The door slowly creaked open. The man standing behind the counter turned his head briefly to look at the entrance. A well-dressed man slipped inside out of the rain. He looked completely out of place entering this run down café. The café was like something you would see on the roadside. A typical trucker’s stop. A suit wearing, elegant, immaculate, rich looking man did not fit the usual clientele. He flapped out his long raincoat then slipped off his hat. He looked up and around the establishment quickly. A mixture of disgust and doubt was etched into his expression. The smell was the first thing to hit him. Greasy food mixed with strong coffee. He was gagging on it. There was a stale air to the place that he felt starting to cling to every part of him. He knew he was going to have to take a long shower after this visit. The second thing to hit him was the décor. It was fading, dirty and the chairs looked ravaged by time. The owner of this place did not care much for looking after it. The last thing to hit him, were the people inside. They were rough looking characters. The men sitting at the back wall were burly characters with arms covered in tattoos. Their clothes looked unwashed and uncared for. Then there was the character sitting in the far back corner. It was hard to make the figure out. The lighting was bad enough. The figure was bathed in the shadows of that corner. He could not even make out if the figure was a man or a woman at that point. A hooded top covered the head and the figure was bent forward over what looked like a bowl of tomato soup.
“Can I help you sir?” the man behind the counter asked to break the silence.
His accent was very deep rough British sounding. The older man turned to look in his direction. The man was wiping a plate with a rather dirty looking dishcloth. Half a lit cigarette was hanging from his mouth almost dropping its ash into the food being prepared in front of him. Food was the last thing that the elegant man was going to order.
“I’m looking for someone,” the older man explained gulping down the sickness that was continuing to rise in his throat.
“What does this look like to you?” the man with the cloth exclaimed sharply. “A pick-up joint? I don’t allow Nymphs in here,” he added bluntly.
“No, no, no,” the older man exclaimed hurriedly in a disgusted tone. “It’s not like that at all,” he stammered nervously. “I…”
“Mr Fairfax,” a sexy slightly French-accented female voice sounded out to cut him off.
Both men looked towards the dark corner. The man behind the counter snorted with disdain. The older man shuffled away from the counter quickly. He edged his way through the tables and chairs trying not to touch anything on his way through. He paused at the table and looked down at the hooded young woman. The woman nodded towards the chair opposite her. Fairfax looked at the chair with growing discomfort and disgust. He was extremely reluctant to sit down or touch anything in this place. He swallowed his horror and sat down slowly. He could almost feel the dirt from the chair starting to attack him.
“Are you the Fox?” Fairfax asked loudly.
The young woman lifted her head and fixed her amber eyes firmly on to him. She held her finger to her mouth to signify him to be quiet. Fairfax could see the firm fierce look on her face. If she was the Fox, he was not going to argue with her. He had heard everything about her reputation. That was the main reason for him sitting in this god awful café.
“I understand that you have been looking for me,” the young woman commented in the same accent as before. “Why don’t you tell me what you need?” she added quickly.
“You are a very hard woman to find,” Fairfax stated bluntly. “I searched all through New Arizona for you, but no one had seen or heard from you since the chief of police returned. I can understand why now,” he explained looking around the café in a knowing expression. “Hiding out in Germancey,” Fairfax finished with a nod of his head.
“Who says I am hiding?” the young woman snapped back sharply. “Everyone is entitled to a vacation once in a while. Besides, there are some scores to settle around here,” she added in a cold voice that sent quite a chill through Fairfax.
“I need you to find my daughter,” Fairfax started firmly, not even hesitating to ask further questions to uncover the identity of the woman in front of him. “I’ve heard that Larna Fox is the best mercenary that money can buy,” he added sweetly trying to turn on the charm to win the young woman over.
“Cut the charm. It won’t work,” Larna snapped back sharply as she flipped her head back to send the hood flying off. Her long auburn hair, tied into a tight ponytail flashed into view. She sat back in the chair away from the soup. “The only thing that works with me is credits,” she said firmly.
“Oh,” Fairfax expressed then the colour drained from his face. “That is something that I was hoping we could discuss,” he added quickly.
Larna rose to her feet in a quick smooth single action. The move took Fairfax completely by surprise. He was even more surprised when she started to walk away towards the door.
“I have something better than money,” Fairfax exclaimed swiftly in an attempt to draw her attention back.
Larna did not stop walking to the door. Her stunning athletic figure was clear to be seen. The short tight leather miniskirt she was wearing over the top of fishnet stockings, just displayed her amazing legs to full effect. Fairfax could not get over how sexy the mercenary was. And how young she was. Larna was the equivalent to twenty-one years old in our time. Humans were changed by the events of the past. They now age only one year every eighty-four orbital months instead of the twelve months it is at present. This new seven-year ageing period is called Erayears. Humans are fitter and stronger, but do not have larger builds. So despite Larna having the look and body of a top fitness model, she was a lot strong than most men would be in our time.
