Chapter 99

"Quiet?"

"Hi, we got the body, the girls are hacking it now... You sure you don't want the body?"

"What the hell do I need it for?"

Regina's image shrugged.

"Zero it out, but get the data to me."

"Roger that... then wait, I think within an hour or three my runners will have everything cracked and I'll forward you the data."

"All right, uh. I take it you cleaned up Malstrom's base, too?"

"Sure..."

I shrugged now, and my image repeated after me.

"...They're thugs and eliminating them while the order is in progress doesn't go against my understanding of what's right."

"You're a strange guy. You don't take orders for elimination, but you zero out the bandits during the assignments, unless there is an exact indication that there are no fatalities."

"Well. that's just the way I am."

I grinned.

"Okay, uh. I'm waiting for the data."

"Uh-huh...

The connection broke and I immediately went back to the girls' channel.

"Scribes, how are you?"

"It's okay. the basement's almost cleaned out. They've got a warehouse of old chrome and weapons, so there aren't too many people here, according to the ranners, only a dozen intelligent..."

"Yeah, and she's already zeroed in on seven."

Lucy commented on Becky's actions and I relaxed a little, realizing that there were no problems this time. So we'd have to have a little feast to celebrate Becky's successful debut. It was the first time she'd ever worked this way.

Nodding at my thoughts I sat down on the nearest chair and began to wait...

The wait was about fifteen minutes, after which Becca finally reported that she was finished.

"Great, coming your way..."

Standing up from the chair I threw the target of our order on my shoulder and quietly went down first to the first floor, and there with Kiwi's help I found my way to the basement, where Becca was already waiting for me at the door.

"Is something wrong?"

"Just want to appreciate the chrome and the guns..."

"I'll tell you, these guns are junk. Only for spare parts, however, even spare parts from this weapon will be of disgusting quality."

I shrugged.

"Did you appreciate the chrome, too?"

"Well. My knowledge is lacking here, I'll have to change my optics to the third kiroshi. They have a wider database, and you can upload it, then I'll be able to navigate in chrome. In the meantime, let's go and evaluate... maybe there is something normal there..."

But it turned out there was nothing of value in the chrome, just junk, old, or broken, so from the basement we went up to the first floor, then left the building through the back door, so as not to be seen by any outsiders.

We reached the car quietly, after which I loaded the target of the mission into the trunk and sat down in my seat.

"Let's go to our place. We'll get some goodies on the way."

"Do you have a reason?"

"And Becky's new role? Or rather, her new way of working? How'd she do, by the way?"

"It's okay..."

Lucy shrugged.

"...though I have to say that you, with your better sandi, always make this kind of work easier, and where you just go for broke, Becca had to wiggle a bit to show off her skills and capabilities."

I nodded understandingly.

"Okay..."

The car rolled quietly toward the nearest store where we planned to store. When we were almost there, Judy spoke up.

"Okay, this scumbag we hacked into. Regina was totally right, he was working for an out-of-town fixer. He started working right after he got fired from his last job. The deal was for him to be the fixer for Regina's neighborhood while they took over the Padre and Wakako neighborhoods as their starting point to take over the city.

I sighed.

"Get the data to Regina. Panam, you head over to the junkyard, we'll drop a load."

"Got it."

After forty minutes we came to one of the abandoned roads of the dump, or rather there is not even a road, but a path.

"He won't be traced?"

"Oh, that's insulting. the chip will work for two weeks after the body dies, using up any energy left in the chrome. It'll simulate life support, so all the chrome will transfer free energy to it. Could be dead in three hours, though, if this asshole isn't concerned..."

A body appeared in a white flare above the car. A woman's body...

I was able to look at it in great detail, because I had turned on Sandy at full power on automatic. And here I was sitting in the car, the surrounding world almost froze, and I was looking at the body of a girl... A white-haired girl in leather pants and a white shirt, a sword scabbard on her back, and the sword itself is there...

And it reminds me of something.

Sighing, I carefully opened the car door, then stepped outside and climbed onto the hood, where the girl should have fallen. She should have fallen on the windshield, but it didn't matter. I looked at her face carefully...

She was clearly unconscious.

Gently opening her eyelid I made sure that she was unconscious, and only then I gently took her in my arms and began to slowly reduce the acceleration of the sandi, until I noticed the external changes and realized that now the girl will not suffer from moving together with me.

A step to the side and I go down to the ground and completely shut down the sandi.

"Uh... what?"

The girls focused their gaze on me, while I thoughtfully looked at the girl in my hands. I even activated the optics, but neither police databases nor other databases that were loaded into the memory of the chrome did not find any data about this girl.

"I don't know why. just appeared over the car and could have hit our windshield. The windshield wouldn't have been damaged, but she could have--

I gently put the girl back in her seat in the car and slapped her cheeks a couple times. Not hard, just to try and bring her to her senses.

"М..."

She opened her eyes and looked around with a hazy gaze.

"Shchschm...*?%;youf...m*?:psgtyr."

