Which means you’re lying!” Xiao spat. “This is a personal crusade then. Why? Why would you take such risks?”

  “Monster!” Our friend wished to protest more, but Xiao silenced her by slipping Ali’s remote control between her teeth. He ordered her to clench her jaws if she didn’t want my partner to meet her end.

  “Since you came all this way, I have a lot of questions for you, Zéphyr the data zéi—about you, the Brokers Guild and that shéngùn of Mancéphalius. But we will get to that later, won’t we?” He turned to his men. “Shackle her to these gallows. I’ll keep her for myself! And with a double knot!” shouted Xiao, cracking his fingers. “For now, let’s focus on the girl the Crypto-Moirai warned me about!”

  Xiao approached Ali and ordered his henchmen to violently tear off her kimono. My partner wanted to fight and beat her attackers, but the godfather slammed her to the ground with a titanic slap. Her lips burst under the shock. A thin vermeil stream ran down her chin and pearled on her breasts. She didn’t move anymore, tetanized.

  “Ali! Ali!” I shouted, tearing my lungs out.

  The Maiden tried to do the same, but if she loosened the teeth over the remote control, Ali was doomed.

  Sacrebleu! What a disaster! Being too self-assured, we had been totally outwitted. The Maiden had led us right into a trap. Disarmed, tied up and imprisoned in the heart of an underwater bunker, we had no chance to escape.

  I had to calm down. I had my freedom of movement at least in this box. So, I was the one with the most leeway. But what could I do?

  “Tak Khunn! You must see this!” cried one of the executioners.

  “What is it?” Xiao breathed.

  “The girl! She—she’s Monsutā!”

  The Emperor grunted. “How come?” He stood up and crossed the room in long strides, causing the floor and walls to tremble. He then lifted the torture rack, studying the cursed markings on my partner’s body with his optical lenses. “Incredible!” He placed her back on the floor before resuming his seat. He then turned to the Maiden and said: “You knew?”

  Our friend shook her head.

  “You knew. And you brought her here?”

  “Should we secure the M-operative in the dungeon, shúshu?” asked one of the two cyborgs.

  While a white tear traced down the Maiden’s cheek, Xiao seemed lost in thought, his mind consumed by mad calculations. “No,” he answered. “This girl is not an operative. She is a doll. A Niku-doll! Monsutā’s ultimate bio-machine! One of the Dark Sun’s most fascinating experiments.”

  I fumed. Experiment? She was no experiment! She was my human!

  Xiao resumed: “The dolls were almost indestructible, thanks to their innate regeneration abilities. Their potential is nearly limitless! Look!”

  Upside down, battered by Xiao’s following blows, Ali hung motionless. The violence of the assault had strained her leather laces to the brink of snapping. Xiao’s men laughed in unison while blood flowed from my partner’s body, beading on her face.

  Xiao exalted. “How tough! She’ll heal within a day or two. Gentlemen, we have a gift from providence. This will put us back at the forefront of the interplanetary stage! With Noboru Monsutā dead, the dolls were lost forever! But with a little retro-engineering, we can resume their production! Our means are ready! We will no longer have to survive by copying his forgotten tech! With an army of dolls, we will drive out Lao and take the Cloud Cities! With an army of dolls, the Technos, the Kingdomlands or the League will no longer be our clients—they will belong to us!”

  Our enemies cheered.

  “Is it true the Moon used to pay billions for just one of them, Tak Khunn?” another voice asked. “I wonder what they’re made of. Is there any machinery inside?”

  “Like the other soulless creatures of Noboru Monsutā, they’re all organic. Tear her open, and you’ll see for yourself.”

  “At your service!” The executioner drew a line with his knife across Ali’s stomach. “Printed nerves or not, this will tickle, witch!” he chuckled.

  But not for long! Still upside down, Ali had broken her loosen shackles and freed the lower part of her bruised body. I heard her scream. Her legs clamped the shoulders of the grunt who tried to gut her a few seconds earlier. With her thighs around his jaw, she broke his neck which snapped like a dry twig.