“I have information,” Fairfax continued swiftly. That still did not stop her. “About who killed Chi Li,” he added bluntly.
Larna stopped dead in her tracks. Her hand was gripping the door handle. Her knuckles started to turn red as the strength of the grip increased. She snapped her head back to Fairfax sharply. The old man turned his head away. Larna glared at him strongly. She did not know if she could trust the man. He was a savvy businessman who knew how to play the game. This could just be part of that game. Larna slowly let go of the door. She regained her composure quickly and slowly swayed her way back to the table. Her eyes fixed on to the man behind the counter and the other men sitting at their table. They were not interested in the conversation in the slightest. None of them were paying any attention.
Larna slipped back on to her chair, “OK, you got my attention,” she stated sharply. “But, you had better not be playing me, otherwise it will come back to bite you,” Larna warned in a deep-tone of voice that sent another chill down Fairfax’s spine.
“My daughter,” Fairfax responded simply.
Larna was a little tired of these babysitting assignments. The last one she got involved in led to her apprentice being arrested and a betrayal that spiralled into her conducting her business out of a grotty café in the depths of the London sector of Germancey.
“She told me that she had got a great opportunity in the Berlin sector to pursue her dancing and acting career. I haven’t heard from her in several weeks. She is not answering my calls and her vid-phone is switched off. She is not answering any messages either,” Fairfax explained quickly.
“Maybe she is too busy,” Larna pointed out noting the shake of Fairfax’s head. “Or maybe she has hooked up with someone,” she added working through a list of potential reasons.
“My daughter is not like that,” Fairfax protested flatly.
“A woman can be easily charmed by a man playing on her wants and desires,” Larna pointed out emotionlessly.
“Is that what happened with your partner?” Fairfax blurted out before he had chance to think.
Larna grinned. Fairfax suddenly felt the stinging coldness of that expression. It was not a pleasant grin, but a grin of wickedness and evil. It was the smirk of someone contemplating evil deeds. Fairfax shook his head in an attempted apology.
Larna folded her arms across her chest, “Guess we will find out when I find her,” she stated confidently.
“You are going to help me?” Fairfax stated in a relieved tone. “Thank you,” he added quickly with deep relief.
“I’ll help you, but only if you tell me about Chi Li,” Larna replied instantly.
Fairfax shook his head slowly. A wry smile came on to his face. This was the businessman coming out rather than the worried father. He was going to play the card now that Larna knew he was going to play.
“After you return my daughter to me,” Fairfax insisted cleverly.
Larna nodded her head. She was expecting that. It was not really an incentive for her to do the job. She did not care about Ms Fairfax, the missing daughter. If she wanted to get the information out of Fairfax, she would. There would be nothing he would be able to do to stop her.
“Where did she say she was going to work?” Larna asked calmly.
“This is all of the information I have,” Fairfax said as he slid a small info-pad across the top of the table.
The info-pad was about the size of an iPhone, but with the power of a large Mac computer. Larna picked it up slowly. Fairfax rose to his feet glad to get off the dirty chair he had been sitting on. He glanced down at Larna as he pulled his gloves out of his raincoat pocket.
“My contact details are in the pad. Contact me when you have found my daughter. When you have returned her to me, I will give you the information that I have,” Fairfax exclaimed confidently.
Larna firmly grabbed his wrist as he went to walk away. Fairfax grimaced in agony as the firm hold tightened. He could feel her strength squeezing his wrist painfully. He looked down at her with a pleading expression. Larna let him go. Fairfax gripped his wrist gingerly.
“That’s just a warning,” Larna expressed firmly. “You fuck with me and I will seriously mess you up,” she growled menacingly.
Fairfax slipped away nervously. He swiftly made his way back to the door. He could feel the heat of Larna’s glare on his back the whole time. Larna waited until the door was closed before winking playfully at the man behind the counter. He flashed her back a knowing smile before returning to what he was doing.
Fairfax stood outside of the door for several seconds to regain some of his composure. He looked at the replica London street in front of him then reached into his inside jacket pocket. He pulled out his communicator and flipped the top open straight away.
“I’ve made contact with our little project. She has the details and accepted the job,” Fairfax said into the screen.
“That’s good,” a male voice said on the other end of the communicator. The screen remained blank though, despite them being connected via video call. “Then it is time for you to set the rest of the things in motion,” he commanded firmly.
