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03: The Professional Difference

"Kal, for once, don't be a cunt." The short, barking laugh of an insufferably smug border collie is all that comes back through the phone. Vick rolls her neck, pacing back and forth along the wharf. Most people find the gentle lapping of the waves soothing, the slow in-out a calming tempo to an addled mind, but Vick isn't most people. The waves are annoying. She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose and rolling her jaw. "I'm sorry, alright, I'm sorry?"

"You know I'm well within my rights to record these calls?" Kal says, and Vick can hear the cocksure smirk that's no doubt plastered across his face. Vick rolls her eyes, smoothing out the same crease in her militant business skirt that's been bothering her for the better part of an hour. Kal adds, "You're late, that's not my fault."

"By an hour, Kal. This is beyond unreasonable."

"Pick-up was at four, Vick." Kal's tone is icy. Vick hates how he does that, wielding his anger like a weapon. She only wishes he hadn't learned it from her. Quickly, Vick subtitles. The clock in her assistant reads 21:49. She doesn't even remember it getting dark.

Shit. She thinks. Vick hates losing, and the embarrassment of it nettles at her stomach.

"Okay, you're right, you're right." She starts slowly, trying to marinate her words with shame. She knows Kal likes to see her squirm, likes to feel like he's pushing her around. Vick's a strong woman, far stronger than he'll ever realise, and certainly strong enough to pretend he's beaten her into submission. "How about a compromise, instead? I'll give you the night, and then I'll swing by tomorrow morning at... let's say, ten?"

That barking laugh comes again. It hits Vick like a nail down her ear. Mocking. Chiding. She hates fair fights. "You'll give me the night? It's already mine, you've got nothing to give. You missed pick-up. You obviously had more important things to do. I'm just following the rules of the order."

Vick bares her teeth. It's something she generally tries to avoid doing - the motion is rather comical on a silver-furred saluki, but right now she can't help herself. "You know that isn't fair, my work--"

"Vick, you missed it. That's that." She curses. Mentioning her work is a sure-fire way to make Kal shut right down. She should have grovelled a little more, gently massaged out a tiny chink in his armour, prying enough space to ram a dagger in. Instead she let him fluster her, and now he's gone and clammed up.

It's infuriating. Vick forces her free paw to unclench, realising she's dug her nails into her palm hard enough to leave a mark.

"It's my weekend, Kal." She keeps forgetting not to use his name, it's too familiar, too kind. She needs to be detached, untouchable. But Kal knows how to get under her skin, after all, what else are ex-husbands for? "I have a whole Saturday planned out, Ricky was so excited. Don't do this." She swallows a dry lump. "Please."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you forgot to pick up your son. Don't worry, I'll be sure to let him know you had more important things to do."

"Kal--" Damn it, using his name again. Before Vick can get another word in however, the call disconnects.

"That sonuva_bitch_!" She snarls, raising her phone as if to hurl it into the sea. Vick stops herself in time, panting, and cautiously slips it back into her coat pocket. She takes a minute to compose herself, straightening her blazer as she stares at the horizon, mind drifting to the bay. History is relaxing. More importantly it is consistent, it doesn't renege on deals, and it doesn't change.

There used to be ice in the Black Bay. A century or two of consistent global warming has done away with that, and nowadays there are few places outside the arctic one can find solid ice occurring naturally. Vick's at the edge of Cistern, a district on the western side of the city. It's an industrial area, with most of the blocks owned by one or two of the Big Five, used for either factories and labs, or boxy housing flats for the workers employed by those factories and labs. In the bay beyond her, supermassive freight ships ring their bells, VTOLs peppering the air like dragonflies in a swamp, ferrying passengers and small cargo from ship to ship. The seawall is a little different down here, and unlike the rest of Anchor City the part of the wall built where the borders meet the ocean rests socketed deep underground, beneath the water. In case of flood, break glass - nineteen minutes of a four-billion-point hydraulic effort later the Black Bay is cut off from the city entirely.

The seagate had been a massive construction job divided between two of the Five, and the last remnants of the Alaskan government. It had cost a hundred and ten billion points, and over thirty people had died during the project. Many had considered it an unmitigated disaster, but Anchor City had to be protected from future floods, and they couldn't swallow the cost of cutting off the bay completely.

Not that any of that mattered in the end. The only thing people care about now is that it works.

