“Let me know how she does,” Killian ordered, and Whitney nodded grudgingly.
Though she knew the girl disliked her and clearly wished she would go away, Ynna wanted to impress her. She needed friends outside the apartment, and she hoped that she could turn Whitney around.
As they exited the building, both girls ignored Killian as he called after them, “I love to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.”
Whitney shook her head. “That’s not even the fucking saying.”
“He’s a dimwit anyway,” Ynna said.
“Dimwit who pays,” Whitney corrected.
“He creep on you?” Ynna asked, trying to sound conversational, but the words sounded stilted as they left her mouth.
“Sure, but who wouldn’t? I mean, look at me,” she said with a sweeping hand gesture.
There it was—that confidence Ynna so desperately wanted. Whitney turned an eye on her. “You’re no slouch, though. I’m sure the boys love to put you away wet.”
Ynna stifled her shock. The brazen bluntness of the girl’s words was not like anything she was used to. In the circles she was used to running in, saying what you meant was a social faux pas.
Ynna dropped her head and mumbled, “I mean, I do okay.”
“I’m sure you do more than okay, and I’ll tell you right now, I’m not in the market for any competition.”
Ynna looked her over, watching her perfect ass shift as she walked. She tried to think of just the right thing to say, trying, “You have nothing to worry about with me. I mean, look at you.”
Without thinking, she reached out and slapped the girl on her behind. Instantly, she regretted taking that drink again. Whitney wheeled around, but rather than the anger Ynna anticipated, she was smiling.
“You’ve got fire in you, girl,” Whitney said, and for the first time, Ynna felt as though she was making headway.
“I try,” Ynna smirked.
“You smell like fucking sauce,” Whitney noted with a raised eyebrow.
“That a problem?” Ynna asked, feeling more at ease with her.
Whitney smiled. “Oh, hell no. Just an observation. I prefer the synth stuff myself, but to each her own.”
Ynna had dabbled in the lab-created recreational drugs but had found them too powerful. The loss of control made her uncomfortable, and she had found it boring to lay on couches in palatial estates tripping.
“Alright, princess. Ready for a whole new world?” Whitney mocked as they approached an abandoned factory.
“Sure,” Ynna grumbled, not surprised that the young woman had reverted to her patronizing tone.
The brick building was massive, the heavy doors frozen open with rust. Tents and tarps were propped against machinery unused for an age. The vaulted roof was lined with cracked and broken windows. People milled about lazily, exchanging trinkets and stories.
“What is this place?” Ynna heard herself asking.
Whitney chuckled. “People just call it The Press. Used to be someplace they printed stuff on paper. Home away from home for some, straight-up home for others.”
“Oh,” Ynna said as she passed an open tent with a man snoring loudly in nothing but ripped underpants. He gripped an injector with an affixed empty vial in one hand that had fallen open. Scars and open sores covered his body.
The two young women turned many heads, but no one approached them.
Whitney seemed to read Ynna’s mind. “We are safe here.”
Ynna knew better than to trust her but felt that she was sincere.
They walked over to a dilapidated couch where a young man and woman sat watching daytime television on a small screen with protruding wires covered in gnaw marks from rats. Both sets of eyes turned to look at them as they approached.
“The two of you make quite a pair,” the boy said, standing and extending a hand to Ynna. He was shorter than she and seemed to want to make up for lack of height with width. He was muscular, a large vascular arm reaching out to her from under a black tank top with the words “sponsored product” stenciled across his chest. He had black hair, shaved on the side and slicked back on top. “I’m Metric,” he said, shaking with one hand and sweeping his long, greasy hair back with the other. He hooked a thumb to the girl with similar facial features to him and a spiked purple Mohawk. “There’s my sister, Pes.”
She gave a slight wave, rattling the bands of costume jewelry on her wrist. She was short and plump with piercings covering her ears, nose, and eyebrows. She looked at Ynna with the same derision that Whitney had.
“There are more of us,” Metric informed her, “but we are the most important two.”
