Minotaur

Jake Maison
02/06/2024
Content Warning: Coarse language, drug references and suicide

Image description: A lit up neon green front of a car, with a dark yellow and black background.

The man stood at the mouth of the garage, unable to shake the feeling that he was standing at the edge of the world. The tension in the air was as palpable as the humidity, the wind on his back whispered promises of incredible violence. He swallowed, gathering his nerves and silencing the voices in his head before pressing forward. The holo-sign overhead read: ‘Hotel Pollux – Guest Parking Only’.

James was a fixer, a fancy word for an outlaw mercenary. Freddy Glassjaw was a broker, a fancy word for a middleman. ‘Job’s simple, kid,’ said Glassjaw, a man with whom the word ‘simple’ was not on speaking terms.

‘You waltz in,’ he continued, ‘talk to my guy at the desk, wave that piece of wonder-tech at the car in question, and boom! We’re all rich!’

The piece of ‘wonder-tech’ Glassjaw had given him sat heavy in his pocket, like a leaden weight trying to pull him into the earth. The oblong device was supposedly a retrofitted service key used to disable a vehicle’s security subnet for repairs. Apparently, Glassjaw had his tech-wizards turn it into a skeleton key that could bypass any vehicle’s security subnet. The device itself was slim and felt so small and fragile in the man’s hand, as if he could easily crush it in his grip.

‘James. I fucked up big time, man.’ said Joel, his bony shoulders shaking. James held his brother until he calmed down. James knew he’d been using again.

‘Who do you owe this time?’ James calmy asked him when the shaking stopped. He didn’t have the energy to be angry with him right now.

The man walked down the path adjoining the access ramp leading into the garage, careful to make himself look like he belonged there. The security cameras fitted at intervals along the ceiling leading into the garage regarded him with cold indifference, their black lenses twitching and clicking with face-rec software and coming up with nothing. For once, he was grateful for being seen as little more than a cockroach to these people. Cockroaches tend to go unnoticed.

‘That junkie you call a brother owes us more than he’ll ever be able to pay off, little man,’ Freddy said, prosthetic eyes glittering with malice.

‘True,’ James said, ‘but not more than I can pay off.’ James sat back in his chair, watching the gears in the broker’s brain turn until his scowl twisted into a sleazy grin.

‘Funny you should mention that…’ he drawled.

The man was smart enough to not bring a gun with him. Platinum-tier joints like the Hotel Pollux had screening devices fitted to every entrance that would raise the alarm if any guests were found  packing heat. The eye of the scanner ran over him in a webwork of white light, apparently deeming the device in his pocket unworthy of attention. He could feel his heart pounding as the door opened for him.

‘Say something,’ Joel ventured. James said nothing, only stared back at his brother’s baby-blue eyes. ‘James… please,’ Joel pleaded, his eyes brimming with tears.

Any pity James could have felt in that moment had atrophied long ago, he only sighed before asking, ‘What is there to say?’

The parking garage beneath Hotel Pollux’s lobby was a vast labyrinth of ferrocrete pillars and winding steel pipes, the air hung heavy with the stench of engine fumes and floor cleaner. The reception desk sat to the right of the door, the security guard manning it gazing up at him as he approached. Mindful of the ceiling-mounted camera watching and recording them both, the man leaned on the desk and casually inquired, ‘Maintenance Request, number eight-four-four-nine-zero-eight-dash-six?’ The guard nodded before hitting a button on the security console in front of him, ‘Cameras are down. You have five minutes.’ The man nodded in return. Five minutes would be more than enough.

Joel met his brother’s gaze, brow creasing with concern. ‘What kind of deal?’ he asked with a greater sense of authority than he deserved.

‘The kind that gets us off the hook,’ James snapped in reply, suddenly angry. Joel looked at his brother with wounded eyes, the word ‘us’ hanging in the air between them.

 The car was a beauty, a Wakefield Motors Type-6 ‘Minotaur’ supercar, painted dark green, one of only ten ever made in the whole world. The average going price for one of these was higher than most people made in their lifetimes. Holding the device in front of him, the man pressed the button on its face, and the car responding with an electronic chirp. The driver’s side door of the Minotaur clicked and whispered open, revealing the barrel of a pistol aimed directly at his face.

James regarded his brother for a moment longer, the silence between them thick enough to smother him. A pang of resentment spread through his chest like poison at the sight of his brother now. Holding him back as a boy after finding their father dead from an overdose, tears in both of their eyes.

‘Next time, save both of us some time and just fucking OD,’ James spat, slamming the door on his way out.