"Miss Stalt?" A voice asks from behind. Plastering a perfectly composed smile on her silver-white face, Vick turns. A burly, pale green alligator in a black honeycomb vest and pinstripe trousers is waiting patiently, his swollen muscles pulsing with the energy of ridiculously expensive wetware. Vick should know - she paid for them.

Even when she was married to Kal, Vick had never changed her last name. That was a level of marital submission to which she would never stoop. She had always been, and will always be, Victoria Stalt.

"Mister Hugo," she says, dipping her head. Ever the attentive assistant, Hugo notices her clenched paw, which Vick promptly snakes behind her waist. Can't have the help starting gossip, although Hugo is always remarkably discrete.

"Everythin' alright boss?"

"Absolutely perfect," Vick says, walking forward. As she passes the large alligator, he folds neatly into step behind her. Her carbon-fibre heels click loudly on the alley floor, the stench of piss and junky-fuel strong enough that Vick considers switching off her olfactory.

No, need to stay sharp, always sharp, like a knife. Kal's destabilised her. He's ruined her weekend with Ricky, and now she'll have to wait a full two weeks to see him again. She lied to Kal when she said she had the whole weekend planned out, but she had been looking forward to it. Say what you want about Vick Stalt, but she loves her son.

Hugo steps ahead to open the door, and Vick turns into the empty construction site without slowing her stride. It's dark inside, but this room is mostly complete. Rebar spikes jut from the concrete in the corner, the walls up but still uninsulated and unplastered. A strip of hi-brite LED has been stuck to the far wall, casting a sharp colourless glow across the space. Splitting the beam of light in the dead middle is a man in a chair. He's a sheep, both literally and figuratively, and a stained hessian bag covers his head. Hugo's taken his shoes and turned out his pockets, but besides a small splotch of blood on his undershirt he seems relatively unharmed. For now.

He startles as Vick's heels click on the ground, his bare feet kicking slightly, arms straining behind his back as he pulls uselessly at the cable ties. Vick stops a few feet from him, then nods to Hugo. The alligator walks over and yanks the bag free.

The sheep, one Mister Harry Llewelyn, blinks in surprise, rocking the chair as he squirms. He pants and pulls, blusters and bites, but then finally goes slack.

"And who're you? The hell is this?" He spits eventually, voice a muddied mixture of fear and anger. With the placement of the light strip behind him, it must be difficult to see Vick's features. Still, she's aware of her imposing silhouette, and for a moment lets him stew. He tongues a dry mouth. "Where are we? I don't know anything, you got the wrong guy! I-I don't have any money, whatever this is about, I didn't have nothing to--"

"I do not make mistakes, Mister Llewelyn," Vick says, clasping her paws behind her back. The sheep stiffens at the use of his name. He looks to Hugo, who stands expressionless, giant arms crossed over his chest like locks on a gate.

"Who are you people?" Llewelyn asks again. He's panting, and his words come tiredly, as if he'd been running a great distance.

"My name is Victoria Stalt, and I am speaking to you on behalf of the Rextrom Group's interests." It's technically true. Vick's a fixer for Rextrom, one of the Big Five. Of course none of her payslips trace back to them, and technically she works for a shell corporation of a shell corporation, which is in turn owned by a small religion based out of Luxembourg. She's pretty sure it's called Joviasm.

However, there are no doubts about who gives her orders.

The sheep is quiet, and Vick simply waits. Eventually, he works himself round to the right conclusion.

"So you're here to what, kill me?" He asks. Close enough.

"If we want," Hugo says gruffly, joints popping as he rolls his neck. It's a good trick.

Llewelyn's eyes bulge, and he looks pleadingly to Vick. "We only wanted--"

"I know what you want. And we both know you aren't going to be getting it."

Llewelyn recoils as much as his chair allows, making a choked noise that's half laughter, half sob. "So you're... what, a hitman working on Rextrom's payroll?"

Vick lets a smile touch her lips, cocking her head as if she is explaining something to a very small child. "No, Mister Llewelyn. I am a lawyer."

"Call me when there's a difference."

"Oh, there's a great deal of it, I can assure you," she says firmly. Now it's her turn to use her words like a weapon. Confidence. Power. Let the things she doesn't say do the threatening for her, she doesn't even need to speak them aloud. "The difference is a matter of professionalism. Where I go, problems disappear with elegance and grace. There are no crude and mangled bodies to be dug up by nosy journalists or concerned citizens. Instead, it is rather as if the problem were simply... never there to begin with."

