Mardock Scramble

Balot’s eyes met with the deep red in Oeufcoque’s.

Balot closed her eyes. She felt Oeufcoque’s warm body heat and prayed for something to protect her. Just like when she first took Oeufcoque in her hands, all that while ago. Oeufcoque turned with a squelch. She felt a reassuring weight in her hands and a trigger against her finger.

“Don’t, Balot! You’re too—” The Doctor’s words were dissipated by a sharp gust of wind. The car roof was opening up, and the Doctor could only gape at it. The rain came down, assaulting them like razor blades.

Balot felt an extraordinary sense of precision amid the lashing rain and the car that was now pushing three hundred kilometers an hour. She was in control. She grasped the two cars. Their strengths and their Achilles’ heels. She sensed the currents of the violent winds and the raindrops that spiraled all around. The direction the two cars were heading in. Her movements. Boiled’s movements. She sensed everything as one, with perfect timing. Her whole world turned bright white.

Balot’s eyes became bloodshot, and she noticed her skin pressing in tightly on her internal organs. She heard a ringing noise around her forehead, and then could hear no more. The only body part left to rely on was her heart, which kept on beating away, telling her what she needed to do.

It all happened in an instant. The two cars were side by side. Balot leapt up, opened her eyes wide, and wrapped her finger around the trigger. Amid the torrential downpour she thought she heard herself screaming, yelling with all her might with a throat that had long since lost all powers of speech.

She fired. The bullets flowed out of the gun in quick succession, meeting Boiled’s salvo in midair.

Balot’s first shot smashed into the bullet Boiled had fired and was obliterated. So was the second, but the third was enough to deflect the path of the oncoming bullet. The fourth went straight for Boiled’s face, but was rendered harmless by Boiled’s PGF wall, as was the fifth.

The sixth and final bullet found its target—Boiled’s car.

Something ruptured right in front of Boiled’s eyes. Balot’s aim had been true, and she had hit the steering wheel just where she had wanted—on the spot to release the airbag. In an instant, Boiled’s face and arms and body were pinned back, the air pressure from the expanding airbag pressing him into his seat.

With a yell, Boiled focused his PGF, forcing the airbag back far enough for him to extricate his shooting arm. He pushed his gun into the gap so that the muzzle pointed into the airbag, and fired. It exploded. The airbag shattered into a million pieces, as did the glass in the windshield.

Wind and rain and shards of glass came flying into the car, and all were reflected harmlessly off the wall of artificial gravity that Boiled generated.

On the other side of the newly created space was Balot.

The convertible was now back in front of Boiled’s car, roaring away.

Boiled screamed a wordless scream and fired again.

Balot had fired first. Boiled’s PGF was activated in self-defense, warping the flight paths of all bullets in his vicinity—including his own.

It flew up into the air, way over Balot’s head.

Like the red convertible, Boiled’s car was also supposed to have been utterly bulletproof. But Balot could accurately target the exact same location over and over as easily as she could walk a straight line. She fired repeatedly at the hood, hitting the same spot again and again, and this eventually opened up a bullet-sized hole in the not-so-impenetrable armor. Then Balot’s final bullet flew straight through the hole and ripped the cam belt to shreds.

In an instant, Boiled’s car lost the ability to convert its energy into forward momentum.

A gap opened up between the cars. Balot and Boiled both looked for an opportunity to fire, but too much space now divided them. Balot’s car was still devouring the terrain voraciously, and Boiled’s car could no longer keep up.

Balot and Boiled remained still lest a final chance—or need to defend—presented itself. Soon, though, it became clear that their duel had come to a close, at least for now.

Boiled jerked the steering wheel to the right, bringing his vehicle onto the shoulder beside the highway.

That very same moment the fuse in Balot’s consciousness blew.

–The steering…

It was the last thing she said. As soon as she’d confirmed that the Doctor understood that he was back in the driver’s seat, she collapsed across the rear passenger seat.

“Balot?” Oeufcoque called.

All Balot heard was a ringing noise. Her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably, her lungs panted—rapid and shallow—and her whole body convulsed.

“Shit, why does this girl always have to try so hard ! Can’t she just take it easy once in a while?” the Doctor lamented from under his rain-drenched hair. “Is this the only way she’s ever going to be able to live? To survive?”