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Apr 07, 2005 20:28

It's not a good sign, really. I've been banging my head against the keyboard in boredom since yesterday. Apatheteic boredom, too. Not enough concentration to read, no desire to go out (though I did end up shopping today, but not for nearly as long as I would have liked), nothing online or on tv, no one to talk to... Rattling about inside my head, decided that I ought to write. Couldn't think of anything to write. At all. So I did what I usually do, and wrote what I was doing. No inspiration yet, so I wrote a bit more. And, as usual, something evenutally began to evolve. I'm lucky like that, though there's a whole folder of fics that prove it's not always so.

Anyway, here's the product of my boredom. No promises on quality. I wrote half of it yesterday evening and ht rest just now, and somewhere in between it turned from random girl to older Freefall, which is why the ending hints at a larger story. There's a possibility it could be a prologue to something far longer, though I wouldn't be able to keep up nameless third person present tense for long. No doubt there are some rather ambiguous moments here.



Employment

The laptop’s speakers are in the base, at the front, and when she leans forwards her sleeves muffle the sound. CDs and DVDs are piled around her, and she glances at them in a half-hearted concession to tidying up. At least she’s thinking about it, at least she sees the mess. A lot of people in this world don’t. The song playing is one she particularly likes, and even though her favourite show is about to start on TV she lingers, willing to miss the beginning of one so long as she gets to hear the end of the other.

It’s a one room flat, with a bathroom down the hall shared between four and a kitchen on two floors below occupied at the worst of times by ten. Though, like everyone else in the building, she has a kettle and a hotplate in her room, so she’s rarely down there.

The room is paid for by Mr J T Thompson. Most people, if they think of her at all, think of her as his girlfriend. Occasionally she hires someone to come in and take showers and mess about in the kitchen. In theory, he works nights, which is why no one sees much of him. He’s always very friendly, and wonderfully memorable. She’s been tempted to actually invite her little actor in for longer, at times, but she doesn’t want him to think of her as anything other than an employer. She has seven or eight similar employees. They usually don’t meet, except in rare and particular circumstances. They all think she needs them for different reasons. A brother to deter boyfriends, a boyfriend to impress friends, a friend to take to work parties and a fellow employee to persuade family she had a real job.

She has fourteen different email addresses. Several exist only to forward to other addresses. Some are only known to one or two people. Many are almost entirely full of false conversation. She checks them on a rota, from a variety of IP addresses owned by a variety of individuals. Today she has two emails from herself, one from her mother and three from J T, who really hasn’t got the employer/employee relationship quite straight. Nothing work related.

Her mother thinks she’s a student. She does do a variety of evening classes, when she’s got time. Her Japanese is sketchy, but she had surprised herself by enjoying the tapestry immensely. She tells her mother this. She tells J T she won’t need him here for several weeks, and if he tries to contact her again before she contacts him she will find someone else. She blocks his email, more on a whim than anything. He’ll create another, and probably try again. She knows how to block anything sent from his computer, which she might do should he prove persistent. Or annoying. Whichever comes first.

She flicks on the television and lounges on the bed, pulling a boot out from behind her irritably. It’s tempting to just move to another flat, rather than clean up. There’s not enough storage space here. She plans to move to the terraced house for the weekend, as she always does. She really ought to keep more of her clothes there, but on a Sunday night she’s just to tired to go all the way to London to change, and then back up the country to sleep.

Her favourite house, the place she promises herself she’ll retire to, is right up in the North of England, almost on top of the Scottish border. It’s a small house in a small village. It’s like the three bears: her weekday bedsit is too small, her weekend flat is too big but the house she never sees is just right. She doesn’t know what she’ll do when she retires. Maybe right detective stories and mystery novels. Maybe do nothing. Maybe, and most probably, she’ll never get there anyway. No one used to carry guns in Britain, but the blackmarket trade is trying to compete with America and she hates it. They don’t even supply anything useful. She had to go to Nepal to get what she wanted.

There’s a garage in Manchester where she keeps most of her equipment. The stuff you get a lifetime’s lockup for just possessing. Her James Bond pen lives where ever she does, but the computer equipment stays, for the most part, in London, the knives in the panel in the back of the wardrobe here and her favourite tools in Cumbria. Each place belonged to a different person. Unknown to her employees, each is set up to take the fall for a different crime.

She uses a mobile, registered to Miss Jones, to call the answering machine in London during an ad break. There’s two messages, one from Miss Jones herself, and another from a friend of a friend of a friend. It looks like she might be catching a late train south tonight.

