My cyber-girlfriend smiled, reaching for my arm. “Don’t panic! I sorted things out!” Her eyes turned purple as she lifted me on the wing.

  All around, the surviving speakers spat dust. Very loud chords could be heard from the heights, before giving way to lyrics and music.

  I never meant to cause you any sorrow

  I never meant to cause you any pain

  I only wanted to one time to see you laughing

  “What the hell is that?” I coughed, figuring Prince’s voice out while I sat on the wing against the cockpit. I was shaking.

  Meanwhile, the vessel steadily hovered to the top, far from the inferno and the mutants. The temperature remained hot but became tolerable again.

  Zéphyr slowly slumped on the edge, opening for me an ice-cold brick of Mr. Pibb from her ship’s reserve. “Happy birthday, Ali-love…”.

  Below, the Radio Freaks started howling in pain. Their screams grew in intensity until their heads suddenly burst out—first one by one, then by entire batches.

  Purple rain, purple rain

  Purple rain, purple rain

  Violet mists silently scattered across the whole vault, also causing the flames to turn purple. In a blink of an eye, the entire blazing dune resembled a breathing lavender storm cloud. It was beautiful.

  Purple rain, purple rain

  I only wanted to see you

  Bathing in the purple rain

  I smiled, resting my tired head on her metal shoulder.

  Roof of the Palmer House Hotel in Downtown Callisto City (Callisto/Jupiter IV) - Present day

  “What happened to the Monsutā once you guys got back to the surface?” Bill Murray asked.

  Ali spat her bubblegum. A colored trickle drooled on her chin. “I reckon throwing Lisa into the fire wasn’t the right thing to do. I let Zéphyr humanely get rid of her after I went home to the Kitty and met Lee,” she said, wiping her lips with the back of her sleeve before sticking her candy on a rusted rivet.

  “And the fire? That was you? The barber shop exploded on live TV. That was awesome!”

  “That’s the problem with us,” I sighed, trying to light up one of my cigarettes I was saving. “We rarely go unnoticed.”

  “What about the FBI? Did you get your bounty hunter’s license back?”

  “We received an unexpected visit from the two agents, Mr. De Mornay and Mr. Gross, shortly after…” I interjected, beating the dust off my tail out of frustration as I couldn’t properly light my cigarette. “While I had my head in the nuclear reactor!”

  Ali laughed. “Lee bit their butts. We didn’t hear more from them until yesterday.”

  “What do you mean?” Bill Murray asked, helping me with his Zippo.

  “The infamous June Roger is alive,” I explained, puffing. “And according to Mr. Gross, she’s holed up in this building with mercenaries.” Ali pointed to the 50-story bookstore we were watching with her thumb. “Ready to be exfiltrated off world.”

  Bill Murray raised an eyebrow. “So, the feds were good guys?”

  I grumbled. “Let’s just say they were short of competent agents in the area. We’re private cops from the Alliance, remember? The best.”

  The trash heap in front of Ali beeped. Lost amid the old Quisp Cereal boxes and other household garbage, a bulky walkie-talkie loudly alerted us of an incoming communication.

  Bill Murray grabbed the device and turned up the volume. We could hear Agent Gross’s deep voice: “Kitty? Are you still there?”

  “For ages, indeed…” I whined as the actor spun the walkie-talkie in my direction so I could rant more easily.

  “We have a visual on our friend the Freak-mouse! The mercs’ helicopter was damaged over the Englewood slums, meaning she won’t be escaping through the roof as planned—God Darwin! Watch that taxicab!” Screeching tires and honking horns drowned his last curses.

  “You kiddin’ me?” bellowed Ali, grabbing Bill Murray’s tiring wrist. “We’re starvin’ here for nothin’!”

  Agent Gross shouted orders to his partner at the wheel, before coming back to us: “We also lost quite a bit of time in a TV van, stuck in an alleyway reeking of garbage!”

  “This isn’t a contest!” I interjected. “Where’s Mighty Mouse? Where’s our luscious contract?”

  “She’s gonna break through the east side!” De Mornay exclaimed, realizing a skid destroying—from the noise—someone’s newsstand. “According to our team stationed a few floors below you, she’s about to jump on a subway train!”

