The autocab offered Gary the customary drive to a Theremin Group approved bar, and for once he accepted. How could he not? He was replaying what happened all shift, wondering how the mag clamps would lose power just when Nutt happened to trip, how it happened during the precarious winding path down into the depths of the mine. It just didn't add up. There wouldn't be any compensatory payments to the family, naturally. "It's in the contract," the most affordable lawyer they could find would say. "Should've been born into a better family that could find a better job," was the unspoken meaning.
Gary departed the cab, drenched in sweat as he shut the door. The company gave all workers an annual stipend of "entertainment" scrip to soften the blow of working for a dangerous job. Gary's balance was just about at the maximum. He'd seen what liquor made worse men do firsthand. He tried not to indulge. Days like this, though. He had heard folk rumors of workers falling in cupolas loaded with Mars-red-hot metal, of men falling from cranes, so he wasn't caught completely off guard. That it happened to Nutt, though...
The bar was faux-seedy, eternit panels made up to look like an old roadhouse tavern. The house band played dreadful country covers of contemporary songs, probably Enemies of Europa. Gary took a stool and ordered a black boilermaker, hold-the-cream-thank-you. He downed it in two gulps. The bartender just looked at him with empty detachment, and all Gary could look at were the booze stains on the front of the red-and-white striped apron. He couldn't meet anyone in the eyes right now.
The miner looked into his reflection in his empty glass and sighed. Should he have died a woman in prison? He made the plea deal under the hope that the resistance would regroup somewhere, somehow. He took a job that would keep him strong, not like all the former code monkeys that lost their jobs. He still practiced his boxing and judo at home. He couldn't keep a gun anymore, but he still remembered the basics. Gary thought about everything he lost, and he began to cry. Just as a tear begain to glide down the crease between his nose and cheek, a gloved hand reached from behind him and offered him a lacy kerchief. "Dry your eyes, sugar. You aren't dead yet."
Gary glanced over his shoulder and saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. High cheekbones, pert lips, a nose like a Renaissance painting. She was wearing an expensive white fur coat from an animal that was probably grown in a lab to be turned into drapery. Underneath, a perfectly tailored black suit that teased the extent of her curves. Her black leather driving gloves offered glimpses of bare knuckles, one of which offered an increasingly rare sight these days: a burgundy mottled burn scar. As Gary ran his eyes up and down, he realized the woman's wavy hair and striking eyes were the same shade of red.
"Two Starbursts, barkeep. You know how I like them." The bartender was taken aback, head pulling itself upwards as the rich woman's order was beamed into their brain. They nodded, and got to work assembling the ingredients in two separate shakers. The woman took out a silver-plated lighter and lit the tip of an herbal cigarette. Wafts of cinnamon and lavender filled the space between her and the miner. She stared directly into Gary's eyes, and he tried not to flinch as she blew smoke into her face.
"You've had a rough day, haven't you?" the redheaded woman asked. "Don't answer that, it's rhetorical." Gary held back a scowl. He had always hated this type of woman. Someone who bought and sold so recklessly that she could treat bodies like currency. Someone like her was a big spender.
The bartender presented the two drinks with a customary flourish, and the woman lifted the glass in front of her in a faux-salute. "Oh, Gary. Look. It's your old favorite, isn't it?" Gary's skin began to crawl as his mind flashed itself back to an old college town he used to rent in in his early twenties. There was an Irish bar with a specialized pink citrus and strawberry drink that he would only find out later was a house mix. How did ...
"I know quite a bit about you, Gary." The woman ran a single black finger along his left sleeve. "However, I don't need a file on you to be able to tell that you're tired of this kind of work. Go on, drink up. I want you relaxed before we go into the nitty gritty."
Gary looked at the drink in suspicion. A little bit of pulp flitted in the pink fluid, drifting between the chunks of ice. He gingerly lifted the glass off the bar, sipping it. Just like he remembered. He looked at the woman again, wondering at the nature of her intent.
"I have a job for you. It's a good one, all things considered. It utilizes your talents to a greater extent than what you're doing now. It affords you more freedom, and you can leverage it any which way you choose." The faintest trace of a smirk on her lips. "However, you will answer to me directly. If I say jump, you'll know how high." A tilt of her head to the bartender, who remained mute.
Gary took another sip of the Starburst, head starting to quaver under the waves of alcohol. "How much freedom can you possibly offer me?" he asked with equal measure quiet rage and desperation. "I have a record for two of the worst crimes under the last administration. It's astonishing I'm as free as I am." A fist clenches and unfurls one finger at a time, his stool clangs with jittery feet beaning themselves off the metal.
A slightly wider smile. "I thought it would take you a little more convincing. You know about corporate exemptions to crimes: it's legal if you can afford the penalty," she said as she untucked a tablet from an inside pocket within her blazing white coat. What she had on the screen made Gary recoil in shock.
It was a picture of the miner as a young woman, smiling with a group of now-imprisoned or deceased trans women in her old circle. She had electric blue hair with pink highlights, round glasses, a jet black leather jacket and stompy boots. Gary grabbed at the tablet, and the woman relinquished it with a graceful ease. "How did... but..."
"Like I told you, Genevieve, I know an awful lot about you." The woman returned the lacy kerchief to the now-sobbing miner in front of her. "What have you got to lose? You have no friends, no prospects. You can work until you die a decrepit and broken old man, waiting for a leftist revanchist movement that will never, ever come. Or. You come work for me. I restore you to your proper glory. And all you have to do is bust a few skulls. What do you say?" The rich redhead asked with a smile.
Gary couldn't respond, racked with sobs as he was. Snot was flowing, tears pouring down his face like a tropical storm. A small part of him that he didn't know that remained locked inside made a tentative step outside its now-open prison door. Her face became solemn. The mess was wiped off her face as she looked at her new boss. "Who do you need me to kill?" Genevieve asked.
An inhumanly wide toothy grin spread itself on the rich woman's face. "Oh, quite a few people. But I think you can manage that."