Impulse Control

"You were arresting him," Candles said sourly, "So what? He would have sat in a holding room for an hour tops before getting back out on the street."

"Don't lecture me on the intricacies of corporate justice," Dawson warned him, "For all its many, many flaws it doesn't condone the dispersal of napalm onto a crowd of drugged-up kids."

"Until it does," Candles spat dismissively.

"You said you think he had your sister killed," Dawson brought up again. "How did you find him at all?"

"Questioned the supervisor at the lab where Loretta worked. He said an elf he'd never seen before wearing a three-piece suit met with him the night before the place was robbed, told him to make sure Loretta was working that night."

"He just told you flat-out, did he?"

"Well I told him if he talked I would let him pick which one of his legs I broke."

"I'm sure that testimony will hold up in court," Dawson commented. Randolph scowled darkly.

"Wasn't planning to sue him," the ork said with menace.

Dawson lowered her weapon slowly until it was pointed at the floor. "You loved your sister," she ventured.

"Yeah," he said matter-of-factly, "I did. And she deserved better. I'm the thug, I'm the hired killer, if anyone should have gotten gutted like an animal it should have been me. Loretta, she did things the right way... Went to school, played by the rules, followed the laws, never hurt anyone and... And..."

The ork had gotten animated as he talked, in a way he hadn't before. He looked at Dawson for a moment, breathing heavily, and then settled his hands back over his waist. "Well, not that you would care. Nobody really cares, do they? It's not really a problem, not for anyone but me." His hands balled into fists, gloves clenching against themselves audibly.

"And I'm going to make it a problem for Megiddo. His last problem, ever."

Dawson chose that moment to sit on the table, gun still hanging in her right hand. "Think about this," she said slowly. "You know how corporate endeavors work, I'm sure. If you kill Megiddo, maybe you get revenge for your sister. But that won't be the end of whatever this is. Someone new will come along to do Megiddo's job and people will keep getting killed in pursuit of whatever their goal is."

She could see that the ork was listening to what she was saying and continued. "You want to hurt him? You want to hurt his bosses? Killing them isn't enough, Mister Macguire. You need to think the way they do about these things."

"Most of these suits, people like Megiddo, they're not afraid of dying, because they're convinced they're going to live forever, all the way up until the very moment the lights go out. If you want revenge--real 'lamentations of your enemies' type revenge--you need to hit them where it hurts: the bottom line."

"You need to blow this thing wide open. You need to make this so insanely expensive for them, such an enormous loss, that they never, ever try it again. Crash their stock, spread their secrets, tell all their competitors what they're up to."

"What are they up to?" Candles breathed. "I went through two Johnsons to learn about Megiddo's hangout here in San Francisco and neither of them had any idea what the point of it all was. They said it was for the orichalcum but if that was the case, why bleed people dry?"

"That I still don't know," Dawson admitted. "I had hoped if I got Megiddo into a cell he might give up the game, but someone lit my idea on fire."

"Well, shit," the ork muttered. "What the fuck do we do now?"

Dawson pulled the thumb drive out of her coat pocket and looked at it. "This was in Megiddo's pockets, I took it from him before the lights went out. I'm sure it's encrypted but I have a friend who's good with decking. There could be some evidence on it."

Randolph leaned his head back and looked down at the gun in Dawson's hand. "You going to arrest me?"

Dawson thought for a moment. "What you did tonight was the kind of reckless and stupid thing I'd have done fifteen years ago."

He chuckled tensely. "Is that praise?"

"It's me saying I understand your position. I've had friends I'd get revenge for."

"So I'm... not under arrest."

"You will be if you do anything like this again," she said, holstering the Accelerator. "You want to help? Wait for me to contact you. One way or another I'm going to find out where Megiddo has run off to and track him down. And in all likelihood I won't be doing it with a warrant. I had one of those for the Troll Atoll and it just burned down, there's absolutely no chance I'll get another."

"It is not my fault that place didn't have a modern fire suppression system," Randolph said dismissively.

"'Not my fault' says the ork with a flamethrower. 'All I did was point the weapon and pull the trigger.'"

He waved his hand as if this were mere semantics. "What happens if you can't track him down?"

"In that case I just have to hope that whatever is on this drive is enough to force him to show himself again. I mean it, Macguire--keep your head down for now. If we meet in circumstances like this again I'm going to aim my gun a lot higher on my next shot."

