Hydra Heart

Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Your Girlfriend Calls Me Bamboo

On the sidewalks and walls, no space was left untouched. Advertisements sprawled like weeds, accompanied by graffiti, which preached ideas such as, "McKenna wuz here."

"Make your data private, only 300 credits a month! Nidus Privacy Association."

"Cheap apartments, inquire at..."

"Control your workday. Nutrijet."

"Need extra cash? Donate blood today! (Under 35 need not apply.) Paid for by the Nidus Youth Program."

Molly found the last one particularly affronting. I'm not putting my tomato juice in an IV so some dinosaur can squeeze a few more months in before the meteorite comes.

She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, taking in her surroundings. Nidus, eh? Haven't been here since it was called Ursara. This is where Vesta lives, then. She gave the city a look up and down. It was as gloomy as any of the cities that had been conquered by Hirudinea.

When Molly was in the city, she always noticed the children playing in the street. They displayed an inspiring creativity in finding fun and trouble, even in a world that was out to get them.

Molly knew where to go. Ha, I know right where she is. Dumbass didn't think I'd put a tracking device on her.

Molly stepped into the lobby of the apartment building where Vesta lived. Now, she had to figure out which of these rooms belonged to Vesta. Her tracking technology wasn't new enough to gauge altitude, but she more than enjoyed the challenge of figuring it out herself.

She withdrew her Kit, Inquiry. It manifested as a multi-tool which could turn into anything that might be handy to her, within a reasonable size. Moreover, it gave her a little extra intuition to solve problems like the one in front of her now. She spoke with Inquiry, though most would say she was really just talking to herself. Then again, Kits do not play by anyone's rules, least of all their own.

Molly could have just used the kiosk at the desk to get Vesta's room number, but that didn't sound fun to her.

I'll start with where she isn't. If she's working against Alogos, I doubt she'd be in the higher floors of the building.

The top half of floors in any housing building in Nidus were spacious, with extra room and luxuries for those wealthy enough to afford them. In a full complex, there would be several times more people living in the bottom floors than the top. The floor directly in between these two halves was for those who were staff serving those in the higher floors: janitors, security, pest control. They enjoyed the same pretty decor as the top floor, yet their apartments were as cramped as the rooms in those below.

Since she was obviously a rogue kinda gal, there is no way her living situation isn't gonna stick out in some way or another. Molly looked at the small mailboxes for each room. Then, she busted out a legal pad and started taking mental notes.

After passing by almost every other mailbox, she stumbled across the one for Floor 32. The slot for room 41 caught her eye. It looked decrepit with disuse.

With the door to the box left hanging open, Molly could see it was dark and empty. Now that seems like the woman I met. She took the elevator up to the very same floor and room.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.

No one answered. She looked around the vicinity of the door, and Inquiry hummed with excitement as Molly began to think about how to get in. After some deep thought, she tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.

In we go. Molly had arrived. She basked in the glory that was Vesta's apartment building. There were no paintings or posters on the walls. There were no books on the table. There were no fun colors on the neatly made bed. Instead, there was a desk, a refrigerator, a bathroom, and one box tucked away in the corner. Exalted above all was a fish tank. It was well-groomed, and Molly spent longer than she would have liked to admit staring at the vivid spectrum of colors, scales, and fins.

Recuperating her focus, she inspected the desk. She opened the first drawer to find an immensely thick tome. The second and last drawer contained about a dozen different hard drives, labeled.

One of them read 1-276. In the same fashion, the following drives were numbered, the next one picking up from 277-412, and so forth. Molly returned her attention to the first drawer, and opened the tome within. It turned out to actually be two separate volumes, one much smaller than the other. She opened the thin one.

00001 - (1)

00002 - (1)

This continued for as far as Molly could see, so she opened the second book.

00001 - Fight Man Kills: Volume 1

This film explores thoroughly the nature of humanity's darkest desires; those rooted in sadism. The ending was so profoundly emotionally charged, my hair stood up on my skin, and I thought about it for days. But, there was a scene wherein Fight Man shot two more bullets out of his gun than he should have been able to do without reloading, as the model he was wielding only has a twelve round magazine; he fired fourteen times.

Rating: 4.5/10

Molly flipped through hundreds of pages. They were all short reviews of action movies, over a thousand of them. Molly thought to herself, She's worse than I thought.

One disturbing revelation was simply not enough. Molly's attention was brought to the box in the corner, the one she had ignored to investigate the desk. Without a second thought, she opened the flaps.

In it, there was one picture. It was Vesta, as a child, being held by a woman whose likeness Molly would recognize anywhere. She'd seen her in pictures countless times.

Somehow, I need to get Vesta to Tenra.