Loss In Changye
Death is quick to find you in this city. Truthfully, I expected Elvira to find her death while on a job. Not on the streets, with her face smashed, augments ripped off her body, and body faced flat on the ground.
“They know her?”
“We do.”
Marvin shuts his mouth. Kei and Eta are looking down on Elvira. Their faces are a mask of confusion. Like they do not know whether to be happy or be furious about it.
“She’s infected by the undead plague.”
Kei finishes speaking. She fishes out a cigarette out of her pack and lights it up.
“Look at her. All that augment, ripped off, sometimes I forget that even morons like her will go away.”
Eta takes a cigarette silently and lights it up. Without an expression, and without a single agreement. She stands there as if some part of her soul got ripped out. I think she had some ailing with her, but not enough to want to see her like this.
I do not know much of Elvira. Even during the time on the lanes, she was always reserved, and I did not think of anything which would make me think of her. Still, seeing someone you know dead like this never gets easy. Friend or not. Once you get to know someone, despite how little you spent together, they’ll leave a part of you.
One of the detectives handed over a chip to Kei. She inserts the chip on her transmitter and plays her last moment. From the looks of it, she has a last light installed, a program where the user can record their last moments.
“Hah, shit, if you’re seeing this. Guess them Agents are going to kill me and rip my augments off me because they tainted. Thought I’d be able to escape, but turns out you can’t fight it and no way I’m going to lose the last bits of my humanity – nuh-uh, ain’t going to happen.”
She tried running, but they caught up to her and one of the Judges grabbed her by the back of the head and mashed her head on the pavement.
Guess she trusted Kei and Eta enough about her burial rites.
“So she's yours now.”
“Got any clue on her augs?”
“It’s burnt. We found a pile of ashes not far from here. The kind of ash only augs would have.”
“I think she has enough credits to get cremated. Mind if you do it now?”
“Sure. Chip tells us everything we know. Guess this is what happens when you fight them undead. You don’t know if it’s on you.”
Kei eyes me. She walked next to me and whispered.
“You got no undead plague?”
“I think no. They would have come for me too.”
“Good. I don’t want to burn two acquaintances in the same month.”
She crushes her cigarette under her boot’s heel.
“Didn’t think she’d die this way. She survived a demon, and even got out of a Dreadlord incursion. And look at this woman, dying because she got careless enough. If she’d known this, I wonder if she would have changed career?”
“I don’t think she would have.”
Eta finishes her smoke and throws it in a bin. The unit in-charge of her body carried her back to a mortuary where she cremated, her ashes stored in a metal canister containing data of her achievements, who she was, and what she did while alive.
All of that compressed into a metal canister. Eta took the canister with her and told us she knew where she’d want to take it. Kei followed her, leaving only Marvin and I on the streets of Changye, dodging the traffic and waiting for the cars to move so we could cross.
“Did they have a thing?”
“Who?”
“The deceased.”
“I think so.”
I got out of a salaryman's way. Marvin takes a long time to answer before pocketing his hands.
“I actually didn’t want my kid.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want my kid. I just thought it’s hard, but she didn’t want to abort it and feeling the baby’s kicks and seeing the ultrasound scans has changed my mind.”
“Got into a fight with the Missus then?”
“She understood. We actually were planning to hold back. Take our time, get our livelihoods in order and earn some cash before starting a family. But the world's so bad. We almost died during a mission and we got so afraid, we just wanted to comfort ourselves… and it ended like this.”
Debauchery and to let live has been the credo of the Agents and Hunters who I’ve acquainted throughout the years. Vice-addicted souls who want escape from reality. Some never get out of the addiction, and the rest simply can’t live without it. We all got one, but mine’s more through having enough weapons.
We got to cope one way or another.
“At least yours is somewhat of a blessing too.”
“I think it is. Still, seeing dead like that is a constant reminded how fucked we are.”
“Monsters, cryptids, mutants, ghosts, and now anomalies. Would be easier if you think of them one at a time. You worry too much about these bastards existing and you’ll get no sleep and rest.”
“Sounds like from your own experience.”
“Aye, mindbreak is a thing. You don’t juggle your sanity and you’ll be in a mental hospital, screaming at walls, shivering at shadows.”
“Guess I’d rather deal with anoms than go through all of that.”
Marvin seems to have a dream once. A dream he had to crush so he can take responsibility. But not this man’s head only has his wife and child.
Changye, and the current world makes it easy to be snuffed out. Elvira, the woman I barely know, and I thought would get to know was just gone so easily. Not because of some monster, blade or bullet. Simply, because she got careless once and got executed for it.
This city really has a way of reminding you how disposable you are.
How the whole of your life can just be reduced to just ash in a tin can...
***
Eta didn’t come to work. Kei told Marvin to run an errand for him and left the office. Kei’s chain smoking is particularly bad today.