Dawson picked up her commpad and started making for the door. Before she could get across the lobby Randolph called out in a tone he probably imagined was conversational, perhaps even casual.

"Hey, you fuck?"

She stopped, and let out a brief but genuine laugh. Usually the requests came in a slightly more veiled fashion, and usually not from people she had held at gunpoint minutes prior. "Is that how you compliment people?" she asked, turning to face him.

"Only the ones I want to fuck," he admitted. "And you look like you fuck good."

The candor was refreshing. "If you'd met me a week ago I might have given you a tour if only to shake the rust off, but I just got back into the saddle and I'm feeling pretty sore for it."

"Just like riding a bike," Randolph commented with a shameless grin. Dawson couldn't keep from laughing again.

"Yeah, something like that. Maybe we'll talk about it when this is over."

"Or we could fuck now," he pointed out, spreading his arms. "Doubt the owners would mind."

Her commpad started chirping anxiously. Someone was calling her.

"Some of us are accountable to others," she explained, lifting the pad and starting to tap at it as she made again for the door.

"Think about it!" The ork called after her. "Friends call me Candles, not just Wick!"

= = =

Dawson refrained from answering the call until she was back inside the Firebird, and it rang the entire way there. When she finally answered Sokoth's voice filled the interior of the car.

"For fuck's sake Dawson why didn't you pick up? I was pulling my hair out!"

"I was busy," Dawson replied, setting the commpad on the dashboard and turning on the car.

"Yeah, so I've been told!" Sokoth barked. "Someone set that bar on fire! Witnesses say some nutcase wearing combat armor and holding a flamethrower came in and torched the place! Were you in there for that?"

"I was chasing my suspect when it happened," Dawson told him. "He got away in the confusion."

"Fuck! Well, did you get a description? Metahuman type, corporate logo... Overheard a stripper say his name, anything?"

She tapped the side of her face in silence for a few moments, stretching it out for a full five seconds before speaking her words carefully. "Nothing I can confirm," she said.

Sokoth didn't reply immediately. He knew what the pause meant: Yes, I did, but if I say his name over the comm it'll get around and my job will be a lot harder. Finally he muttered an incomprehensible swear word and followed up.

"You know how this looks," he said, "I'm not going to be able to get you another warrant unless you have irrefutable proof there's a suspect on the premises, and at this point nothing short of another body is going to be proof of anything. The district manager was already skeptical that this had anything to do with Applied Reactions."

"I know, Sergeant. Just like he was skeptical that the go-gang brawl on the corner of Oakland and Parkview had anything to do with the kids in the shipping containers at the harbor."

"It's not me you have to convince, Dawson," Sokoth said tensely. "My rules are still the same. You're on hunches from here on out."

"I'll contact you when I know more," Dawson told him.

"Don't let this be the one that kills you, Dawson." That was as close to be careful as Sokoth was capable of getting.

Once the call was over, the compact disc in the stereo started to spin and music floated out of the speakers again.

"You see me now a veteran, of a thousand psychic wars! My energy is spent at last and my armor is destroyed..."

She pulled out into the street, electric engine humming quietly as she passed through the barricades set up by Lone Star's response team.

"I have used all my weapons, and I'm helpless and bereaved... Wounds are all I'm made of!"

The smoldering embers of the Troll Atoll were no more effective at lighting the neighborhood than its neon signs had been, and nobody would be dancing or dosing here anytime soon. Maybe not ever again.

"Did I hear you say that this is victory?!"

Once she was through, the Firebird sped away into the night back towards Silicon Valley.

"Don't let these shakes go on... It's time we had a break from it!"

"Send me to the rear! Where the tides of madness swell, and been sliding into hell..."

"Oh please, don't let these shakes go oooon! Don't let these shakes go ooooon!!"

= = =

The quiet walks back up to the apartment around midnight were traditionally when Dawson got most of her thinking done. According to the regulations she was nominally supposed to adhere to, she should have taken the thumb drive to Lone Star after which it would mysteriously vanish from evidence lockup and the case would be quietly closed. In the past she had taken things like this to Templeton, and one day he had paid the price for his willingness to assist in her pursuit of justice. Rossman was a skilled technician but he had been terrified just to sell her a cyberdeck. He'd probably think the drive was a bomb, and Dawson couldn't guaruntee it wasn't.

