The Inspector’s unexpected envelopes forced Remy to clarify a few things in his life really fucking quick.
He returned to New Madison, went straight to the School House and drank enough gin to kill a wild beast. Luis kept refilling them and Remy didn’t even care that Jack’s boys sat across the bar with their eyes burning holes through his chest. Fuck Happy Jack and this entire rotten city.
He woke up the next morning in his bed and sobbed. Josie was everywhere. Strands of her hair clung to his two-day stubble. A wadded up piece of cherry gum stuck on her nightstand and he could smell it every time the fan shifted directions. A styrofoam box of takeout in the fridge labeled with her sloppy writing “Josie’s - don’t eat me, Remy :).” Fantasies of cinnamon hair and passionate escape couldn’t compete with what was real. This was real. Josie was real and she was dead if he didn’t do something about it.
Remy loaded up one of Josie’s Barrier Vascs and ate Josie’s marked leftovers. They’d go get new stuff when she came home. Who wants to return home and only find leftovers, anyway? After breakfast, he loaded his hand gun and a few spare Vascs into his duster and walked toward Stefanie’s. He’d always felt bad news was like a bandage. If you tear it off quick or slow, it’s still going to hurt so you might as well get to it. He figured it wasn’t ever going to get any easier. Besides, if the envelop told the truth about Stefanie, whatever fantasy was never going to happen anyway. He’d have to ask her. He had to know before he put a bullet in her.
She’d left him two new messages since he left for the Outlands begging him to meet with an update after the auction. The news was all abuzz over the prototype being a dud and since she hadn’t heard from Remy, she had assumed the worst. He simply typed back that morning. “Your place, ten a.m.” He was always short in text responses so he hoped it wouldn’t be suspicious. Her response of a winky-face seemed to confirm that she didn’t suspect anything.
Stefanie opened the door to her apartment in Remy’s worst nightmare. She wore black leggings and a puffy gray sweater with a scarf. Of course, her hair was perfect and her make-up done up as if she was hitting the town. She welcomed him in but he kept his jacket and hat.
“You’re lucky school got out on Friday, otherwise I wouldn’t have been here.” She grabbed his hand and brought him over to the kitchen island where she had two mugs of cocoa with, what else, a cinnamon stick for a stirrer. He flashed back to the last time he was in this apartment. A dress on the floor. Broken zippers. Her hair stuck on his lips and the way her silhouette looked as she hopped out of bed to grab a drink of water. Cinnamon everywhere.
Remy couldn’t do it. How could he? Here she was, sweet, innocent and an absolute smoke show. Any guy would be lucky to catch her eye even for a moment and he’d shared far more than that. She wrecked him. It took a moment to register that she was still talking.
“Remy? You okay?”
“Yeah, I, um, was just enjoying the smell.” He wanted to keep enjoying the smell. Keep enjoying her, and just get out of town. It would be so easy. The Inspector had let him go. His stuff that mattered could fit into a speeder and he could be soaring over the western hills by sunset with Stefanie at his side. That would be something.
“You just seem distracted. Is it about the job?”
The job. He’d forgotten about that. Would she still run away with him if he didn’t have the prototype? They didn’t need the prototype. Who knew what it could do. Why risk it? Far easier to just start a new life and live more simply for a time. People did it all the time, why not them?
“I couldn’t get it. My team had a plan but we were beat by someone else.” As always, honesty was the easiest to remember and probably the best way out. They had a good plan, it just was beat by a better one. Stefanie frowned.
“I don’t understand. Who did get it? Your team? I thought you worked alone.”
She just didn’t understand how jobs like these worked and that was okay. She was a teacher, not a criminal. He shook his head. Didn’t he just read something to the contrary? He couldn’t remember. It didn't matter.
“Jobs like these need teams. I had people I trusted helping and we almost did it. That’s how these things work, sometimes, it just goes sideways.” If all they needed was money, that was easy. Drugs and Vascs sold well everywhere and they wasn’t hard to find. They could have enough for lunar tickets within the month if he worked hard.
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Stefanie stood up and stomped over the window. “People you trust, like your ex? ‘Josie’? I’ve seen you around with her, Remy, and how do I know you aren’t going around behind my back.”
Her words stung like a thousand tiny little barbs. He could never go around behind her back. Stefanie was intoxicating, and captivating, taking him in entirely and devouring him. But something held back. What did she say? Josie? Smacks of cherry gum and engine grease clogged his senses. He remembered Josie.
“I won’t be made a fool of, Remy. Not if we’re to start a life together.” She continued to hammer away at him but the words sloughed off like water. He remembered Josie and remembered why he had come. She had a lot to answer for. Stefanie’s eyes grew as wide as dinner plates when Remy leveled his hand gun to her head. He remembered what he had read.
