Just Business

Face Rec pinged on Daniel’s console. He tapped the picture on the surface of his desk.  Grim.  That was unexpected.  He studied the picture from the building lobby as he thumbed the intercom.

“Nathaniel?  I’m about to have a visitor.  Normal routine then let him in, please.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Daniel studied the face from the CCTV.  A mirrored band covered Grim’s eyes.  That was new.  Probably an augment.  Well, he always did love his toys.  Why would he be here?  No one in the building warranted a visit.  At least, not at the rates Grim would charge.  He had to be here for him.  Perhaps it was a social call.  Daniel smiled at his own humourless joke.  Right.

He switched to his own reception’s cam.  A few moments later Grim walked through the door.  He paused for a moment, moving his head.  Definitely an augment.  Daniel wondered what he was registering.  The cams definitely.  The gun covers?  They were meant to be invisible to the naked eye, but his shades probably had all manner of wavelengths covered.

Inspection over, Grim walked over to the reception desk.

“Is Dan in?”

“Mister Heath is expecting you,” said Nathaniel.  He reached under the desk and produced a Faraday box.  “Please place all weapons and recording devices in the box.”

“Recording devices?”  Grim produced a large handgun that was all show and placed it in the box.  “Is he still camera shy?”  He produced another gun, small, no show at all but much more lethal, and put it in the box with its showy cousin.  “I wasn’t planning on having sex with him, if that’s what he’s worried about.”  He dropped his phone in the box.  Nathaniel waited, box still open.  Grim stared back.

Nathaniel was not muscle but he had a brain.  The display showed the knife in the buckle of Grim’s belt, but you don’t tell them that.  You wait, because they don’t know what you can see, and maybe they’d give up something the scanners couldn’t detect.

After a long second Grim shrugged and dropped the blade in as well.  Nathaniel held the box open.

“What?” asked Grim.

Nathaniel tapped his temple.  “The shades,” he said.

Grim in turn tapped the mirrored eyepiece.  “Augmentation,” he said.  “Wired in.  You a tech surgeon?”

“The card.”

Grim shook his head.  “Stuff on there little boys shouldn’t see.”

Nathaniel held the box open, but his hand slipped under the desk.  Too obvious.  Grim would have noticed.  Daniel thumbed the public address control.

“Grim, he’s just staff.  Don’t make a scene.  Give him the card.  It’ll take bloody ages to vet another PA.”

Grim looked up into the camera.  For a moment it looked like it would get nasty, but then Grim shrugged and smiled.  He tapped the port on the side of his head and pulled out the SIM.  “No peeking,” he said as he put it in the box.

Nathaniel took his hand from the panic button and closed the box.  “Please go on through,” he said, as though the pair of them hadn’t been a twitch away from death.

Daniel leant back as the door opened.  Grim took a pace forward then did his usual two second scan of the room.

“Danny boy!” he said.

“Long time,” said Dan.

“Too long, but you know how it is.  Busy, busy, busy.”  He glanced at the couch.  Candice sat, knees demurely together, micro skirt anything but demure.  Her face was hidden by the VR viz.  “Or maybe you don’t know.”

“Oh, that’s just Candice.  Candice, dear?”  Candice didn’t stir.  “She likes her Korean dramas,” said Daniel, as way of explanation.  He indicated the chair on the other side of the desk.  “Not much of a conversationalist, and a mind like a sieve unless it’s about K-soaps.”

As Grim sat Daniel hit a button on his screen.  The VR visor snapped up.  “Candice, darling.  We have a visitor.”

Candice looked startled for a second, then switched on a smile.  “Oh, sorry.  I didn’t know.  Lee was just telling Su he loved her when everyone knows he’s slept with Ken and Lai Ming, and anyway her dad has promised – Sorry.”

Daniel smiled.  “Candice, this is my friend Grim.  Grim, Candice.”

Candice flowed to her feet and smoothed her skirt.  “How do you do, Mister Grim.”  She shimmied across the room, hips swaying, impossibly-long legs criss-crossing like a model on a catwalk.  She held out a hand, palm down, limp wristed like a European princess.  Grim chuckled and fistbumped her hand.

“Candice, would you get Grim and me a drink?  The ten-year-old Irish malt?”  He looked at her blank expression.  “The green bottle top right.”

Candice catwalked to the shelves behind Daniel.

“I thought you hated augments,” said Grim.

“Candice,” said Daniel, turning to her.  “Grim was admiring your legs.  Want to show off for him?”

Candice turned and grinned.  Slowly she lifted her right leg, balance perfect.  Her foot rose up and up until it was over her head and her legs formed a 180 degree angle.  “Ta-da,” she said, holding her arms wide as though she were a magician’s assistant.  The she turned on her foot until she was facing the wall.  Placing her foot on the wall she leant forward as her legs went well beyond one-eighty.  She took the bottle and two glasses, pushed herself off the wall and spun back to face the men.  Then she slowly lowered her leg until she was standing normally again.  She giggled.  “You like?”

“Um… very… very nice.”  Grim looked at Daniel and raised his eyebrows.

“Thank you.”  She brought the bottle and glasses over.  “Daniel bought them for me.  I’m going to be a dancer, but all that stretching and stuff, like you have to start when you’re like five,” she said as she poured the drinks.  “But with these augmented legs Daniel’s going to get me an audition.”

“Dearest,” said Daniel, “me and Grim are going to be boring.  You want to get back to Lee and whatever?”

“Okay.”  She flipped the visor down and stood motionless by the desk.

“Dead to the word,” said Daniel.  “Though I’m not sure the headphones are necessary.  Once she gets into her K-Ds a battle could break out around her for all she’d know.”

“Business?”

Daniel took a sip of the whiskey.  “Well, you didn’t come all the way here for my scintillating conversation.”  He winced as Grim took a gulp of the whiskey.  “Jesus, Grim.  That’s sipping whiskey.  Savour it.”

Grim grinned and shrugged.  “Fair enough.  I’ve got a job on your turf.  None of your guys, but I wouldn’t want it to be unnecessarily messy.”

Daniel waved at the office.  “I’ve expanded since we last met.  You have no idea how many guys work for me.”

“Trust me, the people who hired me, they know.”

They probably did at that.  So either one of the tongs or one of the big three corps.  Grim wasn’t cheap.

“A courtesy call?”

“I owe you that.”  Grim patted his pockets and produced a vape.  “You mind?”

“Really?  That’s a ten-year-old single malt.  You know how hard it is to find that since the Euro war?”

Grim chuckled.  “You always knew I had no taste.”  Gri took a long draft on the vape.

It was only later, slo-moing the footage, Daniel could follow the action.

The shield slammed up from the desk.  Even so, the dart clipped the top edge of the shield and spun across the room.  Even as the shield came up Candice’s leg blurred.  Grim’s arm rose, too fast for unaugmented reflexes, but the kick was enough to send him over backwards.  Candice’s legs scissored one-two and sent a stiletto through Grim’s right hand.  Her other leg bent up, ready for the final kick.

Candice flipped up her visor and looked around.  She gagged at the blood under her heel, leaking from Grim’s pinned hand.

“Oh, Danny.  I hate it when you make them do that.”

“Go back to your show, Candice.”

“Please don’t make me do it.”

“It’s another month off your indenture, honey.  Now if you don’t want to watch, go back to your show.”

She looked down at Grim.  “Sorry,” she said, and closed the visor.

“It was just business,” Grim told Daniel.

Daniel nodded.  “I know.”  Then he hit the button to complete the kick.