Violetta Durand

Fuck the Authority

Steam greeted Vee as she stepped inside the tonkotsu ramen shop. As she pulled down her rain-soaked hoodie, a hospitality-drone that had seen better days greeted her with an annoyingly pitchy irasshaimase. The bot started to protest as Vee walked past it straight towards the back.

'Ojisan,' she said in a flat voice, 'your intelligence was flawed'.

An old man with a long thin beard turned around. He was wearing a dirty white shirt, and an even dirtier apron that at some point must have been white too. His small round sunglasses lit up with a red hue as he looked Vee up and down. 'It's done?', he asked as a smile curled upon his face.

Vee zipped open her hoodie to reveal a body that was more cyborg than human. She pressed a button in between her collar bones, and a compartment hidden in between her ribcage opened up revealing one bloody eye. As Vee grabbed the eye with her mechanical hand the old man started protesting. 'Be careful with that! If you scratch the retina, it will be useless to me!'

'My Ether?' asked Vee as she exposed her wrist to the old man.

'Not so fast!' said the old man as he turned around with the eye in his hand, 'I need to make sure-'. Before he could finish his sentence, Vee had grabbed him by his right arm and spun him back around. Her left hand was now under his chin with a sharp blade protruding seemingly from her finger nails.
'As I said,' Vee said in a calm but cold voice, 'your intelligence was flawed. Ether first.'
'Alright, alright,' the old man said, staring nervously at the blade, 'just take that damn thing out of my face.'

Vee let go of the old man's arm leaving red marks where her hand had grabbed him. She stretched out her wrist again.

'Ether.'

The old man stretched out his wrist and as he aligned it with Vee's wrist both their subdermal chip implants lit up activating an interface. The old man input the amount he owed and signed his transaction. A few seconds later Vee confirmed the Ether had been transferred to her wallet's address. She pulled back her hand and the blade retracted as the nanobots that made up her bionic arms reshuffled.

'This better be the eye!', shouted the old man angrily after Vee as she walked out of the ramen shop. 'I know where to find you if it's not!'

Stepping back into the rain Vee pulled up her hoodie. Further down the alley a group of young men were harassing two girls. One of the girls looked her way and opened her mouth to scream for help. Vee turned the other way and started walking and then running. She turned a corner and three steps later she jumped into the air as the whole cityscape expanded in front of her in a burst of neon-lights. She was greeted by a swarm of self-flying vehicles as she tumbled towards the ground. Vee pressed a button on the interface embedded into her left arm hailing one of the air taxis around her. The closest one in her proximity positioned itself perfectly below her and she landed right on top of it. As she crawled inside the dirty, badly lit cabin she pulled down her hoodie again and interfaced with the taxi to submit her destination. The first part is done, she thought to herself, as she pulled out the picture of her and her mother. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she could not place the emotion. All she knew was that whenever she looked at this picture, she felt strongly compelled to save her mother. She felt a longing for something now lost. A longing for a life she didn't remember anymore. She stared at the picture as the taxi navigated through the blurry sea of lights.

Excruciating pain shot through Vee's body as the sound of bone saw reached a high pitch cutting through what remained of her left arm. As much as she tried to, what felt like a thick tube stuck in her mouth and throat was preventing her from screaming. She opened her eyes in panic, and was instantly blinded by a bright light right above her. It felt like someone was trying to rip off her arm. A silhouette of a face blocked part of the bright light above her. She tried to reach out to the silhouette with her other arm, but could not move. A second silhouette appeared above her now, and she could make out some frantic hand gestures. Suddenly the ripping and tearing sensation she had felt at her right arm stopped and a final jolt of pain shot up through Vee's body as she passed out.