runner, hunter.

runner

His mouth twists: a tight, flat smirk.

"A runner."

hunter

She stares at him. Says nothing to that.

runner

Fine. So she doesn't find that amusing. His smirk drops; he meets her flat stare.

"Let's leave names out of this for now. I'm a runner. You're a mark's sister. So now what?"

hunter

"Kali," she says, level and unruffled. Has not ceased staring. The soft ah, the emphasis on the first syllable. Cocky, perhaps, to give herself the name of a goddess, but there are as many runner tags as there are runners, and plenty of them just as (and far more) boisterous. Odinson, for example, all but ruled several blocks of Seattle for many years before going pro. Kept the name, though.

This one, named for a dark and blood-hungry goddess, ignores his opinion on names but does not ask again for his. "Ahj is not a mark. Or a target. He's an eleven year old boy who ran away from Temple and has half the runners in the city looking for him, banked by people far more powerful than any monk or runner."

Which means, in this town, they're likely more powerful than the piddling wannabes in the 'police' department who weren't good enough to make it onto a corp's security force.

"I want to know who is really looking for him. I want to know why he ran away -- or if he was taken. That's my now what. What's yours?"

runner

"I want creds."

Wonders briefly when he lost the last of his shame. Wonders, ever so briefly, when he got so baldfaced and thickskinned he'd just say it like that.

"I want to keep my lights on, hydro in my tanks. So, you want me to turn around and sniff the other way, you're going to have to make it worth my while."

hunter

There's no disgust in her eyes. No aggravation. When she speaks with emotion, it is only with regards to her brother. He says all he wants is creds. He's not the first runner she's talked to about this.

"Just want you to stop looking. Pay's lower, but you're not having to outrun a few dozen others hoping yours is the lucky number."

runner

An eyebrow cocks up. He scoffs. "Just going to buy us all off and hope you catch him yourself? Best of luck to you, there."

hunter

Her head tips. There's a slight sway to it, somehow, graceful and slow. And eerie. And inhuman.

"That a no?"

runner

"That's a counteroffer. Buyer's rolling me two thousand. Make it two and a half, and I'll find your brother for you. And kick some false leads the other way, keep your mystery men off the trail."

hunter

"Two five, and you go home," she says, without missing a beat. "Tell your john you got a better run to work on. Drek... you can even tell them who bought you out."

runner

"You'd like that, wouldn't you. Bring 'em to you instead of you chasing after them."

Fingers tap restively on the scarred tabletop. Then he flashes that tight-edged smirk again.

"Well, I know a good deal when I see one. Paying me more not to work than to work, takes a fool to turn that down. Minute I see those creds float my account, I'll stop the run on your brother. My run, anyway."

hunter

A flick of her brow. She doesn't answer.

"Agreed," she says. Reaches into her coat, taking out a slim tablet, fresh and new and glossy. Drags something up, then slides it over. "Input your account ID."

runner

So night and day from his own battered tablet that they hardly deserve the same name. No dents in hers. No cracks, no dings, not even a scratch on that glossy screen. He looks at it askance, distrustful. Doesn't like giving out his account ID any more than he likes giving out names. Even if both are handles, really. Identities masked through four or more layers. There are still ways of getting down to the truth. There are always ways. That's why runners exist, do the jobs they do.

He makes a choice. Flicks up a scanner-box, puts his fingers into the optic grid. Beep as his prints register, and then an account deposit prompt comes up. He spins the tablet around -- maybe he's spitefully trying to scratch the back -- and slides it back over.

Gets up, picking his emptied glass off the table. "You change your mind and want a run," he says, jerks his head bar-ward, "Mags can get ahold of me."

hunter

Kali inputs the deposit. His tablet chimes softly, or vibrates, or does whatever it does to tell him that an Account. Transfer. Has been made.

