“Run!” she shouted.
We slushed through the wet snow, which had begun to fall across the bay. There was unrest in the city that night, and we found ourselves caught up in the middle of it. I had seen her from a distance at other protests, but this was the first time I had seen her go militant. She said her name was Mary Jane, so I also lied and told her mine was Victor.
Her intensity was like a star bursting through the sky. Ferocious. A reckless Joan of Arc. There was no stopping her as she entered the melee and clawed and clubbed her way through the laboratory security lines.
As expected, we quickly found ourselves in heaps of trouble when the countermeasures kicked in. Choppers flashed their lights in the dark as drone guardians jumped and snow crashed in the middle of the street. Their motors whirred blowing steam, and then the multi-legged droids began crawling forward, like tarantulas, scanning their environment with laser precision.
Somehow we were separated from our ‘unit’, if you could call it that. We were nothing but a bunch of ragged misfits fighting that eternal war against the forces of corruption: the ones hell bent on taking away our rights. It was the age old struggle between freedom-loving individuals and oppressive authority.
“Never give them power!” shouted Mary Jane. “You give them an inch, they always take a mile.”
In the maelstrom of the crowd, we chanted, hurled insults and holo-granades at the riot police until they’ve had enough of our shenanigans and began to chase us down the street.
She fell on the sidewalk, and a guardian crawled up to her, making a grating sound as its sharp pincers struck the pavement. The drone tried to inject her with the wicked cilia on its long appendages, but she rolled out of the way in a shower of sparks.
More guardians were approaching, so I ran up to the creature and swung my bat with a grunt. It struck and shattered the droid’s plexi-carapace with a loud crack. Again and again, growling obscenities at the machine, I smashed it until its electronic entrails spilled onto the snow in wisps of smoke. The battered exo-skeleton began to spin wildly as its navigation systems went haywire.
I reached for Mary Jane’s hand and helped her stand up. We ran along a dark alley until we reached the park, where we both lay panting on the snowy grass, holding on to each other. Behind the mask, her eyes looked bewitching. I was spell bound and was about to say something but instead fell silent and just stared into her eyes.
She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and reaching forward she rubbed her nose on my mask. She laughed. The material was smooth and rough at the same time. Silky. I moved my face about and our two masks glided past each other with a soft synthetic rustle. I felt the warmth of her breath through it and saw its fine misty crystals rising up and shimmering in the cold air.
A turbulent tide of emotions drowned us in madness, and we threw caution to the wind. Old fears rose within me. What if viral spikes were still activated on the surface of our masks? What if she was infected? Or I… Ah! To hell with the virus, we wanted to feel alive again. We bit each other’s straps like hungry creatures, and the masks snapped back with a satisfying slap. We laughed and rubbed our faces together in a deadly game of passion. Life, love, and beyond. In the frenzy of our coronal delirium, the straps came undone around our ears. Our lips met. Moist naked flesh. Tasting for the first time that which was forbidden and long forgotten.
There would be other battles in the days ahead. This was just the beginning, or perhaps the end of the beginning, as Old Bulldog himself like to say.
In any case, none of that mattered in that sweet moment. We had each other in the dark. We had the will and the fire. We had our masks, and our warm kisses in the viral night.
The lonesome booms of gravity bombs echoed across the city. All around us, the snow was still falling.
This concludes my flash fiction entry for The Ink Well Prompt #31. The cover image is my own creation. Thank you for reading!