Boss King and the Blade

Trixie

Trixie hadn’t even realised she had drawn her pistol until she was halfway across the dormitory, fingers locked around the small weapon as she moved quietly towards the sounds.

A door was ahead of her, labelled as Training Room One. She stopped at the sliding door, pressing her ear against the thin plastic frame. The voices came from the other side, her acoustic programs detecting three distinct male voices in addition to the female one. They were in a large, open space she could tell from the way the sounds echoed. Roughly ten meters ahead of her, slightly to her right.

She disengaged the safety on her slim pistol, cocking it slowly to minimise the noise, then drew her Stun Wand from where it sat against her back. With a final deep breath, she pushed at the door. It slid almost silently to one side, revealing a wooden floored space about twenty meters long and half that deep.

A pair of handheld lamps illuminated the small group, one of the men turning in surprise at the light spilling in from the dormitory. At their feet lay a young woman, barely past her teens, huddled in terror as the men loomed over her.

“Who the hell are you?” snarled the biggest man, the one who had registered her first. He drew a pistol from his belt, cocking it loudly and lifting it towards Trixie. His companions drew guns and knives too, grinning at her sudden appearance.

“I’m just here to join the party” Trixie said as she strode into the room. With the light behind her, the men were struggling to make out the modest weapons she carried. Trixie had no such problems, with her Enhanced eye showing everything in precise detail.

“Please” begged the girl, her face turning towards Trixie. A pale hand reached out, pleading for rescue. “I just want to go home”

Trixie stopped halfway across the floor, her hands held loosely at her sides, left leg slightly forwards in a balanced fighting stance.

“How about it, boys?” she asked casually. “Any chance you could let her go?”

Coarse laughter ensued, one of the men placing a booted foot on the girl’s back, pushing her to the floor.

“Sorry, but this one belongs to us” the big guy snickered evilly. “You should leave now”

Trixie smiled at the three men, a grim rictus showing her perfect white teeth. If the men had any sense at all, they would have seen it was an apex predator baring her fangs.

“She’s so tiny, she won’t be of any use to big, strong guys like you” Trixie growled. “Give her to me and I’ll go easy on you”

“Nah, I like them tiny” laughed their leader. “I think we’ll keep her” He raised his pistol to aim at Trixie, her Enhanced eye predicting his shot would land around her right shoulder. His gun technique was decidedly sloppy she decided, same as the posturing of his two henchmen.

“Sorry, I can’t allow that” Trixie declared and sprang into motion. Her first move was a sudden side-step, the surprised reaction shot from the big guy zipping a good arm’s length past her shoulder. She lifted and fired her own small pistol, the rubber Suppression round slamming into his right hand.

The guy screamed in agony, dropping the gun from his pain-wracked fingers and staggering sideways. Trixie ignored him, charging forwards even as the other two leapt into motion. Henchman number two, a dark complexioned man with a long scar down one cheek came at her first, swinging a big fighting knife in a savage arc.

Trixie turned as she ran, blocking his knife arm with the back of her forearm, stepping through and letting his own momentum carry him past her. The slim Stun Wand was jammed into his shoulder as they separated, the electrical discharge bringing a pained shout from his lips as he stumbled to his knees.

Her third opponent had jumped the young girl, bringing his own gun into line with Trixie as she charged. For a brief moment Trixie wondered if this would be her last battle, her artificial eye calculating she was about to be shot in the head.

At the last instant, the guy’s confident grin turned to shock as his legs were wrenched out from below. His pistol shot blasted into the wooden floor, missing Trixie completely. As he toppled, she could see the girl had grappled the guy’s legs in a desperate lunge.

Without breaking stride, Trixie gave him a solid kick to the side of his head, her sturdy boots snapping him backwards. The third man was out cold before he hit the floor, laid out flat beside a stunned girl. Trixie sheathed her Stun Wand and stepped next to her, holding out her left hand.

“We need to leave” she told the girl. “Is there another way out of here?”

Behind them she could sense the leader and his second struggling back to their feet. They were between Trixie and the dormitory now, so she didn’t want to fight her way past them if she could avoid it.

