Chew 'Em Up

By S.C. Jensen

Rich and famous? She'd rather be dead.

Bubbles Marlowe, the infamous cyborg detective, prefers to stick to the shadows. But when one of her cases blows up in the media, the private eye is thrust into the public eye.

An army of unhinged fans is stalking Bubbles and her best friend is on the run from corporate head-hunters – not the kind that want to give her a job. Worst of all, the only people who can help them have started to mysteriously disappeared.

The friends must do anything it takes to get out of HoloCity alive. But fame has a way of sinking its teeth in.

And someone will bleed before it lets go…


Blade Runner meets The Fifth Element in this eccentric cyber-noir thriller series about a bleak world ravaged by corrupt leaders, mega-corporations, and crime lords… and the washed-up detective who might be the only one crazy enough to take them on.

Bubbles Marlowe IS BACK in an all-new installment of the cyber-noir technothriller series, Bubbles in Space. Delve into the secrets of this gritty future world, and buckle up for an adventure full of unusual characters, dark humour, and non-stop action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.C. Jensen
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9798215949528

Book preview

Chapter One

The door of Sal’s dingy restaurant opened and closed, letting in the cold. A chill crept across my shoulders as I slurped up the last of my noodles.

I kept my eye on the mirror behind the bar, watching the door.

Outside, the rain came down in buckets, and the neon lights of HoloCity broke and scattered across the darkness in a million moving pieces.

A hooded figure shook off the worst of the damp in a puddle by the door. A pool had formed from all the other patrons who’d done the same thing. Then he slipped into the nearest booth and picked up a menu. The hood stayed up.

My gaze slid back to my meal.

I wrapped my hands around the bowl, feeling the warmth of it through my flesh hand and something similar through the biofeedback of my prosthetic one. This dingy old upgrade wasn’t nearly as sensitive as the most recent prototype Rae had scored for me. Hopefully she’d cracked the code on it so I could get the shiny new pink arm back. I picked up the bowl and drank the last of the broth.

From behind the bowl, I watched the reflection of the other patrons of Sal’s Soba & Sake Bar. The usual late-night crowd. Drunks and pinches on the glow-down. Pro-skirts in for a warmup. Shady business deals over noodle bowls. Nothing out of the ordinary. So why did I feel so uneasy? And where was Rae? The cracked synth-leather seat of the barstool creaked beneath me as I swung my knees back and forth.

Sal Shuzo, the owner, waddled over to take my bowl. He wasn’t a huge man, only about the size of a gorilla on stilts. About as hairy too. He flipped a greasy grey dishrag over his shoulder and grinned at me with a mouth made for noodles. He had about four teeth left, and none of them next to their neighbours.

You know that guy? He grinned like a maniac and nodded his head, putting on a good show for anyone watching. The one just come in?

I shook my head slightly. I’m waiting for a friend. But he’s not it.

Sure seems like he knows you. Sal guffawed at nothing, his big, round belly bouncing beneath an apron that might have once been white. Watching you over the menu like you might be something to eat.

You saying I don’t look like a snack, Sal? I winked at him and flexed my cybernetic fist under the table.

Sal shrugged. Too skinny for me. You come back for more noodles. We fix you up right.

He patted his belly and I laughed, not just for show. I’d been coming to Sal’s Soba & Sake for years. Back when I was drinking, it had been my hangover cure. Noodle mana from heaven. Turns out the best cure for a hangover is not getting one in the first place. I kept coming to Sal’s, though. Best noodles in the Grit District.

But that wasn’t why I was there that night.

Watch him for me, will you Sal? I held out my arm so he could ping my tattler for the bill. But he waved me away.

You still waiting? I’ll bring you coffee.

Sal swayed over to the opposite end of the bar to where the coffee machine sat. He made a big deal out of taking out the beans and the cream. Under the counter, he pulled out a big old shotgun from the back of the shelf and flipped off the safety. He left it under the counter. He called over his shoulder, Lots of sugar, yeah?

I scanned the restaurant again, then checked my tattler. Still no message from Rae. She’d been terrified when she’d called. Anxiety clawed inside my chest, but I forced a smile on my face and said, Fatten me up, Sal.

