Levin stared out of the window with a pained expression on his face. Before Raine could ask him anything, Levin shook his head and got up. “Anyway, I should get going now. Just be careful, and you’ll do fine.”

“Thanks.” I’m sorry for refusing the offer.

“The hotel room is yours for another two nights. See you, Raine.”

“Thanks. See you.”

Levin left. Raine heaved a long sigh of guilt and frustration. He pulled out his phone and Song Hyun-woo’s business card. Song Hyun-woo picked up on the first ring.

“Williams, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll take the offer.”

“Great. June will meet you at the same place at noon, if you’re free.”

“Alright, I’ll be there.” With his injured leg, all he could really do was sit around in his hotel room. He would be free all day.

. . . .

Elizabeth slammed her desk. “Again? Really, again?”

Gulping, Levin kept quiet.

“Who was it? Do you even know? Xiyashi? Hopkins?”

“Hopkins, most likely. Raine left his room at about the same time as the cameras in the lobby malfunctioned.” Xiyashi would have been more straightforward.

“Yeah, malfunctioned.” She snorted. “Fuck Hopkins.”

Levin knew she didn’t care about Raine specifically. She was furious that Hopkins had taken someone who should have joined Shields. Again.

“Have you made any progress on finding their rat?”

“Well, they knew where Raine was. And Hopkins probably wouldn’t have approached Raine if they hadn’t seen him take down the Duke’s subordinate, so the spy had early access to the footage from Sora Takeuchi.”

“The footage was available to every recruiter and their assistant in L.A. Two dozen people we’ve already questioned thoroughly. I know more about their fucking boring lives than their parents do. So who’s the damn rat?” She grabbed a dart and hurled it at the board. How she still got a bullseye was beyond Levin. “And what about the Duke? Where’s your progress on him?”

“With information from his captured subordinate, we found out where the Duke was staying. He booked a single-bed room for two nights at the hotel under the captured subordinate’s name. In the room, we—”

“Okay, can you just get to the fucking point?”

“There was nothing leading us to the Duke. His other subordinate’s car was found abandoned in an alley. It should be a stolen car. We still have people scattered about Beverly Hills, looking for the Duke, but we don’t know where he or his subordinate went. It’s insane. It’s like he vanished. The most useful thing we have now is knowledge of his current appearance.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. Levin watched as her arms tensed and her hands slowly balled up into fists. A growl came out of her mouth, starting quiet but rapidly rising in volume like she was an anime character powering up. She slammed her desk again. He could have sworn he saw it bend. “Fuck the Duke. Fuck the rat. Fuck Hopkins. Fuck the Old World. Fuck the Roundtables.” She punctuated the start of every sentence with a slam.

Then she went quiet. She sat with her head in her hands, elbows on the table. Fearful of what she might do next, Levin quickly made up an excuse to leave and got the hell out of that room as soon as possible.

She’s a volcano. He heard her slam her desk again as he closed the door behind him. He regretted leaving the New World for this awful job. It was fun looking for talented people and trying to convince them to join Shields, but whatever joy he found in the job was vastly outweighed by the stress of working for someone so erratic and angry.

“Loving life?” Ruby asked with a snicker as she passed by.

“I know she isn’t,” Levin said, glancing at the door to Elizabeth’s office.

“Yeah, well she’s not exactly meant for this kind of work.” Ruby shrugged. “But such is office politics. Or rather, just plain politics.”

She has to get replaced soon, right? Right? Levin sighed and made his way to his desk. It was in a great spot where he could see the sunset through a massive window if he just leaned back in his chair. But there was nothing but a plain, starless night sky now. He sat down and opened his notebook.

There were three more people near Gemini that he wanted to approach before the end of June. He checked his calendar on his laptop. Let’s see, I can probably offer Kayden the job next week, if he does well on the test. Clair Grant is getting pretty broke, so I should meet her tomorrow and have her quickly fill the bodyguard role with Kayden. Galina Orlov can wait until mid-June.

Levin scribbled his thoughts onto his notebook. Then, when he glanced at the calendar again, he noticed he’d written something for June 5th, which was two days later. Oh, Raine’s birthday.

He wrote a small reminder on the bottom of his notebook to send Raine a message then.

. . . .

“I like the soft serve here,” June said. “I’ve never tried the chocolate flavor, though. I guess I’ll get that one today.”

“I see,” Raine said. He was standing in line with her at the cafe. He hadn’t exactly expected this when he’d come down to the lobby to meet her. I guess I’ll get an espresso. It was one of the cheapest drinks on the menu.

The young man in front of them made his order quickly, apparently in a rush, so Raine and June reached the counter soon and made their order. Then they sat down at a nearby table, and June pulled out a stack of paper from her handbag. “Here’s the employment contract.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Raine read through it. It was a crazy mess of a thing. But the core elements were simple. He was guaranteed pay at the federal minimum wage as long as he took a task at least once every two weeks, and the rest of his pay would be considered performance bonuses, given after every task. The company guaranteed three free meals daily and a free bed in a shared room. By signing the contract, he also acknowledged the risk of serious injury, or even death, involved in the work.

He signed.

“Yaaay,” June said. “Welcome to Hopkins, Raine. Here’s your signing bonus.”

She passed him a small stack of money. My god, she was just carrying around $5,000 in cash.

“Thank you.” He tucked it in an inside pocket of his jacket. Just a second later, he patted it to make sure it was still there.

“Oh, our stuff is finally ready.” She got up and went to get it.

“Hey, we gotta go!” someone said.

“I know, I know.”

Raine saw a young man hurrying to the pickup section of the counter, squeezing between some and brushing shoulders with others to get there. That’s dangerous. “June, watch out for the—”

The young man bumped into her as he grabbed his coffee. Her cone of soft serve ice cream slid from her fingers. It hit the floor with a splat.