“There’s an elevator hidden at the back” the girl said. She got to her feet and led Trixie into the darkened end of the Training room. “It’s behind a false wall panel, but it should still be open”

With the girl’s description, Trixie’s superior vision spotted the opened wall panel. She guided the girl to the hidden door and found the button to summon the elevator. The sliding door parted immediately, the interior lit by a faded red light panel. Both women got in hurriedly, turning to face the Training room.

The big guy had picked his gun up left handed, cradling his injured right against his waist. He walked towards Trixie and the girl, trying to sight down his weapon.

“You’ll pay for what you did to us!” he snarled and fired, the bullet slamming into the wall beside the open elevator doors. Trixie shielded the younger woman with her own body and mashed the down button. The doors slid closed, blocking off their view of the angry men.

“Send me the bill” Trixie said to the closed doors, the elevator smoothly beginning its descent.

A small nervous laugh came from behind her, making Trixie smile.

“You Okay back there?” she asked, still facing the doors. “I’m Trixie, Trixie Smith” she added.

“I’m Okay” the girl responded. “My name is Abigail Langdon, but everybody calls me Abbie”

There was a pause, then the elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Trixie scanned the space beyond over her raised pistol, her eye penetrating the dimly lit chamber that was revealed.

“Do you know this place, Abbie?” Trixie asked her, stepping out cautiously. “Are there any more of the gang down here?”

“No, it was only three of them” she confirmed, joining Trixie in the cavernous space. It was at least thirty meters deep and over fifty long, faintly lit by a series of work lamps arrayed in a loose circle near one wall. In the midst of the lights, stacks of boxes, small bottles and cans could be seen.

“Those men, they’re Wall Runners aren’t they?” Trixie asked, scanning the concrete floor around them for what she needed. A dented can lay discarded near the elevator doors and Trixie snatched it up with glee. She turned and jammed it into the closing doors, preventing the elevator from leaving.

Abbie nodded her head, maybe in agreement with what Trixie said or possibly with her trick for stopping the elevator heading back up to the three men. Satisfied that the immediate route was blocked, Trixie gave the large chamber a more detailed look.

The first thing she noticed were the bullet holes, peppering the nearby walls and leaving gouges in the concrete floor. Trixie stalked along one wall, Abbie following her cautiously, as she surveyed the surroundings.

“It looks like this was once a training room” Trixie ventured. “Bigger than the one upstairs, with a shooting range and obstacle courses. This looks an awful lot like the kind of facility I was trained in”

“What were we you trained as, Trixie?” Abbie asked her, pulling her attention back to the present.

“Hmm? Oh, I was trained as a Police Auxiliary” she improvised. In a way it was kjnd of true, her Guard training being very similar to the Tactical training given to the SWAT teams. “How about we get out of here and find somewhere less exposed to talk?”

Abbie agreed with her thoughts. She pointed to a distant door, over near the stacked goods.

“I have a place in the tunnels we can use” she offered. “It’s not too far and no-one else knows about it but me”

“Sounds good, Abbie” Trixie replied. “Let’s make our escape before those guys find another way down here”

“Copy that” Abbie agreed.

=====

Abbie’s Place, Service Tunnels, District Seven

Abbie

“Sorry it’s a bit cramped” she said to her rescuer. “It’s only ever me that comes here”

Abbie turned to regard the tall, solidly framed woman who had saved her. Trixie Smith was truly impressive, her handsome face and muscled body reminding Abbie of some high fashion sportswoman. There was something else nagging at Abbie’s thoughts when she looked at Trixie, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“It looks very cosy” Trixie replied, squeezing her shoulders then hips through the maintenance hatch that concealed the refuge. It was one of the unused voids that filled much of the underground warren beneath Pan City, a space intended for machinery or pumps that were never installed.

It was a set of two connected chambers, each the size of a small bedroom. Abbie used the first as a living space, with a small cooker on a low table beside some boxes she used as a chair. Food supplies and bottled water were stacked neatly in one corner, tightly sealed in boxes to prevent the ever-hungry rats getting in.

