“Eleanor,” she says taking his hand. “My god, your hands are rough. You really were a soldier, huh?”
Rennin nods.
Eleanor looks at him closely, “World War One or Two?”
“I look damn good for my age, thank you so much, and I don’t have to forget my underpants to attract a mate.”
“Still, you should show a little more skin than you are, even at your age. Are you here trying to land a donor?”
“A what?”
“A vaginal donor.”
Rennin coughs out a surprised laugh, “No, I’m just curious about the scene.”
Her face turns deadly serious suddenly. “What did you say your name is?”
Oh fuck. “Rennin.”
Her head tilts, “I’ve heard that somewhere,” she says leaning back slightly.
Rennin gets a good look at her eyes as she’s leaning and can see her dilated pupils. So she’s high. He knows it is time for him to move on and hope she’s high enough to forget about him by morning. “Thanks for the chat, I’ll see you around.”
She nods and returns to ogling Prototype.
Rennin turns the belt’s signal disruptor back on and the music instantly drops out. He looks to Eleanor one last time, “You are so hot, it’s intensely unfair,” he says at normal volume.
She doesn’t react.
“I guess you really can’t hear a thing,” he says before stepping away from the bar and across to the other side of the dance floor to keep a bit more of an eye on Prototype.
As he’s crossing the dance floor he moves between the people, the dancing and the swaying, with fluid precision not touching any of them despite the close proximity. He reaches the wall that seems to be lined with the really wasted people. They’re all leaning against it with eyes closed or just staring into space whilst nodding or bopping along to the music.
The tracks are obviously getting faster because the green, red and blue light show is devouring his vision with alarming voracity. Rennin stands against the wall with sea of drunkards and waits for an opportunity to make his move.
Caufmann wanted an update should he find Prototype, but sending a transmission so close to the progenitor-class might prove fatal if it’s got the ability to intercept signals. Rennin is also quite sure it possesses a similar disruptor for the music signal.
As a couple of hours pass the crowd becomes more degenerate; trashy even. Rennin has made a few trips to and from the bar but only to order lemonade. Prototype hasn’t moved.
Eleanor has vanished somewhere or other and she was not looking well in the minutes leading up to her leaving. She briefly made contact with the progenitor but it smiled blandly, indulging her for a few moments before they separated. Well Eleanor separated, the android just sat there.
Rennin rubs his arms against his weapon holsters and hopes to himself that Caufmann’s little bullet additive will do the trick. The good doctor told Rennin to make a hit, location irrelevant, on the android and flee. Nothing more. Just a single hit will do it.
Caufmann did take the time to explain to him the exact chemical that he applied to the bullets but Rennin didn’t understand all that egghead talk. As near as he can tell it is some kind of oxidizing agent that acts like a blood virus, literally eating the android from the inside out.
Caufmann made a ridiculous pun, saying the most important thing you can ever know about your enemy is what they’re made of.
IQ of eleventy-thousand and that’s his A-material?
Rennin believes that he’s passed more workable humour through the down-pipes after a harsh curry, but he still finds himself smirking at the comment.
The Prototype stands up and Rennin’s body is instantly awash with adrenaline. It comes on so quickly he sees a white flash, and feels the world fall out from under him for just a moment. The android moves with an uncannily smooth ease through the crowd. It still hasn’t noticed Rennin but he has a nagging feeling that its apparent ignorance of him is feigned.
Rennin slaps that feeling away but he has a distinct doubt about all this.
Being so close to this thing alone, despite being surrounded by club-going masses, makes him immensely ill at ease. The android moves across the bar, towards the stairwell but instead of descending it swerves behind to the toilets. Rennin’s nerves screech at him to follow but if he does too quickly it’ll be far too obvious.
After waiting for what seems like the entire Cretaceous Period Rennin can’t take it anymore. He heads straight for the toilets in a bee line almost bowling over three people without noticing. His adrenaline floods again, causing everything to seemingly slow around him. Smaller details sharpen in focus and the only sound in his ears is his pounding heartbeat.
The toilet has a queue but he walks straight past, earning some snide comments. The place stinks. There are three stalls lining one wall and a urinal trough lining the other, with basins next to the door. Once inside he moves straight to the sink, making a show of washing his hands.
Turning his back on the room of human waste, Rennin realises he is wearing his gloves and they’re rather annoying to remove. He is about to curse himself when a gust of cold night air brushes past him from behind. Night air?
He spins around, standing on the tips of his toes to see far enough over the stalls to check for a window, and he spots an open one in the third stall.
Rennin walks across casually to bust it open, easily snapping the rudimentary lock, surprising two clubbers having sex. Rennin doesn’t notice. After half throwing them out of the stall he climbs on the toilet seat looking out the window. Rooftops.
This is not where Rennin wants to be, but he has to be fast because the android clearly knows it’s been spotted. One of the sex fiends is swearing at him and Rennin briefly wonders what kind of sex they were having for it to smell so bad before launching himself through the window to land relatively quietly on the roof.
A light snow is still falling, with a thick fog descending to make things more difficult. Visibility is not too badly obscured at the moment, though the sounds of the rally are muffled out a little due to the density of the air. In fact the slightly deadened cheers and music from the rally puts an entirely new kind of discomfort within Rennin’s chest.
His glasses’ scanner spots something like a radiation trail to his right, so he sets off at a slow jog across the pitched rooftops, up and down, up and down.
Someone seems to flick a switch on the city’s weather machine turning the snow into a rather heavy rain almost in the blink of an eye.
After a few buildings he starts to slow down as it dawns on him that he’s lost the Prototype. He lets out a huff and stops. “Stupid, useless, idiot,” he mutters at himself.
Despite dressing himself down, he honestly can’t think of a way he could have taken the thing down any quicker, short of walking right up and blowing its head off. Though Caufmann said he only needed to land one shot.
Too late either way.
As he turns away, a massive blow strikes his side hard enough to throw him clean off his feet. Rennin is surprised to find himself on his back and rolling down the slope of the roof, only stopping when he falls into the V between connecting buildings.
He looks up in shock, choking out a breath knowing that he would be drowning in his own blood if it wasn’t for his armour-weave, just to see Prototype standing on a roof peak soaking wet, long hair hanging down, wearing a bland smile and black overcoat.
Rennin lost his glasses in the fall and can barely breathe. It feels like he was hit in the ribs by a flying anvil. He wants to go for his gun but if he does he knows the thing will be on him in a moment’s notice. He sucks in another half-gasp feeling a shooting pain in his side. His ribs are definitely broken.