FLIGHT!

"And brave Sir Robin bravely ran away", you mutter as you turn and start jogging the hallway. There's a whole bunch of female faces - in various stages of shock, sleep and surprise - taking peeks at you but they very quickly hide behind their doors.

But there's one door that's completely open and you stop when you see what's inside:

A very professional looking medical lab. And a stunning brunette wearing a lab coat, reading something on a datapad. As if shots hadn't just been fired. You glance behind you but there is no pursuit - which the radar confirms. The guys must be gathering courage downstairs, though you do hear the madam screaming in impotent rage.

But this street doc - or, whore doc - is one cool operator. You step inside and unceremoniously drop Peaches on the examination table. The woman is about 167 cm tall, meaning that her nose is the same height as your navel. She looks at you coolly, as if a three-meter tall troll bringing whores into her lab was a daily occurrence. Maybe it was?

"Hey four-eyes, what the fuck is wrong with her?" You ask and emphasize your point by sticking the barrel of your rifle between her smallish tits. She doesn't even flinch. Ice cold bitch.

"Same as most of the other girls - it's a sub-dermal pouch containing a mixture of ****, intravenously administered by a tiny injector, wirelessly controlled by the house", she explains.

Ah, that explains it.

"In ENGLISH, please!"

Now she looks annoyed. Really annoyed.

"Bad Mojo", she waves her arms above her head, "in the belly", she rubs her stomach. Great imitation of a chimpanzee, all in all. Damn. You don't know whether to slap or clap for her.

"So the girls have implants that dose them with **** when the madam presses a button? Right?" You ask and let your rifle point to the ground.

"Yes, exactly. I am very proud that your Neanderthal brain manages to wrap itself around such complicated concepts", she exclaims, faking enthusiasm, while acid is dripping off each word.

Okay, time to get control of the situation. You slap her with your off-hand. Even without putting much strength into it, the bitchy lady doctor is tossed against the far wall, her glasses smashed. You step over and drag her up.

"Unless you want to replace all your teeth, I suggest you get to work and remove it from Peaches. After that, you're going to tell me everything about Amber and her tracking device", you explain carefully, your tusks almost rubbing against her cheeks.

"But, you broke my glasses!" She exclaims, her toes barely reaching the floor as your fist holds her up by her light brown shirt.

You shake her around for a moment.

"Do you think that, at this time and age, you being a cyber-doc, that you would actually NEED to wear glasses? That they weren't just a fashion statement? How dumb do you think I am?"

"FINE! Let me down and I'll do it", she practically screams. You do so.

Radar pulse reveals that the crowd downstairs has grown to over twenty. The bravest are climbing up.

You take a knee at the doorway, for once using both hands to aim your rifle, as you want to present a minimal target. As Doc goes to work on Peaches, the first bandit head appears. And promptly vanishes as your bullet drills through his prefrontal cortex.

"Hey doc, remember to flush the **** out of her system but keep her sleeping for few hours", you shout as bandit number two tries his luck. Nope, another perforated prefrontal cortex.

"Hmph, yes yes", she acknowledges, busy hovering over Peaches. The medical machinery looks pretty intimidating.

"And by the way, put some of those nanites into her tits", you shout while you shoot.

"What?!"

"Yeah, she's too flat. Fix it!"

Then there's no more time for conversation, as a flashbang is tossed upstairs. The flare protection in your cyber eyes and the filters in your cyber ears are suddenly worth their price and more, as the dumb fucks rush the hallway, thinking that you're blind and disoriented.

BANG - throat. BANG - chest. BANG - nose. BANG - belly. BANG - chest. BANG - chest again, the guy won't go down, must be wearing armor. BANG - face, that always works.

You curse and flip to full auto - but your clip was already half empty from the single shots, so you switch to the underbarrel shotgun and let them have it.

Ten mangled corpses lie on the hallway as the smoke clears and you're busy reloading.

"So doc, tell me about Amber while the dogs lick their wounds"

"What to tell? She was the best here, though Madam, of course, trusted none of the whores, which is why she was planted with a tracking device. But something went wrong as it only transmitted for a very short time"

More shouting from downstairs, a proper argument this time, not just Madam screaming.

"Yeah? Did anything weird happen last night, involving Amber?"

The brunette pauses for a moment.

