Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets
Read Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets Online
Authors: Jeffrey Cook
Tags: #spies, #espionage, #best friends, #futuristic, #superhero, #missing, #dystopian, #secret agent, #florist, #job chip
From Bouquets to Bullets
by Jeffrey Cook
Published by
Fire and Ice
A Young Adult Imprint of Melange
Books, LLC
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to
Bullets, Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Cook
ISBN:
978-1-68046-036-0
Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this
book are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America.
Cover Design by Caroline
Andrus
This book is dedicated to Kaylin Anderson and
Mike Decuir, without whom this book wouldn't exist. Everyone needs
the type of friends who will ask the truly important questions,
such as: "What if no one truly did expect the Spanish Inquisition,
including the Spanish Inquisition? How would that work?" Sometimes
random moments really can become whole stories.
MINA
CORTEZ: FROM BOUQUETS TO BULLETS
by Jeffrey Cook
She'd never said, “I want to join the Secret
Police when I grow up.”
Of course, Mina Cortez hadn't known there
were secret police. She just knew she'd rather be a ballerina than
a florist. But in 2154, though the world has mostly recovered from
the supervolcano, vocational education is still programmed based on
aptitude testing. An implanted skill chip can give the recipient
many things, but not longer legs. So Mina fully expected to end up
inheriting her family's flower shop and landscaping business
someday.
Like three generations before her, she had
the nose for it.
She didn't expect one of her best friends to
be kidnapped. She didn't expect to be inducted into a covert
organization by desperate authorities. She didn't expect to have to
be grateful for her other best friend's 'undead' Chevy. She didn't
expect programmed spy information to come with the taste of
aluminum on her tongue — or a burning sensation when she fought its
impulses. She didn't expect fights, car chases, family secrets,
bureaucrats acting as espionage cheerleaders, electro-magnetic
pulses, or the frequent scent of gun oil.
She definitely didn't expect to still have to
deliver flowers while figuring it all out.
Table of
Contents
"Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets"
Chapter
One
Mina raced down the alleyway, dodging past
people on foot and around a recycling bin. As her bike hit a long
stretch of open path, she crouched forward and pushed herself
faster. Her pulse pounded. She couldn't slow down. Her wrist-comm
chimed to tell her how late she was running. This almost distracted
her from a bright light flashing up ahead of her at the edge of the
alleyway where it opened up onto the street. Seeing figures moving
against the movement of the light, she braked hard. Instead of
stopping, the bike went into a skid in the loose gravel and pooled
rainwater, then tumbled. Mina hit the ground hard, momentum
carrying her skidding along the alley floor just behind her
bicycle.
She came to a stop a few feet from the edge
of the alleyway, her bike clattering down the dirty path. Mina saw
a tall figure moving in its path. She had barely opened her mouth
to shout a warning when the woman turned, lifted a foot, and
stepped down with perfect timing to bring the bike to an abrupt
halt.
Mina pushed up to her feet after a moment,
clutching her now-sore wrist. “I'm so, so sorry,” she offered,
abruptly but sincerely.
The big woman, easily a head and a half
taller than Mina, scowled down at her. As she closed the gap, Mina
noticed an area cordoned off by the police, just a few yards back
from the edge of the alley, and a number of officers scrambling
around setting up tape, a couple of cars currently blocking the
street—the source of the lights she'd seen earlier.
“Sorry,” Mina said again.
The woman's eyes did not soften as she
shifted, blocking Mina's view of the scene. “You shouldn't be here.
Move,” she said directly, leaving no room for question.
Mina quickly gathered up her bike and started
away from the scene as quickly as possible. Her wrist-comm buzzed,
and a voice called over it, “Incoming, get ready to go!”
Mina looked down the street to see her best
friend's car careening down the road with Amiko's typically
lead-footed driving style. “Miko, there's police down here!” she
called back into the comm.
Vlad, Amiko's restored ancient model Chevy,
screeched to a sudden slowdown, eventually pulling up at something
akin to polite suburban driving speeds.
“Get in!” called the cheery voice of the
Asian girl in the fedora. Mina pressed two buttons on the frame of
her bike and quickly folded it up to fit neatly in the back seat of
Miko’s car. Then she launched herself into the passenger seat as
the comforting scent of sandalwood and cloves hit her. Mina always
appreciated Miko's post-tai-chi smell, but knew not to mention it.
The younger girl was still a little awkward over the fact she did
it alone each morning now.
“Can you see that woman with the cyber arm? I
think I already got my first two warnings.” Mina commented, only
half joking.
“Yeah, I see her not being happy.” Miko
squinted. “How do you know she has a cybernetic arm?”
“Would you drive? We're going to be late!”
Mina said, punching her friend in the shoulder.
Miko hit the gas, and the car launched ahead.
The acceleration wasn't as smooth as any kind of modern car, and
Mina was pitched forward midway through buckling herself in, since
it didn't have automatically adjusting straps. “Damn it.”
“So how did you know she had a cyberlimb?”
came the question again. “It had to be a good one.” Miko was
unperturbed as usual.
