Two and a half minutes later, and we were off, running past faces that deliberately looked in any direction but ours. A new waypoint plotted by my RI guided us to the lift we needed, and after a few minutes of running?
We were reduced to walking again and dealing with pickpockets, obnoxious salesmen, and people trying to hawk us shitty knockoffs that they swore were real.
“Oberyn Systems datadecks!”
“Nemesis upgrades! Two for one!”
“Corpo meat! Feed your family the best!”
“Tits and ass! Cheap and tasty!”
That last one made me smile despite the pain as I passed the caller, a whore leaning against the wall nearby obviously deciding that if you can’t beat the shitty salesmen, you might as well join them. “Seriously, I wash and everything!” she announced to general laughter.
“So,” Reign said as we entered the lift, ignoring the gang signs that glowed here and there on it, warning others off. “What the hell was that?”
“You tell me.” I shrugged. “You followed me.”
“I wanted to see what you were doing.”
“You could have fucking asked.”
“And you’d have told me?”
“Yeah,” I said, deciding honesty was the best policy here. “Seriously, Reign, I told you I was going to go to bed after fixing my gear, and…”
“And instead you went bounty hunting,” she pointed out with a smile.
“Nope,” I corrected. “I went to do a job. You remember what I said? Five jobs I’ve got for the gang—two outright hits on gang leaders, after them, take down two chemists, then a bounty. The bounty is the last of all.”
“You…” She paused, looking at me, then grinned. “Are you registered as a bounty hunter?”
“No.” I shrugged. “It’s on my list of shit to sort but…”
She smiled happily. “I am.”
“And…?” I asked after a few floors of silence, as the lift slowed.
“And I got paid the bounty on her head,” she admitted, hefting the bag.
“I’m not getting paid a bounty,” I said slowly. I swore as suddenly it all made sense. “Fuck’s sake. She had a bounty off someone else?”
“Three people.” Reign grinned at me. “ACE, some corpo scumbag, and a private citizen. Payment for each was lodged with the Armed Brigade, so I just made…yup. Seven hundred and forty creds.”
“Motherfuckers.” I groaned. “I need to add that to tomorrow’s jobs.”
“Today,” she corrected. “It’s nearly seven.”
“For fuck’s—”
“Hey!” She cut me off, staring into the distance. “Some fucker just contested my kill! They’re trying to claim the bounty!”
The doors opened on the lift, and she blinked, clearly filing a counter-claim from the notification as she stared fixedly ahead into the gloom.
“What the hell is this?” She blinked one eye free and stared around confusedly.
I grunted, stepping forward, looking around and seeing only one of the gang passed out on the floor nearby.
“This is the wonderful floor I live on.” I spread my hands in welcome, before walking over and prodding the unconscious figure with a foot. “Hey—hey, dickhead!”
He groaned and rolled over, trying to ignore me, and I sighed, turning to Reign.
“Give me the head.”
She pulled it out, glancing at it and clearly taking a visual shot of it, just in case, before handing it over. I crouched down and set it and the arms and so on right before the idiot on the floor, before pressing my rifle barrel to the side of his head.
That woke him up. And the first thing he saw when his eyes opened? What was left of Lilith’s head and the collection of looted body parts I’d grabbed behind it.
He screamed, frantically trying to get away and I stood, letting him scrabble away on all fours.
“Oi!” I called after him. “Give those to Lucky.” For good measure, I sent the shot I’d taken of him staring at the head and arms on the floor to Lucky directly, then turned and headed for my apartment.
“So,” Reign said after a few seconds, catching up to me and striding along, her long legs easily keeping pace with me. “You’ve really not registered with any merc bounty hunter guilds?”
“Nope.” I sighed. The crash from the adrenaline surge hit me hard. “Fuck, I need some sleep.”
“You and me both,” she admitted. “You know how long I was watching for you?”
“Hours?”
“Literally!” she growled. “I thought you’d be like half an hour polishing your barrel, at most!”
“Well, I’m terribly sorry I dared to disappoint,” I muttered, unable to stop from quirking a smile as she mumbled, almost too low for me to hear.
“You haven’t…yet…”
We walked in companionable silence until we made it to my apartment, and I hesitated, before sending the code to the door.
