by Noah Rain
Judging by their expressions, neither were the girls.
“Carmen,” Scarlett said, exhausted. Her drying body was still intertwined with mine.
“Be ready in five, Kayde,” Carmen said as she walked out the door. “And bring that vest.”
I looked at Scarlett, who continued to look out the door where Carmen had gone. She got up in a rush.
“Scarlett,” I started, but she whirled on Nina. It was a bit strange, seeing her mood shift so drastically when she was still naked and, quite honestly, wearing my cum.
“Nina,” Scarlett said. “Did you check?”
Nina was already nodding. She had switched her mobile from surveillance to an entirely different screen.
“Sascha’s orders,” Nina said.
“Who’re they going after?” Scarlett asked. “And what are we doing in the meantime?”
Nina shrugged. “Doesn’t say.”
Scarlett looked positively furious. When she saw me propped up stupidly on my elbow, still just as naked as she was, she seemed to remember everything that had just transpired, and, being in the mostly-sober state she now was, her cheeks colored.
Darla was still smiling as she looked between me and Scarlett.
“Don’t worry about it, Scar,” Darla said. “Sascha’s probably just testing him.”
“Carmen’s been waiting to let loose for months,” Scarlett said as she cleaned herself off with sheets that most definitely needed to be washed now. “If Sascha’s giving her her wish, it’s something big.”
“It doesn’t concern you,” Nina said.
Scarlett stopped with one shoulder of her suit back on, one breast hanging out. She didn’t care in the slightest what she looked like in that moment, and the three of us who were still laying or kneeling on Sascha’s bed turned from adults to kittens in a flash.
Apparently, our panicked looks were the only thing Scarlett needed to see, as she finished dressing and then tossed me my gi and vest.
I sighed and started to put it on, feeling like I was in desperate need of a shower.
“Scarlett,” I said once we were in the hallway. “I think I should go this one alone. Hold on. Hear me out.”
We paused in the hallway. Both of us could see Carmen standing farther ahead, pacing as she spoke on the phone, presumably with Sascha.
“I think Darla and Nina are right,” I said. “This is Sascha’s way of having me prove myself.”
“Tonight should have been enough for that,” Scarlett argued.
“You girls had tonight well in hand without me there,” I said. “Sure, I knocked around a couple of glorified mechanics, even if they call themselves Guilders. And then I got drunk in a club, and, well, you remember the rest. Honestly, it was a pretty great night.”
“It was,” Scarlett said, crossing her arms.
“Well, maybe this is a job meant more for the bruisers of the group.”
“I’m just as good in a fight as Carmen is,” Scarlett said, glancing toward the entryway. “Better.”
“I know that,” I said. “And I’m sure Sascha does. But clearly you’ve got other skills. Face it, Scarlett. This is a house call. I don’t need to be in the group text to know that much. And hey, now that I know more about my condition—“
“It’s a gift, Konnor,” Scarlett said. “Not a condition.”
“If that’s true, then let me use it,” I said. “Come on. I’ve got to be good for something around here.”
“You’re good for a few things,” Scarlett said. She sighed and shook her head. “Go on. Don’t get yourself killed. And don’t let Carmen get you killed.”
“So I have permission to get her killed?”
Scarlett rolled her eyes and walked back toward Sascha’s red room. “I’m not worried about her.”
“Kayde!”
“Coming,” I said, tying my belt as I shuffled and then jogged the rest of the way to Carmen.
The car ride was mostly silent. I had only been on the one mission with Carmen thus far, and she had been in a much more jovial, relaxed mood than she was now. I didn’t know what that meant, but to have someone like her rattled or at least heavily focused, I knew we were in for a bit more than a knockaround.
“Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?” Carmen asked. She seemed almost annoyed at me for having to say it.
“No,” I shrugged, looking out the window. It was clear, now. The night had dried. Sunrise wouldn’t be far away.
“Well, we’re going to pay someone a visit, give them a bit of a knockaround.”
I laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing much,” I said, looking over to her as she put the car—a different black car, likely loaned by Onyx as well—into gear and rounded a corner. “Just seems like Sascha has a lot of messages she wants to send tonight. Wondering why a phone call won’t suffice.”
“Sascha makes phone calls when phone calls are needed,” Carmen said without inflection. “When something else is needed, she sends us.”
I shrugged again and continued to watch the city go by. All of Silk City looked the same to me. The buildings were varying shades of, well, glass. They changed whatever color the neon lights on the advertisements, displays and corporate banners bid them change into. There were zombies in the streets now that the clubs were emptying. Socialites weaving and stumbling back to their broom cupboards, which was all that qualified as primo living in the cities.
I should have pitied them for buying into the system so heavily that they actually thought this was what they wanted. Instead, I hated them for leaving their fellow man behind. They looked over the bay at Jaxton with scorn, and they couldn’t even be bothered to spare a thought for the orphans and homeless haunting the suburbs that they referred to as wastelands, even though most of them were one credit mistake away from skipping right past the Jaxton bridge and ending up working as a fixer on one of the cy-farms in the countryside.
