Proditio

[Byron]

Deck 9, Freeport 1, Omega-3 System, Border Worlds
02/04/824 AS, 0325 Station time

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Quiet. Possibly the one adjective Arthur Atkins despised above all. And thus, this day was neither one of his favourites either. He had already felt it in his urine of the routine morning piss: This would become one of these days he could have well enough passed up, one of these days he usually tended to revile with the harshest of words known to a Texas-born like him. He had never done a study about it, but he was certain that Houston was the place to go if you wanted to be taught the widest vocabulary of abusive words you could ever imagine. Sometimes he imagined how his life would be like hadn’t he been born there, hell, or if he hadn’t been born in Liberty at all. But that was just the signal for him to stop with the procrastination get to work again. Looking back at his past life created a certain anguish in his chest that he prefered to never get overly into, for his own well-being. Here he stood, where he would stand if things had been different were of no relevance anymore. Business was of relevance.

One of the reasons he despised quiet days was that they gave him barely anything to do. And he needed to do something, at the very least, otherwise he would feel like vegetating. He had come to learn and hate that feeling, and exactly because of this did he never want to indulge into it again. Under no circumstances. Not after everything that had happened.
And with no patients whosoever visiting his comfy quarter, he definitely had nothing to do. It was a large apartment he had rented on Freeport One, one that he even grown attached to over the months that he had resided in here. During this time the room had steadily undergone some major changes in order to, to word it neutrally, make it fit his “needs”.
Those needs being a full-fledged doctor’s office. Not as full-fledged as you would expect from one of the all-well-known star doctors of Manhattan or Los Angeles. But he was not of their kind. Not exactly. And so he would not profit from a flamboyant office either.

He had just pulled the third cigarette this hour out of the box and lit it and elegantly put his legs onto the office desk and leaned back on his swivel chair when he suddenly heard a noise from outside his office, from out on the hallway. He shook his head and pricked up his ears. First he dismissed it as some random junkie who had gotten an overdosis and now played out his splendid phantasies, but it would not take long for him to realize there was actually somebody knocking on his door, and then he realized there was actually somebody trying to kick it open. He inhaled deeply. Calmly, he grinded the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray, opened one of the desk’s drawers and grabbed the gun that was hiding inside it. A good model.
He took his time to walk over the door somebody so vividly attempted to open. As he stood before the door, for a few seconds would he listen to the noises, out of curiosity how long this dude would keep trying and trying. Then however he sighed and decided to open it at one go. The gun, pointing straight forward, he held in his right hand. He couldn’t guess what this guy wanted. Maybe it was just a patient with some drug problems. But it could also be a troublemaker. He had come to know these before. One shot in the kidney and they were usually not much of a problem anymore. On Freeport One, you could get away with something like that.

But before he could even think about pulling the trigger, Arthur saw a woman’s body. One that collapsed before him, to be precise, apparently bereft of any strength. After a moment of shock, he scratched his neck. “S.hit,” he mumbled, looking down at the woman, then at his gun, then stretched his head out to get a glimpse on the hallway. “Thank God.” Nobody there.
He couldn’t waste time. That woman had to get out of the hallway, or else it would look seriously fishy. With a sigh, he stooped, darned his bad back, grabbed the unconscious woman by her waist and hauled her body into his office and quickly closed the door behind him. The least thing he needed right now were the few guards that actually were on the station to find a person collapsed directly before his doorstep. People would start to point fingers.

As soon as the door fell close, Arthur dragged her to one of the walls of his office and leaned her against it. By now, he panted slightly. Still with the gun in his hands, as a form of precautional measure, he looked at her, examined her, slowly lifted her face and checked on her face. It took him a few seconds to realize what he was looking at. But when he realized, it struck him so much so that had to cough. Despite the black hair that hid some of her facial contours, he could easily recognize that scar. The product of a long incised wound that had stretched well over her face. It was clear to him immediately: That stitch had to come from a master of his craft. “Oh bloody hell,” he mumbled under his breath and stepped back a meter. He remembered that stitch well. And as consequence, the person behind the scar as well. He had not thought to see her again, but he could have guessed so much, since he had already doctored her up once.

It had to be Annika Haupt of all people.