Nobody but Sal moved. A hush had descended upon the restaurant, like we were all waiting for something. Or maybe I was just imagining things. Sal pushed the button on the grinder and a high-pitched whine tore through the silence and my anxiety rode that wave of sound to the next level. My knees bounced, and I drummed my fingers on the underside of the bar. I hated waiting. Waiting was the worst. Bad things come to those who wait.

Another cold draft hit the back of my neck and my eyes shot up to the dirty mirror again. A transparent umbrella poked through the door first. Then a long, blue raincoat that looked too dry to be made of any natural fabric. The door closed, the umbrella collapsed, and Rae Adesina stood in the doorway of Sal’s Soba & Sake Bar like a cerulean goddess. Her long, sculpted afro—dyed the same colour as her raincoat—made her look about nine feet tall. Her dark eyes, lined with matching blue eyeliner, searched the restaurant from behind thick-rimmed black glasses. When they landed on me, her blue-painted lips parted in a tight smile. She shook off her umbrella, spraying the hooded creep in the booth next to the door. He glared at her from under the hood as she strode up to the bar and climbed onto the seat next to me.

What are we doing here, Bubbles? she said to me through her clenched, perfectly white teeth. I said we needed to speak in private. This is about as private as a feedreel channel.

Sal plunked down two clear-glass coffee mugs, tall, pale, and covered in whipped topping. He said, One for your friend, too.

Then he grabbed a tray full of steaming bowls that the cook had shoved through the serving window. He lifted it up to his shoulder, shoved past the swinging gate with his belly, and delivered the orders the customers had keyed in at their tables.

Rae eyed the drink suspiciously. What is that?

Cream and sugar, mostly, I said. And a nice jolt of caffeine.

She curled her lip. Real cream?

It had better be. I sipped it tentatively.

Sal’s was one of the few places in HoloCity you could still get unadulterated animal by-products. One of the many reasons I kept coming back.

I licked the whipped cream off my lips and said, Yup. One hundred percent bovine excretions.

You can have mine, she said. But we need to talk. Now.

Cool it, Rae. I swallowed a mouthful of liquid sweet enough to give a toddler second thoughts. Sal will let us through to the back rooms. We can talk there. Until then, try not to look so guilty. It attracts attention.

Rae wrapped her long, black fingers around the coffee mug and tapped her electric-blue fingernails against the glass. I watched Sal in the glass as he did his rounds, collecting empty bowls and taking payments with a portable chip reader. The creep by the door scooped some chili sauce out of a jar with his chopsticks and stirred it into a steaming bowl. Just another customer after all.

The swinging door slammed against the bar as Sal came trundling back with his tray of empty dishes. He swung back toward us as I was finishing my drink.

Good, yeah? Get the insulin up where it belongs. He turned to Rae. You don’t like it?

Rae smiled thinly. I’ll take mine to go, please.

Leaving already? Sal frowned. She been waiting an hour. More! He slapped his rag onto the counter in disgust and began to furiously polish the grime back into the surface.

I held back a smile. We want to rent a box, Sal.

Sal whipped the rag back up on to his shoulder where it slapped against his broad back. He grinned his toothless grin. That’s a different story. How long?

I glanced at Rae. She shrugged.

I said, An hour. Just to be safe.

You’re feeling cushy, eh, Marlowe? Sal grinned wider. That last job musta paid out nice.

Not so loud, Sal. I glanced in the mirror, but the restaurant patrons all had their faces in their noodle bowls. I can pay. But they call it a quiet box for a reason, right?

Sure, yeah. Sal punched something into the tattler embedded in his left wrist. It’s quiet. I’m quiet. We’re all quiet. Just let me get it set.

Are you sure about this? Rae whispered through tight lips. It seems a little—

Hey, Sal! The cook shoved his greasy head through the service window and leered at me and Rae. Send in your girls. We’re gettin’ hungry back here.

Sal dropped a to-go cup made of recycled bioplastic in front of me. Go ahead. Cookie and the boys’ll treat you real nice.

He turned to serve a new customer who’d come up to the bar, and Rae and I slid off our bar stools. I looked up at the mirror one last time. The hooded creep was no longer in his booth. There was no bowl on the table. Several customers had lifted their gazes from their meals and watched me with interest. I spun around, scanning the restaurant. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I looked at Rae.

She stared over my shoulder with her eyes wide, facing toward the narrow corridor where the washrooms were tucked away. Her dark complexion had gone grey. She said, What—?

