Archon's Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ruin behind for the intactness of London. Half a block away, she glanced back to smile at him, but he had gone back inside. In the distant grey, the dull shadow of Coventry tower traced a smudge through the sky.
    Annabelle continued through a bustling crowd that scarcely noticed her. More people were out and about today, drawn by the rare lack of rain. A world apart from the tower, London brimmed with jostling bodies, flashing lights, whizzing advert bots dancing through the sky, and random smells of food.
    A young man collided with her. His hand swiped through her pocket, but there was nothing to take. She offered a disbelieving glare at the astounded look he gave her, as if she was being rude by having nothing to steal. The crowds thinned as she got farther away from the nicer areas, toward where people closer to her level congregated.
    She sped up to an uninspired jog past the tramps and street gangers who shifted out of their lazy rest to get a better look at her. Anna did not glance back until the glow of a giant pair of holographic breasts came into view above a black-painted door. It looked so old and battered she often wondered if it was real wood. Each time she would knock on it, the same thought waltzed through her mind as if it was the first time she had laid eyes on it. Today the zoom was weak; the texture of bubbled plastic looked obvious in one of the gouges.
    The door was as fake as most of the tits behind it.
    Her trembling hand reached up and knocked again. A panel, eight inches by two, shimmered away from the appearance of paint to a pass-through screen. The club manager’s bushy black eyebrows scrunched together as beady grey eyes glared at her.
    “You’re late.”
    “Sorry, Mr. Blake. Old Bill kept me for a minute at the border.”



lashing lights thrummed in time with the oppressive music vibrating through Anna’s body. With each twist of her figure, the capsule-shaped cage jostled on the three chains holding it off the ground. The six-foot enclosure of polished plastisteel weighed less than she did, bucking and swaying as she went through her routine. Faces massed into an ocean of lustful eyes at the level of her feet. Men stared at her with alcohol on their breath and sex on their thoughts.
    She danced wearing only a dark metal choker connected to a thin band encircling her chest an inch below her breasts. Made to resemble leafy vines, the harness held a device the size of an egg tight against her back from which long filament wings sprouted five feet to either side. Her alabaster skin glowed blue from the holographic appendages that fluttered, waved, or extended in concert with every motion or change in posture. A headband of false flowers projected shimmering antennae of light up from her hair, a dangling pair of orbs at their tips.
    Anna clasped the bars above her head, fingers circling about the gentle curve of the metal where it came together. She swung herself about in time with the music pounding into her head; so loud, she imagined her brain compressing with each beat. Her feet landed with the precision of practice. It took more concentration than usual today; anxious sweat came from knowing one misstep would result in a painful fall. The lack of chems in her system made everything tedious, every motion slower, each piece of her act necessitated deliberate thought about what she did. To the room around her, she flashed a smile as insubstantial as her wings.
    She could not remember the last time she danced while sober enough to realize she was naked in a room full of strangers. Aside from suppressing her out of control brain, the chems mitigated her embarrassment. At least six men had commented on how red her face was. Concentration spread between containing the
thing
and not breaking her ankle. Whenever a slip happened, she chose not to fall and
it
got loose. Few noticed the random spark overhead or a NetMini here and there blowing out. Anna forced herself to move with the beat the way she