“He thinks of himself as our leader,” Whitney explained with an eye roll.
Metric grinned. “I am the leader.”
“You just keep telling yourself that,” Whitney mocked and shoved him playfully. Ynna understood then why the girl had been threatened by her. Ynna would make it clear, as quickly as she could, that she had no interest in the little strongman.
“I’m Ynna,” she told the two of them.
Pes snorted. “With the two of you around, we’ll be able to pull jobs on all the men in town.”
Ynna tried to hide her grimace. All the rich fathers with their genetically designed children had tried to one-up each other through the outward beauty of their offspring. For her whole life, Ynna had been little more than a prop her father had used to aggrandize himself, and now these kids saw her as little more than a pretty girl, too. She wanted to prove her value as more than that.
“I’m Ynna. Killian said you could use another pair of hands,” she said, hoping to change the subject.
It didn’t work. “I’m surprised he didn’t want your pair of hands,” Metric said, obviously pleased with his own joke.
“Gross,” Ynna said, trying to play it off, but her displeasure was obvious.
Whitney snorted a laugh. “You’ve clearly never been very desperate.”
Ynna looked at her in shock.
She shrugged, averting her eyes. “Desperate times.”
Whitney looked to Metric. “What’s on the menu for today?”
Metric smiled as Pes chucked him a bag. He opened it to reveal what appeared to be fine jewelry, though Ynna knew better.
“So, what, we get suckers to buy fake stuff for a marked-up price?” Ynna asked, and they all laughed. She felt her face flush with embarrassment.
“No,” Metric said. “Much simpler. While you two try to convince rich tourists to buy the shit for their wives, we pick their pockets. The marks will be too distracted by a nice pair of tits to notice as we snatch the cash chip.”
Ynna tried her best not to let her annoyance with the comment show. She would go along with the plan and try to befriend them, but she was determined to come up with her own clever plan—though she had to admit to herself that she had no idea where to begin.
“Why do they carry cash chips?” Ynna asked. Though Killian had paid her with one, most people she knew used digital currency exclusively.
“You really are new to the world,” Metric laughed, clapping his hands bemusedly.
Whitney put an assuring hand on Ynna’s shoulder. “Most of the tourists we target are off-worlders who get chips when they arrive at port.”
“Oh,” Ynna said, feeling foolish.
“Killian said you were a looker, so we got you this,” Pes interjected and threw a band of white fabric at Ynna that she caught awkwardly.
She flipped it over in her hands. “What am I looking at?”
“A top,” Whitney chuckled, and Ynna’s eyes darted from the fabric to the girl. “Trust me. It’ll do the trick.”
Of that, Ynna had no doubt. The fabric was light and pale and would be less than she had worn to the beach club on a sweltering day. For the first time since meeting with them, Ynna doubted if she could work with them. “Is there someplace I can change?” she whispered to Whitney.
“Here isn’t good enough for you, milady?” Pes snar
led. Ynna felt her face burn with rage and humiliation. She considered just telling them to fuck off and go back to her room to finish out the school day. That thought, the idea of sitting in the cramped space, suffering through another lecture, fortified her resolve.
“It’s no big deal,” Whitney assured her, pulling off her vest to expose the slight bra she wore. “We’ll end the day with some cash.”
“Fine,” Ynna said, determined. She pulled her shirt off with trembling hands and folded it before realizing there was no good place to set it down and simply throwing it on top of a broken box that served as a table. She ignored the eyes on her as she pulled the band over her head and onto her chest. She tried not to pay attention to how little cover it provided as she pulled her bra off from under it.
Metric was beaming, Whitney was looking on her with a surprising face of support, and Pes was staring daggers. She adjusted the top and threw the bra to join her shirt, looking down to see the clear outline of her breasts and nipples showing through the fabric. She looked away to keep from running out the door in shame. She had never worn anything like this and couldn’t believe that she was now.
“They definitely won’t see us coming,” Metric said, almost bursting.