Her tablet goes away, back into that hidden interior pocket, the item itself nearly weightless. Drops two-five on this deal, made almost spontaneously, without blinking. Buys top-shelf liquor. Wears a coat that he can now recognize -- having seen the lining -- as pro-level armored clothing, light as air but bullet-stopping all the same. Fuck knows how many runners she's paid off like this.

Or maybe he was the only one to take the deal. Who knows.

Not his problem anymore.

"Won't change my mind," she says. He is getting up, perhaps to leave, and those are her last words to him.

hunter

Another job finished. Another cred upload from some black-boxed account, and the soft voice of the banker app telling him in Mandarin-accented English: Account. Positive. Congratulations. Sir.

Out of the red again. Not enough to celebrate, definitely not enough to get out of the metro, but enough to get to the next job. If the next job comes soon enough.

--

Creds are running thin by then. Didn't finish that job last year, and the stink still lingers for all the johns that might actually send work his way. Even the ones that know that no one with a soul would have finished that job, they only throw scraps his way now, or stuff no one else will take.

Hand-delivered job. Fancy. Androgyne on a scooter dropped off the cello packet with the prints inside. Blank sheets, of course, no letterhead. Had to stamp his thumb on all four corners before he found the damn reader.

Then the image blossomed upward from the page. Sketchy blue holo, but easy enough to make out when it started to resolve. Just a boy, his forehead accentuated by an under-skin tilak. Big, dark eyes. Small, sad mouth. Haunting eyes. Heartwrenching mouth. Young enough to be innocent, even if he weren't Consecrated.

Rest of the info comes through after the blinking, anxious pic of the kid fades. Kid ran away. Gotta track him down, pick him up, deliver him back to the temple. Probably no wetwork. Babysitting job. Even gave him a Last Seen: sitting for alms outside the Red Light bar. Might still be in that area, but will probably bolt if he sees a monk or a badge.

runner

This is how he lives now. Job to job, payout to payout, trajectory of his balance rising and falling like an ekg. Was a time he would've never taken a meager little job like this. Was a time when he rolled high, when the jobs and the creds both seemed a limitless deluge. Then that job last year. Then the wildfire of word-of-mouth flickering from node to node. River dried up and money slowed to a trickle, a painful crawl through his parched accounts. So now: jobs like this.

Metro drops him quarter-kilometer from the bar. High-pitched whine of magneto-turbines carries the train away, sleek interconnected tubes dirtied by polluted rain. Same rain falling on his bare head so he turns his up collar, pulls it high as he can. Quick-steps into the dubious shade of rattling fire-escapes and tattered awnings. In open doorways and crumbling stoops the redwomen are gathering for the evening; raise their skirts over their spread knees. It's as much pragmatism as advertisement: it's always hot and muggy here beneath the smog layer. Couple of them pucker up their lips in half-hearted comehithery; fan themselves with the flickering, half-broken tablets they keep their accounts on. He'd think poorly of them if he weren't so similar himself: a warm body, a certain limited and inglorious skill-set, a balance always flirting with bankruptcy and ruin.

Bar doors slide noisily open. Multicolored lights from the sign on his face. He pushes past raucous regulars, drunk already at half-past-dinnertime. Gets to the bar and sets down a battered tablet of his own. Swipes up that portrait. Haunting eyes and heartwrenching mouth. Turns it around so the barkeep can see it clear.

"Looking for this kid," he says.

hunter

The tender has booze, most of it paint thinner. Has a long-gun under the bar that the badges let her keep because she's only ever fired it the once, and it saved them the trouble. She has numbers and she has contacts that she keeps with her silence. You can get just about anything you want legally now, from the indie redwomen outside to the expensively-enhanced women who haven't retired from -- or been forced out of -- Escort Corp yet. From the sublinguals to the subdermals.

Information is, as ever, one of the only illicit things left. That and guns, of course.

She gives the holo a once-over, and he barely catches it -- that flick of her eyes toward a table in the corner, not far from the door. She's looking at him straight on. "Badges chased him off bout a week ago," she says, and shrugs. "You drinking or just taking up space?"

