by Sean Platt
“Is that a real cigarette?” she said.
Kai cursed herself, unable to believe how fully she’d shown her hand with five words after so much time spent composing herself. According to Alexa, the man was asking a lot of Kai. She would only know her level of interest after she heard him out, and until then she had to be the one in control, despite the handsome man’s obvious intentions.
He held the cigarette in front of his face as if noticing it for the first time, delicately squeezed between his first two fingers and thumb, cherry toward the ceiling, a fine tendril of fragrant smoke curling into the air. He turned it then looked at Kai with eyes she could have sworn were gray.
“It is,” he said. “One of a pilot lot of five hundred cartons. My company purchased some land in the Carolinas near what used to be Raleigh and was granted permission to plant a high-yield strain of tobacco. Real tobacco. Who knows? Smoking may make a comeback.” He extended the cigarette toward Kai. “Do you smoke?”
A trap. If anything, modern cigarettes were somehow worse than those her grandmother had smoked. And ironically, even after a cure had been found for most cancers, it was the non-cigarette cigarettes — the imitations smoked by middle class poseurs — that were still called cancer sticks and coffin nails.
“Of course not,” she said.
“Would you like to?”
Kai stood in front of a chair opposite the man. She kept her knees together, demure, and eased comfortably down. She said nothing.
The man turned his attention to the burning cigarette, stared at it with interest, then took another puff and let it dangle. He exhaled a slow cloud into the room, and Kai found herself succumbing to unwelcome memory. It was as if he somehow knew the scent of her yesterday and had brought the cigarette to unhinge her.
“It’s not for everyone,” he said. “In fact, now that I’m in it, I see how the industry is a fuck-you across the board — or at least to everyone who can’t afford the nanobot treatments to undo the damage real smoking causes.” He looked back up at Kai. “I see it as a fuck-you to mortality. A way of showing the world that you’re not afraid of anything because if you can afford the nanobots, you can’t die.”
“Everyone dies,” Kai said.
“For now.”
She shifted in her chair. “Alexa didn’t tell me your name.”
“It’s Micah.”
“She didn’t tell me your last name, either.”
Micah looked around the big room as if taking it in for the first time. “This is an O spa. Where people hire the company of pretty women. And men, I suppose. I doubt you traffic in last names often.”
“The rules are different for what Alexa told me you wanted.” Kai crossed her legs, careful to keep them together. This was a seduction, but not the sort that typically occurred under O’s roof. According to Alexa, he wanted to hire her away from O. Kai rejected nothing without proper thought, but this man would have to romance her quite a lot to make the offer enticing. O paid all of Kai’s living expenses and took just 20 percent of her rather substantial client fees. She was escort royalty, at the top tier of the company’s offerings. She had a waiting list miles long and a stable of regular clients who were handsome, well built, and wealthy. The idea of moving to a new employer — just one man — rankled her both in terms of lifestyle and boredom. How could Kai ever be satisfied with such a glaring lack of variety?
“Ryan,” he said. “Micah Ryan.”
“I know you,” she said.
He laughed then shook his head. “You don’t know me at all.”
“Alexa says you want to hire me. Not for the night. Not for a weekend. But forever.”
There was a small table between them. The two chairs and table were set atop a lavish rug. Between the rug and the door was polished wood floor. The ceiling was high, with tall windows that opened to copious light. The alcove wasn’t in direct sunlight, but Kai had sashayed her way through several stark sunbeams as she’d approached, swaying to establish control over the man dominating his leather chair. But as Micah Ryan — industrialist, upcoming politician, fierce Enterprise capitalist — leaned forward to dock his smoke in a crystal ashtray that Kai was certain had been placed for the district’s only lit cigarette, she felt uncharacteristically weak. Whatever else Micah might be, he was certainly confident. And for good reason.
“Forever sounds so extreme. Let’s just say, ‘into a full-time position.’”
“I already have a full-time position.”
“Yes, but this is better. What do you earn in your best weeks at the spa, as an escort?”
It was an audacious, intrusive question. He said “escort” with a twinge, as if judging her. Prostitution had been legal for nearly a half century and hadn’t had any significant stigma for decades. Kai had no shame. Yet here was this man, at her spa, judging her. Something in his poised manner demanded rebuke, and before Kai could stop it, she found herself blurting information she shouldn’t have shared.
“Four to six thousand credits.” She found she was also unable to throttle her superior tone. Sure, 200,000 or 300,000 credits per year would pale next to Micah’s income, but it was the top in Kai’s world.
“I can double that.”
“You’ll pay twelve thousand per week?”
A small smile creased the corner of Micah’s mouth, probably because she’d doubled the highest end of her range. “Sure.”
“Why?”
“I need someone with certain abilities and am used to being able to buy my desires.”
Kai leaned forward, pinched the cigarette in the ashtray between her fingers, raised it to her lips, and took a delicate puff. When she replaced it in the ashtray, it was ringed in bright red. She fought a cough, leaned back in her chair, and exhaled in a way that both mimicked and mocked Micah’s demeanor.
