THE PIANO by Elszy

John watched Valerie taking place behind the grand piano in the room. She flexed her slender fingers, which almost seemed a representation of her entire frame. Undoubtedly, she was a beautiful woman and he felt attracted to her. Before he had returned to the bureau after two years of absence, he had never met Valerie Stahl and he had to admit, although at first he thought she was just another pretty face, she had something. It had been a long time ago that he had felt so much for anyone. He felt protective of Captain Maldonado en Rudy and hell yeah, even that dickhead Richard, but Valerie appealed to a much deeper feeling inside. He turned a clumsy, stuttering fool around her. Like a teenager with a crush.

Face it John. You like her. A lot.

After he had his mind probed by a recollectionist, when he realized that he had seen his former girlfriend being part of the ambush team that caused him to lose his leg, he had finally come to terms with the fact that Anna Moore had left him.

That she had betrayed him, was a different matter which he was not likely to forgive and forget. He still couldn't get his mind around it why she would betray him the way she did. Had she expected him to die out there? Why? Often, at night, when he dreamt, he saw himself lying in a pool of blood and gore, his leg gone. It had completely disappeared. And always, when he woke up during or after such a dream, he frantically searched for a leg that was no longer there. In the deepest hour of the night despair always hit him in the face: it wasn't a dream. It was real, he had lost his leg and it had been replaced by the very thing he loathed: artificial stuff.

He had not expected to grow accustomed to the leg. It still didn't feel like his own and he knew it would never be the same as the real thing, but he knew that without this artificial leg he would not have been back to work at all, and he would not have met Valerie. Or Dorian, for that matter.

And now he was here – watching her as she placed her elegant hands over the keys. He had expected a slightly romantic, dreamy tune that would come from the keys when she touched them. The song she'd play would match her voice, which was feminine and light and sometimes carried a sense of hidden amusement. There was always an undertone of friendly mockery in the way she spoke. He was surprised by the amount of respect she showed Dorian, despite him being a robot. But right now, he was baffled when she started playing and hammered down on the keys with so much force that it looked as if she was about to smash the piano to pieces.

There was nothing romantic in which he played. It was hard rock 'n' roll, the good old stuff, and almost seamlessly turned into a sturdy upbeat song, which then got a raw and tough undertone. His eyes thwarted from her fingers to her face. There was a different Valerie at work. Her usually so gentle eyes were hidden behind long hair that had fallen over her face and hid her expression. John forgot that he was holding a drink. The glass hung in midair as he stared at the way she attacked the piano.

He was hypnotized by her and couldn't do anything else but watch her, while she played the piano as if she was wringing the notes directly from the snares. Valerie had a lot of hidden sides, that much was sure. He hadn't expected her to like soccer nor had he expected her to play piano. And even if he had known she did, he would never have guessed that she liked this hardrock stuff.

He was definitely attracted to Valerie, although he would not quickly admit that to Dorian, even though the DRN had already noticed and stated out loud that his vitals were changing when Valerie was around. It was quite difficult for himself to admit that he liked Dorian who was so different from the MXs in the bureau, that it had almost been a relief to be working with him. Fair enough, Dorian still needed to learn a lot. Like, not putting your finger in your partner's coffee, or checking out arousal in your partner, or constantly scanning your partner's vitals. But apart from that he had to admit the Dorian was good company. He was quick on the uptake, and he had a lot of humanity in him, much more than some of his human colleagues had. Surprising too. He had seen Dorian being puzzled about pasts and birthplaces, about childhood and such things. Like the case of the sexbots, and one was decommissioned. He had seen the DRN ponder on matters of life, just as curious and thoughtful as any other human. Sad even. Yup. He wouldn't say it out loud - not in a million years - but Dorian was not the worst that could have happened to him. In fact, he was glad Dorian was around most of the time.

But now he was a lot happier that Dorian was nowhere in the vicinity. The robot was in his charging cell, and was not likely to appear before tomorrow morning. Which was a good thing, since he had a date with Valerie and he was very happy to be alone with her. The last thing he needed was a droid checking out his genitals and publicly announcing the state they were in.

Valerie turned the volume of the digital piano music up a notch or two. It started to lose a bit of its appeal. In fact, it got rather noisy.

Suddenly he noticed that the her nails were red and shiny, reminding him of oddly of fresh blood. She must have put the nail polish on for this date because he could not remember ever having seen her wear nail polish. At least not this kind of bright red. Fingers attacked the keys with even more force and with a distinct cracking sound one of her nails broke. But she didn't stop.

