Jess took a slow swig from the thermos flask on her hip, savoring the flavor of Von’s “House Blend”. It’d only get her so far, but it was still worlds better than the legal stuff. Tasted better, too – somehow, Von could work that ubiquitous shitty synthcaf astringency into something actually drinkable.
“I’ve got the cameras,” Nine’s voice came in over Jess’s earpiece. “One guard at the front desk, two on the inner doors, a bunch more patrolling. And… perfect, someone’s heading out. Inner doors opening in 3, 2, 1, now.”
Feeling the buzz of caffeine entering her system, Jess activated one of the chemoglyphs on the inside of her jacket, and sprung into motion as the world slowed down around her. By the time the guards and bystanders understood what they were seeing, Jess was already through the inner doors, racing three times faster than any normal human. She ran confidently down the corridors, following the directions on her visor as alarms began to blare.
"Okay, I’m up to speed now too,” said Nine, her voice sounding slightly tinny over audio codecs optimized for normal-speed human speech. “You’ve got company at the next corner. Three guards, accelerated, heavy armor. Looks a lot less breathable than your gear, I bet you can steam ’em no trouble.”
Jess gave a grunt of acknowledgement, charging another chemoglyph as she rounded the corner. An oppressive heat quickly filled the corridor. The guards opened fire, but they already seemed to be sweltering behind their masks, and their guns were standard-issue models not designed for accelerated combat. She quickly disarmed one, and shoved another out a plate-glass window; hopefully he’d gone through “cat training” for using accelerated mobility to survive falls.
The third guard, when Jess turned back to look at him, had taken off his mask and seemed to be getting a second wind, laying down fire as Jess dodged and weaved. Eh, I tried, Jess shrugged to herself, and shot him in the head with her high-speed machine pistol. Unfortunate, but the mission took priority.
Jess was just one or two hallways away from the target when she started to feel woozy. “Nine, what’d they just do?”
“Shit, it’s tranq gas. The hyper-permeating kind, gas mask won’t help. They wanna take out the entire building at once, then come in with oxygen tanks to clean up the mess once everyone’s down.”
Jess groaned. She was going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow. She unzipped a pocket, pulled out a small vial of brown sludge labeled “SLEEP NO MORE”, and downed it in one bitter gulp. The drowsiness cleared instantly, and Jess made her way to the vault door, scanning the surroundings warily with bloodshot eyes.
“All right, time to see if this passcode I dug up is still good,” said Nine.
“It fucking better be.” Jess keyed it in, and the door began to slide open, aggravatingly slowly from Jess’s perspective. Inside on a small table, Jess could see the target: a canister filled with real coffee beans.
Jess entered the vault, and picked up the canister with an air of reverence. “Target secured. Heading up to extraction point.”
As she turned to leave the vault, she heard boots on tile in the distance, moving fast. Too fast. The guys with the oxygen tanks were here earlier than she’d hoped, and they were using military-grade synthcaf, from the sound of it. Nine was saying something in urgent tones, but she was barely listening – she had a couple of seconds before they’d be on her, and then that’d be that. There was only one option left. Jess uttered a silent prayer, opened the canister, grabbed a couple of beans, and bit down with a crunch.
For all that researchers tried to dress up chemomancy in the trappings of scientific objectivity, fundamentally, it wasn’t about arrangements of molecules. It was about concepts, rituals, symbolism. A solution of pure caffeine wouldn’t be useless, but even a cup of shitty diner synthcaf would be a lot more effective. And as for coffee, real coffee – the template, the origin, made all the more powerful by its now-forbidden status –
The boots were silent now. Jess stepped out of the vault, and found herself facing a crew of mercs in frozen tableau. She walked carefully between them, brain vibrating with energy – possibly literally; she could definitely feel her nose starting to bleed. She walked up several flights of stairs, not trusting her body to handle running, and arrived at the rooftop where her ship was hovering in wait. The glowing jets from the ion thrusters had a strange ethereal beauty in this frozen moment of time. She felt an urge from somewhere within her hyperactive brain to try touching them, just to see what it’d feel like; she restrained herself and climbed aboard, sinking into the captain’s chair and finally deactivating the accelerator chemoglyph. She pushed a couple of buttons with shaking hands, and the ship shot off on its pre-planned course to the rendezvous point.
Jess remained sitting in the chair, canister clutched to her chest, as Nine gingerly walked over to check on her. “’m fine.” She was just going to keep sitting here for a while, until the shaking calmed down and she stopped seeing in two or three extra colors she didn’t have names for. Hopefully she’d be able to get to sleep eventually, in a day or two.