#(Tak spins around and shouts at the other with narrowed eyes)

[rebeldreamtak]

Tak. We need to talk.

What about?

The human boy.

I’m aware of your feelings on his behalf.

We need to send him home. Back to Earth. He’s too much of a burden for you-

We’re not forcing him to leave. End of story.

Tak, he’s a hindrance to you and the Rebellion! He’s a Smeet, for Stars’ sake! You can’t be serious about keeping him up here!

The boy stays until he’s ready to leave! THAT is my last word on the maggvi!

See! You’re glitching out! Again! You’re so worried about this human child that your coding is breaking down!

I’m frmv!

Tak!

SHUT UP I’M URMV HGZI'H WZNMRG!

TAK!

F. Fine. I’m f- uu- fine.

Tak, you need to face facts here. The kid’s in danger and putting all of us in danger by distracting you from our goal.

Shut it. Just shut up up, I’m. I’m fine.

Tak-

Look, if it’s that big an issue to you, I’ll-.... I’ll think on it, alright?

You need to make the choices best for everyone, even if it hurts to. Sacrifices must be made.

[vanquisher2099]

Part Fifteen: A Waitress Breaks a Rule

Jennifer and Clarissa were sitting in the café near the diner, having just finished a shift. Clarissa had been strangely quiet, and was toying with her coffee cup like she was trying to work her way up to something. Jennifer, on the other hand, was relishing the feeling of being relaxed and something approaching happy for the first time in years.

Eventually, Clarissa spoke up. “Hey, Jenn?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a weird question.”

“What’s the question?”

“It’s kind of… I don’t want to overstep or anything.”

“Overstep?”

“It’s just uh, who’s Maddie?”

Jennifer felt her heart skip a beat. Keeping her voice decidedly even, she asked, “Who?”

Clarissa seemed to be choosing her words carefully, well-aware of how silly she probably sounded. “Well, remember the other night? You woke up all in a cold sweat? You shouted something about a Maddie just before you woke up.” She rubbed the back of her head in a nervous gesture. “It just seemed like you were pretty distressed, is all. I guess it might’ve just been nonsense, but…”

“Yeah…” Jennifer said, quietly. She unconsciously rubbed at a scar on her shoulder. How long had it been? Nearly four years? She didn’t remember a nightmare, but she did remember waking up in a cold sweat, although it was a fairly common occurrence. Oh what the hell, she thought, it might be nice to talk about it with someone. “She’s uh, an old girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Clarissa looked deeply embarrassed. “I’m uh, sorry I brought it up.”

“No, it’s fine. We uh, it…” Jennifer frowned, trying to figure out how best to talk around things. “It didn’t end well?” She nodded decisively. Not ending well seemed like a pretty accurate description. “It didn’t end well. It’s… it’s kind of why I’m out here.”

Clarissa’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Wow, that’s pretty not well.”

Jennifer failed to suppress a laugh. “Yeah, you could say that.” She sighed. “It was my fault, really. I was so sure that I knew what was best, and it wound up driving us apart. This will shock you,” she said, with a wry grin, “but I had this belief that I needed to do everything myself.”

This did in fact seem to surprise Clarissa a bit. “News to me.”

“Yeah, well, I learned that lesson the hard way. Turns out that if you keep trying to do everything on your own you end up driving people away.” Or you end up making the wrong call and damn yourself to being on the run forever, she thought.

Clarissa took this all in quietly, not really knowing what to say. She settled on, “Well, I’m glad that you felt like you could tell me. It kind of goes without saying, but I’d hope you know you can lean on me when you need to.”

Oh kid, Jennifer thought to herself, if you had any idea what that entails you’d never make that offer. She gave what she hoped was a reassuring grin and said “thanks” instead before jokingly saying, “What about you? Got any dark secrets I don’t know about?”

“Afraid not.” Clarissa said, shrugging. “Grew up not too far from here, had a couple relationships that never really went anywhere, ended up in the waitressing game after the Crash more or less made paying for school an impossibility.”