The girl fainted again, and I realized I didn't understand anything at all. My translator couldn't handle the language! How is that even possible?!

"Did you understand anything?"

"No..."

I shook my head.

"...didn't understand a damn thing..."

"I see..."

I shook my head.

"Okay, well, let's deal with the mission first and nullify our target by trashing her, and while I deal with that you look after the girl."

"Got it..."

I went to the trunk and took out the body and just stuck the knife into several important points in any even very chrome body, and the first of such points was the brain, into which I drove the knife five times from different angles. But the brain was not the only point, and only having made sure of Hal's final and irrevocable death I dragged him away from the road, and then threw the garbage.

Halfway to the car, I stopped and looked back at the place where I had come from.

DeShawn's already made a similar mistake-- one single bullet to the brain and that's it, and Vee survived. I don't want that kind of happiness. And even though I knew I'd killed him with a guarantee, I went back and used all my muscles to rip off the guy's arms and legs, and then his head, just by throwing the body parts as far away as possible.

Only then did I go back to the car.

"Uh, uh. what was flying around out there?"

"I was just thinking about V.. and decided a couple stabbings to the brain and other critical points weren't enough, so I just tore the body apart and scattered it."

"Hmm... if there's a tracker somewhere other than the head, it'll probably work."

"Whatever..."

I shook my head.

"So you're, uh."

"Yeah, I thought about covering up his death so that it would be known as late as possible, but I highly doubt there are beacons in every part of his body, and what I turned his brain into..."

"Okay... home, or do you still want to rest in our place?"

I cast a glance at the new girl, who the girls were peering at intently.

"I think it's better to go to our place, there won't be strangers there and the girl won't panic too much. Because judging by her appearance and the sword behind her back, she came to us from the Middle Ages."

The girls laughed.

"You're so imaginative!"

I shrugged.

"Either that, or she's a representative of a corporation that tested teleports, and she's a fan of the old style, and even at work she carries a sharply sharpened metal dirk."

"Uh..."

The girls looked at each other.

"If you look at it that way. but it still doesn't add up, how did she end up here?"

"Teleport..."

I shrugged.

"It's the only realistic explanation for her being here."

"From the Middle Ages?"

I cast a glance at Judy.

"Do we know what was there before? Maybe the world was many times more advanced than ours, but there was a catastrophe and..."

I shook my head.

"...everything, the world is thrown back, almost to the Stone Age, though more like the Middle Ages, and people find some remnants of a pre-existing civilization and this girl accidentally activates one of the portals?

"And it led not to another point in her world, but to ours?"

"Who knows what happened in there? Maybe some kind of defense mechanism is triggered, which in the absence of a response point makes a random jump so that the stored energy doesn't trigger an explosion."

"Well..."

The girls looked at each other and when I opened the back door and moved the girl into their laps, I took the sword off her first, then I chalked myself into the car and it drove smoothly to our cabin.

We got to him without problems, but I was still tormented by the thought that I know this girl ...

No, not personally...

I just knew who she was. I did, but I forgot.

How's that?!

When we got to our cabin, we settled down next to the lake and I started cooking. And it was on the smell of cooking food that the girl came to her senses.

I noticed that she had come to her senses at once, and I was standing so as not to lose sight of her, while continuing to cook, so that when the girl fainted and became awake my optics reflected it. But I did nothing, continuing to talk to my girls.

Sandi activated extremely easily and the girl, even though she was unbeknownst to me, had accelerated to very significant speeds without harming her body! So the girl was noticed by me and I calmly walked around her and tripped her, redirecting her fall so that she didn't hit anything.

As I lowered the acceleration from the sandi I noticed the girl rolled on the ground, but she jumped up and looked at me with fury.

"Зфщывгп0186734пAndуказ8ц730к:;?ЕНП*?:;?!"

"I don't understand you..."

The girl who was glaring at me angrily froze and said something else, apparently in a different language, more rude, and her command of it was mediocre, but it did nothing for me.

"I don't understand you..."

And having said this in English, I switched to French, Japanese and German. I just activated the translator in the optic and read the transcription of the necessary phrases with a terrible accent.

The girl now just frowned and, like me, uttered several phrases in different languages, one of which was so ... singsongy or something.

"I don't understand you..."

I switched to English again, and then I remembered that in my previous life I was actually a Russian citizen, so I said the same phrase with a terrible accent, since I had never spoken Russian in this world.

"I don't understand you."

The girl's eyes widened in shock.

"You... speak... to... this... language?"

"Yeah. You, too, I take it."

"Slower... fast is bad. comprehend..."

I nodded understandingly.

"Let me introduce myself."

I pointed a finger at myself.

"First name, David. Last name, Martinez."

Next, I started pointing at the girls.

"First name Lucina, last name Kushinada, first name Kiwi, first name Rebecca, first name Judy, last name Alvarez, first name Panam, last name Palmer. You?"

I pointed my finger at the girl, which made her wince slightly.

"Cyrilla Fiona Ellen Rhiannon ..."

Fuck-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o...