Stephanie Steele

An expansive skyline of city lights shrouded in smog. Apartment blocks mixed with factories spewing out toxic fumes. The atmosphere so polluted that it is perpetually night. It’s a world of dimly lit streets, neon signs and danger lurking around every corner. There is urban and social decay everywhere. Cruisers fly on skyways or hover above the ground on regular twenty first century roads. A remnant of a past world. Neon advertising hoardings are everywhere. Large corporations blasting their products at its citizens night and day with no let up. Market leaders like ©Face with their unrelenting assault on your mind and life, influencing your choice of clothes, meals and sexual partners. Their street readers, automated recognition plates, recognised your Face profile and knew your life history in an instant. Scanning your face on every street you walked down and every building you entered. On every street corner you were hit with an ad personally aimed at you. You couldn’t walk down any street in Paradise City without Face being in your face.

High level traffic didn’t escape either. On Face owned buildings vid ads ran constantly. One in particular was for a company called Cyber Corp and their very popular product, Cyber Dolls. In short, android sex substitutes. The vid ad depicted a male and female adult and a male and female child. A seductive woman’s voice informed you, “Make it legal. Use and abuse an android and not a human. Try our Cyber Dolls for all your sexual needs and fantasies. Men, woman, children of all ages and skin colour for your ultimate pleasure. Video call Red Hill Spar now for your low price consultation on 555-6969 and we’ll return your call at $8.99 per minute premium rate plus tax.”

At street level citizens crowded the street on their way home from work or out shopping for a Face bargain. Makeshift market stalls sold just about everything. Large store windows with more neon signs advertised sex. Inside each window scattily clad girls of all ages, sizes, ethnicity and preferences tried to entice men to come inside. No one on street level thought this unusual. In fact it was the norm for twenty second century society. Depravity was a way of life for many people. Discount for using your Face card and double discount if you got 10,000 likes on your Face account when you uploaded the vid to the net.

In less affluent areas the girls plied their trades directly on the street. No glass between customer and merchandise. Sexually explicit clothes enticed you. One or two girls had a surgically enhanced breast or ass on display like a fashion accessory. Most wore high heels or thigh high leather boots and suspenders. The epitome of class. The glow of neon signs cast across them in the dark making them look more enticing. But where store bought sex was pricey, bargains were sought here.

In an alley three men raped a teenage girl over the front of a parked cruiser. One man taking her from behind while the others pinned her. Her small white panties round her thin ankles, a shoe lost. The cruiser’s headlamps made the rapist seem more demonic. The second ripped at her top just bought online via Face. The third wrenched at her latest fashion bra, snapping it and scarring her delicate teenage skin. Skin that was prized above all.

Just a usual night on the streets of Paradise City.

It was a mid summer’s evening and the heat was beginning to lower. While the smog shielded the sun from penetrating to the ground the heat of the city seemed to be unable to escape. The streets were awash with people on the move. Every quarter people scuttled and shuffled seemingly on an endless journey to nowhere, Face readers accosting them every few yards with products specifically targeted to them.

On one of those streets sat Archie’s Bar. Sleaze city. On this particular night the bar was packed, mostly with pot bellied middle-aged men come to drool over the dancing girls who wore very little and danced in and around the punters, between tables and within easy and enticing touching distance. Girls who were no older than eighteen. One girl in gold underwear gyrated sexily, teasing the men. This was her job after all.

One drunk in a beer stained shirt called out “Yeah Baby, shake those titties for me.”

Another drooled and licked his lips then yelled “I love you baby.”

The first man pulled on the back of the girl’s golden underwear with a lecherous smile, exposing her shapely bottom for all to see, “I’d love to bury my face in that ass.”

As both men laughed the girl whipped around and slapped the first man who had been yanking on her clothing, full across the face. The slap could be heard well above the blasting music. “Don’t touch me you slob!” The girl threw at him and carried on dancing, unfazed at having been accosted by yet another drunken guy.

The shirt stained man sheepishly cradled his face as those around him laughed raucously.

Behind the bar, Archie, the owner, a big slob of a man with a towel slung over his shoulder, grinned at what just happened and continued to serve customers while chomping on a big fat cigar, rolling it from one side of his mouth to the other, smoke choking the air. On the bar counter top more scantily clothed girls gyrated with dollar bills hanging from their small panties. Put there by appreciative and drooling customers.

Outside, music from Archie’s Bar seeped along the street and beyond like the stench of crime, infiltrating every nook and crime riddled crevasse of the quarter. Crime was everywhere. No one was safe on these streets even in daylight. What passed for daylight any way. The smog was a permanent fixture, hanging in the air like a bad smell. On a good day you could see two blocks. On a bad day, like today, you couldn’t see the criminal coming until (s)he was already on you.

A couple left Archie’s hanging on each other like they were Siamese twins, giggling and heading for a private place to do whatever they intended. They passed a doorway across the street and headed off into the smog. Features appeared in that doorway, watching and waiting, fixed exclusively on Archie’s Bar. The figure stepped out of the shadows. Dark sunglasses which were purely a disguise masked the face along with a trilby style hat pulled down over the face which was hidden behind a scarf. The figure’s pot belly was hidden behind a long leather coat which came down to a pair of leather boots. The hands were concealed under leather gloves.

The shadowy figure waited until the moment was right. They were here for one reason. On the trail of the sleaziest of sleazes. Leon! A child rapist and murderer. A tip-off had told them that Archie ran a child sex ring at the back of his bar and Leon was a big customer on a Friday night. They’d been on his stink trail for two years and now finally they had him in their sights. Tonight was going to be the fucking gunfight at the OK Corral. The shadowy figure stepped into the street and crossed the road towards Archie’s den of debauchery with light steps for such a big frame.

