ONE YEAR AFTER THE BATTLE FOR WASHINGTON, DC - THE PRESENT DAY
(Immediately precedes the events of Chapter 1)
In lower Manhattan, deep in the bowels of the enormous Cobra fortress, a small team of Tele-Vipers lazily lounged in their security station. The supercomputers concentrated in the basement of the Cobra fortress constantly monitored the security of the main computer servers as well as their internet connections throughout the world.
One of the Tele-Vipers, taking a break from his issue of Playboy long enough to run his routine diagnostic tests on the Cobra server named Anaconda, was the first to notice the internet intrusion.
"Hey," he said, turning to the other four Tele-Vipers, who were huddled around a small table playing Hearts, "we have an online intrusion."
"What is the source," a second Tele-Viper inquired as he came up to the first Tele-Viper's station and watched on the monitor as it displayed the running log of top secret security files the intruder had already accessed and downloaded.
"Unknown," the first Tele-Viper answered. He was running a tracing program at the moment.
"This guy has rerouted his IP address through at least a dozen different servers all over the world."
"Son of a bitch is good."
"Yeah, no shit."
"Could this be G.I. JOE?"
"Yeah, gotta be."
"How long until we can get a full trace?"
"Two minutes."
"Let me handle this," the second Tele-Viper ordered. "I spent high school hacking into credit card company servers. This is nothing."
"Be my guest, pal."
"The intruder is in the city. Alert Commander Zartan and have his police standing by to move immediately once we get an exact location."
"Yes, sir!"
"Come on, you little bitch, come on. Almost got you."
* * *
Mainframe paced nervously around the small apartment room as he watched Dial Tone hack into the Cobra mainframe.
"Jesus, will you hurry it up, they've almost got us," Mainframe cried as he watched the monitor screen show their safeguards being penetrated, one by one. By now, Cobra had figured out that their IP address did NOT originate from the Ukraine, Germany, France, Nigeria, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Idaho, or Montana. By now, Cobra knew that they were in New York City. In a matter of seconds, Cobra would refine the trace and discover that they were located in Brooklyn, just over the Brooklyn Bridge, snooping through their secret files under their very noses. It wouldn't be long before Cobra would discover the exact physical address, right down to what room they were sitting in. Then they would be in a world of shit.
"Easy, Mainframe," Dial Tone said as he popped a wad of gum into his mouth. "Even if they pinpoint us, they still have to haul ass over here before we finish downloading."
Mainframe hastily began packing their gear into their backpacks. He checked his pistol and made sure he had plenty of spare clips. Satisfied, Mainframe stuffed the pistol into his belt.
"Our safeguards are failing faster than we anticipated," Mainframe said. "Whoever's tracing us knows his shit. How much left do we have to download?"
"A lot of shit, Mainframe," Dial Tone said grimly. "A lot of shit. But we can't abort now. We go all the way. That's the plan. You know damn well we won't get another chance like this to hack into Cobra again. They'd come back with a firewall more massive than the Great Wall of China. You know how much we need this information. Can't do a damn thing without it."
Flint was planning a major strike against Cobra, the first coordinated attack against the enemy in an entire year. Underground forces scattered across the eastern seaboard would come together in a desperate operation, under Flint's leadership. Flint and Lady Jaye were still in Philadelphia, planning more attacks against Cobra with other G.I. JOE members along the mid-Atlantic coast, but they would soon be arriving in New York to rejoin Beach Head's group. Beach Head's group consisted of Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Low-Light, Steeler, and Cover Girl.
But first, they needed to get these top secret files, which would hopefully reveal the location of every Cobra base, along with the movements of Cobra Commander and information on his secret weapons programs. Those weapons had already killed many good Joes.