“Are you sure you want to go against her? I mean, you know all about the destruction that she has caused and the fact that she has wiped out nearly all of the crime gangs in New Arizona. She is dangerous,” Fairfax expressed in a tone that clearly showed he was worried and anxious about getting involved.
“We can handle her sort of dangerous my friend. And don’t forget, Mr Shaw is paying us handsomely for doing so. Now get it done,” the man pointed out sharply before the call went dead.
Fairfax slowly closed the lid of the communicator then glanced back to the door of the café. He just hoped that they knew what they were getting involved in. Larna Fox was a dangerous mercenary. At the best of times she was unstable and unpredictable. When someone made her mad then she was even more of a dangerous weapon. A destructive weapon that would stop at nothing until everything and everyone who was against her had been destroyed. Fairfax slipped the communicator down into his inside pocket. They were playing with fire with this one.
Larna stopped staring at the door after several minutes of watching where Fairfax had gone. Her eyes moved slowly down to the computer pad sitting on the table in front of her. As she had stated to Fairfax, she was getting tired of babysitting jobs and rescuing stupid girls who got themselves into trouble. Her last few assignments had all been the same. She was getting fed up with it. Her true mission, to find out who had been behind the death of her husband and sensei had been derailed. She had lost all of her friends in New Arizona and was now forced to live on the streets in a completely different living quarter. Everything that she knew had been taken from her. Larna was a fighter, but it just seemed like every lead that she followed led her deeper into trouble. She was no closer to finding out who murdered her husband now than when she started. Apart from the fact that there were a lot less suspects left to choose from, since she had killed all the rest.
The year was 2498. And the planet was a different world to what we know now. Future history records that America launched a nuclear missile against a target in Russia, which was a part of the European Union at the time, at 1200 hours on July 4, 2000. The Russian authorities did not believe that this was a mistake launching, which could not be cancelled, as the Americans had said. As far as they were concerned the missile came from an American air force base and was therefore American. They retaliated immediately. The surface of the planet was changed forever in a matter of minutes. Cities were laid to dust in a few seconds by radiation fires. The ozone layer was destroyed. Because there was now a thick layer of fallout from the nuclear bombs, the sun was blocked out. A nuclear winter. The planet started to freeze. The planet returned to an ice age.
The human race did survive, thanks to underground bunkers and caves. They divided the planet into four new Continents or Sectors as they were called. TF Sector 1 was called Americano. This was the largest sector and therefore had the largest Living Quarters. All Living Quarters were built under invisible protection force fields, which stopped the deadly cold from getting in. New Arizona was the Living Quarters and was designed like a map of the old USA. Bostary High Security Prison was the only prison on the whole planet and was built from the ruins of the old city of Boston. The SAT Laboratories were the last hope for humankind. They searched out new avenues of travel so the human race could leave a dying planet. TF Sector 2 was called Europa. Sector 3 was Africano and Sector 4 was known as Oceanatica. Each sector had a Living Quarter that housed the remnants of the human race.
Germancey was the Living Quarter for the Europa sector. Like New Arizona, it was modelled on old cities. In this case the old capital cities of Europe. Larna was currently hiding out in the London sector of the city. She placed her hand down on to the computer pad to pull it closer to her. Every part of her was telling her not to look. It was telling her not to get involved and just leave it alone. She needed to get back to working out who killed her husband.
‘Why did I just not beat the information out of that pompous ass?’ Larna asked herself as her eyes returned to the door Fairfax had left from.
There would have been no way that Fairfax would have been able to stop her torturing him for the information. Larna feared that she was getting too soft for her own good. Her eyes glanced down at the computer pad.
“Do you want something else to eat?” the scruffy man behind the counter shouted out to her.
Larna shook her head slowly.
“Well, I’m about to close up, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he pointed out bluntly.
Larna looked towards the window of the café. She couldn’t see outside. The window was too dirty to see through. It was dark out though. That much she knew for sure. She nodded her head. There was no point in getting into an argument here.
“Can you give me a few minutes?” Larna asked hopefully.
The man behind the counter nodded his head before he disappeared into the kitchen. Larna quickly picked the computer pad up and swiped across the screen to activate it.
