Painkiller

by Robert J. Crane

  “And these are the people who want a monopoly on the use of force,” Reed said, shaking his head.

  “You said you would stop,” Kat moaned her eyes rolled. “And … also, another thing,” she slurred, and turned to look right at me, “Why did I follow you up here so I could work for like two months before we all quit? I left Hollywood behind, you know—”

  “I thought you start filming on the new season of your show next month?” Augustus asked, frowning.

  Kat either didn’t hear him or ignored him. Probably the former. “Whyyyyyy?” She put her hands in the air like she was asking the heavens.

  I stared her down. “Because you were sick of soulless, materialistic wandering and wanted to serve a higher purpose than just showing your sculpted ass on television and trying to contrive ‘storylines’ to mine pointless drama out of your life for the sake of entertaining people.” I paused.

  She stared at me through cloudy, drunken eyes then broke into a lazy smile. “You really think my ass is sculpted? Everyone else always calls it ‘bony,’ but I’ve been working on it and—”

  “I propose a toast,” Reed said, cutting her off, raising his mug.

  “—I was thinking about maybe getting ass implants, but—”

  “Kat,” I said, trying to stifle her. I looked at Reed.

  Reed’s eyes were glimmering, thick with the emotion of the moment. “In honor of our last week working together in glorious cause … to us, the line between the metahuman world and humanity. May whoever follows us do as much or more good as we did.”

  I frowned. “Well, that’s awfully chipper.”

  He gave me a cool grin. “Would you prefer they do oh-so-much worse? Chaos and destruction in the streets and all that?”

  I thought about it for a second. “Honestly … yes. I want to see the agency fall apart without me so that they know how badly they screwed up by wanting me out. I want President Gerry Harmon to be calling every day for the next year apologizing and telling me he’ll move the agency back to Minnesota or do whatever I want as long as I’ll come back and do my job again. Yes, I want chaos in the streets and cataclysms in the sky and the world to fall apart without me.” I pursed my lips. “I mean, I don’t really want any of that, not really, but … on a very basic, emotional level … yes, I want that. I want to be needed, to feel like all these years I put into carrying this thing on my back weren’t a waste.”

  “You’ve done a lot of good,” Kat said, a hint of regret on her face behind those flushed cheeks.

  “You’ve saved the world,” Augustus said, lifting his own mug. “Ain’t nobody can take that away from you.”

  “It is true,” Dr. Perugini said, nodding. “No one may ever really know it, or thank you for it, or care that you’re gone, but—”

  Reed cut in over her with a fake laugh. “Honey … maybe try and help instead?”

  She gave him daggers. “I am helping.”

  “So what are you going to do, Sienna?” Ariadne asked me, looking forlornly over her mug. Her new one was already half empty and she wasn’t really much of a beer drinker.

  I stopped with my mug halfway to my mouth. “I’m …”

  “Excuse me?” came a polite voice from behind me. I turned to see a middle-aged Asian man looking down at me, a polite expression of reserve upon his face that tended toward a faint smile. “You’re Sienna Nealon, correct?”

  “Oh, for crying out—” I put down my beer. “Who are you with? The EPA, right? You want me to cease and desist with setting things on fire?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “My name is Jonathan Chang. I’m a lawyer with the firm of Rothman, Curtis and Chang, here in Minneapolis.”

  “Oh, really?” I picked up my mug again and held it at the ready, staring at Mr. Chang with a wary eye. “Who’s suing me this time?”

  His faint smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “You misunderstand my purpose.” He reached into his coat and pulled out envelope, this one white and long, a letter envelope that looked thick. “I’m not here about anyone suing you.” He placed the envelope on the table next to me as I watched him carefully. “I have a job offer for you.”

  3.

  I gave Jonathan Chang, esquire, attorney at law, blah blah blah, a wary, cocked eye. “You want to hire me? Because my registration with the Minnesota bar is sadly nonexistent.”

  “Who do you work for again?” Reed asked, voice cloudy with booze and suspicion. “Wolfram and Hart?”

