Then
Together they sat on the picnic blanket beneath the starry skies, comfortable enough with one another that they no longer felt a need to fill the dead air around them—silent all but for the occasional short of joy or anguish from the distance. He was lying on the blanket and looking up at the stars, wearing that red flannel shirt of his. Even today, with his name and face forgotten, Karina still remembered that damn shirt and how many times she had made fun of him for wearing it. Her husband who was allergic to pretty much everything found in nature and frightened by dogs, cats, and rodents, dressed up like a lumberjack—a true outdoorsman, she would say with a laugh. He would laugh too, even though neither of them found the joke funny anymore. She was sitting up and watching the shadow of their son drift between the tall grass as he grabbed at fireflies, smiling at his excited yelps as a bug slipped between his fingers.
It was nice to get away from it all, she remembered thinking. Those conceited mothers who knew the best because they read something in a damn magazine whereas she had only spent around a decade in higher education. Those snippy coworkers who were always friendly to each other face-to-face but complete and utter bitches when they thought the others were out of earshot. Those asshole neighbors who complained to the landlord at the drop of a hat when they heard one argument through the walls without once ever thinking that perhaps they should come an talk to them. Her goddamn parents who kept telling her that she was making a mistake getting back together with him, let alone adopting a son together.
It had been his idea for them to take a little vacation as a family, a sort of way to resolidify their reunion as well as give their son the opportunity to get away from the doldrums of always being stuck indoors. The cabin had belong to a friend of his, or his boss, or his parents, or somebody. Not them, she knew that. They couldn’t afford that, between her college debt and his general mismanagement of his money. She remembered he was always bad with money. It was part of the reason they had fought so much, even though they had separate bank accounts. It seemed stupid now, petty even. He made her happy, and after her third glass of wine she was certain that things would continue to work out.
“Look,” her husband said, pointing toward the night sky as a light streaked across it. “A shooting star. Make a wish.”
“Oh, come on, that’s a stupid superstition. It’s not really even a star anyway,” she said, wishing upon it anyway. Later, Karina would learn that it had not been a meteor, but a comet.
“What’d you wish for?” he asked, a little while later.
“You first.”
“A million wishes, obviously. And?”
“If I told you it wouldn’t come true, obviously,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him. Truth be told, she was more embarrassed to say that it had been your typical cliched ‘wish this moment would last forever’ movie bullshit.
“Oh, damn it, how could I forget?” he said with mocked frustration.
“Right? For someone childish enough to believe in wishes, you think you’d know the first rule about—ah!”
Karina gleefully shrieked as he grabbed her by the shoulder and playfully shoved onto the blanket before he planted a kiss on her lips.
Now
Karina shrieked as he grabbed her by the shoulder and forcefully shoved her into the wall before he planted a kiss on her lips with his fist. A flash of stars filled her eyes as she fell to the ground, barely catching herself from colliding face first with the concrete floor. Books from the shelf she had been thrown against slammed next to her as a heavy boot pressed up against her chest. She rolled with the boot, fearful that resisting would end with her ribs getting shattered by a steel-toed kick, and ended on sitting with her back against the wall. Her mouth tasted like copper. She rubbed her jaw, thankful that no teeth had been knocked loose.
She didn’t have much time to take a break. A meaty paw grabbed her by the shoulder again, lifting her up by her jacket and pinning her to the wall. A larger, bald man glowered down at her with one dark eye. The other one was a milky cloud, blinded by some object in some scuffle. While Karina was naturally curious, she had learned that the clientele she now dealt with did not like hearing too many questions—Jackie especially.
“Where is it,” he growled, spittle splashing on her face.
She could smell his breath. She hadn’t pinned him as the cinnamon-flavor gum type, but it did almost mask the lingering stench of rot from his lungs that had been tortured by years of working in the mines before Jackie had decided to break bad and turn to a life of crime. At least Karina assumed that was the case. He had the muscle of someone who had spent years in hard labor, and the delicacy of a hired thug. Again, she would never ask him to clarify. Too many questions got you killed, and they were both aware that Jackie could easily kill her right now.
She tried her best not to glance over at her Peacekeeper, knowing fully well that her gun was on her desk and far out of reach.
Not an option.Grovelling it was, then.
“I, I, I don’t, I don’t,” she stuttered. It wasn’t a played up effect; even amongst people who weren’t threatening her Karina still had a hard time not sounding nervous. “I don’t—”
“I’ll break your goddamn neck if you say you don’t know, bitch.”
