VANCOUVER, EARTH, SOL SYSTEM
“Don’t kill anyone this time,” Tetsuya grumbled.
Thick gray clouds released a downpour of rain that had been drenching the region for the last three days. Classic Vancouver, Rina “Destiny” West thought while she looked out the passenger-side window of the car she was riding in. The sights of the outside world appeared as a blurred splash of colors thanks to the rainwater.
Vancouver was one of the few cites in the world that didn’t bear many scars from the war with the Hashmedai. This was a surprise to many, as New Westminster and Surrey had seen Hashmedai ground forces take control of those areas two decades ago. New Westminster took it the worst, as the Royal Canadian Air Force had launched a series of air strikes in that area to thin out the Hashmedai. This also proved to be the final acts of the Canadian air force, as Hashmedai interceptors had obliterated all their fighters across the country in a counterattack.
East Hastings was another sign that Vancouver hadn’t changed much, Destiny was quick to notice. Tetsuya Ishihara, who handled the wheel of their car, drove it along the badly maintained streets. Prewar, East Hastings had been one of the poorest and most run-down areas in the city and quite possibly all of Canada. Today? Not much had changed. Run-down buildings, sketchy people, trash, and questionable deals struck in back alleys. The only major difference between this place now and this place then was that Hashmedai roamed these areas as well. Deserters from the war, they knew they had lost and that they couldn’t return home. They made their homes here on Earth wherever they felt welcome, which didn’t include many places. Most of the human race still bore a grudge.
Their car came to a stop alongside a curb. Destiny’s fingers interacted with the screen of her holo phone. A window materialized in front of her, displaying the contact info of the person she was trying to call. A man named Arn. After several seconds of listening to a ring-back tone, Arn finally answered. The holographic window transformed into Arn’s image, a bald man with a long unkempt beard, wearing a hoodie and shades.
“I’m here. Where the fuck you at?” Destiny said.
“Already? Damn, girl, you’re quick!” Arn’s hologram said. “It’s some old-world abandoned Chinese supermarket. You can’t miss it.”
Destiny recalled driving past it not long ago; she’d have to backtrack. I should have called earlier, she thought. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said and hung up. The holographic window with Arn’s contact info reappeared, displaying a notification at the bottom that the call had ended, and then it vanished. “Wait here,” she said to Tetsuya. “I’ll deal with this fucker as quickly as I can.”
“Discreetly,” Tetsuya said. “It’s still daytime. Can’t afford to have someone ID you.”
“Whatever.”
“Seriously, Hannah’s predictions haven’t been accurate lately,” he said, looking at Destiny’s scarred left hand. “And you know that.” She rolled her eyes and proceeded to open the door but stopped. Tetsuya’s hand gripped her shoulder; he had something to add. “I’m serious, no bodies. These are humans not affiliated with the United Nations of Earth we’re dealing with.”
“Whatever,” she said with a sigh.
“Give me your piece.”
Her visibly upset blue eyes gazed at him almost as if they were burning a hole into his mind. The five-second stare down resulted in Destiny reluctantly handing her ePistol over to him from her leather jacket. “Happy?”
“And your old-world one.”
Old-world was a term commonly used to describe anything that existed before the Hashmedai invasion. In this case, her concealed Sig Sauer P238, a pocket-sized pistol that fit perfectly in the side pocket of her blue jeans. Like her ePistol, it found itself into Tetsuya’s possession. “Now are you happy?”
“I’ll be happy when I get the fuck out of this piss hole.”
The car door finally opened, exposing a section of the interior to never-ending rain showers outside. Before stepping off, Destiny opened the back door and removed a large black art tube. Tetsuya took notice and asked, “What the fuck is that for?”
“Just part of my cover for the people around.” She smiled and winked at him. “I’m an artist if anyone asks.” He has a lot to learn about me.
Destiny began her walk away from the car, down the drenched and grimy sidewalk in East Hastings. She paid little attention to what the rain was doing to her ginger hair, dyed of course to mask her age of forty-one. Between that and her vigorous daily workout routine, few people truly knew her real age. Throw in the art tube, and she looked like college student. And to think—she hadn’t even kept up with all the new fancy antiaging biotechnology that had been invented.
She continued her walk, paying little attention to the homeless humans and Hashmedai. She saw a group of prostitutes speaking to someone in a car that had pulled over. They were both Hashmedai. Threesome with two Hashmedai women. What a brave soul. She grinned and walked past, briefly thinking about a time she was a working girl. Though she was much better than these girls, as she was an escort, she never walked the streets. She was above that, a high-class and very expensive escort, working out of Los Vegas, before it was glassed. She sighed and thought to herself, Those were the good old days. She missed those times, especially Jazz, her favorite client.
Destiny arrived at the location, a boarded-up store. The door was ajar, and she could hear voices coming from within. This must be it. She entered and quickly performed a threat assessment of the location. Overturned shelves, four shady-looking men wearing sweatpants and shirts, probably bodyguards and probably packing heat. They all had something large in their pockets, ePistols like the one she handed over earlier, no doubt. Arn emerged from the shadows with open arms, his guard was lowered, a perfect opportunely for Destiny do something she’d been dreaming about for the last few months.
She ignored the four men, and her feet took her toward Arn at rapid speed. Her fist slammed against his jaw, launching his body to the floor. Fucking asshole. She heard the hissing sounds of four ePistols powering up. They made the same noise Radiance magnetic weapons made when activating. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference, as the tech behind eWeapons was based on Radiance magnetic weapons-Railguns, aided by a computer built into the weapon.
Destiny could see blood slowly trickling out from Arn’s mouth as he spat out a tooth and slowly rose to his feet. “What the fuck was that for?” he asked.
“Bio-fucking-metric weapons. I requested not to be given those.”
He finally got to his feet and said, “So my stock got a few of the defects, my bad.”
Biometric weapons would activate only if the fingerprints matched with the assigned prints programmed into the weapon. It was possible to hack and remove the biometric programming, but even the most skilled hackers had issues with it. The United Nations of Earth (UNE) did not want their weapons in the hands of terrorists and criminals and went out of their way to make it an irritating process.
“Your stock had me sitting in a hospital bed for a month. Your stock had me bury eight of my good friends,” she said, jabbing her index finger toward his angry face.
“Well fuck, I’m sorry.” More blood slowly dripped from his mouth. She had gotten him good. “I’ll hook you up with some better guns.”
Her hand reached back toward her art tube as her head slowly tilted to the side to see if any of his bodyguards had stepped closer. No sign of them, though she knew damn well four guns were being aimed at the back of her head. “I have a new dealer; I’m fucking done with you.”