  “No,” Mr. Chang said coolly, still with that faint smile, “my firm is named Rothman, Curtis and Chang. But I’m not making the offer on our own behalf. I’ve been contracted by an employer who would like to hire you.”

  “As what?” I asked, looking right at him. “A security guard? Muscle? An assassin?”

  “Hardly,” Mr. Chang said, looking very slightly affronted. “We only deal with legal and aboveboard entities.”

  “So says every lawyer, I’m sure,” Augustus said, looking extremely amused, “even the ones that deal with murderers and rapists.”

  “We don’t work in the realm of criminal law,” Mr. Chang said.

  “So you defend big, dirty corporations in lawsuits?” Reed asked, suspicion far outpacing the booze.

  “Sometimes,” Mr. Chang said, “and sometimes we defend big, clean corporations against some idiot who wants to sue them because they shoved the staple remover the company manufactured into their own eye and think someone else should pay for their stupidity.”

  “Eye for an eye,” Reed said. “That’d fix it.”

  “Yes, and then no one would make staple removers,” Mr. Chang said, and shifted his attention away from Reed. “And while I’m sure that a world without staple removers would be a better world for all, clearly … that has little to do with why I’m here.”

  “What’s the job?” I asked, frowning. I kept my face carefully neutral.

  “A Non-Governmental Organization is forming,” Mr. Chang said, “backed by someone with considerable resources and focused on assisting with metahuman threats that the United States Government is unable or unwilling to address.”

  “So wait,” Augustus asked, his brown furrowing, “what would she be doing?”

  “In her current capacity with the government,” Mr. Chang said, utterly calm, “Ms. Nealon presently assists state and local jurisdictions because they’re unable to handle metahuman threats. After her exit for—the agency, I think you call it—the U.S. government will be tasked with replacing her, and thus assisting these state and local jurisdictions will fall to this new FBI-led task force, should the state and local governments desire the help. However, they may be finding their assistance somewhat lacking, since the only metahuman available to assist them now will be—”

  “Guy Friday,” I said. “Which, I mean, he can probably handle some of the stuff we dealt with, but … he’s a blunt instrument. Like, really blunt. Like, his head is a hammer and everything else in the world is a nail—”

  “As you say,” Mr. Chang nodded, “the U.S. government approach will be somewhat one-dimensional for the foreseeable future, leaving state and local jurisdictions without anyone to turn to in a time of crisis. For example, if the recent incident in Los Angeles had been left to Mr. Friday, as you call him—”

  “He would have played skee-ball at Santa Monica pier while the Elysium neighborhood went kablooey,” Kat gurgled, unable to hold her head up straight. “And I would have died horribly, too.”

  “Furthermore,” Mr. Chang said, “if the events of last January, the robbery at the Federal Reserve, had been left to Mr. Friday—”

  “We’d be off the gold standard permanently,” Reed said. “But maybe they’d finally audit the—”

  “Reed, shut it,” I said, focusing on Mr. Chang. “So what does this … Non-Governmental Organization do, then? Butt in whenever they see something like this happening?”

  “It will make our resources available under the aegis of the state jurisdiction, if the local authoriti
es want the help,” Mr. Chang said, “and most of them will, because you have a reputation—”

  “For lighting tires and starting fires,” Augustus said, raising his glass to me before taking a drink.

  “For raising ires and burning shires,” Kat burbled senselessly.

  “I think that’s more Saruman’s territory,” Reed said, his brow furrowed in thought. “Or Sharkey, if you prefer—”

  “So you want to hire me,” I said, spelling it back to Mr. Chang, “to do … basically my job right now, but without the federal government on my back?” He nodded, and I narrowed my eyes in practiced skepticism. “Who would I answer to?”

  “The state authority on each job would be your employer,” Mr. Chang said, “but the NGO—the organization—would be run by you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Ariadne said, frowning. “You said the money comes from somewhere. Who’s bankrolling this and why?”