London. That means the black hairpiece, the double Ds and the blue eyes. Tight clothes, ostensibly to make the job easier. Leotard and leggings, usually, like some long lost late eighties aerobics instructor, but the leotard is in the wash. The job went unspecified, but her go-between had mentioned one of the rougher areas.

London. Who is her go-between there?

Oh damn. J T.

Well, she’ll barely see him anyway. And he’s going to talk to another contact, to pretend he’s taking the job himself. She doesn’t know what he thinks he’s doing, really. Alfred, in Manchester, is a petty thief and thinks she’s just a more professional version of the same. Miss Jones is a girl she knew at school who was practically a prostitute, living in other people’s houses and off other people’s food. She’s too dumb to ask questions. She is mostly a secretary and reserved for the least illegal jobs. There’s a variety of others, some who do nothing but act as go-betweens, and as go-betweens between the go-betweens. Some own houses for her, some live in them. Several unwarily foot her phone bills. They come from all strata of society, and a few have similar arrangements for themselves. She met some of them when they ‘asked favours’, and learnt a lot from them. Others were the ones who trained her for this in the first place. A few she’s taught herself. Not everyone realises how far she’s come since she was fourteen.

J T is, first and foremost, an actor. She knows that much about him. He’s not a particularly bright young man, or even curious. He’s striking, and he’s amiable, and he’s aware of his talents. He thinks he’s smarter than he is, maybe even smarter than her. She knows he’s reached out, explored a little, looking for other part time work. She’s made sure he’s been turned down. She wants him to go back to auditioning for legit work, like his plays and extra roles. She knows enough people now that she might be able to land him something good. Get him out and away, and let him think it’s his own decision. He’s too much in love with the danger and daring.

Admittedly, so’s she.

Out of spite - she can admit to herself easily enough, even if it does sting - she uses J T’s credit card to buy the train ticket. It’s almost £50. He’s earning far more than that tonight anyway.

J T, little idiot, is waiting at Waterloo. Right under the clock. She realises he’s seen her in two many costumes, too many names, too many places. If she can’t get him out of here soon she’ll have to kill him. Neither of them deserves that.

“Nancy,” he greets her.

“You,” she replies tersely.

She folds one arm across her chest like she’s about to cross her arms and holds the other out, fingers twitching impatiently. He pulls a sheath of documents from his bag but doesn’t hand them over immediately. She rubs her fingers together and rests all her weight on one leg. She practises a variety of postures every day in front of the mirror, and she finds this one to convey the most threatening impatience of them all, short of actually waving a weapon around. He hands over the paper.

“Good boy,” she says, taking some satisfaction in the patronising tone.

“Yes, I am,” he says, pride stung. “I don’t know why you kick up a fuss every time I prove that.”

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “The money will arrive soon. What else do you want?”

It’s a dangerous question, but he’s not so stupid as to take up the challenge. Still, he pouts a little. Too pretty, too nice. She rolls her eyes.

“I know someone who knows someone,” she tells him. “I may have to relocate soon,” - a lie, a blatant truth, but he doesn’t know how often she relocates and how frequently she comes back. He thinks she lives in London, for fucks sake, despite the room in his name - “and your life might be easier elsewhere. You could do worse.”

“I could do better,” he insists.

She sighs. “You could fuck off, for a start,” she tells him. “And don’t expect to see me again for a while.”

“If someone’s after you, I might be able to help,” he says. “You could stay at my place. I could protect you.”

She’s tempted to pull her pen from her pocket and give it all the tongue she knows he’s hoping to get from that arrangement. She wouldn’t rely on him to protect her from telemarketers, for god’s sake.

“You’d die,” she tells him, and walks away.

She takes a tube out of greater London and reads by the artificial light. A theft so simple she wonders whether it’s really about what she’s stealing. Maybe a test of defences? Maybe a set-up. Or perhaps she should keep a little of the haul for herself, just to see what’s so special about it.

She feels like a Matrix extra, the black trench coat half-hiding the skintight suit. A budget Catwoman. She looks like a thief from a comic book, so her fellow travellers assume she is anything but. She can guess the words in their heads when they look at her. She’s glad that without the add-on extras she’d get none of it. Always better to be memorable before, and forgettable afterwards. She tugs on the fake hair, childhood habit of chewing the stray ends almost leading to the displacement of the entire wig.

She strides through the tube station, kicking cans and yesterday’s news out of the way, and makes a point of not touching the banister on the stairs up to street level. She emerges in an above-ground station stuck on the tale-end of street composed all most entirely of off-licenses and boarded up shops. The documents she was given go in a rubbish bin, a rarity of stations now, and already on fire. It’s not a long walk to where she’s going, but on these estates there are still a lot of people hanging around, even at this hour. She’s attracting too much attention now, getting herself followed and talked at. All races, all ages, all related.

