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“What’s going on,” I said, coming to a stop next to Amena. I already knew what was going on. This act was for the park staff, who didn’t know I was a SecUnit with a drone watching over Amena.
Amena and her friend had taken off their interfaces, and neither had been allowed to go get them so the staff could isolate them (typical fucking predatory corporate bullshit), and if I came in already knowing everything then they’d get suspicious.
Amena’s face filled with relief (which made me feel some squishy emotion) while her friend’s filled with doubt.
The situation was this: Amena was out at an amusement park with friends. I’d gone along because it’d be “good for me” to “have fun” (according to ART’s opinion) and because I don’t trust any CR places to have decent safety standards. (I’d fucking researched the accident rates for amusement parks. They were not good.) (Any non-zero number was bad, but the numbers here were Bad.)
Amena and one of her friends had gone to the “bumper cars” attraction. There’d been a crash with one of the other guests. The cars had crumpled like the cheap shit they were, as if “bumper cars” weren’t supposed to be fucking made for crashing into shit. (That was the whole fucking point of them, wasn’t it??) No injuries, thank the void, but those cars had been totaled.
And now the staff in charge of this attraction were pressuring Amena’s friend (the one who’d gotten into the accident) about paying for the damages because of fine print on the waivers they’d signed (of fucking course).
“We—” Amena started but one of the staff cut her off.
“Go away, kid. This doesn’t concern you.”
(Did I get pissed about that? Yeah. Was I unfortunately used to that? Also yeah.)
I said, “I’m here with them.”
Amena quickly butted in to explain in one breath, “Mazgotinanaccidentwithsomeone, theywantustopay.” (Okay, so that was two breaths. Whatever.)
One of the other staff ringing Amena and her friend like scavengers wrinkled her nose. “Tell your—”
“Where’s the other person?” I interrupted. “Why aren’t you talking to them about payment?”
Nose Wrinkler (yes, I saw her name in her ID; no, I didn’t care, I deleted it) told Amena, “Get your baby sibling out of here. Honestly why are you getting help from a kid?”
My face did a thing. Definitely not a nice thing because some of the staff looked alarmed.
“That’s my Third Mom,” Amena blurted in an attempt to give me some sense of authority.
There was an awkward silence for an excruciating 3.7 seconds.
“Oh.” Interrupter Guy (I deleted that name too) looked back and forth between us. “Your…mother looks. Incredibly young for her…? Age.”
Nose Wrinkler and some other staff members regarded me with a strange mixture of envy and judgment.
I didn’t care for that shit at all. “You’ll hear from our lawyer,” I said, already contacting ART, and herded Amena and her friend away.