Issue #91 – Rock and Roll Lifestyle

The Descendants Vol 8: The Weaver's Web

• Issue #85 – The Ballad of Bad Lass
• Issue #86 – Those Not Forgotten
• Issue #87 – Descendants… In Space
• Issue #88 – Tome of Battle
• Issue #89 – All That Glitters
• Issue #90 – Just Us Sidekicks
• Issue #91 – Rock and Roll Lifestyle
• Descendants Special #8 – The Heart of Rock ‘N Roll
• Issue #92 – Homage
• Issue #93 – Day of Recovery
• Issue #94 – The Knight, The Witch and the Gadgeteer (FaerieQuest Part 1)
• Issue #95 – Into The Woods (FaerieQuest Part 2)

Rock and Roll Lifestyle (Part 5)

“No doubt about it, this palmtop’s GPS chip was cloned. I see a weird access indication from earlier this morning. That’s how Mr. Scruffy was planning to track Sonia.” Tink, along with Warrick, Kay and Lisa were in one of the hotel’s many conference rooms, rented for them by Laurel so they could meet in secret from the others, specifically those who weren’t in on their shared secret.

“Can you find out who did it?” Lisa was leaning over her left shoulder, Warrick her right. Kay was sitting on the desk, depending on the others’ reactions to tell her what was going on.

Tink shook her head. “No, sorry. Anyone smart enough to make a GPS clone also so smart enough to block it from being traced.”

“So we’ve got nothing?” asked Warrick.

Craning her neck around to look at him, Tink offered a clever smile. “I didn’t say that. While I might not be able to trace them, but once I knew the time the clone was made, I checked for other access instances around the same time. Our hacker got a little too ballsy and installed spyware that lets them watch the palmtop’s activity in real time. Apps, calls, whatever—they know anything and everything that happens on this palmtop, they know.”

Warrick thought on this for a minute before deciding to think the way his techie girlfriend would think. That made him break out into a smile. “So we can convince them of whatever.”

“Or to be wherever we want.” Kay slid down off the desk and made a grabby motion toward the palmtop. “For example, if someone who sounds exactly like Sonia calls her band to change the time and place of their practice.”

“There is still the matter of how we take this guy down,” said Tink, “I mean, people might notice that the Descendants just happened to show up at the same time we’re here.”

Warrick shrugged. “LA’s a big place and the music festival’s a big event. But if you’re worried… we may have a way around that…”

As Tink started disconnecting the palmtop from where it had been plugged into her tablet, Lisa stood up straight and looked thoughtful. “That’s a good plan, but we need to keep in mind that since they screwed up here, they might be trying to find her other ways. I mean you can track celebrities through their fans these days.”

This only made Kay grin even wider. “Oh, just leave that up to me.”

***

Garfield sat down at an outdoor cafe, having ditched the public car after only a few blocks and taking a commuter pod to this, his fallback position. The tables here were separate from each other and placed on an elevated deck, affording him both privacy and a good vantage point.

“Got her yet?” he asked into his palmtop, pretending to have a casual conversation.

“Nothing recent. The PublicCelebrity site has some pictures of her at Sangre City earlier, and the airport earlier than that. People just aren’t obsessive about her enough to be able to track her like this.”

Garfield took a drink of water. He’d ordered a late lunch of grilled salmon and a salad just to keep up appearances. He was used to eating mostly energy bars and takeout and burning off that unhealthy lifestyle at the gym. “Has she used her palmtop?”

“Keeping an eye on it, Fat Cat,” said Kaycee, “But—oh, wow you must be psychic. She just erased something from her schedule.”

“What’d she erase?”

Kaycee didn’t reply for a moment before saying, “Hold on, she’s making a call. Patching it through to you.”

Moments later, her voice was replaced with a ringing tone followed by an unfamiliar voice saying, “Hello?”

“Lisa?” asked the voice of Sonia Remington.

“Oh, Sonia, hi! Did you get back to your hotel that quick?”

“No,” said Sonia, “too many appointments for that. Just coming by your friends’ place to get my palmtop pushed some things back into free time—but thank you so much for getting in touch with my manager and letting him know I’d left my phone with you.”

Garfield scowled. So that’s what happened.

“Oh, that’s no problem. Did you track down that courier?” Lisa continued.

Sonia sighed dramatically. “I haven’t even had time to tell my assistant about it. But I’ll do that later. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is because I just found out the studio we were going to practice in was double booked, so I need to change out practice time. Is seven good for you? My manager found an indie studio run out of a warehouse on Wildrow Street. Can you meet me there?”

“Of course,” said Lisa. “We’ll see you there!”