That left her with Alenia to examine it for her. Megiddo already wanted her dead just as a loose end so it wasn't as if she could be in more danger, but Dawson always hesitated to place people into harm's way for her benefit. It went against her instincts.

The door code shifted the crossbars and admitted Dawson into her apartment. To her surprise it was quiet inside... but clothing littered the hallway and part of the kitchen.

Ratty clothing. Denim, and leather, and cheap cloth with friction holes at the knees and elbows.

Closing the door behind her, Dawson strode in to find Alenia reclining on the couch with her bare feet on the table, as usual wearing only one of Dawson's shirts. What was not usual was that all of her friends were still here. Fairy was sitting next to Alenia with their legs laid over each other, and Daggey was sitting beside her with her legs hooked over the side of the couch and her head in Fairy's lap.

Tange was sitting on Dawson's arm chair and Shelf was splayed out on the floor with the aid of a pillow stolen from Dawson's bed.

Every single one of them had a visor over their faces, connected to their datajacks. Every single one of them was wearing one of Dawson's shirts, either the nicer ones she wore to work or the sleeveless ones she wore to work out.

None of them had on anything else.

A glance to the kitchen indicated that every cabinet had been opened and looted bare and the refrigerator door was slightly ajar. No need to worry about spoilage--all the shelves and drawers were empty.

After all the driving around, the adrenaline, the interrogations and the frustrations of limited support from Lone Star, Dawson had been exhausted on her way up to the apartment. Now she found a reserve of energy she didn't even know she'd had: irritation.

"Hey!" None of them responded with anything more than a murmur of distracted disinterest. She stepped up behind Alenia and gently tapped the elf's head, on the side with her datajack. "Hey, wake up."

When Alenia didn't respond, Dawson gently flipped the visor up off of the girl's eyes, revealing her melon-green gaze to be unfocused and hazy.

"What are you doing?" Dawson questioned sternly. Alenia's response was sluggish and slurred, like she'd been completely immersed and lost her sense of self.

"Impulse Control..."

"What? Why are you looking at that?"

"Feeels goood..." Alenia reached up with her hand to try to flip the visor back down onto her face, but Dawson used one hand to pull the visor off of her face.

"You girls are melting your brains with these things," she warned, going to each one of them and gently removing the visors from their faces, detaching them from their datajacks carefully but swiftly enough that none of the sluggish, tech-drugged girls could resist. When she piled them up on the counter the elves started to come to their senses, or at least what few they hadn't dulled into uselessness. Dawson had taken off her coat and stored her gun before the first of them was even sitting up straight.

"Why are you girls still here?" Dawson asked them. They looked at each other sheepishly and no one seemed entirely sure how to answer. Fairy eventually spoke for them.

"Alenia said that you told her we could stay as long as we like."

"I meant you didn't have to get up and leave immediately," Dawson said, folding her arms over her chest. "It wasn't an invitation to eat all my food and steal my clothes."

The elves cowered at her obvious irritation and Dawson immediately felt guilty for making them afraid, even though she had every right to be displeased. She let out a slow breath and addressed them again in a much calmer tone.

"Relax. I'm not angry at you, I just want to know why you haven't left yet. I'd have thought you'd be gone as soon as the refrigerator was empty if nothing else."

Shelf opened her mouth to say something artful in their defense, but whatever she'd had in mind evaporated from between her pointed ears and something mechanical and well-rehearsed came spilling out instead.

"I'm a stray street elf but Dawson will take care of me as long as I surrender to her totally." She covered her mouth with both hands after saying it and blushed furiously, but the other elves, Alenia included, all nodded eagerly in support of her point, sporting nervous smiles.

Dawson felt herself blushing too. "What?"

Daggey was next to profess her allegiance. "Yeah! I'm totally loyal to Impulse Dawson! I believe everything she says!"

Fairy visibly shivered a little as she recited one of the lines of programming. "I crave her touch and need her guidance!"

Tange's eyes took on a dreamy quality as she spoke. "I want to eat Dawson's pussy and get cuddled hard by her!"

Alenia pulled on the stolen shirt she was wearing eagerly to express her energy. "And I want her to eat my pussy and clean my ears for me!"

