Dahun drives himself and only relinquishes control when he can hear the gunfire. He is out and running before the car stops, ignoring the AI warning and arming his weapons, drones and armour. His satellite drone rises out of the trunk of the car, high above the danger zone. Four synners, two on each side of the road, elevated positions, rifles, created a crossfire into which the procession walked. Several broken corpses and bleeding injured.
“Fuck this. Action-hero mode activate.”
Earwormed with the theme song from the cartoons he always has playing in the background, he detonates a mild flash-bang, more to draw attention to himself than to confuse the shooters. The orbiting drone shows him they are amateurs, deployed in a pattern straight out of films, wearing no armour, disoriented by the flash-bang.
“Dah-dah something something shield and swooooorrdddd!” He marks the targets, one of whom recovers and starts to shoot at the monitor drone. Terrible shot. Dahun pumps his rifle and sends a grenade to one of the synners who is still trying to kill civilian stragglers. The explosion obliterates the entire window ledge she is perched on. No body parts. A gentle fire burns like the kind you find in temples. Dahun advances.
“Super action activate, join the hero activate, something something justice for all something. Dah-dah-dah-dahh.”
They are firing at him now, but his shield can take it. Most of their bullets miss in any event. A plasma shot powers through a window and the upper torso of the shooter perched in the nest. He remembers that he must take at least one alive. He idly wonders if he should do this hand to hand in order to present a challenge, but he is a professional.
“Dah-dah-doo-doo activate… activate!”
He shifts the rifle to non-lethal. One of the synners stands his ground, shooting consistently in plain view. He is a hundred metres away. Dahun shoots him in the head with his side arm.
The last one runs. Dahun follows, whistling the whole time.
While he is looking for Lora among the dead and wounded, Dahun sees Koriko going about her business. She glows green; not bright, but gently, which explains why he has never seen this. From the sidelines people throw rocks at her, but she doesn’t even look. A particularly large one bounces off her skull and breaks skin. She does not flinch, nor does she wipe away the darker green effluent from the cut. A serpentine is coiled around her right leg and it sounds like they are talking to each other. He remembers this one. Aminat gave it to her as a replacement for one lost, a kind of payment for Koriko’s help in entering Taiwo’s castle.
The orbiting drone sounds an alarm, which means it has picked up Lora’s ID chip. It weaves, bobs, and comes to rest right above Koriko. She happens to be handling a woman’s body at the time. Dahun scrambles towards her.
“I remember you,” she says. “You’re Aminat’s man. What do you want?”
“Don’t,” he says. “You can’t have that one.”
Koriko looks at the body, looks up at Dahun and shrugs. “I don’t want it anyway.”
The snake’s tongue flicks out and back in, and Koriko moves on to other cadavers.
Dahun sees why she didn’t want Lora.
Jack, you should have told me.
Dahun hefts the body to his car. It takes two trips because she is not in one piece, and he is puffing by the time the work is done. She’s heavier than she looks. Looked. Looks. He calls Jack.
“I found her. What do you want me to do?” He opens the boot and the satellite drone settles into its nest.
“Take her to your place. I’m coming. Twenty minutes. I’m coming.”
Dah-dah-dah-dah. Activate.
It doesn’t look the way he thinks it should. She. She doesn’t look the way he thinks she should.
Lora is in three distinct pieces, head-neck-chest in one piece, abdomen and legs, and right arm. Dahun could not find a left arm, but he did gather some fragments that might add up to the missing part, or might not. She is smeared with the blood of other people, her hair caked with it. Her eyes are open, her face expressionless. She is wearing make-up as if she were dolled up for a party. There is a crack across her forehead and it forks multiple times to form a line drawing of antlers.
There seems to be little fluid leaking from her. The machinery is far too advanced for him. He would have no idea where to start if tasked. Here, under the harsh light of his dining room, laid out on his table, she looks like a broken toy.
He remembers her from the war. She was mad efficient and never cracked a smile, but ate and drank with the rest of them, and wasn’t she fucking that writer guy? Walter Tanmola. Dahun had liked him. When asked about Lora, he had said, “She’s amazing. I’ve never met a woman quite like her.”
Dahun wonders if the writer knew. Does Aminat know? Jacques clearly does, and wants to keep it quiet, which is a smart move.
The house warns him of approach to the back door, and Dahun verifies the IDs of Jack’s new bodyguards, then lets them in. He remembers being present when a Nigerian drone tried to kill Jack during the insurrection. One of the old bodyguards died, but the mayor remained unscathed. Lucky bastard. Luck will do in a pinch, Caleb, but it doesn’t last for ever. That’s what his own father used to say.
After searching the house, and barely seeming to notice the destroyed robot, the suited men leave, replaced by Jack. He’s wearing shorts and a Bermuda shirt, with a floppy hat. He makes for the table and places a palm against Lora’s cheek. His face crumples, though he does not cry. It is the most visibly upset Dahun has ever seen him.
“Thy lips are warm,” says Jack. “Shit. Shit. Shit. This is not the time.”
“Did you love her?” asks Dahun.
Jack shoots him a hostile look. “Hannah’s the only one for me. Lora was… is like my sister, has been for a long time.”
“Then you might not want to quote Romeo and Juliet. It’s weird.”
Jack sucks his teeth. “Did you see who did it? Get any of them?”
“An alien. In the trunk of my car. He was bleeding, but I set up an IV to keep him alive while Rosewater heals him. No head trauma, so he’ll be able to give us information.”
“Definitely alien?”
“Green-eyed devil.”
“The Honeycomb might come for him. Or Koriko.”
“Let them,” says Dahun.
Jack’s phone beeps. “Ahh. Open your front door.”
Dahun checks his cameras. Since the mayor is here, he sends an orbiting drone out just in case someone wants to take a shot. A silver eighteen-wheeler with a refrigerated trailer has squeezed itself into his street. Dahun does not recognise the logo, but he scans it and Nimbus comes back with a secretive robotics firm. It is not even clear what the company does.
Four people come in bearing backpacks that are larger than they are. Two of them, the men, take further trips to the trailer while two surround what remains of Lora, taking readings, plugging cables in here and there. These two seem… enamoured of each other, and from how they touch in passing, Jack thinks they are involved.
“Sir,” says one of them, “I’m Sola, the team lead. This is not a combat unit. In fact, quite the opposite, if I’m reading this right.”
“Make love, not war,” says the second woman, whose tag identifies her as Morinola.
“I know this. She wasn’t sent into combat. She is my right arm, however. There are bonuses in play here.” Jack points to Dahun. “Let’s leave them to their work.”
“We’ll need industrial-strength coffee,” says Sola. “In vats.”
“You’ll get it,” says Dahun.
The alien is laughing when they get to him. He refuses to answer any questions, so Dahun shoots him through the head with an explosive round. The mayor is impassive.
The alien does not rise again.