The shadowy figure stepped into the bar passed the security and into the lasers and pounding music. A thought ran through their mind, I was so close I could smell him. He was here. I was sure of it.

The shadowy figure pushed through the crowd towards the bar noticing a heavy set doorman guarding a door marked ’private’. A man handed the doorman a bunch of dollar bills and was allowed to enter. The back room the shadowy figure assumed.

Archie saw the shadowy figure enter and make their way towards the bar. He knew everyone in this bar and this guy he didn’t recognise. He was instantly alert to trouble and this guy looked like trouble alright. Archie took a deep drag on his thick cigar and blew smoke through nicotine stained teeth at the shadowy figure as he approached, never taking his eyes from him.

“Drink?” Archie rasped. His throat damaged from years of those cancer sticks.

The shadowy figure reached into a pocket of the leather coat and pushed a hundred dollar bill across the bar towards Archie.

“What’s this?”

“My entrance fee.” The shadowy figure said in a deep male voice and nodded towards the door marked ’private.’

Archie rolled his cigar in his mouth as he studied this stranger. “You need to be recommended.”

The shadowy figure stared back from behind the dark glasses unperturbed by the refusal. “I recommend you take the money.”

Archie tensed a little. This son-of-a-bitch was definitely gonna be trouble. He laughed, trying to distract the shadowy figure as his chubby hand reached for a shot blaster concealed beneath the counter. His hand didn’t reach it.

“Don’t force me to make a mess.” The shadowy figure said with a commanding voice, their stare penetrating the sunglasses, boring into the fat fucker before them. They appeared calm and relaxed but beneath the leather coat, pot belly and rest of the disguise . . . Underneath was something just waiting to be unleashed. They just needed a reason, and that reason they suspected was about to be given.

Archie’s sweaty hand was inches from the shot blaster but something told him he shouldn’t reach any further, that if he did he would regret it. The shadowy figure was acutely aware of what Archie was doing, yet remained ice cool and calm, waiting for fatty to make the move they so desperately wished he’d make. Time seemed to stand still a moment. The music and dancing girls no longer existed. There was just the shadowy figure and Archie. Two gunfighters at the OK Corral. One of them needed to draw first, but which one?

Archie relaxed and took the money from the stranger before him, giving a little nervous chuckle as he did so. During that chuckle a hand darted for the shot blaster and in a flash the blaster was coming up above the counter top looking for a leather clad target. The barrel was levelling at the stranger’s head, a stubby finger slipping onto the trigger. Within a split second the blaster would be there and the stranger no more. As the blaster levelled to find that target Archie was taken by surprise.

A leather gloved hand came up and grasped the weapon’s barrel. Archie pulled the trigger.

Boom!

Ceiling plaster and tiles came crashing down on the bar leaving a large hole in the ceiling two feet wide above where the two of them stood. At the same time the shadowy figure brought up their own weapon, a pistol blaster, firing off one shot before the falling ceiling plaster hit the bar.

A dancing girl missed her step and fell from the counter, landing on her sweet teenage ass and the beer sticky floor with a heavy thump despite her small frame, a twenty dollar bill dropping from her panties and floating down amongst what was once Archie’s head.

It took a moment to register with the clientele but when it did there was panic and pandemonium. Patrons fled for their lives. A particularly overweight man stood on a beer bottle and toppled like a felled tree, face-planting in the dancing girl’s lap who had landed on the floor a moment earlier. He lifted his face out of her barely legal crotch with a wide grin. That grin got wiped away as the grossed out girl launched a stiletto heel at his face. His eyeball juice fired back at her as it popped, and she shrieked.

Amidst the mayhem the shadowy figure strode purposefully towards the ’private’ door. The doorman spoke into his wrist communicator as he pulled a pistol blaster. “Pack up the store. We’ve got company.”

The shadowy figure knew their cover was blown. This was not the way they’d planned it. But this was the way they liked it. The shadowy figure didn’t break stride as the doorman opened fire. He was a bad shot. Bullets whizzed harmlessly passed the shadowy figure. One caught a fleeing man in the shoulder. Another hit a busty dancing girl, scoring a direct hit on one of her huge breasts, exploding the breast in her face. Civilian casualties were inevitable when the shadowy figure was around.

The leather clad figure raised their own pistol blaster and fired off three quick shots. Their aim was true, forming a perfect triangle over the doorman’s heart. He dropped to the floor in a heap. Now nothing stood between them and the ’private’ entrance. They reached for the door handle but came up short. A round tore a hole in the shoulder of the leather coat. Under the scarf there was a grimace of pain, but there was no blood from the shoulder wound.

The shadowy figure spun on the spot as they brought up their pistol blaster and took out a second heavy set guard with one shot to the head. His dead weight fell onto a nearby table, shattering it and sending bottles and glasses everywhere. He had barely hit the floor when the tails of a leather coat disappeared through the ’private’ entrance.

The black boots of the shadowy figure strode down the dimly lit corridor with many rooms off it, casting aside the disguise as they went. The leather coat was unbuttoned and a false fat belly released revealing a taut midriff. Next came the gloves, hat, scarf and sunglasses, left in a trail behind them.

A cascade of shoulder length raven black hair fell towards rocket-like firm breasts straining at a tight vest top. Her trousers were black combat pants held up with a thick leather belt on which hung a shiny detective’s badge which glinted as it caught the overhead lights as she marched unrelentingly under them. By her side a holster strapped to her leg, the detective’s regulation pistol blaster in her hand.

She ejected the spent clip and slotted in a new one and loaded a round into the chamber. Here was Stephanie Steele, early twenties and six feet of the most beautiful woman in the world, about to do what she did best. Go to war!