Chasing the Dragon Ch. 03

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Part 3 of the 5 part series

Updated 11/01/2022
Created 08/07/2014
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AwkwardMD
AwkwardMD
1,321 Followers

While he waited for her to return, Beez poked around the compound. The living room and kitchen seemed so sparse. It seemed that either Roxie was making some kind of aesthetic statement, given how spartan the rooms were, or she had found it this way. Both seemed equally plausible.

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like this place had to have existed before the collapse of whatever was on top of here. It's one thing to hollow out a mountain of dirt, which is more or less done settling, and build a compound underneath that. A mountain of trash has no internal structural integrity and therefore, he thought, there could be no tunnelling done underneath it. That raised questions. Roxie seemed like an extremely resourceful person. Was this place given to her? It had to have been. Who goes looking through a dump to find something like this? Then again, she might have been looking for something else.

Beez muttered to himself, frustrated by the pointlessness of wondering about all of this when answers were more likely to materialize from thin air than come to him on his own. He wandered over to his bedroom and found his bodysuit waiting for him on his bed. He felt safer once he was in it and out of the hospital gown he'd awoken in. As he strode out of his room, he noticed that Roxie's bedroom door was still open. He sifted through several pieces of advice his parents had given him about doors and settled on 'An open door is an inviting door'. He couldn't remember the circumstances under which his mother had said that, but it was the closest advice he could think of to justify what he was going to do anyway.

Her room was just as minimalist as the rest of the apartment. The walls were bare, and the bed tidy and unruffled. He felt a little guilty crossing the threshold, but not enough to stop. She had very little in the way of clothes, aside from many copies of her bodysuit. They might have been different in function for all he could tell, but the appearance was uniform. She had several brown dusters in a closet. One had a bullet hole in the front and back of the left shoulder. The stain was dark, but not gone. In fact, most of the dusters had a hole or two in them.

The nightstand nearest to the door was empty except for another handgun and some ammunition, but the other surprised him. In the bottom drawer, he found a large pad of paper and several loose pencils of different colors. As he flipped through the book, he found drawings of flowers. Not a field of flowers or a bunch, but one flower. No background, no hand holding them, no vase. Just one flower, per page, elegantly sketched. He only recognized two of them; a rhododendron and an orchid. None of the flowers there seemed to match the tattoo he'd seen on her shoulder, but he had the strangest feeling he was staring at a deep and central theme for Roxie, even if he couldn't understand it.

He carefully put the pad back and headed to the kitchen. The refrigerator had a pile of those green juice boxes, which made his lip twist into a ghost of a sneer. Besides those, it was fairly well stocked. The cabinets he opened were filled with boxes and cans of food stuffs, and a door by his knee had more spices in it than he'd seen in his entire life. Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.

Eventually, his wanderings took him out of the kitchen, past the bedrooms, and down the flight of stairs. With his contacts in, the keypad for access to The Motherfucker was visible. It seemed to be the only purpose for this wing of the compound, as there were no other doors or hallways branching off from it. Just a dead end with a keypad in the middle of the wall. Beez stared for a minute. The interface was holographic. He didn't know if he could get HI to interface with it to hack it, but then he had a much better idea.

He ran back to his room and grabbed the little green box from his dresser. It took him a minute to pop out one of his contacts, but he was glad to have a place to put it immediately. With his one eye squinted shut the holographic interface was visible, positioned immediately against the wall and not hovering like HI. With the other, the holographic interface was invisible. As he stared at the wall, he could see a slight browning on the white paint where her fingers had deposited oil and dirt and who knows what else. Blood. Probably a lot of blood over the years. It had been cleaned a few times, but it was visible.

She'd hit four numbers the first time she brought him down here. He opened and closed his eyes in an alternating manner, and he found four brown spots corresponding with numbers; 1, 4, 5, and 7. 24 possible combinations. He'd done some brute force hacking in his time, although it lacked elegance. Number 18 was the winner. 5417. With a hiss and a soft whirr, the wall next to him swung in and away.

"Well this is an unexpected surprise," The Motherfucker said. "Up and about and looking rather spry. ... Where is your nurse?"

"She told you I got shot?"

"No, but she had me synthesize an assortment of painkillers and treatments. It wasn't much of a leap when you didn't accompany her during the same amount of time for which I had provided medication. The larger question remains."

