A rose by any other name still has thorns

Clingy Clubs Containing Cautious Customers

I cannot see anything. My face is pressed against the cool examination table. My back is exposed to Him, to whatever sick experiment He wishes to conduct today.
"Now then, let us begin, yes?" I hear the small click of his recording device cutting on, "Patient X, receiving the new mutagen agent. Known side effects include hallucinations, loss of sight, loss of hearing, loss of sanity, and spontaneous corruption of non-mutated DNA, which can cause death."
I recoil at His words, but only slightly. I am used to His experiments, His talking to Himself, and His reeking breath.
"Beginning main incision," He states. A very short moment later, I feel the familiar pain of a scalpel slicing my skin open. I try to scream, but He has a silencer ring clipped around my neck. When He is documenting during an experiment, I am silenced. When He isn't, I'm not because -- as He has told me many times before -- He enjoys my screaming.
"Inserting the mutagen."
The incision is pried apart and a warm object slid inside.
"Closing incision and activating mutagen," He reports to His mechanical audience.
The warm object feels extremely strange under my skin. After a moment of waiting for the sensation to pass -- He has put items under my skin before, I know the feeling will fade -- I realize something else is happening. Slowly, the object is warming up.
A few minutes pass and now the heat is unbearable. I believe my skin is burning apart. I am screaming, but the silencer is still working very well. Tears have pooled below my face onto the table. The pain is excruciating, all-encompassing. Omnipotent and evil.
I keep screaming until my lungs hurt, too. Oh, the pain! The pain-

