Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood

Author:Aubrey Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd
Published: 2023-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

19

The car cruised itself through stripes of streetlight illumination. Orange-yellow throbbed in a heartbeat pulse behind Correspondence Valkyrie. Kiera couldn’t help it; she needed something to occupy her buzzing brain until she reached Phoenix.

Bradley Camillo, Roxy Coxx. What the fuck was this? She shifted her ass on the vinyl, anxious. Ships disintegrated in blue and yellow explosions. Every time she destroyed one, a subject line scrolled by on a ticker. 24-Hour Flash Sale! What Are Your Implants Doing to Your Skin? Kyle, gourmet protein-steak burgers for any budget. Please stop looking for me. It’s Rush Hour—Need a Date for This Weekend? Hey Kyle, still looking for a good book?

“Wait, wait. Pause.”

The ships and fireworks froze, vibrating in the air in front of Kiera’s face. She scrolled the ticker back a few inches.

Please stop looking for me.

A pit opened up, and her heart fell in. Nile? She double-tapped that subject line to bring it out of the garbage. Her mail client sprang open.

Stop trying to find me, please. My karma is clear. There is no longer any need to punish me. It will only make things difficult for both of us. I don’t want to hurt you, or anyone else.

—Nag Champa

Kiera imagined two stars crashing together and exploding, flinging stellar-stuff and space-glitter and destroying planets for millions of miles—this was going on inside her. But in the same way it was cataclysmic if you were standing on one of those planets, it was a slow and natural, even meaningless event when viewed from far enough away. Okay. Cryptic message from the bad guy. I can roll with this. She was relieved the message wasn’t from Nile, and it worried her how easily she took the escalation from someone wanting to throw her in prison to someone wanting to kill her. Well, he said he didn’t want to kill her, but it was going to come to a head, because Kiera wasn’t going to drop the search for Nile. And really, she had been thinking of getting caught by the police as on par with dying, anyway.

Kiera rubbed her temples.

“Someone should be paying me for this.”

Kiera rocked up to Phoenix and waited in line behind a guy with a dog face—not ugly, literally his face was modded like a dog’s—and in front of a chick with blue skin. Why couldn’t she ever do something cool like this when she wasn’t on some shitty detective errand? Although, going to a strip club on a weeknight wasn’t that cool. Still, it was more interesting than how she spent most evenings. She pulled her jacket collar tighter around her neck. All this wandering of her mind was just to distract herself from how fucking mad and confused she was. She wished the dumbass kids at the front of the line would stop arguing about their shitty fake IDs and move, so she could get inside and get some answers already. They did, finally, though they hung around and started smoking on the curb.

Dog-face went in without issue; you had to be at least twenty-one for mods that extreme.

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