“Now, dismemberment,” Augo pries. “Costly, no?”

“Very,” the onscreen corpo agrees. “And your basic kidnap and ransom coverage—boilerplate in most cases—won’t have any provisions for dismemberment compensation.”

Ginevra simmers. Past the booth’s plastic curtain—its voluptuous Chow Chow illustration coquettish, surprised, powder-blue pawpads uncapping a bubbling-over Chiao-Chou pilsner—and into the bar proper, the audiovisual antenna plays. To a few hiccupping patrons, mouths agape, squinting over empty shot glasses, the receiver spits this cycle’s recording of The Great Hunt. The receiver’s broadcast is softened, drowned out by the slurring salarymen lingering with their bosses and secretaries and contractually-obligated comrades.

She’d prefer not to, but the filly can’t help but subconsciously fixate on Augo’s familiar voice. She listens with a nervous tap-tapping of her hooves, hands planted flat on the table, palms first. After all, she needs to be focused—her trap is nearly sprung.

“Current accepted legal definition for dismemberment, for our viewers, being the forced separation of one appendage from the whole,” Augo squints into his notes.

Ginevra can see him through the curtain, her mind’s eye building up his frame. Starting with his bony shoulders, dressing him in the early mornings with his outdated suspenders as he affixes his fauxleather Avante shoulder holster, stowing his favorite outdated, antique Star pistol between bites of flaky spinach breakfast pastries—baked with flat-leaf parsley and dehydrated dill, the family recipe drilled into Ginevra’s mind through years of practice like how she field-strips a Kanapaha—and sips of his morning coffee fresh from the ibriki pot. Always from him, that feat of domestic dexterity, balancing eating with drinking and dressing, careful to pepper her with comments and questions out the corners of his mouth. It’s that inquisitive, prying tone of his.

“But, in the cases you’ve dealt with, what’s the usual extent of dismemberment damage?”

“In my own cases? While I don’t mind a little dismemberment, I try to keep the violence to a respectful minimum,” the corpo laughs. His voice is smoky, translator belting guttural r’s and th’s turned to z’s. Husky, lumbering breaths escaping fat liquored-up lips. Coughing with laughter at his own comments. In the receiver’s glare he’s sweaty, dabbing a balding humanoid head, handkerchiefs staining with caked-on makeup. “But all joking aside, normally I’d take a finger,” he wiggles a robotic pinky towards the interviewer, Augo nodding, “nothing detrimental. Something easily replaced. Small enough to fit within standardized mail packaging—along with the ransom note. All physical, too, nothing digital.”

“Which, as you’ve mentioned, is more difficult to track?”

“Precisely. Practically anonymous, especially when included in bulk deliveries by courier. Of course, that always carries the risk you’re transporting meat without proper licensing, a minor technicality—but that’s only a civil fine. A small inconvenience compared to your average mail fraud or your average kidnapping, I say,” he sighs, “but that’s just the cost of our business, no? C’est la guerre.”

“Interesting,” Augo concedes. “But what if things get out of hand after your old, average kidnapping?”

“You mean if the target, what, is spaced?”

“Yes. Killed, liquidated, what have you. But, most importantly, while the kidnapping occurs. During the main event itself.”

“You’d need different coverage entirely—as kidnap and ransom coverage implies there’s a ransom to be paid at all,” the corpo smiles through silver dentures, ones sharpened, once leased, now owned. “No life to save, no ransom to pay, pas moyen.”

“But, you’re still licensed to sell those other sorts of policies as well? Ones to cover such an unfortunate circumstance?”

“PVLP’s, Public Violence Life Policies, of course I’m licensed with such products as well. Umbrella, and in all quadrants, too—explored and unexplored.”

“Fantastic,” Augo smiles, “now, let’s go further—”

But Augo’s gone. Replaced. The contorting Chow Chow’s illustration is folded as the curtain swings open, jingling along plastic rings. Accordion’d, by the man who arrives, standing over the filly and her cramped booth with a polite smile.

Once more, Ginevra’s proven right—she didn’t have to wait long at all.

“I’m sorry,” the stranger lies. “I thought this booth was empty.”

He’s plastic looking. Sharp, exceedingly good looking, even in the garish industrial lights. Older-looking, with his reading glasses square-framed and perched at the end of his nose. They glint a silver sheen in the low-wattage.

Everything glints—he’s glowing, with his off-navy suit of hand-dyed pseudowool and high-quality fintocashmere, handspun. Single-breasted suit, sleeveheads roped, imposing at such a height. The four-in-hand knot hanging from his satin off-red necktie, impeccably slapdash, nearly bleeding into his blindingly white button-up. Recently laundered, by the way it sticks to his chest, refusing to budge as his diaphragm grows and shrinks in the silence the filly tries to cultivate.

Ginevra recognizes him from the pictures.

“Don’t worry about it,” she lies in turn. As planned, the six-shooter’s barrel is rotated at exactly ninety-two degrees, her nail tapping the gun’s frame. Safety off. Barrel at the perfect angle to mangle a kneecap, to shatter a patella into an unrecognizable rat’s nest of bone and blood.