'Valerie,' John said in a loud voice while putting his glass down, 'Shouldn't you ease down on the piano a bit? You'll break the thing if you go on like this.'

But Valerie didn't stop and John gazed at her, mesmerized by the striking speed in which her fingers ran over the black and white of the piano. And then he saw blood on one of the keys. Just a few drops to start with but soon there was a lot more. There was something wrong!

'Valerie! Stop!' John jumped up and threw his glass aside. It shattered on the floor in tiny, glistening pieces of glass and left a liquid spray of gold on the the tiles. John didn't notice. Where it came from he didn't see, but when he grabbed Valerie's arm to stop her from playing, the entire piano was covered in blood. With a jerk from her head she looked up at him, eyes no longer bright and welcoming but cold, distant and scary. She bared her teeth like an angry, dangerous dog.

'What the...' John had no time to think.

With a cry and howl she jumped up from the piano stool, hit him rock hard in his chest, kicked at his leg – his human leg which was the most vulnerable of the two – and suddenly clawed at his throat, using those un-Valerie-like nails to aim for the jugular. He could barely hold onto her wrists as she tried to bury her claws into his neck. And then she seemed to go after his eyes, to scratch them out. She raised her leg, tried to hit him in the crotch with her knee but he jumped back and avoided the painful confrontation.

'Valerie! Stop!' he panted. Where her hand had collided with his ribcage he could feel a bruise appearing.

This was a nightmare! What was going on? What was wrong with her? She fought like a tiger, strong and relentless, and she didn't look like she was going to let him go. Her foot hit his knee hard, and this time he wasn't able to escape her. His leg gave way and he lost his balance, while something in his knee snapped audibly and stars of pain clouded his vision.

'Valerie!'

But there was no stopping her. She seemed determined to end his life here, now, once and for all. Out of nowhere she produced a knife, blinking and shining in the dim light overhead. John wiggled backwards on his buttocks. Something was wrong with his artificial leg now. He couldn't move it, and the heavy limb had turned into an obstacle rather than helping aid. Valerie was coming closer, her hand holding the knife, her eyes dark and empty, having lost all sense of emotion.

This is real, but that's not Valerie, John realized. This is someone using face technology to make me think that she's attacking me, this is someone who is trying to kill me and make me believe it's her. But this is not Valerie.

The next thing he knew was that knife flashed through the sky only millimeters from his face. Then a short flash and he felt the knife grazing his cheekbone. A thin trickle of blood ran down his face, he could feel the warmth on this clammy skin.

His gun! Where was it? In a frenzy, he patted his chest and his hips, searching for it but of course he wasn't wearing a gun. That was not something you wore when you went on a date with a nice girl.

His hand searched for something to hold onto, to use as a club and hit this Valerie–ish like creature. Maybe it was a robot as well. And he hadn't even noticed. That would account for the uncanny performance that he had witnessed. He wasn't even sure that humans could play the piano that fast, and that loud, with that much force.

It is surprising how little you find on the floor when you need something in a hurry. All that John could see when he was sitting on the ground, while his mind raced through the limited possibilities, were chairs and tables. There was nothing that he could use to defend himself with. Just as Valerie was about to lash out at him again and probably send him to the hereafter for ever, he found something and grabbed it.

As hard as he could, he swung his arm around and let go of the projectile he had just found.

'John! What are you doing, man?'

Dorian?

'Wake up John. It's me, Dorian. You were having a bad dream.'

'Dorian…?' But, where was Valerie? He had been fighting Valerie, not Dorian! He had thrown a beer bottle at her, not at his partner.

'Dorian?' he stammered, his mouth dry, his head pounding and the distinct feeling of nausea rising up inside of him.

With a jolt he touched his good leg, which was fine. He groped for the sensitive stump of his other leg. That too, was unchanged. The artificial leg – well, that was as ever. It was still there, as always: irritating and unnatural, but necessary. Before he had crashed onto his bed, he should have taken it off and put it in the charger but he been too knackered to do so. He usually didn't sleep with the fake leg still attached.

'Here, drink this,' said Dorian and handed him a glass of water. 'You don't look too good man. That must have been a hell of a dream.' The DRM eyed John curiously, but was sensible enough not to push any further.

John gulped the water down and rubbed his face. A thin sheet of sweat had formed on his forehead, and it wasn't until now that he realized he had been dreaming. That was a bad dream indeed. Valerie? A robot? A murdering machine?

Dorian sat down on the chair next to him and eyed him intently. 'Are you alright now, John?' He asked.