I jolt awake, frantically searching the room with my eyes. The deteriorating room I was sleeping in is free of intruders or danger. My back continues to ache from the nightmare's pain, but the actual aching in my mechanical joints take precedence. Either a storm is heading towards the city, or I need to start saving up on some elbow grease from the black market.
Instinctively, my wings wrap around my torso. They're small and useless, though, so they barely reach from my shoulder blades to my shoulders. My wings are the outcome of the dream/nightmare/memory I just escaped from temporarily.
I sit for a few moments, breathing heavily into the cool, dusty air. Once all the fragments of my shattered nightmare have blown away, I glance out the boarded-up window. The sun is beginning to rise, signaling that I need to get ready and head down to the shipping yard.
I gather up the thick binder I made using an online tutorial long ago and pull it aggressively over my head. This is a battle we're both accustomed to, and the binder puts up a good fight before I get it past my shoulders. Next, I curl my wings firmly underneath the slightly itchy fabric and throw my t-shirt and coat on. I straighten my hair using the reflection in my right hand before pulling on the fake-skin glove I bought a few years ago -- also from the black market of course. The sun is still rising over the horizon by the time I pull my boots on over my worn jeans and head onto the street.
Outside, even in the dim light, I can perfectly see all of the run-down skyscrapers built for poorer people to "live" in. Only the rich can afford a house with ground space. My vision is yet another side effect of His experiments. The pupils in my eyes are enormous, black holes made to see in all levels of light.
I have a mask pulled on to cover my eyes with a thin mesh, along with hiding the chunks of metal surgically added onto my face.
It doesn't take long to arrive at the shipping port, where workers are already going back and forth carrying packages. A few call out greetings to me as I pass, a few don't. They all know what I'm doing here, so none of the guards try to block me. I come here every day to make money either by carrying crates or assisting the workers on other "things." With the way they're all rushing through their work and excitedly talking, I would guess that a new club has opened or an old club is having a special celebration. Obviously, my job today will be cartying crates and other stuff in and out of the shipping trucks. I fall into pace with everyone else and soon we've finished all the work. A few workers pat me on the back, ask if I'm coming along to Meely's new red-light special. I have nothing to do anyways, so I agree and begin following the crowd downtown to the barely-to-code bar/dance club.
Outside, a bouncer is watching the door. A sign bosts an 16+ age limit for their entertainment. She stares at me skeptically before finally allowing me to pass. Once inside, all the shipping workers disperse, leaving me alone. For a few songs, I just sway in-place to the beat, but then I notice someone has undeniably begun inching his way closer and closer to me.
He's wearing the same "outfit" as all the other partiers, meaning he's wearing as little clothing as is legal to wear. My first instinct is to leave, but he's faster than I am and soon I'm surrounded by him and the suffocating stench of alcohol and sweat.
"Hey, ya wanna dance?" The stranger asks in the drunken equivalent of trying to be smooth.
If it wasn't obvious that the only correct answer was yes, I  would have already been out of the club's door. Instead, he flashes me a dangerous look and I know that I have to take his hand. It's the same dreadful, excited feeling of danger I used to feel whenever He on-purpose left my cage unlocked, daring me to try and escape.
The guy takes my hand and drags me closer to the center of the dance floor, where the bar is also . He orders two glasses of llocatediquid that lookd eerily like blood, thanks to the club's dark red dance lights. I keep my mask on and drink through the small straw-slit I made in it a long time ago. The guy watches me amusedly and laughs.
"So, are you doing some kind of flirty masquerade thingy there?" He asks, although far less coherently than I would've liked.
I shrug and pretend to take another sip. I know the game he's playing, and judging by the glint in his eyes, the drink is obviously not safe. After a few minutes of stiff conversation and horrible dancing, I make an excuse of needing to use the bathroom.
Meely's doesn't have an unisex bathroom, so I rush into the lady's room, hoping the sign will stop him long enough for me to escape.
I shimmy open the window and silently drop out of it at the same time that a girl has begun to open the door.
"Who the heck left the window open?" She wonders aloud before closing it firmly. By then, I'm already far into the alleyway, heading back towards the main street. Trash from the night before litters the ground. Some dumpster divers must've been routing around recently.
Voices drift in the air, their words indecipherable. As I get nearer to where the alley opens onto the street, I can hear the dance floor guy, with his venomous voice. With him is the plaintiff cry of a person who wasn't as lucky as I to escape him.
"C'mon, let's just have a little fun. My pals and I won't tell anyone," He slurs out in a coaxing tone.
Various other masculine voices chime in, agreeing with him.
A higher voice continues protesting, "Please, I just want to get home."
"Well, why don't you take us with you, then? It'd be a lot more comfortable than the concrete below us, for sure."
A small sob fills the air, as the girl demands, "Why won't you leave me alone?"
I've had enough of listening, someone needs to help her. I peek around the corner of the building to check out the situation. Dancer floor guy has two equally evil-looking sidekicks with him.
Considering they're all drunk and I have cyborg enhancements, this fight should be easy enough, especially if I can sneak up on them.
Creeping along the wall quickly, I end up a few feet behind them when the girl looks up and catches my eye. She tries to not let them notice, she's smart and can tell I'm here to help her, but one turns anyways.
My fist quickly knocks his head back away from my direction. He hits the ground and the other rush to defend his honour. Using the wall as leverage, I leap up and kick my legs out so that each foot strikes the men seperately in their chests. I had aimed for their  faces, but I'm offensively short and that was the highest I could go, even with the wall's assistance. The first guy had begun standing again, but the guy who unluckily got hit by my metal foot stumbles back into him. The third guy, dance floor guy, is still standing, catching his breath quickly and winding up a punch of his own.
The girl has already run away and is safe, but that isn't the point now. I'm angry and want to teach this trio how to respect others. I kick the two on the ground rough enough to knock them out, and I catch dance floor's weak punch.
I twist his arm around savagely, enjoying the crack of his radius before letting go. He cradles his arm protectively and cries out into his I.D. chip, "P-police! Help!"
Suddenly, the sirens of a nearby squadron begin to pound into my skull. With the club having a special celebration, the police station would've lost their jobs if they didn't have officers nearby.
I really should've thought of that before I went all "vigilante", but I'm not known for my careful consideration of the government's laws. Still, I know what they would do to a deviant who attacked a genetically-"pure"  citizen. Prison for life, or worse: immediate execution.
With a cursory glance around, I spot a nearby fire escape and quickly climb up onto the roof. Police cars have trouble floating too high above the ground for long distances, so the officers will have to follow on-foot. That gives  me an advantage. I have a mastery of parcour and most officers don't.
As I reach the end of building, I hear the police unloading from their car behind me.
"Under federal law, we demand you stop!" An officer shouts. They must be a rookie if they think that will work. I tumble onto the lower roof very close to this one and hop up into a full sprint.
The tell-tale thump of boots follow me steadily, never getting close enough though. I'm good at escaping. They don't understand that yet, but soon they will learn. I can hear one of the sets of footsteps slow for a second. When they speed back up, the tell-tale buzz of a heat gun joins them. I scrunch my body even shorter than it naturally is and push myself even harder to speed up.
The buzzing amplifies, then stops abruptly. "They've shot it," I thinm before dodging into a zigzag. The shot blazes past my left shoulder and I can feel each nerve being singed in slow motion. Then, time speeds up again and I realise the ground below me is about to disappear. I've run to the end of the shorter buildings. My only option is to jump; hopefully, something will be below to break my fall.
One of the officers has caught up to me. With a quick glance behind me, I discover he's nearly at my heels. The burning wound in my shoulder must be muffling everything. I didn't hear him approach, and I must have slowed down my run, too, if he caught up so easily. Turning my head back forward, I take a deep breath and jump.
The officer, who was watching me, not the ground, falls with me. The difference is that I know how to curl and roll with a fall. He doesn't.
I land easily into an open dumpster, adding some cuts and bruises to my other wounds, but none are too bad. The officer was less lucky. Since he didn't have time to prepare, he fell gracelessly onto his neck.
I climb out of the dumpster, which sends new waves of pain from my slightly limp arm, and inch closer to him. Now that I'm closer, it's quite obvious the poor man is dead. His name tag reads "Harrisen." I mentally catalogue his name among all the others killed, injured, or abused -- both willingly and unwillingly--  by this government. Terror is still etched on his face, along with a trace of regret.
I keep going. I can't stop now. There is no time. I must keep going. I must-