There Are Many Tokyos In Flower

Chapter 10: Watch, Rewind, Repeat

It was often during the most important moments, instants of the greatest significance, when people communication become quite a bit less coherent. It was certainly true for Martin, as he stared after Rin as she tumbled down the street like a crash-test dummy launched from a cannon.

Martin was moderately complex —as people went — and the layers to his thinking as he realized Rin had died a second time were certainly multifaceted. His sympathy and his concern responded first, quickly followed by a certain amount of embarrassment — as his professional pride had been hit by that same motorcycle. Even before he managed to turn his head and open his mouth to speak, he worried this might not be just a horrifying coincidence. And half a heartbeat later he already began to worry that he was in a quagmire too deep for his own thinking to get him out of.

None of this was apparent in what he eventually managed to say, or course. "Oh, shit, no, fuck!" was all he managed to blurt out as he chased after Rin and the stone. He crossed the distance fairly quickly; she barely stopped rolling before he was crouched beside her, ear over her mouth and two fingers pressed against her throat.

"She's dead, Martin," BIRD said.

"No, she might not be, that impact wasn't as severe," Martin disagreed. "A motorcycle doesn't hit like truck."

"I'm looking at the status feeds from her artificial eye. It's registering no brain activity, and no pulse. Like that hit cracked her skull, broke her spine, and stopped her heart all at the same time," BIRD reported. "Almost exactly the same injuries she picked the first time she died."

"Fuck," Martin said.

"By the way, you have six seconds to grab the stone and find some cover, before your shoot yourself," BIRD reported, and Martin swore the little robot sounded amused.

Martin wasted one of those seconds wondering what BIRD meant by shooting himself, until he remembered that he was also halfway up the street. And armed.

"Shit," Martin muttered as used his hands and feet to throw himself forward so quickly a professional sprinter might only have been mildly disappointed. He managed the distance to the glowing green stone in six steps, snatched it up without slowing down, and almost reached a cement barrier on the far side of a bus stop.

Almost.

Something punched him in the left shoulder hard enough to knock him off his feet, and he ended up skidding into the barrier, colliding chest-first and knocking the wind out of his lungs. He coughed, pulled himself behind the cement, and gasped for breath.

"Fuck," Martin cursed, slipping the stone into one of his pockets and drawing his sidearm. He looked at his shoulder, where the ceramic plating had shattered from the impact. "That asshole didn't even use the beanbag shotgun. He's full-on trying to put me in the ground."

"I'm not sure that expression works on a city floating in space," BIRD said, as it perched on the top of the cement barrier and inspected Martin's shoulder. "This might be the oddest form of suicide in history, by the way."

"Don't remind me," Martin agreed, as he tried to glance up. He ducked as soon as he remembered who he was dealing which, which was fortunate since another three shots smashed into the concrete inches from where his head had been.

"That's a hell of a close grouping for over two hundred metres," Martin noted. "I'm a really good shot."

"Great. The one thing you're good at, and it's working against you," BIRD said. "Got a plan for getting out of this one, like firing back?"

"Shoot-outs don't work in real life like they do in the movies," Martin replied, ducking down a little lower. "Those three shots were me showing off, letting another pro know that unless I surrender right now, he's going to put the next few shots into me. I poke my head up to fire back, I'm dead."