The second chamber was her modest bedroom, with a sleeping bag laid over a thin foam mattress. Her personal data-pad was resting on another empty box, letting her watch TV while lying down.

Abbie turned on her lights, the stolen work-lamps wired into a power conduit that ran through the chambers. She even had her own running water, with a small outlet valve giving her unlimited free supply.

Trixie squatted on the clean floor, surveying the modest home.

“You’ve done very well to set this up yourself” Trixie commented. “I am guessing you left home for some reason, which is why you are down here”

“Yeah” Abbie admitted. She had only met this stranger less than half an hour ago, but she felt she could trust her with the truth. Trixie had saved her after all.

“I ran away from my step-father in Haven” Abbie said. “He turned mean once my mother died and I knew I had to get away from him. I had nowhere to go, then I met some other people my age who dabbled in Wall Running”

“Wall Running is a dangerous career” Trixie cautioned her. “The Board of Governors don’t like people smuggling stuff under the walls but I guess you already know that. Most Wall Runners end up getting caught by a Guard Patrol or meeting something even nastier down here”

“Uh-huh” Abbie agreed. She had lost friends already like that, one captured and arrested, another pair vanished without trace in the maze of tunnels and sewers. “It’s why I decided to try and join up with an experienced gang. They told me I was perfect for their plans”

Trixie sighed and Abbie knew why. She had been terribly ignorant, trusting the Wall Runners before she had really found out what they wanted her for. If Trixie hadn’t chanced upon them, Abbie was certain things would have ended badly for her.

“Why were you in that tower?” she asked Trixie. “That place has been empty for a year or two at least”

“I was looking for someone” Trixie told her. “Or at least clues about who she was” Abbie saw her saviour’s eyes hone in on her, a faint green glow visible behind the mesh eyepatch Trixie wore. “What do you know about that Happy Hive place?”

“Not much. It was abandoned long before I came along. Leroy, that’s the leader of that gang, he told me they were one of those militant cults that pretended to be a communal family. They trained all their kids how to fight and stuff, like they were some kind of private army”

“Is that so?” Trixie responded. “How did it end up being abandoned?”

“Leroy said the Guards raided the place. He used to sell some stuff to the family members, so he saw a little bit of what they got up to. Then one day he was going to make a delivery when he heard gunfire. He said he crept as close as he dared and saw Guards swarming the place, shooting at the men and women who lived in the Hive. They put up a pretty fierce resistance, with the kids running about swinging swords and shooting guns too!”

“They fought the Guards?” Trixie asked her. “Why didn’t they fill the place with Stun Gas? All the humans would have gone down right away”

“Leroy wondered about that too” Abbie told her. “Maybe the people in the Hive were resistant to the gas?”

“Only Guard clones are able to resist Stun Gas” Trixie told her. “Their bodies don’t have the same chemistry as regular people”

Abbie regarded Trixie and then it hit her like a thunderbolt. It also helped that Trixie’s wig had slipped sometime in the fighting or short journey here, revealing close cut dark hair beneath.

“You’re a Guard clone too, aren’t you Trixie?”

“What? Don’t be silly, Abbie” her rescuer insisted in almost panicky tones. “I know I look a bit like the Jills from the Guard, but I really am as human as you are”

Abbie smiled nervously and waved her hands in front, trying to reassure her new friend.

“Look, it’s Okay, Trixie” Abbie assured her. “I don’t care if you are a Guard clone. You don’t really act like the ones I have met before, that’s why it took me a while to realise”

“Oh, I see” Trixie told her carefully, her tone neutral and soft. The older woman reached up and tugged her blonde wig off, rubbing her hand in the short, dark stubble on her head. “I guess my disguise is pretty rubbish after all”

“Can I see your eye as well?” Abbie gushed. “I’ve never seen one up close before”.

Trixie gave her a strange look, then slid the eyepatch off too. Abbie leaned forwards, her two natural eyes locked onto Trixie’s glowing green one.

