**** Elysium 1986 ****

“Whatever you do, be as quick and as quiet as you can,” Abigail whispered to Yuri. Moments ago, the ring announcement outside had ended and the gong had sounded to begin the finals. The inside of the ship had all but emptied and the two had made their way unnoticed back to the side corridor where Lisa Muller had crossed their path earlier.
“Sure. Quick and quiet. Is my specialty,” Yuri confirmed, then removed the silencer from the silver paper and screwed it onto his pistol.
“You can’t predict this, of course, but do you have any estimate from previous missions of how long it will take you, roughly?” echoed Abigail.
“A few minutes,” Yuri nodded and checked the magazine of his weapon, then reloaded.
“And you have the key, I gave it to you, right? Do you remember where you put it?” asked Abigail with slightly increasing nervousness. The giant had to grin.
“Baby Owl has to get to the comrades quickly now, I can handle it here,” he said, hiding the weapon within reach under his jacket. Abigail looked up at him, eyes narrowed to slits, and gave a grunt.
“Good luck, big guy,” she whispered and hurried off.
“… Or as they say where I come from, a mountain goat and a car never eat cake together,” Yuri muttered, stomping toward Dexter’s cabin. By now, two different guards were posted outside the room, talking – about what, exactly, Yuri couldn’t understand. When they noticed him, they immediately turned to him.
“Hey buddy, where you going?” one of them called out to him.
“Got call for Mr. Dexter,” Yuri replied, pointing to the bulge on his jacket where the gun was. The guards then looked at each other questioningly and seemed to grow suspicious as he walked towards them with a firm stride, unperturbed.
“Last warning, man…” the guard began again as Yuri suddenly reached into his pocket and pulled out his pistol. He fired four times in quick succession, aiming directly at their heads. The two guards collapsed dead before they could draw their own weapons. Despite the silencer, his shots echoed loudly down the corridor. Without slowing his pace, he fired five more shots at the door lock, which broke halfway off its mount from the force of the bullets. When he was close enough, he charged and kicked the lock, causing the door to burst open. Undeterred, he marched into the sprawling luxury cabin. Surprisingly, everything inside was bathed in subdued red light. A large, elegant oak table was covered with exotic food and drinks that Lisa must have brought from the dining car earlier. Otherwise, expensive-looking paintings on the walls, lots of playful accessories, and chic furniture dominated the scene. Near the picture window stood a lady in a strict, skin-tight red lacquer dress and high-heeled boots. She had a riding crop in her hand and a hair band with two fluffy cat ears on her head. She was standing next to a black bed on which Dennis Dexter was lying, naked, handcuffed to the bedposts and with a black rubber ball in his mouth. When he saw Yuri, he began squealing frantically, trying desperately to pull at the handcuffs on his wrists and legs to free himself. These efforts were, of course, completely futile. The lady turned around, holding the riding crop at her hips. It was Gigi Chiwawa herself, whom Yuri had met on the red carpet a few hours ago. She looked first at the damaged cabin door, then at the giant and grinned smugly.
“You do BDSM here?” Yuri asked, pointing at Dexter.
“Yes. Tell me, sweetheart: weren’t you taught not to enter locked rooms?” she asked in a stern tone.
“But I have key,” Yuri explained, pulling the room key out of his pocket, showing it to her demonstratively, and then dropping it on the floor.
“Then why didn’t you use it?” Gigi asked now, astonished.
“My colleague just asked if I had key with me. Not told me to use,” he shrugged. Then he marched over to the bed and Gigi jumped aside.
“What are you going to do? Are you going to shoot him?” she shouted while the drug lord was still squealing in a high-pitched voice and writhing on the bed like a dung beetle fallen on its back. Gigi, on the other hand, threw her arms in the air and waved her riding crop. She didn’t understand the world anymore. Why the hell had this fitness trainer, whom she thought she had seen somewhere before, broken in here?
“I can’t, have no bullets left in gun,” Yuri said, throwing the gun behind him.
“Yeah, so what now?” she said, letting the whip fly at her thigh with a slapping sound.
“Now for next level BDSM,” Yuri said, grabbing Dexter’s nipple with the heart-shaped ruby piercing. Then, in one swift motion, he pulled the filleting knife from his jacket pocket and sliced off the nipple, including the piercing, while Dexter jumped up and down as if stung by a tarantula and reared up on the mattress. Gigi’s mouth dropped open for a moment.
“Honey, you’re a crazy monster,” she said.
“The guy biggest drug lord of Elysium, I don’t know how many dead on his conscience,” Yuri shrugged again as he wrapped the nipple in a tissue and stashed it in his pants pocket.
“Oh wow, is that really true?” Gigi asked in horror to which the giant just nodded. “And… What are you going to do now? Are you going to cut his throat with the knife?”
“No, I’m not crazy monster after all,” Yuri said. Then he briefly tested the condition of the floorboards with the sole of his shoe, grunted, and grabbed the bed with both hands. Immediately he began to push it towards the picture window. He accelerated as fast as he could for the short distance. The bed, with Dexter still tied to it, crashed through the window with a deafening thud, and a rain of broken glass fell on Yuri. He let go at the last moment to avoid being pulled out himself. The bed flew down in an arc, slammed into the beveled window of the next floor directly below them, and then tumbled to the right, sending more shards flying. At the bottom, it hit the railing and was deflected toward the water. With a loud splash, it finally landed on the water’s surface and immediately sank, pulled down by its own weight.
“Holy shit…” Gigi panted, gasping for air. The riding crop fell from her hands. “That was… that was incredible!”
“Oh, thanks,” Yuri grumbled, shaking some glass shards off his shoulders and out of his beard.
“Honey… you really are so… cool and strong… like a real action hero!” Yuri walked over to her, fumbled briefly in his other jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to her. She took it and looked at it.
“TRAP agency?” she asked in surprise.
“Call me anytime, sweetie. We make special cases happen.” As Gigi gave an enthusiastic sigh in response, he turned on his heel and headed for the cabin door, when he suddenly noticed a Japanese-style sword hanging on the wall next to the entrance. It was decorated with elaborate engravings and characters he could not read. It seemed to have been forged for a woman’s hand, judging by the filigree construction. Underneath the weapon was a small black wooden plaque with the words Starry Sky written in gold letters. Yuri threw down the filleting knife, took the sword from the wall, and weighed it briefly in his hand. The thing was probably worth thousands of dollars, an extraordinary piece of work. It would certainly make his escape easier. As he stepped through the cabin door back into the corridor, he could already hear the excited shouts of the guards.

