I shifted to the left just a tick, brought the cup up, and splashed gin into the big guys eyes, and knew Id hit the mark from the sudden squeak of surprise. I spun left and his knife flashed into the empty space in front of him. I slapped out my hand and took him by the wrist, firmly, and stood up, rolling his arm behind him as I moved, something popping loudly in his shoulder as he dropped the blade with a clatter onto the floor. I kicked at it and it disappeared, most likely plucked cleanly off the floor as it skidded by some enterprising criminal. From the look of his expensive clothes, my admirer either was rich, worked for someone rich, or was a System Security Force officer. But System Pigs didnt need to hire guys to arrange murders; they just showed up, pinched you, and shot you in the head in some deserted alleyway, usually after emptying your pockets. This guy, from what I remembered when hed hired me a few days before, didnt talk rich. He was just a middleman whod come up in the world.
Now I had leverage, and I used it to slam him face-first onto the table. No one else sitting around me had moved. I leaned down, smothering him, and chanced a look up. Security was just starting for me, a little slow. Fuckheads. You couldnt find good help these days. I thought, I could kill this bastard six times before you made it to me, assholes. Keeping my eyes on security, I put my mouth into his ear.
You owe me fifteen thousand yen, motherfucker.
He was having a lot of trouble breathing, with my weight on top of him and his arm nearly broken. You fucked up he gasped.
I twisted his arm a little more, and he finally made some real noise, a strangled cry that dissolved into a gurgling moan. What was that?
They found her hanging from a fire escape goddamn goddammit
I felt pretty confident that I had this guy under control, so I looked up again. Security was still a few tables away, sauntering toward us, not hurrying. They were used to sodden lumps of shit causing a ruckus. Id overestimated them, no doubt, and dismissed them from my worries.
My employer he stuttered out, will not be happy
My sense of outrage turned my vision red for a moment. This asshole owed me fifteen thousand yen, had tried to shiv me in the goddamn back, and now hes complaining to me? I tightened my grip on his wrist and pushed with all my might, and the bastard finally screamed as a sharp cracking sound rewarded my efforts.
You lied to me, I hissed. Or youre incompetent. The subject was not alone. You said nothing about professional protection-moonlighting SSF, a fucking cop she looked like, and a lot of goddamn trouble. I twisted his arm again, savagely. And there was a child, you shithead. In the room.
I looked up. Security had split up, coming around the tables from either side, looking to flank me.
Amazingly, the big guy started to shudder, and I realized he was laughing, whether from reaction or shock or some bizarre sense of humor, I didnt know. My eyes swept the table, black and tan and white faces, all more interested in their gin than in my little drama-a drama theyd seen, a drama theyd acted in. Boring stuff.
The big guy had suddenly found his voice, slurry and close to unconscious as it was. A child? he gasped. Who gives a shit, a child? Youre hired to eliminate someone, you do it. A child? Fuck, you kill that piece of shit, too.
I wanted to hurt him more, I wanted to make him feel it. I trembled with the urge to do him violence. But I could see, in my peripheral vision, that security had arrived and were sneaking their way around the table, coming at me from the left and right. I let out an explosive breath, released the big guy, and in one practiced motion reached across my body into my coat and came up with a gun in each hand, each pointed at one twitchy musclebound asshole. Security paused, looking at each other across me. No one at the table moved, or even seemed to be paying attention. The big guy looked to have finally passed out.
We dont give a shit, one of
the security guys said with the mushy accent of oft-broken teeth. Just take it outside.
I nodded. I was civilized. I didnt kill children and I did not shoot men whose only crime was doing their job. Not unless I had to. Im leaving. No trouble.
Even shitheads respected you if you played by the rules.
One of them swept an arm toward the door, inviting me to take my shit elsewhere. I was full of terrible gin eating away at my insides, and I was a sweating, unwashed mess. Id killed someone just a few hours ago, the wrong person, worth exactly zero yen to me, and the mark I had been hired to kill, and the kid, would both likely be dead tomorrow when the contract went out to someone else, some other Gunner with less scruple. Some kid who had never known anything but the System, nothing but a unified world and the Joint Council that ran it. And the cops-the Crushers who walked the streets and kept order, more or less, and the officers, the System Pigs, who cracked heads and shook us all down, whod grown rich off us like fucking bedbugs sucking for all they were worth. Someone whod never known anything better was possible.