We took another turn. Sharp. And I had to grip the door handle to keep from toppling over. Carmen brought the car to a halt in front of another nameless, faceless building that no doubt was famous for something.
“Game face,” Carmen said.
She got out of the car and I followed, matching her stride as she came around the car. There were no guards out front, and Carmen held her phone up to a flat black rectangle set beside the automatic, reinforced doors that looked to be made of four-inch thick glass.
“Nina’s got us,” she said.
A red dot showed on the obsidian glass, blinking slowly for a few tense moments, then it jumped to the opposite corner and turned green.
Carmen released a breath and pushed the doors open with a silent whoosh, and I looked behind us, watching the late night cabs trundle past carrying their half-dead cargo.
I knew we weren’t supposed to be here as we crossed a long, narrow lobby with speckled marble tiles set into the floor, but I followed Carmen as she held the mobile up to another obsidian rectangle beside steel doors that admitted us into a roomy elevator.
Once these doors had closed behind us, Carmen let out an even bigger breath. Then she breathed in, and reached around her back to grab the gauntlet gloves she still had hooked to her belt notches.
“Business time?”
“Business time,” she answered. “Nina.”
I heard a crackle as Nina responded, and Carmen pressed a finger to the tiny communicator bud stuck to the back of her ear.
“Yeah,” Carmen said with a nod. “Give me 50%. He’s old. Don’t want to stop the heart, but the sparklies should give him a scare. Get the message across.”
Carmen had set her gloves to a weaker stun level than they had been against the DyNo’s. That made me relax some, but she still seemed nervous.
When she lowered her hand from her ear, she wouldn’t lo
ok at me, just kept watching the floor lights go by. It was a tall building, and a painfully long ride.
“We’re not visiting a Guild this time, are we?” I asked.
Carmen closed her eyes, then opened them. She seemed to have steadied herself.
“No, Konnor,” she said. “We’re not visiting a Guild.”
I nodded. A Suit, then. Or a Pearl. We were going right for one of the royals of Silk City.
“I sure hope Sascha knows what she’s doing.”
“She does,” Carmen said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than me.
There wasn’t even any calming elevator music to add some dark humor to the proceedings, so I tried limbering up, bending into a calf stretch. I needed it after my row with Scarlett, though I bet she needed it more.
It was strange. Just an hour ago, I had been fully engaged in an intense sexual encounter with Carmen’s partner. Now, we were riding an elevator together to the top of some Suit’s seat of power, preparing to either lay a beatdown on one of Sascha’s rivals, or maybe just do some classic intimidation work.
“Ah,” I said, light dawning slowly, as always seemed to be the case these days. “We’re going after a Suit, aren’t we.”
Carmen’s silence was deafening.
“A fucking Suit, Carmen?”
“What’s the difference?” Carmen asked, defensive. “Suit. Guild. At least this one won’t fight back. Not that Barter and his boys did.”
“And how often have the Vixens gone against the Suits and Pearls?” I asked. “Directly, I mean. Let’s not count Darla fucking a few of them she managed to spritz some of Nina’s formula on.”
Carmen did answer this time, but she didn’t meet my eyes, and she said it under her breath.
“What’s that?”
“None.”
“Until today,” I supplied.
“First time for everything.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“You took Sascha’s offer, Konnor,” Carmen said.
“More of a threat than an off—“
“You just finished fucking one of my partners, and one of the most beautiful girls in the world,” Carmen said, holding me with her dark eyes. “That’s after everything else you’ve experienced at the hands, tits, and hips of Nina and Darla. Honestly, Konnor, your week hasn’t been all that bad.” I couldn’t really argue with that, even if I had technically been drugged and kidnapped by the Vixens to start this whole misadventure. “Besides,” Carmen continued, “once we’re through with this little house call, maybe I’ll join in the fun.”
I looked up at the floor lights. We had been frozen on the twentieth floor for more than a minute.
“Nina,” Carmen said into her communicator. She nodded as my heart picked up its pace. “She’ll get it started up again in a minute. Probably just auto security feature. The lifts shouldn’t be operating at this hour.”
I took the momentary respite to admire Carmen, my eyes tracing her form. She had more meat on her than Scarlett did. Her chest was smaller, but her hips and ass. Those were unrivaled. And she had an attitude I wanted to put to the test. See how far it would take her once I had her prone.
“So then,” I said, bringing myself back to the task at hand. “Who is this Suit?”
“Someone Sascha wants back in line.”
“For what reason?”
Carmen sighed. “You really are relentless, aren’t you?”
“Guess you’ll find out after this is over.”
She smirked at that, but didn’t look at me.
The elevator lurched back into motion.
“I don’t know everything, Konnor,” she said. “All I know is, he’s been proposing something to the companies. Some kind of corporate legislation to be instituted into the system they all follow. The system that enslaves us all.”