* * *
At this very moment, a Cobra FANG chopper carrying Zarana, Buzzer, Ripper, and Torch was flying low over Brooklyn, rapidly converging on the source of the hacking invasion. Zarana piloted the chopper while the Dreadnoks steadied themselves on the landing bars. They were all dressed in the sleek black uniform of the Cobra Police Force. The Dreadnoks were eager for blood. They were vultures ready for a long delayed feast. It had been a while since they had last had the opportunity to kill Joes, and they were excited. The thrill of killing was almost as great as the thrill of sex. As Zarana listened on her headset for further instructions from the Tele- Viper tracing the hacker, she frowned. Her heart was troubled. Somehow, she sensed that this night would not turn out well at all. A computer hacker, possibly G.I. JOE-could Mainframe be involved?
Something terrible is going to happen today, Zarana thought to herself.
Mainframe, please let it not be you, Zarana silently pleaded as she briefly placed a hand over rapidly beating heart.
"We have them," the Tele-Viper announced over the radio.
"Where?" Zarana demanded.
The Tele-Viper paused to check out a real-time satellite surveillance image and use GPS to find Zarana's chopper. He relayed his coordinates to Zarana.
Within moments, the chopper landed on the roof of the suspected apartment building, and all four Cobras jumped off and headed for the stairwell. Their weapons were primed for murder.
* * *
"Did you hear that?" Mainframe said, poking his head out of the window and listening for the Cobra chopper.
"They're here, I know," Dial Tone said.
"Well?" Mainframe cried urgently.
"Got it," Dial Tone said triumphantly as he pulled out the CD from his laptop, the CD containing all the illicit information he had just downloaded off the Cobra network. Mainframe took the CD from Dial Tone and stuffed it into a side pocket in his pants.
"Then let's get the hell out of here!"
At that very instant, the two Joes heard the sound of their front door being broken down. Mainframe looked toward the open window. The curtains blew outward in the wind. A fire escape stairway led to the street from a height of five stories. The enemy would be here within instants. There was no other choice.
"Quick!" Mainframe cried as he led Dial Tone out of their apartment.
Buzzer, the Dreadnok in the lead, ran for the open window in the living room.
He stuck his head out of the window and spotted the two Joes climbing down the fire escape, one level below him. One of them, Dial Tone, looked up, and his eyes met Buzzer's for an instant. Buzzer, enraged, pulled out his pistol and fired three shots. All of them ricocheted off of the steel bars of the fire escape ladder and stairway, missing their targets completely.
"Curses!" Buzzer hollered furiously as Zarana, Ripper, and Torch joined him at the window. Already the Joes had made it two levels down.
Zarana grabbed Buzzer's arm and squeezed it in a vise grip.
"I want them taken alive!" she declared.
Buzzer smiled at his superior with an air of condescension and scorn. Zarana made a mental note to beat the shit out of him on the slightest pretext.
"Come on, let's go down the other way!" shouted Zarana as she ordered the Dreadnoks out of the apartment and down the stairwell, hoping to beat the Joes to the street level.
Zarana and the Dreadnoks huffed and puffed down the stairwell. They practically bowled down the bottom door and fell over themselves running for the front entrance. Buzzer was the first to burst out of the building and frantically scan the area for the fleeing Joes. He saw them just as they reached the end of the block and ducked into a narrow street on the right. He turned and searched the cars stopped at the red light on the street, and he smiled at the sight of a rider on a black Harley Davidson motorcycle. Serendipity! Just the ticket, Buzzer thought to himself happily.
Buzzer pointed to his comrades.
"They turned into that alley. Follow them, I'll swing around and cut them off!"
Buzzer pulled out his pistol and shot the man on the motorcycle, causing him to fall off of his bike, onto the street. Buzzer ran to the bike and hopped on.
"Official police business!" he shouted at the man who lay dying on the pavement.
With a primal howl of excitement, Buzzer revved up the bike and raced in a direction opposite to Zarana, cutting and weaving through the vehicles like a madman. Zarana scowled in disgust as she turned to give chase to the Joes. Zarana, Ripper, and Torch reached the end of the block and turned, nearly slipping in the cold, wet pavement. Zarana could only see two shadows fifty yards ahead of her.