“Perfect. So sorry for the shake-up. I’m sure things will be amazing nonetheless.”

The call ended and Garfield took another sip of water before speaking. “Can you check out that warehouse?”

“Already on it, Fat Cat. There are two warehouses on that block. One is scheduled for demolition in a month and the other… belongs to ACE Music Associates LLC.” The sound of keystrokes filled the call. “Sending you the layout now.”

“Send me the layout of the whole block. Find me an escape route with minimal camera coverage.”

Kaycee started doing so, then piped up, “Are you sure you want to do it there? She’s meeting people. Might mean a lot of witnesses.”

Almost unconsciously, Garfield patted his weaponized arm. “I have enough range that it won’t be an issue. Let’s do this.”

***

It was a quarter to seven when a town car pulled up to the warehouse on Wildrow Street. Sonia Remington exited, talking on her palmtop.

Garfield was watching from the third floor of the building across the street. He’d forgone the other warehouse because the building he was occupying had a back exit that opened onto an alley with no cameras, but which did have a fence he could jump to end up on a loading dock he could easily slip through. A clean getaway, according to Kaycee.

He watched Sonia with a monocular, scanning the street for any of her band members. No one came out to meet her, but at the same time, the street was relatively quiet with the only non-warehouse buildings being bars, night clubs and flophouses like the one he was in. He couldn’t have asked for a better set-up.

And that’s what gave him pause. He really couldn’t have asked for a better set-up. That’s what made it feel like a set-up. Remington had no bodyguards, no extra eyes on her… she was just wide open and defenseless. Things were going too smoothly. Nothing ever went so smoothly.

Paranoia rising, he scanned the street again. There were a couple of young bucks in gang colors sitting on a stoop at the end of the block, but they were just hanging out, not looking for any trouble. A woman in late middle age wasn’t far from Sonia, carrying groceries.

There wasn’t anyone else in evidence and nothing to indicate there was a sting going on: no vehicles on the block that could house cops or some sort of security.

Beyond the feeling that the whole job was just too easy, he couldn’t see anything that would convince him to abort. Just in case, he mentally went over his escape route: to the end of the hall, down the stairs, then past the little alcove with the vending machines and the first floor janitor’s closet to the rear door. Kaycee had already overridden the meager security there as well as looping the camera there. Once in the alley, there was a chain-link fence he could easily jump that would put him in another alley that let out between a laundromat and a barber shop. If he moved quickly, but without obvious hurry, no one would connect him to the time of the shooting.

Down on the street, Sonia Remington finished her conversation and looked up and down the street. Her bandmates appeared to be late. After a moment, she leaned into the passenger window of the car and said something to the driver.

Anticipating that she would be going into the building or leaving soon, Garfield converted his arm to rifle mode. In what he liked to call ‘another life’, he’d been an industrial spy, sneaking into high security facilities to steal information and help his employers keep tabs on the competition. He’d kept copies of everything, sold a few on the foreign market, and used a few more to lure Kaycee into his employ.

It turned out to be a good investment when one of the security drones he’d broken in to steal the schematics for turned out to be fully active and operation. Two replacement arms and a lung courtesy of Kaycee later, he was more suited to assassination than infiltration now, and had slowly been building a reputation-and an arsenal.

His current rig was his pride and joy: an all-ceramic, high muzzle-velocity custom rifle with a recoil suppression system built into his shoulder and sound suppression built into the barrel. It wasn’t movie-silencer quiet, but it would be hard for people on the street to identify it as a gunshot until after the fact.

A holographic display came online and painted a targeting reticule before his eyes, linked to the rifle’s sights.

He lined up on Sonia’s head. It wasn’t like using a normal sniper rifle. It was stabilized purely by the rig connecting his arm to his body. The recoil suppression system took care of any shaking, but at the same time, the very fine adjustments needed for long-range sniping, hence he was only across the street instead of many blocks away. If he could snipe long range, his prices would be much higher.

Not to say he wasn’t good. In his element, he was very good.

To illustrate just that, he led his shot as Sonia left the car and headed toward the side of the warehouse where a set of external stairs led presumably to where the recording studio was. It was a simple mental command, imagining a trigger being pulled, that fired the rifle.

The report sounded more like a pop than a gunshot, and Sonia’s head pitched tot he side as she dropped.

Garfield didn’t linger at the window in case the driver, who predictably leaped out of the car, looked up. The only reason he didn’t immediately dart for the door was because he needed the time spent walking to it for his arm to revert to the form of a normal arm.

Once out the door, he proceeded to follow his escape plan and hit the stairs. Here, he didn’t have anyone watching, so he took them two at a time, pausing at the door to the ground floor to calm his breathing and heart rate for the benefit of anyone who might be down there using the vending machines.

