[i]Mamushi | Regalia - Safe?[/i] [hr] Nobody drove Mamushi anywhere. In the five minutes of shivering-bunny PTSD he’d allowed himself, it occurred to him that shit like that was what got people killed. The only reason he was alive, that he would be leaving at all, was because the Main Branch was as retarded as the Regalia Branch when it came to keeping up with the times. It was all very Scorsese, “send my best guy” this and “I’ll whack ‘im good, boss!” that. The compute rat knew well enough how they operated because he’d watched it about a hundred and a half times over the past few years, keeping his own little files in excruciating detail before surgically removing them from the world’s collective digital memory. Let the other Erasers rock the lye-and-bathtub scene, he was the one who excised all the dirty little secrets from the light of day. Gyles they’d send men for. The Twins they’d send men for, and wish they hadn’t. Vivian Hong, that fine piece of tail, they’d send men for. Warawasa Mamushi? The computer nerd? He could practically hear the eye rolling from here. Whatever Enforcer got his assignment probably felt like he’d gotten the short end of the stick. [i]Sup bro, you comin’ with us to take down the Reg? Cut your teeth on some real meat?[/i] [i]Nah, man, got some chicken-shit Teriyaki to fry.[/i] [i]Weak, dude, hurry that noise up and come for the real party.[/i] Assholes. But it was for exactly that stupid line of thinking that he was alive, that boots-on-the-ground, one-shot-one-kill bullshit that the muscle got so hard over. You want to kill someone, no question? Find yourself a good nerd. He should have, he thought, been a smoldering heap. The moment he turned over the cylinder of the frankly ridiculous motorcycle he’d bought himself as a New Year’s present, he should have blown himself to Hell. There should have been a man waiting for him—one bullet to the back of the head, into a van, done. Hell, there should have been three men [i]in his room[/i] so that a lucky slip like the one he’d had didn’t happen. The tiny neuron of that attempted to find pleasure in the fact that he’d beaten the odds—take that, meat heads!—was ground out under mental heel like the butt of his cigarette. That he was alive right now didn’t change the fact that he should have been dead. As he revved the engine on his 2016 Kawasaki Ninja H2R, a duffle-bag that weighed practically as much as he did over his shoulder, Mamushi drove his damn self to the safe house. No more room for error. [hr] “Hold the—“ Click. “—fuck.” Kimberly Kristen’s hefty rear disappeared behind the red corrugated door just as Mamushi rounded the corner, leaving him another three and a half minutes of time to kill. That a cigarette was already in hand, a tight butane lighter flaring invisibly to searing life, probably said unhealthy things about his habits. Having almost been killed was, however, only a distantly terrifying prospect to him in the face of what was to come. …people. Friends, even, or the dreaded realization that [i]Oh wait, no they’re not![/i] How long had it been, he wondered, since any of them had actually seen him? Not interacted with him—he was a visible digital presence, the ghost in all of their machines—but actually [i]seen[/i] him? Or, for that matter, wanted to? The trouble with having people on constant surveillance was knowing more about them than they wanted you to. Having read—okay, skimmed—several books on the subject, Mamushi was more than aware that feelings of assumed familiarity were common among surveillance experts. Yes, he knew that Gyles spent about as much time as Mother Warhead on looking suave as fuck. Yes, he knew that chocolate pretzels meant that he should keep his mouth shut around Vivian—he wouldn’t, but he should. Yes, he knew how much his latest crush hated the way the assorted assholes talked about her pretty accent. But what, precisely, was he supposed to say? [i]Hey Devi, you remember that time Rob Marquette called you a dot-head? Don’t even trip, babe, he’s totally taking it from your Thursday driver. Wanna see something funny? Call him ‘spanky’ sometime.[/i] Charming. The problem was that all these little relationships were just in his head. It was easy, from behind a monitor, to imagine them laughing it up over his little asshole jokes. Watching TV. Getting a beer. Intimate little sit-com moments he was too embarrassed to admit he craved. Out here in the real, where people walked around with guns and expected to be able to take on four or five thugs at a time, for all he knew he was just their freaky pocket-geek. Dial-a-nerd. “Get a fucking grip.” He muttered sharply to himself, breathing a plume of fresh smoke into the elevator as he stuffed his hands into his hoodie pocket and scanned his eye. “What are you, twelve?” [hr] When Mamushi was nervous, he did a lot of things. Stepping out of the elevator like a Japanese Lizbeth Salander, he immediately found himself focusing on the fact that everyone else in the room was older, cooler, and better dressed than he was. It was like grade school all over again. “So fuck this day.” He drawled as he padded inside, rivet-head chic in black Rage Against the Machine hoodie and sweats with still-wet helmet hair plastered down the sides of his pale face. “Like, hard. Like, really hard. So hard that, between you and me? Probably illegal. I’d call on that shit, no joke.” ...grade school had not gone well for Mamushi. “I win the badass off, by the way. No contest.” He continued, bee-lining for the kitchen as his eyes did a near instant tour of the room, collating and processing. Kim, Devi, Gyles, Vivian—decent showing, all things considered. They were fast. He was already going for some water, pulling a cup out of the cabinet. Mamushi would have done just about anything to have a stupid beer like just about anyone else, but with enough benzos in his system to tranq a horse at any given moment now didn’t seem like the time to start mixing medicine. “Turned some fucker into a Jackson Pollock painting with a goddamn sword. Shut up, Gyles, it was impressive.” The kangaroo pocket of his hoodie shook when he walked. The fact that he knew which bottle to grab by feel was not a good sign, nor was the one-handed pop of the child-lock. Ironically, he’d had that down when he’d actually still been a child. He turned, threw back the pill, took a sip, and finished up his cigarette in the same motion. He ground it out on the bottom of his black moccasin without missing a beat, dark eyes flicking about to the others again above his sardonic, snake-bit smirk. “So that was my morning. Happy Monday!”