The man froze, holding his hands up in surrender. The wielder of the pistol unfolded themselves from the driver’s seat to stand beside the car’s open door. The woman, looking about a year or two older than him, was clad in a form-fitting black netjockey suit and brown bomber jacket, blonde bangs framed eyes that pinned him to the spot.

Ruby awoke to a call from her broker, bedsheets clinging to her sweaty, damp skin. Ruby mentally retained the details of the meet-up before wordlessly ending the call. Ruby showered, the cold water sobering her from the dregs of a restless sleep. Ruby holstered her pistol beneath her shoulder before leaving her apartment.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ the woman growled; the barrel of the pistol unwavering in her grip.

‘Easy, I’m just here to run a maintenance check on this guest’s vehicle,’ he lied, indicating the device in his hand.

‘Bullshit,’ she sneered, ‘since when do techies use black market repros?’ The man swallowed. He had no answer to that.

Ruby met with her contact at the usual spot, a hole-in-the-wall bar with no name. Speaking for her broker, the contact slid the design specs for a Wakefield Type-6 ‘Minotaur’, including its onboard security countermeasures. Ruby absorbed the information like a parched wanderer in the desert. Shrugging on her jacket, Ruby left the bar without a word.

‘Who sent you?’ the woman demanded, an edge of impatience entering her voice. The man remained silent. He didn’t even like Glassjaw but he wasn’t about to snitch on him. To emphasise her point, the woman drew back the slide on her pistol before resuming her aiming stance. Regardless, the man maintained his silence, closing his eyes and waiting for her to pull the trigger.

The hackslinger sat behind a desk piled with ancient VR interface helmets and racks of data-sticks. Ruby flashed her transcard at him, asking after a ‘special delivery’ left in her name. The slinger ran her transcard, credits deducting in an eyeblink as Ruby inspected the deck, a TBM Mk.4 NetDriver with modified control software. It wasn’t anything special, but it would have to be enough.

The screen of the deck began to flash red on the dashboard of the Minotaur, warning of the impending detection of the breach protocol by the subnet’s countermeasures. ‘Motherfucker!’ the woman snapped, turning to the deck while keeping her pistol trained on him.

The man saw his chance, lowering his hands while her back was turned. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we stand a better chance of getting out of here if we work together.’ Before the woman could reply, the garage became bathed in blood-red light, accompanied by the blare of alarms.

Ruby had a good memory, remembering the number of the niche in the columbarium dedicated to her parents. She remembered watching them waste away from the necrophage from behind the plastic quarantine tent, their handsome faces robbed of all life and colour.

‘This might be the last time I see you guys…’ Ruby said, her voice becoming thick, tears running freely down her cheeks. ‘After tonight, I’ll be set up for life,’ she continued. ‘I can finally leave this fucking city, just like we planned.’

The man held the woman’s gaze for a long time as the klaxons screamed and the room flashed red, precious seconds slipping by. Finally, the woman relented, holstering the pistol beneath her shoulder.

‘Fuck, fine!’ She snapped, her voice transitioning from hostile to commanding. ‘I’ll trick the hotel’s subnet into letting us go, you use that thing to get us the fuck out of here.’

Without waiting for a response, the woman climbed back into the car, snatching her deck off the dashboard as he climbed in after her. She didn’t seem the type to hesitate, not for him or anyone else.‘

Please stop crying.’ Ruby said for the fifth time, any trace of guilt for coming here having well and truly evaporated. Jupiter Jones, vocalist of metarock band Division Stance, world-class narcissist and – as of now – Ruby’s latest ex-boyfriend, stood weeping before her.

‘Ruby-y-y-y!’ he wailed, ‘I’ll kill myself without you, I swear!’ Ruby met his gaze at that.

‘We both know that’s not true,’ she said, her voice like iron. Jupiter blinked at her, opening his mouth as if to argue.

‘You’ll still be here in a month,’ Ruby pressed on, ‘doing what you always do with some other girl.’ She watched the mask slip from Jupiter’s face, anger curling his lip. Ruby held up a hand to silence him.

‘I’m already late for work,’ she said. ‘You are not my problem anymore.’ And with that, Ruby turned and left his apartment.

To the man’s surprise, the skeleton key worked like a charm, disabling the Minotaur’s security protocols and isolating them from the Hotel Pollux’s subnet. With that, the woman was able to launch a second breach into the subnet, replicating access keys for the garage door which had slammed shut when the subnet tripped the alarm. Sealing the Minotaur’s cabin and bypassing the engine’s biometric lock, the man gunned the accelerator and the Minotaur roared to life.  The woman swore as her gun slipped from her holster and fell behind her seat.

