| From: | Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Working Girls |
| Date: | Sat, 17 Jul 1999 02:01:13 +0100 |
>>>>>[This is for you, you big stripey wuss :)
+++++begin video
"I still don't want to go in there." Harold says, nervous but firm.
"Then don't. Cover my back while I do the job. That's all I ask." Jules,
wearing the camera, replies.
"Okay. I just worry. Jules, you seem to like this too much."
"What? Kneecapping some cheating corporate SOBs and killing a few
guards? It's _business_, Holden."
"Yeah... but you've killed, what, three people?"
"And if the guards drop their weapons and run, they will live. If they fight,
they die." Jules' voice is firm. "I've killed three guys. One was reaching for
his weapon, bam, I killed him first. One was in mid-rape, don't even
_start_ asking me to feel sorry for him. One was shooting at me when I
killed him, well, frag _him_."
"And the last?"
"He brought the gun up, I shot him. Turned out he was committing suicide
anyway. Even if he wasn't, better I shoot him than him shoot me."
"How come you're so casual about it?"
"Harold, do you ever have nightmares about killing gazelle?"
"'Course not!" Holden is outraged. "They're gazelle. Tigger-food."
"But they're living, thinking beings."
"Well... yeah. But they're dinner."
"So allow me to make similar judgements. Humans are a lot more than
gazelle, as far as I can tell."
"Which is why you do the killing and I just watch your exits." Holden
mutters.
"Precisely. Harold, you're the only friend I have."
"What about Alba?"
"She's fucking me and hiding with us. She'd abandon us in an eyeblink if it
suited her. I like her, she's a great lay, she's got useful contacts, but I
trust you with my life. Her, I don't trust much at all. You understand the
difference?"
"Really?" Harold looks pleased.
"Really. Now, are you ready?"
"Yeah."
+++++pause
+++++resume
"Testing, testing, one, two, one two..." Harold asks over the radio.
"....where are the drugs for the band?" Jules replies. "Loud and
clear."
"Likewise."
Jules looks down at his HK227S: checks the clipped pair of magazines, that
the selector's on AUTO and that there's a round in the chamber. "All set."
"Still time to quit."
"Yeah. Wish me luck." Jules walks half a block down the street, to an
inoffensive building whose exterior looks like any other of the shabby
tenements. Inside the lobby door, though, is a burly Elf guard and a
Human desk clerk.
"How can we delight - hey, he's packing!" is all the clerk has time to say
(reaching all the time for a weapon) before at least one round catches
him in the throat.
The big Elf bouncer bearhugs Jules, who doesn't try to wrestle with the
taller, stronger man: instead, he stamps hard. The heel of a British Army-
issue Boot, Combat, High comes down with all Jules' might on sneaker-clad
toes and bone breaks under the impact: Jules slithers out of his
adversary's grasp, twisting to bring up the HK227 and fire half-a-dozen
silenced rounds into his chest.
There is a few seconds' pause. No alarms sound, no guards arrive, the only
noise is the ugly choking gurgles of the desk clerk drowning in his own
blood.
"Reception's clear." Jules says softly. "This is the right place. Going
in."
"Good luck." Harold says quietly.
Jules goes past the desk, up the stairs: beyond them, what should have
been two bedrooms is now six cubicles. He opens the first door quietly:
inside, it's dark, a huddled form asleep in the bed.
He steps back, softly closes that door. The second door reveals a Human
male lying on his back, naked except for his socks, and an Elven girl barely
into her teens astride him.
"Miss? Lean back." Jules says.
The hooker throws herself off the far end of the bed. "Who the hell do
you think-" her customer is blustering as a three-round burst - no louder
than a man clearing his throat - kills him.
"Please, don't..." the girl pleads.
"Keep quiet. Stay here, silent, for five minutes, then run." Jules says.
"Thanks, mister..." The young prostitute is already grabbing for clothes.
The third room is empty. The fourth is a reprise of the second, except for
details of the positions being employed: but, with the John quietly dead
the girl is equally willing to silently wait until it's safe to flee.