  “A concerned citizen of the world,” Mr. Chang said, inclining his head to look at Ariadne. He was wearing a suit under his fancy, fancy coat, and it didn’t look cheap either. “Someone worried about where things will go without Ms. Nealon at the helm.”

  “Who is this concerned citizen?” Reed asked.

  “Your benefactor would prefer to remain anonymous,” Mr. Chang said with a sniff.

  “Oh, that’ll end well,” Reed said, slumping back in his seat. “This guy could be a megalomaniac wanting to use Sienna for world domination, for all we know—”

  “Ms. Nealon will be in charge of this new organization,” Mr. Chang said. “Fully, completely. She can choose her own team—”

  “Oooh,” Kat said, raising her hand in the air and waving it drunkenly. “Pick me!”

  “—and I can assure you,” Mr. Chang said with a gleam in his eyes, “the salary pool will be considerably better than government scale. In addition, there is funding for research and development, a medical unit …” He looked at Ariadne. “Someone will, of course, need to manage the budget of this entity.”

  “I told you finance was a hot sector right now,” I said to Ariadne.

  “You also said there wasn’t much market for your skill set,” she said without looking at me.

  “You’ll be able piece together your very own version of your old agency,” Mr. Chang said, “without the government breathing down your necks.”

  “That is so very, very generous of some random stranger who’s concerned about the world,” Reed said, by now fully suspicious. “This guy is willing to throw away millions and millions of dollars to let Sienna run a meta fantasy camp. That’s damned decent. But what does he get out of it?”

  “Your benefactor gets a sense of self-satisfaction,” Mr. Chang said, “knowing that the world is a better place with Ms. Nealon delivering aid to those who need it. In addition, there are some tasks you’ll be able to decline involvement in that you otherwise might have been forced to take while in government service, and also some things you’ll be able to investigate or consult on that you might not have been able to. Opportunities abound in the metahuman world.”

  “Meaning we could hire ourselves out to be security guards if we wanted to,” Reed said, a cloud over his face.

  “If you wanted to,” Mr. Chang said. “But you could also extend your talents into other arenas if you wished. Private investigation, for instance—”

  “I’ll to need to switch to drinking whiskey if I’m going to become Jessica Jones,” I said, lifting my beer glass.

  “You can do whatever you wish,” Mr. Chang said, nodding at me. “However you feel you would best serve the world at large, whether holding out until the world-ending sort of events require your attention, or getting involved in human missing persons cases is your … area of interest. This opportunity is flexible, and you will be able to set your own course.”

  I stared at Mr. Chang, almost not daring to look away. I took a breath, the smell of my beer wafting up at me. “Tempting,” I said. “Very tempting.”

  “You cannot be serious,” Reed said, looking at me with stark disbelief.

  “So would there be college paid for in this deal?” Augustus asked seriously.

  “I’m sure something could be worked out,” Mr. Chang said with a smile.

  “Could I structure filming on my new season around this job?” Kat asked, her eyes half-open.

  “That would be entirely dependent on Ms. Nealon, as head of the organization,” Mr. Chang said, “but I don’t see a conflict there.”

  Kat turned to me. “Could I—”

  “You can do whatever the hell you want with those cameras as long as they don’t land on me even once,” I said, brushing her off. “Could we—” My phone buzzed, hard, in my pocket. “Dammit.”

  “The sky is the limit,” Mr. Chang said as I pulled out my phone.

  “Not according to the FAA,” I muttered, thrusting the envelope at him as I answered the phone. “House of Style,” I said into the phone.

  Andrew Phillips was at the other end. I could tell it was him by the disappointed sound of the breathing. “Where are you?”

  “At a whorehouse,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I took a job with the Secret Service,” I said. “They have the weirdest initiation rituals, but hey, who am I to argue as the new gal, right?”

  “You are not working for the Secret Service,” Phillips breathed into the phone, his annoyance rising.

  “You never supported my dreams,” I said, letting my voice faux-break. “Why didn’t you believe in me?”

