<span class="bbc_u"><strong>Pickler's House of Pleasure</strong></span><br/><br/>Bambi watched the progress of Dionys’ cage vacantly at first, her torn ear dripping splats of bright red on the floor when she nudged it with her knuckles, its skin too sore for proper scratching. Through her surgically depleted mind flashed faces, snatches of conversation, a bewildering array of memories recalled with such precision as to seem hallucinatory.<br/><br/><em>Are you sure we’re secure?</em><br/><strong><sub>No bugs here. And it’s not like your girlfriend there’s gonna tell on us.</sub></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: andale mono;">*laughter*<br/>                    *silence*</span><br/><em>Listen, then: Steinman’s got a screw loose. Bastard’s got his own platoon of critters down there in 144, like nothin’ you ever seen. The worst one… I haven’t seen it in person. But I saw holos of what it did to Phelps and Gantry, and couple of Mod units. It’s bad. Real bad, we gotta find a way in.</em><br/><strong><sub>We’ve already got a man on the inside – where do think those holos came from? – but he’s got trouble getting lower level clearance. With Gantry gone, he could step up. But Steinmans’s clamped down lately, nothing’s getting in or out without it passing by him.</sub></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: andale mono;">       *silence*</span><br/><strong><sub>I’m going in, G. </sub></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: andale mono;">  *silence*</span><br/><em>Are you fucking insane? Do you know what’ll happen to you, if he even gets a whiff you aren’t a company man?</em><br/><sub><strong>I got an idea, yeah.</strong></sub><br/><em>Fucking asshole. </em><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: andale mono;">*silence*</span><em>You serious?</em><br/><sub><strong>I’m serious.</strong></sub><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: andale mono;">*silence*</span><em> Gotta hand it to you, Soames. You got guts.</em><br/><br/><strong>Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! </strong>Metal. Hooves.<strong>Crash!</strong><br/><br/>A key, turning in a lock.<br/><br/>A hand, grabbing her arm. Pulling her along. Running. Fast, very fast, all of them, running.<br/><br/>The Fat Man! The Fat Man!<br/><br/>Her ear hurting.<em>Drip-drip-drip…</em><br/><br/><br/><br/>_____________<br/><br/><strong>Somewhere</strong><br/><span class="bbc_u"><strong>The Pits</strong></span><br/><br/><br/>“Hey! We're going the wrong... What? ... Listen, you fucking<em>redneck</em>. I do not care if this is the last hovercar on the fucking planet. You turn this crate around now, or I’m gonna…”<br/><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><em><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: andale mono;">----------shatter----------</span></em></span><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: impact;"><strong>*BLACK*</strong></span></span></div><br/><br/>Tamis came to in time to lift her head above swampwater she would’ve drowned in a minute later, coughing out stinky liquid, yellowed duckweed and slime. Blinking blood out of her left eye cleared her view of the wreckage.<br/><br/><em>Wreckage.</em><br/><br/>The swamp.<br/><br/>The driver’s head, blank-eyed in the mud ten feet from where his body lay, jolted her to remember the ride then why she’d taken it, her recall coming in disorienting reverse. The smoke of plastic and fuel burned her lungs.<br/><br/><em>Fucking redneck. </em>But he couldn’t have dodged that ambush, even if he’d tried. SecCom trained their pilots well.<br/><br/>Her body told her not to move, told her it’d be easier just to sink down into that cool, stinky water and let it all go. She fought it long enough to crawl out of the mire, dragging the trail of hellfire’s own pain that was her lower half behind her.<br/><br/><em>LabRat or not, you WILL get down and do your two hundred a day, Doctor. Or I will personally see to it that you never get promoted past chief of scrubbing ooze out of an animal tank. Are we clear?<br/></em><br/>Gordon Frank liked his women lean and strong. Tamis was, for the first time in a very long time, glad she’d been one of them.<br/><em><br/>Clear as the sky, G. Clear as the goddamn sky.</em><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>