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Just as I think she’s about to get up to leave, a woman races into the bar looking like her ass is on fire. Her severe blunt bob is perfectly dry despite the downpour outside, and her ruby red lipstick looks like it was painted on.
“There you are!” the woman hisses, and Miss Hoodie cowers before hopping off the stool and making a beeline for the bathrooms at the back of the bar. The woman with the bob follows after her, and I follow them both with my eyes.
The woman in the gray hoodie makes a sharp U-turn and tries to run out of the bar through the emergency exit doors.
“Hey!” the bartender roars, pointing a meaty finger at them. “No one goes out that way!”
The woman in the hoodie is pushed into a corner by the woman with the black bob, and I frown. Okay, yeah. That’s definitely abnormal.
Because I hate peace and quiet and minding my own business, I drop my glass onto the coaster and approach the back corner, where the black-haired woman is currently whispering harsh words into the other’s ear.
“Everything okay over here, ladies?” I ask as I lean against the wall.
The black-bobbed woman doesn’t even spare me a second glance. “Fine. This is a private matter,” she grinds out. “Just go away, please.” Meanwhile, the woman in the hoodie keeps turning her face away, aiming it toward the wall.
I run my tongue across my bottom lip. “Hey,” I say, more softly this time as I address Miss Hoodie. “Are you good?”
Before she can answer me, however, Black Bob grabs her by the wrist and starts to drag her through the bar. Hoodie puts up a lot of resistance, trying to break free of the woman’s grasp.
“Stop, I said I was fine!” she yells, and wriggles free of Black Bob’s vice grip. Angry, moon-shaped marks are clearly visible on her skin, and I wince. Against my better judgment, I move forward, putting myself between the two women.
Black Bob narrows her gaze on me and crosses her arms. “Who the fuck are you? This is my friend. I told you to mind your damn business and butt out.”
Miss Hoodie shivers and starts to shuffle off toward the bathrooms again. I level my gaze on Black Bob and smirk. “You have an interesting idea of what a friend is, I take it.”
Black Bob scoffs, lifts her wrist, and presses a button on her terminal. It’s similar to mine, but it’s a much newer model. In fact, it might be the newest model on the market. Not too many folks can afford the Terminal550. Mine’s only the 375, but it works well enough. Black Bob’s ID pops up on the screen and floats between us with an eerie, blueish glow.
“Margot Robinson, manager over at Gabbor Entertainment, huh?” I say, rolling my shoulders back.
“Amazing. You can read. Thought I’d have to help you sound out the words.” Every word drips with bitter sarcasm. What an asshole. “That’s my client who just raced off to the bathroom. So, if you’ll please excuse me, I’d like to go retrieve her.”
I grit my teeth but reluctantly step aside. The bartender, who’s been watching the entire altercation go down, still hasn’t lifted a finger. The only thing that got him huffy was someone almost using the emergency exit.
Margot rushes off to the bathrooms and returns moments later with her client, whose head hangs in defeat as she’s dragged out of the bar without another word. Should I have stopped them? A nagging feeling in my gut tells me that I shouldn’t have given in so easily, but then again … I did want peace and quiet, right?
Maybe I haven’t learned, after all. I really need to start minding my own business.
Back at the bar, I look down at my half empty glass of whisky and the barely touched white wine sitting next to it. Suddenly, I’m not in the mood to drink anymore.
* * *
After the strange incident at the bar, I walk around the high-tech district about three times, then circle back to the brothel to wait for Aiken. By the time he stumbles out of the brothel—with an enormous grin on his face—it’s seven in the morning and I’m about ready to keel over.
Fuck, when was the last time I actually slept? Gorcians can go weeks, sometimes months, without sleeping, so I know Aiken will be ready to go if shit hits the proverbial fan. But me? I’m inches away from an early grave. Sensing this, Aiken shoves me out of the driver’s seat of our jammer and slides behind the wheel. Our jammer may not be top-of-the-line, but it has some of the best cloaking tech you can get off the black market, and it hasn’t failed us yet. The interior is a little too tight of a squeeze, though, leaving me with hardly any leg room. Aiken, on the other hand, fits inside snug as a bug in the rug. Which is apt, considering he’s pretty much a giant bug.
Not like he has to do much, in terms of driving. Most of the time, the jammer’s on autopilot. Still, it’s good to have someone with sharper cognitive abilities behind the controls just in case something goes tits up.
“All good?” he asks me in his broken Universal, and I nod.
“All good.” I lean back against the leather seat. “But maybe we could hold off on fleeing the planet until later tonight? My head needs to hit a pillow.”
5KALLISTA
Eight a.m. comes fast when you’re running on four hours of sleep and a lukewarm plasma packet. At breakfast, Margot sits across from me while I watch pedestrians head to work from our balcony window. So many people, young and old, fly through the sky on jammers, air cycles, and hoverboards while we bask in the rare warmth of the sunshine. I haven’t seen good weather since I was in Tokyo, and even then, it still rained half the trip.
I lift the glass of blush berry juice to my lips and grimace. “Why does it tingle?”
Margot’s sharp gaze flicks to mine. She’s wearing gold eyeliner this morning, and in the sun its shine is so intense it could rival a star. A chill passes through me as she stares at me, clearly grumpy from something she just read on her terminal, or maybe she’s still pissed about last night. We argued a little bit about it, but since it was so late, we decided to just go to bed. No sense in screaming at each other at four in the morning. “What? It’s blush berry,” she says, as if that explains everything.
