It all started with Jane and the other Jane

Friday's Coming

by Robert W Castello

Imprint: Double Dragon

Style: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Published: 7 / 2022

CLICK HERE to get told when further books by this author are published

Available Formats to Download: MOBI EPUB MS Word PDF MS Reader RTF 

STORY DESCRIPTION

Jessica Teasdale has a problem. Actually she has several. Jessica is a survivor of the Uptown Fever. Uptown Fever was a whole host of crap that rampaged through Uptown Town on the L-2 colony. The main part was a virus that caused fever that could fry your brain. It also had a whole bunch of other fun stuff that went along for the ride, like uncontrollable bleeding from all sorts of fun places. There was no treatment and no cure.

Some of the victims managed to just sweat it out and survived, but there was damage from being so hot for so long. Jessica's primary motor cortex went hinkie. Every few weeks the muscles in her back would slowly swell and strangle her spinal cord. Angel tears would set things right, for a while. A dose of Frinalolchoday would cure it; Friday.

Angel tears were a byproduct fluid that would build up in a touch-head's brain. Too much build up could be grave, but was easily drained and liquid gold for the bio-techs. For Jessica it was life. But one evening while trying to glean some tears a freak accident happens and Jessica kills the man.

And he was a cop. And his fellows didn't like that.

Her next big problem was a shadowy fellow named Alistair. Alistair headed a sort of black-ops agency and Jessica worked for him. Alistair claimed that she was on a sort of point system; she did his dirty work and came ever closer to her dose of Friday. And so every Monday morning with the help of her cyborg slave, Geena, Jessica transformed into Samantha Waters, would smile and log in to work as an administrative agent at the city of Boston's Bureau of Customs and Inspections. At that job she was able to do all sorts of clandestine work for Alistair.

But her big problem was in the form of two Latvian teenage twins Jane and Jane Rozlapa; a pair of genetically modified wunderkind. And they're wanted for murder and Alistair wanted them bad. Figuring that they'd attempt to get themselves out of East New England they'd try and find passage via smugglers through the customs house. and so Jessica was on the hunt.

She didn't need to hunt long. A day after receiving the assignment, Jane and Jane show up on Jessica's doorstep on the company of Shelly, one of Jessica's best friends and a fellow Uptown survivor. Shelly works for Amnesty Inter-colonial. Shelly and the twins scoff at the notion of murder and explain that the twins are being hunted so that their brains can be picked ??" literally. Shelly begs Jessica's help.

And so that becomes Jessica's biggest problem: turn the kids in and get her Friday, or help them flee and loose that chance forever.