There was a loud roar of a motorcycle engine at the end of the block, followed by a squeal of tires and two gunshots, which rang out like loud claps of thunder throughout the narrow alley. Zarana and the other two Dreadnoks halted in their steps. The two fleeing figures in the distance were now still, lying in the street.
Zarana was enraged. Didn't she explicitly order Buzzer to take the two Joes alive? She got no respect from these stupid motorcycle riding, grape soda-drinking gangsters. It pissed her off to no end. And Zartan was too busy to care about whether or not his henchmen paid his sister the proper respect.
At the end of the alleyway, Buzzer hopped off his bike and holstered his handgun. Zarana, Ripper, and Torch ran out to meet him and the two fallen Joes.
It began to rain hard now, and the dark side street was briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning.
"Hey everyone, check this shit out!" Buzzer hollered with glee.
"You rotten son of a bitch!" Zarana screamed emphatically. "I TOLD you I wanted them taken ALIVE!"
Ripper turned the Joes over onto their backs, so the Dreadnoks could see their faces. Zarana's stomach sank right down to her shoes as she saw Mainframe and Dial Tone lying on the street.
Mainframe, Zarana said silently to herself. He had been shot in the shoulder and looked dazed.
"Oh, they're still alive, don't worry about that none, dearest Zarana" Buzzer said with a tone of mock saccharine sweetness. "Although one of them won't be, in a minute."
Buzzer pointed to Dial Tone, who writhed in agony on the pavement, clutching his shot neck, trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his severed carotid artery. Blood sputtered out of his mouth as well. It appeared as if Dial Tone was trying to say something. Whatever he was trying to say, no one would ever know. He was on the launch pad to death. Zarana shut her eyes and turned her head from the sight.
If it had been Mainframe with blood pouring out of his neck, instead of poor Dial Tone, Zarana did not know what she would do. Her world would collapse. Life would lose all meaning. Since the great battle of Washington, DC, when the forces of G.I. JOE had been defeated in open battle, Zarana had taken heart from the knowledge that Mainframe had not been killed. So many Joes had perished, but Mainframe had been plucky enough to escape Cobra's dragnet. She had always cherished in her heart a dream of reuniting with Mainframe. The dream remained alive, nourished and sustained by the faintest of hopes.
Now, Zarana and Mainframe locked eyes in a brief moment of understanding. Zarana had never forgotten the way Mainframe had kissed her. He had kissed her, and then she had zapped him. But the kiss had stayed with her, haunting her. No one had ever kissed her like that, with that kind of tenderness and gentleness and warmth. She often thought about him, during those long sleepless hours in her bed at night. In those hours, Zarana dreamed that Mainframe was with her, holding her in his arms, kissing her the way he had kissed her on that fateful night. She wanted him to kiss her on her lips, her cheek, her neck, the hollow of her throat, the curve of her breasts, the sensitive tips of her nipples, her smooth navel, her groin, the tender insides of her thighs. She fantasized of him kissing her like that from head to toe, all the way down, paying homage to her body. When a warm breeze blew in through the open window, caressing her naked body, she imagined that it was Mainframe caressing her. Her body was drawn like a magnet to his. Her soul was drawn as well to the gentleness and the caring that she remembered in his eyes. Even when they had met for the last time, and Mainframe had been a helpless child of seven, and she had given him the formula to reverse the de-aging, Zarana remembered the way he had looked at her. His eyes had told her that he remembered as well their brief kiss, so long ago. Those eyes told her of the long nights he, too, had lain in bed, thinking of her, wanting to know every little thing there was to know about her, wanting to share his life with her. Wanting to love her. Those eyes told her, if only we weren't on opposite sides in this war, we could be free to be together and love one another for the rest of our lives.