“I’m surprised.” Jennifer admitted. “You seemed… huh.”

“What?”

“I just realized there’s no way I could say ‘you seemed like you’ve been to college’ without sounding like an asshole.”

“Yeah pretty much.” Clarissa said, laughing. “I assume that means you went to college?”

“Yeah, I was lucky. The Crash didn’t happen until I was in my last year. There was just the one year of debt to deal with. Which uh…” Jennifer almost said ‘I faked my death and it doesn’t matter anymore,’ but settled on “I’m still kind of paying off? Which isn’t much of a surprise, really.”

“See, that’s why I didn’t bother. Plus, my parents needed the help to keep our house.”

Jennifer felt a pang of guilt as she stood and stretched. “Yeah, that sounds about right. You ready to get out of here?”

The sun had set, and Clarissa somewhat reluctantly stood as well, grabbing her jacket from where it hung off the back of the chair. “Yeah, let’s go. You uh, mind dropping me off at my place? Speaking of parents, mine are coming to visit in a couple days and the place is a mess.”

Jennifer shrugged easily. “Sure, of course.” She looped an arm over Clarissa’s shoulder and smiled. “You want help with that, or would you rather I didn’t silently judge your poor housekeeping?”

“I mean, if you want to judge, you can feel free to. I don’t think it’s any dirtier than your place though – and I’ve got the additional excuse of roommates.”

“Roommates who don’t clean up, eh?”

“I didn’t say they were good roommates.”

As the two walked down the street, Jennifer suddenly felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Casually, she pretended to stretch her neck out and caught sight of a few figures following behind, although she could possibly chalk it up to paranoia. The smart play, of course, would have been to get to the car as quickly as possible and hopefully get out before the possibility of a confrontation with, she assumed, some desperate criminal element who assumed a few women were an easy target for a mugging. That was not the worst case scenario, which was that the two following them were d3m3t3r’s people – although Jennifer assumed in that case she’d already be dead.

Clarissa seemed to notice her sudden shift in attitude, because she whispered, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Jennifer said, trying to reassure herself, “long day just caught up to me, I think.”

“Ah, old age is rough, huh?” Clarissa said, in a teasing tone.

Jennifer snorted and gave Clarissa a shove. “Keep that up and you’ll have to walk home.”

Clarissa gasped in mock horror. “You wouldn’t dare! A young lady, out on her own at night? How unchivalrous of you!”

“Please, it’s the 22nd century. I think we’re past chivalry being a thing.”

They were a block from Jennifer’s car when one of the two behind them spoke up. “Excuse me, ladies? Could you happen to have some change for the bus? I seem to have lost my wallet.”

Clarissa turned, already reaching into her own pocket. “Of course! How much does the bus cost these days, anyway?”

Jennifer watched as the one man quickly moved to flank them while the other pulled out a knife and grimaced. “Well, you know how it is with busses.” The one said, smiling in a less-friendly way. “Best to give us everything you have just to be safe.”

Understanding dawned on Clarissa’s face and she froze. “Ah.”

“Do you really want to do this?” Jennifer said, sighing. “We’re waitresses, you know. Not exactly swimming in money.”

“Oh I’m sure if you don’t have much money there’s other things we can take.” The man smiled nastily. “That arm of yours for a start – cybernetics go for a pretty penny these days.”

“Unfortunately I think I’m a little attached to it at the moment.” Jennifer said, narrowing her eyes. “But we can give you the money we’ve got and you can go on your way.”

At this the other man spoke up, mockingly. “You’re not in a position to be cutting deals, miss. I think you’ll find we’re the ones giving orders, and you’re the ones obeying the orders. So we will be taking that arm of yours.”

Maybe it was something about his tone that did it. Jennifer wasn’t quite sure at the time, and later on she still wasn’t sure. It didn’t really matter in the end, of course, because what happened next ended up being the important thing. Jennifer smiled, and stood up a little straighter, and honest-to-gods laughed. She even applauded a little, causing Clarissa to send her a worried look.