A challenge.

runner

Drinks here are on the expensive side, but that's because a good minority of the customers are buying information with their 'hol. And the information's always good, even if the hol is shit. He thinks a second of his account, considers the dregs in there.

"I'm drinking," he says. There's really no other answer; not after that flick of her eyes. Not if he ever wants her to give him the time of day again. "Pour a man whatever six creds will buy and I'll throw in the other four for thanks."

hunter

Those eyebrows flick up, bushy and dyed indigo. She shrugs, puts down a glass, pours something grey and viscous into it. Keeps it on her side of the bar til he swipes his creds across the bartop. She hates the little animated holo that came with the place: tiny blue cubes flurrying up from the bar on her side, cascading into nothingness with a tinkly sound. Most kids these days don't even know what coins are, much less that that sound represents them somehow.

Glass comes his way. She glances at the corner again, back to him. Says, offhand, before she heads down to another 'customer': "Check your receipt. Have a survey going."

Which is bullshit. When he flicks open the receipt on his tablet there's a note beneath the cred transfer: NOT ONLY 1 LOOKING 4 KID

runner

"Obliged," he says to barkeep's back. "Five-up from me, that survey of yours."

Takes his glass of something-grey to a table. Sits himself down, flicks up the receipt. There it is, clear as clear: 24 characters spelling out a heads up. He swipes it into the delete bin.

Sits back to nurse his drink. Tastes like rancid battery acid but he paid for it and he'll damn well get his money's worth. Besides, sit there drylipped and people notice. Particularly whoever it might be, sitting in that there corner.

He watches it, that corner. Watches it without looking like he's watching, of course. Just the occasional flick of his eyes that way, as if scanning his surroundings. Keeping a wary eye out. No one'd think that unusual; everyone here keeps an eye on everyone else.

hunter

Heh is all he gets from her, but her rough persona doesn't matter as much as the information he reads a moment later. She's already moved on to the next person down the bar, waiting for the slide of creds, the desire for drink, or information, or just another human being to talk to.

He is unbothered where he sits, drinking what may in fact be rancid battery acid. Glances over at that corner, though, the one near the door. Sees a single person sitting at a single table. Gender isn't entirely an anachronism yet but given the dim lighting in here (and so much of it red) it's difficult to tell if that person is a woman or an androgyne -- nute, if he wanted to be crude. Hair is dark enough to seem black, cut just above the shoulders. Skin is pale, enough so that the ever-changing lights of the juke console on the wall paint the back of the person's hand like a canvas. Bulky clothes, considering how hot it is.

Looks back over at him after a few seconds. Might've been flicking eyes his way just like he's doing, keeping a wary eye out. But there is a moment there when their eyes both meet. His and... hers. Sure of it, suddenly and somehow, as certain and heavy as nightfall. Not a neutral-gendered androgyne, thought she sits at her table, drinks, and generally carries herself with that confusing, blank sort of grace that they have. She's drinking something top shelf, he can tell by the color. Not even water is that clear. One of those synthetic liquors, that crisp dry taste, that two-sip wallop it packs on the uninitiated, that beautiful fuzzy feeling in the morning in place of a hangover. God: he remembers that shit. Light-years above what he can afford now.

And now it becomes clear that she has not looked away. Clear to both of them, because a moment later, she does.

runner

That's not the boy he's looking for. Second there he thinks maybe it is, maybe he grew up, maybe he decided to go androgyne. But no. It's not. Mouth is different and so are the eyes. Someone else; but maybe she's looking for him too. Can't imagine why, wealthy as she evidently is. Or maybe he can imagine. Doesn't want to.

Their eyes meet. Hold. Then, almost in the same second, break: he looks one way and she the other. Few seconds go by. Then his chair scrapes and he gets up, swipes his drink from the table. Moves toward the corner, affecting a drunken sway, a dandyman's swagger.

