Impulse Control

"W-w-well," she stammered. "What about me??"

"You'll be safe here while I'm gone," Dawson said steadily, "Just don't answer the door. You didn't tell your friends where you are, did you?"

"No," Alenia said truthfully," I just--just feel safer when you're here..."

Alenia had been fully expecting for her objection to be dismissed, leaving her in the cold. The pit in her stomach filled with butterflies when Dawson turned her eyes on Alenia, set down the commpad and loomed over her, setting one firm hand on Alenia's shoulder.

"I know," she said softly, and Alenia knew she really did know because Dawson was perfect. Purely on instinct Alenia melted into Dawson's chest, throwing her arms around the bigger figure's midsection. To her perpetually spiraling joy Dawson's other hand came up to the back of Alenia's head, feeling over her ears and across the shaved side of her head. The elf shivered when the fingertips brushed over her datajack.

"I know you feel safer when I'm here," she continued, "But I can't detect things if I don't go outside. And doing this will make it safe for you to leave."

Alenia forced herself in deeper. I'm never gonna leave! she thought defiantly. I'm gonna climb in your lap and live in it forever! Wait and see!

"What if you get hurt?" she murmured plaintively.

"I was doing this long before I pulled that cord out of your head," Dawson assured her. All Alenia could think of is who would have saved her if Dawson had gotten geeked a long time ago. But beneath that, Alenia had an immediately exhausting realization that this was what Dawson was protecting people from by being distant. Yes, she might not come back, and then someone close to her would be alone. Alenia would be alone. She and her dreams of a better life for her and her friends would be broken, like one of those old relics someone finds in a dumpster and tosses away without a second thought.

"Now let go of me," Dawson said patiently.

"No," Alenia said decisively.

"Fine," Dawson said. Without any difficulty she swept the elf up into her arms and turned towards the stairs. Alenia could do nothing but hang on around the human's neck as she was taken up to the bed where Dawson gently set her down among the blankets they'd been beneath together not too long ago.

Having the woman's arm underneath her knees was not so far from having Dawson's hand touch her pussy and Alenia felt like relieving herself right there on the bed. Her desire was amplified considerably when Dawson took the side of her head in one palm, held her still and rubbed her nose into Alenia's hair, audibly breathing in while she did so. Ahh... she.. She likes my smell... I'm gonna die...

Getting nuzzled went a long way towards making sure the only part of Alenia that was active was her hammering heart and allowed Dawson to disengage successfully. Even when she was acting on Alenia's suggestions through Impulse Control, Dawson knew exactly how to handle her. Alenia would soon be a victim of her own success, and it was the best thing she could imagine.

Her pleasure started to subside--slowly--when she saw that Dawson was changing into street clothes. A button-up white shirt, fitted blue slacks and a belt that all together managed to slim down Dawson's profile considerably, and she knew from personal experience that once the black trench coat and her wide-brimmed hat were put on over it Dawson would look equal parts commanding, intimidating, mysterious and capable. People would see the hat, and the gun, and the level grey eyes and they would know she was not to be fucked with.

But Alenia knew the touch of her lips and the feel of her fingertips. She knew that beneath the surface was a wellspring of essence in need of someone to absorb her affections like the heat sink in a delta-tier cyberdeck. Alenia would be the sink; she would bask in the heat and the ultra-sweet things Dawson had to offer. It would only be for her... and for a few of her friends, sometimes.

Once she was dressed, Dawson fixed her with a steady gaze. "Stay inside," she instructed. Alenia found herself nodding, mouth open slightly. "I don't know how long I'll be gone. There's something in the fridge you can cook in the microwave." She nodded again, fully receptive to these edicts.

"Consider a shower," Dawson said, prompting the elf to scowl.

"No way," she said petulantly. "Come make me."

"I just might," Dawson said, lifting her brows. Alenia shuddered into a puddle in the bed. She kept forgetting that their closeness was something Dawson thought of as normal. Well things are gonna get a lot more normal after tonight, razorgirl.