'Yeah, yeah,' John muttered with a sense of embarrassment and he waved his hand to put an end to Dorians gaze.

'Bad dream?' Dorian insisted.

'Yeah, bad dream.'

'What did you dream about?'

John hesitated for a second, then answered truthfully: 'About a girl. No, not a girl, a woman.'

'Did you dream about the ambush and your girlfriend Anna Moore?' inquired the DRN. He didn't sound impertinent at all. In fact, he sounded what John could only describe as concerned.

He shook his head. 'No.'

Dorian processed John's answer before he said: 'I thought that dreaming of women usually meant good things. I am intrigued by the concept of dreaming. It is not something I will ever experience.' He squinted his eyes a little bit, and the blue lines in his face lit up for a second. Then he asked: 'Did you lose your leg in your dream?'

'Let it go, Dorian.'

'Did you dream about detective Stahl?'

'That's none of your business,' John grunted.

'I take that as a yes,' Dorian said and did no effort to hide a little smile that surrounded the corners of his mouth.

'Oh, shut up,' sighed John.

He met Valerie in the hallway of the police station where she stood and read the bulletins on an electronic board near the cloak room. She seemed to be in deep thought but when he approached, she looked up and smiled at him. 'Hello detective Kennex', she nodded.

'Good morning, detective Stahl,' said John and tried to produce his most charming smile, hoping he didn't look like a complete idiot.

'Are you alright?' asked Valerie. 'You look... different.' She looked at him with such an inquisitive look in her eyes, that it was almost as if she was scrutinizing him. It was difficult for John to hide his discomfort. Telling a colleague she was the mad Nemesis in his haunted dream was probably not the best way to start the day.

'Can I ask you a question? Do you play the piano?'

'No,' Valerie answered with a little smile and a touch of amusement in her eyes.

'You don't?'

'No,' she repeated. 'But, I did have piano lessons many years ago. When I was a child I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, and playing the piano was mandatory in a girl's upbringing, according to her. So, she arranged for me to have piano lessons on the digital piano that sat in the corner of her room.' Valerie laughed. 'I was terrible at it. After a year or so, the teacher told my grandmother there was no way I would ever learn to play the piano, no matter how hard I tried. The teacher made me play one song. Nearly gave my grandmother a heart attack. She had never heard me play because I always made sure I was wearing the headphones.

Anyway, that was probably the worst short piano recital ever performed by a 10-year-old. After that I quit piano lessons.' She laughed and John laughed too. My god, you're fantastic.

'Come to think of it - I like the saxophone more than the piano. It's a shame my grandmother didn't make me play that.'

'You'd probably rock that,' John said and kicked himself inwardly. What the hell am I saying?

But she laughed and John did too.

'You're staring,' she said with a smile.

'No… errr… no, not at all… I mean… errr… yeah, I better get to work,' he hastily said and then gestured upstairs where Maldonado awaited him.

Just before the two parted, Valerie stopped him. 'Are you sure you are alright?'

'Yeah, fine,' said John, his cheeks flushing. For a second there was a bubble engulfing the two of them, a sort of vacuum in which John would have liked to hold her and pull her close. Kiss her too. Their eyes locked. The bureau faded to the background.

'Detective Stahl? There is a conference call for you in room 212.' An MX popped up.

Piss off, John thought, but the moment was gone. Valerie nodded, turned around on her heels and followed the MX. She cast a glance over her shoulder once, flashed him a smile and disappeared in the catacombs of the building. John sighed and went to his station.

Much to his annoyance he saw Dorian sitting at his desk, with a broad grin on his face.

'What do you want?' he said, not trying to hide his irritation.

'I am merely observing the way you try to avoid her knowing that you dreamt about her. There are some perfectly legitimate reasons and explanations for your dreams. You must have overheard that she played the piano when she was a child and incorporated this into your...

'Shut up, Dorian,' said John. He lowered himself into the chair. She likes saxophone music, he thought before the routine of the day kicked in. Just a few minutes later he received a message on his phone. ASK HER OUT. Dorian pretended to be busy, scanning through a bunch of files. He only looked up once. He was a DRM, but he was alright. For a DRM.

And another. SHE'LL LIKE THAT. AND IT'S GOOD FOR YOU.

'You think so?' John muttered below his breath.

Dorian looked up from his work, met his gaze and nodded. John easily forgot how sharp the DRM's hearing was. But if Dorian would ever tell Valerie that John dreamt about her, he'd have him decommissioned. No matter what.

THE END

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