  “Probably because of your frequenting of whorehouses,” he grunted. “We’ve got a murder victim in Chicago.”

  “Chicago has quite a few murder victims as I understand it,” I replied. “What makes this one special?”

  “That is cold,” Reed said, frowning his disapproval from across the table.

  “It’s winter,” I threw back at him, “and I’m me.”

  “Who was that?” Phillips asked.

  “Just a sweet little gigolo with a heart of gold, clearly,” I said. “Why are you calling me about a body in Chicago? What’s the Sienna of this?”

  “The—what?”

  I rolled my eyes. “What does this have to do with me?” Duh.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s obvious,” Augustus said. The sarcasm was strong with this one.

  “The guy was killed with one punch to the side of the head,” Phillips said.

  “Brock Lesnar could do that,” I said.

  “He was thrown ten feet by the impact, into a brick wall—”

  “Seriously, have you checked with Brock Lesnar for an alibi? He’s a really big guy. I mean, I'd say Floyd Mayweather, but you said this vic was a guy—”

  “—fractured skull even before the impact—”

  “—I mean, big. Big, big, big. And have you seen Lesnar fight? I wouldn’t want to tangle with him, and I’m me—”

  “—Chicago PD says it’s a metahuman incident,” Phillips said tightly, his annoyance and loathing draping themselves over every syllable. I could tell he was just barely controlling himself. “Are you going to do your job or are you already mentally out the door?”

  “Fine,” I said, sighing. “But will you at least get the FAA to lift this stupid cease and desist order so I can fly down to Chicago without having to take a commuter flight?”

  “No,” Phillips said. “It’s not my department first of all, and second of all … just no. I’m not doing it. It’s less than an hour flight to Chicago. I already had my secretary book you and Reed on the last one of the night. Get to the airport.”

  “Your secretary?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “How is Guy Friday?”

  “Busy,” Phillips said, and then he paused. “Also, he’s not my secretary and this is not really his … area of expertise.”

  “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,” I said, smirking. I was sure he could hear the smirk over the phone.

  “No, I’m not,” he said, certain. “
Get your clothes on and get to the airport.”

  “Clothes on?” I asked, frowning. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You said you were at a whorehouse.”

  I laughed. “I’m at a bar, with the team, celebrating our imminent emancipation from your dictatorial rule, but it’s nice to know I can still pull one over on you with nothing but repeated assurances.” I hung up on him. “Reed, we’re going to Chicago.”

  “We are?” He looked at me funny. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I said, glancing at Mr. Chang, who was reading over the paperwork in the envelope I’d handed him. “You’re a lawyer. What do you make of that?”

  “I’m employed by your benefactor as your legal counsel,” he said, and he nodded once. “I’ll work on it. It’s not exactly a settled area of case law, though. Try and obey the order until I can see if I can get it reversed.”

  “All righty,” I said, and stood. Reed took another drink, leaned over and kissed his sweetie, and then mirrored my movement. “Off we go.”

  “One last hurrah,” Reed said, then he glanced at Mr. Chang suspiciously. “I hope.”

  “Why would you hope this is it?” Augustus asked with a frown of his own. “You got big plans after this week? I mean, you could hire yourself out to birthday parties as a human wind tunnel experience, but other than that—”

  “It’s all right,” Dr. Perugini said, reaching up to pat Reed on the face. “I can find a job easily.”

  “You really are going to be a gigolo,” Kat said with a giggle, “just like Sienna said.” She slapped the table and the wood made a cracking sound. “Hahahahaha!”

  “Once more unto the breach?” I asked him, trying to draw his sour gaze away from Kat.

  He nodded. “Once more,” he said as a woman threaded her way through the platforms over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. Blame it on the alcohol, because it took me a second to realize it was the same woman who’d served me the FAA order.

  “Are you Reed Treston?” she asked sweetly.

  “No—” I started to say.

  “Yeah,” he said, puffing up with pride. “I am.”