  Back on his throne, King Xiao startled. Roaring like a tiger, he immediately ran to the Maiden to collect the remote control. But the cyborg with the night skin had fled her own chains. A skillful acrobat, she stood at the top of a column, a sly smile almost erased by rage.

  “Nothing can surprise you anymore, uh?” the androgynous thief shouted, holding Ali’s zapper firmly in her free fist.

  Meanwhile, my partner took advantage of the chaos. She slipped into the back of her attacker and grabbed the weapon from his belt. Clinging on the corpse’s shoulders, she fired several shots towards the godfather. Her skilled move shredded the man’s other hand holding the second switch.

  Stray bullets from the salvo pulverized the robot butler’s organic brain. A mechanical click followed, and I was set free. Free to jump on the Tak Khunn before furiously snootdiving into his sweat-soaked dress. Not without a few scratches, I reached his feet where I grabbed the Maiden’s remote control on the ground after deeply biting his Achilles tendon.

  It was time to flee the premises. But that wasn’t the objective of my human. Like a wild beast, she twirled from one henchman to another, throwing them to the ground one by one with her fists and knees. Even the two sentries went down without the slightest resistance.

  I had never seen her in such a state before. There was no more life in Ali’s eyes. Amid the tornado of fire and blood, my only reason to breathe no longer existed. Her incommensurable rage took over.

  It was a massacre that the Emperor could only witness helplessly. Riddled with bullets, he had tried in vain to take cover. Still alive, when all his men had fallen, he rushed towards my human to fight hand-to-hand.

  “Watch it, Ali!” I warned her.

  Alas! An unequal battle ensued. None of her attacks, even with all the fury she showed, seemed to hurt the monster. Those of Xiao, as powerful as a nuclear warhead, reached her every time. “Miserable mutant whore! You may be a bag of bio-meat created by a crazy man, but I am wrath!” After several blows, my partner collapsed against the edge of the fountain, her body and face entirely covered in blood. Tears traced paths of despair along her cheeks, bluish with the slaps.

  “Don’t you dare touch her, geriatric jerk!”

  I dashed, but the Maiden beat me to it. Armed with a ceremonial qiang that she had torn from a wall, our friend struck King Xiao just below the right shoulder. The cyborg’s body wasn’t a fighting model, yet the spear pole passed through our enemy’s abdomen and was driven into the scarlet ground.

  Unfortunately, it had no effect. The Tak Khunn withdrew the weapon as one removes a splinter. He broke the wooden handle before sending back the titanium blade right at the Maiden.

  “You’ll fight better by dropping the remote control,” Xiao said before tearing off the top of his robe.

  His Kevlar fiber muscles started convulsing under the injections of chemical agents held in the microcapsules surrounding his vertebrae. His wounds stopped bleeding.

  The wounded Maiden didn’t stand a chance against him; moreover, with only one hand and no speed-hacking. But, against all odds, the thief obeyed him and dropped Ali’s remote control. An explosion sounded as the androgynous thief’s thumb released the button.

  “Maiden! you—” I shouted as I witnessed the unthinkable.

  Blood splashed on King Xiao’s back. But it wasn’t Ali’s. My human had ripped off her necklace, breaking both her nose and jaw in the process. Her face all torn up and blind, she had pressed it against our enemy’s ankle. Incredible!

  Howling, the Emperor tilted backwards and collapsed into the basin, twisting his spine against the rim. Too heavy, he couldn’t get up on his last remaining leg as my partner crawled on his chest. With her hands on the monster’s neck, she held his head under the foam with all her might. The golden water turned into the color of blood. Her opponent struggled furiously. Far too long. Then it was just silence.

  When the Tak Khunn, a glorious title for a pitiful kingpin, escaped its final air bubble, my associate fell backwards over his corpse. She was picked up in time by her girlfriend, just before she hit the water’s surface.

