This city never rests. You will walk its streets forever, only to see you never even made it even a single step. You’ll be trapped and enraptured by it.

  It is a ceaseless neon monstrosity of boundless riches at the top, and slaves convinced they are free at the bottom. Downtown, bridges for pedestrians and cars alike stretch and weave from skyscraper to skyscraper. It’s spotless, if one looked up, in between the holographic advertisements, and weaving and winding light-rail trains, you could see the sun.

  We do not find ourselves here in the area of white collar crime, and cleanliness. We find ourselves in the neighborhoods, and warehouses, much, much lower. Among highways, and apartment complexes, malls, and shopping districts, occasionally, even a proper home on a small lot. There was very little for certain, other than the statement said in hushed tones by the outsiders, “That’s a bad neighborhood.”

  A sport motorcycle, an ancient, carbureted thing. It still ran on standard, rubber tires. It belched blue smoke as it raced through the empty, sunset streets. The body is of tired plastic, wrought with visible, makeshift repairs and painted in several different shades of blue, it’s an asymmetrical mess of bike parts, all stitched together atop a, frankly, all too large engine.

  The rider is even stranger than the bike. A lithe, thin woman, wearing a short, black and techy tanktop, with matching tight, black, athletic looking shorts to match. She doesn’t seem to be quite human, a large, bushy tail blowing in the breeze, her large helmet has extensions in the top, seemingly to accommodate animalistic ears. Her whole body is slathered in an animalistic, blue-grey fur, with white segments of said fur stretching up her guts, running up from her thighs to her throat like snow within valleys.

  Zipper at the bottom of her oversized blue track jacket sting her sides as it blows in the wind, only restrained by the set of greatswords, and their according straps, and sheathes and belts fastened to her back. All of this racket, and the occasional sting of some poorly fastened gear whipping against her flesh was much like spurs to a horse's side, it kept her alert, focused, focused above the nauseating smell of burning oil, and the tinnitus-inducing noise of the motorcycle.

  Easily, she overtook an Auto-bus, the brakes of her bike screeching, and squealing, and bucking and truthfully, threatening to throw her off the bike. Nevertheless, despite the bike's constant disapproval with quite possibly everything it was instructed to do: At breakneck speeds, she veered down that curving exit, being fed into an underground tunnel. The countless eyes of advertising mascots, and low cost lawyers, and hospitals line the walls of the tunnel. The eyes of the mascot of Lucky Cat Breaks LLC seared her very soul.

  This tunnel met its terminus in a neighborhood, strip malls, and gas station corner stores. Apartment complexes, among the winding streets. Downshifting, the bike belched a cloud of smoke, The Biker swerving down a side street, where a particularly derelict apartment complex stood.

  The whole complex is flanked by a ratty chain linked fence, barbed wire diligently perched atop it. Vines, weak and anemic stretch up this fence, fed by the runoff cancerously flowing down to this lowly place. The flora of the parking lot followed this trend, nothing more than weeds springing from sickly little cracks in the black concrete. Clearly there was something worth safeguarding here, ahead, a gate in the chain-link, scholars pose it may be to allow cars into the parking lot, despite the fact there are zero cars present within said parking lot.

  She didn’t slow down, not one bit coming up to that gate, merely rising to her feet, balancing on the seat of the bike like one would ride a surfboard. Yet barreling towards the gate, she reached to her back, grabbing the handle of the larger sword, she wrenched it from her back, all manner of snaps, and straps loosening and opening to permit this. The greatsword, a guardless, leather wrapped hilt preluding a blade with a wide, symmetrically jagged base, the sword slimming the longer it got, before it came to a wider, almost hourglass shaped square tip, with more symmetrical, sharp, serrations jutting out of either side of the blade.

  Firmly, she gripped that handle with both hands, the bike, now without a constant throttle, began to choke, and sputter, the carburetor, likely stolen from some vastly inferior machine, simply could not give the bike enough gas to keep going.