She watched from the stairs as Dawson collected her coat and hat from the rack by the door and her gun from the small wall safe next to the fridge. She looked up and said, "I'll be back soon," with such confidence that in the moment Alenia believed it was true. Yet the moment the door shut behind her and the bars shifted back in place to lock it, Alenia felt pitifully touch-starved and frightened. She should have been kicking back, eating Dawson's food, surfing the matrix on her brand new Gungir and sticking her bare ass on the window at cars driving by.

But all she wanted was for Dawson to return and hold her again. Alenia recalled everything Dawson had said abou what was happening, and one word stuck out: drone. Lone Star had a drone in the vicinity of where Dawson would be going, and Alenia had a Gungir. Their tech wouldn't be able to keep her out, at least not until a demiGOD took notice and ejected her.

She'd never hacked any starware before but Alenia was confident she could mask her locale and keep tabs on Dawson while she chased after the norm from Humanis.

And... and do something, if she could. Maybe the drone would have a gun on it or something, and while she couldn't shoot for much on her own, Alenia knew how targeting algorithms worked. At best she could fly the thing into someone's head and give Dawson an edge. At worst... well, at worst she'd watch Dawson get shot and bleed to death.

If they both lived through this mess, Dawson would be in for a major career change...

= = =

San Francisco during the day wasn't much friendlier than it was at night. Indeed it seemed the presence of the sun did nothing but drive most denizens indoors, if the countless derelict apartment buildings could be considered indoors: many of them were half-burned or half-collapsed from bombings and firefights that had happenedduring the occupation years which no one had bothered to go about fixing.

But still, people were living here. Desperate people, doing what they had to in order to survive. Humans, elves, orks, trolls, dwarves and even a few awakened animals from time to time. Rumor was it a naga was living on a playground somewhere on the southeast side and gave children a ride in exchange for a piece of candy.

Dawson's Firebird cruised slowly up to a collection of only partly dressed figures lined up on the main wall of an abandoned simsense theater, congregating beneath the rusted awning that kept them out of the California Free State sun. The racial makeup of the prostitutes had no clear majority, either in race or gender. Some were women, some were men, some looked like they could have whatever you wanted to pay them to have. Poverty: a great equalizer, second only to death. And rumor had the megacorps were always working on a way to cheat that, too.

She came to a stop by the curb with her driver's side window lowered. The nearest figure pushed themselves off the wall, an ork that was almost assuredly male wearing a blonde wig and a red dress that Dawson had to admit really played up his rough edges. He took his time walking towards her and didn't waste too much time on strutting: she was well-known in San Fran and not as a customer.

He put his hands on the top of the Firebird's gullwing door. She wasn't worried about prints; his hands were probably cleaner than hers.

"What chu want, señora?" the ork said, voice unexpectedly high. "You ain't here to pay, you ain't here to play, comprender?"

Dawson looked at the ork steadily from beneath the brim of her hat, left hand set in front of her face, fingers concealing her chin. She asked, "Has anyone from Humanis been on this block today?"

The ork snorted dismissively. "Humanis don't come 'round here when da sun is up, señora. Dey wait 'till dark when no one gonna see what they pay me to do to them, si?"

Dawson regarded him for a moment, scanned her eyes up the street to get a quick head count and then reached down with her right hand into the open console. She came up with nine silver dollars, thin chips with the Lone Star logo printed onto one side. Anyone could bring them to a precinct building and trade them for value loaded on a credstick, about 80 nuyen this year. As scrip it wasn't as fluid as real currency but it would feed someone for a few days if they were frugal. And people on the street got real creative with their resources.

"Get everyone off this street by sundown," she told the ork quietly.

He looked at her with a suddenly serious expression, sparing a glance down at his hand to make sure he caught all the chips. "Sometin' gonna happen, señora?"

"I hope it won't," Dawson said, "But my hopes and three nuyen will get you a cup of soykaf."

He backed away and she pulled off from the curb slowly. A speck appeared in her rear-view mirror for a moment, hovering in full view for just a moment before whirring off over a building. That was the fifth time she'd seen the same drone and she wondered if Lone Star was monitoring her. That was unusual; Sokoth knew enough to keep his distance and let her work. Drones floating nearby made people reluctant to ask questions, thinking they were being recorded so as to implicate them in a crime they'd merely heard about through the grapevine.

