11.7
Once inside, Bat whispers over the comm, “Smells like feet in here.”
I manage not to laugh aloud. “Anyone home?”
“Voices from the other room. I think I’m in a bedroom.”
“Alright, I’m heading to the front. Be careful.”
It takes a little bit of a jump from this balcony to the front set of stairs. There are no interior elevators or sets of stairs in these types of structures. I just have to be out in the open on this guy’s front porch, but lucky for me, now that I’m up here I’m mostly hidden from the eyes of the street by a metal wall. Hopefully, I don’t look too out of place.
Tapping my comm, I try to get a connection back to Cath’s bar. “Everything alright back there?”
“Not dead yet,” comes a mostly-garbled response from Zane.
I roll my eyes and disconnect from them.
Considering several different alternatives to how this could go, I simply push back my hood, pull down my mask, and knock on the front door.
“Go away!” comes the muffled yell of a response.
Huh, maybe I might end up liking this guy.
I knock again. Harder.
Silence lasts so long that I consider picking the lock on the door, but then a bolt un-clicks, and the metal door slides open. I’m greeted by a man old enough to be Cath’s age, wearing nothing more than a shirt and his underwear. I probably shouldn’t find this as funny as I do, but it’s an effort to keep a straight face. Technically, this is the easiest job I’ve done in months.
His jaw pops open when he catches the sight of me, eyes flickering over my entire body. I let the mask hang off my neck. When he tries to shut the door, I grab it before he can take my fingers off. He’s strong than I expected from the skinny twigs of his arms, but it isn’t a struggle.
“Hi,” I say, “Are you Birk?”
He squints.
“Look, I’m really happy to leave as soon as possible—in fact, I don’t really wanna be here—but I do need to know your name.”
Eyeballing my gun, he says, “Birk.”
Well, that checks out. I’m actually surprised he even answered. “Fantastic. Know Cath?”
Immediately, the nervous expression drops to annoyance. “What does that bitch want?”
I’d be offended on Cath’s behalf if the statement wasn’t likely to be accurate.
“Her pet returned to her, by my understanding.”
He wrinkles his scruffy upper lip. “Tell her to come get it herself.”
I’ll give him one thing: he’s not scared of cyborgs. At least, he isn’t when he thinks they’re sent by his ex-neighbor. I wonder why the fear went away once Cath was involved.
At least I don’t have to worry about Cath making up this whole thing. Old man’s pretty happy to admit it.
I smile, which works to drain some of the color from his face. “Sorry, I’m taking her pet back to her. Might as well hand it back to me.”
“Or I can shut the door in your face.”
“Or I can break your door right off,” I say pleasantly, tightening my hand on the flimsy metal until my fingertips dig in with a grinding shriek. It doesn’t feel great on my joints, but he doesn’t know that. “Pay for your own exotic pet.”
He lets go of the door but doesn’t back down. “I can’t. Ya wanna know how your friend Catch got hers? She’s sleeping with the entry authorities. Can’t get things like that around here unless you know someone. I heard she’s slept with more than one of them, actually—”
Dryly, I say, “I simply do not care.”
“You know, she serves illegal drinks at that bar of hers—”
“Again, I could not care less.”
“What’s going on?” a voice asks from behind the door, and a squat-faced man no older than me appears, scowling. The son, I’m assuming. He’s bigger than I am, sure. Maybe if I was drunk he could land a punch or two.
“Hi squirt,” I say. “Where’s that animal your old man stole?”
Unlike his father, the only thing this guy’s wearing is pants. What a team. I ignore the fact that back when it was just me and Bat in my ship, I used to walk around in my underwear.
“Why don’t you get out?” the son says and pokes me in the chest.
I grab his hand and twist it casually, nearly toppling him over. Yeah, not much of a fight. Cheerfully, I say, “Yeah, don’t touch me.”
“We’ll call the authorities,” Birk says.
Sighing, I say, “No, we both know you won’t.”
