“…regret…” gurgled Cassandra Clevenger as her hand reached weakly for the heel of Webmistress’s boot.
“Oh, don’t embarrass yourself, Cassandra,” Webmistress said. “I’ll regret this? Of course I’ll regret it. Why not? I end up regretting everything else I do. Like investing in cybertech. Around the turn of the century, it all seemed so cutting-edge, but now it’s obvious that biotech was the way to go. Do you know why? No batteries, no software, no firmware… and if the junk’s cloned from you no possibility of rejection. Do you know I have to take pills every day to stop my body from attacking my implants? And if I want to upgrade them… it’s a whole big thing. You know what I should have done is hired the world’s greatest biotech innovator to work for me full-time. Oh, you know what? I guess that would be you. So, now that I’m thinking about it, I do kind of regret this.”
She kicked away Clevenger’s hand, the fingers of which were curling spasmodically back towards the palm like a misshapen claw, then turned away from the monitors and slid back a metal panel, revealing an espresso machine set in the wall.
“Oh, God, look at me… I’m making my own coffee,” she said. She sighed in disgust, then looked around the room and seemed momentarily surprised to see Andrea Markham backed into the corner of the room, a pained look on her face… she froze under Webmistress’s gaze, looking fearful. “Good God, Andrea, aren’t I paying you to do something?”
“You want me to make you an espresso?” Markham asked.
“I want you to do something useful.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Well, this isn’t exactly your first job… what would you normally do in a circumstance like this?” Webmistress asked.
“Like this?” Markham repeated.
“Okay, okay, not exactly like this,” Webmistress said. “But come on, it’s time to impress me. I need to hear some ideas. Things are going pear-shaped all over. Plans thwarted, base trashed, enemies at large. What do you do?”
“I… uh… that is…”
“Come on, don’t just stand there staring at me… what did you do for Geppetto and his toymakers when things got rough?” Webmistress asked. “Oh, right,” she said, realizing that Markham wasn’t just in a corner, she was back up against the room’s exit, and the look on her face wasn’t just fear… it was guilty fear. “You stole the most valuable thing you could lay your hands on and fucked off to the next gig.”
She pointed her right arm at Markham, bending her hand down at the wrist. A stream of large metal needles flew out of a concealed port, perforating the surprised woman’s chest and in a few cases pinging off the wall behind her.
“Well, that wasn’t a taser,” Webmistress said, looking at her slender wrist as Markham hit the floor, a bubble of blood bursting between her lips.
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