image [https://i.imgur.com/5OLUwy4.jpeg]
ART BY FULMINAIRE
In the middle of Trimayber 2077, a woman entered her apartment late in the afternoon. It was a modest single-bedroom apartment that she had gotten at a reasonable rate and it came with no contracts of any kind to limit how long she had to live there. Achieving such deals had become second nature to her due to the skills in charisma she had picked up over time. She could talk most people into just about anything she wanted, as long as it was within reason.
In one arm she was cradling a paper bag with fresh groceries, and in her other hand she was holding her keys along with an envelope. In the envelope was her last paycheck, since today she had quit her job. There was no particular cause for this. She didn’t dislike her job, and it paid extremely well. It was just that time again, specifically meaning that she had worked there for exactly one month.
This had become completely routine to her. For the last several years, she repeated a pattern of finding a job and then quitting after a month. In the past 12 years she had worked a total of 99 different jobs in various fields. Usually when she would start working at one, she would be a complete novice with little to no understanding of the work, but by the time she left, she would be an expert, able to perfectly execute any task bestowed upon her. This had earned her the nickname ‘The Terrifying Temp’.
She was well known in the business world among industry leaders. About a year after she had entered the workforce, rumors began to spread about her. Managers from all over began to see her as an indispensable treasure to be won, and there was now a long-standing bet as to who would finally be the one to get her to sign on as a full-time employee.
Many generous offers had been made to her. In one instance where she had started in a restaurant as a dishwasher, by the end of the month she was offered her own luxury restaurant to run. Several other offers that would be someone’s lifelong dream were made to her, but she refused every last one of them. The mere concept of a longstanding career was useless to her after all. There had been more than one occasion where a manager had groveled on their hands and knees to try and get her to stay, with one even going so far as to grab onto her legs; drug along the ground as she walked out the door.
This time around she had been working as a programmer. Initially, she signed on as a basic debugger, but by the end of the month she had been promoted six times and was a leader of her own development team. She had made sure that they finished their project on time of course, not wanting to leave them before their work was finished. However, she may have left her underlings a little worse for wear as a result. Tomorrow, she would begin looking for a new job. She wouldn’t always find a new job right away, but with her grand reputation it never took her long. Now, though, it was time to unwind.
She set the envelope and the groceries down on the counter in the kitchen, then headed to the bedroom to change. Of all of her past jobs, this had been her first time working in an office, and thus her first time wearing a suit for extended periods. She had gotten used to it on just the first day, but it was weird wearing something formal after all this time. Long ago she had worn something similar, so in a way it was almost nostalgic to be wearing something of the like again. For now, though, she was going to relax in some sweatpants.
When she returned from the bedroom, she stared around the apartment, inspecting it. As per usual, the whole thing was spotless, not a speck of dust left alive. Before work every morning, she would clean everything, not wanting her skills to go out of practice in case she ever needed them again. It was entirely redundant for her to practice, but she felt she needed to anyways in order to retain her sense of self. She then turned her tv on and set it to the news like she did every night to listen to the [750] broadcast and headed into the kitchen.
After putting away the groceries she wouldn’t need for tonight's dinner, she began preparing her meal. Tonight’s dish was going to be a simple beef stew. With her vast experience in the food industry, she could prepare just about anything with relative ease regardless of what it was. Unfortunately, she was cooking for just herself, and didn’t have the motivation or self-appreciation to go out of her way just for her own sake. Truthfully, she’d much rather just make some form of instant frozen food, but knew that ‘he’ would get upset with her if he found out she wasn’t taking care of herself.
As she began cutting the vegetables for her dish, she tuned into the program that was playing before the news broadcast. It was a Central Peace sponsored reality show about bigots who were forced to live with whatever type of person they were bigoted against, whether it was based on race, religion, sexual orientation or anything else. In general, it was a universally loved show with high ratings that most people found endearing, believing it was spreading a good message. The only people who didn’t like it and actively spoke out against it were bigots themselves. The loudest opposers of the show would often later find themselves on it.
The commercial break began to air when the show ended, so she decided to refocus on her prepwork only to be shocked. She had been so absorbed in the show that she had lost track of how much she was supposed to be preparing. Looking down at the now abundant pile of chopped potatoes and carrots, she sighed. Originally, she had been planning on saving most of them for later dishes, but now she would just have to make one big vat of stew instead. She almost preferred it this way. Having a meal she could easily reheat each day was a rare treat.
There was something special about her cut vegetables, though. Every single piece was perfectly cut into bite sized chunks, and not a single bit of food was wasted; another one of her special skills she had picked up along the way. She began cutting bites of meat, which were just as perfectly proportioned, in as excessive an amount as the rest of her ingredients when the Prosper City News broadcast began to play.