Shelf had put one of her hands between her legs to press her balled fingers against her cunt. "I lust for Dawson!" she said between pants. "She'll take care of me and sort out all my issues!"

And then in unison all five of them said: And I want my gang-mates to feel the same way!

Dawson rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. Fuck! She'd been thinking with her cunt when she came up with those trashy lines and now these girls had spent who knows how many hours rewiring their minds with what amounted to parody propaganda from a bad pornographic trideo.

"I thought you were tough Ancients go-gangers," Dawson said, trying her hardest to sound critical rather than plaintive.

"Frag that!" Shelf said immediately.

"Yeah!" Fairy added, "That's all a bunch of drek! We want to be house elves!"

"The street is cold!" Alenia complained.

"We want to eat real food!" Daggey pleaded.

"And sleep in a bed!" Tange added.

Dawson had to admit they were reasonable motivations. "And take showers?" she ventured. The response was a sudden aversion of all eyes, the rubbing of necks and a chorus of non-committal eehhh noises. "Or at least get your ears cleaned," she corrected. The response to that was a unified yes! Dawson pinched the bridge of her nose softly in two fingers and looked around the apartment again in an attempt to survey the damage done in her absence.

"I imagine," she started, "My apartment seems pretty spacious to you right now, but after a week of..." Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of something on the window overlooking the street below. The faint impressions of five sets of rounded shapes of roughly similar size and placement were obvious now that she was looking right at them. The window tint was down low, but not as low as she'd normally left it.

"Were you putting your bare asses on the widow as cars went by?" Dawson asked incredulously.

For a moment none of them spoke, but then their self-inflicted conditioning kicked in and they were speaking over each other to offer explanations.

"It was Alenia's idea! She said you wouldn't notice!"

"I only did it because my pants were already off! I'm a victim of circumstance!"

"Nobody crashed! One guy almost did but he swerved before he hit anything!"

"It's not like illegal to have an ass, is it?"

"If it is I want to be punished with spankings... But not really hard ones!"

Dawson let out a low sigh, rolling her neck and shoulders. "I can't deal with this right now, I need to rest."

A body clung to Dawson's side and she opened her eyes to the feel of Alenia wrapping arms around her midsection and pressing her face into Dawson's right breast.

"Do you want us to leave?" she said in a trembling voice. Immediately Dawson's expression softened.

"No," she soothed, stroking the back of her head. "Of course not. I even need your help."

Alenia's melon-green eyes looked up at her with a hint of excitement. "Really?"

"Tomorrow," Dawson said, "When I can think clearly."

A moment later four other bodies crowded around Dawson, competing for space on her body. She straightened up and looked at the elves gathered around her with a brief spike of annoyance that faded into fond tolerance. Daggey was looking up at Dawson and straining on her toes trying to nose the woman's neck.

"Can I call you Impulse?" the elf asked eagerly.

Dawson brought up her left hand and held the side of Daggey's face. She spoke in the sultriest voice she could summon in the moment. "What happened to mommy?"

Immediately Daggey's legs seemed to turn to jelly and she leaned all her weight onto Dawson's body. "MOMMY IS JUST FINE!"

Disrobing was easy with the help of five sets of hands though they didn't stop at her boxers and stripped her naked. Once she went to bed they followed her into it eagerly like pack animals after prey. She had barely enough time to stretch out in bed before they descended on her body and began competing for who could be the most responsible for keeping her from falling asleep. Alenia went straight for her cunt and expressed her as-yet undiminished hunger for it dutifully while the others attacked her breasts, neck and face. Shelf had a fondness for lip-locking that seemed as insatiable as Alenia's obsession with her clitoris.

Dawson's initial instructions to stop and let her sleep were far from stern and it seemed the street elves had the ability to interpret their conditioning quite creatively. "This will help you rest!" Tange said, right before slipping her tongue into Dawson's asshole.

It wasn't like the previous night, where Dawson had felt again the young lust that had so defined her early adulthood, harnessing it to tyrannically bend the eager elves to her sexual will and their mutual satisfaction. This was merely being dined on, meat and muscle and her softest parts licked, nibbled, tongued and sucked whenever possible. It felt like drowning, like being swallowed by the crowd and bathed in hot breath and blacklights until she didn't know where her own body ended and someone else began.