“Now, I don’t want to impose on you,” the man continues with an open hand and tilt of a head, “but are you waiting for someone?”

“Not anymore.”

“Great,” he grins. The corners of his lips barely budge from his smile, his eyes hooded and predatory. “That’s just great.”

He shuffles into the opposing side of the booth, perching his Windsor-grained attaché case atop the vinyl seats, their thick upholstery stained with beer and pockmarked with stab wounds, billowing plastic pulp that could be coarse between fingers, nervously pawed at. Fumbling with his suit jacket, the stranger removes his reading glasses, perching them on his naturally graying hair. He rifles through folders, his paperwork’s typeface too small to be seen. It’s a collection of encoded symbols—Arabic numerals and Latin letters used interchangeably, cascading up and down x- and y- axes, organized by legions of barcoded secretaries and delivered by armed courier.

By the time he collects himself, he’s reaching towards the menu, flipping through the leaflets, investigating the pictures for fault with a squint through his silver-framed Medarra reading glasses.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Now, Ginevra, right?” he asks, investigating a dish of over-salted peanuts and semi-sour peppercorns.

“Sure,” she replies. “Kelly?”

“The one. Buy you a drink?”

“Already have two on the way.”

“Well, I’ve already imposed on you once,” he smiles, flipping through the monochromatic brands, “no sense in pushing my luck, right?”

“Sure,” she replies. He nods at her impoliteness, punching in an order for two bottom-shelf whiskeys—Hialieah brand—imbibed with ginger ale and lemon. A separate bill. To be expensed.

“Food?”

“Already ate,” she lies.

“Me too,” he lies in turn.

Kelly finally sits back. It’s a forced comfort. His arms at their wingspan, legs open, keeping his chest vulnerable to attack. Sitting up straight, he’s just above the filly’s height, shooting off his kind smile. The first salvos of a normal corporate conversation.

Nothing escapes his lips. After all, there’s no intonation expected. Instead, only the corporate body language and silence. The subtext is thick as he takes a cigar from his case, cuts it, and lights it, performing the half-minute ritual without offering one to the filly. As he chews at the tobacco, they both know that he or she who speaks first, loses.

But, the insults do their trick. The scent of tobacco makes the filly bite her lips and grimace. Ginevra, impatient and spurned, kicks conversation to life.

“Would you mind?” she hisses.

“What?” he smiles, “Oh, of course. Excuse the bad manners. Long day at the office,” he laughs, patting down his sport jacket, rifling through the pockets, performing a longwinded and purposefully nonthreatening show before producing an additional cigar for the filly. “Didn’t even think to ask—you don’t seem like the type to smoke.”

“Really?” Ginevra brays with skepticism. “Well, appearances,” she begins, huffing the end of the cigar, sucking the exposed flame of Kelly’s lighter into the Milfuegan tobacco. Hand-rolled, a familiar taste. She’s been aching for one since Sant-Sarnin. It’s nutty, like the cedar stench of well-stocked humidor.

“Deceiving, sure, as always,” he muses. “You never really know someone, do you?”

“Well, my file would have said I smoked,” Ginevra chastises.

“Yeah, and mine probably said I didn’t,” he jokes. “I don’t trust those files too much. All those variables condensed into a one-pager like that? Your mind starts filling in the blanks, getting creative,” he gestures through clouds of puffed smoke. “But you look like your picture, at least.”

“You, too,” the filly lies.

Gone is the scowling corpo from the picture. Lessened are his scars. He’s aloof, too roguish in the way each sentence of his is stutter-stepped, designed to draw you in with an up-and-down intonation making up for his surgically-saved face’s limitations. Whatever his headshot was, doctored or not, has vanished in clouds of Mulfuegan tobacco.

Ginevra clicks her lips with skepticism at the corporate mirage, tap-tapping a hoof with a nervous sort of impatience—as if she’s never been lied to.

“Really?” Kelly redoubles his grin. “First time I heard that.” He taps the cigar over the table, into the ashtray crammed with lascivious Chow Chow bodies and hand-scratched numbers to be called for a good time. “Which one did they use?”

“The headshot,” Ginevra admits. “Three-quarter view, fist under the chin. Red background, where you’re wearing the red tie.”

“With the bezants?”

“The what?”

“Bezants,” he repeats, chewing through cigar. “Little dots. Gold balls. Whatever you want to call them.”

“Dots, circles,” she puffs with a frown, “sure. Whatever they’re called.”

“Well, it’s a good choice.”

“As if we have a choice,” she muses.

“Hey now,” Kelly smiles. “Trust the big man up there who gives us the work. Or should I say ‘big men,’ ‘big thing’ up there. Whatever or whoever it is. Hasn’t steered me in the wrong direction just yet. Good taste in headshots, too, evidently.”

“Sure.”

“You know,” he begins, tucking reading glasses into suit pocket, looking elsewhere, eyes tracing from a nearby Chow Chow’s periwinkle high-heeled paws to her shapely waist and lingering on the curtain, “yours wasn’t much of a headshot. More like a snapshot. From when you were on that show. The show,” he snaps his fingers, “that show you were on, what’s it called?”