“That is so cool!” she insisted. “Can you link it to your guns and stuff?”

“Err, yes I can” Trixie answered her. “It’s the most advanced model that is implanted into the Guards. I can also use it to magnify my vision and see in the dark. Anything I see can be recorded and transmitted to another device too”

“Wow!” breathed Abbie. “I wish I had one of those!”

“Why would you want to be like me?” Trixie asked her, the confusion evident on her face.

“Are you kidding? You are tall and strong and incredibly beautiful, with that amazing eye and all sorts of skills I bet. It must be wonderful to be you, Trixie”

“Yeah, it’s a real blast” she finally replied. “So, we probably want to wait a while before we try and make it to the surface. Is it Okay if I stay here with you for a bit?”

“Absolutely!” Abbie grinned back. “Stay right there and I’ll make us something to eat. How does curry flavour ramen sound?”

“It’s my all-time favourite” Trixie said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Abbie just motioned with her hands for Trixie to stay seated.

“Nope. You are the first friend I ever brought here. Just sit back and take it easy while I get it ready”

“Thanks, Abbie” the woman said. “I really appreciate this”

“Why? It’s only curry ramen”

“I know. It’s the thought that counts”

=====

Trixie

The ramen was eaten, the bowls washed and dried, and Abbie was remarkably talkative. If her investigation into the Busy Bees hadn’t stalled, Trixie would have been pretty happy right now.

“So who were you looking for?” Abbie asked her again. “Was she someone important to you?” Trixie regarded the young woman properly, seeing a pretty face with green eyes and freckles surrounded by a frizzy mane of auburn hair. Her family heritage had to be Euro-Bloc she decided, or maybe Ireland or Scotland in the Re-United Kingdom.

“Yeah” Trixie agreed. “She kind of helped make me the person I am today” Trixie saw the data-pad Abbie had been using so she asked to borrow it. “I can download an image of the girl I wanted to identify” she explained.

Linking her internal processor via an induction cable, she sent an image file to Abbie’s pad. As soon as she opened the file, Abbie gasped at the picture of young Trixie.

“Is she your little sister?” Abbie wondered aloud. “She’s so adorable!”

“What?” Trixie replied. “No, she’s not related to me. Why do you ask?”

“Seriously?” Abbie demanded. “The girl looks like a miniature version of you”

Trixie lifted the screen towards her right eye, focussing her facial recognition software on the photo of the other Trixie. The result came back almost instantly – ninety-five percent match with standard Jill facial features.

“How could I have missed something so obvious?” Trixie breathed in wonder. She ran another program, aging the image of the young girl to around eighteen years of age, then compared that to the photos of the intruder from the Records Hall.

Ninety-seven percent match.

There was no doubt in Trixie’s mind. The young girl and the intruder were created from the same genetic material as Trixie and all the other Guard clones. Such a thing was supposed to be impossible, with the cloning facility for the Guards directly overseen by Archimedes himself. No-one should be able to steal the genetic base to grow young women like these, yet they obviously had been.

“Is something wrong, Trixie?” Abbie asked her in concern.

“Did you ever feel like the whole world has been pulled out from under you?”

“Yep. About once a week I reckon” Abbie answered seriously. “You get used to it in time”

Trixie looked at the young woman and came to a decision.

“Abbie, I need to head back to Spitfield. There are some things I need to check out”

“Oh, Okay” she replied uncertainly, her face revealing her unhappiness. “I can show you the best way to the surface if you like”

“Thanks” Trixie said. “Do you want to come with me? I know some contacts in the city that can offer you somewhere better to stay than down here”

“Seriously? We only just met” Abbie gasped in surprise.

“Yeah. I kind of owe you one, since you tripped that guy before he shot me in the head”

Trixie watched with a kind of amused expression as Abbie thought for a solid twenty seconds.

“Well, I think that Leroy’s gang will be after me now so leaving Pan City is probably a good idea” she admitted. “Can you give me five minutes to pack up my stuff?”

“Take ten” Trixie told her. “You don’t want to leave anything important behind”