She walks up to the block of flats and calmly begins climbing the fire escape. The followers filter towards the bottom, but they don’t want to look too keen and they’re all looking for a better excuse to be there. Some continue shouting after her, a few begin at each other. She stops on the third floor and looks down at them, head cocked to one side. She doesn’t smile.

Climbing again. Fifth floor is what she wants. Well, second, actually, but this way is better. There’s a window up there, open, next to the fire escape. An invitation. She climbs in and nods to Miss Jones, who holds a hand up to the young man between whose legs she’s currently kneeling.

“I don’t like what they’re asking you to do,” Miss Jones says.

“Neither do I, but I always was too curious for my own good.”

“You’re going to get hurt.”

“You’re going to patch me up, then.” She smiles at the young woman, a real smile. Miss Jones smiles back.

She’s out the door of the squalid flat and making her way downstairs again. The steps are uncovered concrete and there’s no banister, not that she’d have used it anyway. She pauses on the third floor to pull on gloves and take off her heavy boots. They slide on more easily than they slip off, and she chose them for that. Padding down the last flight of stairs in her Snoopy socks she leaves the boots immediately outside the door of the apartment, ready to go back on at a minutes notice. She looks at them for a second, then moves them to consecutive steps on the stairs to the first floor. Always run to the ground floor. Your best exit is always at ground level.

Everybody in the business has some little luck charm. For some it’s socks or shirts or jewellery. For others it’s an intense preparation method, usually highly ritualistic. For most, there was some mantra they repeated to themselves. ‘Here we go’, maybe, or ‘it’s showtime’ or ‘let’s get ready to rumble’ or one of another million begged borrowed or stolen catchphrases.

“Don’t cry for me, Argentina,” she whispers as she inserts an unneeded lockpick, removes it and pushes open the door.

The room is empty, but she can hear activity in the bedroom. She steps over an abandoned bottle of beer, kicked over but not quite empty, careful to avoid the sticky mess on the ratty carpet. She pulls the pen from her pocket and holds it tightly. There’s a bread knife resting on top of the television.

Sweat begins to soak through her thin gloves. Grunts and moans continue to bombard her from the next room. She looks around, hunting for some kind of storage device. There doesn’t even seem to be a shelf. There’s a dilapidated sofa, the aforementioned television and... well, she supposes the kitchenette must count as furniture, though the cupboard under the sink lacks a door and where two drawers ought to be only a dark space gapes.

She checks the cooker and the fridge. Both smell of gas. She sticks her nose into the cupboard under the sink and gets cobwebs on it for her trouble. Moving away again, she turns back to the main room. She had been told that it would be in here, and she didn’t doubt her informants. She crouches next to the television and examines it for evidence that the casing has been removed recently. No luck.

Still crouched, she turns to look at the couch again. The upholstery is barely attached to the frame, and it is leaking stuffing. She shuffles over, half crawling, and kneels next to it. She follows the stained foam until she finds the tear it’s emerging from, and, with a deep breath and closed eyes, sticks her arm down the back.

Aside from twenty seven pence and a juggling ball, one might think there was nothing there. She felt something like carpet, but when she runs the same gloved hand over the carpet next to her, she knows it’s not the floor she touched. The carpet under the sofa was still thick and clean, unused. She runs her fingers along the bottom of the sofa, knowing it won’t be so simple as merely lifting it up to look underneath. She tries this on every side, until, crouched next to the beer with her back to the door, she finds something that gives as she pushes. Like a letterbox, it’s barely big enough to get her hand inside, but her fingers touch paper and she knows she’s found it. She puts the pen down next to her.

It’s gone quiet in the bedroom now. With both hands in the secret compartment, she wiggles the unseen package towards her. The space it too narrow for her to get hold of it without trapping her hand, so she must slide it by brushing both sides, convince to overcome the friction of the base beneath it. Slowly, slowly, it emerges. Freeing her hands, she grabs an edge and pulls it out.

It snags on a nail. With an explosive whumph it disintegrates, pouring white powder across the floor, the sofa, and her. She can’t see, she can’t breathe, but she can hear. It barely made a noise, but now there are heavy footsteps in the bedroom and the muffled swearing of someone failing to get their trousers on correctly.