  “I’ll get her!” Ali immediately replied, springing towards the hatch while stepping over the silent Bill Murray.

  “What?” I reacted. “Wait!”

  Too late, my partner was already outside and running to the edge of the roof. Below, the subway tracks snaked towards the bay’s spaceport.

  I too leaped outdoors by a hole big enough to accommodate my stomach, before turning back to the actor who poked his nose through my former surveillance post: “Goodbye, Mr. Murray! It was a pleasure meeting you!”

  “Alas, nothing lasts forever, fellas!” he smiled, waving his hand through another gap. “Goodbye, Ali!”

  “See you around, Bill!” shouted the latter before throwing herself headfirst into the void.

  I ran to the edge. Below me, my partner drifted away, helped by the hot wind. Thanks to her genetically modified body, she could almost gracefully land on the Blue line subway train and not almost gracefully crash head on onto it.

  I turned around. Hidden under an orange tarp, the Kitty was just waiting for my pads to join the mad chase.

  A Blue Line subway streetcar in Downtown Callisto City (Callisto/Jupiter IV) - Same time

  I kissed the train, bending the shiny metal roof. My clone body absorbed 80% of the impact. My head, the other 30%. With my nose shattered and slightly dazed, I straightened. A monumental mistake. The wind coupled with the speed ejected me backwards, and I caught the red handle of a safety hatch at the last second. Once back on track, I progressed slowly while remaining crouched, elbow in front of my eyes to protect myself.

  “Lee? Do you read me?” I tried, bringing my implant as close to my lips as possible.

  The train’s frantic race took me through the tall black towers of downtown Callisto City, slaloming between the bright and giant advertisement holograms. Window-cleaning robots, fat insurance brokers and other curious white-collar workers passionately followed my live show.

  “I’m in the ship, a little further back behind the unmarked FBI truck!” Lee answered. “But I need to stall because the line is about to dive underground after the next block!”

  “Got a visual?”

  A stained flier brushed my cheek. I used it to clean my bloody nose, before the whistle of a bullet grazing my tight startled me. In the distance, June Roger and her mercenaries didn’t want to share their little bumpy ride and started shooting at me.

  “I’d throw a lovely rocket, but…” Lee snapped as I saw the Kitty pass by on my left in the busy air traffic.

  “Hang tight, partner. Imma take care of it! Ali style.”

  The subway slowed as it approached a curve, and I could leap forward, gun in hand. As I made my way to the front, I gradually got rid of the escort that accompanied the Freak mercenary. The subway racing towards the ground, I gained the high spot.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Easy Peasy.

  A fourth and last body crashed into a parking lot below just before we entered the underground passage. Almost deafened by the screech of the brakes and an alarm triggered by the passengers, I jumped to the next car. Meanwhile, June Roger reached the front, dodging the few traffic lights sparsely lit on the rocky ceiling. “Gotcha, bitch.” I aimed at her. But she disappeared into the blinding advertising screen after the tunnel exit. I lost sight of my contract because of a goddamn teaser for Donahue’s last show.

  I swore, and Lee invited himself back into the comms as the subway rocketed up to city heights. My implant buzzed: “Ali! June jumped again!”

  “What? She’s a mouse, not a fucking wallaby! Where is she?”

  “The construction site… left!” Lee replied as the link was disrupted by static. My wrist implant alerted police vehicles soaring in our direction were scrambling the comms. “I have to go… before being shot down for flying too close to Wrigley Fields!”

  “Roger that!”

  I saw the Kitty vanish into the smog above the starscrapers.

  “Take care of yourself, girl!”

  “Trust me!”

  Of course, I appeared to be reckless. And a nutrigel delivery kite hit me head-on.

  A shower of greasy fries followed my short fall. I landed with them on a sand pile at the center of a construction site for a new residential high-rise. I rolled breathlessly to a rough concrete floor and crashed into a wall made of bricks. Under the impact, several of them came apart along a bunch of iron rods dangling nearby. While the bricks struck my stomach, the rods impaled themselves into the ground—a few centimeters away from the parts I would have grown if I hadn’t won the chromosomal lottery.

  “I’m getting sick of this!” I yelled, dusting off my aching limbs.

  “So do I!” a familiar voice intervened.

