He avoids your face, backing away, the gym bag in his hand trailing along the ground.
It’s not news to you that you look like you’re attending the creepiest masquerade ever. What would be news to the world is how the rotted flesh pulled across your face once belonged to your father’s hand. The bones of his fingers, entwined by rope, keep the mask tight across dozens of tiny scars he inflicted upon you. But that story isn’t anyone’s business but your own. Not even Karl knows about this.
“You’re her,” he says.
The certainty in his voice is rewarding considering how many posers are out there pretending they’re you. You’re as unmistakable as your product is unrivaled.
“I’m Mike,” he says.
You know.
You know his name and you know why he’s here.
You reach into your jacket pocket, and your fingers brush against the small pistol while grabbing the drugs. “It’s eight thousand for Trance.” You’ve never killed before, but if he tries haggling on this evening when you’re desperate to get back home for some normalcy with Karl, this boy will have a third eye before he even realizes you’ve grabbed your only-for-absolute-emergencies gun.
He tries handing over his gym bag, but you hold up your hand and he halts. You point to the backpack leaning against a grimy crane that’s missing a wheel. “Put the money in there,” you say. The aluminum inside the backpack will interfere with any signals in the event Mike was recruited by Local to bug you. The price on your head for being the most wanted girl in the city is huge.
You should start increasing your rates for how risky this is becoming.
Mike kneels between the bags, shuffling cash from one to the next. If there’s even one dollar missing, you’ll put him through a pain he won’t be able to forget even with a strong dose of Daze.
“I need my girlfriend back,” Mike says, looking up at you as if this is a surprise. Even if you hadn’t stalked him online to see his recent relationship status switch from IN A RELATIONSHIP to SINGLE, you’d know what was up. Love is the reason Trance is such a top-seller. “She found out I was cheating on her. It was a mistake, seriously. I’ll never do it again. We just need a fresh start.”
You hate hearing the stories. You didn’t care about the woman who needed Daze to forget the sins against her sister and start anew. You didn’t care about the man who needed Token to remember his dead stepfather more vividly. You didn’t care about the man who needed Trance to trick his boss into giving him a promotion he didn’t deserve. You don’t care about this kid needing Daze to get his girlfriend back. But you listen because a god is only a god when they know how to serve their worshippers.
“Daze will work, right?”
“Your doubts are not my problem. My reputation has gotten you this far.”
This is why the cops and bounty hunters want you so badly. The authorities don’t care as much about people forgetting their own drama or taking a stroll down memory lane. They care when Daze, Trance, and Token are used against others. The authorities are too caught up in locking you away to see the good of what you do. How some takers are better off. Some were nobodies off the streets. Others needed escapes from abusive situations, new identities. But they don’t see that. They chase you down because they think what you’re doing is unethical. Except you don’t force this on anyone.
Not anyone who doesn’t deserve it, at least.
Mike finishes depositing all the cash into your bag and looks up at you.
You toss him the drugs, which he catches with shaky hands. He stares at the small velvet pouch containing the four Daze seeds. “How should I—”
“Your move, not mine,” you say.
You only supply the seeds. It’s up to them to plant it.
You’re betting on him bowing out of this completely. You doubt his desperation. You also care so little you’re already thinking about putting his father’s eight thousand dollars toward a yacht for you and Karl.
Mike stares at the pouch with a loser’s smile. “Who said you can’t buy happiness, eh?”
You roll your eyes.
He takes a couple of steps toward you, and the gun is out of your pocket so fast the smile is still on his face. But he doesn’t beg for his life. “You’re an angel,” he says. Even as he looks upon your face, masked with flesh so rotten it’s gone charcoal black, he calls you an angel. This is a first. You’ve been called a god for your power and you’ve been called the devil for your fierceness, but you’ve never been called an angel for your services.
Mike looks as if he wants to bow before you and kiss your feet, but instead he turns away from you and the gun you’re pointing at him.
An angel. Interesting.
“Put the gun down!” This new voice rips you out of your reverie. A bald, muscular brute in a tacky denim vest and wielding a shotgun steps out from behind the crooked crane.
You hate being told what to do.
You almost shoot Mike while the gun is fixed on him, but you can see the pure terror and surprise on Mike’s face—he didn’t set you up. The accomplices in these ambushes are always so proud to have gotten you, but that doesn’t last long. In the past, you’ve used Trance on your opponents, turning them all against one another. It’s always amusing when you force the accomplice to strangle the mercenary who recruited him.
You nod at Mike, and he gets your signal, fleeing with the powerful seeds you’ve sold him. He was right. You are an angel.
But even an angel has to put her halo down from time to time.
You turn your attention to the tacky brute, and you wonder how you’ll make him kill himself. A bullet to the head is too easy.
“You probably shouldn’t let someone run off with the drugs you’re hunting me down for,” you say, eyeing the bag of cash from your transaction. You’ll go home with the bag and whatever money is in this clown’s pocket, if anything.
“We don’t care about your drugs,” the brute says.
Two more figures file in from your left, where Mike ran away. One is a woman, pretty if you’re into faces with less personality than a mannequin’s, and slender enough that breaking her arms should be easy. The other is a young man in a black lab coat with a face in desperate need of a mask—swollen nose, black eye, receding hairline.
“Let me guess. You work for Pierce.” Only power-hungry junkies hopped up on Brawn would be bold enough to take you on weaponless.
“We know you kidnapped Franklin,” the wannabe scientist says.
You cringe. You’ve always hated the name Franklin.
“Where is he?” the girl asks. She looks to be in her early twenties. She’s likely the victim of many poor life choices, but stepping into the arena with you will be the one she loses her life over.
“He’s gone forever,” you happily report.
“You don’t kill,” the girl says.