"Nope, she just ran away"

Now that was fishy as fuck. The argument was getting even more heated. But you can't rough up the doctor while she's elbows deep inside Peaches. You're trying to rescue her from a Life of Vice and Sin, not get her killed on an operating table.

"You sure doc?"

"Of course I am!" She snapped. Now she was nervous instead of angry as before.

It took ten more minutes before the thugs decided to try again. This time the opening salvo was a trio of frag grenades. No wonder the Madam was arguing - the place is going to be ruined and she's going to lose some of her girls.

You kick the door closed and shield the operating table as much as you can. The explosion is surprisingly subdued and you feel two, maybe three thunks. Didn't even pierce your armor. But they definitely made a number in the hallway. You can hear soft moaning and crying from some of the rooms closer to the stairs. Anyone in those rooms must have been messed up pretty bad.

"You almost done Doc? Peaches has a cab waiting", you bark out as you take a knee and again rock with full auto. This time you empty both the rifle magazine and the shotgun magazine and some of the corpses are still imitating slugs.

"YES! I am done", the Doc shouts. You turn around - Peaches has a little cut, stitched over, on her lower abdomen but otherwise, there is little change.

"The **** will come out with bodily waste. I gave her an immuno-booster and sleeping aids. She'll be out for the next four to five hours and the booster will help her flush the remaining ****. And yes, I injected basic nanite kits on both of her breasts. There won't be any miracle growth as they need time and fuel to work", the brunette explains.

"Thanks a bunch, Doc. Now, how many girls have you cut up and mutilated along the years? Do you sometimes play some twisted **** games with them here?" Your voice has taken a definite step to the angry side, as you pull out your knife and run it, slowly, around her throat.

She finally loses her cool completely and starts babbling:

"Candy! Lynx is Candy! I mean Amber! I didn't know it at the time, I thought Madam wanted a new twin act, so I modified Candy to look exactly like Amber! Only when the Corps goons came back, saying that the fingerprints didn't match, did I realize the truth!"

You stop swinging your knife.

"Wait, what?"

"I'm telling you! Lynx came here, dressed up as a girl! I don't know how he fooled the Genetech goon, but they took the real Amber with them, thinking that it was Lynx! Meanwhile, I thought Lynx was just another hooker and changed her appearance, to match with Amber! You know, guys pay a lot of money for the twin sisters act!"

She's really babbling now and you're pretty sure she pissed her pants.

"Okay, let me get this straight. Genetech goons killed the real Amber but realized their mistake. Meanwhile, Lynx-slash-Candy was transformed, by you, into a carbon copy of Amber, who then escaped this house of horrors? And is now somewhere out there, on the loose?"

"YES, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, please don't kill me, please!" She falls to her knees.

Well, this mission just went from challenging to flat-out impossible. Except, Peaches knows what Amber looks like. That means she just got promoted from charity case and bedwarmer to sidekick and bedwarmer.

"Okay. Give your shirt to Peaches", you order. The brunette quickly unbuttons her shirt and then, with shaking fingers, dresses the **** blonde in it. As the young whore is quite a bit smaller, the shirt easily covers her hips, running to her upper thighs. You lift her on your shoulder again.

"It's your lucky day doc. There's a number of people here who need your skills, so I'm going to spare your miserable life. But I'll be back and you better be working at a more respectable place and doing some good or else", you don't need to finish the sentence. Instead, you fire the underbarrel grenade launcher at the staircase, just in case some foolhardy idiot was going to take a potshot at your back. The grenade hits the upper corner of the stairwell, shooting burning-hot shrapnel pinballing through it. Based on the screams, there were two foolhardy idiots.

The fire door barely even slows you down. Climbing the ladder with a half-naked sleeping girl on your shoulder is a bit more challenging but you manage. You run about three blocks before stopping and using your commlink.

"Super-Fast Shuttle Services, how may I help you?" A female voice answers immediately.

"Yeah, I'm at 760 Morrison West and need a troll-sized ride", you tell her.

"Certainly sir. Where are you headed", she asks

"Barrens, I'm not certain of the exact address but in the middle of it", you tell her.

"You must be joking sir, we do not drive to Barrens. Good day", she says and hangs up.

Huh. And as if things couldn't go better, your boss is calling you.