‘Hi baby.’ I cooed with a slight lisp. He looked at me and I could see he was interested. Human men were easy to deal with, especially this type of low rent brute. I ran my gloved finger down his exposed wrist and into the palm of his hand. ‘You look lonely, would you like some company?’ His pupils dilated and I could tell he was interested.

‘Hey there, sweetie.’ He had a deep, gravelly voice that indicated hard living. He might have been handsome at some point, but years of fighting had given him a look not even a mother could love. ‘I was waiting here for someone, but she’s nowhere near as good looking as you.’

Ugh. This was rough. I forced a giggle.

‘I bet she can’t give you what I can.’ I discreetly grabbed his crotch and tried not to look disgusted. He kept one eye on Manuk Kai’s store.

‘And what’s that?’

Gag, gag.

‘Why don’t you meet me upstairs and I’ll show you.’

‘And how much is that going to cost me?’ I ran numbers through my head, trying to figure out an amount that seemed right.

‘Fifteen hundred.’

‘That seems a little low for someone as clean looking as you.’ The last thing I wanted was for him to be suspicious. ‘And with what I’m carrying around, you’ll be out of commission for a few days.’ I wanted to puke.

‘I always give a better price for humans, there are no... compatibility issues that I have to compensate for.’ He looked interested again. ‘Why don’t I go get a room and I’ll send you the number. You can meet me there once you’re done here?’

‘Ok honey.’ He flicked his wrist monitor. ‘Here’s my contact. I’ll see you soon.’ He winked. ‘And get ready for the best time of your life.’

‘Don’t take too long.’ I turned and rolled my eyes so deeply I thought they would fall out of their sockets. He was right, while the amount might have been ok for a mobile station, but the rooms here cost more so I was out five hundred credits already.

I sent him the room number using an alias on my communicator and sat down to wait. The hood was seriously chafing my neck, so I pulled it off while I sat there, running through my options. I could just kill him, that would be the easiest thing to do, but I wouldn’t get any intel. I could torture him first, which would feel really good and I did have the room for three hours, then kill him. Whatever happened, I reckoned I would probably eventually need to kill him, but I also needed info. Cutting off his arm and taking it with me would be straightforward, but his mobile OS was tied to his unique brain patterns, so if he was dead, getting it to work would be extremely difficult. I accounted for variables that had arisen in previous encounters similar to this, took an inventory of the room and waited for him to show up.

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An hour later, the doorbell rang. I pulled on the hood and went to answer it.

‘Are you ready for all this, baby?’ He strolled in confidently and I slid the door shut, locking it and turning on the do not disturb.

‘Oh yeah, I can’t wait.’ He began undressing. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do to you.’

‘I bet you have, honey.’ He chuckled and pulled off his shirt. As he yanked it over his head I grabbed the back, using the material to secure his arms as I knocked out his feet from underneath him. His head slammed into the corner of the table and I panicked, worrying that he had died already. Rolling him over, I checked for breathing and was actually relieved to see that he was still alive. I ripped the sheets into strips and tied his feet together and secured his left arm to the foot of the bed.

‘Ok loverboy. Let’s see what you’re really working with.’ First, I transferred two thousand credits to a dummy account. ‘It is what you agreed to, and a little extra for being a piece of shit.’

While the wrist monitors were extremely convenient, trying to use someone else’s could be difficult, especially when that someone was unconscious and weighed twice as much as I did.

I scrolled through the messages and downloaded his contacts into an encrypted folder, ensuring there was no connection to me. I also found a contact that just said Colleen. Well, that’s convenient. Once I was done, I still had an hour left in the room and tried to decide what to do with Mr. Hot Stuff, who was still out cold on the floor. He would tell Colleen what happened and they would trace it back to me, doubling the amount of shit I already found myself in. I had planned on killing him, but leaving him here could also cause problems with station security; there were still laws and having legitimate legal issues in addition to the ones in the grey area in which I operated could be problematic.

The room’s atmosphere controls blinked at me and a plan formed in my head. I pulled him into the bed and stripped him down. He hadn’t been lying about his...talent, but I could tell it had been artificially enhanced so it didn’t really count.

Once he was totally naked, I washed the blood off his head and removed the restraints, putting the torn sheets into a pile by the door. I tried to position him to look comfortable, then adjusted the environmental controls to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Ideally, he would asphyxiate within a few minutes, giving the appearance of a misunderstanding of the environmental controls after a random encounter with a prostitute. I doubted the death would raise any extra scrutiny- especially once the authorities saw the tattoo on his neck.

I pulled on the hood, activated the holo mask, grabbed the pile of sheets and left, sliding the door softly into place. It should only take a few minutes for him to suffocate, but I walked slowly away, discreetly putting the sheets into a nearby disposal. Wanting to make sure he didn’t emerge, I snuck into a corner, changed my face and sat on a sofa at the end of the hall until the cleaning robots showed up.

Manuk Kai would have to wait until I figured out what the hell was going on.