“Who are you?” Remy asked. Stefanie shook her head and frowned.
“What do you mean ’Who am I?’” Her voice had the perfect quiver. Remy smelled cinnamon again and his gun wavered. What was he doing? He couldn’t shoot Stefanie. No, this was all some filthy trick by the Inspector. The Inspector who had Josie locked up. The sights settled back squarely on Stefanie.
“Do you work for Vascorp?” The Inspector’s notes were clear. They couldn’t be true but he didn’t know what he would do if she wasn’t. Shooting someone who’d lied to him like this was one thing but shooting a woman whose only crime was to open her purse and her bed to the wrong man was pretty fucking different. She scrunched her face.
“Vascorp? No, of course not. I’m a teacher, Remy, you know that. Put that down, you’re scaring me.” Cinnamon again and his arm nearly fell without a second thought. She had the strangest effect on him. Stefanie had a sort of animal magnetism, pulling him in without effort or thought. How could someone like Stefanie be what the Inspector claimed?
It was like a cloud lifted from his brain. Animal magnetism. Clever.
“Take out your Vascs. Do it, now!” Remy gritted his teeth and scowled down the barrel. A Pheromone. He’d been taken by a girl far to the west who used a Pheromone once. Nothing as strong as this, though. He should’ve seen it coming.
Stefanie hesitated. Remy fired a round into the wall over her shoulder spraying concrete down.
“Vascs. Out now.”
Gunfire would certainly bring the Redcaps over soon enough, so he needed to resolve his Stefanie problem quickly. He could almost see her thoughts progress through her options. Lie again, beg, double-down on the Pheromone and flirt with him. She settled on smug braggadocio.
“Alright, here. Don’t shoot. Just taking it out.” Stefanie slid her sweater up her arm and pressed downward on her wrist. It clicked and Stefanie pulled a thin card from the opening. She tossed it to Remy’s feet. A telltale pink heart with three arrows through it covered the outside. Pheromone. He didn’t know a third edition had even been made.
“I’ve never seen an internal unit before. Do all teachers get it or just ones like you?”
“There’s no one like me.”
Well, at least that was the truth. The scent of cinnamon lingered but he could see through it when he knew what to look for. Thin lines ran along the edges of Stefanie’s eyes, and her hair had lost some of its luster. Remy didn’t know if that was the Pheromone or just him taking a good hard look for the first time without wanting something more.
“You are Vascorp, then.”
“Recovery & Engineering.” She confirmed. Stefanie didn’t even have the good grace to blush or look ashamed as she was caught in her lie. She said it like she was ordering a cocktail.
“Why me? Know why someone would want you dead?”
Stefanie shrugged and sat in a nearby chair. So she was going for the nonchalance route. “You had a reputation and it was preferable to hire someone than risk getting caught myself. You did a great job, by the way. I’d been looking for those papers for over a year when you came along. You were willing to get your hands dirty in ways I could never have done.”
Being used was Remy’s least favorite situation. Sure, deals went bad, sometimes you got shocked with 50,000 volts and put into a hospital, but a betrayal was more personal. It weaseled its way into you, nuzzling up to your brain and heart and then ripping away without warning. Stefanie used Remy like she used a paper towel. Disposable.
“I didn’t get the Prototype. Your bosses must’ve been disappointed.”
Stefanie laughed, actually laughed.
“You weren’t my only plan, Remy. One of my other hires brought it to me straight-away after the auction. It’s verified and on it’s way back to a Vascorp black site now.”
“Let me guess, tan guy with a bad accent and a nice suit?”
“Do you know each other?” Stefanie cocked her head to the side.
“Professional courtesy, I suppose.” He could’ve laughed at the irony at another time. Stefanie sensed the lull and rose.
“Stop, don’t come closer.”
She ignored him and stepped forward. Her steps were slow and deliberate, each one swaying her hips and her eyes flashed that familiar smolder, almost funny now without the Pheromone.
Stefanie leaned her forehead up to the end of his barrel and locked eyes with him. Remy could feel her pressure on his gun and didn’t blink away from her.
“I don’t think you’ll shoot me, Remy. I think there’s still hope for that life out there. Come with me.” Not all of her charms were in the Pheromone. She could sound sweet, and convincing. The type of girl you wanted to hold hands with and drink wine under the stars somewhere. Someone, maybe. Not Remy.
“Not with you.”
Then he fired.
The result was a tremendous mess and Remy didn’t even bother trying to clean up. The Redcaps could deal with her. Remy replaced his gun inside his duster and paused only long enough to cut away the internal Vasculator on her left wrist and place it in a plastic bag.
Remy exited through the fire escape as he heard sirens in the distance.