In my ear, my comm crackles to life. Bat says, “Aaron, I found it. He had it locked in a drawer…it’s pretty cute.”
“Bring it back out through the window,” I say, ignoring the floundering expressions on the humans’ faces. “Don’t lose it.”
“Will do.”
“Now, squirt,” I say, twisting the man’s wrist a little further—at least he learns enough not to shove at me with his other hand. “I hear you’ve been intimidating an old lady. That’s not very nice, don’t you think? Really, I’d hate to have to come back here again, wouldn’t you hate that?”
The father is inching behind his son. I’m just glad they didn’t answer the door with guns, or this would’ve been so much more of a headache.
The son whimpers, staring at his wrist that’s very close to bending in an unnatural way.
“Good,” I say sweetly. “Now, you two have a lovely day.”
Releasing the idiot, I shove the door shut, smirking to myself. Before they get any ideas about opening it back up, I jump back to the balcony and slip down the chute of pipes, dropping down next to Bat crouching in a corner. My gloves are really gonna need a wash after climbing around this city.
Bat blinks at me, looking about as pleased with himself as I feel. Clasped gently in his jaw is a little fuzz-ball of a critter big enough to fit in my palm. It squeaks when I reach for it but doesn’t struggle in my grip.
“Hello there,” I say, petting the top of its head with the back of my finger.
“It sheds,” Bat says, spitting out shiny white hairs.
The little creature—Plum—matches exactly with the pictures and certificate Cath showed me. Pulling my backpack back around, I set it in the bottom and let Bat get inside with it.
“Keep an eye on it, don’t crush it, and don’t let it slip out,” I say.
All this reminds me I need to get Bat some sort of little critter of his own. After all of this is over, and before we head into uncharted space. Anya will probably lose her mind.
But they won’t be coming with us.
After this place, we’ll be heading to Neyla Ve. My smug little smirk at how easy this all is falls. I shouldn’t let that affect me, and I shouldn’t sulk, it’s been the plan from the beginning.
My little ship sure isn’t going to feel crowded anymore once the princesses are gone and Zane and Lalia eventually find a new ship of their own. If those two will even be with me after all of this. Scowling to myself, I slip back into the flow of people about the street, putting the respirator and hood back in place. Don’t be an idiot, Aaron, I tell myself, not entirely sure which part I’m scolding myself for. None of this is worth dwelling over until I get the stupid little animal back to Cath and we find her person who can figure out the encrypted DNA file.
We’ll deal with everything else after we get this major thing off our plates. No use sulking about it.
Still, I’m in a significantly worse mood as I retrace my steps through the streets, checking my tablet again so I don’t manage to get myself lost in this maze of metal and wires.
One of the buildings off to my right is an open alleyway with buildings stacked on it. Warm, orange lights drift out, along with voices a little too strong to be cheerful. I move my path to the left side of the road, avoiding the people going in and out. There are lots of bounty hunter groups and scavenger types around here, not even people who would particularly want to harm me, but egos are a bit too big for me to want to get involved with, even in passing.
Better safe than sorry.
I can’t see much of the building over the heads of all the other people on the street—I swear I suddenly become shorter than average whenever I visit this place. A voice I know, yelling in a dialect I don’t recognize, has me pausing. I glance in the direction of the lights and the scents of food coming from that direction. Maybe I should ignore it, it probably isn’t someone I know anyway, but I edge through the crowd until I can get a decent look into the place.
Tables and chairs are set up, as well as tablets around the walls, and lots of folks who appreciate their weaponry as much as I do. It might be an eatery on the face of it, but it looks to me like one of the places where I found my first bounty hunter job with Lee’s crew. Serving food and organizing hunting parties and jobs for people tough enough to want them.
Yeah, best not to get too close.
Before I can walk out of range, I catch the face of the voice I recognized.
“Oh, fantastic,” I mutter and feel Bat squirm in the backpack.
Kel.