  In one decisive strike, she rent the gate away, sparks, and rust flying off the location of the cut, still barreling towards the apartment entrance. The bike slowed to a limp, belching more clouds of toxicity, and grinding more gears, slower, and slower. Finally, as if wholly by intent, and wholly by the riders will, it came grinding to a halt underneath the apartment portico, letting out a final, spiteful crank, before dying all together.

  With remarkable agility, she hopped off the teeter-tottering bike, quickly engaging the kickstand with the flat of her sword, the bike rather fussily deciding to fall on its peg leg. Next, she cast her gaze to the metal barred doors, and, certainly more annoyedly, to the security camera eyeballing her. Lastly, to a digital keypad inset in the wall.

  She rocked on her hips, using the weight of the blade she rolled it over her shoulder, taking a springy few steps up to the keypad, hitting the flickering button on it labeled “Call.” It took only a second for a very distinct digital dial tone to sound out. Brrrrrrr. Brrrrr. Brrrrr. Her breath fogs up the visor of her motorcycle helmet. She reached up, and did switch, huffing and puffing and delighting in the fresh ventilation.

  “Hello?” A gravelly voiced, albeit, still young woman answered through an intercom, her voice garbling further through poor quality speakers, and noise. She sounds pretty tired. “I think you’ve got the wrong address.” Judging from how nice she sounds despite the apartment exhaustion, she must have worked customer service somewhere. “Let me in.” Sourly, ordered The Biker, frenziedly pecking at the keys on the screen, hoping to garner some result.

  “I can’t do that.” The tired woman affirmed, “Buzz off.” The sound of her exhaling a breath of vapor came over the speakers, The Biker only sighing. Taking a step back. In a single, fluid motion, she both rolled the sword off her shoulder, and issued a terrible slash to the barred door. The intercom erupted into screeching, and insults, and pleads to “fuck off”, all falling on deaf ears.

  Leaning closer, she peered through the newfound, noncompliant window in the metal door, she couldn’t see much, but it was just enough for her to be pleased with her work. Backing away, The Biker drew in a breath, before lunging forward, issuing a mighty kick to that gash, her foot wedging it open even further. Just enough for her to slip her lean body through, like a fireman wading through wreckage.

  This bade her entrance into a near barren lobby. Buzzing fluorescent lights reflecting off a dusty tile floor, dead ahead of her was another set of steel barred double doors protecting an elevator, while to her right was a reinforced glass window, like what you see in a bank, with a speaker in the middle of it. It provided view into a lightless, abandoned office.

  Without even a half second of thought, letting the heels of her sneakers skid and squeak with every step as she lackadaisically strode towards the elevator. Given what she did to the last door, she figured a more delicate approach. Seizing the door handle, she gave the door a harsh rattle, the rusty handle leaving an unknown residue on her fingers. A great wrath filled her quickly, evident by the sharp gasp, followed by a low growl making its way out of the stifles of her helm ventilation.

  Thus, she punched the door straight in the handle that revolted her so, the entire frame bending, and breaking with the blow. She recoiled, shaking her hand free of the pain, before wrenching it open, making entrance into the ever “illustrious” elevator. Closing the door behind her, she immediately took to the crummy, smudged digital keypad, and out of all 8 floors, she picked floor 6, the elevator exhaustedly shifting into motion. Grinding, and rocking, it went upwards rickety.

  She stood there, anxiously tapping her foot to some off-kilter beat against the floor. Whether it be fiending for a cigarette, or an answer to a question, maybe a desire of any stimuli at all. Rather, a different one than the dancing of the edge of death in this shaky, sketchy, non safety-certified elevator.

  And then, it stopped, with a shudder and a squeal of some poorly maintained cable grinding against something. Her nervous tapping ceased, The Biker Briefly praying that the elevator would move yet again, only for no god to answer.

  Another growl vibrating out from The Biker’s helmet, looking around, she stared at the floor indicator for a moment, just to confirm that she was, indeed, not moving, yet trapped at floor 4, her least favorite number. Her grievance redoubled, “Fucking kidding me.” She snarled, violently rapping the tip of the sword against the checkered elevator floor, before turning her vision skyward, towards the emergency exit hatch in the ceiling.