So much ran through Zarana's mind in a mere instant. So many emotions bubbled and boiled in turmoil in her torn heart. She was a Cobra, with allegiance sworn to Cobra Commander. If she broke her oath of allegiance, it meant death. But here was Mainframe, who offered her a different life, a life not of violence and hatred, but of intimacy and love. He was her good angel.
"Having deep thoughts, love?" Buzzer sneered.
Zarana turned to look at her teammates, who all gazed at her curiously. Zarana felt strangely detached from this moment. She suddenly forgot how to dissemble before her Dreadnoks and show them the cruel bitch they always loved to see.
Zarana made no reply.
"Say, Zarana love, isn't that Mainframe?" Buzzer pressed Zarana with astonishing insolence. "Didn't you and him have a 'thing' once?"
"Oh yeah, I remember!" Torch said. "We were gonna blow up his sorry ass, but she went back and saved him."
"So what if I did?" Zarana said, recovering her usual demeanor. "Don't mean nothing. I had a little episode of conscious-entious-ness, or whatever the bloody hell you call it."
"No I don't think so," Buzzer declared. "You and computer boy here had something 'special.' We Dreadnoks call that 'true love.' I don't know what stopped you from leaving Cobra so you could make little babies with him out in the suburbs."
The three Dreadnoks burst out laughing at Buzzer's joke.
"Let's kill him," Ripper said.
"Shoot him up full 'o holes!" Torch howled.
"No, we need to bring him in. We need to interrogate him," Zarana protested.
"Listen, love," Buzzer snarled, "We all's know you've gots a soft spot for computer boy. As such, your emotions are interfering with your judgment. As SUCH, you ain't competent to be giving us no orders."
"Therefore," Buzzer raised a finger in the air triumphantly, "since this is a DEMOCRACY we live in, and there are THREE of us to ONE of you, it's high time we shot his sorry ass."
Ripper snickered. "Democracy, ha ha, good one, Buzzer."
Ripper pointed to Mainframe. There was more lightning and thunder. Next to Mainframe, Dial Tone was in his death throes. He would be gone very, very soon.
"Here, Zarana," Ripper invited. "You do the honors."
(Immediately precedes the events of Chapter 1)
In lower Manhattan, deep in the bowels of the enormous Cobra fortress, a small team of Tele-Vipers lazily lounged in their security station. The supercomputers concentrated in the basement of the Cobra fortress constantly monitored the security of the main computer servers as well as their internet connections throughout the world.
One of the Tele-Vipers, taking a break from his issue of Playboy long enough to run his routine diagnostic tests on the Cobra server named Anaconda, was the first to notice the internet intrusion.
"Hey," he said, turning to the other four Tele-Vipers, who were huddled around a small table playing Hearts, "we have an online intrusion."
"What is the source," a second Tele-Viper inquired as he came up to the first Tele-Viper's station and watched on the monitor as it displayed the running log of top secret security files the intruder had already accessed and downloaded.
"Unknown," the first Tele-Viper answered. He was running a tracing program at the moment.
"This guy has rerouted his IP address through at least a dozen different servers all over the world."
"Son of a bitch is good."
"Yeah, no shit."
"Could this be G.I. JOE?"
"Yeah, gotta be."
"How long until we can get a full trace?"
"Two minutes."
"Let me handle this," the second Tele-Viper ordered. "I spent high school hacking into credit card company servers. This is nothing."
"Be my guest, pal."
"The intruder is in the city. Alert Commander Zartan and have his police standing by to move immediately once we get an exact location."
"Yes, sir!"
"Come on, you little bitch, come on. Almost got you."
* * *
Mainframe paced nervously around the small apartment room as he watched Dial Tone hack into the Cobra mainframe.
"Jesus, will you hurry it up, they've almost got us," Mainframe cried as he watched the monitor screen show their safeguards being penetrated, one by one. By now, Cobra had figured out that their IP address did NOT originate from the Ukraine, Germany, France, Nigeria, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Idaho, or Montana. By now, Cobra knew that they were in New York City. In a matter of seconds, Cobra would refine the trace and discover that they were located in Brooklyn, just over the Brooklyn Bridge, snooping through their secret files under their very noses. It wouldn't be long before Cobra would discover the exact physical address, right down to what room they were sitting in. Then they would be in a world of shit.