“Now that is a hell of a line. I wonder, do you practice that in the mirror? No, no, don’t tell me, I think I would just be disappointed if I ended up being right.” Her face hardened, sharpening her smile into something dangerous. “So, I’ll make you a deal. You two leave us be, and go think about how you should give up this life of crime – or at least, cause trouble for the folks with a little more money than a couple waitresses. In return, I won’t beat you both senseless, which will doubtless bring the police into things and ruin your chances of being able to give up your lives of crime. How about it?”

The two men looked at each other, and then moved menacingly forward. Jennifer pushed Clarissa back out of the way and propelled herself in the direction of the one with the knife with a gleeful shout. This movement so surprised him that he actually seemed to hesitate for a second, which was all the time Jennifer needed to spin to the side, avoiding the knife, and bring her elbow – the metal one – into contact with the back of his head with an audible clang. The man’s head snapped back with the force of the blow, and he dropped to the ground in a senseless heap.

His partner brought his fists up and came in swinging. Jennifer brought her own arm up, deflecting the blows easily. She gave ground, letting him come forward and gain confidence, then used the momentum from one of his punches to spin around him and deliver a blow to the temple that caused him to stagger to the side. At that point, Jennifer brought her leg around and took his knee out, with another blow to the head sending him to the same unconscious realm as his partner.

Jennifer looked at the two unconscious would-be muggers and brushed her arms off, feeling satisfied. The feeling didn’t last as she quite suddenly realized that Clarissa had just witnessed the entire scene and was staring at her wide-eyed. “Can you call the police? Or we can just leave them here and go. If you don’t want to uh. Deal with cops.”

Clarissa seemed to be in a state of shock. “What…?”

“The police.” Jennifer said, patiently. “Do you want to call them, or do you want to just go? We can do either.”

“You just… that was…”

Jennifer placed her hands gently on Clarissa’s shoulders. “Hey, look at me. Breathe, okay? Focus.”

Clarissa stared back into Jennifer’s eyes, and seemed to master herself a little. Her breathing, at any rate, seemed to have slowed down.

“Good.” Jennifer said, still not taking her hands off Clarissa’s shoulders. “Now, do you want to call the police? Or do you want me to just take you home and these two will wake up with headaches in ten or fifteen minutes?”

Clarissa thought about the question for a moment. Eventually, she nodded. “I’ll… I’ll call the police. Just to be… just to make sure these guys don’t come back for us or something.”

Jennifer nodded. “Okay. Make the call. We can give our statements, and then I’ll take you home. Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah it uh…” Clarissa looked down at the two unconscious men again. “Holy shit Jennifer, where did you learn to do that? How did you—”

“Long story.” Jennifer said, a little brusquely. “Well, not that long of a story, actually. A buddy of my brother’s taught me how to fight. As a favor.”

“As a favor?”

“I’ll tell you the whole story some other time, okay? I don’t know how long these two will be out, so the sooner you call the police the better.”

Clarissa nodded and made the call while Jennifer paced back and forth and felt the adrenaline bleed out of her system. Things were, Jennifer knew, about to become complicated – obscenely, frustratingly complicated. The police would take a report, and that would get digitized, and while it was a fairly minor incident, it expanded her footprint. It put her on the radar of those with eyes to see it, even if there was nothing necessarily identifying about her. It also meant having to talk to the police, which was not something she was particularly willing to do in the best of situations, never mind in a situation involving assault and battery.

The soft sound of Clarissa’s footsteps behind her brought Jennifer out of her thoughts, and she turned around, arranging her expression into something a little more relaxed. “Hey, kid. Cops on the way?”

“Yeah, they say they’ll be here in a couple minutes.” Clarissa said, still looking a little rattled. “Think they’ll still be out when they get here?”

Jennifer shrugged. “Probably. If they aren’t, I’ll deal with them. They aren’t exactly professionals.”

The look Clarissa gave Jennifer spoke volumes. “Are you?”

Part Sixteen

Part Fourteen