The security man didn’t budge a millimetre.
Hector clicked his tongue. “I’ll shave 5% off the final price.”
“Deal.”
DROP THIRTY-SIX
To say that he looked out of place would be an understatement. Next to rows and rows of Porsches and Ferraris, he parked his dingy truck. It was brown.
The Laimargia restaurant was so fancy, it completely redefined the meaning.
They gave him a suit jacket to wear. It was mandatory. He felt a bit silly, he should have thought this through. The who’s-who of Athens dined in there.
And that’s where he’d meet Mamacita.
He spotted her on a table, along with Hondros of course, who was wrestling with a lobster and winning apparently, so he ate him. Another man, practically eating out of her hand, had eyes only for her. He was younger, handsome, well-dressed. Hector assumed that she wouldn’t really mind seducing him.
He sat on the bar and ordered a drink. Which he nearly choked on when he saw the price. Sure, he had a few incoming piles of money but he wasn’t anywhere near the black.
Why was he even doing this again?
The pair of sleepy eyes next to him reminded him why.
“You tricked me.”
Her voice was pure honey. “Oh? How did I do that?”
“You gave me, you-know-what, so that I’d learn about the effects and force it on my athlete.”
“Yes, I did that.”
Hector shook his head, incredulous. “So, you admit it?”
“Yes. But I had no choice. Yianni is forcing me to do it.”
“Do what exactly?”
Mamacita leaned in close and smothered him with her aroma. She purred in his ear, “Seduce owners. Give them a taste of the drug.” She bit his earlobe softly.
Tingles travelled down his spine.
“Then let him hear the gossip, and force it on his women. After that, if some accident were to happen, it’s Yannis’ turn to seduce the owner in business and provide the band-aid.” She pulled back, slowly.
Hector was breathing hard. “And you’re telling me all this, why?”
She drank from his ouzo. “I read people. It’s my superpower,” she shrugged, chuckling. “I knew you were noble even before I heard about Cherry.”
He pointed at his chest. “This particular noble is walking out of here if you don’t tell him exactly what you want, lady.”
“I want you to buy my contract,” she said, toying with the white liquid in her mouth.
“From Hondros?” Hector said, pointing a thumb towards his table.
“M-mm,” she purred.
“Have you seen what you’re worth? I can’t afford that!”
“Wait six days. Then bring him an offer for me, one you can afford. I’ll make sure he’ll want to take it.” Mamacita stood up and brushed the tip of her breast on his shoulder.
He watched her swaying behind as she left, and he could swear it was calling out to him.
DROP THIRTY-SEVEN
“You are thinking with your dick. Again,” Patty yelled at him, her hands up in the air.
Hector leaned back on his chair. The shop was quiet and he had paperwork to finish. The street outside was smoggy, the night making it look even dirtier. The steady rumble of traffic from Syggrou avenue further down worked like white noise to the senses.
“I’m not, she-”
“She admitted to manipulating owners. And manipulating you as well, right to your face. But nooo, she’s a good whore, not a bad one. Let’s believe whatever she says,” she mocked.
“Pickle, I have survived in this world before I met you, you know.”
“No, you’re a softie and a pushover,” she said, pushing his chair.
Hector started to complain, even get a bit angry at her.
She dialled it down, but kept pushing. “You let Diego rack up debt, a junkie. I had no choice, he’d bought my contract, I was stuck with him. Why did you?”
Hector fell silent.
Patty sat on the display case and cleaned a corner with her fingers. “Exactly. ‘Cause you’re a softie. He went down and almost took everyone else down with him.”
“How did he treat you?” Hector asked, biting his lips. He couldn’t meet her gaze, and neither could she.
She sighed, craning her neck backwards. “Oh, he was okay, as owners go. He didn’t hit me or anything, and didn’t sell my body around.”
“He loved you,” Hector said softly.
Patty just nodded and sniffed.
“For what it’s worth, he asked me to take care of you. I didn’t pay attention then, but...”
“Is that why you’re doing this? To honour a dead junkie’s last wish?” she asked bitterly.
“No. I’m just doing what feels right.”
She smiled at him in an I-told-you-so expression. A tear ran down the good part of her face.
“I’m telling you, it feels right, helping Mamacita out.” He touched his chest.
She stood up, hands on her hips, looking around. “Whatever,” she sniffed. “This store is filthy. No wonder you ain’t got no clientele. Where do you keep the cleaning supplies?”
DROP THIRTY-EIGHT
Hector checked his finances. He was going insane, pulling his hair out on how to pay the rest of the money to Canvas. He’d show up at some point and Hector wouldn’t be able to swindle his way out of it this time.
Patty made him 4500. The pay was 5000, but 500 euro always went to paying off her debt, the cut didn’t even touch her bank account. Hector looked up the contracts, running them through Tony’s extremely handy ‘Dumb it down for me’ AI. That was standard practice he saw for all such contracts, and it actually protected athletes from exploitative owners. The corps couldn’t trust the owners that they’d pay off the girls’ interest rates, so the contract stated that interest would be always kept from any income they gained. The rest of the money were at the owner’s discretion.