"Buy you a drink, sweet." Affects the slur, too.

hunter

She looks at him when he walks over. Her stare is unblinking, and steady, and yet she is not still as a stone. There's a coiled intensity to her that translates to his mind as a sway, even if he can't see it reflected in her form.

Her eyes glance to his drink, then his face again.

"You've only had one drink," she says, flatly. Almost awkwardly. She sips her own, that crystalline prettiness. Stares at him. Still hasn't blinked.

"Why were you looking at me."

runner

Click, he sets his drink down. Pulls a chair out and sits, meeting her eyes right back.

"Could ask the same of you, if you've been counting my drinks."

hunter

Wasn't invited, but she doesn't kick his chair out from under him. Maintains that stillness. That hypnotic, unsettling stillness. Watches him as he sits. Finishes her drink.

Changes approach, sliding around to another side, scenting the air there instead. "Why did you walk over."

runner

Shrugs. They are watching each other like adversaries circling for an opening. His eyes are the most remarkable thing about him: keen and clear and quick. Other than that, he's rather ordinary. Ordinary height, ordinary looks, ordinary build. Sort of man that could blend in anywhere. Useful in his line of work.

"I was looking. You were looking. Thought I'd have a figure why."

hunter

Silence, to that, for a few seconds. She finally blinks. For a moment her pupils look strange, but just a trick of the lurid red lights positioned around the bar. Her lips are dry, but she doesn't lick them.

"Saw your holo," she says. "Heard your question."

A tip of her head. "Why are you looking for Ahj?"

runner

"What's it to you?" he answers immediately. Of course he does. Wouldn't be very good at his job if he gave up information so easily, so cheaply.

hunter

"He's my brother," she says. Not immediately. That same slow, hypnotic grace comes through in her words as well as the way she just sits there.

runner

"Could be so. Could be you're saying so for your own gain."

Click-click. Bottom of his glass taps the table. He considers her with those keen, careful eyes.

"Could be you are his sister and you're still out for your own gain. Sisterly love's in short supply."

hunter

She's having none of it. Stares at him as she has been, very still.

"Why are you looking for him?"

runner

Found a wall there. Boundary he's pushed her to: this much give and no more. His turn to give a little. So he does:

"It's my job."

hunter

Something in her eyes -- that flash again, that flicker that before came with a blink but doesn't this time. This time he doesn't mistake it, the way her eyes change. The darkening of her sclera, the subtle golden ring around a widened, perfectly round pupil. Reminds him of something, but nothing comes immediately to mind.

She folds her hands in her lap, leaning back slightly.

"Who is paying you?"

runner

"Think it's your turn," he says. His mirroring may or may not be conscious: leaning back, folding his arms across his chest. "What's so special about your brother?"

hunter

A tightening of her brow. A pang she doesn't hide, or simply: can't. "Everything," she says first, before she thinks about it. Before her voice can be cold again.

A moment later, firmer, distant again: "He's my brother."

runner

No answer to that. Made ashamed by her raw emotion, he turns his eyes aside; clears his throat uncomfortably. Shifts.

"Temple hired me. Don't know much more than that. Came anon, by crypto. Maybe you got thoughts on that."

hunter

Something about living like this, or even living in this world, makes it easy to forget how important people can be just for... being. For being a brother. For being an innocent. This many billions, grinding up against one another on a planet not made to sustain so many, it's easy to forget that sometimes they matter to one another.

Her nostrils flare slightly at the mention of the Temple. Her lips part, too, barely. He sees a hint, just a hint, of the very tip of her pink tongue, as though she's tasting the air. Withdraws, and closes off again, and seems to decide that she doesn't think he's lying.

"The monks took Ahj in when he was little," she says, and she must mean toddler, that's as young as they go. Common enough practice, for families who find themselves with a mouth they can't feed. Doesn't mesh with how fine that unnecessary coat of hers is, or the quality of the drink in her hand. Not if he's her brother. Not if the reason he went to the monks was poverty.