"She's not here."

"Oh-ho! Breaking and entering then, are we? Roxanne will be so proud when she's done pummelling you. I do hope she finds you in flagrante so I can watch at least some of it."

"She said she was going to be gone for a few hours."

"Then she'll be cutting it close."

"Close to what?" The red ball Beez thought of as The Motherfucker's eye pulsed but remained quiet. He walked around a little, looking more closely at the different machines. He was getting tired of asking questions and not getting answers. And then he had a thought.

"Motherfucker?"

"Yes?"

"Could you make something for me? We... have a mission... and I think I might need something for my part of it."

"Of course. I live to serve."

"Can you manufacture Sodium Pentathol?"

"I can..." caahn. The machine's tone implied an unasked question.

"But?"

"For what?"

"I might need to interrogate someone."

"And you want Sodium Pentathol?!" Beez had seen numerous vids reference it as a truth serum, so The Motherfuckers incredulity perplexed him. "Do you have any idea what I'm capable of?"

"Um, no?"

"I have more computing power at my disposal than was available in the entire world combined through the year 2020. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of chemistry, biology, history, and hundreds of other subjects. I will live to see your children's children die, and you want me to make a drug invented two centuries ago?! Why don't I just craft you a nice round wheel while I'm at it? Do you have any idea how ineffective Sodium Pentathol is compared to something I could invent on the spot? Do you?!"

"No?"

"It is my most sincere wish that during your lifetime canines rise up, overthrow you, and force you to do their bidding. Clean up my shit. Scratch my ear. Now."

"C'mon! That's not fair! I'm closer to your intelligence than a dog is to me!"

"No, you most certainly are not." He continued, almost mumbling, "Sodium Pentathol. For fucks sakes."

Beez was momentarily distracted by two of the machines in the corner coming to life, but he turned back to the red ball. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Will you make it for me?"

"Sodium Pentathol?"

"Yes?"

"No. But I am making you something better. All I ask is that you answer a question in return."

"Absolutely not."

"Don't worry. The stuff I'm brewing up will have a much more powerful effect than a common drugstore barbiturate, and you can have it for free." One machine shut down, and the other one, a miniature centrifuge if he wasn't mistaken, kicked into overdrive. "I won't be able to stop you from taking it, and I don't have control over the door. I have no way of forcing you to answer the question."

"You can ask it, but I'm not promising anything."

"Excellent. And now, the question. Is this really for use in a mission you and Roxie have planned?"

Beez frowned.

"I thought not."

"I didn't say anyth-"

"You didn't have to," it snapped. "Eye movement, pulse rate, body language, they all said it for you. So this is for my lovely Roxanne, then?"

"How-"

"Good. You'll be glad I asked. If you've been out of comission for a week, you may not yet have noticed Roxanne's rather odd sleep schedule."

"Actually, I had!"

"Oh, so you know about her 72 hour cycle?" Beez frowned. "60 hours awake running around like a lunatic, followed by 6 in seclusion and 6 asleep? You know all about that?"

"Y-y-yes."

"Then you know that the current 60 hour cycle is going to end in 67 minutes? And that during her 6 hours of seclusion she'll be... hmmm...vulnerable is the wrong word. At her most... susceptible?"

"Of course."

"Of course you did. Because you're such a smart boy." Beez began to feel very uncomfortable. He scooped up the two vials from the centrifuge containing a clear liquid, and made for the door. "You have an attachment in your suit on your left hip. It will draw out the fluid and keep it ready. Just pull your left hand back at the wrist and hold your breath." Just as the door was shutting behind him, The Motherfucker began laughing again.

***

"YEAH!" The boy hadn't heard the entrance to the compound opening or closing, but Roxie's celebrations were boisterous and numerous. "People's champ!" He sat in the living room, watching a vid from the library. It seemed to be an extremely old story about zombies. Only 2 dimensional, but still entertaining. "Ah! I'm glad to see you're making yourself comfortable!"

"Took me a little while to figure out, but yeah."

