VALERY KONINGSBRUGGE

The manager asked, "What is your purpose down here?"

"Binoculars," I answered vehemently. Her helmet is unrevealing of any nature of a human. I see only currency. Literally, her armor is our currency.

"Val!" An old man called the first three letters of my name from a yard away. The manager and I both turned heads in synchronisation.

The old man has found a way to get down here. And the weapon he sheathes from the ravelling blue around his arm tells me of his way down.

He is a Compeller as I had guessed. Then Jennifer might be a Compeller as well and I seriously doubted treating her now. I did not want to be pursued by three Compellers, if and when they knew I was duping all of them for the coins that covered the body of the Floater.

I did not like the Floaters, but they knew what it felt like to be rich. I want to feel rich even if it's only for a little bit. It's not greed if I'll earn it.

Two Floaters closed in on him from behind for the liquid blade he had formed was a general threat. And he was making threats against me. The manager stood between me and the old man.

"Give me back the girl," the old man shouted, "Val!" He sounded like a despot and I didn't quite like the racket. But I didn't want to give up on the girl. I'm the good guy and I'll get her to the pharmacy.

The old man just doesn't understand because I haven't communicated this to him yet and I refrain from it because it was a public place.

It's too late for him, but I will save the girl. The two Floaters tackled him to the ground and I knew it was over for him. I turned my back from the scene because they were probably going to cut him and his blood would stain the glass.

But something happened. The Floaters on top of him bled from their throats when I returned my attention.

The water had maneuvered from under the old man and cut their throats. Blood ran from their throats like the water that had given it freedom from their necks. It shared the same colour as well. As did my blood.

I might see my blood on this night if I didn't start running now because the old man was going on a rampage of precise defeats. The manager shot his protterer at the man but the water blocked the liquid nitrogen bullet and it fell from the strait of water as a block of ice.

My feet turned the other way and they wouldn't stop moving. I didn't dare look back. Floaters left their positions to tend to the offender and I ran straight past them with the girl in my arms.

I didn't want to press my feet too hard against the glass or else it would shatter, which was different from how I had run on the water in the morning. But I skidded to a stop like before - a before which felt like an eternity ago. When the sun was lower in the sky but slowly moving upwards above us. The only thing that shined from above now, was the neon sign of the pharmacy.

                                                                        ...

The door of the pharmacy quietly slid open, the mass panic and violence behind me growing louder and more intense. The old man was pulling closer and closer. But I didn't dare look back until I was safely in the pharmacy.

I rushed in, careful not to hit Jennifer's noggin on the sides of the doorframe. Then I looked back as the glass door slid closed.

My breathing slowed down which lessened the condensation on the visor. He had killed so many Floaters in armor.

It was their fault for not putting any protection over the neck. The old man was now searching for me with a trident made of water in his hand. His Iko suit was splattered with blood, blue as sky.

I walked away and snooped around a corner into an aisle for prescription drugs, hoping he hadn't seen me. I peeked my head out from the aisle and watched him walk aimlessly into the DUDHU next door.

Then I heard the giggles of a woman nearby. They were sexualised and an obvious sign that workplace safety had not been issued in the pharmacy. I carried Jennifer to the front counter, passing aisles of natural remedies and artificial pills and tablets and syrup. I laid her on the countertop.

The moans and grunts were coming from the backroom. The liquid nitrogen was pluming through overhead vents that bordered the edges of the ceiling. Under the length of vents running along each wall were stretches of fluorescent lights that lit the pharmacy up.

It made everything visible and the lights became so bright. Staring at them for too long could cause virtual blindness.

There was a bell on the counter. I rang it frantically.

"Yeah - yeah - yeah, I'm coming," a man's voice groaned from the backroom. "I'm coming." That word could be inferred in two ways. Two women in otter fur coats scurried out of the backdoor and smiled as they passed me. Floater whores.

The lothario was still in the backroom, hopefully putting the Iko suit back on. Or if he was a Floater, he wouldn't need to. I was about to scamper away because he was taking too long, but when my head went through the motions, the man appeared at the counter.

I kept my clandestine plan under wraps until I knew if the man was a threat or not. But as I stared through the window of truth, picture-perfect on the shoulders, there was me. In the shade of the Iko visor, I believed it was a mirror. A practical joke.

But enumerating the possibilities of a mirror fitting into an Iko suit were zero to none. Then I noticed micro-details on the man's face which differed to mine.

The man had wrinkles. And eyes which stare into the soul. Not my soul. His own. His cheekbones sat higher up on his face. It really was me, but it was me with wisdom and desperation. Two characteristics that I neither had or wanted.