He took the 4k and left her 500 euro in her account, which he had full access to in a severe warping of laws by the corporations. Saving on rent would be a good thing as months went by. But her recovery had already brought him deep in the red. After they fixed her eye next month, the mechdoc was saving it for her, he decided that a round 1k would be a fair allowance for her. Not that he’d deny any reasonable request for expenses.
He finished the last order he had and actually got paid. That was after Patty send them a polite reminder of a late-fee overcharge in their invoice and then called them the next day. They paid on time, and Hector paid off the supplier, leaving him with 1k profit. It was minimal, but he had offered a 50% off deal if they took it immediately. His neck was on the line.
That left him with 5k. Simple math, he needed 6k, so he was 1k short. That small amount of money might as well be a million in this instance. He had no favours to call on, no more clients owing him money. His assets were his shop with the house on top, his truck, and some inventory. He could perhaps sell his truck, but he doubted he could get more than 500 euro for it.
Yeah, it was that old.
He could sublet storage space, as he had done so in the past. But the shopkeeper next door who needed it had shut down two years ago. Now it was a car shop, fitting armoured cars. And the other shop sold guns. They wouldn’t rent unsecured storage space, and Hector didn’t want them to.
He could push that security doorman, George, to pay him the rest of his order, but Hector didn’t like trading the ire of one scary man for that of another.
So, still 1k short. And Canvas would be deaf to his excuses.
He could always sell Patty’s contract. He looked around at his store. It had never looked so tidy and clean. He hadn’t asked her to clean it up, she’d just done so by herself. She was very annoying at times, and she had taken over his bedroom, a fact which he was reminded of whenever he repositioned his aching back. But she was growing on him. And who would he sell her to? Nicomedes, that sleazy fucker? Or Hondros, who pretended to b
e nice and orchestrated accidents and disasters with back-handed manipulations? Or, any other owner? Hector hadn’t met a decent person yet in this shitty business.
He had no illusions, he wasn’t a saint. He sold armour to organised crime so they could bully and kidnap and murder, remaining safe while doing so. And the legal guys were no different, they simply had a logo on their armour. He wasn’t the one creating the mess, sure, but he kept the ones perpetuating it alive and kicking.
But he drew a line at some things. He’d always done what felt right, and the way the owners treated the athletes was... certainly not right, at all. He remembered an episode he liked from that classic TV show, Doctor Who. He watched that show with his dad on the weekends. There was a disaster, a volcano at Pompey. They didn’t even have a word for Hephaestus’ wrath back then. And the Doctor said it was bigger than him, it was a fixed disaster in history, done, he couldn’t save them. His friend begged him to save someone. Anyone. To them, it would matter. To them, it would be the most important thing in the world.
So, he did save a family.
And to them, it mattered.
So, no. He’d never sell Patty’s contract, no matter how tough things got.
Hector sighed. He had no choice. He pulled up the banking system and drew the remaining 500 from Patty’s account. He had 80 in wallet. Bringing him at 420 short. Canvas wouldn’t kill him and paint his Apollonian body with Hector’s blood for a measly 420 euros, would he?
He could also go to a loan shark, which would simply delay the inevitable, as they would gouge him in interest and leave him strapped for cash in two months.
As if on queue, Patty jumped down the stairs and ran up to him, excited.
“I figured out how to make the cash we need!”
She slapped a flyer on his counter. ‘Underground Jugger Match,’ it said, then went on with some details.
He looked up at her. “No, this is too dangerous.”
Patty grinned and looked at him wide-eyed. “Yes!”
DROP THIRTY-NINE
Canvas prayed to the war god, Ares. He was breathing hard, back against the wall. Angelo was down and bleeding, a mere three metres to the side, yet he couldn’t reach him.
Bullets whizzed and ricocheted around him, cover fire from a sentry landrone. It was high calibre, tearing through walls and cover as if it were cheese.
There were twelve hostages inside, two of them underage. Canvas injected a stim in his thigh. He peeked around as fast as he could and seared their positions in his mind. He was so fast that his combat veil didn’t have time to register the non-combatants, he had to do this old-style.
It was good that he had ducked, because the sentry drone shot the very spot his head had been a fraction of a second later.
Michael was further back, pinned down as well. Injured, but barely. Canvas checked his ammo. Three clips. He switched into single fire mode and popped out, shot once, making sure there were no hostages anywhere near his line of fire, and ducked again.
The cement corner turned into fine dust.
He gritted his teeth. It was now or never. “Michael, pull Angelo behind cover as soon as I draw fire.”
“No, babe, you’ll-”
“Michael!” he demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
Canvas darted out of cover and went into a mad dash. He felt rocks hitting him, perhaps debris from the shredding of the wall behind him. That damn sentry drone was far too intelligent, definitely black-market AI. It had shot his scout drone, all of their combat mirrors, everything, single shot. It was maddeningly accurate. From the collective two seconds Canvas had managed to see of it, it was a silly thing, a machine gun whirring about, balancing on top of two rugged wheels like a killer Segway.
And it might have already gotten Angelo. “Can’t see, did you get him safe?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael said, panting. “He’s, uh, it’s bad. I’m patching him up, but we need a Tripod, like now.”
