But mostly?
I need a damn job.
My stomach growls like it's ready to mutiny, and I consider pawning one of my knives. Not my main blade—never. But one of the spares. Enough for food, maybe a night’s bunk. Just long enough to hit bottom a little softer.
I shake the thought. Pride’s a bastard, but it’s kept me alive this long. Might as well let it finish the job.
My comm buzzes. Not a message—an alert.
One fixer left.
The worst one.
I don’t groan out loud, but the air around me sure does. I can feel the station groan with me—like it knows where I’m going.
Don Gnotz.
Old, slick, overdressed, under-loyal. A Glimner crime boss with a talent for staying just legal enough to thrive. I once saw him trade a life for a bottle of liquor and make it look like a business expense
So I go to Don Gnotz anyway.
Because when you’ve hit the bottom, you might as well scrape it loud.
The noodle stall front is still a noodle stall, except the scent of whatever synthetic sludge they're boiling is stronger this time—burned oil and something trying way too hard to pass for pork. The cook behind the counter doesn’t even glance at me. He just twitches his elbow toward the back like he’s getting paid not to care. Probably is.
I push past the plastic curtain, and the temperature drops ten degrees the second I cross the threshold. The lights inside are low and indirect—like shame, or a bribe nobody wants receipts for. I duck under a rusted crossbeam and step into Gnotz’s private warren.
He’s waiting, of course.
He always is.
Don Gnotz is dressed like he’s about to negotiate trade rights with a planetary governor—slick obsidian suit, lapels like blades, rings fat with gemstones. His dark green scales gleam, polished like a crime scene that got buffed out too fast. There’s always a fresh cigar in his hand, and it always smells like something he ordered from a catalog labeled"Decadent Regrets."
“Vrok,” he says, not standing. “What a surprise. I was just thinking it’d been too long since someone tracked ash into my office.”
I don’t smile. “Still hiding behind noodle grease and false walls, I see.”
“Security theater,” he says breezily. “It keeps amateurs guessing. And you’re no amateur. You’re more like a recurring act with a demolition clause.”
“I need work.”
“Mm. And I need a back massage from a Pi’Rell courtesan. We don’t always get what we want.”
I step closer. “I’m not here to trade insults, Don.”
He finally lifts his eyes from the compad in his lap. The expression on his face is the same one I’ve seen right before a bounty hunter makes a bad call—calculated boredom, topped with just enough curiosity to tempt fate.
“No,” he says. “You’re here because nobody else will touch you with a ten-foot plasma rod.”
I say nothing.
He sighs, takes a long drag from his cigar, and exhales the kind of smoke that clings to lungs like guilt.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” he says. “You’re not just dangerous. You’re radioactive. Hiring you is like inviting a bomb to dinner and hoping it’s too full to go off.”
“You used to like bombs,” I say.
“Controlled detonations,” he corrects. “You? You’re a fireworks show on bath salts.”