  Yet muttering more obscenities, shifted her grip on her sword, reaching up and punching that hatch open with the great pommel of it, the hatch graciously giving way. She leant down a bit, gauging this distance, quickly determining her next move to be adequate, she leapt up. Making prodigious verticality, she flew right up out of that hatch, and atop the world’s second shittiest elevator.

  The elevator shaft is dusty, and choking, and hot and stale. Like a garage with no air flow. The stench of stale oil, and the subtle stench of death emanating from the absolute catacomb of random mice, and bugs, and all other housebound critters that no doubt found itself at the bottom of this shaft stung her nostrils. She’d depart this place quickly.

  In another impressive display of athletics, she sprang upwards, bouncing off the wall and seizing the elevator cable, bracing herself against it before leaping up another story. She was only able to get half a foot on the little ledge preluding the elevator doors, but this was half a foot enough. Sword hanging loose in one hand, she reached for the door handle, gently leaning into it, the door obliging, and giving her entrance.

  Thus revealed a dusty hallway, of buzzing lights, and peeling wallpaper. To her left, the hall stretched on, lined with doors, it stretched on. To her right, an identical situation, but this one had some more pronounced decoration, little wall flags, and string lights. She opted to go this route.

  It went on a decent distance, a maddening tunnel of stale air being forced through mildew lined filters. Even the smell pissed her off. The buzzing, flickering lights only agitated her further. With a greater, borderline juvenile annoyance, she strutted down that hall, letting her sword fall upon the low quality carpet as she lazily drag it, leaving a wake in the form of a delicate cut.

  Above the lights of infuriation, she can almost pick out something. The comings and goings of people behind the numbered doors. Perhaps the cockroaches in the walls, the drip-drop of a leaky pipe bestowing mold onto some poorly maintained bathroom.

  She stopped, her tail slowly swishing from side to side. Doors 635 and 634 were to either side, the compass tail neurotically twitching back and forth. She swagger up to door 635, pressing an ear against it with a revealing clunk of her motorcycle helmet. Nothing there. Thus, to the other side, clonking her head against the door, listening as best she could. She found the rat.

  The Biker took a step back, before, decisively twisting her body, stretching up on one leg to deliver a powerful kick to that door. Of course, it immediately harkened her command, flying off of its hinges, and into the apartment, the man on the other side flying alongside it.

  The particle board construction deformed and bent across his chest, the man gasping as he was pinned to the wall by the forces of inertia, before he slid downward, crashing atop an entertainment stand, crushing the record player he land on. Frantically, he reached out, trying to wriggle free. She offered nothing to this struggle, only meandering forth, making a baleful debut to the dingy apartment.

  The sound of the dirty tile squeaking beneath her sneakers, the leather belts and hardware which held her scabbard together rattling. The sound of the man, groaning and grumbling from ahead of her was almost pleasing, almost. Similarly, the sound of keys, as she kicked over a little entry table, a large wooden bowl full of the contents of empty pockets clattering to the floor with a lovely jingling.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He almost managed to escape, alas The Biker arrived, walking up that door as if it were any ramp, pinning him to the floor. She isn’t particularly heavy, but it was still enough to squeeze the air out of him, like juice from grapes. Muscular shoulders engaging like a transmission, she cleaved a section of the door with the might of her sword, revealing the face of a rather strong, bald man beneath this tomb of low quality wood. “Esteban Anderholt?” Snarled The Biker, pressing more weight onto the crushed man, “Who’s asking?!” He wheezed, “The god damn me.”

  “It’ll take more than a door to stop me!” His name is obviously Esteban, he roars and bellows and… actually yeah, it will take more, like a particularly athletic woman punching open the hatch of the world’s second shittiest elevator, he exploded that door right off him, attempting to condemn The Biker to a similar fate as he. She however, is much too athletic. Adapting to this new development, she made use of that door as a springboard, leaping and flipping back into the foyer, her sword digging into the popcorn ceiling like an ice pick digs into ice.