When Jules eases open the fifth door, the situation is little different:
except the girl (yet again, barely into her teens - obviously this house's
speciality) is tied to the bedframe and gagged, and the customer is taking
evident delight in hurting her: distracted with his amusements, the cough
of the HK227S goes unnoticed but the flechettes smashing through his
skull get his attention.
Jules hesitates for a moment, then moves into the room. "Keep quiet." he
says firmly, pulling the dead man off the girl's back and dumping the
corpse on the floor. "I'm not your enemy." He unbuckles the ball-gag. "But
make noise and I _have_ to shut you up. Understand?" At that, he eases
the gag out of her mouth.
"Thank you..." the girl says. Jules sighs with relief: seeing that, so does
she. "Don't get upset. I get extra for this. Used to it. Doesn't mean I like
it, though. How long before I can run?"
"Three minutes."
"Good enough. And thanks. Who are you?"
"My friends call me Jules."
"Well, Jules, round here I answer to Ecstasy Morita, and I don't owe you a
favour but I _am_ your friend. Capice?"
"All the way, Miss Morita, and I've still got a room to clear."
"That's a toughie. Twosome, they've been in there a while, with a new
girl."
"Oh, hell!" Jules checks the ammo counter (twenty-one rounds remaining)
and heads for the door.
"That's why I want to be your friend, Jules. You actually give a damn."
Morita says.
"Yeah. You got one-fifty seconds to wait." Jules leans against the door:
pauses a moment, takes a black cylinder from inside his jacket, pulls the
pin and lets the safety arm fly off.
"One-Mississippi, two-mississippi-"
He kicks the door to the small room open.
"three-mississippi"
and throws the black cylinder inside-
"four-mississ-"
The concussion blows the cheap macroplast door off its hinges and sends
smoke clouds boiling down the corridor. Jules is instantly around the
doorframe, the HK227 held tight in his shoulder and seeking targets. Two
candidate man-shaped silhouettes both get bursts of flechette: the second
doesn't fall when hit and is resolving itself into a furious, weapon-hunting
man when Jules shoots it again, spraying a dozen rounds into him.
Jules takes a handful of seconds to check the girl on the bed (Human,
young, sobbing with fear and pain, alive and likely to remain so) before
leaving. "Ecks? You're on your own." he calls, as he runs down the stairs.
"Jules? Car arriving." Harold's nervous voice. About to race out of the front
door, Jules ducks back, taking cover behind the dead receptionist's desk.
"Two people. Both out. Car's empty. I could get one of them."
"Wait. See if they come in here."
"They are."
"Then kill anyone who comes out of here that isn't me." Jules drops down
behind the counter, takes another concussion grenade from his pocket,
pulls the pin quietly.
"...the frag happened here?" one voice asks.
"How the hell should I know?" another replies. Jules flips the grenade over
the counter, hearing shots before the concussion charge detonates, and
comes up firing with the HK227 spitting death as his enemies fire back.
A few eyeblinks of smoky confusion later, the Bad Guys are down and so is
Jules.
"Oh, FUCK that hurts!" Jules cries.
"What?"
"Took one through the arm. Hurts like a sonofabitch. Street clear?"
"For now, yeah!"
"Coming out! Let's go!"
"They dead?"
Jules pulls the pin from a frag grenade, throws it back into the smoke-
choked lobby, bolts into the street. The open door of a Ryder van beckons
and he throws himself inside, shoving the door shut left-handed: the van
accelerates as he so. "They surely ain't well. Girls alive, customers dead,
bouncers very dead. Contract fulfilled."
"You don't seem bothered."
"Harold, when you wade through a sewer, do you feel remorse when you
tread on a turd and crush it?"
"Never been in a sewer." Harold replies. "Hope I never find out what
they're like. They must _stink_."
"They do. And I'm bleeding. Can you head for Doctor Unmann's clinic?"
Jules gives up on his left-handed fiddling with field dressings.
"Doc 'Look No' Hans? Yeah. That bad?"
"I think the bone's broken, and it's bleeding like crazy. Fixable, but not
pleasant."
+++++end video
Wish it were simsense. That arm wound _hurt_.
But thanks for getting us out of there.]<<<<<
-- Jules <02:00:24/07-17-60>