"Easy, Mainframe," Dial Tone said as he popped a wad of gum into his mouth. "Even if they pinpoint us, they still have to haul ass over here before we finish downloading."
Mainframe hastily began packing their gear into their backpacks. He checked his pistol and made sure he had plenty of spare clips. Satisfied, Mainframe stuffed the pistol into his belt.
"Our safeguards are failing faster than we anticipated," Mainframe said. "Whoever's tracing us knows his shit. How much left do we have to download?"
"A lot of shit, Mainframe," Dial Tone said grimly. "A lot of shit. But we can't abort now. We go all the way. That's the plan. You know damn well we won't get another chance like this to hack into Cobra again. They'd come back with a firewall more massive than the Great Wall of China. You know how much we need this information. Can't do a damn thing without it."
Flint was planning a major strike against Cobra, the first coordinated attack against the enemy in an entire year. Underground forces scattered across the eastern seaboard would come together in a desperate operation, under Flint's leadership. Flint and Lady Jaye were still in Philadelphia, planning more attacks against Cobra with other G.I. JOE members along the mid-Atlantic coast, but they would soon be arriving in New York to rejoin Beach Head's group. Beach Head's group consisted of Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Low-Light, Steeler, and Cover Girl.
But first, they needed to get these top secret files, which would hopefully reveal the location of every Cobra base, along with the movements of Cobra Commander and information on his secret weapons programs. Those weapons had already killed many good Joes.
* * *
At this very moment, a Cobra FANG chopper carrying Zarana, Buzzer, Ripper, and Torch was flying low over Brooklyn, rapidly converging on the source of the hacking invasion. Zarana piloted the chopper while the Dreadnoks steadied themselves on the landing bars. They were all dressed in the sleek black uniform of the Cobra Police Force. The Dreadnoks were eager for blood. They were vultures ready for a long delayed feast. It had been a while since they had last had the opportunity to kill Joes, and they were excited. The thrill of killing was almost as great as the thrill of sex. As Zarana listened on her headset for further instructions from the Tele- Viper tracing the hacker, she frowned. Her heart was troubled. Somehow, she sensed that this night would not turn out well at all. A computer hacker, possibly G.I. JOE-could Mainframe be involved?
Something terrible is going to happen today, Zarana thought to herself.
Mainframe, please let it not be you, Zarana silently pleaded as she briefly placed a hand over rapidly beating heart.
"We have them," the Tele-Viper announced over the radio.
"Where?" Zarana demanded.
The Tele-Viper paused to check out a real-time satellite surveillance image and use GPS to find Zarana's chopper. He relayed his coordinates to Zarana.
Within moments, the chopper landed on the roof of the suspected apartment building, and all four Cobras jumped off and headed for the stairwell. Their weapons were primed for murder.
* * *
"Did you hear that?" Mainframe said, poking his head out of the window and listening for the Cobra chopper.
"They're here, I know," Dial Tone said.
"Well?" Mainframe cried urgently.
"Got it," Dial Tone said triumphantly as he pulled out the CD from his laptop, the CD containing all the illicit information he had just downloaded off the Cobra network. Mainframe took the CD from Dial Tone and stuffed it into a side pocket in his pants.
"Then let's get the hell out of here!"
At that very instant, the two Joes heard the sound of their front door being broken down. Mainframe looked toward the open window. The curtains blew outward in the wind. A fire escape stairway led to the street from a height of five stories. The enemy would be here within instants. There was no other choice.
"Quick!" Mainframe cried as he led Dial Tone out of their apartment.
Buzzer, the Dreadnok in the lead, ran for the open window in the living room.