  Free of the weight, he cast the door aside into the living room, continuing the movement, he reached into the waist of his sweatpants, drawing a great, if crude pistol. Perhaps these two descriptors coincide. He was nowhere near dexterous enough, The Biker, running forward, carved great and terrible claw marks in the walls, for her sword was far too big for such a confined foyer.

  He managed to pop one shot off, one in her general direction, you could credit. It was far too late, she dipped right underneath his outstretched arm, kicking up her sword to take his arm clean off at the elbow. A sickening mixture of hydraulic fluid and blood sprayed; his face still held the same angry expression, the same one that would be etched like stone, as The Biker kept the movement going, gracefully beheading the sweatpants clad man.

  All the blood spray, it stopped effectively instantly, all the terrible cybernetics that maintained it were severed. His head fell to the floor, his body didn’t even twitch. Scoffing, the motorcyclist wiped the splatter from her visor, shaking her sword free of the sanguinity, before returning it to its home, in its ramshackle scabbard. She then began rifling through all of her jacket pockets, becoming so absorbed she didn’t even notice the ever growing pool of mixing fluids at her feet.

  Shrieking in disgust, in fear of staining her sneakers, she recoiled back, before decisively plucking something from her breast pocket. Twas her phone, which, ironically enough, is a flip-phone, in a worn, pink case, a string of beads hanging from its bottom. Fumbling through the menus, she finally got her prize.

  Squatting down, she very carefully acquired the frame, just enough to capture the pool of blood, and the statue-like head, and folded-over body of Esteban, before Click! A picture was taken, an affirmative ding ringing out from the phone. The job was done.

  You wouldn’t want to be bored with the details of her headed down the hall, and back outside, truthfully, she barely could be bothered with it too. Like some lobotomized homunculus, she swaggered off. Twas a good feeling, an eagerness to get home, maybe crack open a cold drink, all exciting thoughts that crossed her mind as she left into the warm afternoon.

  Swinging a leg over her bike, she shifted her weight about, trying to find a comfy spot to sit, before she was oh so rudely interrupted by the buzzing of her phone in her pocket, a ringtone of her favorite guitar riff. Loudly scoffing, and snarling, and muttering a thousand curses, and flipping her helmet’s visor up, accepting the call begrudgingly.

  “Hello.” The sanitized voice of a woman, surely she was dressed in some spotless suit, behind a spotless desk. “Is this a Ms. D’Lupu?”

  “Speaking.” The Biker growled. “Hi! This is Sheena with Rearview Genetics, we are calling to inform you your clone has become non viable.” She pulled the phone away from her head, loudly groaning, her last paycheck went into paying this stupid company…

  “Non viable?! What does that mean?!” She barked, angrily leaning deeper into the phone, as if that would provide any emphasis at all. “I am afraid I am not enough in the know to give you specifics. We’d just request you pick up your clone before 5 pm today.” Pinching her brow, The Biker hung her head, before looking back up, “What time is it now?”

  “3:00.”

  “UUUUUUUGH. Okay. Fine. I’ll be there before you guys close.”

  And by god, she would be. With the wrath of an elder awoken, she kicked her bike to life, the ancient, but powerful mechanics roaring, as she ripped off. Winding through the side streets, and on ramps, before entering the traffic hellscape that was the highway. Fortunately: lane splitting.

  Cloning always was a tax bracket or 7 ahead of her. The slums and favelas and apartments quickly turned to walled mansions, and salons and clinics and steakhouses. And towering skyscrapers with millions of glistening windows, and great big curves of white. Wind blowing her fur, she weaved behind a great box truck, to zip to her exit, into the land of luxury SUV’s, and limousines.

  It wasn’t too much further. Bike sputtering, occasionally spitting some burning fluid on her leg, she pulled right up to the front of Rearview Genetics, yelping, and cursing, as she threw her kickstand up with trembling muscles, quickly tossing herself off the bike and frenziedly wiping the mysterious, burning liquid off her calf.

  Puffing with relief, a shiver went up her, all the way to her tail. Issuing another groan, she made her way to the front door, with big, long stretchy steps of her thin, long, stretchy legs. Inconsiderately, she kicked the door in, revealing just what she had suspected, a humble, sterile waiting room, with a fancy desk at one end, with a fancy looking brunette woman sitting behind it.

