Your power of bullshit, Pierre-Alexandre says. Cut these beautiful curls, he says through our helmlink, and you take away my power. Pretty Boy shakes out his hair before he puts on his helmet. I’m taking the scissors to your hair when we get back, I say to Pretty Boy. I pat my tight and right Janelle Monáe before I wreck it with my helmet. We will be if you don’t put down that damn comb, Pierre-Alexandre tells him. We’re not dead yet, Pretty Boy says, and his voice echoes as it carries to me from across the almost-empty bunker. (That’s Chicago Police Department, for those that don’t know.) Safe and protected in an undisclosed location with Marie-Therèse, Marie-Louise, Jean-François and the last CPD contingent. Smother us in the bed of our city-state infancy.
Skittles glances at a second console screen. You’re online, Skittles says, handing me my helmet. I feel all components lock into place, one by one. Robotic arms lower the torso of my powered armor onto me and outfit my arms and legs with the rest of my sleek exo-skeleton. I still can’t bring myself to look at her station on my right. Once, there were thirty-six of us, including Caracara. Instead, I look at the empty outfit stations scattered throughout the hangar. I hesitate for a fraction of a second before I answer. You okay? she asks as her fingers flow across her station console, manipulating my exo-skeleton into place from above. Skittles catches my eye as I pull on thin leather gloves and stand shoulder-width apart on my platform, arms outstretched.
Good-N-Plenty pops the back of Pretty Boy’s neck with a comb before she hands it to him and buttons up his flight jacket. We hustle down the short flight of metal stairs and fan out to our respective bright-shirted handlers waiting for us at our outfit stations: me to Skittles, Pierre-Alexandre to Sour Patch, and Pretty Boy to Good-N-Plenty. It don’t matter what we got, I tell them, throwing open the double doors leading to the enormous underground hangar at Meigs Field, as long as we finish what they start. Good-N-Plenty is going to smack him upside his head for entertaining unauthorized personnel after lights out. I bet he just left some police academy recruit in his bunk. I flicker a glance at his beautiful, honey-hued, well-muscled chest and frown. issued white tee-shirt (that’s Tuskegee Institute for those that don’t know).
His flight jacket is only half buttoned and he’s not wearing his T.I. My guess is fifteen bogeys coming in hard and fast from the south, he says. I’m going to hell for that.Ī door to my left opens and René-Bastien, better known as Pretty Boy, falls in on my left flank and matches our stride.
#Tales of escape mine helmet code skin
My reptile mind-that wonderful, hedonistic thing of mine-notices how lovely his make-me-jump-up-and-dance-like-I-just-caught-the-Holy-Ghost-in-church dark skin looks in the red emergency scramble lighting.Īnd yeah, I know. Our boots echo down the long hallway as we make our way from the underground bunker at Soldier Field to the bunker at Meigs Field. I’m cranked and ready to put my foot all up in it.Ī door to the right opens and Pierre-Alexandre falls in on my right flank, his steps brisk like mine.
#Tales of escape mine helmet code full
Muscle memory and Secret Service training kick in I’m on auto-pilot (no pun intended) and a good ways down the hall buttoning up both sides of my leather jacket to the shoulder a full thirty seconds before I’m awake.Īnd just so you know, the ever so slight tremble in my hands and fingers is not fear. I’m off my bunk and into my jodhpurs, knee-high leather boots and flight jacket the moment the long range air attack klaxons seep into my nightly dream about Caracara.
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