"Ok good!" She came up behind him and leaned over the couch. Her face poked out into his peripheral vision, and he turned a little toward her. "Listen. I'm pretty pooped, so I'm gonna go get some sleep. I might make some noises, but just ignore it, ok? Don't come in. " Her face seemed to lose some of it's humor. "At all." All of it's humor. "For any reason. Under penalty of death." Beez swallowed hard and nodded. She narrowed her eyes for a moment longer, and then grinned inexplicably. "Ok! GoNight!"

He smiled weakly as she bounced up and skipped to the hallway. He turned to watch over his shoulder, and then sat back down. How long should he wait? 20 minutes? An hour? Two?

The vid he was watching was over after another hour, but long before that he started hearing Roxie behind him. At first, it sounded like she was talking to someone. Far too animatedly for him to get close to her, he thought, so he put it off. Another half hour after that, she was screaming. He jumped up and ran to the edge of the hallway. It was awful. A deeply harrowing scream; one of true terror.

Even if he hadn't planned on going in anyway, he would have been torn between following instructions and wanting to go in to help her. Worry creased his face. Still, he resisted the urge. He waited as the screams died down, and by the two hour mark, she was inaudible from his spot at the end of the hall.

As he got closer to the door, he realized she wasn't completely silent. There was a soft wheeze, like a cold October night through a thick window. He was pretty sure she hadn't locked the door. There appeared to be no way to do so that he could find, and he had searched thoroughly beforehand to make sure this would work. Just as he suspected, his hand was able to turn the knob as he crept up to the door.

Roxie was huddled in the middle of her bed, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her hands were pressed tightly over her ears. She rocked slightly, wheezing on the exhale as she pulled tight to her knees. She seemed completely unaware of him as he slipped in. Her widened and terrified eyes were red-rimmed, cheeks puffy, and she stared at nothing.

"You'll regret this later," she whispered as Beez crept up next to her. Far too late to back out now, he thought. He raised his arm, and HSST!

Beez hadn't realized she'd stripped halfway out of her bodysuit. As she fell to her side, he noticed the empty sleeves lying behind her. He started to run around the bed to make sure she didn't fall and hurt herself, but she wasn't unconscious. Her eyes even seemed... more?... attentive than before?

"What... what did you do?" She blinked and looked around like she wasn't sure where she was. For the first time, Beez got a good look at her whole torso. Her left shoulder was indeed covered in a huge burn scar, and he saw more than one scar on top of that, including a fresh one where she'd recently been shot. The burn scar crossed her chest, tapering off at the neck and traveling just slightly into her cleavage, if you could call it that.

Her breasts were very small. Smaller than Eliza's. The more he saw them, the more he realized he'd always equated size with beauty, with desirability, and then how wrong he was. Her nipples were a light brown color, suitably small to fit with the rest of her. It was funny how the force of her personality had colored his impression of her. Roxie was explosive and larger than life. Here, stripped naked, he finally saw how small she was. How thin.

Roxie's arms crossed over her chest, conveying a discomfort that shocked Beez. He'd been certain that if she was unhappy with something he was doing, especially something this private, he'd get his nose broken. His eyes travelled up to her right shoulder.

He'd been right. There was a leaf and vine tattoo that covered her right shoulder to a nearly identical degree, right down to the way it trailed off in her theoretical cleavage. There was a beautiful symmetry to the placement of the flowers with what appeared to be the worst of the scarring.

"I'm s-s-sorry," he stammered. "I shouldn't stare." Roxie nodded, but she didn't meet his eye. She looked... despondent? "I got The Motherfucker to make me a truth serum."

"I see." she said.

"I'm tired of not knowing anything. I'm an accomplice now, and God Damnit, I want answers!" Roxie flinched as he cursed. What the hell is happening, he thought.

Despite the odd reaction, she nodded reluctantly. "I'll tell you anything." She sounded so... weak! He wanted answers, but he hadn't wanted to break her!

"First of all, who is Viktor?"

"He's the man who killed you family. He works for Long Chemicals in a Public Relations capacity." Her eyes seemed just a little heavy. She wrapped her arms more tightly around herself and tucked her legs up in front of herself again. When she talked, she droned. Monotonously. It had none of her characteristic exuberance or unpredictability.

"Is that supposed to be ironic?"

"No. He really does do PR work for them, but he also gets his hands dirty."

"And the other three men you keep tabs on?"

"Contract killers."

"Why do you keep tabs on them."

