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Aiken and I are an intimidating duo, sure, but unless you’re on our list, we’re relatively harmless. Relatively.
We shuffle forward in the slow-moving line, and I glance up at the giant video terminal fixed above a row of closed-up bodegas. The bright lights and cheerful music from the video seem to perk Aiken up. He dances along with the gyrating Human girls wearing nothing but skimpy bikinis.
And then she comes onto the screen. Kallista, the woman everyone calls the star princess. It’s not her actual title, but the media has practically crowned her as such.
She appears to be in her mid-twenties and has the longest, most flowing blond hair I’ve ever seen on a Human and rich violet eyes that suck you in like a black hole. They’ve got to be fake—a makeup Weave programmed to make her look that way—because there’s no way anyone can look that fine without some sort of technological assistance. At least, noHumancan look that fine.
Most people these days don’t leave their homes without putting a Weave filter on their face and hair, covering up their natural features. Hundreds of years ago, you could only do that with your phone using an app, and from the archival footage I’ve seen, it was easy to tell when someone was using one.
Now? The filters are so good and can be worn whenever the user wants, and they look believable as hell. There are even some couples who have gone their entire relationship without knowing what the other actually looks like. Yeah, no. Definitely not for me, thanks.
Aiken lets out a roar of happiness when Kallista twirls across the screen in thigh-high white boots that make her legs look long and slender. She brushes her hair out of her face and holds up a bottle of perfume, and just like that, the ad is over and the screen flicks to an ad for a diet soda brand.
“Love her,” Aiken says, followed by a dreamy sigh. I catch him making gooey, love-struck eyes at the soda, and I let out a small chuckle.
“I know, big guy. I know. Hey, maybe one day we’ll get lucky enough to go see her tour,” I say as we move up in line. There are still twenty men in front of us. Good lord, this is taking forever. So much for that hot shower, I guess. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I even get any sleep tonight.
Aiken lets out a trill of approval. You’d never know that, only moments ago, this guy snapped someone’s neck in a dark alleyway with absolutely zero remorse. But he loves women and would do anything to see them happy, which is also why he loves spoiling the sex workers silly. I know it’s none of my business what he spends his credits on, but I’m sure there’s a woman out there somewhere who would be happy to put up with him for free.
I pat him on the back and smirk. “Yeah. Next time, we’ll go.”
But probably not, because seeing Kallista in concert is expensive as fuck. Even though we get paid the big bucks, it’s hard to justify that sort of luxury on a few hours of pleasure. Then again, Aiken spends most of his credits at the brothel, so there’s not much of a difference.
When we step up to the terminal’s dark blue glowing interface, I let out a deep sigh. Fucking finally. I thought I was going to grow old and die in this line. Aiken always needs me to do the button pushing for him, because his fingers are too fat for the machines. The ladies love them, though, or so he tells me. Me, on the other hand? I come from a long line of elvish warriors hailing from the planet Nymfarr, and my graceful fingers have no issues pressing buttons.
“Alright, how much do you want this time?” I ask as my fingers hover over the glowing pad.
He holds up both hands and wiggles his fingers. I sigh again.
“That’s too much. Come on, Aik. You want to go see Kallista’s show, right? You can’t do that if you’re giving the women all your credits. How about … half of that?” I suggest.
Aiken’s thick brow slams together and I hear a rumble of disapproval.
Okay, fine. I pull out 7,500 credits and hand over the credit chip to him. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
He glares at me, not appreciating my shitty joke, then pulls me along with him toward the brothel. The woman at the door, Madame Cornelia, who wears a gaudy chiffon dress with twin poofs on her shoulders, cries out when she sees the two of us.
“Is that my Aikey-poo?!” she squeals.
I shoot him a withering stare as he rushes off to gather the madame up into his massive arms and swings her around. It always scares me whenever he handles someone that way, but he would never hurt his favorite people in the galaxy, I remind myself. Besides, Madame Cornelia never seems to mind it.
She presses her dark-red lips to his cheek, leaving behind a big lipstick stain, and says, “Who did you kill today? You’ll have to tell me all about it.” And she leads him inside, ignoring me completely. Which I get, I really do, because every time I’m in here, I resign myself to the bar and sip watered-down cocktails all night while I wait for Aiken to tire himself out. Which means I’m in for a looong night.
Yeah. I think I need a new line of work.
3KALLISTA
“Kal, no. Bad, Kal! Bad!” Chloe, my Terran makeup artist, waves her hand through the terminal screen just as the start of HAHA Entertainment’s nightly news segment starts. The Terminal550’s screen glows a soft, bluish hue in front of my nose, then flickers and dies as Chloe dismisses it.
I sigh and slump back in the chair as she opens a compact and dabs some concealer around my eye. Yes, I would just use a Weave to hide the marks on my face from where my head made best friends with the vanity counter the night before, but it’s good to take precautions. Just in case the tech fails, as Margot likes to say.
I don’t know how many times she’s told me the story. “It happened to Lacie once in the middle of a show. Ten thousand fans saw her Weave die in the middle of that stupid song about her dog or something, and then….” I can almost see Margot snapping her fingers. “Just like that! The Weave died and her naked face was on display. It was in the news for a solid month.
Besides, I like Chloe and I want her to have a job. So here I am, sitting in her makeup chair, getting the thickest concealer she owns applied to the biggest bruise I now own.
“That bad, huh?” I say as she takes a step back to examine her work. “The tabloids, I mean. I know my face is busted.”
It’s not the first time I’ve had a bruise on my face, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. That doesn’t bother me.
