Smoothing down the back of her robe, Syn’ found herself a comfortable pose on her large and entirely natural leather couch. Fingers ran down the authentic texture of 100% Cow and she was instantly happier that she chose it over the cheaper alternative. She soaked in her material wealth, a martini in her right hand and her left tapping out a cheroot. Syn’ made for a sensuous image, sprawled out with her head laying back on the cushioned neck rest and her bare legs propped up on a blown glass coffee table held aloft by two reclining Greek goddesses cut in marble. Life had been good to her recently, she thought, and at the rate things were going this would be her best year in some time.

Taking the cheroot between her lips, she chewed at the end of the small cigar-like vice and enjoying the taste of the little bits of fiber coming off to the sharp edge of her teeth when she rolled it back and forth. Her eyes closed and she focused on the music issuing from the walls of her entertainment room, a rolling drum and bass rhythm plated in gold stringed guitar riffs and accented with the sighs and moans of a movie starlet. Every now and again, whispers would echo around the room, tied very quietly into the music and only meant to be picked up by machines and Syn’s neuria-acute hearing. Taking the cheroot from her mouth, she layed it on the arm rest as always — she loved the way it tasted, but hated the smoke — and took a long draw off of her martini. Cool bitter fluid sifted over her lips in a slow waterfall, tumbling over her tongue and finally unhindered down her throat with one smooth swallow. Yes, life definitely couldn’t get better. She lost herself in the music, hips rolling with the beat and by virtue of dry skin failed to stick to the clinging leather.

It was at this vulnerable moment when Syn’ felt something cold and metallic press against her right temple. She didn’t open her eyes, adrenaline pounding up through her nervous system, and instead took in what of her environment she had access to. The metal was coldly smooth in a fashion mostly found with round, polished cylinders and bondage handcuffs. Counting out the latter option, she relaxed further to keep whomever now had her at their mercy from finding a fast excuse to kill her. The scent of gun oil was entirely absent, which was strange and she hadn’t heard them approach. Inwardly she cursed herself for not checking the 6 layer security system after her consort left for the night, taking for granted that its hard-intelligence would kick it in and bolt the door. Thinking back, she didn’t recall the sound of the bolt locking into place after it opened to let her toy out. Whomever was with her now had been either hiding here all night or found a way to circumnavigate the security intelligence. That meant a pro.

Opening her eyes slowly, Syn’ took in the figure leering down above her. He was in his early twenties, the gun clutched in a hand used to carrying a gun but not muscled enough to be used to firing it. His wrist shook nearly imperceptibly from nervous tension and a bead of sweat was clinging to the side of his nose. And what a nose it was, thin and hooked like a predatory bird’s beak and distracting attention from the acne pocked face behind it. His hair was lank and black, skin faintly shiny in the dim light and his eyes shined with the fervor of a man possessed. Whomever he was, he meant business and she carefully set her martini on the short table beside the couch. Wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, she ignored the cold metal against her skull and spoke aloud. “If you meant to kill me, you would have done it by now.”

He did not react, the sweat bead on his nose collecting smaller ones and getting bigger. This detail was annoying her, it looked dirty and she wanted to take a shower just seeing it from her angle. “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked, and again no response. She waited what seemed like five entire minutes before his lips moved, and his free hand came up to rub a sleeve along his mouth. Oh god, she thought as realization struck, his other hand had been in his jeans that entire time. He was some kind of pervert and by stroke of insane luck, he must have wandered across her apartment. Her very expensive apartment, with the door man, locked ascension elevator and hundreds of chits worth of security. No, she realized, he had to be there with a purpose to have gotten past all of the measures in place.

She wondered how much he had seen from during the show. It wouldn’t be even a bump on her public ratings if it got out that she fucked while DJ’ing but it would take a serious hit if he released -who- she had been fucking at the time. The man was an animal, wanted for breaking and defacing several other fighters in very demeaning manners during the cage fights and certainly not popular. She had found him interesting because despite the reputation in the meat pits, he was very well endowed both physically and philosophically. He had very pure opinions on things, even if he came off sounding like a homicidal maniac when he tried to explain the definitions of good and evil.

Bringing herself out of the mental wandering, she realized the man had been talking to her for several minutes and she had ignored pretty much all of it. Just like her, she thought, always skipping the parts that might tell her how to survive a situation.

“…and that is why I think you need to focus on more of your old style of material.” he said.