June stared blankly at the ice cream on the floor.

“Oh shit. I’m so sorry,” the young man said.

“Dude, what the fuck?” his friend said, sighing in frustration.

June recovered and looked at the blond man. “It’s okay,” she said without a trace of anger in her voice. “But please be more careful next time.”

He apologized again and repaid her the cost of the ice cream. Then he left in a hurry with his friend.

June grabbed a small stack of tissues and got down on one knee to clean up the ice cream. Raine tapped her on the shoulder.

“I’ll take this.” He took the espresso still in her hand and put it on the counter. Then he helped her clean up the ice cream on the ground.

“Thank you. And I’m sorry I spilled some of your coffee,” she sighed. “I’ll get you another one.”

“It’s fine.”

They were halfway done when an employee there hurried over and practically shooed them off so he could clean the mess up with a towel.

“I don’t think this is a good omen,” Raine joked when they were back at their table. “My time at Hopkins might end up being like spilled ice cream.”

“What? Nooo,” she said. “Things turned out fine, too.” She raised the new cone of ice cream in her hand. “If this does say anything about your time at Hopkins, it’s you’ll have trouble at first but get through it and have a great time. That’s how it was for me.”

Raine downed his espresso. “Well, what’s it like at Hopkins?”

“I can’t go into detail.” She opened with that frustrating line. “But I have the same job as you. I’m just helping Song temporarily because I was injured.”

She took a few moments to think. And to eat her ice cream.

“It’s pretty hard at first. You have little to no free time in the first few weeks. All you do is train and study and train some more. But it’s a chance to get a fresh start. I made some mistakes in college, and I never finished my bachelor’s. That didn’t matter at Hopkins. The number one thing for us is results. If you get things done, you’ll be in as good a position as anyone else.”

Raine nodded and took a second to digest her words. “I see. That’s good to hear. What about the teams? I remember Song Hyun-woo saying that I’m supposed to work in one. How does that work?”

“Well, you’re first put in training, as I said. And then you get tested. You get a chance in two different competitions, and that’s it. You get graded you based on your results and put in a team with others of the same grade, or at least a similar grade, and for one month, you get guidance from one or two experienced members.”

They spent an hour talking, throughout which he continued asking questions about Hopkins and her experience there. Raine thought most of her answers were unsatisfyingly vague, but he was done asking the questions he’d wanted to.

They shook hands, and June stood up. “I think you’ll have a great time at Hopkins. You seem like a really nice person, honestly.”

Raine smiled wryly. “Thank you.”

They said goodbye, and Raine went back to his hotel room. After he shut the door and turned on the lights, he looked into his wallet and patted the $5,000 in his jacket.

I suddenly have cash. Wow. He felt loaded even though the majority of it was going to go to repaying his loans. Still, he was optimistic about the future. He had a job. It was dangerous and strange, but it paid well.

He fell onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. He had two gunshot wounds in his body and wouldn’t be able to walk normally for at least another three weeks, but still, he thought, Holy shit. I lucked out.

His stomach growled. He got up, went to the kitchen, and grabbed a chocolate bar. Then as he was about to open the packet, he stopped himself. The job is physically demanding. I really should start eating better.

He put down the chocolate and grabbed the room service menu. The roast beef and tomato sandwich seemed like a healthy choice. His eyes went to the price. He put down the menu. Time to go back to the cafe. He put his $5,000 in the safe and headed for the door.

. . . .

“He almost died because of me. Fuck.”

She took another shot of whisky.

“Miss Sora, I think you’ve had enough for tonight,” Louise said, putting a hand on Sora’s shoulder.

“Well, maybe.” Sora paused for a moment. “Actually, not yet. One more shot.”

“No, no. You can’t.”

“It’s just one shot, Miss Louise. You’re not the one taking it, so why are you so worried?”

Louise sighed. “That’s not the problem, Miss Sora.”

“I don’t see any problem at all.”

“That’s part of the problem,” Louise said, getting up from her seat.

“You really want to go back now? Goddammit.” Sora stood up abruptly. She swayed left, then right, and almost fell. Louise caught her.

“Okay, time to go.” She grabbed Sora’s wrist with one hand and her handbag with the other.

The bar wasn’t crowded. Louise pulled along Sora and reached the door without much trouble. She pushed it open and headed for the Bolstridge parked at the curbside.

The bar door swung open behind her. Hearing it, she glanced back. A bald young man in a cheap bomber jacket came out of the bar with one hand in his pocket and the other holding an unlit cigarette.

Why are twenty-somethings so fucking eager to drink and smoke? She continued pulling Sora to the Bolstridge. As they approached it, Louise frowned. There was a black sedan parked in front of it. The cars were a mere inch apart. Though not impossible, it would be hard for her to get out of the spot without scratching both cars. What the fuck?

She first helped Sora get into the back seat. Sora fell asleep immediately like the seats were as comfortable as her own bed. Louise looked around, hoping the owner of the sedan was around and hurrying toward their car. She didn’t see anyone like that.

But the bald young man approached. Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he stared at the tiny space between the cars. “Wow, that’s some damn close parking. My friend should be here in a minute to move his car.”

“Glad to hear,” Louise said. Something about him bothered her, besides his smoking. She walked over to the driver’s side door and pulled it open.

She had yet to get in the car when the young man said, “There he is.”

She followed his gaze and saw a lean man in a grey coat approach. Her eyes widened in shock and confusion. Her grip on the door tightened. How? We have so many goddamn people in Beverly Hills.

She heard a snicker from the young man. Her gaze went to him, and then the pistol now in his hands, pointed right at her. She had no time to react.

He fired.