The future that never wa.., p.6
The Future That Never Was--RADIO FREAK,
p.6
“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 disappear into the smog above the starscrapers.
“Take care of yourself, girl!”
“Trust me!”
Of course, I appeared to be reckless. And a nutrigel delivery drone 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 breathless 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 than the Miami Mice puppets.
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 my head. 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 the fucking sewers!” 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.”
Telltales slowly lit up on the side of her rifle while I enjoyed my last moments of peace in Solaris. I was going to 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 was swooping towards my position on a hang glider.
“Bill!” I exclaimed, recognizing my tank mate.
“Who?” reacted June, turning around.
Bill Murray hit the merc 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 laying 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, June?” 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 Zéphyr, the Data Maiden?’
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-fuck back…” The man-made Swamp of Sadness devoured her legs. She was sinking fast.
“Her shenanigans with the Guild are none of my business.”
“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 learned a few little secrets about Zéphyr, you know… It has to do with the Moon. Don’t you want to hear them before you turn me over to the feds?” June held out her one uncluttered hand to me.
“She will tell me about it if she thinks it’s important.” That idiot couldn’t understand that my girlfriend always had my absolute trust.
“You don’t know what you’re walking into!”
“At least it’s not a concrete screed…” I said, sitting on a whirring generator after grabbing a heavy jackhammer.
The pneumatic drill hit a pedal. The generator spit 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.
I smiled, resting on the jackhammer’s handle. All I had to do was to wait before collecting June’s Finger-IDentification. And just the FID. The Bureau would deal with the rest.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Quentin Raffoux
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
First Edition
July 2022 - KOBO
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Cover design done drunk on sparkling wine
Quentin Raffoux, The Future That Never Was--RADIO FREAK