Syn’ quirked an eyebrow, he was critiquing her catalog and it really pissed her off. She could feel the heat in her face rising, possibly even beginning to warm the tip of the gun on her temple. “That’s very interesting… I’ll take it under advisement for my next compilation.”

For a moment he seemed speechless, like he had planned for her to be very angry about what he felt were superior tastes in the techno genre. He even almost quirked a grin at the edges of his mouth, pulling the gun back just a little as he relaxed his muscles. “That’s so good to know, I’m one of your biggest fans! I’ve been listening for probably 5 years now, even the underground stuff you played down in the club districts under the name TawnyKitten18-” and he tried to finish the sentence, but it was cut short by the shock of wind leaving his lungs.

During the moment the fanatic had his gun pulled away, Syn’ focused on bunching up all of the muscles in her middle and grabbed the backboard of the couch, making fists. Swinging both feet up, she brought her naked shins down on his shoulders and exposing the full blossom of her womanhood to his view. In that one moment, he probably thought all of his stalking and studying had payed off, she was offering herself to him like the god he was after all… Wrong.

With a quick scissoring of her legs, she grasped him by the head and swung her hips back down. He came with her legs, flailing as he sailed over the couch and down back-first onto the glass and marble coffee table. The resounding bursts of noise as the glass shattered was enough to make Syn’ wish he had died on impact. Gritting her teeth, she clutched his head still between her calves and kept his back arched at an unhealthy angle while his spine took most of the marble impact. He didn’t move a lot, but he tried to point the gun up at her. She smacked it away with a quick chop of her martini hand and leaned forward to pick the gun up from where it fell on the ground. Pressing it against his forehead and smoothing her robe back over her hips for the sake of a propriety that was mostly instinctual, she looked down into the man’s eyes.

“You’re going to lay here, dying very slowly from that spine injury and you’re going to listen to -me- for awhile… You have to remember your place, the listener. I’m the DJ, that means I spin the music and you dance to it. If you don’t like the music, you turn it off and walk away… There are all sorts of music out there and you’re bound to find something you like better than me. But no, no, that isn’t going to be enough for a hot stud like you. You came here to tell me the errors of my ways, so I think it only fair that you have to come to appreciate my newer music for what it is… An evolution, a new step in music that you’ve already become a dinosaur to. It evolved too quickly for your ear and now you blame me for it being bad when in reality… It is your ears that are behind, not my methods.”

She cocked the hammer on the gun and tears leaked from the edges of his eyes. She re-guessed his age, he couldn’t be any older than 20 but the dull look in his eyes had convinced her before he had lived a little longer. He did everything he could to keep from blathering and in some ways she respected that despite his madness. She layed back on the couch and tightened her hold around his head and neck. “If you move before we’re done, I’m going to break your neck and it will be hours before I report your death. After all, they could bring you back in perhaps half of an hour, but I don’t think I want that. I want you to have to listen.”

Syn’ looked up at the entertainment system, calling out to the hard intelligence in it. “Play prototype melody 5, Plutonium Afterglow.” she said, and the system hummed to life. She made a rare exception and began to listen to a new song she was preparing for an upcoming event. The man between her calves sobbed like a young boy, totally emasculated and terrified of the gun still pointing at his head. She glanced down, “You should have thought of all of that before you came here, to -my- house and did something stupid like this.” The music swelled from the walls and violins played a staccato melody, accenting the high notes and filling the spaces between with rich valleys of noise. At random intervals of 4 to 8 seconds, the remixed sound of a plutonium reactor exploding in the distance would play back in one of the major keys.

Closing her eyes, Syn’ relaxed everything but her legs. Legs used to having sex in the same position for hours at a time, hardened by martial arts and toned by years of Yoga. Her free hand reached out over her gun arm, grabbing the martini and drinking it sloppily. The man made his first attempt to shift and her legs forced him back into position, thousands of pieces of broken glass re-settling in his back and legs. It jarred her and she laughed when some of it ran down between her breasts, trailed over her stomach and pooled above her mons. “You made me spill.” she said, and she hummed along with the violins. Hum, huuuum, huuuum, hum, huuuum… bang.

The gun went off and Syn’s legs grew warm from the blood now running down them, knocked free from the exposed mind before her. She didn’t bother to look, reminded entirely too much of her first menstruation and how her mother had yelled when she ruined her best sunday outfit. She spoke out to the corpse, “Now, if you listen closely you can hear the point at which the sampled violin’s bow just barely clears the edge of the strings… But then, you probably won’t care. I get the impression you don’t really have a head for this sort of thing. Nevermind.”