When he opened the door, he found that there actually was: a Hispanic woman in jeans and a flannel shirt. There was a laundry basket next to her feet as she cycled through the items in a hot snack machine. She didn’t even glance his direction as he made his way past her.

Doing his best to look like he had every right to go out the rear entrance (which, he noted, was a fire door), Garfield pushed said door open… and came face-to-face with another arm-mounted weapon. A much larger arm-mounted weapon.

Teen Machine.

Garfield had done his homework on the potential hazards he might run into in LA, but had largely discounted Descendants: LA, as they dealt more or less exclusively in monsters and high-profile crime. There was no reason for them to be guarding a C-list celebrity even if she was on the rise.

“Reach for the sky, dude.” Teen Machine’s voice was highly youthful and highly synthesized.

“Whoa.” Garfield pushed his skill at acting, honed from many nights pretending to be a technician, custodian, or security guard in order to case of infiltrate his targets. “C-come on man, I ain’t done nothin’ wrong. I was just coming out here for a smoke.”

He focused on his right arm, waiting to pick his moment. While the rifle was his bread and butter, his left arm had a submachine gun loaded with traditional armor-piercing ammo and a bayonet made out of high-density alloy.

“Yeah, that’s not going to cut it, dude. Takes a cyborg to know one, and I can tell you’re loaded for bear. Bear wearing armor.” Teen Machine gestured with his arm cannon. “So like I said, reach for the sky.”

Garfield tried to take a step back and his back hit something solid. He looked back to find… something. It was translucent with a feminine upper torso and face, though the face lacked a mouth and had merely a bump for a nose. It was bald, and its legs were sort of fused, becoming sort of a thick tail somewhere at mid-thigh. It wasn’t wearing clothes except for a metal and glass belt at its weight, but through its body, Garfield could see the Hispanic woman’s clothes lying in front of the vending machine.

“Say ‘hi’ to Glass. She’s new, declared Teen Machine.

“How the hell did you even know I was here?” he squawked, completely incredulous.

Teen Machine laughed. “We got a metal detector. And since you didn’t put your hands up…”

By the time Garfield whipped around to look at him again, the large-bore arm cannon had fired, expelling a set of bolas that rapidly ensnared his arms. Before he could react, they sent a brutal shot up his arms and he lost consciousness.

“Nicely done, TM.” Sonia Remington—with a hole still in the side of her head, but no visible gore—came down the alley with the white and blue jump-suited Rebound accompanying her. She turned a grin to Glass and gave a double thumbs up. “And it’s nice to see a fellow shapeshifter in action. Nice war form. By the way.”

A mouth formed on Glass’s countenance and she said, “Um… thanks. Could you…” she gestured tot he side of her head.

“Hmm? Oh!” the hole in Sonia’s head closed up. After a second’s thought, Sonia shifted into the heroic form of Facsimile. “Thanks so much for your help, guys. We’re kind of on vacation and didn’t want to get the media causing either of us problems with why we were running around in your town.”

“We wouldn’t have minded either way,” said Rebound. “But we’re happy to help. Any idea why someone would hire an assassin to go after Sonia Remington?”

Facsimile shrugged. “We get all kinds. Old business partner who didn’t like that she made it big like Maven was to the Ladies of Ragnarok, maybe a family member gone bad, racist asshole who doesn’t like the idea of a descendant making it big. Who knows?”

“It it really racist?” asked Glass.

“Huh?”

“Hating descendants. Is it really racist? Do we count as a race?”

Facsimile blinked. “You know, I always just assumed.”

“But there are descendants of all races,” said Felix, “and ethnicity.”

“You can be more than one race,” Facsimile pointed out.

Glass shifted her ‘tail’ into legs and leaned on the door frame. “Yeah, but that still doesn’t mean ‘descendant’ is a race.

“Maybe it’s like how someone can be Jewish ethnically or religiously or both… except the opposite of that and there’s really no kind of category for ‘my great-great-great grandpa got experimented on a hundred years ago.”

“Then what do we call the people who would be racist against us if we were a race? Just assholes?”

“Bigots works,” said Teen Machine, “Also covers people that hate spark jockeys.”

Facsimile’s eyes flashed, “I always wondered of ‘spark jockey’ was a slur or something.”

Shifting her position against the door frame, Glass shrugged. “I’ve never heard another name for them.”

“I prefer ‘cyborg’,” said Teen Machine, “something about ‘jockey’ at least seem kinda slurry.”

Rebound sighed at the conversation. “Weren’t we going to hook up with Renaissance to try and track down this guy’s hacker friend?”