“It will just get shot down, wait for the all clear.” Canvas of course wanted to call up a Tripod real bad. Those glorious medivac drones of Apollo, they’d swoop down in a column of light and take care of the wounded and dying, bringing them back to life. But it would just get shot down. No self-respecting officer would ever program his sentry drone to shoot a medivac down, but he was certain this one would.
Damn that nutjob, damn him! He hated those people, those rebelling against corporations and all that nonsense. Stupid, ugly, unfuckable toads. Blowing up buildings, hacking data serves, pasting their shit ideology around. What did they expect people to do? Just sit back and watch? No, they sent people like him to clean it up. Fuckers. People didn’t care. They just wanted to live their lives and eat their pizzas and spend their paycheck on stupid crap.
Why did morons like those guys want to take a shit all over everyone’s parade?
He glanced at the rebel once more. A criminal. An ostracised person. Worthless. Killing people, blowing Canvas’ shit up.
His neighbourhood. Fucker coming to his neighbourhood, killing his people. Fucker. He’d kill him. He’d kill him and then hunt down all his chicken-shit pals and kill them too, and then draw dicks on their foreheads with each other’s blood.
Fuckers.
From his angle, Canvas could see the little girl on the ground, staring straight at him. She was scared and had her tiny little hands over her head. She couldn’t have been more than two years old.
“Joy!” a woman’s voice screamed and Canvas had to stick his head out.
The sentry was turning the barrel at the little girl.
This couldn’t have been autonomous behaviour. “No, no, no,” Canvas spat out and looked back. The criminal was controlling the sentry drone, gripping a tablet, eyes on the child.
Grimace of a madman.
“Fucker!” Canvas said and leaped forward. There was no time. He’d never get to the girl on time, even pumped full of stims as he was.
It was just not humanly possible.
The mother cried out, torn in half by the bullets. She fell on the ground, dying in a pool of red blood right in front of her child.
“Canvas, no!” his lover called out but he wasn’t about to stop now.
He grabbed the girl and ran for his life. It was easy because he actually was doing just that. The sentry tore up the place behind him. Again, rocks pelted his back.
Michael charged forward from his flanking position and shot the criminal right in his stupid, rebellious face. Then he tossed a grenade right into the middle of the hostage area.
“Michael?” Canvas cried out, surprised. Why had he risked the civilians? He hugged the little girl tight in his arms.
The grenade was just a soda can. The sentry identified it as a threat through, and targeted it, shooting it into a puff in the air. Michael got the opening to fire. It was half a second, but it was something.
“Cover your ears, sweetie,” he said to the girl, who complied like a good little soldier. Canvas pulled out his sidearm and fired along with Michael. The sentry drone sparked and whirred about, trying to remain upright. The barrel pointed around spasmodically and the pair didn’t wait to see if it was damaged enough. They unloaded all their rounds on it, taking care of their line of fire against the hostages.
The sentry got destroyed.
The hostages stood up cautiously, looking around.
“No more casualties,” Michael reported. “All clear?”
“All clear.”
At his command, there was a sonic boom above and the Tripod descended, grabbing Angelo inside its white light. Canvas held the girl away, preventing her from seeing her mother. “Hey, Joy is it? Right? Don’t turn around, just hold still and keep your eyes shut. Okay, my little soldier?”
Joy nodded all the way up and down, her tiny hands over her ears and her eyes closed with a frown. “Okay, sir.”
Canvas couldn’t help but smile at that. He rubbed her back and stepped forward to inspect the body on the ground, checki
ng for vital signs. She was gone.
Michael sent orders to the emergency response vehicles that were on standby, then ran to Canvas and felt him up.
“Hey, kids present.”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure I am. And so is Joy, who’s gonna keep her eyes shut until we find her daddy.”
“Babe, you got shot,” Michael said, worried. “There’s no way it didn’t go through, look at my Deltoid protector.” He lifted his upper arm. It was shredded, and he was very much bleeding, sipping through his bandage.
“No, I’m...” Canvas looked back at the holes on the wall. “I was shot, Ares’ balls, man. Sorry, Joy. Keep your ears closed.”
“Did Ares protect you, mister?”
“Sure he did. But he did so through the magnificent hands of a dear friend of mine. His name is Hector and I owe him my life.”
“Where’s my mommy?”
“...Let’s find your daddy, first.”
DROP FORTY
They were headed to pick up Tony on the way.
Athens was nice. There was plenty of traffic, the hustle and bustle of the nightlife was all around. The Gazi area they would eventually head to, known for bars and cultural events, was a mixed bag of experiences, from the posh to the downright underground.
They drove in silence, radio off. She was silent as well, probably thinking over their problems from every angle. Hector appreciated a woman that could sit silent next to you without blabbing your ears off. His ex was the exact opposite and it was honestly the worst thing you could do to an artisan like Hector, not letting him concentrate.
Hector laughed on his own.
“What?” she asked.
“I just realised I don’t know much about you. Why don’t you tell me some?”
“You’ve watched my interviews.” She waved it away, looking out the window.
“I haven’t. I want to hear it from you.”
Pie Box 1 Page 9