Ginevra sees it. His eyes, tracing the Chow Chow’s bottle. Wrapping around each one of individual furred digits. The way Kelly’s toes curl beneath Readington loafers, his pupils slightly dilating, enraptured with the illustration’s fat blue lips pursed in coquettish embarrassment, the computer-generated still-life grasping his attention fully.

With each huff of cigar, he gets closer, mentally, to the fictional image slapped onto the plastic curtain, as if Ginevra weren’t even sat across from him.

“Hunter, Prey. That’s what it is, right? Or is that the channel? I’m more of a music guy. You see, that’s a detail you didn’t get in the file, right?”

Ginevra reaches for the six-shooter on the table, placing a single digit near the trigger, palm turned upwards, ready to force the gun to Kelly’s throat.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t space you here and now,” Ginevra spits.

“What?” Kelly laughs. His smile doesn’t fade. It’s stuck on with the rest of the plastic as he looks back at Ginevra’s posture, barrel turned towards his buttoned-up chest. He’s still as always, uncompromising in his posture. “Well, for one, it’d be rude.”

“No joking.”

“No joking? Alright then—for one, I don’t appreciate your attitude.”

“Appreciate my gun on the table,” she hisses through clenched teeth.

“Okay, it’s cute, sure. What is that, a Bergeret? Not a lot of stopping power in her. Sure, it may be enough to blow me away, but not enough so you can be sure about it, right?”

Ginevra’s threats are cut short. In walks a bartender. Dead-eyed, fake eyelashes on display. Shorter than average, curly tail, flat face off-putting and puggish. Older at her black-furred and wrinkled face, dull hole-filled jeans and crop-top combo hiding a body sapped of natural sunlight, poisoned with unshielded electromagnetic radiation. A hung’tou refugee housed for cheap, indentured servitude dragging on longer than expected, no doubt.

The waitress gives Ginevra her two Chao-Chou beers, uncapping them against the plastic table. To Kelly, his mixed drinks, glasses still dripping with semi-recycled wastewater. For the table—purchased for friendship no doubt—a bowl of withered pre-shelled peanuts and balmy prickly ash peppercorns atop a grease-stained tart card brochure.

“Thanks, sweetie,” Kelly smiles, tearing into his first drink, lemon pulp caught between his lips. He waits, politely, for the curtain to close once more before continuing between sips. Ginevra, for her part, hasn’t waited, Bergeret in her palm, aimed throughout the entire ordeal. “I know you might not be a fan of the jokes, but here’s one more. Just one, scouts honor. How about a little filly who came all this way to Hu Shih, sat around for a week sipping tea at The Regimental of all places, who wants to space the person she’s supposed to partner with. So if you want to space me, be my guest. The real joke is that you’d wait around for a week and a half while not doing even a pinch of research on your target, and murder the guy who’s got all the answers.”

“Well you kept me waiting,” Ginevra hisses. “You were late.”

“Late? Here I thought I was right on time,” Kelly jokes once more. “Next time tell the big guy upstairs you want a deadline included. I spin a lot of plates—can’t be everywhere at once, can I? I mean, I love The Regimental, but every day?” His tacit offer of a light refreshment is ignored, and he pops a peppercorn onto his tongue, salivating anew between chews. “Hope you weren’t too bored. But it’s a big station, so I’m sure you kept yourself busy.”

“There’s not exactly much to do.”

“To the naked eye, maybe. But I’d just love to give you a tour,” his roguish smile curls. “Introduce you to Hu Shih like you’re a local. I’ve got a great guy. I know everyone says that, but I mean it, I’ve got a great guy. Lived here his whole life! Showed me everything when I stepped off my first hung’tou with nothing but a suitcase in my hands and a 415 on my hip. Used to be a banker in the Southern Edge. Fixed income specialist. We ran a few viatical enforcement jobs back in the day. He gets a couple big acquisitions, and look at him. Retired already. Daylights at a monastery now, if you can believe it, sweeps the place so clean you could eat off the floor in front of that big gold Buddha of his. Even jokes he didn’t mind shaving his head—because he was bald when he showed up.” Kelly pauses. “You know, I can get him for tomorrow,” he offers, “no sweat, I mean it, just a call away. Got his card in my case if you don’t believe me—and I won’t even reach for my 415 while I grab it. It’s the least I could do after this nice face-to-face. Unless you’re in a rush to, you know, kick off the little hunt we’ve got.”

“I am,” she growls through gritted teeth.

“Well that’s a relief,” Kelly shrugs. “So am I. If you change your mind, don’t you hesitate—but I get it. Antsy,” he muses, reaching for his second glass, ice cubes clacking. “No sense in wasting any more of our time, then, right?”

“So no apology?” Ginevra threatens.

“For being late?” he laughs. “Tell you what—how about a couple more drinks? My treat. If you put away that Bergeret, at least—before someone gets their head blown off. Fair trade?”