The Pill and the Patsy – Part 7
I am tired. Bone deep weary. I have had an extremely frustrating day, full of a complete refusal to acknowledge that I’m a fully capable adult who shouldn’t be handed random busywork. I shouldn’t have to justify the value I bring a company just because the decisions of others leaves me with a few hours on my hands every other day or so. Yet here I am, dreaming of a freedom still denied. For now, my benefits for the change to home extend no further than the lack of a commute and the addition of sweat pants into the dress code. Those are not small things, those are not things I’m not grateful for, but I swear to all the heavens above my freedom from cloistered nine to six living cannot end fast enough.
To that end: The Pill and the Patsy. I’ve really tried to stretch my legs with this series. I don’t normally write action sequences, and to be brutally honest, I’m still not sure I’m good at them. I think Patsy as a anti-hero lends herself to great writing. I think the world that I’ve built lends itself to good writing. I think that the ‘science’ of my universe lends itself to good writing. I’m just not entirely convinced that I’ve manged to seize the dark and gritty action that plays out behind my own eyes and successfully convey that image to all of you. Nothing for it but to keep trying, yet I can’t help but feel like I continue to leave things on the table with my writing. Maybe that’s just another part of becoming a successful author, but it does make me worry at night sometimes.
I am especially proud of how cohesive I’m making my story to date. I write these very, very, loosely. There’s no blueprint, no roadmap. Heck, I’m pretty certain I keep getting terms mixed up and other things backwards just because I’m not actually keeping appropriate track of them from day to day. I know those are all things that I will need to actively work on once I make this my career, but for now the realization that I’ve managed to stay on task over six separate encounters with the dark lives of Patsy’s world makes me happy. In the end, that’s all that truly matters. Writing is a journey of self-discovery. It is a master of oneself, and I enjoy thinking that I’ve managed to learn a thing or three over the last four months. Delusion it may be, but it’s comfy.
Without further distractions,
The Pill and the Patsy – Part 7
Patsy sat behind a desk, pocked and splintered by the hail of comp-gas propelled darts designed specifically to combat individuals with implant enhancements. She’d already been struck, twice, and was rapidly losing the internal battle to the invasive nano-virus replos. Four of her six assailants were down, but the two remaining members would be plenty to take care of her if she made even one mistake. I haven’t even delivered the package to Monty yet, the thought bubbling to the surface made her loose a snort of derisive laughter. Monty was bad, but unless she beat both opponents and made it to a dead-drop in the next eight minutes, she was a dead woman. Or worse. Patsy shook off the thought, and realized she was dithering. She didn’t want to go through with this any more than she wanted to eat a plate full of live hand grenades, but really what choice did she have left? She reached into her pack, and withdrew the high powered quantum signaling device, and with excruciating difficulty she managed to direct enough power from her besieged sternum reactor to activate the tiny device. She sent one word and her current coordinates, but that would be more than enough for the rotten, slippery bastard: Help. She, The Duchess, notoriously aloof and calculating thief and part-time assassin had just had to ask the person she hated most on the god-forsaken rock called Earth for help. She swallowed the bile which had risen in her throat, and set about doing the second hardest thing she could ever think of doing: Waiting.
Flachettes and splinters flew around her like a bizarre blizzard, and she huddled down and occasionally fired a few darts herself just to make it feel honest. The angle of the hits indicated that the Wicker had figured out she was finally out of options, and was advancing for the take-down. He wasn’t wrong either. Patsy was shivering now, her body cold and numb, barely able to make her hand keep it’s grip on the pistol. The knife lay forgotten on the floor, falling from clumsy fingers no longer up to the task of holding it. Her nanos were in overdrive, but they had accomplished what they had set out to do. Her neural implants and her sternum reactor would both survive their encounter in perfect working order. The replos were already dying off, having ransacked all the things it was possible to ransack. Her timer ticked down to two minutes, and the pistol finally fell from her limp fingers. Her head lay useless against the desk, and she had a perfect view of the Andro come around the corner, pistol raised, pointed directly at her. All Patsy could do was give her oncoming existence full of painful torture and gruesome death a weak smile. “What took you so long?” she called weakly, with all the strength she could muster. Her attacker didn’t even blink. He simply took aim, and crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap. Odd Patsy thought as she squinted at the obviously dead Andro, with a deep pool of blood rapidly expanding from their gaping head wound. I thought I was supposed to do that part. A second later, she heard the sound of the second shot which she had missed, a hammer striking a pillow. A third whumph, a fourth. Then the soft patter of the rain, and the occasional lightning flash were her only company in the darkened office.
There was only one person who could’ve gotten here swiftly enough to take such a precise shot. Monty had his neural implants, but he shunned the dangerous sternal reactor and joint work which had been forced on Patsy. No, this was the work of Shade, the only other surviving member of her unit. She hadn’t been coerced into helping Monty. She’d flocked to him as soon as she was able to. Treacherous snake Patsy thought with the idle detachment of the seriously ill. She couldn’t move her head any longer, and blinking was becoming a wearisome chore. A flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, and then Shade stood before her. Slim and terrifyingly well armed, she had a sniper rifle flung over her shoulder, and looked down at Patsy with what oddly looked like pride in her dark eyes. Patsy tried to spit at Shade, but her tongue weighed more than the whole of the Earth. She decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and simply passed out. When she woke up, she felt as though every square inch of her body had been beaten with a cane. Her joint implants screamed at her as if she had never taken the dose of salvation what felt like a thousand years ago. Her mind seared, and her chest burnt like the reactor was going into overload. Her neural implant and the nano overlay across her peripheral vision displayed that she was simply feeling the side effect of the replo invasion. She wished it were the overload, however. She’d recognized the darkened office she had woken up in. Sure, the reactor going critical would destroy her and everything else within a quarter mile, but at least it would take Monty with her. As if her thoughts had summoned the beast, a smoke roughened voice oozed out of the darkness, surrounding her with clammy hands of dread “Hello precious, how are we feeling?”
To be continued…
Shadefully,
Justin
