Mardock Scramble

pulse.

She felt the incandescent bullets piercing the air.

After she had fired all the bullets she ejected the magazine again and turned around to look at the Doctor.

The Doctor was glued to the monitor.

His fingers covered his mouth as if he were in deep thought, and then he suddenly exhaled, letting out the huge breath that he had been holding in.

“Perfect. You’ve really studied the videos closely, haven’t you?”

–Yes, both the ones where you stand still and where you fire while moving. Also the ones with moving targets, as well as stationary ones.

“Great. Moving targets next, then. Some balls will start flying across randomly from beyond that pillar over there. A bit like a pitching machine, the sort kids use for baseball practice. Shoot those balls down. Same distance as before.”

–Got it.

Balot quickly—and smoothly—equipped herself with a new magazine and bullets and got into position.

The Doctor started tapping his keyboard.

Balot realized that these actions controlled the machine on the other side of the pillar.

Boing, and a rubber ball flew out.

Balot shot it.

In a little less than four seconds, that one ball had taken all twelve of the bullets.

The rubber ball performed a whirling dance in midair, and the fragments flew off every which way.

The scales barely flickered, and the golden cartridges gleamed as they scattered across the floor.

Again Balot dropped the magazine and turned to the Doctor. His eyes were like saucers as he watched the distant particles from the ball fragment further.

“Er…the idea was that you try to shoot down each ball—that’s to say shoot, singular, just the once.” Yet again the Doctor was dumfounded.

Just then another ball bounced out of the machine.

Balot’s attention was still half focused on the Doctor as she raised her hand. Just her left this time—her right hand dangling by her side.

She snarced Oeufcoque in an instant, re-equipping herself with a magazine and bullets.

She fired a single shot, just as she was told.

The ball bounced against the wall and came bounding back toward them, then rolled another twenty meters or so before stopping at the Doctor’s shoes.

There were eight balls total, including the one that Balot had obliterated earlier.

Before long seven of those balls rolled into position right at the Doctor’s feet. Balls that had been shot through their cores with deadly accuracy.

The Doctor picked one of them up and looked at it, jaws trembling. “We’re talking about spherical targets here. To pierce the cores with one hundred percent accuracy, and from this distance too…”

He sounded as if he were ready to raise the white flag of surrender, but then laughed and said at a high pitch, “How absolutely thrilling !”

He shut his mouth as soon as he opened it, very aware that he was getting carried away.

Balot frowned.

–I thought you didn’t like war?

“Yes, but this is something completely different,” Oeufcoque interjected.

The Doctor nodded. “I’ve never actually been at the front lines, you see. I might seem a little warlike, but in my heart I know I’m not about to go to war anytime soon.”

Balot pursed her lips. An expression that was somewhere between sympathy and disapproval.

“Right, let’s have you moving now. Try walking toward that target. There are some more pitching machines positioned behind those pillars. They’ll sense your movements and fire balls directly at you—shoot them down. Consider the balls to be an attack on your person.”

–Got it.

Balot stepped off the silver scale. Without missing a beat she walked toward the wall at the far end.

She perceived the machines operating to her left and right. Her concentration levels were rising. She looked inside herself to manipulate her internal workings—so that her pulse wouldn’t start racing—all the while keeping a close check on her surroundings.

The moment she sensed movement in the shadows Balot pointed her gun in that direction without looking. By the time the ball had left the machine Balot had already fired.

The ball hurtled toward the flight path of the bullet as if it were being sucked in and was skewered perfectly.

Balot felt the other machines firing up but walked on steadily. A volley of balls converged on her from all directions. She shot them all down, having found her target before the balls even left the pitching machines.

The Doctor cranked up the speed. Balot held her steady pace, unabated. She took her right hand off the gun and snarced that hand too.

Another gun appeared, just like the one in her left hand. She used this to fire at the balls too. Left and right. Whichever she could use to aim—and fire—the quicker.

She arrived at the far wall, turned around, and began her return.

The sound of gunfire echoed all around, balls and spent cartridges littered the floor, and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air. Her vision was clouded by the gun smoke.

Balot closed her eyes. She looked as if she were about to go into a trance. She fired her gun, playfully now, almost as if she were dancing.

Balot’s eyes were closed, and she never missed a shot.

The Doctor, on the other hand, grew paler and paler, the blood draining from his face.

“I know what ought to be done, I just don’t know what the right thing to do is… I never imagined in a million years that the girl would mesh so well with the abilities we gave her…” A shiver ran down his spine as he spoke, and his voice was drowned out by the echoing gunfire.

The Doctor gulped, and as he did so there was a ping—a message had arrived.

“We’ve just had a newsflash from the DA. I set him to gather information on Shell—anything on the net or from internal police reports,” the Doctor said.

Balot took a seat, listening. She had already detached both guns from her sleeves and handed them over to the Doctor, and when she did so his expression lifted ever so slightly in relief.

“He’s come up with something, has he?” Oeufcoque asked, sticking his torso out of one of Balot’s hands.

“The five neurosurgeons who were looking after Shell have all disappeared. Every single one of them, simultaneously. One of the surgeons had even just prepared dinner. No signs of a struggle. And no witnesses…” The Doctor’s eyes flicked over to Balot.

She understood the significance of this glance straightaway.

–Don’t worry. I won’t be afraid. Carry on.

“Okay. Well, it’s strange. All five of them have these large sums of money deposited into their accounts by an unidentified source. But considering the salaries they’re on from the state, it’d hardly be worthwhile for any of them to abscond with the sorts of sums we’re talking about—not with all they have to lose.”

“The deposits are obviously a red herring, Doc. Boiled doesn’t do things by halves. Once his mind is set on an effective course of action, he carries it through to the bitter end. I imagine he hired professionals to do the job. Whenever we find something that looks like a lead, it’s safe to assume that it’s more likely to be a decoy, or a deliberate bluff,” said Oeufcoque.

“I think you’re right. Well, I’m going to use these mysterious disappearances to press our case further, try and crank up the Life Preservation Program to the highest level. We strike a blow inside the courtroom, they go on the offensive on the outside. We’ll need to shore up our escape routes—and we may need to start scouting for a