“No—” Zéphyr took her Urgl beer and my Rockbiter cocktail from the returning waiter who didn’t recognize her at first glance. “—by the first person who will walk through that door.”

  4. THE NEVERENDING TROUBLES

  Roof of the Palmer House Hotel

  Downtown Callisto City (Callisto/Jupiter IV)

  Present day

  “Ali.” With his sauce-stained index, Bill Murray pointed to the small piece of chicken my partner had just grabbed from the bottom of her bucket. “I’m sorry to interrupt you after such a hectic cliffhanger, but your nugget looks way too much like Danny De Vito!”

  “Psych!” my associate uttered as a drop of fat dripped down the scratches on her chin. “Yours’ so massive it’s like Arnie!!”

  Our host scraped some spicy sauce with his tender. “You guys seen Twins?”

  “Obviously!” I interjected, a wing between the fangs.

  “We’re, like, movies—to the max,” Ali commented.

  Bill Murray raised his eyebrow. “Obviously. And what did you think of Ghostbuster II?”

  There was an awkward silence. As I resumed my monitoring, Ali lost herself in contemplating the crumbs at the bottom of her empty bucket.

  The actor cleared his throat. “Let’s get back to your story, shall we?”

  Wise Dragon’s Bar

  Techno-Marine Pier Marina (Callisto/Jupiter IV)

  A month ago

  My cyber-girlfriend and I waited for someone to come through the door. Alas, the cigarette smog had thickened since the concert began, and it became near impossible to discern anything from the booth.

  “What does our stalker look like?” I asked over the first few bass notes.

  “We need to get closer,” she proposed instead, pulling herself up from the bench. “Let’s bust a groove while being alert. If we’re acting suspiciously, he might run away.”

  Dragged by the hand, I walked around a big burly guy in a Marine uniform gallivanting his silver-haired girlfriend, before slowly pushing my way through the bustling mosh pit. Her perm’s hairspray made me sneeze.

  While I followed Kajagoogoo on stage, Zéphyr danced next to me. She kept watching the comings and goings. And by the end of the third song, she kissed me on the neck before whispering: “I’ve got a visual, Ali-love.”

  I turned, miming glancing at the glass I had left on our table. With a nod, my cyber-spy designed the surprise guest: a yellow jumpsuit wearing a motorcycle helmet. Our mysterious party crasher walked along the crowded bar before quietly making his way downstairs. To the bathroom.

  “Time to bounce,” Zéphyr ordered, slapping my buttocks to push me forward.

  Once out of the human tide, on top of the stairs, I saw the biker entering the women’s restroom. “Maybe he’s just a creep,” I hypothesized. “I gather sewer-smelling Bigfoots and FBI spooks could give birth to crazy theories I know you’re fond of, but… are you not kidding yourself?”

  Too late. Cyber-stubborn was already storming downward.

  I sighed. Clearing a Rockbiter cocktail left at the corner of the bar between the olive jar and the dusty landline booth stamped with sex chat ads, I joined her below.

  “Z?” In the quiet toilets, the cyborg was alone. “Where did she go?” I asked with my lips this time. I rested the empty glass on a hand-free towel dispenser before picking the last squared olive.

  Zéphyr nodded at the stall door near the back wall covered with graffiti. Her holographic suit sizzled as she stepped into the puddle of smelling water surrounding the adjacent sinks. Lifting her left foot, she prepared to kick the green door in.

  The latter flew in the opposite direction intended, right into her hardened steel face. Thanks to her motorcycle helmet, the party crasher had just burst out as violently as unexpectedly.

  Swearing, I wanted to take my Desert Eagle out of my chest pocket. Sadly, the top of my overalls being folded, the long barrel got caught in a strap. The weapon tumbled from my hand before ricocheting heavily on the tiled floor.

  The pervert in the yellow suit immediately jumped on it. But I had the reflex to slide it away with a heel strike. Destabilized, he slipped. My lap painfully welcomed him.

  As I fell backwards in the puddle, Zéphyr got up. She grabbed our attacker as I pushed him back with a kick to the chin. She lifted him into the air with the incredible strength of her bionic body. The assailant’s head went through the ceiling plates. A second later, he collapsed in the water, stunned. His cracked helmet remained up there.