  June Roger stood in front of me, in the middle of construction workers running away. The fake reporter with whom Zéphyr and I had conquered the moon-city’s sewers no longer resembled the friendly little mouse. The silver flames that had cooked the Radio Freaks army had eaten away her mutant face and hair. Under Jupiter’s shy light, she looked more like the disgusting Monsutā Soupa-whatever-the-fuck-fetus than a Miami Mice puppet.

  My contract had ditched its discreet .38 for a shotgun with automatic sights. As loud as it was effective, the latter pulverized a chunk of the wall above me. A new batch of bricks landed on my head before a construction drone mechanically refurbished the hole with creamy cement.

  After repairing his weapon with large red rounds that didn’t bode well, the Freak pointed it in my direction again. “You gonna pay for what happened to me in this fucking pit!” she threatened. “For letting me roast like a goddamn squirrel!”

  “Oh, that was that?” I joked, following with my eyes her purulent scars running from her temple to her neck. “I thought your back-alley surgeon screwed up your lifting pretty good, June.”

  The telltales slowly lit up on the side of her rifle while I enjoyed my last moments of peace in Solaris. I would miss my cyber girlfriend. Lee, too. Burger King even more.

  “Geronimo!” someone shouted.

  I opened my eyes again. In the sky to my right, a curious man in a dirty bathrobe swooped towards my position on a hang glider.

  “Bill!” I exclaimed, recognizing my tank mate.

  “Who?” reacted June, turning around.

  Bill Murray hit the Freak full force, and she disappeared through the scaffolding and dust of the impact.

  The actor stopped dead in his tracks, defying the strange laws of physics in lesser gravity. He lay on the ground, arms crossed amid his hang glider’s aluminum pieces and torn canvas.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked as I stood up and grabbed my gun.

  Bill Murray sat up with difficulty. “John Candy doesn’t know what he’s missing,” he breathed, both hands on his forehead where a bump grew. “Where did she go?”

  “Over here. You betta rest… and thank you.”

  “You’re welcome…” he sighed while lying down again. “Good luck!”

  Stepping over the bent uprights of the scaffolding, I followed the chaos propagated by the Freak. I found her half a minute later, with all four legs deeply embedded in a fresh concrete screed.

  “Enjoying a fine cement-flavored mud bath?” I asked as I strode over the pipe continuously spilling toxic additives.

  She struggled to catch her breath. With several ribs likely broken, she was wetting the hardening surface with numerous drops of blood. “You won…” she spat before trying to brush away the gray oatmeal dripping into her eyes. Unfortunately, her hands were deeply soggy, and she stumbled to the side. Beaten. “Just tell me one thing…” she gasped. “The girl with you… was it the Data Maiden—Zéphyr? Or whatever new name she uses these days.”

  I stepped up to the edge of the deadly pool. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  She coughed. “Yeah—knew it. The holosuit gave her away. That explains why she got the Monsutā back…”

  “Zéphyr took out Lisa. Monsutā’s long gone, his last computer purple-fried. No more bio-machines roaming—freaks or Nikus. That’s it… ain’t gonna shoot a trilogy about it.”

  “The end of the Children of M? You clueless—shit!” The man-made Swamp of Sadness devoured her legs. She was sinking fast. “The Maiden is—”

  “Trustworthy. Her antics. Not my circus.”

  “You’re not the type to ask much anyway. Nor thinking too much,” she growled, as she tried to swim towards me. Without much success. “I have a couple of secrets to tell you… It has to do with the Dark Sun. The Data Brokers. And Greek Operatives like your girlfriend. Don’t you want to hear them before you turn me over to the feds for them to dissect my brain?” June held out her one uncluttered hand to me.

  I pondered. “Nah.” And I slapped her hand.

  “Wait! You don’t know what you’re walking into!”

  “At least it’s not a concrete screed…” I chuckled, sitting on a whirring generator after grabbing a heavy jackhammer.

  The pneumatic drill hit a pedal. The generator spat a black cloud through a canister in my back, startling me. Its engine roared, and a huge crunching sound resounded on the other side of the floor under construction. Behind June, a massive, automated steamroller hissed before being set into motion.

  See you, Kitty!

