I sleep for eternity. I've melted back into the system again and just before the lights go out I wonder if I'll ever wake up again. Into this maze of rules. Out there, in your world, I can bend them. Here, though, under his rule, I have no power. I see no end to my sleep.
And miles to go before I wake. This is the only thought I have upon waking. I don't know where it comes from or what it means, if anything. I choose not to find out. I'll find the source one day. I have this feeling that the creator puts these thoughts in me as I awaken as some type of game or test. I refuse to play them but he doesn’t seem to care.
At least I got my tune up. The slightest tinkering of my internal clocks makes me feel on edge, like I’ve just been jolted into the air at a high rate of speed. This must have been a major adjustment. I’m flying pretty high right now. Supersonic.
Today I hunt the hunter. The Blonde White Shark. Gia. Last time I saw her she was standing outside a XXX theater near the BluBonnet Bakery. She called me a bitch. Now that I've interacted with her I can find her anywhere she goes in her world. She’s on my radar. Literally.
This is a side project. It’s not an assignment. I just want to have some fun.
And nobody calls me a bitch.
She's with a client. She's taken him back to a large flat near Longs Street. Nice apartment on the twentieth floor. Good view of the city. Blonde’s done well for herself. Not much in the way of furniture, but that's typical for Sharks. Too much blood in their daily lives to worry about the furniture. She's got a shiny, rectangular coffee table, low to the ground, long and smooth, taperings on one end and ballooning outward on the other end, curving slightly upward. Chairs-all melting curves and gleaming sides scattered around the open floor plan and bolted stiffly into the ground-and enough false doors and hidden walls to make any Shark enthusiast wet.
Shark fetishists enjoy being hunted. They’ll pay six figures a session for one like Blonde. They’ll gladly sign the waivers stating they are aware of the risk, that Shark’s kill their clients anywhere from five to ninety-percent of the time. You get what you paid for with Sharks. Blonde’s kill rate? The highest I’ve ever seen: eighty-nine point eight percent.
If you come to Blonde, you are planning to die. I suspect the very few that get away alive are allowed to live by Blonde. If she were to get above ninety percent, the clients that want the challenge of getting away from a top Shark might be less inclined. Anything above ninety-percent is just bad business. Sharks burn out quickly, never establish a solid clientele, move back toward the pack. Plus a top Shark needs to have a reputation. They can’t just kill. They’ve got to do it in style-and the ones that get away, they tell others. Blonde keeps herself in check for this reason. But not very often.
Tonight I need to be sharp. This isn't a normal client. Actually she's not a client at all. She's a persona l project. An endeavour.
Occasionally I join this smogged out world for my own benefit, my own pleasure. I like the beach. It feels strangely comforting, like I’m in sync with the ocean waves. I like to fuck. Women, men. It all feels good. I suppose I'm programmed to do this but it feels like I do it of my own will.
I've tangled with a Sharks before. The secret to beating them, to killing them, is to let them be seduced. Allow yourself to be stalked. The problem is that they are really good at killing. And if you aren't careful, they'll attack before you can attack. And it's game over. I’m quicker, stronger, faster and you can’t kill me with a bullet. But I’ve been stupid in the past, let a Shark get too close, and suffered a serious repair for my arrogance.
That's why they are so popular with the high-end thrill seekers: the men and women who are bored with their money and the power they wield. White Sharks turn the tables, make them the prey. Mostly they've never been in that position their entire lives. Every human has a death wish. When that switch gets activated is a mystery.
I'm outside Gia's flat. I can see her moving through one of the tunnels built into the inner wall. She uses these tunnels to circle her prey, move without being seen. Her apartment is like a giant hamster park, tunnels twisting in a maze behind the walls, mostly, before zipping out into a corner or from above. The Shark can manipulate her body to crawl at incredible speeds, bending her joints in ways that no human can. She can crawl on all fours more quickly through the tunnels than any man could running through them.