  “Lee?” the Maiden said. “We got to go. By killing Xiao, Ali triggered a death switch. The whole complex is about to implode.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  An alarm rang out. The Maiden put my unconscious partner on her shoulders, forgetting about the gaping wound in her belly. “This is the kind of stunt a megalomaniac like him would pull. Now, follow me!” The Maiden’s eyes flickered, and the layout of the area must certainly have appeared in her cybernetic brain.

  We dashed across the complex. My keen eyes reflected the eerie emergency lights flashing erratically along the walls. Above, the constant hum of machinery filled the air, its rhythm fractured by the growing tremors shaking the complex’s foundations. Guard personnel dashed past in a blur, their faces painted with panic as they scrambled towards emergency pods which refused to open. Their cries echoed through the narrow, winding corridors, merging with the harsh, robotic complaints of the automated units. No witness.

  My ears twitched as another set of alarms blared in the distance, signaling the impending collapse of the bio-factory. Through the glass windows of the main hall, the frantic movement of the slave workers became a blur, while automated voices repeated warnings in multiple languages, urging a phony evacuation.

  “We have to help them!” I yelled at the Maiden, thinking about Yaan-ze and her companions from Mayflower.

  The cyborg’s panicked look made me understand we probably wouldn’t be able to save ourselves.

  We finally arrived at the main docking bay and fought with fierce coordination—dodging bullets while disabling the mooring systems. One by one, we leap aboard a ship, sealing the hatch just as new enemies breached the dock. With a thunderous rumble, the vessel detached, plunging into the depths, leaving behind the chaos as we disappeared into the dark ocean, free at last.

  “How is she doing?” I asked the Maiden after having reprogrammed the automatic pilot for a return to Thebe. Ali had opened her eyes but looked vacantly at the ceiling.

  “Physically, she’ll recover even if that monster did damage her… I didn’t know she was a—a fucking doll. I thought the genemark was just—fuck! What was I thinking? How is that even possible? Fuck! Fuck!” the thief swore, passing a trembling hand over my partner’s face. “Ali…”

  I stopped her. “Xiao’s dead. This is over. And we’re all alive.”

  “I tricked you into my—and—”

  “You required help. We didn’t need the details to follow you.”

  “I’m so sorry…”

  “Silly you,” I replied as we both sobbed. “Blame the Dark Sun and human nature. None of this is your fault. At least this Monsutā story has come to an end…”

  The Maiden breathed. “No, Lee.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Xiao spoke of the dolls.”

  “Of reverse-engineering them, yes.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  I raised a whisker. “Why?”

  “The Triads. They would have needed something—something lost during the corpo-war.”

  “Like what? The evil recipe?”

  “A computer…”

  A computer? Monsutā’s computer? “Is that what you were searching for on Europa? Is that why we risked our lives tonight?”

  She closed her ivory eyes. “First, I thought it would surface on Las Pallas. Caught in the claws of the Emporium. After Lau’s job, I tracked it down again. Thought it was here, giving life to the continental factory…” She opened them again and looked at my partner. “Of course, I was wrong again. And this is just another dead end of heavy consequences.”

  “Could it have been destroyed years ago?”

  “I’m the one who made sure it did not, Lee.”

  Well… that one packed a punch. “Will you keep looking?” my brain managed to ask.

  “Yes. Alone.” The Maiden brushed Ali’s cheek. “Even if it means turning over the very last asteroid in the Kuiper Belt.”

  Back on Thebe, Zéphyr and I stayed alongside Ali for the following nights, hugging her and binge-watching as many Betamax as we could. My partner finally spoke after two Jovian weeks. The sweet smell of berry waffles may have brought her out of her lethargy.

  “Ali! How are you? Do you need anything?” I said, full of joy.

  “Lee?” She smiled at me, removing the bandages holding her healing gelmask. As beautiful as the first day. Her eyes shine, mixing sadness and relief. Pink spots around her nose and her chin were the last remnants of her surgery. My human, a tank-grown Niku-doll or not, was indestructible.

  “We gotta go back to the arcade.”

  “Of course, partner! Forgotten Quest. Here we come!” I concluded before she took me in her arms for the biggest hug I have received in a long time.