The sheep swallows audibly, and then his eye dart across to Hugo. "And him? He elegant too?"

Vick walks by Llewelyn's side, circling behind his chair. He tries to turn his head but can't quite follow her. "A good worker needs more than one tool, don't you agree? I am a filet knife. Sharp as anything, but perfectly acceptable to brandish in polite society. Why, nobody even raises an eyebrow."

She comes around his other side, wearing a playful smile. "Mister Hugo however, is more comparable to a chainsaw." And she stops, laying a delicate paw on the big alligator's bicep.

The sheep looks down, his breaths come slow and heavy now, as if he can't get enough air into his lungs. "And where's that leave me?" He asks quietly.

Hugo sniffs. "Where indeed, boss?"

Vick steps forward, bending at the hips to look right into Llewelyn's eyes. "You my dear, are the meat."

"What do you people want?" He asks, eyes shooting between them. His wrists are still twisting around behind him, but there's no chance of him breaking free.

Vick straightens. "These talks you've been having with some of your co-workers? The grand plans you've all been making behind your foremens' backs? My employers tend to find them, on the whole, rather unproductive." She glances to Hugo, who shakes his head, tsking about as well as a giant alligator can.

"Extremely unproductive, from what I heard."

Llewelyn strains against his bonds. "We just want an extra break on any shifts longer than twelve hours! And a right to a contract if we been workin' longer'n ten weeks in the same shifts!" He cries, a slight bleat slipping between his words. "That's more than fair, you fucking corpo bastards!"

"And rather than you taking such an altruistic suggestion to your appropriate floor leader, you instead decided to try and shut down the factory floor for an entire day?"

"Chain of command exists for a reason," Hugo adds.

"Strikes are the tools of the people," Llewelyn mumbles. Vick rolls her eyes. "We didn't wanna hurt no one."

"Do you know how much money you would cost your employer if that were to happen? You and your friends produce over three million points worth of product every ten hours, did you know? It's a remarkably well-managed work place, and yet you seek to sabotage that. Don't you think that would 'hurt someone'?" Vick sniffs, glancing to Hugo. "I don't know about you, Mister Llewelyn, but many would call such an action corporate espionage."

"A very serious crime," Hugo says, flashing prehistoric teeth and a cybernetic tongue. "But least nobody got hurt, huh?"

"Leviathan's gonna put a stop to this!" The sheep cries suddenly, lunging in his chair. "The power belongs to the people! We're sick of selling our bodies for your bottom line, and gettin' nothing back but scorn and harsher conditions!" Vick steps back casually as Llewelyn tips forward, losing balance as he crashes face-first into the ground with a cry, still strapped tight to the old chair.

"Oh?" Vick asks, as Hugo steps forward and rights the chair with one arm. Llewelyn sniffs, nose mangled, two thin dribbles of blood sliding down to his lip. "He's quite rude, don't think Mister Hugo?"

The alligator nods, pinching Llewelyn's shoulder with one claw, his giant pale green fingers swallowing the joint. "He's gone from questions, to threats. Very rude indeed, boss." Four tiny red pinpricks sprout up in the sheep's undershirt, each one blossoming like a small rose beneath Hugo's claws. Llewelyn hisses in pain, trying to wriggle away, but finding himself pinned completely.

Hugo stays right there, standing like a statue flush to Llewelyn's side. Vick regards them both. How she wishes she could stuff Kal into a seat like that, make him squirm like the mutt he is.

"Try to see things from our perspective, Mister Llewelyn." Hugo says quietly. "We don't wanna hurt no one, neither. Yet here we are." Hugo releases his pincer-grip with a snap, and the sheep gasps with relief, sagging against the chair back. With a sniff, Vick realises that Llewelyn has wet himself.

Oh, how little that took, she thinks, with a slight air of dissatisfaction.

"Don't kill me. Please don't," he mumbles, head hanging low. "I have a family, a daughter. I don't wanna die."

"From questions, to threats, to begging." Hugo muses.

"I could, you know," Vick says plainly. Hugo cocks his head, and the sheep shrinks beneath his glare. "You could be one of those crude and mangled bodies I spoke of earlier, found floating naked in the bay to be drug up by some nosy journalist. It'll be a spot of bad press for Rextrom, but there'll be no real proof connecting them to your unpleasant death, give the news cycle an hour or two and nobody will even care. Except, of course, those friends of yours that were helping to organise that strike."

