Earth | Sol System | "Local Cluster" (Human star-charts) | 2180

"Houston Dome"

The bass line of the club's music is like a war drum. It sings of prowess, bravery, and violence in war, and the spoils taken thereafter. She licks her lips and lets it wash over her. The Memories and the Voice guide her, but they also take away. The Memories make her wonder whether she wants to do something, or if they do, and the Voice makes it confusing or loud, or even makes it hurt if she doesn't do the things it tells her to.

What is the word for the orange bracelets made of light? The flat metal things that fly over and hum, with white glow at the back, that sometimes open and release people? The hollow people split up by lines that want her to buy things that say the same thing over and over? The ones her fingers pass through when she touches?

She knew these words when she woke up yesterday-she still knows-but since waking up on the passenger ship, she cannot find them. She cannot find the words for most things. The Voice likes this. It woke her up this morning with "Normal, proceed." But the Memories are angry about it. She wonders if whatever the Memories were before was treated this way, too.

The Voice says she is here to do something, in the back area of this club, where the powerful eat and drink. The Memories like the place: Drunkenness, proffered flesh, the expectation of rough pleasure, and keeping of names like precious secrets.

They overindulge. They are trusting.

Prey.

"Heya darlin'."

She turns her head just slightly. Human male: Dirty, underfed, unshaven. She loosens her hold on her energy, letting it channel outward. Energy gathers between her fingertips, cords of red and black dancing and entwining.

"Now, now, little lady. Ain't gonna hurt ya! No need to use...that. No need to use ol' devil's yarn on me! Just need a bit to get by, y'know?"

Ah. A beggar. The Memories remember these, not from the silver, blue, and pink place, where silk flowed across blue flesh like the water did, and the streets echoed with whispers from lovers who pulled each other into niches in buildings and slid curtains across, and carts were stacked with fruit almost till they spilled, and wine, and meat. No. The Memories tell her that beggars are from the black and brown place. Dirty, grimy, hidden in rock. Rough. Wild. Bloody. Uncaring. The perfect lair for the Memories.

She has credits. The Memories told her to never use accounts, only fixed chits. Accounts have names. Names...names leave a scent? No, names leave a trail. Trails make the Memories afraid. The Voice told her where to find some credits buried in a rock outside the dome along with white metal things, red cloth, and blue bars of grit: The Voice said they were armor, civilian clothing to go over it, and a weapon.

"Charity can divert attention. But use sparingly. Too much can draw it."

How many does he need? He coughs and clutches his abdomen. She stands still, and lets herself reach out through his skin. She wraps her senses around his parts, testing the weight and the shape. Something above the sac filled with water, and large: Pushing the tubes of old food to the side. It's big. It pushes all else aside and reaches nearly to the curved bones around the sacs of air. But it is attached to nothing. Tubes carrying water, salt, and iron twist around it. The inside is only lumps.

"You are sick."

He laughs.

"Bladder cancer. Treatable, the first doc said. Used to be. Free care, the clinic's sign said. Hundred thousand credits, the thugs outside the clinic said."

"It is killing you."

"Yeah," he sighs, pushing himself up straighter on weak arms. "Never drank before. Do now just to not have to feel all the time passing as I wait."

"I could destroy it. All of it. I can give you credits, not as many as the-what are thugs?-not as many as that, but many. I have...more than I need."

"You're joking."

She lets energy out between her fingers.

"I can feel the shape of it. Feel how it's different."

She looks at a metal can which once held food and lets the power out, red and black ribbons reaching from her fingertips. The bottom of the can burns, scorching the pavement. But as the destruction climbs, it cools, and the rim merely crumbles.

"Sure. Why not?"

"You will bleed. I can burn some of the tubes going to the outside of it...but if I burn all of it, you will die."

He chuckles.

"Long as I got the credits to rent a taxi."

"Hold still. Once I get close to the edges, I must be careful."

She finds the closest thing the shape has to a middle, and pushes at it, making a spot so heavy that it forms a bubble, swirling and tearing and finally popping. Nothing inside remains, not even a mote of flesh. She twirls a finger in her palm and burns the edges, to stop the iron, water, and salt from pouring in.

"Fuck!" he hisses.

"That was half. Now the edges will be easier to find. Continue holding still."


