An Eighty Percent Solution - By Thomas Gondolfi Page 0,26
pulled flat against the surface to prevent the air getting between her and the wall, where it might increase its grip upon her.
Corporate guards were paid to be alert, and generally succeeded. Her approach needed to be exceedingly careful in order to maintain the effectiveness of her protections. She needed a painstaking hour of creep-and-stop to cover the last hundred meters. The two guards exchanged banter but took no notice of the shadow, or the sign, or the stonemasonry that barely moved along the wall.
Anticlimactically, Sonya’s act of sticking the pipe bomb above the executive entrance compared to playing with clay in kindergarten. Just pressing the device into place caused no problems, entailed no additional risks. She sweated with tiny but continuous efforts as she eased her way back around the corner.
The danger passed quickly with the corner between her and the only real threats. Her fatigue also flew as she could now move much more openly. She used her tools once again to open the window of a vacant office. Now it didn’t matter if anyone caught her, as the most they’d do is kick her out of the building. Once safely inside, she mumbled a few words, rubbed a red powder across her lips, dripped yellow paint into her hair, put a pea into each cup of her bra and wrapped a length of ivy vine around her waist, cloak and all.
Unlike her cautious entrance or the long, slow sojourn around the building’s perimeter, not one single person failed to note Sonya illusionary façade as she left. Men drooled and women narrowed their eyes jealously at the overly buxom blonde with full, cherry-red lips and the kind of hourglass figure men have lusted after and women have coveted for millennia. Sonya appropriately swayed her hips and gave cold stares to the few men who dared approach her. Once out the primary exit and onto the lift-bus, she became even more untouchable.
Now, waiting was all. Sometimes that was the hardest part.
* * *
Tony dreamed of a night with Carmine, sealed inside a luxury hotel room surrounded by hot and cold running delicacies of both the flesh and palate. The two of them spent a fortune on a bacchanalia where they indulged in every way possible—women, men, and some who were in between.
“Open up under Civil Code Fourteen-eighteen, paragraph J! Metro officers identifying themselves and their right to enter.”
But every time Tony got close to Carmine herself, she giggled and slipped away, leaving someone else in her place.
“If you do not open the door, we have been authorized to override the command sequence.”
Tony bolted upright. He had thought the melodramatic voice an annoying, if simple, part of his dream. Intending to step down from his bed, he instead tripped getting up off the couch. Disoriented though he was, he knew the Metros couldn’t be allowed to find Cin! Where was she…?
“I’m on my way! Keep your helmet on!” Tony shouted as he scrambled about, looking everywhere he could see. “I’m in the back room and getting dressed. I’ll be there in a second.”
The kitten didn’t want to be found, so Tony hoped she’d remain that way. Sweat crept over his scalp as he opened the door. Two Metros towered over him in full black riot gear, faces fully obscured. “Out of the way,” came the voice sonically enhanced with seven hertz anxiety infrasound. One of the pair slammed Tony aside with one power-assisted arm, briefly pinning him against the entryway. Even without being able to see his back, Tony could feel the bruises forming. “We have a right to search and seize chattels upon your premises.”
Tony panicked to do something to deflect an all-out search for whatever they were looking for. With sudden purpose, he spun to face the fair protectors of Portland. “Your authorization?” he barked.
While the blank face-mask gave no emotion, Tony got the distinct impression he both amused and annoyed the man. Massive ebon fingers held out a recording crystal the size of Cin’s paw and dropped it to the carpet. Tony picked it up as the armored policemen went into the bedroom.
“You can’t be too sure these days,” Tony offered feebly. “You never know. Fake cops and all.”
The solido crystal went into his player and a solido image sprang forth in the middle of the room. Carmine’s image, life size, spoke to him from behind the faux wood desk he’d given her as a present on her last birthday.