“They're getting way better with the synth
skin, but it's still always a shade or two off,” Mina replied as
she finished buckling in. A block later, just outside of standard
police-scan range, Miko hit the gas again, tearing around a corner.
Anything modern, outside an emergency vehicle, wouldn't have let
them get over the local speed limit. But Vlad was from another
time, excavated from an old parking garage that had been buried in
the quakes. One of Dr. Kimura's research digs had found it in
almost prime condition from the sealed environment. He and Miko, in
one of their last father-daughter collaborations, had spent more
than a year testing and restoring it to working order, and using
his University clout to get the permits for a fuel-based hybrid
vehicle without self-correction. The 2040 Impala was way before the
safety-assurance regs.
“So, why aren't you in school?” Mina asked,
tensing a bit as Miko raced around a corner. No matter how often
she rode with her best friend, Mina never entirely got used to
Miko's driving habits, especially when she was in a hurry.
“All for one,” Miko teased. “I checked your
GPS co-ords. You weren't going to make it.”
“And now we're not going to make it,” Mina
muttered back.
“Oh ye of little faith.” Her best friend
grinned, kissed two fingers, and pressed them to her “Saint Elwood”
bobblehead, another relic—and Miko's hero. “Our Lady of Blessed
Acceleration, don't fail us now.”
Mina rolled her eyes, and then shut them
tight and clutched the handle harder as Vlad jolted up to top
speed, only slowing a slight bit around corners. Thankfully,
early-morning traffic around the back streets was light, and Miko
kept away from main thoroughfares when speeding. “So what do you
figure the big police fuss was?” she asked as she drove.
Mina's knee-jerk reaction was to tell her to
watch the road, but she'd gotten mostly used to her friend's
driving by now. “No idea. Plain clothes, no burning smell like with
big accidents—some kind of raid, maybe. The big lady didn't want me
looking, and I wasn't about to question it.”
“You and your nose.” Miko smirked. “If you
weren't on your way to Russia for the Bolshoi Ballet, you could ask
them for a police dog chip. That'd get you out of delivering
flowers.”
Mina slumped a bit lower in her seat. “I'm
not going to Russia,” she muttered.
“Are you sure? You've worked hard for it, and
I don't seem to recall you having a chipping date yet. No one
deserves a magical-ballerina microchip more than you,” Miko shot
back.
“You know I haven't. You'll be the second to
know.”
“I'd better be. And until you get it, I'm not
going to let you give up.”
“They don't need short, stocky ballerinas in
Russia. In New York, either. Face it. You're stuck with me.”
“The horror,” Miko teased. “Seriously though,
'til you get it, you don't know for sure, right?”
Mina shook her head. “You're impossible.”
Despite the words, she couldn't help but smile a little. They both
knew that if she'd gotten into any other ballet academy, she
definitely would have heard by now to start getting ready for the
move this close to chipping. While its decision date was later, the
Russian academy's standards were certainly no lower—especially for
international applicants—which made it the longest of long-shots.
Still, being a ballerina had been Mina's goal since they were both
tiny, right up until she never got that last growth spurt.
“Okay, almost to school. Get ready to
run.”
Mina blinked out of her brief reverie as they
reached the school lot, her comm giving her the two-minute warning.
The car jolted, not quite jumping the curb, but catching the edge
of the turn in with one tire. Miko had to park out near the back of
the lot near the staff and rec vehicles, since Vlad wouldn't fit in
any of the main spots.
“Can you drop me off at the shop after dance
class?” Mina asked as they were pulling in. Thankfully, there
wasn't enough space for Miko to even try a fishtail parking job.
She'd never quite managed one, but that didn't stop her from
trying.
“Yeah, no problem. Got to run Scott home
anyway so he'll be on time to watch the munchkin. We'll be going
right past. Besides, this is the last time we're running him home,
so you should definitely come.”
“You really think he's going to be in the
first wave of microchip assignments next week?” Mina asked leaving
her bike in the back and jumping out as soon as they'd come to a
stop.
“Sure of it,” Miko called, pulling herself
directly out through the car window and taking off after her
towards the school as time ticked down.
“True, with his parents' clout, he's bound to
either end up getting a first wave job, or assigned to the lunar
colony,” Mina called back as the neared the school.
“No way he's going back to the moon after all
his parents did to raise a kid ... not on the moon,” Miko
answered.
The Szachs had, in the interest of their
kids' socialization, not only transferred off the colony to
Seattle, but stayed out of the child-sparse neighborhoods of their
own socioeconomic bracket. Of course, in the girls' opinion, it had
paid off. They'd met the Cortezes and Kimuras. Who wouldn't want to
send their son trick-or-treating with five-and six-year-old Miko
and Mina Mouse? Oh, sure, the parents had become good friends, too,
eventually collaborating on park restoration projects—Dr. Kimura
for the historical reconstruction, the Cortezes for the
landscaping, the Szachs for the cash—but the kids had become the
inseparable Mouseketeers.
