I sign.
The stylus clicks in my hand.
Brautigaum claps once. “Outstanding. Oh, this is going to play beautifully.”
I set the stylus down with great care and stand straighter. “For the record, if I die on camera, I will be very difficult about it.”
He grins. “That’s the spirit.”
No, I think, as I turn to leave his absurd office and step into the polished corridor with my heartbeat trying to escape through my throat.
That is absolutely not the spirit.
That is desperation wearing lipstick and pretending it’s a plan.
CHAPTER 2
BRON
Iwake up face-first in a couch that smells like old cologne, synth-whiskey, and bad decisions with excellent lighting.
For a few dense, punishing seconds, I don’t move. I lie there half folded over the armrest with one boot still on, my cheek mashed into cracked blue upholstery, and let my soul crawl reluctantly back into my body. My tongue feels furred over. My skull feels packed with broken glass and spite. Somewhere in the apartment, something electronic chirps in a low-battery death rattle every thirty seconds, just to make sure I know the universe is still personally invested in my discomfort.
I peel one eye open.
Light spears through the slats of the window shades and hits me right in the face like a personal insult. The apartment is a battlefield. Shirt over the lamp. Empty bottles on the low table. Three betting slips stuck to the floor by something sticky I don’t care enough to identify. One sequined jacket draped over the holo-projector like it had the decency to pass out before I did.
“Mm,” I mutter to nobody. “Gorgeous. Thriving.”
My comm is buzzing somewhere under me.
I groan, shove a hand between the couch cushions, and come up with a spoon, a cufflink, and a crumpled wristband froma club I vaguely remember leaving through the kitchen. The buzzing continues, insectile and accusatory. I twist, pat around, and finally fish my comm out from under my ribs.
Nine missed calls.
Six messages.
Three debt notices.
One extremely unhelpful reminder from my finance app that saysSPENDING TREND ALERT: UNUSUAL ACTIVITY DETECTED.
“No kidding,” I tell it hoarsely.
I fumble the comm too close to my face and immediately regret possessing eyes. The screen glare drills straight into the back of my brain. I shut one eye, scroll with the other, and piece together enough of last night to make myself wince.
I won a little.
Then I lost a lot.
Then I became convinced that statistically my luck had to turn.
That is the sort of sentence people say right before their bodies are found in ornamental water features.
I drop the comm on my chest and stare at the ceiling.
The ceiling, for its part, is doing a subtle rotational thing I don’t approve of.
“Right,” I say to it. “Today we become a man of restraint and fiscal sobriety.”