Fairfax’s daughter was just as Larna pictured her. A rich, spoilt looking young woman with an innocent look that just begged unscrupulous characters to take advantage of it. The look was so stereotypical that Larna immediately smelt something off. The profile was too perfect. The picture was too perfect. She slowly swiped away the profile of the daughter and instantly accessed a screen to interface with the city info-net – the future equivalent to the World Wide Web. She hacked password access into the security database. She searched for Fairfax. Based on the information that she had got from brief chats with the man, she could find no record of him on the database. Larna closed the database access. She stared at the daughter’s profile for several minutes. The obviously faked profile. Her eyes then started flicking between the profile and Fairfax’s contact number also displayed on the screen. Larna worked through some of the next step options. Someone was laying a trap for her. She knew that it would have to be a bloody good trap to capture and keep her under control or kill her. The story about having information about who murdered her husband was just the bait to lure her in. The daughter certainly was not going to do that. Larna could care less for the girl. So, Larna calculated whether she should spring the trap and follow through with the first step that they were expecting her to take or switch things up. That is why she continued to look between the contact number and the profile. Switch it up by using the number or follow the first step stated on the profile. The talent agency that this daughter had supposedly gone to was clearly going to be a front. Whether it was the first part of the trap or that was to follow, that was not clear. What was really annoying her though was that someone was behind this whole elaborate plan. She was clearly getting close to someone who did not want her closing in on him or her. She knew that curiosity usually got people killed, but she wanted to find out who was behind this. The whole story was quite well set up. There was thought behind it. There was a carefully laid out plan. That did not just happen as a random act. Fairfax was the tip of the iceberg, with a much larger plot lurking under the surface. Larna could see the man standing impatiently at the door to the kitchen out of the corner of her eye. She had obviously overstayed her welcome. She collected the things from the table, pulled the hood up over her head then walked to the door. She nodded briefly to the man behind the counter before she went outside.
The street was deserted. The rain was still coming down. Her hood soon got soaked through. She looked up and down the street. It was obviously one of the remaining crime lords behind the plan. Larna figured that the only reason they would want to disturb the hornet’s nest was because they were scared of it. That reasonably led on to thinking that they might be the one she was looking for. The only way to get to Fairfax was to call him. He was not who he said he was, so finding him via a Life Sign Reading or LSR for short would be impossible. She had no idea who to search for. He would not be expecting a call this early either, so that would alert him to the fact that something was wrong. Larna did not want to do that. That left the front door to the trap. She figured that there was no harm in going to have a look. She could stake the place out for a bit, get a feel for the lay of the land, like she always did. There was nothing better to do. Larna pushed her hands into the pockets of her leather motor-biker jacket. As least when it rained in New Arizona it was still warm. She hated this living quarter already. She had only been in it a few weeks. The talent agency was based in the Rome section of the city. That was quite a walk away. Larna shrugged her shoulders and started off in that direction.
“Sir,” a youngish man in a smart suit said from the door to an office.
“Yes, what is it? Can’t you see that I am busy?” the other man said without stopping or turning away from he was doing.
The man at the door slowly gulped deeply when he could see his boss thrusting his pelvis back and forth. He could not see the young woman laid across the top of the table on her stomach. Her skirt around her ankles. The slightly older man did not slow his thrusts in the slightest.
“I think that we may have a problem,” the man at the door expressed softly in a hesitant tone of voice.
He was hesitant for two reasons. Disturbing the current situation, but also about what the reaction was going to be to the news he was about to deliver.
“I haven’t got time for problems. Sort them out,” the boss growled with increasing breathless pants. This was the same man that Fairfax had been speaking to on the phone.
“It is to do with the small project we have started,” the man at the door stated with a deep swallow. “It seems she accessed the security database looking for information on Fairfax,” he quickly explained.
“And why is that a problem?” the man having blurted out as his thrusts grew stronger as he closed on a climax. “She is just being thorough like we knew she would be,” he added through deepening moans and drowning out the moans of the young woman lying in front of him.
“Of course, but, erm,” the man stammered from the door. “The problem is that we had not had chance to load up Fairfax’s information,” he admitted in a regretful voice.
The man still did not stop with his thrusts. He slowly stroked his hand down the back of the young woman in front of him. His hand over to the far side of her which was the blind side to the man at the door. In a swift motion, he grabbed the letter opener that was lying on the desk beside her, twisted around and threw it at the door. The eyes of the man at the door shot wide open as the letter opener slammed into the middle of his chest. He stood frozen for a few moments, before dropped to the floor like a collapsing building in slow motion. The man at the desk finally let out a deep growl as he climaxed into the young woman. He bent down at kissed her gently on the back of the neck. The young woman moaned deeply with satisfaction. He moved back slightly from her to admire the beautiful form in front of him. He casually did his trousers up then glanced to the door. He was quite well-built, toned and darkly handsome. There was a dark menace behind his youthful eyes that held a hint of rebellion. He pushed a button on the intercom on his desk.
“Could someone please come to my office and clean up the mess,” he stated coldly before standing back to admire the young woman standing up in front of him. “Don’t go too far,” he told her with a playful smile coming on to his face.
Larna faces a different sort of challenge in one of the other living quarters in the future world. It leads her to find out the truth about her past.