Lies

“Do you dream?” Ralph asked Molly. “I dream sometimes. I dream I’m flying and the sky is blue and full of sound…” He didn’t struggle against the wire-ropes that bound him to the crumbling, white walls. Instead, he looked up at Molly with his bright orange eyes, past thick brown hair that came down almost low enough to hide the fleshless strip on his check where she could see his silver cheek-bone.

“Don’t these places make you sad? Didn’t they call them suburbs? Why would they ever leave the city? Molly, I love the city!” She struck a match and watched it as it blazed at the tip, then worked its way down the stick, licking the wood and turning it black while the flame went from yellow to a violet-blue.

“Will it hurt?” Ralph asked. His eyes were such a deep blue, Molly could have mistaken them for the fresh-water reservoirs under the city.

“It won’t hurt,” Molly answered. She struck another match and watched Ralph watch the flames get closer to him.

“Stop!” a voice behind her commanded.

“Why?” Molly asked, slowly turning around and letting the match burn until it went out in her fingers, turning her tips black. The man speaking to her must have been in his later thirties with sandy hair and shifty, dark eyes. He was handsome and his mouth looked like he was used to smiling often.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s not your business.”

“This is my house. My business.”

“Bullshit. The city owns this place.”

“I am the city. I own this place,” the man said, coming closer. He was a lot taller than Molly. At least six feet tall. Only as he got closer did he notice the silver that glittered along her arm and within her hand. “I know you!”

“You do?” Molly asked, smiling. She took a step back to see his face better. It looked strange when he came too close. She had to crane her neck upwards and did not like the way it felt.

“Sure, everyone knows you, Molly!” Ralph laughed. His boyish grin lit up his whole face and his orange eyes glittered like little camp-fires.

“Molly…yes. That’s what they call you. The gangs. You’re their little angel. They use you, you know.”

“And they know I use them back. No point in doing business if we don’t both get something out of it.”

“What do you get out of it, Molly? He came closer again. Now he was between Molly and Ralph, who wiggled in his restraints trying to see Molly better.

“Molly, will it hurt?” Ralph asked her.

“It won’t hurt a bit, Ralph,” Molly said, striking a third match. The man moved to stop her, but Molly was a lot faster. The flame spread over Ralph almost as soon as Molly dropped the match on him. He laughed and screamed, shrieking like a wild animal.

“Molly, you lied. You lied!”

The man lurched towards the door. She watched him as flames spread around her, licked her calves, kissed her cheeks. Then she ran after him. His flesh was soft.

An Apple

Andre came to with a dull ache in the back of his skull and warm green light bathing his bound body. Initially, indiscernible, shifting green filled his vision with a striking blob of purple some distance away before shapes started to materialize. Around him, trees, bushes and vines reached upwards towards the powerful light that shone through the leaves. It had been some time since he’d been in a chlorophyll tower. Except for those who took care of them, few cared to visit the buildings that supported humanity’s voracious appetite.

The purple blob moved, became a person in the shadow of a thick-trunked tree.

“Want an apple?” Molly asked him, moving closer. Her thin, purple braids swayed as she crab-walked towards him, avoiding the thick foliage. Andre watched her extend the fruit to his face, the light glittering off the metallic skeleton where synthetic flesh had long ago peeled or had been ripped away. His feet were tied to a thick sapling and his hands were bound to a tree behind him, but the girl still looked as though he might leap on her at any moment.

“You have anything to get rid of this busted head you gave me?” he asked, leaning away from the offering.

“You’re not bleeding anymore,” Molly answered, taking back the fruit and frowning. Why did she look hurt? Neither her childish features nor her mannerisms betrayed the fact that she was at least twice as old as he was.

“Thanks,” Andre replied. “Why’d you bring me here? Ransom? You know this game. It ain’t gonna help any keepin’ me like this.” Molly shrugged, took a bite of the apple and moved back to her original position.

“I don’t know. I just felt like taking you I guess,” she said. He watched Molly eat the apple, all the while tugging at the restraints, one by one. He had escaped from more difficult situations. It felt like the ropes were woven plant-fibers. They had no give or seams in them that he could unwind or crack. The fact that she sat there so calmly, eating, not even looking at her prisoner unnerved him. It unnerved him even more that he had no idea why he was here and not dead or being tortured.

“What the fuck do you want?” Andre yelled. Somewhere out there, there were bound to be field-hands, workers, gardeners. Someone. Maybe they would come. Maybe he could bribe them to let him go.

“Yelling isn’t going to help. We’re alone,” Molly said. In the distance a bird screeched and a sound of clapping wings filled the air, as though to reinforce Molly’s words. This must have been what the old forests and jungles were like, somewhere out there beyond the cities that towered like mountain-ranges above their desolate surroundings.

Except everything in this building served a purpose, had been engineered and re-wired, with plants and animals within it all somehow part-machine. Even his own body would not pass inspection by purists. Not that he cared. Especially now, tied to a tree, watching this strange half-girl crush apple seeds between her teeth.

Flight

For a moment, Molly felt like she hanged in the air like the smog that curtained the towering city through which she raced. Mercifully, that moment passed quickly enough and she was falling, missing balconies, billboards and lights of every shape and color by only a few centimeters. Exuberance and adrenaline rushed through her body, giving her added power when she threw out an arm and grabbed an overhanging balcony.

The impact of the metal skeleton in her hand on stone sent a thunderclap through the street that vanished into the distance and darkness below her and jarred her arm almost out of place. She could feel the artificial tendons in her arm adjust to the stress where human tissues would have snapped and swung herself onto the now cracked concrete.

She felt her arm shiver as a high-frequency ray grazed it. So she had not lost them yet. Molly grinned and leaped onto the neighboring balcony eight meters away. A ray grazed her thigh, causing muscles, human and artificial to falter in the middle of her next leap, sending her careening downwards.

This time when she met stone, it was not by choice. Molly ricocheted off a landing with her left shoulder and kept falling. Another ray penetrated her right side, making it numb as she fell. Anger flooded her. This was not how they were going to get her.

Twisting in the air, Molly threw out her hand and gripped a girder on the building, letting her body swing through the window. The force of her body smashed the glass and sent her soaring through the huge, abandoned room over heavy machinery. The metal glowed as the last bits of light filtered in through the grimy windows behind her.

Landing on the floor smoothly, Molly ducked behind a towering compressor that had dozens of gears sticking out of it and waited for her heart to beat more regularly. A hum filled the air and figures started flying into the room through the broken window.

“Molly, where did you go?” a voice called out. The figures now hovered and zoomed around the room like a swarm of giant insects. “I just want to talk. You know, maybe make another business deal?” It was Andre, the man who sent blood coursing through her body and rushing into her muscles. Several of the men on the hovering disks laughed.

The right side of her body tingled with an unpleasant tightness but Molly now felt herself again. Getting hit by the ray was careless. But this carelessness fit with her overall mood. Glancing around the machine that hid her, Molly could see Andre drifting near the broken window with two goons beside him as the others glided between the towering machinery. Molly felt power flow to her legs as she crouched, then let her muscles propel her through the air straight towards him.

The goons could not have reacted fast enough unless they knew what was coming. In the blink of a human eye, Molly had one arm around Andre’s neck, while with the other she swung herself back through the shattered window and into the night.