The male is large, and light brown. He has no hair on his head. He has hair on the front part of his torso, longer and thicker, and cut short, there is more around what the Memories call it a 'cock' and the Memories say that she should make him naked, and put it inside her, and feed after he spills warm things in her.

But the Voice does not want her distracted. Thinking about obeying the Memories makes her feel fuzzy.

Killing him would take an instant. The hunger in her head could spill out, burning his mind from the inside. She could tear him in half, or stretch him, or lift him and throw him all the way to the glass in the sky. She could break a bone or tear something out with the energy between her fingers and running down each of her bones like...like...like the white things across the sky in storms. Breaking one of the important bones-the Voice calls that one 'spine'-would kill him instantly.

"I require entrance to this facility."

"Uh-huh."

"I have credits."

"Uh-huh."

"I healed the man in the alley."

"What the fuck did you say?"

"The man in the alley. He was dirty, and he had..."

She rubs a hand on the fabric of the clothes around her belly.

"A shape in here. I destroyed it. I burned the edges shut so he would not lose the saltwater with iron in it that flows in the tubes into the hole. I gave him credits, so he can purchase a ride to the clinic and bribe the...thugs?...the guards."

She lifts a hand and sends dots of energy between her fingers, dancing in slow loops.

"Well, shit. I don't care what you look like, how weird you are, or that you're in an orange-and-blue plaid sundress and flip-flops that don't match. The way people treated Jack is a goddamned crime. If you helped Jack, go on in."


Stacey feels a tap on her shoulder.

"Holy fuck. Stace."

"Yeah?" she calls out over the thumps, electric screams, and cymbal crashes of the music.

"Total babe, at your three o'clock. Go get that pussy, buddy."

She looks and there, at the edge of the floor, is a shimmer, just a silvery flicker of a woman's body. She can see the booth behind her, but not see her-except for a thin sheen, like ice over a clear pond. It's enough. It's the juiciest, softest set of curves Stace has ever seen, on a giantess big enough to wrap around her. Make her disappear into the hug.

She knows every queer that comes in here, so New Girl is not only in need of tips about the menu, she's dancing alone. Shame. New Girl dances like no one she's ever seen: Hands raised over her head, hips swaying on some notes, shaking on some and thrusting slightly on others, turning in a slow circle. Every motion is smooth-arms curling rather than waving, hips rolling in an S rather than swinging side to side, her thrusting matched by a bend in her back and curls of her arms-as if nothing she ever does is less than smooth, sleek, and seductive. It's like watching water dance.

A red dress is flung over a nearby chair.

Ok. Right. Person, probably alien, who can make herself invisible-or invisible-ish, because damn-but only if she gets naked first. Naked's good.

A shot glass slides into her hand.

"Liquid courage."

"Thanks, Mack."

"Go! You're scaring off all the dick. Swear to God, you draw a no-men-allowed circle around you somehow."

Stacey throws it back and pushes off the stool. She shoots the New Girl finger guns and gives her best, snarkiest smirk. New Girl's arms still and then one curls downward, palm up, and crooks a single finger. Something from the shape reaches out, onto her skin, under it, just a little. Stacey sees white, red, and black energy-can light be black, she wonders-coming off her own skin like puffs of ink in water, and the energy explores her head to toe and then pools thickest around her breasts, her face, her sex, curling out into the air like steam before thinning and fading away. She's halfway across the room from this woman and she's being stroked, her skin caressed, the flesh wrapping her muscles traced, her bones tickled.

If this is what a biotic can do, I'm never sleeping with a normal person again.

"F-" she huffs, as the energy thickens, tangling like vines around her clit, slipping inside, tracing ridges and folds. A ball of gentle, pulsating force wrapped in heat forms inside her, like the birth of a star. She's going to have an orgasm that knocks her to the floor if she doesn't get someone to lean on-or dance with-soon. She staggers the rest of the way to this ghost, or sex genie, or Poseidon's gay daughter or who the fuck ever.

When she raises her hands to touch, the shape turns, flickering, becoming more visible.

"Dance?" she asks, taking Stacey's hand in hers.

Images flicker in her mind: Bodies rolling in messy sheets. A woman's head: Thrown back, moaning, until her lungs are empty. A smoky, rough-edged voice chuckling. Eyes of palest blue reflected in wide, glassy brown eyes. Blue fingers tracing shivering pink folds with curiosity, lifting the dew to her tongue, tasting, comparing it to others she had loved.