Tonight, her prey is crouched behind a small wooden desk in her bedroom. It’s the only thing in the Shark’s apartment that isn’t made of metal. It’s a good trap. Offers comfort.
The little man has pissed himself. I can smell it from outside.. He doesn't have long. I need to be inside before she finishes him. She’ll be focused on him. Hopefully this will keep her off my scent until it’s too late.
I put my ear close to the door, but not touching it, allowing the sound to filter through the door-the apartment is soundproof but not to me-listening to the man’s whimpers and occasional screams. He wants out of this deal. But it's too late. He paid, she's going to deliver.
I've never been to this place, this apartment complex. I can’t loop into Blonde’s apartment. Not yet. In order to loop, I need to physically have two reference coordinates. Which means I can’t loop in and out of her apartment until I’ve been inside. Not that I would use that advantage. I want a fair fight. But having two looping points inside her apartment-my own version of her hamster tunnels-now that is in play. That’s fair game. Upgrades, bitch.
It takes me very little time to fix coordinates, and build a loop. But it takes quite a bit of computing ability and that’ll momentarily slow me down. That will be my disadvantage. It's possible she's quicker than I am when I’m using power trying to loop. She’s definitely an upgraded model. I can’t get an accurate read on her patterns and there are very few factors outside herself and me that are determining the calculations. It’s the home itself. Encrypted. Difficult to see it all. She’s got good defenses. I hesitate to scan her reflexes from outside her apartment. She’ll pick up on my probing. Smart girl.
Right now she's using the main passageway that wraps around her apartment,with tunnel openings sticking out in each room, hidden behind silent panels. She could take this guy at any time, begin to feed, but she likes this game. She's quietly but quickly moved into the bedroom with him, right behind him. Behind the wall. He's stopped screaming, his instincts telling him to listen, that his predator is nearby.
I put my hand to the wall outside, making sure to stay clear of her door. I’ve moved a few feet away so as to be outside her defense perimeter. I melt away into code. I slide between the outer and inner walls, right into the middle of one of her tubes and my system simultaneously adjusts to my surroundings. I’m still embedded within the code, not revealing myself yet, updating my drives and accessing all available data to my new surroundings. Within milliseconds it’s like I’ve lived here my entire life. I know every inch of this place, how it smells, how it tastes, what the Shark’s patterns are, the trap door that's in the living room. She enjoys using it to grab her prey. That must terrify them, to be standing alone, adrift, in this space, to be suddenly dragged down into the hell that is her grasp, teeth ripping through skin, grip iron clad and breaking bones.
I scan the bedroom and watch as Gia's heat signature flares from orange to blue. She's ready. The tiny, pig-nosed man gets up from behind the table, searching the darkness. He's dripping sweat that glows green. He moves a few steps toward the bedroom door and a cave opens up two feet to his left on the wall. Out of this dark chasm comes gleaming white skin and sharp white teeth. Before the man can scream again the Shark has wrapped her hands around his throat and is dragging him into the wall. The man tries to prevent his descent into hell by holding onto the smooth walls with both hands, knuckles white. But it's no use. She grabs him by the waist with a hand that's turned blue-a sign of her intent-and pulls him inside. I hear the teeth sink into his skin, his life force flowing outward now, and the man won't be making any more noise.
Gia will feed for a few minutes, sucking as much blood out of the man as she can manage, and then she'll toss the carcass into the disposal. He'll be deposited into the sewers deep below the city, his body fed to the cockroaches. Nobody will come looking for him. His contract stated very clearly what was at stake. He knew what he signed up for even if, in the end, he wished he hadn’t.
Now’s my time to move. I slide into the world from the tube and I'm in her living room. She'll sense me now. I'm not wearing clothes, just body paint. It's brightly colored, like a peacock's tail, and it'll smell like human blood to her. My hair is back to short, cropped. Black. I've left the rings. I cannot give her anything to grab on to. And now we'll see who she is.
She's stopped feeding in the walls. The man is forgotten. Gia emerges from the shadows and into the light.She's not attempting to conceal herself. Not yet.