The damp night air did little to remedy the oily feeling in Ruby’s stomach as she looked down at the inhaler clasped in her hand. The bright-orange plastic label reading ‘Deep-End’, street-slang for the synthetically-enhanced fentanyl contained in the cartridge. Ruby raised the inhaler to her mouth, the words ‘just one more, just one more, just one more’ dancing through her skull. The mouthpiece inches from her lips, Ruby dropped the inhaler on the ground, crushing it beneath her boot.

The deck’s breach protocol proved powerful enough to fool the hotel subnet into thinking it was an in-house terminal, unlocking and raising the garage door.

‘Activate the traffic barrier at the top end of the ramp!’ the man barked, shifting the car into gear.

The woman looked at him incredulously but stopped when she saw the look in his eyes, a look that threaded the needle between genius and insanity. The woman worked her magic with the deck, cycling the hydraulic actuators of the traffic barrier at the peak of the access ramp, it was then she saw why. Parked across the entryway to the access ramp was a black armoured security vehicle, two guards in body armour on either side aiming pistols at them. The man floored the accelerator.

‘Oh, fuck!’ the woman screamed in the split second before the Minotaur hit the barrier, the direction of their approach turning it into a makeshift ramp that allowed the Minotaur to sail clear over the security vehicle. She winced at the metallic screech of the Minotaur’s roof making intimate contact with the holo-sign reading: ‘Hotel Pollux – Guest Parking Only’ before touching down on the lot on the other side and screeching to a halt. The guards reeled about, pistols in hand and preparing to fire right before the sign came loose and crashed down onto the roof of their vehicle in an explosive shower of sparks and twisted metal. Without waiting for them to recover, the man slammed his foot on the accelerator again and they were gone in an instant.

‘Tell you what,’ the woman said, keeping her eyes on the road behind them, ‘because you’re equal-parts brilliant and batshit crazy, I’m willing to let you keep the Minotaur.’ The man blinked at her then, having completely forgotten about the gig.

‘But what about you?’ he asked, ‘won’t your Broker be pissed if you show up emptyhanded?’

She gave him a wicked smile then, showing him the display on her deck, the words ‘Hotel Pollux Data Fortress – Access: Granted’ flashing in green letters. ‘Who said anything about emptyhanded?’

‘I’m James, by the way,’ he said, after it was clear they weren’t being followed. The woman laughed at that.

‘You planning on taking me out for coffee after this?’ she asked.

He didn’t reply right away, finally saying, ‘I wouldn’t be completely against that’.

The woman met his gaze before replying, ‘Neither would I,’ she said with a smile, ‘the name’s Ruby.’

 After driving Ruby home, James delivered the Minotaur to Glassjaw’s auto-shop, squaring away Joel’s debt. ‘Joel! I did it!’ James yelled excitedly as he opened the front door, ‘I did i-’ The words died in James’ throat as his eyes beheld what awaited him in the dark; Joel, floating just above the floor, held aloft by the extension cord wrapped around his neck. Those baby-blue eyes staring out at nothing forever.

Ruby held James in the dark when he wept, letting his body sink into hers. She held him through the long nights and cried with him when needed. He never demanded anything of her, never touched her in the way Jupiter had, only asking that she stayed with him. Ruby wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

A month had passed before the heat of the Minotaur heist had died down, giving James a small window to grieve. Gingerly placing his hand on the niche in the columbarium with Joel’s name on it, James said everything he wished he’d said to his brother that night. How much he loved him, how much he missed him, how much he hated him for not being beside him now.

Ruby watched as James approached from the columbarium. His face was now unmistakable to her. He smiled when he reached her, pulling her in for a long hug that managed to chase away the morning chill. ‘Thank you for waiting,’ he said, ‘was there anyone here you needed to see?’

She pulled away slightly, pausing as she beheld him for a moment. She kissed him then, hard enough to steal the air from his lungs, before pulling back again. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘just you.’

James was so intoxicated by the press of Ruby’s kiss that he almost didn’t notice that she had bought a new car. He cracked a smile before laughing aloud, a sound Ruby had not heard in a long time.

‘Is this another fucking Minotaur?’ James asked incredulously, the smile never having left his face. Ruby returned his smile.

‘You’re damn right it is,’ she replied, ‘one of only ten made in the whole world, you know.’

The two left the city that same day, never once looking back.

The End