The Blood Money - Freeport One Edition -

[Squad]

Johnson was a bit skeptical. Mireen was the last person who seemed to take an interest in him, and she did that through her own means. She never asked him what she wanted to know, she simply knew it.

Now the issue is whether this fellow doesn’t know or wants to look like he doesn’t know.

Johnson looked down at the index finger on the table.

He already knows who you are. What do you really have to lose, boy?

He held up his hands.

“This seems to be your roof. I suppose you’re entitled to know who’s under it.”

He leaned forward as much as he could to gauge the young man’s reaction.

Nada.

“A corsair decided my body needed an exit for my blood supply. When I was young, I knew his brother. Bastard of a man, killed dozens of refugees on Gran Canaria. Well, one day it became my job to represent him in the justice system. Met him in a bar one day, something or other happened, and I ended up falling. Caught his throat on the way down, and I probably broke something.”

Didn’t you want it, though? Truly? Killing a mother holding her baby. Despicable.

“A friend of mine smuggled me off the planet.”

And you killed him, too. Spill those beans while you’re at it?

“Met Mireen at one of the Freeports, but I honestly don’t remember which any more. She knew my parents and supposedly knew me when I was a boy.”

How’d they die again?

“She gave me that ship docked in the hangar, told me some places I could go to make some money. She told me more Hispanics would be looking for me. Over the years, learning how to avoid people had the possibly inadvertent effect of allowing me to find other people who wanted to do the same.”

Something tells me this fellow knows a bit about that. He doesn’t give it away, though.

“What else is someone supposed to do when they’re given a fighter? ‘Fight-er.’ Pretty self-explanatory. Maybe it would be different if she gave me a ‘Trade-r,’ but too late for that. I tracked cargo, ships, parents, children, families, whatever someone wanted found.”

Then did whatever they paid me for once I found them. I feel like he knows about that, too.

“Regardless, the Hispanics found me, and now I find myself here. Mireen seems to be controlling my life from afar in a fitfully despicable way.”

Johnson motioned to the young man’s datapad.

“I used to have one of those. Had the entirety of Gran Canaria’s libraries on it. I thought one day I could read through every pixel, imagining it being a dusty, crumbling page.”

Johnson leaned back in the booth, his core on fire from trying to support his weight upright against the table.

“I’ve wanted a new life day after day, night after night. Now, I just want to keep the one I have.”

He put his hand on his side.

“So tell me, who just wasted ten minutes of his life to hear about a knife fight?”

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