USUALLY, they beg a little more than this guy. But he’s a big bastard. Thick shoulders, wrinkled bald head, fat on delusions. More greedy than the orange-gold jewelry around his forearms would suggest. Or just more stupid. Full of imagined pride that will soon be staining the rich carpets of his private office a very piss-shade of yellow.
“I would ask how you bypassed my guards,” the man rumbles. “How you navigated all those guards, the security systems. Why you even chose this room at all, out of the many you could. But your presence alone is explanation enough. Morninghawk’s little cur.”
Seething grey eyes flick to the clock on the wall, then back up to me. To the dormant metal sphere resting on the far edge of the desk. All the power he could need to kill me waits inside of it, two button presses and a swipe of the finger away. Too far to help him now. His jowls sag, bulldog jaw tipping fractionally towards an artpiece meat-cleaving katana leaning against a stack of old computational consoles. Neon lights gleam through the gaps of half-shuttered blinds behind the desk. His thick, jeweled fingers shuffle some falsified shipping manifests behind an electric-blue projection.
“Not the present you were expecting?” I ask from the door. “Nah. I heard you like them a little younger.”
Hatred gleams in the gangster’s eyes as he glares back, quickly stamped out like embers. Ignoring the jab, pretending he’s still in control here. “I knew the risks of dreaming bigger,” he confesses, like I’d care. “Which was it? Drug smuggling, high bribery, corporate espionage…”
…human exploitation, indentured slavery, murder. I could name a dozen he didn’t. Each deserving of a head to roll, none of them usually worth my time. Criminal ambition is a dime a dozen in the Vents. And taking care of Dynasty thugs isn’t normally worth my effort. Today’s a rare exception.
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Bored, I tap my techheeled sneaker against the stained tile floor. I’m perched like a bad omen on a cracked leather stool by the door. 6-Teba autorevolver casually dangling between my legs, barrel pointed straight at the desk. In my left hand, a black paper-filled binder opened somewhere in the middle.
“Dreamed a little too big,” I say, idly turning a greasy page with my thumb.
“Ah.”
Resignation. Defeat. A hollow chuckle as his gaze finds his desk and he realizes he’s not nearly as big a fish as he thought he was. Some people are too dangerous to be killed. This guy missed the list by a long shot.
“The simple crime of unimportance,” he says.
I snap the binder shut.
Murderous hardness settles in his eyes. His voice is low, husky. “How did you find it?”
I turn the cover over as I set it down. Some cargo manifest of a no-name shipping dock. Real page-turner. His patron syndicate’s orange stamp, a curled dragon’s head, seals the front.
“A little short,” I reply.
Stoic naivete, delusional pride, they all last until a certain breaking point. Like a suicide jumper daring the edge of a cross-tower bridge. Only once the gangster feels gravity taking hold, inexorable, and realizes there’s no reversing what comes next, does the façade of a burgeoning crime lord finally crumble to desperation.
He goes for his blade in the moment before the electrolytic bullet punches into his chest.
They all do.