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Corein Gedring was gone, as she had been for the rest of the week. She was off somewhere reporting on something that the woman didn’t even remotely care about and thus never bothered to pay attention to any of it. This left Clint Crihound alone to cover the main broadcast on his own. He began reading through the headlines, and as usual, there was nothing of interest to her. There was talk of new CP regulations and efforts, along with new laws they were trying to pass. There were several other things that the woman instantly forgot as soon as she heard them, and instead spent the rest of the time thinking about what kind of job she would seek out next.
She was considering doing more work in an office, but wasn’t sure if any would actually be useful to her. She also considered going to a new city to seek work, but that was becoming increasingly difficult over time the more she moved around. This was because she struggled to remember where she had been, and had on many occasions had to stare at a map for much longer than should be necessary to figure it out. Even though she was still quite young, her memory had been failing her more and more, almost as if she had run out of space.
Now that she thought about it, she honestly couldn’t even remember the name of the city she was currently in, and wasn’t a hundred percent sure of the address of her current apartment either. Essentially, as soon as she deemed information unimportant, she’d forget it immediately.
Since it was her last day at this job, she had forgotten every single person’s name who worked there, including the people she was quite close with during the time. Also, she wouldn’t be able to recall any of the employers or names of the places where she had worked in these past 12 years. All that mattered to her was the skills she obtained from them. The rest was just unnecessary details, and she’d forget them to make room in her brain.
This didn’t mean that she was entirely anti-social. There was one person whom she would never be able to forget. ‘He’ who was always at the forefront of her thoughts. ‘He’ who was the center of all her ambitions. ‘He’ who she hadn’t seen in so long that it made her want to break down any time she thought about him. She remembered every single detail about him: his looks to the extent that she could draw him perfectly to the finest detail, everything he liked and hated, and every little tendency he had. Most of this was probably outdated information, but she clung to it nonetheless.
There had only been one headline that even remotely caught her attention, simply because it contained the word ‘Fiend.’ This was one of the few keywords that made her ears perk up, newly added to her list of the ones she’d been tracking in the past. The word was mentioned in a topic that had been repeated the past couple of weeks now: the disappearing men. Many people, mostly shop owners, would find weapons, armor, and general supplies missing. Most of the cases went unsolved. A couple of them were found to be regular criminals, but the vast majority where the perpetrator was caught in the act, they would mysteriously vanish, leaving only the items and a pile of dirt behind.
The reason ‘Fiend’ was brought up was because most people now believed that one must be responsible. There had been conflicting reports, however, of the criminal’s appearance, making it hard to track down an actual perpetrator. The only consensus between them is that the person always looked ‘bland’. The woman didn’t actually care about any of these details, but enough reports had been done on the issue now, so she was able to piece it all together from the small parts she had picked up from each one.
She’d become keen to how the headlines played out and knew they would end in just a moment, cutting to commercial, and then elaborating more on each one. Since none had piqued her interest, she’d probably change the channel once she finished her prep-work on the stew. Just now, she was finishing up mixing all of the ingredients into a large pot and began stirring them altogether, when her ears were suddenly aching with anticipation. “After the commercial break, we will have special coverage on the Fiends For Hire.”
The ladle the woman had been using suddenly slipped out of her hand and clunked against the side of the pot, only for her to pick it up and resume stirring a second later. There had been no reports on the Fiends For Hire for the past few weeks, not since the Constead incident. There had been quite a bit of discussion about them, but no information had been shared about where they were or what they were doing.
She continued to stir, much slower and more methodically now until the news report resumed. Then, she stopped completely. There was a bit of fluff at the beginning of the coverage, recapping the events involving the For Hires that had transpired so far. As if anyone on Rathe doesn’t know about this yet, hurry up and get on with it, the woman was getting impatient.
“This is information which we at the CP have known for a few weeks now actually,” Crihound finally said something new. “We have just now gotten authorization to share this with you all. CP scouts and several eyewitnesses have reported that the Drazahs, and the other two members, have returned to the Drazah estate in Bisomote. Over the past several weeks, trucks filled with various construction materials have been seen making deliveries to the compound. It is our belief that the Drazah’s plan to rebuild their base of operations there, though we know not to what end. Numerous attempts to stop them…”
The woman didn’t hear the rest of this report. After the first few sentences, she had rushed towards her front door and grabbed the bag sitting next to it. This bag had been packed and placed in an easy-to-access location for the past twelve years. No matter where she went, it was always ready to go. She would update it and change out the clothes every few months, however. When the apartment door slammed behind her after she bolted out the door, everything inside would remain abandoned for a while to come.
She had left every other one of her belongings behind, not even bothering to take her last paycheck to cash it in. Everything was left exactly like it was. The TV was left on with the news still playing. Her dish was still cooking on the stove, though fortunately it had an automatic cut-off switch if left on for too long. This was the moment she was waiting for, and couldn’t bear to sit still for another second. All of her work for the past twelve years would finally be for something.