“Sounds very Directorate,” she said.
Still, Kai found herself fighting to keep her face neutral, to keep the pulse from showing in her long, smooth neck, which she’d been arching for seductive effect. Directorate or not — fixed, paid-no-matter-what-salary or not — that much money would go a long way for a girl who’d been eating from alley trash cans and turning dime tricks to buy her way up just five years ago. She was in a good place, but the path behind her was still slippery. Despite her confident delivery, she’d told him about one of her best weeks. Sometimes, even her waiting list dried up, and weekdays were often slower than an empty bottle of syrup. She was making decent money for once but still had loans and below-the-board debts to repay. If she ran the numbers, she was really only two dry weeks from flat broke, back to a life where begging and borrowing re-entered her life. Two dry weeks, and she could be back on the street — not because she’d be unable to find jobs through O, but because her debts would tire of waiting and would finally chase her.
“It’s not Directorate at all,” Micah said. “I’d never do that to anyone, let alone someone like you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, but I do. I mercilessly research anything I’m looking to acquire. I know you grew up on the street, that you’ve been stabbed, shot, and raped. I know you’ve been with O for three years, but that despite starting as a glass table dancer, you rose to AA-class escort within two years. I know that today, you’re not only the most-requested escort at this facility but that O’s travel bookings show you as requested even more than local talent on many of the islands. And perhaps most importantly, I know that you come with the personal recommendation of Alexa Mathis — and that Alexa has never backed a failure.”
Irritation was rising inside of Kai, but she kept it from her face. She’d never told O most of her past’s violent details. How had Micah known? He was right, and her best move — if she wanted to save whatever illusion of control could still be salvaged — was to play along, pretend it was obvious.
“Then you know I’m happy here. I make my hours. I choose my clients. I have all the freedom in the world.”
Mica
h retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray, looked at the bright-red lipstick on it, smiled, and stuck it between his lips. That was a surprise; she’d taken her puff to mark the luxury as hers. Watching him smoke it, she felt strangely violated, as if he’d stolen a kiss.
“You could still do that,” he said. “I’m not asking for exclusivity.”
“You want to pay me over half a million credits a year for non-exclusivity?”
“I want to make you an offer that pleases you as much as it does me. Because I have an ulterior motive, see. Frankly, half a million credits is pocket change to me, and I don’t care about spending it…”
“Then pay me a million.”
Micah smiled at the interruption. Kai didn’t feel victory because even though she may have just doubled her pay, she’d also given him her tacit agreement. Her name was as good as on the contract.
“A million it is. In a short time, like me, you won’t consider even a million to be much. You can’t know what I’m offering, Miss Dreyfus. Because there are things I know that you do not. I’m afraid I’m at an unfair advantage. But that’s not bad news for you. It’s very good news. You see only the credits now because you can’t imagine what’s coming.”
Kai was intrigued. His offer felt like a devil’s temptation, and despite feeling it was a mistake to show weakness, she wanted to know more. A year with this man would solve her problems forever. No more being hungry. No more scrapping and scrambling. No more debts. Based on what he was saying and how badly he seemed to want her, Kai could probably get him to clear her debts as a bonus, on top of the million. The thought of feeling less strapped was like standing in a ray of sunshine.
What would it be like, to truly be free?
But there was no way to find out what he wanted without asking.
“What did Alexa tell you about me?”
Micah leaned back in his chair. Kai noted a boyish playfulness below his confidence and found herself drawn to it. Oh yes. She could be with this man.
“That you’re driven. Ambitious. Hungry. You’re a self-starter. Perfect Enterprise, never wanting anything from anyone that you don’t feel you’ve earned.”
“I don’t take handouts.”
“She also said that your ambition has an edge. You can be ruthless. Callous. Selfish. You have a loose moral compass, if the occasion requires. Or permits.”
Kai leaned forward to protest, but when Micah raised his hand to stop her, she let her indignation bleed out and leaned back again. It was all true, but it was also the sort of thing a person wouldn’t normally want said about them. Micah, however, seemed to be looking for that particular constellation of attitudes.
“In other words, you’re like me,” he said. “I’ll step over my own mother if she’s standing in front of something I want. If only she’d allow it.” He cracked a large, genuine smile, all white teeth. The kind of smile that could melt a girl’s panties into a quivering pool. “Alexa and I run in some of the same circles. She knows me…well, let’s just say she knows me ‘better than most.’ We understand each other. Didn’t you think it was strange, how Alexa took such an intense personal interest in you?”
Kai took a breath, thinking. Now that she looked back, it did seem odd. Alexa Mathis was one of the famous Six who had revolutionized the sex industry from its core, somehow turning taboos into mainstream commodities before anyone noticed, like a magician turning his magic hat inside-out. She’d formed the Six, and those who weren’t kidding themselves agreed universally that she led O as it existed today. Pariah and hero, Alexa was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. She was perhaps the most powerful woman in recent history. Yet until this moment, it had never seemed strange to Kai that Alexa had spent so much time with her, holding her hand both literally and figuratively as she rose through the ranks. It had earned Kai many jealous, spiteful looks from escorts who had been with O longer, but Kai had never asked to be teacher’s pet. She’d simply accepted it as logical and inevitable because she was the best.