"Last time I went to see him, they said he was sick. Contagious. About a week later, someone who would know tells me they're sending runners and roustabouts after him, saying he ran away. Talk to someone else, find out the first job was sent out days before I tried to visit. Talk to someone else still, find out they're coming by messengers, on holo-sheets. Ivory tower drek like that."

She is quiet a moment. Stares at him with that way she has while it sinks in: the monks are an austere order, live communally, hold no property, have the government-required accounts but keep them decidedly empty. Then, trusting he's grokked the same conclusion, saying it with a small shake of her head and a faint rise of her brows: "Temple's not banking this job. Whoever is has dozens like you and me trying to find him.

"Temple's lying about it, though," she adds, with tension. "Other day I ask for him again. Still 'sick', they say."

Nostrils flare again, this time showing her anger, or perhaps something else: something colder, like... determination. Decision. Dedication.

"Every runner gets the same intel. Every one of them has come through here. So I'm here. You're just the first one who hasn't made me follow him when he left."

runner

"I'm not a runner," he says, automatically and with a touch of affront, because of course once upon a time he was something a little more glorious than a runner. A hunter, a slinger, a vij -- one of those shadowy quasi-sanctioned men and women who have earned, through bribery or intimidation or sheer cold outcomes, the right to carry firearms openly and boldly; to hunt bounties irrespective of borders or boundaries; to execute with extreme prejudice with little fear of prosecution or persecution.

But of course all that's behind him now. Excruciatingly hard to get to that level; so damn easy to slip on down. Now it's just these stupid, meaningless little jobs: find this mother's son, find that mid-level exec's whore. Not even the mistress; that sort of v.i.p. would deserve a slinger, or at least the cops. Him: he gets proto-monks with cholera.

Or maybe not. Mind honed by years of hunting-tracking, even dulled by months of this shit, sniffs out the scent of something more. Juicier. He reaches for his glass but finds it empty, leaves it.

"Wasn't always a runner," he amends; then levels his eyes, raises his chin. "Why'd your brother go to the Temple in the first place? Don't seem like you're strapped for creds."

hunter

Almost as automatically, her mouth opens to tell him you take the job, you're a runner. But his eyes are retreating from the words almost before they're out of his mouth. And he follows them up with a small, bitter little morsel of truth: he didn't used to be one. Is now. More or less.

She doesn't hedge on the answer to this question. The defensiveness of his initial reply is something she's smelled before. Seen before. Hell: maybe felt before. Her eyes do flick to the glass in front of her, empty as his is, before she looks back at him.

"Not anymore," she says. Used to be. When he was small. Kid in the holo was maybe ten, eleven. That's close to a decade with the monks. She fiddles with nothing: the surface of the table, her fingernails itching at it anxiously. "Creds have to be legit. Home has to be safe. And Ahj has to want to leave."

A tightness, behind her eyes, though her voice is quiet: "Never told him what I do. He knows, though. Doesn't approve."

runner

"Oh, now I get it."

Voice is soft too. And maybe he's needling her on purpose, and maybe he's not. All the same:

"Motivation's guilt. Saintly brother went off to the monks so you could keep your belly full. Now you're sitting pretty doing ... whatever sordid thing it is you do. And he's gone."

hunter

Someone else's eyebrows might go up. She stares at him. That long, unblinking stare.

Quietly then, though the softness of her voice is unsettling: "Ya got me."

Even if that emptiness that echoes beneath the words like a warning doesn't mean anything to him, the subtle mockery of it is clear enough.

runner

They stare at each other a moment.

Then he laughs. It's short, a blurt, unexpected; not mocking but self-deprecating. Shake of head, rueful.

"So now what? You gonna make me a better offer? Give you your brother back, instead of whoever it is hired me?"

hunter

Brows tug briefly. Smooth again. And she doesn't answer him.

"What do they call you?"