Whitney turned and whispered. “I honestly thought you would run the second you saw that.”
“I wanted to,” Ynna admitted. She didn’t know why she felt comfortable saying that to the girl she had just met, but at that moment, she just needed someone.
“You’re doing great,” Whitney told her softly. Ynna wondered why she was being so kind all of a sudden but was grateful for it.
“What now?” Ynna asked, trying to sound confident and failing.
“Now we go shopping,” Whitney said.
Chapter 5
The shopping district by the port was abuzz with activity. People were moving from storefronts to stalls to purchase goods they could not get anywhere but here. Where the people of earth used cybernetic bioaugments to compete with robots for jobs, the off-worlders had used bioengineered rapid evolution to survive on distant planets. Skin of every color, plate calluses, gills, massive eyes, and many other adaptations that changed the human form could be found all around them.
Ynna—having only ever met businesspeople from other planets—was shocked to see how different people could be.
“Crazy, right?” Whitney asked, following Ynna’s wide eyes.
“It is,” she said, unable to say much more. Metric and Pes had run off to get into position, leaving the two girls to walk the streets and look for a potential victim.
“Want a quick pick-me-up before we get into this?” Whitney asked, gesturing to a shady man in a trench coat standing at the end of an alley.
Ynna couldn’t help herself. “Why are you being so nice?”
Whitney stopped walking and turned with a smile. “What?”
“You were so cold this morning, and now you’re being all kind, and it’s weird,” Ynna stated more bluntly than she had ever said anything.
Whitney’s smile grew wider. “You. Well, it’s just. Killian said you were smart, and then I saw you, and you’re also pretty, and I was annoyed. But then when I saw how nervous and overwhelmed you were, I don’t know. You reminded meؙ—well, you reminded me of me.”
“Oh,” Ynna said.
“Yeah,” Whitney nearly whispered. “And I didn’t have anyone to help me when I started, and I wanted to help you, you know?”
“That’s nice,” Ynna said, surprised by the answer. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Whitney said. “Still wish you were ugly, though.”
“Sorry,” Ynna chuckled. She felt relieved and happy she had asked. While she hated the outfit they had picked for her, the warm sun of the day felt nice on her skin, and she took just a moment to breathe in deeply before they got to work.
“Whatever,” Whitney said in a genial tone. “It’ll get us paid, right?”
“Right,” Ynna agreed and pointed to the alley. “Now, let’s go talk to your sketchy-ass friend.”
Whitney grinned and grabbed Ynna’s hand, dragging her over to the massive man in the alley.
“Hey, Whit,” he said, sounding out of breath though he was just standing there immobile.
“Hey, Tubb,” she said.
“Little ’eng for me and a swig for my new friend,” she said.
“I got you,” he said, producing a nanovial with microinjector and handing it over. She pressed the tip to her arm, and it made a dull popping sound before the liquid entered her body.
“Ooh, boy,” she said as a wave of vibration moved from her feet to her head. She dropped the vial and stamped on it like a cigarette butt. The big man nodded approvingly and pulled a flask from his coat, which he handed to Ynna.
She tried not to think how many mouths had been on the flask as she unscrewed the top, the metal catching on a thin layer of gunk. Hesitantly, she moved it to her lips.
“Woah, woah, woah,” Tubb said. “What kind of place you think this is?”
He pulled a small paper cup from another pocket and handed it over. The cup was comically tiny in his massive hand.
“Thanks,” Ynna said as she poured herself a shot of whatever this was. It smelled like rubbing alcohol. Taking a sip, she was shocked that it actually didn’t taste as bad as it smelled. It was a pleasant surprise.
Whitney looked at her, eyes narrowed and focused.
“Ready to learn a thing?” she asked excitedly.
Ynna smiled. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
As they stepped into the street, assessing their prey, Whitney explained, “We want someone confused. Distracted. In over their head here. Someone like—like that.”