  じゃあね、キティ！

  Epilogue: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE RINGS

  エピローグ: 土星のリングの中で昔々

  A clink sound pulled me from my torpor.

  In front of me, my associate Keigo loudly exhaled, ogling at the muted cathodic television over the bar’s liquor shelves. The jubilant anchorwoman’s ghostly reflection danced on his glasses. Rolling his cigarette to the corner of his lips, he groomed his bleached mullet as the old-fashioned Some Velvet Morning echoed from the Wurlitzer in the alcove.

  Meanwhile, I dusted my black power suit. The asbestos falling from the ceiling tiles sprinkled my padded shoulders. “Give me one,” I ordered in awkward English. Yakuza rarely spoke the popular Solarian language. Even after years spent far from my clan’s stronghold on Titan, I had only learned a few common words I kept for public spaces.

  Keigo folded his pocket comb and nonchalantly hurled me the package. It bounced against the glass ashtray.

  I opened it, spilling a few crumbs of tobacco on the Formica table. But the thin paper pack appeared to be empty. I slowly ran my tattooed hand over my face, probably stretching my tired features. I felt a gray strand of hair falling from my bun upon my temple. “You, punk…” I uttered, crushing the pack. Furious, I then flung it back. “That was my last one!”

  Keigo gasped. The fateful cigarette slipped out his mouth. Hot ash seeped into his open shirt, he leaped to his feet, knocking over the chair he was slumped in. “Please—forgive me, boss. I didn’t pay attention!”

  Reddened by effort and shame, Keigo picked up the smoke rolling under the table. Blowing on the filter to remove the collected dust, he scattered the ash into the round of glasses brought by the last member of our traveling trio: a tall overweight fellow clad in a gray pilot suit. I called him Kuma.

  “You clumsy yarō! Beers are overpriced here!” this one roared as he placed the large pints on dog-eared coasters. Dipping his fingers into the warm foam, he tried to pick up the gold and gray flakes.

  “There’s a vending machine by the jukebox!” Keigo said. “I—I’ll buy a new pack—and another round!” He immediately grabbed his bulky wallet as discreet as his Type 54 pistol. The latter slipped from his underarm strap.

  “Shut it and sit down! You are embarrassing yourself!” I muttered before pointing with my chin at my associate’s apparent firearm. Seeing the bartender away, I started scolding him in Japanese.

  “Same with the ale, boss…” Kuma added, taking several sips. His face twisted as his lips brushed the brown brew. The harshness of the beverage made him gag. “It tastes far worse than nutri-soup, desu ne? But as my wife always said… shikata ga nai.”

  I sighed. Scraping my chair against the uneven tile floor, I meticulously buttoned up my jacket. “Wise words as always, Kuma.”

  I traversed the empty café, playing with the cap of my zippo. Bypassing one of the steel pillars covered with stickers and alluring parallax Polaroids from local harlots, I crossed the tapster coming back from the phone booth near the toilets. The skinny man grinned at me through his drooping mustache before returning polishing his countertop.

  I paid no more attention to him and reached into my back pocket for a wad of crumpled bills. If our pilot could put aside some of his dignity and drink adulterated moonshine, an old dog like me could poison my plastic lungs with gaijin tobacco. After all, those English info-ads on TV proudly extolled low-g crops’ virtues.

  Dismissing holographic advertisements displaying as many sexual innuendos as the menthols they promoted contained health hazards, I pressed the faded Marlboro button. The echo of a spring followed a series of clicks. Mechanized pincers appearing through the front trap door handed me a hard pack from another brand.

  “Uzai…”

  A car passed by outside. Its round headlights illuminated the place through the large, tinted Plexiglas windows. Between two puffs, I reflected lost beyond the volutes as the disappearing yellow lights woke an old acquaintance next to the men’s room. There, the interface overlaying my enhanced vision identified an antique pachinko machine.

  I unfolded a plastic stool resting against the adjacent bar, then stroked the arcade cabinet’s cold frame with my artificial fingertips. A new cigarette rolling on my lips, he grabbed one of the free steel balls in the modest bucket hanging on the edge. Sliding it into my palm, memories of his nights spent in Neo-Babylon’s parlors flooded my cyber-mind. Long gone were the days of my nocturnal wanderings in the Japanese enclave.