  Back to business!

  仕事に戻ろう!

  #14 THE LEGEND OF PURPLE HEART

  第14話 紫の心の伝説

  Birth. Life. Death. Three inevitable milestones in the human journey. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one humanity dreads most. Personally, if I had to choose… the violent emergence as a mucus-coated mass, tearing through another’s most intimate flesh, seems a strong contender. But this primal moment comes with a peculiar mercy: the absence of memory. For your poor mother, however, that’s an entirely different tale.

  Humanity’s true terror was death. The specter of the Reaper loomed so large that their grandest aspiration—aside from, say, building a Taco Bell on Pluto—was to defy mortality itself. Make no mistake, the era had its peculiar wonders: bold cats traversed the cosmos, AIDS had been reduced to the nuisance of a cold, and firearms were as ubiquitous as toys in cereal boxes. Yet immortality? That frontier remained unconquered.

  Even so, humanity clung to hope, believing their progeny might someday achieve what they could not. Faith in the future was their enduring solace amid the ephemeral.

  In 1945, Baskin-Robbins used to sell ice cream in California, before the firm slightly diversified its sprawling activities after Earth’s fall. Until most of its investors gradually withdrew following the enhancement of cybernetic implants, its underground facility on Ganymede became the benchmark for sub-zero sleep. Approaching their existence’s supposed end, the affluent classes often preferred cryonics to Martian independent living communities.

  “All these people are alive, right?” Ali asked through the radio, scraping the ice off a glass cocoon. She was shivering despite her overheated pink suit.

  “I hope so,” I replied. The mist emanating from my mouth immediately turned into flakes of frost on my visor. I had put on my thickest thermal poncho over my space suit when the caloric fluid started running low; yet I felt the cold solidifying my entrails, from the truffle to the tip of my tail. “But this place still looks like a very expensive cemetery to me!”

  After singing Ice Ice Baby on a loop for the next half hour, Ali listed her favorite ice-cream flavors while mixing them with the names of the celebrities we came across in the frozen labyrinth. In hall #7 slumbered numerous musicians between Martian politicians and uranium magnates.

  “Look!” I alerted my partner, jumping on a white tomb. “Chuck Berry’s resting here! No need to even find a pun!”

  Ali smacked the top of my polycarbonate helmet. Joking about Chuck Berry was blasphemy as he was our father’s favorite songwriter and, therefore, sacred. My human then beckoned me to remain silent, for a squeal of footsteps in the snow echoed from the corridor leading to the next hall. On alert, she drew her caliber before sending me out as a scout.

  Behind a corner, an individual in a blue engineer space suit was investigating the content of an open cocoon. He swore when the occupant’s frozen body shattered at his feet: “Dagnabit! It’s not her! It’s impossible! She must be here!”

  We had finally tracked down the vandal, our target standing eerily still under the pale moonlight. Ali raised her weapon, her nylon suit rustling faintly as she moved with deliberate caution. Her breath hung in the frigid air, and despite the cold that made her hands tremble, she steadied her aim.

  Her finger tightened on the trigger, poised to end it—but then we saw it. The glint of metal and wires strapped to the man’s chest. An explosive belt. Ali froze, her hand retreating from the trigger as tension coiled around us like a vice. One wrong move and everything could go up in flames. “Bogus! Where’s this thing’s remote control?”

  She had her answer the moment our target shattered the lock on a second cocoon with the butt of his pistol. As the metal gave way, her eyes fell onto the push button strapped near his thumb—a sinister contraption tethered to his explosive belt by a thin red wire.

  “I can’t risk blowing up this cold room with Chuck Berry around,” resumed my human who, apparently, had ditched her pyromaniac tendencies. “And I can’t do anything unless he’s facing us!”

  “Watch and learn, dear!” I boasted as it was once again up to me to save the day. Crawling into the synthetic snow covering the ground, I approached the target from behind. As he was too busy wrecking another freezer, I could wait for the opportunity to jump on his gun. Meanwhile, Ali would shoot him flat and wish him good night.