So far, it had been a quiet day, with no calls or other special events. Yanny sat in her new seat at a recently acquired desk in the middle of the living room and typed the inventory list of available weapons and ammunition into Abigail's computer. Technically, she could have used a cable to connect directly to the computer using the jack hidden at the back of her head to perform the data transfer. However, it was much more fun for her to perform this activity like a normal person with a keyboard. It felt more natural. With her new left hand, she picked up a large silver Colt that they had snatched during the last run, which was lying on the desk in front of her. As soon as she picked it up, the aiming device in her artificial eyes activated and a crosshair appeared in front of her field of vision. She shook her head, closed her eyes, and said a little too loudly, "No, I don't want to!" The aiming device immediately deactivated.
"Are you okay, Yanny?" Harry, who was busy with Yuri building a new shelf for all kinds of equipment in the already too small bedroom, stuck his head through the door worriedly.
"Thank you, everything's fine," she replied slightly embarrassed. A few small pieces of metal could be heard falling to the floor of the bedroom. Yuri then grunted something that sounded vaguely like "you hold board dammit, or else shit". A moment later, Harry was yanked away from the door and back to the shelf by a strong arm. Yanny tilted her head, trying to figure out how to categorize what she had just seen. The behavior of the two men was sometimes a little difficult to interpret, but she would surely learn to understand all the subtleties of human behavior one day. While she thought about it, she opened the cylinder of the Colt, counted the remaining cartridges and carefully entered them into her digital list.
The apartment door - or rather, the door to the TRAP agency headquarters - opened and Abigail and Ralph dragged in two large boxes of groceries. From Ralph's baggy leather jacket shone the silver paper of an untouched box of liquor chocolates. Puffing, he set the box down in the corner, grinned, and announced: "Well, that's a job well done. All the discount stamps are used up, we'll be feasting for the next few days!" While Abigail carried her box into the kitchen, the old punk threw himself on the couch and turned on the TV. With the money from the last jobs, they had been able to buy a better stove, and the furniture had been upgraded. They even had enough for beds and partitions to put between them. The most expensive purchase, however, was Yanny's hand. Dr. Stein, working with a mechanical engineer, had actually managed to find a satisfactory solution that was still reasonably affordable. The left hand was made of hardened steel parts and, as planned, was a mirror image of her right hand. As a result, it was much weaker, less precise, and more susceptible to damage than the original made from the metal of the colonist ship, but it was fully functional. Growing her flesh over the new hand had required a great deal of electricity. With some effort, Abigail was able to replicate a connection for the power outlet in Yanny's pelvis. To keep her own power costs as low as possible, she had also tapped into her eccentric neighbor Bobo's lines unnoticed, causing a very loud scream in the adjacent apartment at the end of the month when the bills came in. Connecting the cyborg to the power grid had caused a temporary voltage drop throughout the house, but at least it had worked.
Ralph flicked listlessly between channels until he landed on a crime show on the private ENC Elysium Network Channel. A report about a break-in at one of Taiyō Electrics' two branches a month ago was blaring from the TV. A tall blonde woman in a white coat was being interviewed.
"Come quickly, Mrs. Dinner is on TV!" Yanny called to the others. Harry and Abigail rushed over immediately, while in the bedroom there was more jingling and cracking, followed by Yuri's cursing.
"Yes, it was horrible, I tell you! They brutally beat me down and raped me, because I woke up completely naked! My breasts were exposed, my clothes torn to shreds! They then locked me in my office and tried to starve me to death," the engineer told the interviewer with overly dramatic gestures and a highly inappropriate pout and eye roll at the camera that made her statement more ridiculous than dramatic. "It was a horde of horrible beasts, our guards had no chance! They attacked us like wild animals!"
"That's absolutely outrageous, Mrs. Dinner. You must have gone through hell! We'll go into all the details of the loss of your clothes and your defilement," the interviewer replied luridly. His hand, holding the microphone to her face, trembled a little with excitement. He knew this story would get a decent rating. He would just have to keep the tension curve of the conversation in check for a bit, one more cliffhanger before the commercial break. "But, um... let's get back to the stolen production robot your supervisor told us about. Was that robot an in-house development? Do you know who might have sent the group..." The engineer immediately waved her hand in indignation, and the corners of her mouth tightened for a moment.
"But if I tell you, their greedy tongues were all over me! Listen to me: they were horrible, absolute sex monsters! And they shot my colleague's head off at point-blank range with an elephant hunter's rifle and then violated me on his bloody corpse!" scoffed Dinner dramatically.
"Yes, but, uh... the police reports say it was a beheading, didn't they? And didn't you say before... uh... and what about the robot now?" It had happened, the conversation had slipped away from him, and already the commercial break scheduled by the station was upon him:
"Now for a short commercial break: eat Bar Raider, the first chocolate bar without real chocolate! Don't ask about the ingredients - let the taste speak for itself! BAAAAAAAAAR-RAAAIDER!!! You can't get more chocolate without chocolate!" Harry and Abigail looked at each other in silence for a few moments.
"What the hell, that crazy hen..." Abigail started, pointing at the TV, when suddenly the doorbell rang. Yanny got up, hurried to the door and opened it a crack.
"Is this the place for the TRAP agency?" they heard a woman's voice from the hallway and Ralph turned off the TV.