  “What a surprise…” Zéphyr smiled.

  Coughing asbestos, our stalker appeared to be a strange woman: a Freak with a house mouse’s features.

  “Don’t fucking move!” I shouted as I straightened.

  The mutant didn’t comply, and leaped for the exit. Zéphyr immediately tripped her, and she landed on my feet. Furious, I clutched her arms to keep her from getting up, noticing Zéphyr grabbing a composite board from the broken stall door to knock her down once and for all.

  Just then, someone entered the bathroom. In the frame stood a fat man in a Hawaiian shirt not deliberately ajar at the bottom. His mustache stiffened and his sunglasses flinched as he saw the strange rumble performed before his eyes.

  “Sorry, babes! Wrong turn…” he stammered as he took a step backwards, before staring at each of us. “But if you wish to continue…”

  The board thrown at his face by Zéphyr made his libidinous smile disappear. He cleared off with a broken nose.

  “Let me go! I’m a journalist!” suddenly uttered the struggling Freak.

  Zéphyr cautiously approached her. Panting, she stopped moving.

  With a fingertip, my girlfriend slid the zipper of the Freak’s yellow jumpsuit down. She grabbed a notebook alongside a press pass. “Only if Miss—” she glanced at the plastic holo-card. “—Miss June Roger, from Callisto 6 News, promises to behave and be rather talkative.”

  “You’re a bunch of thugs!” she grumbled as she straightened after I released her. “All Martians are brutes!” Her blue eyes were glittering.

  “Here’s Ali. You can call me Z,” Zéphyr stated. Meanwhile, I went to retrieve my gun from under the ransacked condom dispenser. “We’re not technically government goons.”

  “Oh yeah?” She then tucked a strand of her brown hair behind her pierced mouse ear. Her muzzle wiggled. “And why on Jupiter were you happily chatting with the two agents by the convenience store?”

  I interjected, my back against the main door to prevent another intrusion: “We ran into one of your mutant buddies in the mall. I’m the Auxiliary who took it down.” Someone knocked. “Busy—beat it!”

  “I see…” the Freak resumed. “Specializing in monster hunting?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. “But when a dude tries to munch my freckled face. I tend to unload a magazine. Seems fair to me.”

  “I’m sure glad you didn’t empty one into my face. As horrible as it is.”

  “Horrible? There’s nothing horrible about your face,” Zéphyr responded, hands on her hips. “I saw Ali with an avocado mask. Now that’s something scary!”

  I pouted. “Bite me.”

  My cyborg winked. “Why the helmet, Miss Roger?” she continued. “You weren’t following us on a motorcycle. But on rollerblades.”

  “Jovian moons aren’t famous for their open-mindedness and benevolence towards genetic diversity,” the reporter replied, picking up the shattered visor lying on the ceramic tiles. “This monster story won’t help. Although the people responsible aren’t Freaks.”

  “For real?” I asked. “We saw a giant plate-head turtle wreaking bloody havoc in a Chuck-E-Cheese.”

  “These abominations popping up since the late summer are something else—but based on the same genetic alteration process. And they’re endogenous to Callisto.”

  “You’re fairly well-informed,” Zéphyr remarked.

  The giant mouse smiled. “I’m a pretty good reporter.”

  “This story rings a bell,” I intervened. “About cloning rejects bred in a lab on Ceres. In a disused Techno-Marine laboratory to be exact.”

  Zéphyr nodded. “Callisto hosts the headquarters of the Outer System’s fleet.”

  Lady Fievel first dismissed our guesswork: “This moon-city also hides a crime syndicate expert in bioweapons, megacorps specializing in genetics, post-nuclear treatment centers… The whole satellite could give birth to monsters.” She then reached for her pass and her electronic notebook Zéphyr handed her. “Once I know exactly where they came from, I will expose the person responsible. And clear the Freak community!”

  “Do you need assistance?” I asked.

  She hesitated, rubbing her jaw hit by my sole. “I work alone.”

  “We’re getting after them anyway,” I insisted.

  “Perhaps you could possibly be useful with your gun…” She turned to Zéphyr. “I’ve also accumulated hundreds of megabytes that could help us, but I suck at computers.”

