Dirty Work: Volume 1

The First Run - 2

The figure in front of me is clutching his long, black coat close to him very tightly. He's fast, but I'm not in bad shape myself so I'm able to make up ground on him after a while. I didn't have much to do in those days, so walking places was what I did, just observing more than anything, mainly as a means of amusement and distraction from my approaching eviction onto the streets. It meant that I was in pretty decent shape, although I would never like to say it in such egotistical terms.

When we were into the relative security of the complex, I pulled him into an alleyway between the Holsters (twin apartment blocks seven stories high) and pushed him against a wall.

      'You've got some fucking nerve,' I said, trying to sound as gruff as I could, 'doing that to me.'

      'Lay off, will you?' the man replied, thrusting me away. He pulled his coat in around him, eyes darting to the end of the alleyway.

      'I don't care what you've done,' I began, deepening my voice a little, 'but you don't just throw yourself off a Magna line and use someone passing below as a safety net, only to let whoever the hell is chasing you try to shoot him dead, without giving an explanation.' I thought for a little. 'Or some kind of monetary reward.'

     'Forget my face, forget this ever happened,' he said, heading to the end of the street.
      I genuinely thought about forgetting the entire thing; what was it to me? Now that I was out of the way, surely nobody would come after me and try and gun me down where I stood. The important thing would be to call the police, get someone official involved. Perhaps they would give me something for my troubles, something to pay the rent with. Maybe there would even be a slot open for me, a job, making actual money.
      And then I thought, 'sod it.'
      I ran after my suicidal new friend and caught him again.
      'Who was after you?' I enquired. 'I kinda think I have right to know as much as the next guy.'
      At that moment he dug frantically into his pocket and extracted a Halo-Core. He tapped the screen and a face projected from the device. It was the face of a man with greying hair, a well-kept goatee and thick eyebrows. His eyes were dead set.
      'Markro, where the hell are you?' The man had the voice of a boss, alright, someone that should be right at the top of a twister corporate ladder.
      'Deep in 57. They had some guys on the train,' the man in the trench coat said.
      'And you didn't kill them?' the man replied. 'That's why you have guns, remember? To kill people with.'
      'I also don't like to be shot myself. Or thrown into Kalvulseah.'
      'That's the risk you run, working for me. You've even gotten a pay-rise now that Serbgae got shuttered up behind the bars, what more do you want? Just get the fucking thing back here now.' The man scowled and then his face disappeared, vanishing into the mists of data and cyberspace.
      The man, Markro, pocketed the device, before standing there for a moment. Standing beside him in the rain, I could almost see the gears turning in his head. I could see him trying to pull up a mental mind-map of all of his options. I could almost see him following one line of thought and then backtracking, like a grandmaster chess player, after realising that that particular combination of events wouldn't be good for him.
      Suddenly Markro reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gun. A gun nerd in my former, younger years when I was still a handsome piece of sass, I noted that it was an XF-46 Alpha. Quite high range, though not the top. Still something that would melt my face clean off if it went off at point blank in front of my eyes. Which is of course exactly where he placed it.
      'You live round here?' he demanded.
      'Whoa,' I said, 'whoa, back the hell up.' I threw my hands up to show I meant no harm. To tell the truth, my head was already thinking on overdrive. The man on the Halo-Core had mentioned that Markro had had a pay rise after someone else had been nicked and chucked onto the prison planet, Kalvulseah. That meant that there was a position going, and looking at the gun and the cleanliness of its barrel, the way that the rain slivered off it like a serpent, the way it seemed to gleam under the lights of the Holster buildings, whoever hired him had a decent amount of cash.
      'Do you live 'round here?' he asked again, pressing the muzzle of the gun to my forehead.
      'Yes, yes I do,' I spluttered, trying to keep my cool. 'Not far from here, a couple of minutes away.'
      'Take me there,' he said. 'I'm going to put the gun down and we're going to walk there like two old buddies just coming home from a walk in the rain. You know what happens if you don't do what I say.'

     I did. I knew perfectly well.

NOTE: APOLOGIES FOR THE FORMATTING IN THIS PART. STARTING ON WORD AND COMPLETING IN WATTPAD DOES THAT TO IT.