52 Story Project I

3 - Graduation Day

(Description/summary: Cyberpunk, superpowers, very much based on 90's anime.)

2074 AD: Teal

Teal waited silently in her cell, trying to control the vicious excitement that coursed through her. Today is my final exam. I'll see Essell again. They had promised her that if she survived today, she would see her brother again, for the first time in five years-- for the first time since both their lives had been destroyed. Of course, one could not necessarily believe their promises, but they themselves had trained Teal as a killer, and they had to know that if they lied, she'd turn her skills on them. So she expected that they wouldn't lie, not this time.

The door opened, and a Drone entered. "Teal A-3ß. Come with me."

Teal nodded once, sharply, and stood. She was a tall, androgynous 15-year-old, with short white hair crowning a pale face. She wore black today, a bodysuit made of a tough polymer fabric, somewhat resistant to bullets and knives and with lines of silver shot through it to diffuse lasers. They had offered her body armor, but she'd refused. Teal needed to be as light as possible, especially now that she'd gotten her growth.

She followed the drone down the corridor to the battle chamber. The door opened, and momentarily, Teal was blinded by what looked like sunlight, before the artificial film on her retina darkened enough to let her see. She stepped forward, staring about her in surprise. The simulation today was a replica of the Grove, where she and Essell had grown up. Why? Are they trying to remind me why I want to win? Or of what happened, the last day I saw this place? Do they want to throw me off my guard somehow? I can probably expect a trap of some kind. She breathed the air in deeply. They didn't have the smells exactly right, but close. Very close.

Standing, drinking in the air and the scenery, she showed every sign of fatal distraction. But the moment the door opened and the men with guns charged in, Teal was in the air. She'd been too heavy to fly for some years now-- her teek rating was 5, and she'd long been over 50 kilos-- but she could still boost. From a starting position she leapt, boosting, and flipped out of visibility into tree cover before the gunmen could track her.

Ten men fanned out slowly throughout the grove. All carried jectors, some machine, some sniper rifles. Some packed lasers or knives as well. Teal checked her weapons-- razor claws strapped to her fingers, blades on the edge and tip of her footgear-- and then leapt down on two men, backboosting to control her fall. The first saw her and swiveled to fire. Not near fast enough-- Teal slashed his throat open with her footblades on the way down, landed, and brought her hand down in a chop on the other man's neck, crushing his artery and dropping him.

The other men saw her. They turned and fired, but Teal was gone again.

She crept through the trees, using teek to bootstrap, lightening her own weight so that she could crawl along branches far too thin to take her full 62 kilos. She stayed high in the trees, on the thin branches, hidden by meters of foliage, and reached a point where she could peer down over the Grove. With her lens implants, controlled by her eye muscles rather than any kind of cybernetics, she could compensate for vision that was naturally not very good. She scanned the Grove, looking for the hunters to make them her prey.

By now, her opponents apparently had no idea where she was. In pairs and threes, they roamed, searching behind bushes and in the trees, far lower than she was. Perhaps they didn't realize she could stay up so high. Boosting was an obvious application of teek-- teek rating referred to how many kilos you could lift for a sustained period of five minutes, and anyone could figure out that you could carry more in short bursts of effort. But bootstrapping-- where you used sustained teek on your own body to lighten your weight-- was less evident to non-teeks. They might assume she couldn't be as high as she was, because the branches wouldn't hold her.