Asari? Stacey wonders just before powerful hands seize her arms, holding her up as her world melts into technicolor smear and she dissolves under the weight of the pleasure.


She leaves Stacey in the booth, spent, slack and still but for the slow rise of her breath. She left her alive and the Memories are disappointed. She was tasty. Willing. Leaving her was wasteful. Risky.

The Voice is pleased. "Fewer bodies, less suspicion."

She disagrees with both. Stacey was pleasure. Touching her gave her pleasure. Reaching out with her senses to learn what made Stacey shiver and moan gave her pleasure. Sending her energy-thinned and weakened-through her flesh to learn everywhere Stacey could feel gave her pleasure.

She wants more. Another club? Perhaps a dating app? Like Stacey, or perhaps like the one at the door: Flatter and square, but with more of that strange fuzz, and differences to explore.

There is another man guarding the door to the back. Unlike the man at the front door, he carries a small, hard object behind his back.

"M-6 Carnifex", the Voice tells her, "Accurate. Very powerful. Very slow rate of fire. Dangerous up close."

And she doesn't need to know what that means, not exactly, because the Memories remember being shot at, and they want her to live so that she can feed, and so the Memories can feel her doing it.

"Fuck off."

For once, it is the Memories that give her a plan, not the Voice. Through Memories, she remembers a threshold like this, and the lie told to cross it.

"Suck your cock," she coos. "Five credits. Fuck you for ten."

She nods to the room with the sign on the door shaped like a human outline.


She obeyed the Memories. She unleashed the hunger in her head, letting it reach out through her fingers, the skin of her hips, the soft skin in the warm, wet place between her legs-that she must know the name of-a name scurries away as she reaches for the knowledge of it. Blood poured from his nose when she climbed off him. His hands and feet shook nervelessly, and finally his cock jumped reflexively, spilling thin slime into the air before his entire body went still.

She turns away from the body slumped in the stall, cleans herself inside and out with the energy, gathers the credit chits he gave her into the wad she's keeping in her fist, and looks at his weapon.

The Voice explains the weapon to her. The sights, grip, chamber, where the heat is vented, how to set the circuits for a single, overcharged shot. Disgust rolls through her, probably from Memories because she does not recall a single time, either awake or dreaming, that Memories used one of these. Only the energy inside herself.

The pistol also cannot be hidden, as her naked skin can.

So she steals the man's shirt-long enough to hang to her thighs-and returns to the hallway.

The lock melts almost instantly when she touches her fingertip to it, and she sees something passing rapidly through something hard-copper, she now realizes-she calls on her energy to slow it and then cuts the copper in four places along the door and wall.

In the backroom, there is a man on a couch in the middle being pleasured by a woman's mouth-his reaction is pathetic, judging by the Memories that she enjoys in her dreams-and a large man in a red shirt pacing in the other corner of the room. She sees five skinny men and a woman with painted skin, a scar on both arms, and the chemical tang of eezo wafting off her. "Biotic." Voice warns. "Double implants. Additional cybernetics. She is likely radiation-sick and unhealthy, but quite powerful."

She rolls her shoulders and the shirt slides off as she hardens the energy inside her, wrapping herself in it like a second skin.


Nikki hates this sort of trick. Here she is, stuffing his so-so cock into her throat, sputtering spit all over her top, gagging pleadingly, giving him the come-in-my-mouth eyes, fondling his balls, everything...and he's focused on some bullshit about drugs and dangerous chemicals.

Turians? Something about the turians, and a ship going back to their planet, and chemicals. She supposes Mr. Distractible here got sick of slinging Hallex and Red Sand.

The shy ones-husbands and first-timers-would be moaning her name like prayer by now, two or three deep. Coming, going soft, resting on her tongue, getting hard again, coming again. Promising her the world to keep doing that, pressing more and more credits to the bench beside her or the dash of the sky-car. She's damn good at her job-practice, practice, practice-and for seven, eight, or on a good week nine clients out of ten it's amusing.

Some of them are great fun, the sex is messy or goofy and they laugh about it. Some like to mix in other things: Take a nap, watch a movie, a walk in the park. It gets them in the mood and it's easy money and a chance to catch her breath. A handful give as much as they get. The guy who works with the homeless kids would never have time to date, but he can still wrap her around his cock and turn her to mush.