I whipped my head around. A wave of scalding hot broth and noodles hit me in the face. Rae screamed. My skin and eyes exploded with exquisite pain. A wave of laughter swelled from various voices across the restaurant and the musical chimes of people’s tattlers connected to live feed channels. Sal shouted. I heard the ka-chunk of a shotgun shell being chambered. The laughing stopped.

Sal’s voice roared out of his chest like a bangtail shuttle launch. Don’t anybody move! Somebody moved. More screaming. I stumbled forward, blinded and enraged, and grabbed for whoever had thrown the bowl. My fingers collided with someone’s body, and I seized whoever it was in the vice grip of my enhancement and lifted them off the floor. A stream of curses erupted from my detainee.

I said, Did I get him?

Don’t hurt him, Bubbles, Rae mumbled just behind my right ear. They’re recording everything.

I’m not going to hurt him. My heart hammered so loudly in my ears my own voice seemed to come out of a distant tunnel. My skin felt raw and tight. My eyes were on fire. I twisted my fingers into the fabric around his throat until I heard a gagging noise. I’m going to kill him.

That’s what they want, Rae said. I know these guys, they—

On the count of three, Sal bellowed, all you feedreeling skids will remove yourselves from the premises. One!

I whispered, Point me toward the door, Rae.

She said, What?

Two!

There was a scrambling noise as people hurried to escape Sal’s wrath. Chair legs scraped against the ancient tile floors.

The door, Rae. I twisted my fingers into the guy’s shirt. He yelped when the upgrade pinched his skin. With my eyes and skin burning like the fires of Sol I grinned at his pain. I’d get rid of the punk first, and then I’d deal with the burns.

I felt her hands grip my shoulders as she turned me gently to my right. Okay.

Three!

Inside my cybernetic arm, pistons pumped, and I whipped the guy with inhuman strength and speed at the exit. I heard a heavy thump as his body hit something.

Take that! Sal exploded my eardrums with a warning shot from the shotgun. And that!

Glass shattering. More screaming. Sal laughing like a maniac. I bent forward and touched my hands tentatively to my face. The skin was tender but didn’t feel blistered. My eyes still felt like someone had stuffed hot coals into my eye sockets.

Oh my Holy Origin, Rae said. You just . . .

Right into the wall! Sal guffawed.

Is it bad? I turned to Rae. I can’t open my eyes.

Sal shouted back at the kitchen, Cookie! Get us some cold towels and burn cream.

You’ll be okay, Rae said. The skin is pink but not blistered. I don’t know about your eyes.

Burns like a case of fire crotch, yeah? Sal’s voice boomed next to me. Extra spicy bowl he ordered. White chilies.

I jumped when a cool cloth touched my cheek. I put my hands up to take it and pressed it like a salve against my burning skin. It instantly felt better. My eyes, on the other hand, did not want to open. I’m blind, Rae. My eyeballs melted.

Eye flush, Sal said and pressed something that felt like goggles up against my face. Hold still.

A deluge of water ran over my face as Sal pumped the handheld device. Finally I was able to peel my lids away from my eyeballs. I blinked blearily at the now-empty restaurant. I could see, barely, but my eyes felt like they’d been rubbed with sandpaper. Where is that son of a—?

His friends, they pull him away, Sal said, grinning at me with his toothless mouth about an inch from my face. You crushed him. Right into the wall. Bang! Then his friends drag him. I shoot at them, yeah? They not come back.

They’ll come back, Rae said, shaking her blue-coifed head morosely. Maybe not here, but they’ll come for you, Bubbles. That was a Feeding Frenzy.

A what now? I rubbed at my eyes with the fingers of my flesh hand, but Sal slapped them away and made me do another flush.

A coordinated effort by a group of guerilla live feeders to create a media frenzy, she said. They must have targeted you after you broadcast the takedown of the android leader of the Last Humanists.

Why me? I asked. You’d think they’d be happy I helped suss out the plugs.

It’s not about that, Rae said. It’s all ratings. You’re famous. So any kind of video with you in it is going to be a viral hit. They’ll do anything to get a reaction, the better the reaction, the more people will watch it. The more money they make. Companies will actually pay these creeps for product placement in the Feeding Frenzy reels. That guy had on a Lorena Valentia t-shirt under his jacket.

