PRIVATE Love Lay Bleeding

[Emer Tor]

Club Nadir, Westbrook
0238, 2081-02-14

The wind was howling, because NC had shit weather most days. In fact, most everywhere had shit weather most days. Par for the course for '81. And '80. And '79, and—

She was nostalgic for the wilder pace of her youth. Again.

Used to be it was a common problem. Not as bad now, she'd thought. No; she knew. It was only when shit like this happened that she longed for those simpler times. Violence had a way of cutting through all the din and bluster, all the fine, soft things humans wove between each other to make the suffering easier, or worthwhile, or whatever purpose society was supposed to serve.

Expectations she had yet to meet hung above her like the clouds outside. Emer licked her teeth and breathed out her anger. "I want someone combing every nanosecond of that security footage."

"Tapan's already on it, boss."

"And get me that ripper, what's her face—"

"@Queenie?"

"—yeah, her. I want another set of eyes on this shit."

Two hours ago, Dima had been one of her most popular dancers. Now he was a bloody heap of bone and chrome on the floor. He was still twitching – probably all the stims he was always on – but the mysterious john had done a number on the poor guy.

Emer lit up as she stepped out of the noisy room. They'd shuttered the club, and the lights were dimmed down to a dull red glow. The cherry of her cigarette was the brightest thing in the corridor, her slow exhale the loudest.

Dima, Tapan, Aaron, Iris; they were her people. She'd promised to protect them, and she'd failed. Emer sneered and flicked her smoke over the railing, watching it fall until it disappeared amid Westbrook's many constellations.

 

[Queenie]

How easily she got dragged into the remnants of violence. Despite her own peaceful tendencies, she was never far behind the societal explosions that plagued the city like a foul odor. The call had come at an unprecedented hour, rousing the woman from her slumber. It wasn't necessarily the routine, but lately it had been happening more and more. First with @Amos, then with a rash of sudden malfunctions in her usual clientele, now this. She couldn't help but think back to her conversation with @Dr "Redeye" Sloaks and how despite the segregation of all instances, could they somehow be related?

She arrived to Club Nadir as quickly as public transportation allowed, but probably not as quickly as Emer would have preferred.

Large metallic suitcase in one hand and overside shoulder bag in the other, Queenie made her way inside the building and rode the lift up where she was greeted and let in by one of Emer's usual staff. There was no point in asking for forgiveness or saying she'd arrived as quickly as she could. She was here, so she pointedly asked to be lead to the patient and followed in subdued quiet. Upon seeing the mess that was once a dancer named Dima, she tried to school the grimace of shock on her face.

"How awful..." she murmured, feeling the tenseness of the air literally seep into her skin and draw stiffly across her body. A glance around gave her a path over that wasn't entirely slick with blood, so she carefully picked her way across and set her case and bag down. Even with a short survey of the scene, she knew that Dima was already lost.

"I'm afraid there's little I can do for him," Queenie offered quietly as she moved to close the one flesh eye remaining, "what..." but she was at a loss for words at such an atrocity. Such savagery. She couldn't finish the sentence.

 

[Emer Tor]

One of the bouncers pinged her when Queenie set foot into Nadir. Emer waited for the ripperdoc outside Dima's room, arms folded across her chest. With a nod of greeting, she followed her inside. She could've had one of her lieutenants handle it, head on to her flat to catch some shut-eye, but Emer preferred to take care of business personally.

Especially when the business was as gruesome as this.

The Flower worked quickly, efficiently – one of the many reasons Emer liked to employ her. The verdict wasn't surprising, but it still stung. She rubbed her brow and exhaled. "Anything you can give him for the pain?"

Emer had put down a fair few mangled soldiers in the past, but back then it had been a knife or a gun that did the job. Dima deserved better.

"Still trying to piece it together," she added after a beat, jerking her chin at the mess. "About to take a look at the cameras. Could use your eyes."

Ripperdocs were no netrunners, but they knew their way around cyberware. If the client's chrome had glitched, Queenie could clock it faster than any of Emer's techies.

 

[Queenie]

She was afraid Emer would ask for that.

Being a Doctor, even a Ripperdoc, had its share of ups and downs. Some days you were saving lives, some days you were humanely ending them. Queenie felt the painful prickling of tears forming at the back of her eyes while a hard, painful lump wedged itself in her throat. She wished in that moment she had the fortitude to keep it all down like the club's proprietress who never lacked for her poker face.