That one couple in the semi nice part of town are her favorites. Both ladies always have fresh tests, and they really work her over and let her nap in the shed, loopy and tender and knowing exactly how a bowling ball feels after a rough grab and a spin down the hardwood. After last time, she's wondering about changing her extranet listing to women only.

Not this fucker. He couldn't make a woman orgasm unless he stuck an electric dildo up her ass and turned it on. And those orgasms charge compound interest in migraines an hour later.

He's also armed, and talking to gang leaders about something he'd rather keep quiet. Which means that if she stops, he's going to wonder if she might talk, and any hope of getting out alive vanishes.

If she does get out alive, she's going to peel her scheduler's cock like a banana with a rusty knife. Knows she doesn't mind druggies, pickpockets and window-smashers but doesn't want tricks from the gangs or drug runners. But he doesn't always check references. Lazy slob. At least this job pays enough that if she survives, she can hire a proper broker, upgrade her omni's defense program, and get an omni-linked spot testing kit. Spur of the moment tricks tend to be better tippers. Hitting the hiking trails and playgrounds full of unhappy dads is how to make bank.

That's how you get to renting a space, which is how you get cosmetic treatments, gene therapy, medi-gel, spray-in antimicrobial lube, the works. Oiling the parts and shining the chassis is how you get to owning a space, which is how you get to grabbing some strays, polishing up their skills, outsourcing the grunt work and living pretty. Just taking old faves and sucking off a few judges and cops.

The goddamned golden ladder. Her plan when she got in the business. She can finally reach the bottom rung if she's alive tomorrow.

The man at the back door to the alley paces into view. Black pants, red shirt with '10th' on it. He's a Tenth Street Red. He's killed, at least twice, if he's a local. More, probably, if he's one of the out-of-state founders.

Fuck.

"You sure you got the stuff?"

"Forty tons of it. Good old Texas beef. Apparently the spikes love the shit, so some egghead figured out some way to dip the meat and turn it dextro-safe. Special ingredient scans as dextro, switches to levo under heat. Concentrated aminos. Enough to make 'em shit their brains out. Chemist says whatever it's wrapped in could poison an elcor anyway."

"And I got your charges. No one's gonna wonder about a freighter's manifest when the fuel tanks go up. They'll bolt."

Something makes her ears ring and the fucker goes from partly soft to-rock hard. Fucking finally. Ignore the taste, his is probably bitter as hell, she reminds herself, bracing for a throatful...that never comes. Swallow it and get on with your li-wait-what the FUCK is in my hair?

"CHRIST!"

"WASTE HER!"

Red glop runs down the side of her face and drips onto the trick's pants. Some red bubble of fuck knows-biotics? Does anything that fancy even happen in this shithole?-covers Nikki and the trick. It slices his head off, too, which slides slowly down the outside, blown in half above the jaw, with half his braincase just gone and half hanging at an angle like a scoop of lard. It rolls down, smearing blood, gray grease, and bits of bone the size of confetti until it hits the floor.

A shape walks by her-so bright and white it hurts to look at her-but obviously a her. Obviously a woman, and naked, and either turned on or recently well-fucked-Nikki hopes that all this is not turning her on-because her nipples are stiff.

One of the Reds lunges, knife in hand. Something that looks like black smoke shot through with drops of blood forms into a plate and he smacks into it, breaking his nose. The shape turns her head for a moment, looks at him, and the bones of his arms and legs break with cracks so loud Nikki can hear them and then his spine punches its way out through his voicebox.

Little blue things pop like raindrops hitting concrete all over the stranger's skin. Bullets. Hundreds of bullets spattering across that white light. Others hit the red bubble around Nikki but don't break it, just bend it. Another man flies into view, suspended on another plate of red and black, and burns slowly with white fire, from the ribcage out, and up, until his skull melts. His gun tumbles in an orb of red energy and then crumples into something the size of a drink can.

"M-4 Shuriken Submachine gun," the figure mutters. "Altered chamber, low grade phasic mod. Strong against kinetic barriers, tissue, weaker against armor."

The outline of the glowing figure shrugs.

"Dark energy charge in phasic rounds means that rounds interact excessively on impact with stasis or stasis-backed barriers."

"Enough. Surrender, and it will be quick. Continue firing..."

She chuckles.

"And I will see what else the Memories and the Voice in my head can teach me about human bodies."

Great. The Naked Murder Angel hears voices. Out-fucking-standing.