I sputtered as water from the eye wash drained over my mouth. Any idiot can have bad taste in cosmetics.

I had never even met Lorena Valentia before. But she’d gone down for intellectual property theft after I helped Cosmo Régale, her main competitor, find the evidence he needed that she’d been duping his formulas for years.

He flashed it to the holocams before tossing the soup.

I shoved Sal’s hands with the flush away from my face. You think she put some kind of public humiliation bounty on my head? From prison?

I don’t know, Bubbles. Rae bit her lip and stared at the spot on the ground where Noodle Boy must have landed. A dark smear trailed on the ground from the doorway and out into the street. But you gave them exactly what they wanted. They’ll be back.

Sal puffed out his chest so that it competed with the huge belly below. They come back here, I’ll shoot them again!

This is bad, Bubbles.

Lorena Valentia is a scheming vetch. I used one of the towels to ring out my hair and checked out my complexion in Sal’s dirty mirror. My hair and skin were a matching shade of bubble-gum pink. Cosmo was right about that. But I’m not afraid of her or her media creeps.

It’s bad for me, Rae said. Because my face is going to be in those videos with you, plastered all over the feeds.

Oh, I said. Right.

They’re going to find me, Bubbles. Rae’s blue-lined eyes brimmed with tears. They’re going to find me and they’re going to kill me.

Chapter Two

Sal gave me a kitchen uniform to change into after I cleaned up in the washroom. It was warm, dry, and surprisingly clean considering the state of the ones on the staff in the actual kitchen. Cookie shook his head as Sal led Rae and I through to the back rooms.

Those white chilies, he said. Bad enough when you eat them. Then they come out the other end like a blowtorch. But your eyes? I’d have killed the bastard.

Whoever he was. I’d pissed off a lot of people in my day, but at least when they’d come after me, I’d known why. This was different. Ice-cold shock dripped over me like rainwater on a dirty window, leaving nothing but a streaky mess behind. I swallowed the sick feeling in my throat and blinked at Sal through swollen eyelids. If they come after me again, maybe I’ll get a second chance.

Get yourself some CoolJel, girl, one of the sous-chefs said. It helps.

Thanks, I said.

Sal pushed open a beaten metal door with rust showing through the peeling green paint. He ushered Rae and I past his bulbous stomach and into a dim corridor. The door clanged closed behind us, cutting off the light from the kitchen, and left us in the dark.

Down the stairs? Rae’s voice was a rough whisper, like she was holding back tears.

Careful, Sal said from behind me. Use the handrail.

We proceeded slowly down the narrow staircase. Sal’s foot slipped, sending a cascade of pebbles off into the darkness. I had a vision of Rae and I being crushed to death by a ball of hairy man-flesh and kitchen grease. Sal cursed and caught himself.

Damned stairs falling apart, he said under his breath.

We stumbled along in silence for a while, then Rae said, What’s that light down there?

Keep going, Sal said. Bottom of the stairs is a door. Other side of the door, is more stairs.

And we’ll be totally off-grid there? I said. Guaranteed?

Nothing gets through the quiet box, Sal said. Your tattlers won’t work. Nothing. You got enough cush, you could disappear as long as you wanted down here.

If you wanted to live in a dirt cell.

Living is living, Sal said. Sometimes.

Rae said, You’re not going to make me stay down here, are you, Bubbles?

I would, I said. But I can’t afford it. Once we’re inside, you can give me all the details and we’ll make a plan.

If anybody is tracking you, Sal said. They see your signal disappear after you come inside the restaurant. The tunnels are a bit grey. You’ll flicker on the radar. Inside the box, it’s a dead line.

Won’t that raise suspicions? Rae asked. If they are tracking me?

Looks like a little blip in the Telecom data, I said. They see you again when you pop out, somewhere else. But we’ll have to move fast after that.

We got a guy can switch out your tattler for you, Sal said. But that’s it. No going back after that.

I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But Rae worked for Libra. If she was in trouble with them, desperate times might call for desperate measures. All I knew was that she had been terrified when she called me. And Rae doesn’t scare easily.

I said, I’ll let you know after we talk, Sal.

At the bottom of the stairs, two small lanterns on either side of the door illuminated the tunnel. As we had descended, the concrete walls had become raw dirt, and the stairs more like a crumbling ramp that my feet slipped and slid over unnervingly. My eyes burned looking