Author's Note:
I am sorry to all my readers and followers that this took so long to get finished. I would blame life and my day job, and while these are factors, I've been a bit scattered for some time with my writing projects. I am recdoubling my efforts to keep focused and keep to a better writing schedule so that these delays are no longer encountered. That being said, enjoy the conclusion to "What Did You Do Last Night."
"I could just track her phone."
Amahle, Ardat, and Idlu all stared at him. Ben smiled. While the morning's various activities and his hangover had left his thoughts muddled for the most part, he was finally thinking a bit more clearly. He looked over the three of them, now all back in their human forms, before speaking again. "I could just track her phone. I work in computer security. I have tools to track signals and geolocation data even when devices are turned off."
Amahle started smiling again, gods her smile looked beautiful under the dark skin of her high cheekbones. "You can really do that?"
Ben's grin grew wider. "Yes, I can. This is the type of thing I do for a living. Well, I should do it for a living, but mostly I'm yelling at people for clicking malicious links in messages and telling them not to use 'password' as their password."
Ben pulled out his own phone and opened an application. Handing it to Amahle, he said, "Here, just type her number into the search box and I'll see what I can find."
Amahle took his phone, typed in the number, and handed it back to Ben. After typing a few commands in, he looked back up at her.
"Okay, this number connected to the networks just off Bluegrass Parkway, which is right by the hotel we thought she was at. Then there's a series of pings heading west across town. They drop off right after passing through the downtown area, so it's likely her phone was turned off at that point. When I isolate the traffic for just her carrier, I get a device idle ping at the Southern end of Riverport, where there's a bunch of old warehouses. This was two hours ago. There's another ping from the carrier network looking for her phone at the same location from just a few minutes ago."
"So does that mean we know where she is right now?" Amahle's eyes were boring into him as she asked the question.
"Well no, we know the general location of her phone to within a few blocks. If her phone was on, I could get the location to within a few feet, but with it off, I just get the closest signal gate that could ping the device. Since towers for signal gates are positioned every few blocks, that gives us the general area of town she's in." Ben smiled, happy that he could do something to help.
Amahle looked at him with an eyebrow raised. "I still don't understand how the phone connects if it's turned off. But these devices are still so new. Maybe that's why I don't understand it."
Ben replied, "We've been using the same basic mobile phone technology for over a century, even if it stalled after the 9th generation. But the concept is simple: when you turn off your phone, it's not actually off. A few functions, like location service for 'find my phone' functionality, are still active. If you have the right type of signal tracking applications, you can take advantage of that. Anyway, let's go find Kiri since we know what area she's in. Once we get closer, I may be able to get a more exact location."
"A century isn't that long when you're 3500 years old," Amahle muttered under her breath. She grabbed Ben, and they headed out of the shop. Ardat and Idlu both approached them and kissed them on the way through the door. Ben felt his body responding to both of them, but it was not the time to explore those feelings. They had a young dragon to rescue.
*************
Kiri kept her hands transformed into claws. While it was difficult to keep a hybrid form between human and dragon, keeping at least her claws available was worth the concentration it took. She had to retract the talons on her feet as they made too much noise against the tile floor.
She passed multiple rooms that had been converted into cells like hers. There was a goblin woman in one, but Kiri was unable to open her cell. She didn't even notice Kiri looking in at her; she just sat naked on her cot, not moving. While that was the only occupied cell Kiri found, the entire floor seemed filled with other empty cells. A group of bigoted assholes shouldn't have facilities like this. Someone had to be backing them.
Kiri let out her breath as quietly as she could. The internal warmth of her dragon fire was keeping the worst of the chill off, but her naked human form was voicing its displeasure at the temperature in the building. The corridor ended in a T-intersection and she could hear some people moving around. Behind, there was just the single straight corridor she had been walking down. There was nowhere to hide unless she could get one of the doors open and, except for the cell she came out of, all of them were locked.
She turned the corner, moving towards the noise. Two of the people who had kidnapped her were sitting at a small table, drinking what smelled like badly burned coffee. While they didn't seem to have weapons, she could see they had dermal plating. The resistance her claws felt as she tried to tear into the first one of them told her as much. Using her slightly greater speed, she tried to get behind the man she just attacked, putting his body between her and the other man. She reached lower with her claws, trying to find softer, unarmored skin.
Once she reached his pelvis, there it was: unarmored flesh. Kiri sank her claws in, trying to do as much damage to his body as she could. She wanted this asshole to bleed out as fast as possible. She twisted her claws around inside him, then pulled them back out forcefully. Blood sprayed out as pieces of his manhood hit the floor, torn free from the rest of his body.
Using her other hand, she tried to hold the bleeding man between herself and his uninjured companion. The uninjured man pulled out a knife and began stepping sideways, trying to circle around her. She pivoted as he moved, trying to prevent him from reaching her. Clawdancers like her mother were trained for this sort of thing, the martial artists of the dragon world. While Kiri was still fairly new to clawdancer training, this was a lesson she had already learned; to use any and all objects to get any advantage she could, even if that object was the bleeding body of a dying man. She pushed the body towards the knife holder as hard as she could, stepping forward and towards her right, away from the knife as she did so.
As a dragon, she was slightly faster than a human, even when in her human form, but cybernetic implants often closed that gap. As she stepped, Kiri felt a burning pain in her left side. She felt the blood ooze out of her side. The cut wasn't deep, but it was bad enough. She focused her attention back on the knife wielder. Kiri stepped back to give herself some space and concentrated on the divine draconic power within her. Raising a hand, she unleashed a bolt of pure, divine magical energy at her opponent. The blazing energy hit him squarely between the eyes and coursed through his body. Arcs of electricity jumped from his flesh as the magic ran through his body, short circuiting various implants. The man dropped to the floor, groaning.
Both men were now down, even if they weren't dead yet. One bleeding his life away rapidly and the other lost in pain.
"My grandfather was a GOD! His power runs through me. Fuck you, assholes." Kiri spit on the body of the man closest to her, the one bleeding from his destroyed crotch.
Kiri felt her side, and her hand came away covered in her own steaming blood. She could either use one of her limited spells to heal, or she could try to hold it in reserve and instead use an offensive spell to fight her way out of this place. She needed her phone so she could contact her mother or aunt. Looking around the room, there was nothing but a small table, two chairs, and a small stand with a coffee pot and some disposable cups. The walls were bare and there were no cabinets or drawers of any kind.
A wave of dizziness hit her, and she decided the healing spell was worth it. The divine blast was a simple cantrip, a practice spell, but healing? That was a