The sound of shooting stops.

"What the fuck, bro?"

"The whole fucking point of the mod is to break shields!"

"That's a barrier, fuckbrains. There're differences."

"Then do your blue shit, Sarah!"

"Like fuck I will, cocksucker. She knows I'm the only one who could even try, and unlike you, I've got brains. Don't feel like dying for Brick's hard-on for dead spikes and this Terra Firma asshole. Fuck politicians. Only Red I've ever met who could hope go a single round with that is Shepard, but she vanished."

"Don't worry. I'll take real good care of your bitches for you..."

Part of the rear wall glows a sickly bruise-purple before a turquoise streak blasts through the softened brick into the night, leaving a hole with cooling edges covered in blue...something.

"No need to pursue," the figure tells-her boss? her commanding officer? herself?-before pulling another thug onto another of her little torture slabs. He screams and then she propels him into the ceiling so hard that he sticks for a moment before falling with a splat that breaks the rest of his bones.

Someone raises his gun and opens up again. Naked Murder Angel makes a fist, and a flash of red light fills the room. The shooting stops and the last one runs screaming through the hole.

She turns to look at Nikki.

"You are...extra. Unrelated. Not part of my task. Go."

The bubble she's in changes shape, making a tunnel between her and the door.

No one ever had to tell her twice.

Just before she grabs the door handle, a slit opens in the tunnel and a stupidly large pistol falls through it with a small bag of credit chits. If she wanted a dick, this cannon might count as overcompensation enough she could turn it in and get an honorary one.

Nikki picks up the weapon. Fuck. Is this a murder weapon? She wonders if she should drop it but then decides there's no way it holds fingerprints-the grip is like concrete and the rest feels like a lubed-up dolphin-so she checks the safety and stuffs it into her mini-skirt. There's a thumbprint-sized scanner glowing green on the grip. Perfect gun for her line of work. Scary as hell to look at the end of and useless if taken from her.

She got her tip after all...and some solid protection.

Naked Murder Angel is her favorite client ever.


She remembers that there was blood. Screaming. The energy inside her reaching out. She felt...exertion...effort? But never feared she would tire or lose the advantage.

A woman. Made hard by poverty, greedy for money...innocent as a newborn baby in the grand scale of good and evil. She let her go, protecting her escape. The Memories seemed amused, but they also felt...kinship...with the woman. They were not displeased she lived, and when the Memories left they didn't thrash, but merely faded back to their hiding place.

The Voice is excited. "Yes, yes, specimen performance above expectations!"

She looks down at her hands. Clean. None of the blood touched them. Her skin-yes, she reminds herself, this is hers-is pearlescent, like a rainbow or perhaps more like a chemical spill slicking a puddle of water.

A bright light cuts down the alley. "Mission complete. Will contact if needed." The Voice tells her.

"Ma'am, you all right?"

She is herself again. She remembers normal things. The man with the omni-tool light is a police officer. She isn't sure she did the things because she wanted to-she thinks it's because the Voice wanted to-but to the police it won't matter. She can't admit it.

The thing behind him is a skycar. The building behind her is a nightclub. She is naked in public, which humans do not like. The shirt she stole earlier was a 'Hawaiian' shirt. The dance she performed with the woman inside was called The Pulsar and the song was by a band called Expel 10. At her home-if she still has it-she has several of their albums. Lighter ones. Less thumping.

"Ma'am!"

She turns.

"Are you hurt? Are you alright?"

"Yes?"

He laughs, taking a single step closer.

"Yes, you're hurt? Or yes, you're alright?"

"I'm unhurt. I ran out the back of the club when the shooting started."

He swings his omni's searing cone of white light at the building.

"The back of the club with the six-foot hole burned into the wall by a Reds chop-shop biotic?"

She shrugs.

"It was over. The back sounded quiet. I was panicking, and I ran the way everyone else wasn't running. I'm not sure why."

"Well, you did good. Not. Ahem! Not a scratch on you, obviously. I've got a blanket in the car."

"What's your name?"

"I...don't know."

Blackness envelops her.


I write various things for various sites including AO3, and others (see my profile).

If you want to know more, I have a Tumblr (alephthirteen-writes dot tumblr dot com) that ties it all together-every site I touch, I link there in a pinned note-and I also I post musings and ramblings about my various headcanons, characterizations, character and trope rants both for and against, and follow fanartists I like.