“Look, Reign—”
She snorted, reaching out and putting her hand over my mouth. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’ll crash on your couch. I need sleep, and I can’t be bothered to head anywhere else. That’s all that’s happening here.”
“Couch?” I laughed, only to cut off as the door opened, and I looked inside. A small, admittedly shitty couch had indeed appeared from somewhere—presumably Lucky—as well as a handful of other luxuries, like chairs that didn’t look to have been designed to punish you for sitting on them.
“Yeah.” She strode past me, peering around in disgust. “Damn, Kabutt, I know you said it was shit, but still…”
“You’ve got no idea.” I grunted, moving in after her and keying the door to close. I sat on one of the chairs while Reign used the bathroom, the sound of her arguing with someone over the bounty clearly audible. Seconds later, my comm chimed.
I looked at it, seeing a request from Lucky, and I sighed, accepting it.
“So,” he said as a greeting.
“So.”
“So Lilith’s dead.”
“Yeah.”
“Most of her gang too, I hear.”
“That a problem?”
“Not really. I’d planned on absorbing them into mine, but you know, it depended on how many survived when you hit the chemist. I guess you made that easier for yourself, but…” He paused, dragging the word out, and I groaned.
“Fuck’s sake, Lucky, I’m not in the mood for this shit. Say what you want to say and fuck off.”
“Fine,” he snapped, sitting forward. “You hit the gang hard, too fucking hard maybe, as the other floors know whoever’s left and tries to take over from Lilith has got a damn good chemist, and fuck all security now.”
“So?”
“So they’ll all go for the chemist.”
“And?”
“And I need that fuckin’ chemist, Kabutt. That’s the second job! I’m warning you here, because if you take them now? It’ll be an easy fight. You wait? Chances are you’ll be fighting another entire fucking gang to get them!”
“You want them right now?”
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“Yes!” he snarled, sending an updated job’s notification along with the demand.
Job: Update!
Kabutt will carry out five [5] contract hits for Lucky, including and limited to the following:
· 2 x Standard Assassinations:
· [Lilith, Floor 72 – Terminated]
· [Unconfirmed]
· 2 x Chemist lab raids
· [Lilith’s Lab – Location attached]
· [Unconfirmed]
· 1 x Assassination of [Stinger]
Supplemental:
· 1 x Recover 100,000 credits worth of Specter Mods
In exchange, Kabutt has received:
· 47,500 x direct credit transfer
· 30,000 x store credit for Lion’s Chop Shop
· ? x Additional bounties
· 4 x gang members will be dispatched to Kabutt’s choice of location to act as a distraction
Job Accepted
“You fucking go get them then,” I grunted, before closing the connection, then locking it into Privacy and Do Not Disturb mode.
Fuck that asshole, trying to send me on jobs after all that shit.
Reign came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, and I froze, staring unconsciously as she walked past, her gear bundled up in her arms.
She’d stripped out of most of her clothes, wearing only her under armor top and shorts, with her hair loose, and I couldn’t help but stare. I knew she was pretty—she had great bone structure, at least—but as she yawned and stretched, deliberately I bet, then threw herself onto the couch, I had to force myself not to look.
Reign was a half-elf, half a race known far and wide as being both unbelievably shitty if they wanted something from you, seemingly believing that you owed them whatever it was simply for being permitted to breathe their air, and simultaneously unreliable in the extreme.
The entire race would be viewed much as we did the goblins: untrustworthy shifty little fucks who stole anything not nailed down, if not for two minor details.
Firstly, the elves were, as a race, chemists and farmers extraordinaire. They had an almost innate skill to make anything grow, and they could coax individual genes to dominance with little more than whispers and a wink, as well as manipulating nanites with a grace the other races desperately tried to emulate, as well as being rumored to be magicians or some shit.
The second reason? They were, as a race, fucking gorgeous. The women were all stunningly beautiful. And the men? They were renowned for fucking anything and everything, taking what they wanted and sodding off with zero fucks given.
Elves were slimmer than humans, and longer of limb generally, but everything from their smiles to their fucking carefully cultivated pheromones screamed sex appeal.
