The Cyborg's Daughter ( I'm close to 100K reads! Then Party)

Chapter 23/FastNFuming

It was my first dance solo. This nights dance had been harder to begin with, FastNFuming had developed a technique which worked in syncopation with the moves. His moves appeared to be out of time but his 3/4 steps were accepted by the phase bracelets. This match I had managed to bring down the slow time feeling almost at will. We were fighting at level four which could only be compared to someone able to slit your stomach with a knife, watch your guts fall our and then do it all again. The feeling of deep cuts on my body was hard to resist. The important thing with the pain Bret had told me was to try and use it. If you struck back in response the lack of timing would make your move ineffectual.

We broke, the track was eight minutes long and had two drop outs. Both sides tended to use this as a time to stop and take breath.

"Come on girl" said Fast "I'm so all over you. Your going down on your fat ass" .

While we paused frozen waiting for the beat to return I noticed the red LED blinking on the audio system. I knew enough about the gear now to know it was the box that broadcast the beat to our phase bracelets which used it to compute how 'in time' we were. Even by running in slow time it was hard for me to anticipate and block Fast's moves. Lilly said that Fast had been training since he was a child, each move was carved into his mind by ten of thousands of repetitions on the practice ring. The base drum kicked up and I tried something different. It didn't work and resulted in a number of hits on me. The next drop out hit. Fast was getting tired. I was more tired but more desperate, if we got into the final verse he would out point and probably get a full strike. So instead of stopping I kept moving to the beat. The beat was in my head and I was able to see a red LED which was flashing in time. Furious was fast because he had rehersed each move. I was able to move using the LED for time and with a few arm movements built up enough potential to released a bad blast. He was going down with this one. 

Then I felt like a black veil had been pulled over my brain and then my eyes. 

***

I was in the dark room with the council of the grey lady.

"The investigations in New York showed nothing conclusive. Our best hypothesis was that other robots did it, then covered their tracks. We believe the message was written by revolutionaries claiming credit for others work"

"Results of PRISM sentiment analysis show that over 77.3% of slaves in New York have had a conversation suggesting that the attack was the result of the return of a saviour" said one of the men in council.

"We all know there are no saviours" said the grey lady grimly.

"Analysis shows that rumours of the incident are spreading and distorting at the same time. Some are talking about the return of Prometheus. What do we do?" said another. 

"We do precisely nothing" began the grey lady "We know this wasn't the result of a hyper trained machine killing super slave. It's an industrial accident which played to minds which were over exited when a remake of 'the revenge of the mutant slave girl' played locally. These rumours will die out when nothing happens next."

The council thought. 

"agreed" they said. 

"That brings that to a conclusion. As I said no need to panic and jump to conclusions" said the grey lady.

"Information:" said the golden cloud of information "Police in City 05 have been approached by an Eternal with information about illegal street fighting contest which promotes the breaking of rule 17. This unit is aware that high ranking cyborg's are attending the contest along with surrogates for some prominent A.Is. The Police in City 05 are marshalling at the command centre for a large scale raid on the so called dance contest location in a pod bay."