Three stopped. But didn’t turn.
“Come on get this box inside, and I’ll see what we owe ya. My back cain’t manage it.”
Three swiveled on a heel, and returned to the cube. There, a bent old man who looked like he weighed less than his age tottered and leaned against the now-opened door. A stimstick dangled precariously from his lower lip, glowing with casual indifference. Three grabbed the straps off the floor and hauled the coffin inside the cube. The old man followed him in.
“Don’t know why you folks gotta make things difficult for us folk. Times is rough enough without undeserved meanness.”
The cube interior was a stark contrast to the cavernous entryway. Nearly every available square inch was stuffed with various devices, blinking and humming and whirring, and it was easily fifteen degrees warmer inside than out. There was a desk of sorts in the middle of the room, with a plush recliner behind it, and an overturned plasticrate that Three assumed served as a seat for rare company. From within the cube, the flexiglass was clear, and the granite corridor stretched off to the glass exit at the far end.
“So who’d you git?” the agent asked.
“Nim. Nanokid out of the Six-Thirteen.”
The agent’s eyes twitched back and forth as he internally accessed the appropriate file.
“Alright. Looks like fifteen-hundred.”
“Four thousand.”
“Nah, only fifteen for dead.”
“I didn’t say he was dead.”
The agent looked up into Three’s eyes, mouth open slightly, but he swallowed whatever question he’d been about to ask, and instead took a drag on the stimstick. He turned and rummaged through a pile of gadgets on his desk, dragging out a slender rod, pewter-colored, without any apparent seams or separate parts, which emitted a pleasant hum. This he pointed casually at the coffin, grunting after a moment with some mix of satisfaction and disdain.
“Well, that’s him in there alright,” he said, turning again to fish around in his desk drawer. “Pointcard’s OK?”
Without waiting for an answer, the agent produced a translucent green card and swept it through a slotted device, which clicked once and beeped cheerily. He extended it to Three.
“Hard, actually,” Three replied, hands in his coat pockets.
The agent’s slight shoulders slumped almost into non-existence.
“I don’t keep that kind of Hard just layin’ around. No more than a thousand any given day.”
The pointcard trembled in the agent’s still-outstretched hand, in vague hope that this strange man from beyond the wall would take it and disappear. Three could tell he disturbed the agent. The wrinkled old man stared at him like he didn’t belong there, like he was some alien thing wedged in the wrong reality. The agent shivered.
“I’ll take the thousand now, and come back for the rest.”
The agent pushed the card a little closer.
“Might be a day or two.”
“I’ll wait.”
The agent let out a weary sigh. He rummaged in, under, and around the electric clutter of his office, until he located an ancient lockbox, secured with physical biometrics. After running his bent and knobby fingers over the touchpad, the box hissed open. The agent opened it just wide enough to slip his hand in, counted out twenty nanocarb chips, and handed them over to Three with some reluctance. Three glimpsed more Hard in the box, but made no comment, sized the agent up instead: dilated pupils, thin sheen of perspiration, colorless ring around tensed lips.
“Sorry I frighten you,” Three said without apologetic tone. He leaned his head to one side and cracked his neck audibly, watching the old man carefully. The agent laughed, too suddenly, too loud.
“What? I ain’t scared of ya, don’t ya worry about that.”
Lie, Three thought.
“I lived plenty enough years to see things a lot worse than you, friend.”
That was true. Three lowered his head in the barest hint of a bow. Whatever the agent’s reason for withholding a portion of his stash, Three decided, he was an honest dealer. Probably owed someone. The agent got back to business.
“Gimme your SNIP, I’ll pim ya when I get the rest.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
The agent’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Be easier if you just gimme the SNIP.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Figgered that,” the agent snorted. “Well, gimme two days, I’ll have the rest for ya then. Late afternoon.”
Three unfastened his coat to pocket the payment, revealing a mammoth pistol crouching in a holster on his vest, coiled like some predator hungering to pounce. The agent’s eyes bulged at the hardware, but he quickly diverted his attention. He kicked at the coffin.
“’Preciate the work you done,” he said half-heartedly. “Dunno why you had to do him like that, though.”
Three adjusted the pistol, then refastened his coat, concealing it once more.
“You will when you open it.”
Three nodded to the agent, and swiveled back down the stone corridor. As Three walked away, the agent watched him briefly, then, on a sudden whim, picked up and aimed the humming rod at his back. The agent frowned slightly, shook the rod, and pointed it again, more purposefully. His frown deepened, eyes narrowed with some undefined emotion. A thought occurred, and wide-eyed he fumbled over himself to seal the flexiglass cube, as Three stepped back out onto the street.
The honey-colored liquid swirled gently in the finger-smudged squat glass on the table in front of Three. It was his fourth of the afternoon. Still he waited for the comforting blanket of alcoholic haze to embrace him. He leaned forward, resting his face in his hands, and his elbows on the table, felt it shift slightly to the right, and wondered briefly if it were the table or himself that had wobbled. Was this the wobbly table? Or had that been yesterday? Yesterday? Yesterday. It was the second day since he’d met with the agent. Payday.
Three let out a weary sigh, ran his hands back over his shaved head, feeling the stubble of a few days’ growth, then massaged his temples, probably throbbing though he couldn’t be sure. It was like this when he didn’t have a job; something to find, someone to bring in. The restlessness was setting in, the need to move. To hunt. It was the third day in the same town. Might as well have been a month. There were benefits to being a freelancer, but down time wasn’t one of them.
From his corner booth, he had a commanding view of all the critical angles. The booth itself was U-shaped, tucked in the front corner of the bar, a natural blind spot from the entrance. Temprafoam, covered in some cheap imitation of a much sturdier textile, it was adequate comfort and gave him all the room he needed, and best of all required no reservation, deposit, or record of stay. He sat with his feet propped on the bench opposite, with his coat bundled around his hardware on the perpendicular seat that completed the U. His eyes involuntarily swept around the bar, taking stock of his surroundings, the way they had two minutes before. Habit.
But everything was the same. Same hazy atmosphere. Same chattering regulars. Same bartender. The bartender was a lean man, lean like he’d been a foot shorter and stretched to his current height, and fidgety. He was never completely still, fingers always working the air when they weren’t cleaning glasses or pouring drinks. Three guessed the bartender was splitting time between customers and some fantasy app, but didn’t want to guess the type.
He took another swig of his drink, then casual interest in the door. Instinct. A moment later, a woman entered pulling a small boy along behind her. She was bent at an awkward angle, clutching her long coat closed tight around her with a balled fist pressed hard to her side. Colorless, sweating, desperate. Damp shoulder-length brown hair plastered to her forehead. Wild brown eyes darting around the room. The boy was blond, vibrantly pale, with eyes deep sea-green and natural, the mesmerizing kind the Money would’ve paid top Hard for at the height of the market. Three guessed him perhaps five years old. The boy trembled with the frightened silence of a child who’s been told everything’s alright, but knows it isn’t. His shocking innocence swept through the bar: fragile, beautiful, a snowflake drifting amongst ash.