“Assistant of mine. Are you curious?”
“I don’t like to pry.”
“Bullshit. Your face told me you are curious and so I will be generous. Please, humor me, will you?”
She wanted to talk. Guess despite seething and sneering at Elvira. They had enough history to bother them. I sat down and took out my smoking pipe, gnawing on the tip.
“Okay.”
“So bland… and the professional look on yours bother me. Even Marv there shares more than you’ll ever be.”
She’s right. You don’t bare your soul to anyone easily. And Elvira flat on her face on the pavement was another reminder how right I am. It can be lonely sometimes, and stupid. No man’s an island. I take a drag of my smoking pipe.
“We were teammates. Got trained under an OB-affiliated school like Marv there and was taking on missions for five years. We got out of a bad time and I really thought we’d be a team. Just three girls doing their thing and living our lives well. Well, you can see how that ended. We separated because she liked money more than us. Funny, maybe she’d be kicking and screaming if she just stayed.”
She lights another cigarette. Filling the room with so much smoke. Uncomfortable and rattled, and clearly surprised she’d care enough for someone who left them.
“You okay?”
“I’ll be. I’m going to put her into my mind. Think about her. But I guess with Changye’s state, I’ll one day forget about it.”
The people I worked with while paying my debts. I couldn’t remember them. I barely knew their names and even if we did spend time. All of them are just people who passed by. They were gone so easily it makes me wonder if there were any moments I sincerely thought they were ever my friends. Unlikely since they only saw a debt-slave they can order around. But the thought never left me. Always in the mind like a constant reminder. I couldn’t tell anything. I just locked my gaze with Kei and maybe she understood. I wasn’t exactly the best kind of person to talk about loss.
“Sometimes, I wonder if you are competent or incompetent.”
She kept a dull look on her face, and yet the quick and easy shift of disappointment on her eyes made me guess what she thinks of me. I turned away and smoked my pipe. I sincerely didn’t know Elvira enough and I can’t understand their loss, but I can still join them in their silence at least.
“Well, I hope death doesn’t take us so easily.”
With a flash of understanding in her eyes. She leans back and enjoys the silence. Her eyes lost to air and mind elsewhere.
***
Eta didn’t come to work for the next three days.
Kei got a call from a police station. They told Kei they locked Eta up after she got into a fight with an Inquisitor. It was the usual brawl, with Eta punching the Inquisitor on the face and Eta almost maiming the Inquisitor.
Sato pulled her out of trouble. When we reached the station she was holding her face, seething at Sato. Sato’s fist is bloodied and he is holding Eta by the hair.
“Alright. Stop this. Now.”
Sato throws Eta to the side. He grinds his shoe on the concrete. The coldness in the man’s eyes isn’t normal. Kei knows Sato’s pissed off and tries to be diplomatic.
“What happened?”
“Your ‘friend’ tried to fuck us over.”
His voice is plain cold. None of the tone of voice he always uses when speaking usually. I can understand it though. Eta brawled with an Inquisitor and it’s safe to assume she found the Inquisitor who killed Elvira.
“You got her out?”
“For now. Kei, I don’t care what your problem is. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about your loss. But don’t drag others down with you. We have our own lives and if you want to kill yourself, then it’s fine. Just make sure you don’t cause us trouble. Use your fucking heads before you try this stupid shit again. I will not bail you girls out if you do this shit again.”
Sato wipes his hands with a handkerchief. He spits on the ground and turns his attention back to Kei.
“Kei, control that musclehead. Cut her salary. Don’t let her get out of the office without supervision.”
Eta spits the blood in her mouth and then wipes her lips.
“Fuck you looking at? You try this shit again and I’ll cave your face in. You understand that, Eta?”
“I do.”
“You better be. Shit, I like you Eta. I like you girls. You do a good job, but we are professionals here! We don’t let our damn emotions control us. We fight monsters, demons, cryptids, and anomalies. We lose our cool and it’s our end.”
Sato’s seething himself. He points a finger at Eta. Then realizes it isn’t worth his time and leaves the other way. Leaving Eta staring on the ground.
“Are you done?”
Kei asked her while nursing a cigarette. Eta hovers her gaze on Marvin and then to me before looking away.
“I’m done.”
“Good. You fuck off back to your apartment.”
Eta blew her nose and then pocketed her hands. She observed Kei’s face and then didn’t say anything at all. Leaving the station, vanishing with the crowd who took a momentary glance at our direction before moving on as if it’s just the usual ruckus. Kei lights another cigarette and sits down on the bus stop. Marvin stood with us until it was time to clock out and left as well, leaving me with the Boss.
“Got any words of wisdom?”
“Nope.”
“Thought so.”
She took a very long drag of her cigarette and threw it in the gutter.