  “Kinda funny for a mouse,” I joked.

  She resumed, ignoring me: “Do you know your share regarding data processing?”

  My cyborg grinded. Her data-thief’s cyber-blood boiled.

  Roof of the Palmer House Hotel

  Downtown Callisto City (Callisto/Jupiter IV)

  Present day

  “Wow! What a team! What happened next?” Bill Murray asked, absorbed in the story since the wet T-shirt and drunk female wrestling.

  “Zéphyr and I enjoyed the afternoon concert because it was still my fucking birthday, remember?” my partner replied. “Then, we went back to our crib.”

  “And June gave you the data, right?” the actor inquired. “That woman trusted you blindly…”

  “She obviously knew me from TV too, and reckoned the Kitty gets shits done! But stay focused, Bill… stuff got tricky!” she concluded before resuming her story.

  Gold Coast Suites

  North Callisto City (Callisto/Jupiter IV)

  A month ago

  I woke up from my quick nap in the armchair near the window, my legs on the backrest and my forehead taped to the room’s orange carpet. Straightening resurrected my headache. My twenty-first birthday already appeared to be the final death knell for my barely initiated drinking habits. And it wasn’t even 5 p.m.

  Sliding on the floor, I grabbed a pair of crumpled gym shorts left under the bed. Once I was up, I slipped into an old Callisto Bulls hoodie before stumbling towards the kitchen area of the suite. On the other side of the corridor’s window on my right, the Kisugi, Zéphyr’s ship, was anchored horizontally.

  “Z?” I grumbled in the gloom. “Why is it so dark?”

  “In the beginning, it is always dark.”

  Ordering the home automation system to turn on the lights, I found her sitting cross-legged on the living-room’s Formica table. Without a holosuit, Zéphyr sported her inky metallic skin and silver hair. Her eyes were filled with red and blue static. Judging by the many wires connecting her temples to the data-core lying on the Coloniawful couch, she was processing the info sent by July—wait. August? Whatever. She was processing the info sent by Speedy Gonzalez.

  I poured the contents of two bags of Swiss Miss directly into my mouth. “You dug up a bone on the Radio Freaks yet?” I managed to pronounce through the small mallows.

  I got no answers and decided to sit on the couch. Snatching the remote from the faux-leather holder, I turned on the TV. Seinfeld was aired.

  “Yes,” Zéphyr replied through the laugh track as she logged off.

  I coughed up a chocolate cloud. “‘bout time.”

  She spun to me. “Apologies. You may grab your jacket and gun. I’ll page June. It’s time to run for some birthday troubles.”

  “As if! Shower first!”

  “No need for a shower where we’re going, Ali-love,” she said, stretching her rubber ligaments. “I’ll set up the Kisugi.”

  “You. Me. Shower. At once!” I insisted, throwing the hoodie across the room.

  5. M.H.U.D (MUTAGENIC HUMANOID UNDERGROUND DWELLERS)

  Roof of the Palmer House Hotel

  Downtown Callisto City (Callisto/Jupiter IV)

  Present day

  “Weren’t you afraid of getting in trouble with the Bureau dorks?” Bill Murray asked.

  “Cops or Military Police don’t scare us, you know!” Ali replied as she drew her .50, and spun it like a space cowboy.

  “I see…” the actor reacted by replacing the safety that had popped off. “I too made fun of the MP during my service.”

  I jumped into my sapiens’ arms. With a flick of my paw, I activated her wrist computer to check the time. We had been stuck in the water tank for twelve hours. The stench of sweat and grease—mixed with pot, KFC and boredom—gave birth to a cough-inducing scent loaded with carbon dioxide.

  “You’re confusing real life with Stripes…” I said to our guest as Ali opened the door to let in a draft.

  “Anyway, have you reached the reporter? Damn. I’d like to play a news correspondent someday.”

  “You sure will,” Ali declared.

  “I’d love to be in a movie,” I intoned, switching places with my partner. It was her turn to watch the roof of the building across the street.

  “Can’t you help Lee with his career, Bill?” she joked.

  Bill Murray pondered. “A film where I’m a journalist. And where there would be a hairball, too. I’ll ask Ramis—but go ahead with your story, Ali. Please.”