She pointed to a blue-skinned man with a full, skintight bodysuit and clear plastic dome over his head attached by a hose to a water pack. He left steaming footprints on the ground as he walked the street, looking nervous and overwhelmed.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you looking for something for your wife, perhaps?” Whitney asked as she bound into the space in front of him. Behind auto-adjusting light lenses, his massive eyes went wide with surprise before scanning the two girls the way a dog looks at a food dish set before it.
“Uh, um, yes,” he said, the words spraying the water seeping from his headgear.
“Great!” Whitney said with a charming energy Ynna had never seen from her before. “We have just the thing for you!”
She opened the bag and produced a necklace with a green gem hanging from the bottom. “This is jade and gold, two substances unique to earth and something your better half is sure to love.”
She kept talking, never giving him even a moment to reply.
As she spoke, Metric rounded a corner casually. Ynna had expected him to skulk out and creep over to steal the money, but he simply strode down the street like any of the other shoppers. As though he was checking out some electronics at a nearby window, he passed behind the blue man and entered a shop.
It all happened so fast that Ynna wasn’t even sure if it had happened. She couldn’t believe how easy it all was. Being a part of it made her nervous, though, and she was grateful for the drink, knowing her hands would be trembling without it. She worked hard to keep her eyes from darting around nervously, looking for Carcer officers.
“So, are you interested?” Whitney finished her pitch with a question.
“Yes, um, well, maybe,” he sputtered, seeming confused by the question. “How much?”
“That’s the best part, it’ll only cost you one hundred thousand,” Whitney said, and the man’s mouth fell open.
“Oh, no, no. Too much, too much,” he said, raising his hands and shifting uncomfortably.
“Alright, no worries, maybe next time,” Whitney beamed and nearly skipped away.
“Holy shit,” Ynna said when they had moved far enough away.
“Pretty cool, right?” Whitney asked excitedly, a broad grin on her face.
Ynna nodded. “Yes, it happened so fast.�
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“When you pick the right target, it does,” Whitney said, obviously proud of herself.
“What if he had been willing to pay the unreasonable amount?” Ynna asked.
“I just keep jacking the price ’til they back off,” she explained.
“Has it ever failed?” Ynna asked.
“Sure, once, but when he realized his money was gone, I made a break for it,” Whitney said, looking down and shifting her leg.
“And do they ever get Carcer involved?” Ynna asked nervously.
Whitney laughed. “That’s the beauty of it! Most off-worlders have free, governmental police and are in for a rude awakening when they realize they don’t have the money to pay Carcer to get their money back! They could take out a loan, but most tourists just here for a weekend don’t want to pay the interest. Works like a charm.”
Ynna realized then that she had not understood Carcer properly. As a rich kid, the officers had mostly seemed like their protectorate, but for those without money, there could be no justice.
“Is what we are doing wrong?” Ynna asked before adding, “philosophically, I mean.”
Whitney stopped for a moment and looked at her. “Yeah, I mean, kinda.”
“Oh,” Ynna said, not thrilled about the answer. She had hoped to have her guilt assuaged, but now she felt uncomfortable.
Whitney noticed. “But what you have to understand is that we have nothing, and these people,” she gestured to the shoppers with armloads of bags. “They have enough money to spend a whole day buying shit. And what’s more, many of them can afford a flight to a different fucking planet. If they have that kind of money, they really aren’t going to miss what we snatch.”
The justification was weak, but it was enough to satisfy Ynna.
The rest of the day went smoothly. They picked a few more pockets. Whitney even gave Ynna a chance to try her hand at distraction. Ynna sounded awkward and uncomfortable in her own ears, sputtering, and stuttering.
“I—I think she would like this,” she forced, producing a ring with a trembling hand.
“Ooh, that’s nice,” the mark said, eyeing it as Pes strode over behind him. Remembering what Whitney had taught her, Ynna made sure to keep her eyes firmly on the target though she couldn’t help but want to watch the thieving unfold. Her heart thrummed, and it took all her strength not to blow their cover.
Deadly in Pink Page 4