Loss In Changye
Death is quick to find you in this city. Truthfully, I expected Elvira to find her death while on a job. Not on the streets, with her face smashed, augments ripped off her body, and body faced flat on the ground.
“They know her?”
“We do.”
Marvin shuts his mouth. Kei and Eta are looking down on Elvira. Their faces are a mask of confusion. Like they do not know whether to be happy or be furious about it.
“She’s infected by the undead plague.”
Kei finishes speaking. She fishes out a cigarette out of her pack and lights it up.
“Look at her. All that augment, ripped off, sometimes I forget that even morons like her will go away.”
Eta takes a cigarette silently and lights it up. Without an expression, and without a single agreement. She stands there as if some part of her soul got ripped out. I think she had some ailing with her, but not enough to want to see her like this.
I do not know much of Elvira. Even during the time on the lanes, she was always reserved, and I did not think of anything which would make me think of her. Still, seeing someone you know dead like this never gets easy. Friend or not. Once you get to know someone, despite how little you spent together, they’ll leave a part of you.
One of the detectives handed over a chip to Kei. She inserts the chip on her transmitter and plays her last moment. From the looks of it, she has a last light installed, a program where the user can record their last moments.
“Hah, shit, if you’re seeing this. Guess them Agents are going to kill me and rip my augments off me because they tainted. Thought I’d be able to escape, but turns out you can’t fight it and no way I’m going to lose the last bits of my humanity – nuh-uh, ain’t going to happen.”
She tried running, but they caught up to her and one of the Judges grabbed her by the back of the head and mashed her head on the pavement.
Guess she trusted Kei and Eta enough about her burial rites.
“So she's yours now.”
“Got any clue on her augs?”
“It’s burnt. We found a pile of ashes not far from here. The kind of ash only augs would have.”
“I think she has enough credits to get cremated. Mind if you do it now?”
“Sure. Chip tells us everything we know. Guess this is what happens when you fight them undead. You don’t know if it’s on you.”
Kei eyes me. She walked next to me and whispered.
“You got no undead plague?”
“I think no. They would have come for me too.”
“Good. I don’t want to burn two acquaintances in the same month.”
She crushes her cigarette under her boot’s heel.
“Didn’t think she’d die this way. She survived a demon, and even got out of a Dreadlord incursion. And look at this woman, dying because she got careless enough. If she’d known this, I wonder if she would have changed career?”
“I don’t think she would have.”
Eta finishes her smoke and throws it in a bin. The unit in-charge of her body carried her back to a mortuary where she cremated, her ashes stored in a metal canister containing data of her achievements, who she was, and what she did while alive.
All of that compressed into a metal canister. Eta took the canister with her and told us she knew where she’d want to take it. Kei followed her, leaving only Marvin and I on the streets of Changye, dodging the traffic and waiting for the cars to move so we could cross.
“Did they have a thing?”
“Who?”
“The deceased.”
“I think so.”
I got out of a salaryman's way. Marvin takes a long time to answer before pocketing his hands.
“I actually didn’t want my kid.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want my kid. I just thought it’s hard, but she didn’t want to abort it and feeling the baby’s kicks and seeing the ultrasound scans has changed my mind.”
“Got into a fight with the Missus then?”
“She understood. We actually were planning to hold back. Take our time, get our livelihoods in order and earn some cash before starting a family. But the world's so bad. We almost died during a mission and we got so afraid, we just wanted to comfort ourselves… and it ended like this.”
Debauchery and to let live has been the credo of the Agents and Hunters who I’ve acquainted throughout the years. Vice-addicted souls who want escape from reality. Some never get out of the addiction, and the rest simply can’t live without it. We all got one, but mine’s more through having enough weapons.
We got to cope one way or another.
“At least yours is somewhat of a blessing too.”
“I think it is. Still, seeing dead like that is a constant reminded how fucked we are.”
“Monsters, cryptids, mutants, ghosts, and now anomalies. Would be easier if you think of them one at a time. You worry too much about these bastards existing and you’ll get no sleep and rest.”
“Sounds like from your own experience.”
“Aye, mindbreak is a thing. You don’t juggle your sanity and you’ll be in a mental hospital, screaming at walls, shivering at shadows.”
“Guess I’d rather deal with anoms than go through all of that.”
Marvin seems to have a dream once. A dream he had to crush so he can take responsibility. But not this man’s head only has his wife and child.
Changye, and the current world makes it easy to be snuffed out. Elvira, the woman I barely know, and I thought would get to know was just gone so easily. Not because of some monster, blade or bullet. Simply, because she got careless once and got executed for it.
This city really has a way of reminding you how disposable you are.
How the whole of your life can just be reduced to just ash in a tin can...
***
Eta didn’t come to work. Kei told Marvin to run an errand for him and left the office. Kei’s chain smoking is particularly bad today.