Her next stop was a squat one-story building on a patchy brown-and-yellow field. It might once have been a school or something similar but now its purpose was made clear by the more recently installed electric sign declaring that it was the Humanis Policlub Meeting Center - Chapter 484. It looked less like a meeting center and more like a fortress, with a lookout post on the roof and a hastily erected guard-box at what was previously just the street inlet into the parking lot.

Staffing that guard box was two young men and a woman, all human. One had a shaved head, another a mohawk that looked to be spray-painted neon green. The third had a tattoo on their forehead of the Humanis logo.

They didn't take notice when Dawson parked across the street and got out, but immediately saw her when she began walking towards them, hands in her pockets. The woman, the one with the mohawk, slapped the bald one in the chest with her open palm to get his attention, then punched the third in the shoulder, causing him to look in Dawson's direction with an expression of non-comprehension.

She made it onto the sidewalk before Mohawk called out at her. "What do you want?" The hostility in her voice was as obvious as the metal ring in her left nostril.

"Maybe she wants to join up," Balide suggested. The corners of his mouth curled up in a way that suggested all the paperwork could be done on-site, right behind the shabby guard-shack.

"She looks like a star," Tattoo muttered. Dawson chose that moment to speak.

"I'm looking for Jason Pickers," she said plainly. The three exchanged glances and then Mohawk spoke.

"What for?"

"To talk to him."

Tattoo huffed. "About what?"

"A few things, including an investigation."

Baldie regarded her balefully. "You gonna arrest him?"

"If I was here to arrest him I'd have come with a van full of heavies," Dawson said calmly. "Is he here?"

Mohawk crossed her arms and sneered. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"That's why I asked."

A malicious grin told her that Tattoo didn't get many opportunities to say things like what came next. "Mister Pickers is out on important business. You're gonna have to make an appointment."

"Fine," Dawson said, looking at him directly. "Tell him Impulse Dawson wants to talk to him. Just talk."

Like most low-level goons, Tattoo didn't know what to do when given a task that actually appeared to be important so instead he just stammered until Baldie spoke on his behalf.

"And what's in this for us?" he inquired, clearly pleased with finding a way to not only deflect their assigned responsibility of minding the entrance of their compound but imply they needed to be bribed in order to do what was ostensibly their job. But Dawson didn't miss a beat.

From her pocket she pulled a single silver dollar and flipped it with her thumb up into the air. The circuitry on the back caught the light of the setting sun, which alternately reflected off of that and the Lone Star logo on the other side. Dawson turned away without waiting to see where it landed or who reached for it. "That's for whoever tells him," she said to the air.

Someone made a swipe for the chip in the air and hit someone else's arm in the process, and then someone ended up falling down. As much as Humanis members liked to assert their superiority, poverty equalized them as effectively as it did any ork or elf.

As Dawson got back into the Firebird, she thought of Alenia waiting back at her apartment, no doubt eager for word that it was safe for her to return to her gang. She wondered if the decker would object to Dawson checking up on her every few days, seeing if she and her friends were eating. On average members of the Ancients tended to be even worse off than hookers and Humanis henchmen. The fragility of elves did not lend itself well to high-speed cycle jousts on the interstates and back alley melees where chains and knives would be swung and thrown with gusto.

The sight of the drone in the rear-view drew Dawson's eye again. Same drone, same pattern: zoom in to view, spy a look at the Firebird and then zoom off. She thought about contacting Sokoth and getting him to back down, but the more she thought about what might be coming, the better the idea sounded of some patrol cars being on the way.

She took off down the road, heading for the haunt of a dwarf street vendor who had a pretty decent soykaf machine on the back of his cart, and on top of that real soy-ketchup.

= = =

Two hours after sundown Dawson steered the Firebird back along the street towards the Humanis meeting center with her lights off. Painted black, the car at night became little more than a shape on a road; outside Silicon valley and a few other affluent places, street lights were a rarity. She dialed down the console and watched for beams on the road past the building. During this time Dawson checked her glovebox to make sure her Beretta 201T was still where it belonged, unloaded but with a clip next to it. With luck she wouldn't have to look at it again tonight.

Her patience was rewarded ten minutes later. An older car pulled up outside the building, driven by a brawny Humanis thug who put it in park to allow two people to get out of the rear seat. One of them was a scrawny man with a mop of dirty red hair, wearing one of the goofy white robes Humanis was so fond of.

