Allie's War Episodes 1-4(3)

The clerk didn’t seem to be listening, though. His eyes had gone almost blank in the pause, like he was listening to a faraway tune. I watched his face, fighting another flush of irritation. Was he just messing with me? Or did he have a VR implant?
Now that I knew Mr. Mono was there, I just wanted to get out the hell out.
At least now I had a real excuse to spring for a cab.
The tall, dark-haired Mr. Monochrome had been following me for weeks. I first noticed him hanging around not long after I got out of jail, and first got the GPS locked onto my wrist. Maybe he was into chicks with anger management issues, Jon and I joked. Or maybe he was just hoping I'd go postal on someone else, and he'd have front row seats.
Either way, Jon was right; I really needed to report him.
The problem was, he hadn’t really done anything yet. Nothing but stare at me, and I didn’t want the cops to think I was paranoid, on top of everything else. I wanted to be able to give them something more concrete. Something other than, “Well, you see, a lot of weird people seem to like to follow me around, officers.”
Even as I thought it, the court's clerk nodded, marking something on the portable monitor with his thick index finger. At least he finally seemed to have gotten over his interest in my weird parentage. Peering down at my records, his eyes looked almost bored now. Or at the very least, preoccupied as he perused the relevant lines.
“Okay. Eight more months on your sentence,” he said, motioning for me that I could leave the podium. “Same time next month, Taylor.”
He crooked his finger at the biker on the bench next to me.
“You, Daniels...front and center. Verify identification.”
I walked back to my end of the bench and gathered up my shoulder bag and my jacket, still feeling stares on me from some of the other people in the room. The one I felt the most was the hardest to ignore. I glanced in the direction of Mr. Mono again, even as I shouldered on my jacket, tugging my hair out of the collar as I turned.
But he wasn't there anymore.
The chair where I'd seen him, only seconds before, was empty; the door still swung silently on its hinges, but Mr. Mono was definitely gone.


 
Riding down Divisadero Street towards my mom’s, I leaned against the cab’s window as it paused at a red light.
I’d been spacing out, not really paying attention to anything outside, when I realized that I was staring at someone.
She stared back at me, her sharp, blue eyes eyes openly hostile. Framed with stiff, dyed braids that came off her head like a white and orange headdress, her heart-shaped faced had an almost unreal beauty to it, even beyond the heavy layer of foundation and eye make-up she wore. I read the name of the fetish bar on the marquee behind her, and realized abruptly what she must be. I’d heard about the place opening up, but hadn’t been by to see it like everyone else.
It just felt weird to me, I guess. Gawking at them, like they were animals.
The woman’s opaque blue eyes drank me in without apology or fear. Her hands rested on her hips over a white, lace bodysuit.
I receded into the cab’s seat so I would be less visible.
I caught the cabbie watching me in the rearview mirror and blushed.
“Yeah,” he commented flatly. “They got a few of them now.”
“I know...just forgot.”
He didn’t seem to hear me, or care maybe.
“They just keep bringing more of them over here,” he complained. “Like we need our own damned glow-eye army. Fucking animals. I don’t trust ‘em...collared or not.” He glanced at me in the mirror. Looking over my tangled hair and hastily applied makeup, he smiled.
Maybe he thought the dishevelment was deliberate.
“You seen one before, honey?” he said.
“Yeah.” I glanced out surreptitiously, but the seer was no longer looking at me. Smiling seductively at a man on the street, she touched his arm as he passed. The man jerked away as if burnt, glaring at her.
The seer laughed, but I saw those blue eyes turn cold, predatory.
“Really?” the cabbie said. “Where?”
“At the Coliseum. With my dad.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the seer. “On the street too, you know. Downtown.”
The man nodded, absently. He’d already lost interest.
I ventured, “They’re allowed to just walk around like that? What if she, you know...hurts someone?”
The cabbie pointed, tapping his window. “See that collar?”
I followed his pointing finger to the circle of brushed metal around the female’s neck. Finger-width, it had no markings I could see, other than the pulsing blue light at the base when she turned her head.
Feeling the cabbie watching me, I nodded.
He said, “They’re coded to the owner, see? They can’t do nothing with that on...blinds ‘em. They take it off when they’re, ah...you know, working.”