After asking a maid, who seemed to have to exert immense effort to meet Cora’s gaze, they were told Mike had been seen returning to the office. The group found the harried looking butler behind the massive desk, papers splayed out in front of him.
When she looked at them, Cora’s vision glitched out of a second, a holographic display filled with calculations and sums bursting into existence, fizzling as quickly as it had come.
HMM
TOO MUCH FOR NOW, I GUESS
Cora ignored her hallucinations, and was almost starting to get used to them anyway. She approached the desk, dropping a ball on the desktop Newton's cradle to get the man’s attention.
He looked up, eyes vaguely unfocused, before they snapped to Cora’s face.
“Linne-, Cora,” he sighed, “I see Iain has equipped you, so I doubt we’re still doing the violent slave uprising.”
“Not slaves anymore, Mike,” Cora said, giving him a winning smile she hoped looked as good on this face as it had her own. “And I wouldn’t rule out the violent uprising, I’ll just be on your side.”
“Ah, yes, I was referring to immediate company, however. Typically one does not give arms and armor to someone they are planning to execute.”
“Wouldn’t stop me,” Kyra muttered, loud enough that it was definitely intended to be heard. Cora gave her side eye, and Kyra didn’t even have the decency to smile sweetly, flipping her off instead.
Huh, guess that’s universal.
“Right, yeah,” Cora sighed. “Not killing me right now at least. So how’s the situation looking?”
“Not great,” Mike groaned, pushing forward a piece of lined paper he’d been scribbling. “We are low on everything but ammunition. Food, general supplies, and most importantly, running dry on funds to buy more.”
“Oh, right, there’s a few wads of cash in the safe, I think I left it open?”
“What!?” Mike’s eyes shot wide as he scrabbled at the door next to him. He frowned disapprovingly at the pile of Cora’s vomit, but still came back up with four stacks of bills. He quickly flipped through them, and sighed in relief.
“Twenty thousand, give or take,” he stated, visibly relaxing. “A house like this, that’ll go faster than you’d think, but it’s a cushion.”
Cora grimaced, but she’d been playing with an idea in her head since she saw that money this morning.
“Especially quick with this,” she sighed, “let everyone know, present company included, that they can take $1000 and go, if they want. Tell them if they stay, though, they will continue to get room and board, and a salary. Give them…. Uh… $250 as a down payment on that.”
Mike’s eyes looked like they’d bulge out of his head, his expression oscillating between disbelief, admiration, and frustration.
“Sorry,” Cora said, choosing to address that last one, “know I should’ve told you that a couple hours ago, but it’s been a hell of a morning. You gonna take the offer?”
“I am not,” Mike growled, though his eyes flicked back to the cash. “I’d just find myself a corpse on the street, and….”
He looked back at Cora.
[DEVOTION: 1/60]
DAMN! ALREADY OUT OF THE NEGATIVES! WHAT A DAY
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious where this was all going,” he finished. He swept sharp eyes across the others in the room. “Any of you?”
Again, a chorus of shaken heads. These people, at least, had reason enough to stay. Kyra’s hard eyes made it clear that reason still very well may be to put a knife between Cora’s ribs, but that was a problem for later.
“Very well,” he said, rising from the desk. “I’ll make the rounds.”
Cora dropped onto the couch in front of the fireplace, taking a beat to process the morning. This…. This probably wasn’t all a dream. It was too long. Too detailed. That was why she’d sent Mike with the money. If these people were real, well, 1K and a farewell wasn’t anywhere near enough to make things right, but it was a fairer shake than they were likely to get elsewhere.
So, if this is real, if she was in the Slave-City of Tyrinno as a famous slaver herself… what the fuck now?
She groaned, burying her head in her hands. The biggest problem she had back home was whether or not to cameo as Jane Thick in the newest straight-to-streaming Sandler vehicle. Now, she had lives in her hands, even if they were no longer chained to her grasp. Springing from that was the issue of being part of the ruling class in a slave based society in general, which was an ethical conundrum that made her head spin.