When Emer asked after reviewing the footage, all she could manage was a tense nodding.

"Of course-" she cleared the strain from her voice gently, incapable of meeting Emer's gaze as the act all but pushed the tears forward to well in her eyes, "once I am done here."

Her vision stung and blurred, she turned to her kit to blink it away and find a syringe. Whatever pain Dima was in now, if Dima could feel anything at all, would be over soon enough. Even if she could dose a trip to heaven on the high of morphine, Queenie would never claim to find any pleasure in doing so. When needle met flesh now running cold from bloodloss she felt the wave of grief hit her as the contents plunged into Dima's system.

Tender fingers decorated by ink gently smoothed over his eyelid and brushed hair from his face. She whispered a prayer of peace to him and soon Dima was no longer.

Salted droplets fell from her nose as she waited for the last heartbeat, two fingers pressed at carotid. In the stillness, Queenie felt heavy and rooted, but a flicker of movement beyond her peripheral and the sound of footsteps drew her back and she remembered to breath again. Unless Emer wanted her to assess the physical damage to the body or salvage the tech, there was little left to do here, so she packed away the syringe and set her back and kit on a table to the side. She cleaned her hands with a moist towlette and brushed the lingering streaks from her face, faintly smearing her makeup in the process, and looked to Emer to lead the way to wherever her security set up could be found.

 

[Emer Tor]

If pressed, Emer would've described her life in phases, emotions waning and waxing like the moon. They were drowned first in her childhood in the tumult of terror. She'd spent decades with that demon perched on her shoulders, its claws sunk deep, its wings spread wide. Under its numb cloak she would have shot Dima without a second glance; wouldn't even have bothered to visit the site of his suffering in the first place. The pursuit of the culprit would've been borne only of the malignant need to defend her pride, to reassert her monopoly on violence.

Emer didn't cry now as Dima went quietly into the good night, but her chest was far from light. After they finished investigating, his body would be taken away for cremation. Dima had draped himself in gold in life, and would be adorned by it in death. The service was slated for Monday,and afterwards his partner and son would take the urn home, where they would all be taken care of until the day Emer kicked the bucket.

"Let's go," she cleared her throat and marched into the maze of back corridors that made up the upper floors of the club. Several biometric locks later they finally stepped into the security room, washed by the blue light of its myriad screens.

The head tech spun around and pulled off her headphones. "Hey boss. Queenie." Her shock of purple and turquoise hair bobbed as Iggy waved in greeting. "Perfect timing. Just got done screening the footage and, uh…" her perpetual smile cracked, "yeah. Maybe you'll make more sense of it than I can."

Iggy grabbed her mug of coffee and cleared the room. The machinery buzzed. A fan clunked in the distance, rhythmic and annoying. Emer made a mental note to have someone fix it, then gestured to the chair. She was too anxious to settle anywhere at the moment.

The techie had already annotated the recording, highlighting the client as he entered the club three hours prior. He drank a few rounds at the bar before securing a booking with Dima and heading upstairs. The brighter lighting of the bedroom coaxed out his features: late thirties, early forties, with a thick five o'clock shadow and warm brown eyes. His silvering hair was cropped short, military-style, and his outfit comprised a knee-length trench, black trousers, and a printed T-shirt. They talked terms and then Dima gave him a lapdance and a blowjob.

And then the man left. No arguing, no violence, just an ordinary guy with an ordinary request. The only way the encounter could've been more conventional was if Dima had bent him over the bed after.

Emer scowled at the screen, but the footage was still going, the dancer now washing up in the bathroom. Clearly the bad part was—

Dima slammed his head against the mirror. Shards tinkled like windchimes into the sink along with a gush of red. Then he did it again, and again, and again. By the time he collapsed, his face was an unrecognisable grinder of glass and bone. He twitched on the floor for long seconds before he began to crawl out, leaving a wide, bloody smear on the pale tile. At the foot of the bed, Dima yanked a shard out of his flesh and made short work of his abdomen. A minute later a guard burst into the room, and the recording ended.

The freeze-frame shivered on the dancer, slumped in his own gore. The fucking fan clanked again. Emer released her white-knuckle grip on the back of the chair and reached for a new cigarette. She offered one to the ripperdoc as well, exhaled her tension, and spoke into the stale air.

"What the fuck."