"Yes, this is the place, please come in," Yanny replied pleasantly and let a very elegant lady in. She was wearing a gray and black business suit, her shoulder-length blonde hair tied up in a ponytail with a black silk bow. Two large gold triangle earrings and a very expensive looking brown leather handbag completed her appearance.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"Welcome to TRAP, the agency for special cases," Abigail greeted her officially. The lady looked around the living room a little confused at first. She had probably expected something completely different. But then she smiled and nodded to the others.
"It's really clever of you to use this place as a cover. No one would believe that serious agents would hide in a dump like this. How about it, have I figured out your little game?" she said, obviously in a good mood, rattling her long artificial nails on the handbag.
"Sure did! Just a few more hours in this stinking squat and then I'm finally going back to my penthouse for a pedicure!" bleated Ralph from the couch, deftly tossing an alcoholic chocolate into his mouth and belching loudly.
"Wow, how refreshing! You are completely in character. That's what I'm looking for! I expected such professionalism from your ad in the yellow pages," the woman said enthusiastically. "Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Carla Brandon. Perhaps you have heard of me..." At that moment Yuri came out of the bedroom, dressed only in a muscle shirt and sweatpants. He was holding a hammer. Carla's eyes immediately lingered on his torn torso.
"Good afternoon," Yuri greeted in a deep voice, his pronounced pecs twitching teasingly as he casually twirled the hammer between his fingers.
"Well, I must say..." Carla breathed.
"Didn't you host that charity reception a week ago to benefit surfer boys with extreme sunburns on North Beach?" Yanny asked curiously. By now she was the one most familiar with current events. Since she didn't have to sleep, she had all night to read books, newspapers and magazines or watch all the news and talk shows on TV. She was interested in everything and had an exceptionally good memory. This led her to memorize commercial jingles and sing them to herself from time to time. "I saw the report on TV. Your husband was there too..."
"That's right, sweetheart," Carla nodded to Yanny, "and that's the bastard I'm here to talk about."
"Then we sit down, best to talk. In my country they say business standing is like stinky beaver on roof of new house," Yuri explained, winking at Mrs. Brandon and making a welcoming gesture toward the chairs that stood around the small living room table.
"Uh... what?" Harry asked Yuri confusedly, but then just shook his head and offered Carla something to drink, which she gratefully declined, biting her lower lip noticeably as Yuri placed the hammer on the small table, bending low. When they were all seated, including Ralph, Carla began to explain.
"The thing is, my husband, Dennis Dexter, is... well, how do I put this? He's actually pretty much in control of the drug business in Elysium."
"Don't you import sugar from the eastern growing areas?" Yanny asked, slightly confused.
"Yes, that too," Carla confirmed. "And it's financially profitable too, but it's just to keep up a certain appearance to the outside world. The drugs are shipped along with the sugar, and Dennis then makes the really big bucks with it. He has hired a small private army for his protection, plus many employees of the sugar company and then the domestic workers. Selling the drugs on the street is done for him by the Bronko Boyz."
"That's that biker gang, isn't it, where the members have a thing for leather clothes and other gentlemen?" Harry noted questioningly.
"Exactly," Carla confirmed, snapping her fingers again. "Dennis made the deal with the Boyz because he felt they wouldn't be distracted by anything else at work. Apparently he was right. Drug sales are going better than ever." Abigail scratched the back of her head as she thought about what she had heard.
"So you live in luxury, have countless employees, and can afford just about anything you want. How exactly can we help you now?" she asked.
"I recently learned from a very well-informed source that Dennis had my brother murdered about five years ago because he was in the way of a certain business deal that I knew nothing about. The informant provided me with definitive proof of this. It was *made to look like an accident*. And I have lived with this monster for years. Can you even begin to imagine what it feels like to find out," Carla reported, still smiling, but her voice now as cold as a frosty breeze blowing through the small room.
"Tough shit!" Abigail replied with wide eyes. "What do you have in mind...?"
"I want my husband dead, that's for sure. But not only him, also his personal bodyguard who killed my brother back then. And I know exactly how it should be done. Next week, Dennis is hosting the final rounds of a major martial arts tournament on our yacht, the Sea Lord. All the big names in show business and high society will be there for the spectacle. His bodyguard - by the way, his name is Roy Hellfist - is already in the semi-finals. In the finals, Roy will kick the bucket right in the ring in front of everyone to publicly humiliate Dennis. If you accept the job, I will bribe one of the other semi-finalists and one of you will take his place for this fight. All you have to do is get through the semi-finals and beat Roy in the final," Carla explained.
"How can you be so sure that this Roy will win his semi-final?" asked Harry.
"I've met his opponent before, he's no match for Roy," Carla waved him off. "But that's only part of the job. Dennis has to die on the yacht that very night. How exactly is not my concern. But you have to cut off his left nipple and then take it to Bronko, the leader of the Bronko Boyz, and tell him that the deal with Dennis Dexter is over."
"How Bronko know it is correct nipple?" inquired Yuri. "Could also be fake nipple?"
"No, quite impossible. My husband has been wearing a nipple piercing with a heart-shaped ruby for ages. Bronko knows that too, he will immediately recognize the authenticity of the nipple," Carla reported seriously.
"You rich folks are all nuts, eh?" remarked Ralph, popping another chocolate into his mouth, while Yanny couldn't help grinning.
"What's in it for us if we agree?" Harry asked quickly, glossing over Ralph's comment. In response, Carla named a sum that sounded too good not to take the deal. It was a big risk in many ways, and it would be dangerous. But with that kind of money, they wouldn't have to chase discount coupons in supermarket ads for a while. A deal was struck.