“What kind of legislation?” I asked. It sounded ridiculous to call corporate policy legislation. There was no law these days, because there were no law men. The laws were whatever the companies said they were. The law men were the Guilders, and if you got by them, the Enforcers.
“Something called an immunity bill.”
“Immunity,” I scoffed. “From what? The companies are untouchable as it is.”
“Credit immunity,” she said, rubbing at her temple. It had been a long night, and I was making it longer. Carmen was the type who found it easier to fight than to talk about the fight. “It’s a response to Sascha’s … to our methods, and others like us. The Suits want to be immune to credit hits. They designed their algorithms too well, and they play at politics too ruthlessly. This one’s trying to get them all on the same page. Credit immunity for credit lenders. In other words, credit immunity for all Suits and Pearls, no matter the crimes.”
“Doesn’t the world already work that way?”
Carmen laughed sardonically. “The only people the Suits have been taking down more than debtees is each other. Of course, they usually have so much credit that even a serious hit still leaves them in control of most of their assets. But the stuff we gather on them—through Darla’s indiscretions, Nina’s chemicals and hacking, and Sascha’s … methods—are the equivalent of a social nuke in the business world.”
“I guess we shouldn’t envy them,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Carmen admitted. “But we certainly don’t have to pity them.”
Look at it this way,” Carmen said, “if the immunity bill passes, the compromised Suits of Silk City can’t be discredited. If they can’t be discredited, our leverage is gone, and the Vixens live on leverage.”
“Kind of like the companies themselves,” I said. Carmen shrugged the jab off.
“As much as I like knocking Guilders around,” Carmen said. “We don’t want all of them to have the green light to take us down. Hell, they might put a credit bounty on us big enough to get Synners involved.”
“Couldn’t this bill be a good thing?” I asked, fearing Carmen’s response as the words left my mouth. “I mean, in the right hands. Credit immunity. Freedom from the system, and all that.”
“Not in the way they want to use it,” Carmen said, ignoring my qualification. “It will put them beyond reproach. Truly beyond it.”
“I thought we were trying to bring the system down,” I said.
“We’re trying to control it, Konnor,” Carmen said, her tone direct. “We’re trying to turn it against them, and then use it for the benefit of the people it’s enslaved for so many years.”
I nodded, sensing that Carmen didn’t want to discuss the particulars of the bill any longer. Then I laughed as I remembered something she had said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just, you referenced the compromised Suits of Silk City. Kind of like singling out fish that can swim.”
Carmen smiled.
“So,” I said, tracking the lights as they moved from floor to floor. “What sort of goons can we expect in the captain’s quarters?”
“Just the one Suit,” Carmen said. “He doesn’t have a Guild at his back. Nothing to alert him to our presence.”
“Except for our presence,” I said. “This building has cameras, and we’re not exactly dressed like butlers or maids.”
“Not enough time to assemble a squad.”
The elevator finally let out a long, emphatic ding as we reached the top floor.
“Here we go,” Carmen said, flexing her fingers. Sparks danced from the silver ringlets on her gauntlets.
The elevator doors opened, and while there was a massive, pristine suite in the background bordered by a wall of windows that looked out over the city dawn, it was the foreground that had my attention.
A half dozen figures stood just outside of the elevator in two trios. They wore all black, and it looked like a mix of Kevlar and military-grade
resin. They had helmets on, with black glass shields. You couldn’t see their chins or their eyes. In their hands, they gripped batons.
“Guild?” I asked Carmen, who stuck her foot into the open doorway to prevent the doors from closing, ensuring that we would not be beating a hasty retreat.
“Contractors,” she said. “Off-duty Enforcers. Doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”
“I guess not,” I said nonchalantly, even if I was a tad bit nervous. “You’d just think that they could afford more than batons to go along with those fancy digs.”
One of the visors tilted like a curious dog. I craned my neck to look beyond them, stretching onto my tippy toes, and saw a man in—you guessed it—a suit, sitting with his back to the windows and his chin resting in his steepled hands. He didn’t look as concerned as he should have, which meant he didn’t know who he was messing with, or the boys in black were well-paid, and well-trained.
I suppose both things could be true at once.
Carmen was all business. She didn’t waste any more time mean-mugging a bunch of glass heads. She walked right out of the elevator and swung at the first soldier in line. She was much faster than he had anticipated, and the hook blew right through his lazy raised guard. When her gauntlet made contact with his helmet, a flash lit the vicinity, but he didn’t go down, and Carmen was rewarded with a backhand whack across the face with that baton. It made a sick thudding sound, like aluminum, and I was shocked Carmen didn’t topple over.
She straightened, and even the other guards seemed stunned as she wiped fresh blood from the slash on her cheek, and rammed into the perpetrator, bowling him into the walled entryway and knocking a very expensive-looking vase off its pedestal, where it landed on the marble with a very expensive-sounding crash.
It might as well have been the first-round bell.
The other guards rushed in, one heading for Carmen, and the rest. Well, lucky me.
I would tell you it was a hard fight. That these guys knew what they were doing, and that they were prepared. But that would only be half true.
