Here Come the Rooster

Dalia's smile melted. “What?”

"Shhh! Don't look."

Dalia looked.

"Shit." Simonee turned too.

The pink man with the bright-red mohawk spread his arms wide, his white tank-top dangling helplessly over his ball-like paunch. His face was a pincushion of piercings: a ring in the septum, a bar through the eyebrow, the bridge, a spike out the labret, snake bites, etcetera. Aged tattoos darkened his arms and chest like bruises.

O’Singh pocketed his pipe, pulled a self-service kiosk down from the ceiling over the bar, fired it up, then backed through the door behind him.

Shunk. Click. Sealed.

The men at the bar lifted their pissy plastic pilsners and roared back at the man crowing like a rooster.

Rooster-man swaggered to the bar. His name was Hemlock, like what did in Socrates. Simonee only knew him by reputation. He worked in accounting, with accolades. He made a terrifying auditor—nobody ever misplaced their receipts.

Hemlock’s plus-one trundled in behind him—square-head, square-jaw. His brown suit wrapped him like a pork loin. His name was Perci. Simonee wasn't sure what he did, exactly, just that it involved a suit and zero personality. Probably HR.

Hemlock surveyed the bar, eyes eager and buggy with a grin made manic by a jutting overbite.

"Pull up your hood and cover your face." Simonee hissed at Dalia.

Dalia didn't budge. She laughed. "What a ridiculous looking man. Terrifying really."

"Yeah, and he likes pretty girls, so how about you stop staring at him. He's not big on consent."

Dalia just giggled. "Aw, you think I'm pretty?"

Four empty glasses of brandy flavored alcohol sat in front of her.

Shit. Simonee metabolized alcohol differently, especially when flooded with adrenaline. She'd sobered up quick, but Dalia was sloshed.

Dalia leaned in with a wry grin and whispered, “Well, thank you, but we have laws here against harassment.”

Simonee breathed through her nose and cocked her head at the bar. "Do you see anybody here who might arrest him?"

Dalia frowned and lifted her nose.
"The security system will send an alert as soon as any—"

Simonee shook her head. “Nope. Dead zone. And your face ID’s off the grid, remember?”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Do you really think—”

Cock-a-doodle-doo! Hemlock crowed. Yellow teeth flashing, his eyes locked on Dalia.

"Shit." Simonee's teeth clenched.

Hemlock snatched a pilsner from the hands of a man at the bar, drained it, handed it back with pinky raised and lips puckered. “Cock-a-doodle-dill, why do I drink this swill?”

Nobody answered him. The question seemed rhetorical, but Simonee imagined he really wanted an answer—a hypothetical inner-child that liked to pull the wings off of hypothetical butterflies.

Her legs itched to bolt. She could vanish into the restroom, wait it out. Cover her ears and pretend she didn't hear the screams. Wouldn't be the first time she let the survivor take over. Leave the princess, she had her own people. But Dalia’s people didn’t know she was here.

Simonee pressed her palms to her face. “Fuuuuuck.”

Another beer vanished down Hemlock’s throat. He shuffled closer.

Dalia clutched Simonee’s arm. “What do we do?”

Right. Security advisor.

Once, Simonee had been marked for disposal—judged not-my-problem by the people who created her. But then someone made her their problem, and here she was.

Now Dalia was her problem.

“Do you need to pee? I need to pee.”

Dalia pulled back. “What?”

“The bathroom. Back there. We can lock the door. Let’s go.”

“But I don’t—”

Simonee's teeth clenched. “Dalia. Lets. Go. Pee.”

But it was too late. Perci now stood in front of the bathroom hall and the shadow of Hemlock danced over them under the flashing neon.

Dalia squeezed Simonee's hand and stared at her, her eyes shimmering again, the bluest blue.

Simonee groaned. “Just let me handle it.”

Simonee had no clue how to handle this, but she slid off the booth anyway and stepped in front of Hemlock, hands out, draping hair over her implant.

He stopped and looked at her, brow crinkled as if he hadn't noticed her before. Her tight smile quivered at the corners.

“Hey, you guys need a booth? This one's the best, and we were just leaving."

Hemlock wasn’t a tall man, but he dwarfed Simonee all the same. He crossed his arms and grinned down at her, his mouth a toothy cave.

“Cock-a-doodle-dee. Mama, won't you believe? Two little birdies... ripe for a squeeze.”

His accent had a twang to it that dipped in and out of a growl or a squeak, as if a cowboy, a bulldog and a circus clown were singing a cappella.

"Tell me, Perci, which'll it be: tickle-me emo, or glam-punk Barbie?"

