Part II of everyone's favorite sci-saga carries it's weight here...

Previously:

Femme Fatale

Lax flicks out his Stick and prods the exposed flesh mixed in with the gravel. He dampens the flames by flipping the corpse, revealing a toasted male, 20-something and not at all shocked in his last moment. The tire prints carry on past the body to a ledge a couple of feet away.

The wind whistles up at him. A solemn tune with two sizzling cars as the baseline. Lax takes out his specs and scans the scene. A body in one of the cars. A female. With a heart beat.

4-5-6

I rip the dangling pant leg and make a bandage. It works. My left arm still doesn't. It's pitch black in the shadow of the bridge above and I have minutes before County General arrive to check out the red-hot scene behind me. I cough blood and snort oxygen until I reach my destination; a port hole to No Man's Land. Even crooks don't go to No Man's Land. I'm not a crook though. Not tonight.

Crash then Land (a)

The card game has been going on for two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes of snap. It's helped pass the time at the very least, though just why they need to sit here - beneath the hidden entrance to No Man's Land - is a query that has eluded a straight answer for the past three months.

Crunch.

The table splinters into ten thousand shards underneath the weight of a pair of size 7's. The wooden spikes blitz the alcove and shatter the guards' retinas and as they lie there, in the dark, the only sound is that of size 7s pounding the cement.

She makes it through the first grid of shanty-houses mostly unnoticed. It's when she gets to the third a problem arises. It's the street parade celebrating a hundred years of the tunnels. A hundred years of freedom from the County, and she's about to crash the party.

The scene is drenched red by flames dancing on the roof of the cave. A cave big enough for a make-shift city where people can live and breathe.

 

Shoot then Ask (b)

Lax sees her from the back for the first time. Feet away from the hit that'll rake him in enough credit to sail through to the next County. He doesn't slow his momentum, he increases it. Heavy metal toe caps slicing through the cement under his weight. Ten more steps – he draws his Stick. Eight. Seven. Five – he raises his arm. Three…

 

Spin then Kick (c)

Her turn is perfect and sends him flying face-forward into the middle of the parade. His shoulder smashes a drum and takes the drummer out sideways.

She breaks along with the crowd. Pushing. Shoving. Darting. Weaving. Hands grab. Feet kick. And in the strobe of faces she keeps glimpsing his face. Familiar but odd. Comforting but determined to kill.

 

AND NOW...

 

Death. Blow.

He throws the first punch. Then he throws the second. Then he goes for a finish with the Stick but her faint works. He misses and she kisses with the boot of her shoe. Two more blows take out one of his shoulders and two of his ears and then she recognises him.

I recognise him.

Lax is hunched and hurting. He's been both of those things in equal measure any number of times; the difference is this time he cares. She goes down after barely a jab. The Stick finishes her. Finally.

I recognise him.

 

To be analysed, reflected on but also continued...

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