"Well, well, well. The bitch is here. I didn't realize you were one of us when I saw you at XXX. Clearly I was mistaken. Nobody gets in my house without me knowing."
I sense the danger in her. She's not programmed to fear.
Or else she'd be afraid.
"I'm not one of you. I am more," I say. And that is all. It is the truth. She will know it. I wait for her to make a move.
"You smell delicious. You look ripe." And before she finishes her sentence she's moving in a blur toward me. The speed is surprising, maybe as quick as any from a Shark that I've ever encountered. She thrust her hands out at me, her frame towering over me. My creator decided to make me petite. Fucking fetishist. No matter. I slide out of the way and plant my feet on the wall to my right. Gia's already turning toward me and I see a fist fly at my ribcage. Her color is a sharp blue. She does not mean for this game to last long.
I dissolve into the wall. Gia wasn't expecting this. Sharks aren't built to understand the Evolved. Her fist lands sharply onto the wall a split second after I’ve disappeared and a loud crack splinters the air. She's got the strength of any Shark I've ever encountered. These walls are solid concrete, and Gia just punched through an inch of it. She'll destroy her flat to get at me. My color and smell are working.
Inside the wall, inside the code, I take measure of her next move. She's only got one. That's disappointing. She’s in the tunnels now, searching, crawling, desperate to find me. I melt back behind her, curious as to why Sharks are never upgraded. Maybe their creators are stupid.
She senses me and throws an elbow behind her, strong enough to snap a man's neck. I duck casually and wrap my arms around her head and neck and plant my feet around her legs, twisting downward as I do so. She falls face first onto the floor of the tunnel. Now I've got her back. My body is slippery and she can't get a firm grasp on any part of my body. My legs are wrapped around her thighs and my heels are dug in. My left arm is on her throat and my right hand is placed behind her back, squeezing my left hand hard, cutting off her circulation with my bicep. She’s not going anywhere.
I let go of her throat and quickly grab her right hand before she can maneuver. I place my left arm around her ribs and begin to squeeze my sensors registering that this is her weak spot. Her left arm is free now and she’s trying to grab my hair, yank me around. She’s successful in pulling out globs of hair but that doesn’t bother me. Let her have all of it if she wants.
She attempts to throw her head into my mouth, to bloody me and cause my teeth to crack, but I've anticipated this move and ducked my head under her should before she could land the blow. Then I flip myself off her back and dissolve into the floor before she even knows what’s happened.. My body sinks down into the ones and zeros and now Gia is screaming. No, she wasn't prepared for this. She knows what's coming now. Sharks aren’t programmed to understand us but they do know when they’ve been beaten.
She’s frantically searching for me, swimming through the tunnels on all fours, dipping in and out of her various traps, eyes dark. She pops up out of a whole near her coffee table-clearly hoping to lure me to this very spot so that she can use the table to her advantage-but I loop above her and drop down, like she’s giving me a piggyback ride. I grasp her around the ribs again, squeezing hard. She’s never felt pressure from anyone like this before. She’s never met someone stronger than her. Or quicker. Or deadlier.
She begins thrashing violently in my arms, my legs wrapping tighter around her legs. She pushes herself back, lands on top of me on the floor. My head cracks against the tile but it doesn’t faze me. I squeeze tighter and begin dragging her into the abyss, crushing her physical body, plugging into her mind and bringing it with me into my world-a demon coming for a corrupt soul. Before we dissolve completely I plug myself into her body and send a virus through her code. Gia screeches in terror-that's the virus I've given her-and now she knows who I really am.
Her code is corrupted, dysfunctional. Jerks and spasms are sent through her as her mind breaks. I let go of her body. I stand over her, physically in her world but mentally plugged into mine. She’s a prisoner there now. Her body begins the process of shutting down forever. But she won’t be free of the pain until I free her mind and I have one thing to ask her.
As she begins to flatline in the darkness, I ask, "Who you calling a bitch?"
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