Perci the tagalong tree-stump giggled eerily as Hemlock leered between the girls with a look that betrayed ideas his mama may not have approved of. He stepped closer, reeking of moldy onions, and his breath whistled around the thick ring through his septum.

Simonee's chest shook. The rest of the bar turned their not-my-problem backs to the scene. The exit closed like the lid of a coffin as Perci stepped closer, blocking the way.

"Ah, ha, ha." She pseudo-chuckled. "Really, my client and I here just finished up a meeting, and now we're gonna go. We don't want any trouble."

Hemlock laughed. It was a terrible sound, best described as a tea kettle having a seizure—hissing, whistling, then cracking.

"Client, schmlient, I can't be played. I can tell the one getting paid"—he nodded at Dalia—"from the one getting laid."

Dalia gasped. Her eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth to say something Simonee was sure wouldn't help.

"No, no-no, nothing like that." Simonee blurted, shaking her head, uncovering her implant.

Hemlock tilted his head and poked a finger close in on the purple glow.

“My, my, my, what a pretty little eye?”

She flinched, and the ground seemed to shift beneath her legs.

A tunnel formed around her view, and the bar dissolved. The neon turned into flowing tapestries around a raised dais. Mother's temple.

A voluptuous silhouette dances on the dais. Unit 70371 dances along, singing with her sisters—bald heads, blue eyes, bare bodies. Chanting.

Mama, Mama, Mother gave us life.
She climbs the dais.

Kliyenty, Kliyenty, in worship we serve our customers.
The tapestry parts.

Obrabotchiki, Obrabotchiki, may our handlers guide us on the path of fulfillment.
She falls.

She wails. Why is there no Mother?

Someone grabbed Simonee, shaking her.
The handler? No, Hemlock.
Sweaty. Acid breath on her cheek.
Her head snapped back, eyes fluttering.

The handler pins her down. Slaps her; she shouldn't have been up there; she shouldn't have seen.

She won't stop crying. Slap! Again.
Her sisters moan; fawn: be calm.
The handler thrusts himself inside her. She screams.

70371 is powerless.

Dalia shouted her name. Her eyes opened.

Back now to neon dancing, nostrils flaring over onion tang.
Upper lip curled. Teeth bared.

Simonee Saran wasn't powerless.

"Leave her alone!" Dalia pounded on Hemlock's chest and put a finger in his face. “Listen, asshole! Do you know who I am? My father—”

Perci shoved her back into the booth. Her forehead bounced off the table with a thud. Blood pearled on her brow; she blinked hard, eyes catching Simonee's in a helpless glare.

Simonee shook loose of Hemlock's grip and doubled over—wheezing, but with a hand in her pocket, cold metal around her fingers.

He laughed, grabbed her hoodie at center mass with his left hand, snagged her bra, wrenching the breath from her chest as he lifted her off the ground, and pulled her face to his face.

"Mm, mm, mm, you've got good taste. Wanna take turns? Seems such a waste."

She flicked the switch; the spikes popped. She jammed them into his bulging forearm.

He hollered and dropped her to the ground. Smack. Right on her tailbone.

He clutched his bleeding arm, yanked off his shirt, and wrapped the seeping punctures. Nipple bars glittered in the neon flicker over his tattoo-bruised chest.

Perci stepped back a pace, his eyes wide.

“Cock-a-doodle-deez! Naughty little tease!” Hemlock crowed at the ceiling. "Was gonna let you run, but now I'll make you bleed."

Simonee was back on her feet. Teeth clenched between the sneer. A tingle shot through her from her scalp to the seat of her groin.

Hemlock had woken those memories, filling her small body with napalm. A stranger, Vengeance found purchase in her mind and burned in her chest. She wanted to cry at the power, the anger; her eyes welled with tears.

Hemlock wasn't the obrabotchik, the handler, but he wanted to have them and hurt them. He wanted to oppress their will; the very freedom Simonee had cut out her own eye for.

With a blink, a HUD overlay tagged Hemlock's body with circles over weaknesses and an arch of attack.

Simonee wasn’t trained to be a hacker, she picked that trade up on her own. She was bred for a different purpose. Trained in pleasure, she also learned a lot about pain. Erogenous zones were sensitive to both.

So, with a screech, Simonee reared back and punched rooster-man’s nipple off.

The blow was clean. The spikes ripped through his pectoral like butter, spraying blood all over Perci's face. He squealed, wiping it away and spitting. A nipple bar tinkled on the metal floor.

Perci shifted, and an opening appeared. Dalia gaped at Simonee as she reached out. Dalia clasped her arm, and Simonee yanked her from the booth. They ran out the door while rooster-man clutched his chest and crowed manic at the ceiling.