Corps lie.
It’s a fact of life, and I’d accepted that a long time ago when I took the job. I’d discovered my adept abilities a few years earlier, and one of their suits had recruited me. They’d lied to me then, saying my future was unlimited in the corp. Fact is, I wasn’t as powerful an adept as they’d have liked, so my future was limited to the extent of my ability to bodyguard low-to-mid level execs who weren’t shining stars on the rise. I was okay with this, though; I was making more money than I knew existed, and it was way better than being a gutterpunk in the streets of Houston.
They lied to me about the fringe benefits, too. “You’ll have your pick of women, Luther,” they told me, “and a top-notch place to take them to.” I might be fairly smooth, but I’m still an ork. I got women, sure; magic, even adept magic, can be a hell of an aphrodisiac to some. But I sure wasn’t attracting the prettiest of women; the corp saved their money for the more promising of magicians, not a mid-powered adept. Again, it was okay; my life had taken a distinct upward turn from my days on the streets.
I think what finally made me tell my immediate superiors to go fuck themselves was when they lied to me about my sister. They told me they’d find her a place, and find her a job within the corp, and get her out of the streets where they’d found me. And they did. They just never told me what the job was. Turns out, it was as a whore for some of their high-end suits. When she got tired of that and started to complain, they shipped her off to a research facility somewhere in Montana, never to be seen or heard from again.
I never knew any of this, of course; I was assured she’d found herself a nice little secretarial position at their New York office. She sent me letters every now and then, telling me how good things were and thanking me for helping her off the streets. If they hadn’t sent me on the last assignment I ever did for them, I might still be working there instead of working the shadows.
My last job was as a bodyguard for a personable mid-level sarariman who liked me enough to talk about all the good times he and his office staff had with the last girl the corp had sent them. Even showed me the video, of them laughing at Nadine and her tear-streaked face as they took turns with her. He never saw the blade come out of the sheath in my sleeve, and it took him a few moments of staring at me blankly, blood running down his chest from the gash in his throat, to realize that he was dead. I even managed to miss the arteries, so it took a bit longer for him to bleed to death.
I can still see his blank stare when I go to sleep at night.
I called in a couple of favors and found out what had happened to her after that. By that time, of course, I was already back out on the street, a wanted man. The price on my head can’t be that high at the moment, because no one’s come after me since I sent the first of my ex-comrades-in-arms back to the office in a bag. Only a matter of time, I suppose, but the guy I killed wasn’t too high up the corporate ladder or it would be much worse for me right now.
So now here I am in the shadows, trying to keep body and soul together while trying to find a way to seek justice for some of the Nadines in the world. It’s a rough life, but it’s mine now.
It’s good enough.