  Her eyes perked up upon seeing The Biker, as if some long standing mystery was finally answered. She waited, patiently for The Biker to get within adequate social distance. Such she did, The Biker pulling up to her desk and immediately laying an elbow on it, angrily awaiting the first line of dialogue.

  “Ms. D’Lupu?”

  “Speaking.” Said The Biker through gritted teeth, the woman nodding, “Right that way.” She nodded, gesturing to her left, where the shiny doors of an elevator could be seen in the wall. “Through the elevator and down to the bottom.”

  So, sighing, sneakers again squeaking against the spotless floor, D’Lupu dragging her feet all the way to it, passing into the silvery, sterile interior, jamming one of the two solitary buttons on the control screen, the doors before her slamming shut, all of her lunch jumping in her gut as the cabin shot downwards.

  Floor 15, 30, 45, 52, 51. 51? 55, 63. The elevator stopped, finally, a soft chime ringing out, before the doors before her parted, revealing a dark, dingy office, with a smoke stained drop ceiling, a significantly less interesting desk, with an uninteresting computer, and an uninterested man in a lab coat sitting behind it.

  His eyes perked up, finally delivered from the agony of his duty, and, shuffling a stack of papers before him, rising to his feet. “D’Lupu?” He’s trying so hard to remain composed. “Yup.” She disappointedly grumbled, the man nodding, “Alright. Follow me.” He stated, skittering out from behind his desk, leading her to the single, uncaring little door opposite the elevator.

  Prying it open, the two entered a great, if dim warehouse of a kind. Racks on racks on racks, all full of large tubes, or machinery, all locked behind gates and cages. The lab coated man led her through aisles, on aisles, on aisles of such racks, before reaching the very back, the lab coated walking her up to one of the caged racks, fumbling through his pockets, snatching a set of keys.

  Plunging it into the lock, he freed the tight chain link, sliding it out of the way, before stepping into the “bay.” With a loud, mechanical click, the lab coated man flipped a switch, the bay became illuminated with lights from above. It revealed more specifics about the strange machine; A massive screen, adorned with all manner of digital dials, and charts. Numbers and dates and statistics. Much more mechanically, this machine was connected to the large, see-through tube adjacent to it by all manner of wires, and tubes.

  “So, unfortunately, we had a… bit of a mishap.” Began the man, The Biker scoffing, “Stop blueballing me and just show me the problem.”

  “If you insist." The lab coated shrugged, reaching forward and jamming a button on the screen, the tube immediately flickering to light, to reveal it was full of a honeyed orange liquid, bubbling.

  Twas also filled with another thing. By all accounts, it seems to be The Biker! A beastly woman, of blue grey fur, with a white belly. She float in the liquid, a kind of face mask, like an oxygen mask at the hospital, hooked up to her, tubes trailing up and up. She’s asleep, so very asleep, she looks truly, truly peaceful. There was a problem though.

  See, this is supposed to be The Biker. A long, lean, lithe woman. The thing in the pod is… not that. She’s… bigger. Plump, even, as gleaned from her bulkier body, and “fluffy” waist. She might even be a bit taller than The Biker at this point.

  Her jaw dropped, “What the fuck is that?! Why am I fat?!” Fluffy, pudgy, big, wide, thick. Oh my god.

  “We uh…” a nervousness washed over the lab coat, “We had an intern do the rounds a while ago — he’s since been terminated — and, uh… when he was punching in the amount of nutrients for your clone, he messed up a decimal point.”

  “Messed up a decimal point…” sighed D’Lupu, facepalming with a specific kind of wrath.

  “Notice,” he pointed to the monitor, “It says 10. That is supposed to be 1.0. Starting weight: 143 pounds. Your weight, Ms. D’Lupu.”