He stuck his head out of the window and spotted the two Joes climbing down the fire escape, one level below him. One of them, Dial Tone, looked up, and his eyes met Buzzer's for an instant. Buzzer, enraged, pulled out his pistol and fired three shots. All of them ricocheted off of the steel bars of the fire escape ladder and stairway, missing their targets completely.
"Curses!" Buzzer hollered furiously as Zarana, Ripper, and Torch joined him at the window. Already the Joes had made it two levels down.
Zarana grabbed Buzzer's arm and squeezed it in a vise grip.
"I want them taken alive!" she declared.
Buzzer smiled at his superior with an air of condescension and scorn. Zarana made a mental note to beat the shit out of him on the slightest pretext.
"Come on, let's go down the other way!" shouted Zarana as she ordered the Dreadnoks out of the apartment and down the stairwell, hoping to beat the Joes to the street level.
Zarana and the Dreadnoks huffed and puffed down the stairwell. They practically bowled down the bottom door and fell over themselves running for the front entrance. Buzzer was the first to burst out of the building and frantically scan the area for the fleeing Joes. He saw them just as they reached the end of the block and ducked into a narrow street on the right. He turned and searched the cars stopped at the red light on the street, and he smiled at the sight of a rider on a black Harley Davidson motorcycle. Serendipity! Just the ticket, Buzzer thought to himself happily.
Buzzer pointed to his comrades.
"They turned into that alley. Follow them, I'll swing around and cut them off!"
Buzzer pulled out his pistol and shot the man on the motorcycle, causing him to fall off of his bike, onto the street. Buzzer ran to the bike and hopped on.
"Official police business!" he shouted at the man who lay dying on the pavement.
With a primal howl of excitement, Buzzer revved up the bike and raced in a direction opposite to Zarana, cutting and weaving through the vehicles like a madman. Zarana scowled in disgust as she turned to give chase to the Joes. Zarana, Ripper, and Torch reached the end of the block and turned, nearly slipping in the cold, wet pavement. Zarana could only see two shadows fifty yards ahead of her.
There was a loud roar of a motorcycle engine at the end of the block, followed by a squeal of tires and two gunshots, which rang out like loud claps of thunder throughout the narrow alley. Zarana and the other two Dreadnoks halted in their steps. The two fleeing figures in the distance were now still, lying in the street.
Zarana was enraged. Didn't she explicitly order Buzzer to take the two Joes alive? She got no respect from these stupid motorcycle riding, grape soda-drinking gangsters. It pissed her off to no end. And Zartan was too busy to care about whether or not his henchmen paid his sister the proper respect.
At the end of the alleyway, Buzzer hopped off his bike and holstered his handgun. Zarana, Ripper, and Torch ran out to meet him and the two fallen Joes.
It began to rain hard now, and the dark side street was briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning.
"Hey everyone, check this shit out!" Buzzer hollered with glee.
"You rotten son of a bitch!" Zarana screamed emphatically. "I TOLD you I wanted them taken ALIVE!"
Ripper turned the Joes over onto their backs, so the Dreadnoks could see their faces. Zarana's stomach sank right down to her shoes as she saw Mainframe and Dial Tone lying on the street.
Mainframe, Zarana said silently to herself. He had been shot in the shoulder and looked dazed.
"Oh, they're still alive, don't worry about that none, dearest Zarana" Buzzer said with a tone of mock saccharine sweetness. "Although one of them won't be, in a minute."
Buzzer pointed to Dial Tone, who writhed in agony on the pavement, clutching his shot neck, trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his severed carotid artery. Blood sputtered out of his mouth as well. It appeared as if Dial Tone was trying to say something. Whatever he was trying to say, no one would ever know. He was on the launch pad to death. Zarana shut her eyes and turned her head from the sight.