"Four years ago, I was part of a group of protesters and activists here in The Bottom. We were small time, throwing paint on people and picketing. Letter writing campaigns. Getting signatures on petitions. That sort of thing. We were idealistic. And naive.

"But we grew frustrated with the lack of response from the various agencies we were advocating to. We got the bright idea to break into a Long Chemicals facility and see what we could find. We found a small, out of the way location. One guard. Limited resources. No one was going to get hurt.

"Someone betrayed us. 10 hours before we were supposed to move forward with our plan, our headquarters was firebombed. I barely crawled out alive. No one else made it out. 15 of the best friends I ever had. 15 piles of ash.

"As I laid there half dead, four men picked me up and carried me off. I was... thankful, until I realized that I wasn't being taken to get medical attention. They took me into a nearby alley and raped me. Each of them. They taunted me, and they mocked me. Called me a freak. Then they shot me here," she touched her left bicep, "here," breastplate, "and here," at the very tip of the scarring in the middle of her chest. "And then they left me for dead."

She'd delivered all of that in a measured, even voice. Almost robotically. Beez was silent for several minutes. He had every right to feel a little sorry for himself. The murder of his parents was tragic, but he hadn't suspected her story could be as bad as his. Or worse. He needed a new topic.

"How did you overcome a rogue AI?"

Her tone was the same when she started again. "I didn't. When I stole him, I was terrified of maintaining control over something so much smarter than me, so I installed him and trashed the Mini-Fab. Then when I turned him on, I told him that I'd had to wipe him once already and that I'd do it again." No smile. No twinkle in her eye. Just flat. "He spins his wheels trying to figure out how beat him, but he never will."

"That's kind of brilliant..." She just shrugged. "Where did this place come from?"

"It was my Grandmothers home. She and her sister lived here. This home predates the hospital that was built, and later destroyed, around it."

"Why do you keep such weird hours? 60 hours awake has gotta take quite a toll."

She sighed before continuing. "I take a cocktail of stimulants. They give me increased awareness, fearlessness, shorter reaction time, decisiveness, and a few others. The side effects are... numerous. And unpleasant."

"If it's so awful, why do you take it?"

"Because... because..." It seems to crash down on her all at once. "Because if I don't do something, no one else will!"

"Because of what happened to The Bottom?"

She didn't respond, only lowered her head.

"Because of what happened to your friends?"

The red rings on her eyelids were back as she nodded. "My family. And my fiancé."

Beez whistled silently. "Someone in that group?" She only nodded. "Did you love him?"

She nodded again. "He's the only person I've ever known who thought I was beautiful. All of me."

"That's absurd!"

"Shut up, Beez."

"No, I'm serious! You're very pretty!"

"You don't know what you're saying."

"So are you telling me you haven't had sex since..." Beez stopped, because he knew she had. He'd almost forgotten.

"No. I have sex. I just don't give them the option of liking me, or rejecting me."

"Why would anyone reject you?"

Roxie stood up so suddenly that the boy nearly fell off the bed. Her stare was a totally different kind of fierce than he was used to from her. She stood there, bare chested for a moment. She's magnificent, he thought. Beaten, but not broken. A wildflower in full bl-

And then she pulled the rest of her suit down. Her stare changed not a hair. Defiant. Beez's eyes were immediately drawn to her genitals, as any heterosexual man's would, and he stammered at the small penis hanging inexplicably from just above her vagina. It was like a thumb.

"Tell me again," she snarled. "Tell me I'm beautiful. Tell me I'm pretty." The boy found himself utterly without words. His mind was out to lunch. "Tell me how you've always wanted to fuck a boy, or something vaguely boy-like. Tell me how being twice my size makes you finally feel like a man. Tell me how-"

"You're beautiful..."

Righteous indignation flared around her for a moment, but the awe on the boys face was plain. He was staring at a goddess. Baptised by fire and hardened by life in an unforgiving place, but still fragile and delicate. The burns and the flowers. The male and the female. The contrasts! My God!

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen..."

His eyes traveled up her body, taking in every curve and every flaw. He watched her face as years of self doubt, abuse, and rejection stepped aside, and behind them stood a shy little girl, full of love and joy. They hadn't killed her after all.

AwkwardMD
AwkwardMD
1,321 Followers
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