Cora had never been one to dwell on things like that, but that was more because she tended to see the world in black and white, and lived in the kind of gilded cage that made evil easy to ignore. To her mind, on earth, her very existence in this society would have been an intolerable evil. Seeing it in action, she felt she had been right.
Easy fix if I was the only one. Top myself, everyone’s free, hope I wake back up in Beverly Hills.
But she wasn’t the only one. That had been made clear. Kind of small-fry, if anything, albeit from a ‘grand lineage’.
She’d starred in enough historical dramas. They’d never striven for accuracy, but she’d seen this before. She was the kind of discontent minor noble that started rebellions.
Yeah, and usually ended up drawn and quartered.Gotta survive the day first, Cora, don’t get ahead of yourself.
Cora listened to herself, on that. Or tried to. Part of her still burned. Part of her knew she couldn’t let this kind of system stand, when she might eventually have the power to change it. And part of her, a dark part she’d known was there since two years ago, was excited to see what would happen when Cora Casanova let loose.
FUCK YEAH!
THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!
Yeah, [Big Sys]? You gonna fucking help somehow?
OH YOU BET, SISTER!
YOU PROBABLY DON’T FEEL LIKE IT RIGHT NOW, BUT I AM THE BEST THING IN THIS FUCKED UP WORLD TO HAVE ON YOUR SIDE
Better start proving it.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been brooding, but Mike hustling back through the doors snapped her out of it.
“Two maids took the offer,” he reported, conflict written on his features. “I expected more. Maybe hoped for it. But… I worry for those girls.”
“Have they left yet?” Cora asked, rising from the couch. “We could escort them on our way out, get them somewhere safe.”
Iain grunted at that, but lodged no formal protest.
“They are packing their things, which is essentially nothing, so they won’t be long. You might catch them at the entrance,” Mike responded.
“Okay,” Cora said, nodding, “Mike, give Iain as much cash as you think we need for supplies, and put the rest somewhere safe. No point in y’all being left out to dry if we get murked out there.”
Her eyes flicked to Kyra, who’d been fidgeting since Mike had mentioned the two girls leaving.
“Kyra, would you run to storage and get a week or two worth of food? Uh, if we even have it, I guess. I assume Tania wasn’t being literal about our food sitch. We’ll send it with the girls. Meet us at the front door,” she asked, finishing with a pleasant smile. As she’d expected, she saw the girl tense at being given an order, but lose a bit of it when the order was what she wanted to do anyway. She glared, nodded, and left.
Circling her finger above her head, Cora led Iain and Hawk out of the room, and immediately realized she didn’t even know where the front door was. Hawk saw her confusion, gave her a pat on the shoulder that nearly drove her through the floorboards, and left her hand there to guide her through the corridors.
“You really don’t remember shit, huh?” the big girl asked, with a facial expression Cora could best categorize as a ‘comforting smirk’.
“Let me put it this way,” Cora said, flashing the Casanova blues in the kind of upward glance that made someone wonder. “I didn’t remember my goddamn name until someone said it.”
Hawk chuckled, and pulled Cora’s shoulder tight to her stomach.
“Well don’t you worry, Miss Mistress," she said. Her stomach was hard, flexing against Cora’s side with each step. She smelled like sweat, and gunmetal, and sex. “I got no problem playin’ teacher.”
They reached the front door, and Hawk’s hand casually moved from Cora’s shoulder, wrapping around her neck to beneath her chin, pulling her face up to meet her gaze.
“Few things I’d love ta teach you, in fact.”
Cora knew making out with Hawk in the foyer would be a bad idea. But dammit, the ‘switch’ in her was well and truly flipped for this woman, and that hand under her chin was making her feel things. Add on to that the fact that everyone seemed to both be looking to her for directions AND toying with the idea of lynching her…. Well, going full pillow princess and letting this sexy Amazon use her like a toy seemed a lot easier than trying to balance the expectations being placed on shoulders that weren’t even her own.