If it had been Mainframe with blood pouring out of his neck, instead of poor Dial Tone, Zarana did not know what she would do. Her world would collapse. Life would lose all meaning. Since the great battle of Washington, DC, when the forces of G.I. JOE had been defeated in open battle, Zarana had taken heart from the knowledge that Mainframe had not been killed. So many Joes had perished, but Mainframe had been plucky enough to escape Cobra's dragnet. She had always cherished in her heart a dream of reuniting with Mainframe. The dream remained alive, nourished and sustained by the faintest of hopes.
Now, Zarana and Mainframe locked eyes in a brief moment of understanding. Zarana had never forgotten the way Mainframe had kissed her. He had kissed her, and then she had zapped him. But the kiss had stayed with her, haunting her. No one had ever kissed her like that, with that kind of tenderness and gentleness and warmth. She often thought about him, during those long sleepless hours in her bed at night. In those hours, Zarana dreamed that Mainframe was with her, holding her in his arms, kissing her the way he had kissed her on that fateful night. She wanted him to kiss her on her lips, her cheek, her neck, the hollow of her throat, the curve of her breasts, the sensitive tips of her nipples, her smooth navel, her groin, the tender insides of her thighs. She fantasized of him kissing her like that from head to toe, all the way down, paying homage to her body. When a warm breeze blew in through the open window, caressing her naked body, she imagined that it was Mainframe caressing her. Her body was drawn like a magnet to his. Her soul was drawn as well to the gentleness and the caring that she remembered in his eyes. Even when they had met for the last time, and Mainframe had been a helpless child of seven, and she had given him the formula to reverse the de-aging, Zarana remembered the way he had looked at her. His eyes had told her that he remembered as well their brief kiss, so long ago. Those eyes told her of the long nights he, too, had lain in bed, thinking of her, wanting to know every little thing there was to know about her, wanting to share his life with her. Wanting to love her. Those eyes told her, if only we weren't on opposite sides in this war, we could be free to be together and love one another for the rest of our lives.
So much ran through Zarana's mind in a mere instant. So many emotions bubbled and boiled in turmoil in her torn heart. She was a Cobra, with allegiance sworn to Cobra Commander. If she broke her oath of allegiance, it meant death. But here was Mainframe, who offered her a different life, a life not of violence and hatred, but of intimacy and love. He was her good angel.
"Having deep thoughts, love?" Buzzer sneered.
Zarana turned to look at her teammates, who all gazed at her curiously. Zarana felt strangely detached from this moment. She suddenly forgot how to dissemble before her Dreadnoks and show them the cruel bitch they always loved to see.
Zarana made no reply.
"Say, Zarana love, isn't that Mainframe?" Buzzer pressed Zarana with astonishing insolence. "Didn't you and him have a 'thing' once?"
"Oh yeah, I remember!" Torch said. "We were gonna blow up his sorry ass, but she went back and saved him."
"So what if I did?" Zarana said, recovering her usual demeanor. "Don't mean nothing. I had a little episode of conscious-entious-ness, or whatever the bloody hell you call it."
"No I don't think so," Buzzer declared. "You and computer boy here had something 'special.' We Dreadnoks call that 'true love.' I don't know what stopped you from leaving Cobra so you could make little babies with him out in the suburbs."
The three Dreadnoks burst out laughing at Buzzer's joke.
"Let's kill him," Ripper said.
"Shoot him up full 'o holes!" Torch howled.
"No, we need to bring him in. We need to interrogate him," Zarana protested.
"Listen, love," Buzzer snarled, "We all's know you've gots a soft spot for computer boy. As such, your emotions are interfering with your judgment. As SUCH, you ain't competent to be giving us no orders."
"Therefore," Buzzer raised a finger in the air triumphantly, "since this is a DEMOCRACY we live in, and there are THREE of us to ONE of you, it's high time we shot his sorry ass."
Ripper snickered. "Democracy, ha ha, good one, Buzzer."
Ripper pointed to Mainframe. There was more lightning and thunder. Next to Mainframe, Dial Tone was in his death throes. He would be gone very, very soon.
"Here, Zarana," Ripper invited. "You do the honors."