That meant that loads of people who had much to do with male elves generally ended up loathing them. After all, a species with sexual morals that made an alley cat look uptight got a lot of attention, but when they had that many “friends,” it pissed others off.
The dwarves hated them, banning them outright from their sectors. Humans, equally willing to fuck anything, were constantly oscillating between hatred when their lover wandered off and screwed another family member, and frantic lust, chasing them.
That wasn’t to say that all elves were like that. For some reason, it was the pure-blooded males who were the worst, and by a massive degree. It didn’t help that the attitude was actively encouraged by the Living Earth corporation, which was in turn one of the “big four” that pretty much ruled the city in all but name.
They got other races pregnant, then discarded them, moving onto the next and the next. The result was that elven women really disliked the men, while simultaneously looking down on all of us “lesser species,” and doing absolutely nothing to curb their appetites.
That, in turn, meant that the half-elves were everywhere. It wasn’t just human and elven mixes; it was orcs, goblins, and dwarves. Hell, it was anyone and everyone they could get their hands on, and then they kicked them out the next day, strolling on.
There were a lot of the “gorgeous” people in other races who had always done the same as well, but they didn’t specifically tailor their pheromones to have that effect. And they generally at least pretended not to be fucking dickheads.
I’d known people who swore blind it was all part of an attempt to take over the city, that the plan was that all elves would report to the corporation, and all half-elves to their parents, etc.
Personally, I decided it was more likely that most elves were dirty bastards who liked fucking and moving on.
Reign had a lot of her elven parent in her, that was clear: long legs, hair like spun gold, now that she had it down, and yeah, very pretty, as well as being a hell of a shot with her rifle.
The issue I saw with having Reign in my team wasn’t the unresolved sexual tension.
I could live with that. I’d served with plenty of women I’d been attracted to—some over me, some under me—and they were out of bounds both times. Sadly, there were never many at the same rank, but again, that’s life.
No, the issue was that she damn well knew it, and was using it. She’d decided she could sponge off me, getting access to my kills and bounties. She’d seen that I had a plan and access to a good bounty, and rather than back off when I asked her and the others to, she’d pretended to leave, then tracked and followed me.
She made it clear that either I shared with her, or she’d help herself. My options were down to telling her to fuck off and deal with whatever the following fallout from that would be with the guild and her, or accept it and use her.
And not in the fun way.
She lay there, deliberately showing a fuckload of leg, pretending to get comfortable and waiting for an invite to share the bed.
Not to fuck as well, I was betting. No, just to share the bed, leaving me unable to sleep while she relaxed. I didn’t know what she had planned with all of this shit, but I was damn sure there was an angle there somewhere.
I hit the shower, deciding that I’d play her at her own game, popping out my last medikit from the emergency slot in my arm, then injecting myself with it in the shower, replacing the used cylinder in my arm with a mental note to get some more.
By the time I was out of the shower, I felt a lot more sanguine about Reign being there, having decided, again, to play her at her own game. And rather than fuck about with things, I simply walked out of the shower, and through to the bed, naked and unconcerned.
I knew I’d scored a point when, despite ostensibly being asleep, she jerked slightly and shifted. I deliberately ignored her, climbing into bed and pretending to sleep.
After twenty minutes, I gave in and activated the RI, requesting a somnolence routine, and a careful automated monitoring of the room.
If Reign moved from the couch? I wanted to be woken up before she could stab me or whatever.
Eventually, though, the routine kicked in, and I fell asleep.
Four hours later, the RI triggered a growing pulse of lights and sounds in my mind, rousing me slowly. I fought against it, before eventually giving in and opening my eyes.
Turning over on the bed, I stared across the darkened room at Reign, sprawled on the couch, legs over one end, head barely on the other, and I laid there, listening to her snoring, as I tried to figure this shit out again. There needed to be a better way to deal with her than giving in and letting her have what she wanted.
Ten minutes later, alternately annoyed and frustrated as I tried to come up with ways to respond to Reign, I finally got up and got damn well dressed, before kicking her foot.
“Huh?” she mumbled, waving a hand at me, eyes closed. “C’m back later. Pay you then…”
“Reign!” I called, and she wrapped her arm over her eyes and held a finger up in salute.