A tsk stopped her from letting that happen, pulling her attention to a pair of women frozen in the entrance to the foyer. They wore, essentially, rags, and carried honest-to-god bindles over their shoulders. Their faces oscillated between embarrassment, anger, fear, resentment, and exhausted resignation.
“Knew it was too good to be true,” one said, with a voice that backed the statement up. “Shall we see ourselves to the dungeon Mistress, or will you be taking us there yourself?”
It took Cora’s brain a second to catch up to the woman’s.
They think this was a trap, and this heavily armed group is here to stop them from leaving. Yeah, that tracks. Jesus, I must’ve been gaslighter-in-chief.
“What? No!” Cora said, hurriedly tearing herself away from Hawk’s grip. “I see how this looks, but we were heading out for supplies anyway, Mike was worried about you, wanted us to escort you, make sure you got somewhere safe.”
You didn’t have to be a body language expert to see that the women didn’t buy her explanation. The one who hadn’t spoken cowered behind the one who had, and that woman’s jaw was set in what she clearly thought was pointless defiance. Cora sighed, and looked around to her companions.
“Could one of you back me up? I get why they think I’m lying,” she asked.
“Don’t worry, Tinny,” Kyra cooed as she entered, handing bundles to each woman, giving a warm smile to the cowering woman and paradoxically flashing a knife. “I don’t trust the bitch either, but she made the mistake of arming the rest of us. When she does try to pull something, she’ll be too busy bleeding out to finish it. Not even a contract bond left to kill me when the job is done!”
Not exactly PR gold, but looks like it worked.
The women straightened up, and, while wary, seemed ready to follow the group.
“Alright,” Cora breathed, constant tension feeling like it was pushing words out of her. “Iain? Any tips? You’ve been acting like we’re walking out into an active warzone.”
“Weeeelllll not so very bad as all that I suppose, Tyrinno has a few places worse on offer than Light’s Fall, but the best way to be safe in this city is overkill,” he said, then nodded towards Hawk. “I’ve known whole combat squads who would think twice on engaging someone lookin’ like that, ye ken? That said, this city…. It does things to its lost. Not everyone in the gutter will be acting within reason. Add in that The Chains have been getting more bold in their target selection, and seein’ that you’re the only person with anythin’ worth stealin’ in this neighborhood, best to be on guard.”
Cora nodded. Great. It's gonna be like LA in the 70’s, except everyone hates me, specifically.
She found herself ogling Hawk again, this time appreciating the absolute presence of the woman. Iain was right, anyone with two brain cells would think twice. Cora looked back to see Iain strapping on a masked combat helmet. He finished up, strapped his longsword to his belt and handed her a shorter version, then grabbed a duster off the rack and handed it to her.
“Uh, I think I’d rather have the helmet,” Cora said, to a vox-distorted laugh from Iain.
“Nay, ye don’t” he said, folding the duster’s collar over to point at an intricate latticework of circuitry inlaid to its lining. “Were yer brother’s. Dinnae ken why he weren’t wearin’ it the night he died, but yer gain I suppose. Reinforced, emits a minor force field. It’ll do for the beginnings of any small-bore fire coming your way, and if anything bigger gets used we’ll all be fucked anyway.”
Cora nodded, grabbing the jacket and shrugging it on. It was too big, but fucking with the belt and rolling up the sleeves made things workable. She heard a snap and smelled ozone as her vision fuzzed for a moment, then resolved.
“Dope,” she said, then looked to the other women. Kyra tapped the side of her neck, and her catsuit seemed to climb up her face, turning her features jet black. It didn’t look like it would stop a bullet, but what did Cora know.
Hawk just smirked. Cora frowned, squinted and focused. A blue panel sparked into life above her, shedding a little light on her whole deal.
[CYBERNETICS: DURA-DERM REINFORCEMENT, PREDATOR COMBAT PACK]
The panel fizzled out, but the information remained in Cora’s mind. She wouldn’t be the only one with cybernetic tricks in store, and honestly, most people probably wouldn’t be as obviously enhanced as Hawk.
“Alright,” Cora nodded, taking a stabilizing breath, and pushing open the front doors. “Let’s move out.”