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“If either shows up, contact me.”

“Not likely,” the barkeep scoffed.

Bart reached across the bar top and grabbed the male’s collar, pulling the male’s face so close to his that their noses touched. “If I’m told he arrives here and you have not contacted me, I’ll come back with an entire fucking retrieval team and we’ll burn this fucking place to the ground. Am I clear?” Bart barked out.

“You can’t…”

Bart reached into his pocket and pulled out his identification, slapping it against the male’s forehead. “It better be fucking likely. Or I might just decide to come back regardless. Been a while since I burned a piece of shit building to the goddamn ground!”

“If he comes, I’ll call.”

“If either comes you’d better fucking call!”

Bart, even angrier than before, turned and left the bar before the fucker working behind it made him any angrier than he already was. He was too near doing something stupid already.

The barkeep watched him go, grinding his teeth as he seethed at the disrespect the human had showed him. Once he was sure the man was gone, he called out to a very large, very dangerous looking female leaning on the opposite end of the bar. “Keep an eye on things.”

“Don’t I always?” she asked, enunciating a particular lisp on the end of ‘always’.

The barkeep disappeared behind a door leading to a small, filthy kitchen, then another door on the other side of the kitchen to emerge in a crowded, dirty alley. He quickly made his way to the far outer corner of the building, then squeezed into the small space between the bar and the building next to it, seeming to melt into the ground as he hurried down a staircase not even marked by a railing of any type. The steps had been built into theground to give no indication that they were there at all until one all but stumbled down them. When he reached the bottom of the steps, he knocked three times quickly, twice more with a pause between them, then four more times quickly.

He waited patiently while the sound of the locks on the door being unlocked one after the other added to his nervousness. An old man eased the door open. “What?”

“They’re looking for her.”

“There are people looking for the lot of them. They won’t find them.”

“Not them, the new one. She said the Consortium Defense would come looking for her, and the Chairman just left here.”

“Good. You did your job and sent him away.”

“He said if he finds out that she’s been here and we didn’t advise him, he’d be back to burn the place to the ground. I can’t afford to start all over again!”

“Since you don’t own this fine establishment, you won’t be starting all over again. I will.”

“I invested everything I’ve earned for the last four years in this place. It’s as much mine as anyone’s.”

“Then you’d best get back up there and run it!”

“We need to kill her and throw her out into the street. He won’t be able to link her to us.”

“Why would you think he’d link her to us anyway? No one knows we are involved in anything other than providing a place to forget how fucking miserable everybody on this fucking spaceport is.”

“That’s not all. He’s looking for a male, too. Same description as her.”

The old man sighed. “There is no male. She was dressed as a male. That’s why he’s asking for a male or a female.”

“What if there is a male that looks like her? What if one shows up?”

“Well, if you were up there where you’re supposed to be, doing the job you’re supposed to do, we’d know if one shows up and we could take precautions to be sure that he won’t find her,either. But you’re not. You’re down here, not doing anything you’re paid to do at all!”

“But…”

The old man slammed the door, relocked all the locks on it, then turned around to the female lying drunkenly on the dirty mattress across the room. She been nothing but trouble since she’d arrived. So much so that he’d considered on more than more occasion simply slitting her throat and tossing her body into the street.

Sighing, he walked over to the mattress and kicked at her hand where it flopped onto the floor right beside the mattress. “You better be worth all this trouble. Cruestaci is not a breed I like to trade in. They’re too damn much trouble.”

Mirilla tried to force her eyelids open, but was unsuccessful. She lips parted enough to try to speak, but she ended up drooling on herself again.

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