“Laaaterrr!” she called, twisting round and snuggling in to the shitty couch.
I hesitated, partly because I really didn’t know her that well, and partly because I hadn’t realized just how amazing her ass looked until right now. Then I shook myself out of it.
Reaching out, I laid a hand on her shoulder. The transformation was instant and terrifying.
A half second before, she’d been starting to slip back to sleep, or so it’d seemed, stretched out in skintight shorts and a tiny top. Now, though? I stared down the barrel of a gun I’d not even seen.
Where the hell did she have this? And that it was ready, and right now, pressed to my fucking eyeball?
“I SAID NO!” she screamed at me, and I stared into her eyes, seeing the barely constrained madness, the lack of any kind of recognition and the willingness to pull that trigger.
“Reign,” I said slowly and clearly. “If you want to stay in my team, you get that fucking thing out of my eye right now. Otherwise, I set off the explosives in the couch, and we see who lives.”
“What?” she hissed, eyes darting this way and that as she tried to make sense of my words.
“You notice how lumpy and uncomfortable the couch is?” I asked. “That’s explosives. Three frag grenades and a fuckload of high ex, all wired to a dead man’s switch. You take the gun away, or you use it and we both die.”
“What?” she repeated.
I blinked, looking into her eyes, and seeing…seeing a lot of things actually, which confused the fuck out of me. She was scared, I was guessing, borderline terrified, and…and she seemed ready as well, like she was ready to go, to set the totally bullshit explosives off and end it all, simply because I’d made her wake up early.
She’d not woken up like this yesterday, though.
“Reign,” I said slowly, forcing calmness into my voice as much as I could. “Come on. It’s Kabutt. Calm down.”
She stared at me for a few seconds, before jerking the gun away from my eye and smiling widely, pushing past me and sashaying into the bathroom, throwing a comment over her shoulder as she went.
“I know you’re watching my ass!” she called, before closing the door.
I collapsed on the floor. A cold sweat covered me as I realized how close I’d come to being blown away. Reign was fucking certifiably crazy!
Forty minutes later, she was showered, redressed, and walking alongside me as we strode to the lift, all chirpy good nature and flirtatious again.
She’d spent long enough in the shower, that I was torn between thinking she was deliberately using all my water ration for a laugh—thank fuck for Lucky—and that she was deliberately waiting in there to see whether I was going to follow her and try for something.
I heard the snick of the latch as she left the bathroom, and I’d definitely not heard it on the way in, making me think she’d locked it very carefully, which made my mind whirl.
Had she locked it carefully to make sure it was locked, out of fear and uncertainty, or had she done it silently so that I’d think it wasn’t locked, and would try something?
I shook my head and glanced at her out of the corner of my eye as we walked, realizing finally that, as fucked up as the rest of us were? She was on a whole different level.
Lucky was sitting with some of his crew as we reached the lift, ostensibly holding court. He opened his mouth as we passed, clearly thinking to say something, then thought better of it, turning away and speaking to someone else.
We entered the lift, only having to wait a handful of seconds for it; the two people inside were on their way down from higher up the megastructure. They looked terrified as Reign and I stepped in, and I forced myself to nod to them, deliberately not being rude or intimidating.
Reign really helped with that, of course.
“You know he was ordering a watch, don’t you?” she asked after a few seconds, and I shrugged. “A watch on you and me, right?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t believe me?”
I snorted, looking her in the eyes for the first time since she’d put a gun to my head. “Reign, you invited yourself along on this ride. One minute, you’ve got my back and you’re taking down anyone who fucks with us. The next? You’re fucking insane and putting a gun to my head. Honestly? No fucking clue what we’re doing right now.”
“I…” She clammed up, saying nothing.
The rest of the trip to ground level was in silence. The nearby screens on the wall warned of a heavy storm-front incoming and some asshole presenter complaining about how much the weather had changed of late. The atmosphere was certainly uneasy between us, that was for sure, and probably terrifying for the others, but when it was over, and the two of us were in a cab—paid for and summoned by Reign, without so much as a mention—she eventually started to speak again, and this time, it was from the heart.