Over the next three days, I heard very little from Sophia, only a message that her parents had gotten her a job and she would come by, when she had time. I made the best of it, focusing on the bio-lab, finishing the structure and placing the equipment so I could start the actual work. Most of it was from the outside, using robotic equipment, to reduce the chance of human contamination or error but for some of it, I would have to suit up, into a plastic pressure-suit with an oxygen-system to keep me alive in the inert atmosphere inside. But the hassle of it, was well worth the security, no matter how paranoid-driven the security was. It was more a matter of peace-of-mind at this point, not a matter of necessity.

The conflict between Sophia’s parents made me wonder a little, about the differences in child-rearing and their effect on the children. A part of me questioned if I had done the right thing, burning the bridges to my old life instead of trying to get my father to see my perspective, waging a persistent campaign over years on end. I had tried to get him to understand but after running against his set-in-stone arguments and perspective again and again, I had simply stopped fighting and plotted a way to make my own way, without him knowing about it. In a way, when I had stopped fighting, the fact that he was mostly avoiding me became quite apparent, often he wouldn’t even look at me and it got worse over time.

Originally, I had planned to present him with a fait-accompli so to speak, a done deal that removed me from his reach and guaranteed my independence under the auspices of the Guild-Accords, but events had forced my hand.

Now that I was thinking about him and the events between us, I spent some time watching him or Grace, whenever they left the KingCorps building. Their internal security was good enough that I did not want to tussle with it for something foolishly sentimental. But when I was watching, both of them seemed happy. It stung a little, that there was no trace of grief, over the loss of a daughter barely a month ago.

On Friday evening, Sophia asked if I wanted to go out with her, according to her, one of the youth-clubs had an under-eighteen night and she wanted to go dancing. It was a bit of a surprise to me, our dates to that point had mostly consisted of either going to the mall or serene time together, somewhere outside, in nature. I was not certain that going into a club, even a youth one, was exactly my idea of a good time, but there was a part in me, that wanted to go, that wanted to try it out. To shed the sense of propriety, the stiffness of my spine and the correctness of my speech, to simply be a seventeen-year old, dancing the night away. Adding that feeling to a request I would likely have accepted even without any desire to go dancing on my own and the question of accepting was easily answered.

Thus, Friday night, I left my bunker in a pair of tight jeans, military style-boots, a white crop-top and a leather jacket. With my now short, pixie-ish black hair I gave a distinctly butch impression. Added to my clothes were accessoires, my now customary glasses, a ring with a flash-capacitor, a ceramic boot-knife and, last but certainly not least, a pair of armlets containing pepper spray, a few fast-acting tests for common date-rape drugs and two spring-launched taser projectiles. I had considered a purse, maybe with a small gun and a grenade or two, but with my eclectic mix of butch and punker-fashion, it would not really fit, so my fake ID was securely stored in my jacket, alongside some cash and a cheap burner phone. A second, also fake, ID was hidden in a compartment in the boot that had no knife in it with some emergency cash.

Equipped like that, I felt the night could start.

Sophia and I met up close to the inner city, roughly halfway between our respective residences and she was looking better. Most of the tightness around her eyes and the palpable aura of sadness were gone, replaced by an ebullient enthusiasm. The first thing that caught my eye however, were the waves of ebon silk, cascading down her shoulders and onto the thin sur-coat hid the rest of her attire, showing only a lot of bare calves and high heels, raising her normally diminutive height by maybe ten centimeters. Her sight filled me with quite a bit of desire and another emotion I could not quite identify. Maybe the best word was possessiveness, the desire to keep her all to myself.

After a happy hug and kisses in greeting, we made our way to the club, walking arm in arm, like the couple we wanted to be. We got a few looks, mostly Sophia, as she looked simply great, but I believe some were sent my way as well. Interestingly, Sophia got mostly male attention, I got mostly female attention. I noticed another thing as we walked, there was a lot of tension hidden under Sophia’s enthusiasm, a tension that made me worry.

When we got to the club, a heavyset bouncer and a good looking girl, maybe a waitress, were working the door, the mostly collecting the entrance fee and checking bags, jackets and purses for people smuggling in alcoholic beverages, which were banned, according to a large sign at the door. I had a feeling that the under-eighteen was not enforced, as long as nobody obviously older snuck in to prey on the attendees.

But even if the age-limit was enforced, from the queue, I believed to see a few people convincing the bouncer that their bags were clean, using the magical power of money, so I had no doubt that a banknote hiding the exact date of birth on ones ID would work just fine. That did not fill me with confidence, but I was on a mission to make sure Sophia would enjoy herself, so I would be vigilant to make sure nobody got in the way of that. The bag-checks made me glad that I had forgone the purse, I doubt that I could have easily bribed the bouncer to forget what I would have stashed away.

When we got to the door, both of us were asked to open our jackets to show we were not hiding bottles in there, not that either of us really could, but unless the bouncer was bribed, he did his job. The moment Sophia opened her coat, I almost had to pick my jaw up from the floor. She was quite the sight. I think her skirt qualified as barely there and her blouse was tied across her stomach, baring a lot of midriff. Just the sight of her made my lips rather dry, and I could not stop myself from softly licking my lips. She caught the action and smiled prettily with a slight blush colouring her cheeks. A broadly grinning waitress wished us a great night, as we entered the venue.

After a few steps, a wall of sound blasting against us mostly far-too-loud pop-music but also the voices of lots of people trying to talk over the music and each other. Part of me wanted to just turn tail and run, but I persevered. But our ears were not the only senses assaulted, no, that would be too easy. The air inside the club was sweltering hot and saturated with a odious bouquet of sweat, perfume and deodorant, mixed with other smells I refused to think about. In addition to that, the lightning was most likely an experiment in diagnosing epilepsy, at least I could not conceive of another reason for the flickering, dancing lights. A silent mantra of ‘Sophia wants to be here, Sophia wants to enjoy herself’ kept me fortified against my desire to leave.

We deposited her coat and purse, alongside my jacket, emptied of valuables and Sophia pulled me onto the dance-floor. I had been forced to take dance-lessons when I was younger, part of the cultured upbringing my father had insisted on. But comparing the structured, elegant steps of ballroom dancing with the confusing, messy writhing done on this dance-floor was plainly impossible. Thus, I banished everything structured from my mind, and simply followed Sophia’s lead. She seemed to have an idea how to move and I was physically capable enough to move in concert with her.

Two girls dancing with each other was luckily not something unique on the floor and we drew no undue attention until a second pair of girls joined us, after a short non-verbal communication between the four of us. They seemed a little older than us, maybe more secure in their partnership, but Sophia was happy to have them, so I simply followed her lead once more.