She wants to run. Instead, still blinking desperately, she grabs the pen and unscrews it, empty the specially made bullets onto the floor and shoving the pen into the mound of powder, filling it with as much as she can. In one movement she launches herself from the floor, backwards, screwing the lid onto the pen as she hurls herself out of the door. Running across the hallway, wiping her eyes and listening to the footsteps behind her. Pause, run, falter, run: surveyed the scene, began to chase, grabbed the bread knife, kept chasing. She jams her feet into her boots as she clatters down the stairs, tucking the pen away. She pulls off the trenchcoat as she hits the first floor landing, wrapping it round her waist, then pulls off the jumper and wrenches the padding from her bra. Ground floor, out the front door, round the back. Chuck the jumper in the bin, pads over the wall, put back on the trenchcoat, lose the hair piece.

The footsteps round the corner just as she finishes brushing as much of the powder from herself as she can. Luckily, she’s naturally pale, and it’s damn dark. She sees the flash of the bread knife, and screams.

“Murder! Oh god, murder! Rape! Rape! Murder! Fire!” she wails.

“No! No, shut up!” the guy snarls. He’s overweight, and wearing women’s tracksuit bottoms. “I’m not- Oh fuck it, shut up!” He moves to grab her by her hair, but it’s short and lying flat after wearing the hairpiece for so long. She ducks backwards.

“Don’t hurt me!” she screams. “Oh god, somebody, help, please!”

It’s not a neighbourhood where anyone would feel particularly compelled to come to her aid, but she hopes some of the pack from earlier are still around, looking for a fuck or a fight. In her too large bra and tight trousers, she looks like the prostitute she wants the world to think she is.

“Did you see a girl come this way?” he snarls, grabbing her by the coat. “Wearing this,” he shakes her.

“I’m a girl,” she says, eyes as wide as she can make them. He hits her.

“Who gave you this fucking coat?”

“I found it in the wheelie bin,” she says, gesturing. “Hey, is this cocaine?” she holds up her powdery fingers.

“No. Fuck off home,” he says gruffly, letting go of her to pull the open wheelie bin towards him. The jumper lies there. She hovers for a moment behind him.

“Heroin?” she guesses.

He turns around, raising the bread knife. “No.”

She’s never been good at reading faces, and it’s too dark besides, but she knows she’s pushed him too far. He advances, and she stands perfectly still. He grips the handle of the bread knife with both hands and holds it like he’s playing rounders or baseball. She stays still. She sees him hesitate, but she knows he isn’t bluffing anyway, and what’s a little weird behaviour when they’re seconds from corpse-hood anyway?

He swings, she ducks. Kicks his kneecap with one heavy boot, knocking it backwards in a direction it was never designed to bend. He stumbles forwards, not actually falling until she grabs the knife and pulls, overbalancing him.

“You don’t cook, do you,” she says, raising the knife to eye level, placing on foot on the back of his neck, holding him down. “Bread knives are for sawing, not slicing. And they’re even shitter for stabbing.” She looks at it for a second. “Butcher’s knife. Far superior.” She chucks it into the wheelie bin. “So, Restoration or Revolution?”

He doesn’t answer. She can feel his hands clawing at her leggings, trying to overbalance her.

“Look, this isn’t heroin, or cocaine, or any of that shit, is it? It’s something new, and it’s something someone wants. I know the Restoration group still have the labs. The question is: are you courier or thief?”

“Who are you?” he asks, voice muffled by gravel and dirt.

“Oh, I try to stay out of all that. My loyalties are still very much divided, you know. It was so much simpler when it was just The Branch, before the rebellion.”

“You’re one of Them,” he hisses. She can feel him tremble, even through the boot.

“I guess so,” she says, idly staring at her nails. Another practised pose. “I still can’t work out where you stand, though. You’re not one of Us.” She looks down. “You’re trying to guess where my sympathies lie, aren’t you? You want to give the answer most likely to keep you alive.”

She takes her boot from his neck and steps away. He tries to get up, but when he gets his damaged knee under him the falls to his side with a sharp groan.

“I’m not going to kill you,” she tells him. “I told you, I’m unaffiliated. Not everyone who knows about the battle has taken sides. I’m a mercenary, I suppose.”

“So am I,” he spits.

“So who hired you, and what is that shit?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” She rolls her eyes. “Fine, have it your way. Just don’t think I won’t satisfy my curiosity on this, though. I have nothing else to do with my life these days. I may even come back, if I can’t answer the questions myself. Armed with more than a bread knife.”

She looks down at him; middle-age, balding, fat and badly dressed. Though the Revs were far worse off than the Rests, neither side paid particularly well for guys like him. Both would spend a fortune to procure her talents, though. She pitied him.

A little.

It didn’t even last the walk back to the station, really.

Thoughts?

fiction, freefall

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