It's a gamble, but the unfair kind, the only kind Vick likes. She can't risk killing Llewelyn, he'll just be martyred and the whole factory would shut down from revolt. But he needs to believe he doesn't matter. Her bosses made it very clear - there can be no strike. Or else she'll be one of those crude and mangled bodies found floating in the bay.

Being a corpo fixer is a dangerous position, one that forces Vick to walk the line between knowing enough to be useful, and knowing too much to be a liability. A part of her even admires Henry Llewelyn, admires the passion in his eyes. He is a man who believes in something, and he's willing to fight for it.

But Vick learnt the most important lesson of her life at twelve years old, during the Italian civil war - there's no use having a cause if you're on the losing side. Each one of the Big Five likes their secrets to stay that way, but Rextrom will keep her around for as long as she stays useful.

So she has to remain useful. There can be no strike.

"Killing you would certainly be a lot less effort," Vick adds with a flick of her wrist, as if she's simply bored by the conversation.

"You can't!" Llewelyn cries, and Hugo smashes a sledgehammer-sized fist across his face.

"Don't interrupt!" The alligator screamed. Llewelyn spits blood, panting heavily.

"I am speaking now, Mister Llewelyn." Vick says. There is no anger in her voice. This conversation is everything she did wrong with Kal, done right. She's untouchable. Unstoppable. "Now, as I said, you could be one of those bodies. Or, we can negotiate here and now, away from prying eyes. Call me squeamish, but I'd much rather you go and talk down those antsy friends of yours yourself. Help me ease them back from the ledge you drove them to, douse those fires you stoked so well. I'd rather not hurt anyone, Llewelyn. Happy workers are more productive, numerous studies have shown it."

"We just want a break," Llewelyn says, head still low, cowed. "We get forty minutes on a twelve-hour shift, it ain't right. Last week, Olga collapsed right at her station." He glances at Vick, eyes shiny and wet. "They fired her right then and there. But if she'd just been allowed to stop for a little bit, it never woulda happened!"

"Oh? You think the solution to lazy employees is to indulge them?" Vick asks, cocking an eyebrow.

Hugo snorts. "From questions, to threats, to begging, and now to bargaining. Quite the rollercoaster we have here boss."

Llewelyn shakes his head. "You people will never understand."

"Here are the terms, Mister Llewelyn." As Vick speaks, Hugo wraps one of his massive claws around the back of the sheep's head, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You will go back to work, tomorrow. You will speak with your co-workers, and you will convince them you have had a change of heart. There will be no strike. Understood?"

"I... I can't," he whimpers. "They're too angry, they'll do it with or without me." Vick grinds her teeth, her long silvery tail curling behind her. This isn't what she wants to hear. Isn't what she needs to hear.

She steps forward, tilting her head up and glaring down with her eyes, like one might a bug. "You'd better, and I have faith that you can. You riled them up in the first place, and so you will be the one to temper them down." Vick lifts her chin even higher. "Or, we might find that daughter of yours as one of those crude and mangled bodies." A series of uncontrollable shakes overcomes the sheep. His teeth lock up, a keen whine whistling through his clenched jaw, his entire body trembling like a house in a quake. Vick sees the chink in his armour, and pounces. "Remember what I said before... about the filet knife and the chainsaw?"

"Please, no," Llewelyn mewls. "Please don't do this. We just want to be treated like--"

"DON'T FUCKING INTERRUPT!" Hugo screams suddenly in his ear. Llewelyn cringes from the sudden outburst, but nods quickly, falling silent.

"You will be made a third-grade foreman, and given yellow-grade floor clearance," Vick explains. "As such, your new role will allow for an extra hour of break on any shifts that surpass ten hours. Which, I trust, they all will."

"A... promotion?" The sheep asks, confusion on his face. He glances worriedly at Hugo, but the alligator remains still.

"That's right," Vick says. "And a promotion comes with benefits - a pay rise, better medical," she pauses. "Your daughter will finally get that ligament replacement she needs." His eyes widen, and a tickle plays out in Vick's chest. Let him see that she knows everything. Let him wilt in his seat a little more. She is a god to little men like him.