  “I had a cheeseburger for lunch so I think I’m about 145.” She shrugged, this attempt at comedy only barely cutting through the roiling fury bubbling in her breast. “Thats within tolerance. Anyways, the clone’s current weight…” he reached over, operating a digital slide next to the weight indicator, his frown growing bigger as a new number popped up. “241.”

  “Pounds…?” She softly snarled. With all the sadness of a beaten puppy, he looked up to D’Lupu, nodding. “How does such a monumental fuck up occur in the first place?” The fury in D’Lupu has cooled into blackened, magmic disappointment. “I just explained it.”

  “It was rhetorical.”

  “A-anyways.” Stuttered Labcoat, “From a legal standpoint, the thing in this vat is… no longer you. She is a distinct entity. We can’t legally upload your consciousness into it.”

  “Can’t you just make her skinny again?!” D’Lupu stamped her foot, Labcoat shrugging, “That would be tampering with somebody without their consent, which unfortunately is a federal crime.” He nodded.

  “There are a few things we could do that are a bit extralegal, but respectfully, I do not believe you to be of those kinds of means.”

  “Like what? Kill her?” D’Lupu peered at “herself”, floating peacefully, buoyantly in the whisky-amber liquid. “Well, yes but you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Well, we can’t be doing that.” D’Lupu tapped her foot, thinking, struggling, Labcoat nodding. “I figured. So, that leaves us one option.”

  “That option being?”

  “We file a shit ton of paperwork and get this thing registered as a new being.”

  “Ugh…” D’Lupu craned back, clutching her head, before lurching forward. “I guess we’ll be doing that, then.” She said through gritted teeth.

  And such, she found herself standing there at the counter, while that sharp dressed woman kept feeding her paper after paper to sign. Truthfully, she should’ve read them a bit closer, but, by the 30th page, she was starting to give up. Signatures went from names, to just the letter J, written in truthfully beautiful filigree.

  “And almost the last one: birth certificate. Sign here” the woman tapped on the dotted line, “to confirm you are the quote unquote mother of Josephine Diane D’Lupu The Second.”

  “Does it have to have my name?”

  “The certificate is already printed.” The woman shrugged, The Biker Josephine shrugging also, thrusting down a great big J with the cheapo pen she was given, the secretary nodding. “Last one for real.” She slid a particularly stiff, legal looking paper before Josephine. “This is a disclaimer that says you agree to the inbuilt knowledge we will be putting into the clone.”

  “Inbuilt knowledge?” She cocked her head. “Yeah. Things like the alphabet. How to walk and eventually talk. Eating. Your clone won’t be able to talk very well at first, because its lungs will be full of fluid that needs to clear up.”

  “Okay, checks out.” So much shrugging, shrugging, shrugging. Josephine tapped her foot with bored mind, somewhere, distantly, an air conditioner kicked on.

  Arranging all the papers nice and neat, like a shuffled deck of cards, she slid the stack forth, the secretary accepting it over the desk, tapping the bottom of the stack against the desk to straighten them further, “They’ll be out in just a sec.” She assured, not offering Josephine so much as an eyeshot, the mechanics of a stapler unseen ringing out into the room.

  And such, Josephine strode away, opting to merely analyze the lobby for a while. There truly was nothing better to do, other than stare at the spotless white couches, and the boring magazines laid out on an equally spotless white coffee table. Everything here is spotless, and white. She briefly considered what would happen if one were to drop a coffee mug here.

  Surely… these things would never quite be the same. They’d be an off beige, stained with the indelible crime of mocha clumsiness, of error. Of caramel hubris even, should you have filled your cup too full. Josephine paused, blinking, before pinching her brow again. Overthinker, she scolded herself.

  Though, it was just enough overthinking to keep her busy her emotions always outran her brain, so giving it time to catch up was good. It killed the boredom and anger until distantly, an elevator placidly dinged across the room. Puzzlingly enough, it was a different elevator than the one they went down, some kind of strange freight elevator, it was revealed.

  Like bunker doors opening, some decorative wooden panels on the wall shifted and slid, revealing… what else? The ark of the covenant? The inside of the spacious elevator, where a clearly out of breath Labcoat was busy pushing Josephine II on a wheelchair.