“I don’t have it. They took them. Away. They took them away. You know that. I can’t get any money without them. Please, don’t. Please, I have...”
Nothing, she thought. “A family,” she lied.
Bad lie. Obvious lie. His fingers were gripped around her neck. Karina could feel them tighten, tighten, tighten. Her eyes watered, but she did not let a single drop escape. It was getting harder to breath. Her knuckles turned white as she clenched her fists, her nails biting into her skin. Her cheeks flushed. An involuntary gasp came from throat as she felt it constrict beneath his strength. Yet, she wasn’t panicked. She wasn’t scared. She was angry. Furious. Unblinkingly, she stared at him with contempt.
This bastard won’t kill you. Nothing can kill you yet. Not until you’ve done it.His fingers loosened; she felt cool air rush back into her lungs. His hand, however, did not move from her throat: “I want my money back.”
“You know I’m working on it,” she said, her voice raspy and shaky. Even when she was goddamn pissed she sounded like some shrinking violet, and it wasn’t hard for Karina to find things that upset her these days. Still, sometimes sounding pathetic worked out for her. It often made people underestimate her, and she so loved to prove them wrong.
“You’ve taken too long.”
“That was not the deal,” she said. “ALECK, issue notes for log number three hundred and six.”
“Of course, boss!” chipped a high pitched, boyish voice from her desktop as the screen of her tablet radiated a light blue. “Mr. Jackie said, ‘I will murder you, bitch, and then I will find a way to transfer you into another body just so I can murder you again’. Ms. Karina said, ‘If you had that body in the first place, wouldn’t it just make more sense to transfer yourself into it?’. Mr. Jackie now hits Ms. Karina, saying, ‘Don’t get cute with me, you fucking bitch, you lost my fucking new body, and now you don’t even have my money so I can go get another one, don’t you know who the fuck I am, you stupid fucking c—”
“ALECK, ALECK. Please skip to the part about the deal.” She traded glares with Jackie. “Be brief.”
“Of course, Ms. Karina!” said the voice with a momentarily inappropriate amount of spirit. “Mr. Jackie told Ms. Karina that she would have three months to get him his money back plus interest. I can play the complete conversation if you’d like, miss.”
“No need,” she said, lifting her eyebrow at Jackie.
“The deal is that you either do what the fuck I say, or I paint the goddamn walls with your fucking brains,” he said through gritted teeth, pulling out his mammoth of a handgun and pushing it against her temple..
She had just wanted to show him that she was right. Bad habit. Dumb habit.
“Excuse me, miss, but it sounds like you are being threatened. Would you like for me to notify the authorities?” asked ALECK.
“No, no,” she said very quickly. “Not really an option.”
“Then I thoroughly recommend that you take the new deal,” said ALECK.
“Silent mode, please.” There was a beep from her desk. She sighed. “What is it that you want me to do, Jackie?”
He moved his hand from her throat and stepped back to lean against the edge of a table littered with design documents, petri dishes, and flasks. His gun did not trail from her body. Karina rubbed her neck but kept herself firmly against the wall. She doubted Jackie was actually going to shoot her at this point, but she didn’t feel like giving him a reason to be jumpy. Karina had been shot at several times over her years, but she had never been shot in all of her cycles. She would have very much enjoyed to keep that a true statement.
“You’re going to do a job for me. A rather rich friend of mine is hooking up with a couple of smugglers and trying to score a rather large cache of Gemstones. He’s got deep pockets, and he needs someone with your special talents to help him,” said Jackie, tucking his gun back into its holster.
“To purify the Gemstones for him, right? Then you’ll be cashing in on my service fee,” she guessed, folding her arms over her chest. She wasn’t a particular fan of using her Lunos.
“Boy, you are smart, doctor,” he said. “I’ll contact you with more details soon.”
The large man stepped through the door of her safehouse, leaving Karina alone to clean up the mess and steam in contempt. She bent down to pick up a book, smoothing out the pages before sticking it back on the shelf. The job sounded straightforward. Perhaps it was a bit too straightforward, especially for somebody in Jackie’s line of work. Still, if it meant that she would be free of the thug then she would do it. Karina wasn’t above just simply killing him and disposing of the body if she got the chance, but an ill thought out solution like that was often accompanied by even worse consequences. She let out a groan as she pushed herself back up from the floor after kneeling down to gather some scattered research papers and took a moment to steady her balance.
“Perhaps it’d be better to deal with a few vindictive goons,” she muttered to herself under her breath, looking at the bright orange gun on her desk. “My time is too valuable to be playing nice with a bunch of bastards.”
