Dirty Work: Volume 2

Story Two - The New Groove - 1

It's cold, dark, and raining. I'm standing atop one of the old-Christian churches in the Area, perched on the top of their cross. You might think that it's a bad place to crouch, and a bit of a showman's move, and you'd be right. You might think that people would look up and see me, and inform the police of someone defiling a religious building, and you'd be half-right there. Someone might indeed see me, if they bothered to look up at the top of the cross, which they wouldn't since the only ones that have any interest in the building only come here on Wednesdays, and as it was a Friday, I was pretty safe. And even if someone did look up and see me, even the priests of that particular sect wouldn't report me. What would be the use? If someone could get up there, someone could get down. And they would be gone before someone could blink, into the shadows like ink.
Also I thought I looked cool.
'You see him?' It was Markro in my ear. I jumped, not used to having a Halo-Chip in the side of my head. The Boss had managed to secure three of them, giving them to Markro, Ashrore and myself. We had to go to a guy in 41, near the Julliscor region lit up in orange (the stunt to get Julliscor migrants there never worked), to get them implanted off the record. Halo are very concerned about the chips and their usage, having each one tagged and the information filed away. You have to go through Halo themselves in 15 just to get one installed. Unless you do it off the record.
     The boss likes to get things done on the record, except when it's ridiculously expensive.
     'Not yet,' I told him. We'd roped Sila and Reyna into helping us track down Ro Ville, with Hidra keeping Salis away from prying eyesight her apartment in 26. Ashrore had gone off to see Spyder, who was busy jacking up his prices after the possibility of having a shootout underneath him as he slept had disturbed him. Still, he had gotten some information about Carea Euphero, the bitch that had tried to sell out the boss, though nothing to be useful at that moment in time.
     'The only thing I can tell you,' Spyder had told her over a glass of Chorus' pink special, 'is that she's definitely trying to connect with some other people down in the underworld. I don't think she's hooked up with Red Rose yet, or if she has the information hasn't gone anywhere outside of Vayn Baron and herself.'
     'So she's split with whoever she was working for to begin with?' Ashrore has asked.
     'It seems so. Whoever she was working with originally, we may never know. But after you guys messed up their plans to get Grasslea in trouble with the cops, she seems to have slipped through the police nets somehow, probably a rogue cop on the inside, and taken a small group of the henchmen she was part of and gone somewhere else.'
That was all we knew. Someone who wanted us taken down was kidnapping a girl's family and telling her to get her friends and kill some random guy in a nightclub. It wasn't a lot to go on, but based on Euphero's past history, the boss wanted her taken out. In his little chess game, she was a potential threat lurking behind the scenes, just out of focus. We were to, essentially, kidnap Ro Villa and discover his connection to Euphero. Once we knew what we were dealing with, then we would deal with Salis' family and friends who, to our knowledge, were still at Euphero's mercy.
'When are we expecting him to come out of his place?' I asked into the chip in my ear. I almost forgot to tap the chip in the first place, having had two days to get used to spirits whispering to me as I sleep. I was getting drenched, and I was starting to get uncomfortable. I'd come up here thinking it was a good lookout down to the streets below, where I could guide Markro, Sila and Reyna more effectively. They were a few streets away, so as to make a tail less obvious. Markro didn't think that Salis' friends would make a second attempt so quickly, only a few hours after the first aborted try, but he didn't want to take any chances.
     'Salis had been told that he normally takes a walk around the block at five in the morning every day,' Markro told him. 'A little habit developed over years of his dad doing it. Should be any time now.'
     'Good. I'm soaked through.'
     'Where are you even watching from? I can't see you anywhere.'
     'Top of the church.'
     I couldn't see Markro as he was tucked too tightly into the alleyway that they were lurking in, but I could feel his gaze swivel to me. I heard him stifle a laugh.
     'If you fall off, don't expect me to mourn for you, you absolute fucking moron,' said Reyna.
     'Whoa, easy there. Easy. It's a good vantage point,' Sila soothed.
     'But he can just stand on the roof. Why does he have to be balancing on top of the cross like an idiot?'
     'Because he is an idiot,' Markro chimed with a laugh.
     'I can still hear you guys,' I said, and the conversation went quiet.
     The light was starting to change; morning was coming to Region 22. I watched the police vehicles drifting through the sky, searchlights going through the streets like a comb. Not far off the highway was going into its early morning lull, where virtually nobody clambered into their kars or  zoomus' and went on down the road. The quiet hum of the Magna-Train kicked off as it left the station, off towards Region 15, from what I could see. Everything seemed to be quietening down, as every city did around this time. In an hour or so it would begin to pick up again, but five in the morning is probably the quietest time of all.
'Hang on,' I said into the Halo-Chip. 'I see movement.'
Down below I saw the door of Villa's building open, and a figure wander out. I couldn't be sure, but from the rough height and build it looked to be our guy.
'Get moving,' I said, and out of the shadows I saw Markro and Sila emerge, Reyna perched on the Androssian's shoulder. It was time to dance.