“Assistant of mine. Are you curious?”
“I don’t like to pry.”
“Bullshit. Your face told me you are curious and so I will be generous. Please, humor me, will you?”
She wanted to talk. Guess despite seething and sneering at Elvira. They had enough history to bother them. I sat down and took out my smoking pipe, gnawing on the tip.
“Okay.”
“So bland… and the professional look on yours bother me. Even Marv there shares more than you’ll ever be.”
She’s right. You don’t bare your soul to anyone easily. And Elvira flat on her face on the pavement was another reminder how right I am. It can be lonely sometimes, and stupid. No man’s an island. I take a drag of my smoking pipe.
“We were teammates. Got trained under an OB-affiliated school like Marv there and was taking on missions for five years. We got out of a bad time and I really thought we’d be a team. Just three girls doing their thing and living our lives well. Well, you can see how that ended. We separated because she liked money more than us. Funny, maybe she’d be kicking and screaming if she just stayed.”
She lights another cigarette. Filling the room with so much smoke. Uncomfortable and rattled, and clearly surprised she’d care enough for someone who left them.
“You okay?”
“I’ll be. I’m going to put her into my mind. Think about her. But I guess with Changye’s state, I’ll one day forget about it.”
The people I worked with while paying my debts. I couldn’t remember them. I barely knew their names and even if we did spend time. All of them are just people who passed by. They were gone so easily it makes me wonder if there were any moments I sincerely thought they were ever my friends. Unlikely since they only saw a debt-slave they can order around. But the thought never left me. Always in the mind like a constant reminder. I couldn’t tell anything. I just locked my gaze with Kei and maybe she understood. I wasn’t exactly the best kind of person to talk about loss.
“Sometimes, I wonder if you are competent or incompetent.”
She kept a dull look on her face, and yet the quick and easy shift of disappointment on her eyes made me guess what she thinks of me. I turned away and smoked my pipe. I sincerely didn’t know Elvira enough and I can’t understand their loss, but I can still join them in their silence at least.
“Well, I hope death doesn’t take us so easily.”
With a flash of understanding in her eyes. She leans back and enjoys the silence. Her eyes lost to air and mind elsewhere.
***
Eta didn’t come to work for the next three days.
Kei got a call from a police station. They told Kei they locked Eta up after she got into a fight with an Inquisitor. It was the usual brawl, with Eta punching the Inquisitor on the face and Eta almost maiming the Inquisitor.
Sato pulled her out of trouble. When we reached the station she was holding her face, seething at Sato. Sato’s fist is bloodied and he is holding Eta by the hair.
“Alright. Stop this. Now.”
Sato throws Eta to the side. He grinds his shoe on the concrete. The coldness in the man’s eyes isn’t normal. Kei knows Sato’s pissed off and tries to be diplomatic.
“What happened?”
“Your ‘friend’ tried to fuck us over.”
His voice is plain cold. None of the tone of voice he always uses when speaking usually. I can understand it though. Eta brawled with an Inquisitor and it’s safe to assume she found the Inquisitor who killed Elvira.
“You got her out?”
“For now. Kei, I don’t care what your problem is. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about your loss. But don’t drag others down with you. We have our own lives and if you want to kill yourself, then it’s fine. Just make sure you don’t cause us trouble. Use your fucking heads before you try this stupid shit again. I will not bail you girls out if you do this shit again.”
Sato wipes his hands with a handkerchief. He spits on the ground and turns his attention back to Kei.
“Kei, control that musclehead. Cut her salary. Don’t let her get out of the office without supervision.”
Eta spits the blood in her mouth and then wipes her lips.
“Fuck you looking at? You try this shit again and I’ll cave your face in. You understand that, Eta?”
“I do.”
“You better be. Shit, I like you Eta. I like you girls. You do a good job, but we are professionals here! We don’t let our damn emotions control us. We fight monsters, demons, cryptids, and anomalies. We lose our cool and it’s our end.”
Sato’s seething himself. He points a finger at Eta. Then realizes it isn’t worth his time and leaves the other way. Leaving Eta staring on the ground.
“Are you done?”
Kei asked her while nursing a cigarette. Eta hovers her gaze on Marvin and then to me before looking away.
“I’m done.”
“Good. You fuck off back to your apartment.”
Eta blew her nose and then pocketed her hands. She observed Kei’s face and then didn’t say anything at all. Leaving the station, vanishing with the crowd who took a momentary glance at our direction before moving on as if it’s just the usual ruckus. Kei lights another cigarette and sits down on the bus stop. Marvin stood with us until it was time to clock out and left as well, leaving me with the Boss.
“Got any words of wisdom?”
“Nope.”
“Thought so.”
She took a very long drag of her cigarette and threw it in the gutter.