  “Can you keep telling it while on the watch, partner?”

  “I’m multitasking, grumpy groundhog.”

  I began my grooming. “You can indeed eat in your sleep. But that’s about it.”

  Deep Loop District

  Callisto City (Callisto/Jupiter IV)

  A month ago

  “You’re late,” grumbled Miss Roger, the reporter we had met hours before. She was standing against a railing surrounding one of the many dangerous sinkholes in Callisto City’s industrial zone.

  Deep mines had been dug in the chondrite crust during the colonization. Martian engineers injected an immense quantity of iron oxides brought from the main belt into the moon’s heart. Coupled with giant turbines consuming a lot of power, the “filling” of Jupiter IV had endowed it with a substantial gravitational force almost similar to Earth. Thus, the satellite had been able to acquire an atmosphere.

  “Ali is used to long showers,” explained Zéphyr as we hopped off a taxicab. “What does our evening look like?”

  “Gloomy and windy,” replied the Freak as she pulled up the zipper of her yellow jumpsuit to her chin.

  The walls of the narrow chasm were covered with sticky algae, oozing a disgusting red liquid. From the top to the unfathomable depths, the curiously inverted edifice had no apparent entrance and looked more like the gaping throat of a titanic cosmic entity.

  “Should we really go down?” I asked, searching with the tip of my foot for the first rungs of a ladder in the silt surrounding the edge.

  “Those are magnetic walls leading to the safety hatch a little further down,” Zéphyr replied. “Do you have boots, June?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t!” I uttered. I was still wearing my gym shorts and hoodie. “Besides, the flamethrower wouldn’t have been a luxury now!”

  “I’ll carry you on my back,” Zéphyr said, ignoring my remark.

  Not very reassured, the journalist took the first step. Her magnetic sole fixed, she found herself perpendicular to the wall, before escaping a sigh of relief.

  Our slow progress required us to clear the moss mats and the rows of slimy lichen with the tip of our feet. Clinging to my cyborg’s neck, I tried to think of more pleasant moments. Like our gaming nights, or The Land Before Time—no, wait. That’s the one where the little dinosaur’s mother dies, right? Ouch.

  Unfortunately, walls covered with filth weren’t the only danger. Not being a ‘borg with superhuman faculties, the Freak struggled against the nauseating winds rising from the depths. Several times, she had to turn around to absorb the gusts. It was as if the iron monster residing at the planet’s heart snored in its sleep.

  “You okay, September?” I asked.

  “Of course!” she cried out to us. “I—”

  Her last unsteady step went through a barrier of vegetation, and she disappeared behind it. My girlfriend leaped forward in reflex, and we both tumbled headlong into the seeping gorge.

  A second later, I was caught by the collar by the giant mouse, which pulled us through the wall. The next thing we knew, we were on top of each other in a dark, sticky stairwell.

  “My—my apologies…” the Freak stammered as she awkwardly straightened up before massaging her shoulders.

  “Interesting. We seem to have fallen through the seaweed covering that crack,” Zéphyr explained.

  “This is indeed really interesting…” I coughed. “...not.”

  While massaging my bruised throat, I examined the large strain in the steel wall. It didn’t look accidental, nor natural.

  “Let’s go down,” the reporter replied, probing with her freshly lit flashlight the clawed footprints leading into the abyss. “We’re in the old filling system. Converted into sewers.”

  “Ugh! I hate sewers… There’re always clowns roaming around…”

  With my Desert Eagle on alert, I summoned enough courage to conduct the group down a grimy concrete stairwell.

  During this endless descent, several door remnants appeared along the walls. None of them yielded to my shoulder thrusts. The humidity had attacked the hinges and sealed the place; forcing us to continue deeper into the colonial complex. The same humidity made my cyborg’s holosuit sizzle.

  “The wireless signal wanes too,” she whispered to me when the reporter was away.

  The final spiral steps led to immense plexiglass doors slowly collapsing under their own weight. Behind them, a vast round room as large as the Symphony Center’s Orchestra Hall was bathed in halos of reddish glow emanating from huge skylights dotting the walls. They must have been invisible from the outside because of the lichen.