If only Kal could see her like this. That filthy fucking bastard of a man. How dare he try to keep her son from her? How dare he try to wield their child against her like some vicious bargaining chip? She'll get him in a chair, eventually. When things settle down, when it can't be traced back to her, and when Ricky's old enough to make it without a father. How had she ever thought to love a man like Kal? A hot spike of rage flashes through her suddenly, and without warning Vick slaps Llewelyn across the face.

"Understand me?" She snaps. "There will be no strike! Say it."

Hugo leans over, a towering figure of scales and muscle. An ancient predator, breath hot like an engine. "Say it, and we'll end this ride," he hisses.

Llewelyn nods slowly, and finally Hugo releases him. "No strike," The sheep mutters, over and over like a prayer to his new god. "No strike, there'll be no strike. I promise, no strike." Vick relaxes slightly, adrenalin coursing through her veins, the thrill of victory a far sweeter taste than any aftermarket upper.

Many of Vicks colleagues, her fellow fixers, would simply have tortured the man until he did what they wanted. They would have threatened Llewelyn and offered him nothing. Vick could have done that and probably stopped this strike - but not the next one. This was a far more stable correction. That is the professional difference Vick brings to her work, the level of class and refinement her solutions offer the Rextrom Group - the reason they pay her so much, and the reason she will always be valuable.

When Vick was a young girl scrounging for scraps and discarded rotting peels of fruit in the slums of Southern Italy, she'd seen it herself. Would-be revolutionaries singing chants to their forgotten gods Marx and Guevara, razing the city she called home. Those young fighters had hope, they'd had justice and cause and reason and passion flowing out of their ears in abundance.

They hung in the streets all the same.

The first twelve years of Vick's life were nothing but pain and hardship, and they carved ruthlessness into her soul. Her parents fled the economic collapse of Russia, only to find their new home descend into anarchy almost immediately. A civil war sparked by political extremists. Her family had done terrible, awful things in order to survive - everyone had. And in the end, what had quelled the fighting? Had the Italian regime slaughtered the revolutionaries, or blown them apart, or maimed their families?

No. They paid them off.

Most took the money, the easy way out. Enough at least to cripple the rebel 'army' and leave it lame. They hanged the rest.

The Big Five has more money than god. They don't care what stops the strike, they just want it done. Sure, Vick could torture Llewelyn into complying like any normal fixer, but if she gave him a pay rise and promotion, he'd trap himself like a fish in a snare. He'd move his family to a nicer house, he'd take on a bigger credit card, he'd subscribe to a few more apps and services. Bit by bit he'd buy his own cage and throw away the key. By giving Llewelyn a tiny drop from the ocean that is Rextrom finance, Vick will trap him better than any amount of violence ever could. Forgetting pain is easy, it's far harder to give up comfort.

Not only that, but by making him complicit in the prevention of the upcoming strike, she would beat down that sense of wrongdoing.

She will take the us-versus-them, and make them become us. That is what Vick does. Just like Reverend Luther and that pay-per-pray Church of his, she converts sinners to saints. That is the professional difference between Vick and other fixers.

The sheep is still muttering his new mantra, head lolling with his chin pressing to his chest. "No strike, no strike, I promise, no strike."

"I'm glad you can see things my way, Mister Llewelyn," Vick says, smiling amicably. She claps her paws together, as if they've just signed on a high-profile business deal. Even as the sheep's still muttering promises, Hugo slices him free of the cable ties with a flick of one claw.

Llewelyn pulls his paws into his lap, massaging his wrists as he finally shuts up.

"One last thing," Vick adds, holding up a finger. She couldn't let a lead wriggle away like that. Llewelyn meekly meets her eyes, and she knows he belongs to her now. If only Kal were here. "Leviathan. Elaborate on that."

"They're always in the news I just... I..." He shrugs.

"I've heard the rumours, and seen the flyers," she says, wishing he could be a tad more concise. "Are you a member?"

"No!" Llewelyn blurts, shaking his head fiercely. "No, really I swear it, I'm not!" Vick believes him, he wouldn't dare lie to her now. "I only... only went to a few meetings. It's where I got the idea, for the strike, I mean. They say we have the means of production, that we should seize them, that-that the corpos fear us..." He winces as he says the word strike. Good.

"Mister Llewelyn," Vick says, stepping closer. "I want to hear it in your own words." She smiles, like they're old friends. "Tell me everything."