Dirty Work: Volume 2

Story One - Cravings - 5

She walked in front of me, the gun held to her spine as I followed her through the crowds. They swarmed around us, the night in full swing now, and several of them I recognised as being regular customers to both Chorus' place and Dirty Work. As I walked the girl to the other side of the main street, where I knew an old storage block was usually quiet this time of night from an incident back in the days before our storming of Red Rose, and I would be able to do some questioning out of the glare of the anyone that happened to look around at us. After all, she hadn't technically done anything, and it was me being the aggressor rather than the other way around. But I wanted answers, and I wanted them quickly.

'Where are we going?' she asked me as we passed under the highway into its shadow.

'Just keep walking, will you?' I said. 'I'd like that very much.'

'I bet,' she replied, but aside from the fire in her voice she obeyed my command.

We came into the dark of the surrounding side streets, and after a small walk further into the maze of buildings that lay rusting out of the public eye, I stopped her.

'That's far enough,' I said. 'Turn around with your back against the wall.'

She did as she was told, her eyes a mix of hatred and fear, which is a particularly deadly combination to the one putting them in the situation. I leant against the building on the other side of the dark, dingy alley with her gun pointed at her chest.

'Who the hell are you?' she asked, bearing her fangs.

'At this point, even I don't know who I am,' I said, shrugging as I did so. I realised then that what I said was actually true. I had no idea who I was at that point, or what I should be doing. I didn't know if I was working for Dirty Work, or on my own, or if I should look for different employment, maybe off Celestria and on one of the outposts perhaps. At that point, pointing a gun at someone's chest, I had no idea who I was.

The girl cocked her head at me.

'More importantly,' I said, wrestling back the control, 'I have no idea who you are. And that's the important issue here, because your friend was walking through that crowd with the look of a killer on her face. And you know what I don't like? I don't like killers.'

'Says the one with the gun pointed at me,' she bit back.

'True,' I said. 'Very true. However I can loathe myself in my own time, time which you won't be experiencing unless you tell me exactly what I need to know. I won't ask too many specifics because I'm fairly certain that you don't know too many specifics. One of you told to take someone out in the middle of a crowd, blending in perfectly, she gets out before anyone can realise what's happened, the other three of you as backup should anything go wrong, and with even a getaway out in the back alley. A mix of organised crime and complete novices. So what? Someone force you to do it? Someone hold your mom at gunpoint and show you a picture of your target? Was that how it went?'

The girl said nothing, simply looking aside in disgust.

'You're a smart girl,' I said, 'knowing when to shut up. But whoever it is that has got one of your family, friends, whatever, ain't gonna let this rest. Are they?'

The girl looked back at me, her eyes now glimmering with tears that were welling up and trying to push past to fall freely. It made my heart break a little, I'll admit. I may be a bit of a hard ass now, but I've still got a bit of a soft side. I saw there the kind of person I might have been a few years before, the kind of person I was, watching my mother's coffin go into the flames, watching the edges begin to burn through the window, smouldering. 'You don't know what they did to us,' she said.

'Perhaps not,' I said. 'But you've run into a chance of redemption, where nobody has to die unnecessarily.'

She looked me in the eye. 'How do you mean? What redemption?'

My Halo-Core buzzed in my pocket. I smiled. 'You've run into me, and I've got some friends that are very good little soldiers.'