“Honestly, no.”
“Alexa knows talent. See, it’s extraordinarily rare. There are people who can achieve, and there are people who will succeed in what they do. But talent? True, unblunted, unadulterated raw talent? Talent flavored with ambition — real ambition that will stop at nothing? There are only a handful of those people in any city. I am one. Alexa is one. And you are one.”
Kai, flattered, felt her thin walls starting to tear. She leaned into Micah, now allowing her legs to slightly part. She wasn’t doing it consciously. It was her body’s way of inviting him in.
“I have to ask,” she said. “If you want me, why don’t you just book me? Here? At the spa?”
“Here, you are beholden to O.” He shook his head. “I want you beholden to me.”
“Non-exclusively.”
Micah nodded. “Take as many clients as you wish, and do whatever you want. I only require that I’m the only client you may not refuse.”
“I wouldn’t refuse you here.” Kai wondered why she was trying to talk her way out of the job.
“You don’t do what I want here.”
Kai smiled a sly smile. “You’d be surprised.” And even Micah, with his real cigarettes, might be. O wasn’t one of the world’s most pioneering industries for nothing. O’s levels of simulation, neural interfacing, and AI-harnessing technologies were actually ahead of Xenia Labs’s — ahead, really, of everyone but Quark themselves. O had had access to The Beam before it was live. O had developed the Savatar program, which had paved the way for nanobot-downtuned nerve immersions. Alexa always said that O had one advantage few other industries ever had: while people felt they needed Beam chips for memory enhancement, their bodies needed what O offered even more — and were willing to pay greater sums to get it.
“I don’t want you for sex,” he said.
Kai looked up at Micah, disarmed, knocked across the chin, her every advantage suddenly gone. He’d delivered the knockout, and Kai was at the mercy of his punch.
“But that’s what I do,” she said.
“Intercourse is only one sexual function. As is everything involving the genitals. It’s the weakest expression of a powerful force — weak because there is almost no resistance. O knows that. The entire company is based around it.” He leaned forward. “Have you ever asked Alexa about the Savatar program, its origins, or what it really means?”
She shook her head. Savatar training involved sexual avatars and modeling behaviors. Kai had mastered every module, but it was simple because it was the kind of thing that only went so deep.
“Sex runs the world, Miss Dreyfus. It…”
“Kai.”
“Sex runs the world, Kai. You know this already. Sex led you to where you are. Without getting too metaphysical, sex is about the energies that course through the world and through the human soul. It’s about need and desire. Master it, and you can do anything. Life is about sex. Conversation and negotiation are about sex. Birth and death are about sex. You understand it even without understanding it, which is why I need you as much as I do. But I wouldn’t pollute our powerful relationship with what you think of as ‘sex.’ It would be like poking a leak in a hydraulic line. With enough pressure in the line, hydraulics can lift tremendous weights. But if the pressure is dissipated? Well, then you lose the power to generate force.”
“Specifics,” said Kai, waving a hand. Her head was starting to hurt. The man talked in riddles, just like a politician.
Micah paused then pulled a slim paper envelope from his pocket and set it on the table.
“What is this?” Kai asked, not touching the envelope.
“An assignment.”
“A sexual assignment?”
Another wolf’s grin. “Everything is about sex.”
“You want me to…find a person whose name is in that envelope?”
Micah nodded.
“And…what?”
“He’s been causing Ryan Industries some difficulty. Your job is to make th
at difficulty disappear.”
“How?”
“Permanently.”
After Micah fell silent and leaned back in his chair, Kai met his eyes for a long time. They stared at one another in the quiet room for ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.
Finally Kai said, “You want me to kill him.”
“I want you to solve the problem.”
“By killing him.”
“In whatever way keeps the problem from recurring.”
“I can’t kill someone.”
Micah’s cigarette had burned to nothing on the table between them. He fished another from a loose, prototype-looking pack, stuck it between his lips, and lit it with a silver lighter that Kai couldn’t help but admire.
“Can’t you?”
Kai kept her gaze level.
Micah sat forward, elbows on knees. “You were beaten, so you killed the man who did it with a grenade. You were raped then found the man years later and handed him his larynx. You…”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Do you deny it?”
Slowly, she shook her head.
“Someone wronged you, and you evened the score. People stood in front of you, blocking your way, and you knocked them down. Plenty of people back away when that happens, Kai, but not people like us. Most people will be bullied throughout their lives, content to let others dictate their existences for them. But not you and me. We are our own masters. We demand our freedom. This is no different from the others you’ve killed in your past.”
“They deserved it.”
Micah nodded toward the envelope on the table. “As does he.”
“What did he do?”
“He got in the way of a man who was offering you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
Kai shook her head. “No.”
“You have to say that,” said Micah. “Several times, I imagine. So go ahead, and get it out of your system before reluctantly coming around. That’s one.”