The other was dressed more practically in a tactical sleeveless vest, a knife in a sheath on his leg and on his hip a holstered Ares Predator V. Even after all this time, Pickers still had brand loyalty. His crew-cut hair and clean-shaven face were at odds with the obnoxious scorpion that he'd gotten painted on his face, the body of the insect perched on his cheek and the tail curling around his left eye. Even after all this time, he still had terrible taste in tattoos.

He and his cohort were heading inside, and Dawson pressed the key to open up the driver's side wing. She got out and stepped around to the front of the car before calling his name.

"Pickers!"

The single word echoed down the dark, empty street far further than was necessary to reach him. The man in the robe flinched mightily and began scrambling for something he had stuck in his sleeves. Pickers just turned slowly towards the sound of her voice. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he took a few steps forward before calling back.

"Dawson?"

The sound of the door of the car opening up was followed by some hurried words from the robed Humanis member; the driver was looking in her direction and seemed to be about to get out when Pickers lifted one arm to keep him still. The one in the robe squawked something in protest but Pickers just raised his arm again to silence him, more sternly this time. He said something to them, probably telling them to stay there, and then started walking in her direction. It seemed he was willing to talk.

Before he could get across the road, the screeching of tires sounded from far up the street in the same direction Pickers' car had come. A pair of pick-up trucks appeared from around the corner, both of them sporting the scrap metal battering-ram horns and deep red headlights associated with the Bloody Tusks.

Pickers shouted, "Drek!" and sprinted back across the road to his car. He pulled the rear passenger door open and dove in, followed quickly by the man in the robe and frantic gestures of his arm indicated he was telling the driver to step on it.

"Damn it," Dawson said under her breath. She hurried back around the front of the Firebird and slid into the driver's seat, starting the car back up and turning on the lights. Pickers' vehicle, an aging Toyota tercel, was just getting moving when the first truck blazed by. From the bed an ork in full war paint aimed a bolted-down harpoon gun at the Toyata and bellowed a warbling cry before pulling the trigger. The sharpened projectile punched in to the center of the rear door; based on the way Pickers lurched away the moment before, it didn't stick him. He reached through the open window with his knife and immediately sawed through the rope before the truck could take the tercel with it.

The white-and-rust vehicle took off as the driver hit the accelerator, screaming past the first tusk truck and down the long street with the orks in hot pursuit. As Dawson burned a U-turn to get faced the right way she saw the second truck coming up in her rear-view at ramming speed. With a swift wrench of the wheel to the right she made the Firebird dodge the impact, sending the orks in front of her on the street.

Try as she might Dawson couldn't get back ahead of them; the Firebird clearly had more speed but the street wasn't wide enough to let her get by the gaudy rust-bucket with its driver trying to stay ahead of her. To the left was the property wall of the meeting post and to the right was an embankment leading to a muddy creek, effectively keeping her boxed in.

The ork in the bed aimed his harpoon gun at the Firebird's driver's side and fired. The crudely forged projectile bounced off the ballistic glass without so much as a chip, falling away into the street and shedding sparks for five seconds before the heat burned off the rope and left the glowing metal behind.

While the gunner reloaded the driver decided to try to use his truck's weight to force Dawson off the road and onto the embankment. He decelerated slightly and veered to the left, waiting for the Firebird to pull ahead so he could veer back to the right and ram it from the side.

When she pulled ahead, Dawson opened the driver's side gullwing door. She drew her Ares Accelerator Mk I with her left hand and stuck the barrel between her legs so she could use the same hand to dial it up to medium velocity. Then she pointed it towards the truck's front and pulled the trigger.

A solid steel rod nearly a foot in length, tipped with a round silicone head to reduce penetration, flew out of the barrel with no flash or report aside from a swift shinkt. Even with the cushioning, medium velocity gave it enough power to pierce the truck's exterior plating but not enough to carry all the way through. It lodged into the engine, which disagreed heartily with the addition of a new piston and promptly locked up. A flash of sparks and the screech of grinding metal followed, then smoke and the complete hemorrhaging of all the truck's oil on the road below.