Damage analysis: No internal injuries to skeletal or musculoskeletal system, hip hydraulics intact. Severe damage to human tissue, bullet hole in abdomen, several blood vessels ruptured. Drastic blood loss, sclerotherapy of the tissue is recommended. Healing process is estimated at one week in normal case and two days with the help of external energy supply. Removal of the bullet is strongly recommended for the healing process, it is located near the spine. End of analysis.
The effect of the stimulant cocktail Yanny had given Harry had worn off quite a bit. But it was still strong enough to keep him standing.
“You saved my life. I don’t know how to thank you… How… how are you?” Harry asked worriedly. They faced each other in the cabin, Harry holding his ribs in pain and Yanny holding her stomach. After being shot by Roy Hellfist, she had quickly put her hand over the wound and pushed her ring finger deep into the bullet hole in a makeshift attempt to stop the bleeding. She had improvised very well, using the commotion and general excitement to fool the people in the ring into thinking that the dying bodyguard must have either missed or the gun had a lucky misfire. Since she had laughingly refused any medical examination and otherwise seemed very much alive, it had been possible to keep up the deception. However, when they noticed how quickly her blood had begun to soak into the black dress, they had hurried back to the cabin and, with a hasty explanation, postponed the award ceremony for an hour.
“It’s all right,” she told him softly. “It’s just my tissue that’s a little damaged.” Her dress was now completely soaked with blood around her stomach, and it was already dripping from her hand onto the carpet. Then she slowly pulled her finger out of the wound with a smacking sound, and a small spurt splattered onto the white sheet.
“Oh God! What can I do? How can I help you?” Harry cried in a hushed voice.
“There’s a flashlight, a scalpel, a retractor and a pair of tweezers in the medical bag. Would you mind trying to get the bullet out? It’s in pretty deep. I could do it myself, but without a mirror I’d have to dig around inside myself because I can’t feel exactly where the thing is. Somewhere near the spine. Would that be all right with you, do we have time?” she asked him, smiling. How the hell could she be so calm right now?
“No, well… I mean, yes, of course I’ll do it. But is it that easy?” he replied, kneeling down in front of her and nervously ripping open his bag. He rummaged around for the necessary utensils and quickly found what he was looking for.
“Of course,” she said emphatically, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. She hoped it would allay some of his concerns.
“Are you in much pain?” he asked. Yanny shook her head gently.
“I can reduce it by 90 percent.”
“All right… What do you want me to do? How do you want me to do it?” he asked, clearing his throat to quell his nervousness.
“I’d better keep standing, or the wound will fill with blood and you won’t be able to see anything. Just make the bullet hole bigger with the scalpel, stretch it out properly with the retractor. Then use the flashlight and the tweezers to find the bullet and pull it out. It’s all very simple. My body will do the rest in time. As she explained, she took off her dress and dropped it to the floor, now standing in front of him in black lace underwear and covered in blood. It was oozing from the abdominal wound in a thin trickle, so now her panties were starting to soak with it, and the liquid was trickling down her right thigh. Harry had the scalpel and retractor in his hand and looked at her.
“Yanny… I…” he spoke, noticing that his mouth had gone completely dry.
“You can do it, I know you can,” she whispered encouragingly.
“What if I slip with the tweezers? Could I… how shall I put this… accidentally break something on your spine? And what about all that blood? What if you lose more blood during the procedure?” he asked anxiously, looking at the instruments in his hands. “And you will lose more blood, there’s no way around it.” Still smiling, she knelt down beside him, so that they were now very close.
“It’s really sweet of you to worry so much about me,” she replied in a soft voice, looking into his eyes. “But you really don’t have to worry. If I lose too much blood, it could easily be temporarily replaced with saline, but I still have a few liters in me. Besides, there’s a little generator in my skeleton that can slowly replenish itself if I eat food and drink fluids. And you won’t be able to damage my spine with a pair of tweezers, not even by force…” she paused and then briefly avoided his gaze, looking down at the ground for a moment. “I’m not a human, after all… Even if I look like a woman, I will never be one.”
“I owe my life to that fact,” he countered quietly. She smiled again, but then pressed her lips together and stood up.
“Just think of it as fixing a household appliance. It’s not much more than that,” she said with an intonation in her voice that was difficult to interpret, and with both hands she pulled apart the skin around the bullet hole to make it easier for him to cut with the scalpel.

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