Middlemen

Chapter 1

June didn’t run for her life, thank-you-very-much–nor did she narrowly escape with it. That was amateur crap. What she did do, on this fine morning (fine here meaning ‘kinda okayish, kinda foggy, slushy and wet but at least she was winning’), was weave a maze in and out of city alleyways, allowing Initiative enforcers to get close enough to think they could catch her, but never close enough to actually do it, laying obstacles behind her wherever she darted.

A tipped-over trash bin here.

A vaulted snowbank there.

Just as the flailing baggy end of her open coat inched into the reach of the closest enforcer chasing her, she leapt up to cling to the gaps in the chain-link fence before her, making quick work of scaling it and landing on both feet, with a stifled grunt, on the other side.

A few of the enforcers shot at her with tranq beams.

She dodged and blew them a raspberry.

It was funny, she thought to herself, picturing their confused faces as she padded around the corner and made a dash for the renegade safe zone: what did the Initiative hope to take off of her? She’d already gotten the parts she’d needed to unload into the hands of her buyer, just like she always did. They could try and confiscate the payment she’d collected, but good luck with that if they didn’t have a very specific biometric key. She supposed they could always arrest her, take her in for brainwashing and all of that, but the fact of the matter was that there were a million different Junes running down a million different alleyways, frustrating a million different enforcers, trading a million different pieces of contraband, and fighting a million different fights. What was the Initiative going to do? Catch all of them?

Useless fucks.

She reached the usual manhole and knelt down to do the usual stuff. Five knocks with her fist on the metal–slow, quick-quick-quick, slow.

Waited for two dings from down below.

Then she meowed like an alley cat, lifted the cover, and went on down.

The rungs lining the sewer channel were polished to a chrome shine and warm to the touch despite the winter chill above ground. From below, she could hear the gurgle of cool, clean water. To think, this comfortable network of underground tunnels used to be an abandoned sewer, its walls still caked, back in the day, with all of their old filth. As she descended, a message notification hit her NeuroHUD, and she blinked three times to open it.

‘For you,’ read the text that appeared before her eyes, and attached was a picture of what had been a dozen donuts. Only two remained in the paperboard box.

***

August still remembered the day.

Back then, he used to do his own legwork.

He’d been downtown, sitting in a cafe, at a corner table, waiting on a courier. A new girl. The client had told him to expect her in Initiative white-on-white, but with the insignia under the wrong shoulder-pad. She’d have short black hair and a perfect track record when it came to deliveries. She might ask questions, but she’d drop them if he told her to.

Back then, he didn’t have a lab, but he made do, and people liked the inventions he cobbled together.

Shady people, people with something to lose…or gain.

He was halfway through his cup of boring vita-broth when the bell above the door chimed and he saw her walk in. She didn’t meet his eyes, but she did look around. Her wide eyes looked calculating, frantic, quick, and, dare he think it…kind?

No. There wasn’t a lot of kindness in the world for a black-market inventor. Even if there was some good in her, it wasn’t for him. He was function, he was intellect, he survived, and in a world like this, what more could he ask for but what he knew how to be?

What more could anyone ask for without selling their soul?

Anyway, what was the use of introspection? She hadn’t even looked at him, really looked at him.

As per the terms agreed upon by August and his client, he waited for her to decide not to buy anything and walk out before he tailed her, finally catching up with her in a secluded alleyway two blocks down to hand her the package he’d been holding.

She tapped his wrist against his for the transaction, and she was smiling. (Smiling?)

As she tucked the package into her pants pocket, she said, “Funny, I thought I’d missed the connection. I was s’posed to expect a big fat guy.”

That gave him some pause. Was he not a big fat guy?

Then it clicked.

“You’re one of those, aren’t you?” he asked.

One of those stuff-film junkies.

The ones decried in every public service announcement over the PA, marked for the ‘compassionate reeducation’ that might cure them of their…affliction. No wonder she failed to register his excess weight. She spent her spare time in neuruploads of fatter men than himself, watching them gorge and getting off on it.

But what was he going to do, call the enforcers on her? Certainly not–not with a multimillion-SCU deal on the line.

Grinning now, she leaned in and gripped the bottom of his belly, grinning hungrily, that softness in her eyes giving way to fire. There was just a bit of him to grab, no more than a handful, really, but she squeezed hard, and his heart began to beat fast. “Yeah, but you secretly like it, don’t you?”

“I…I,” he stammered.

“Hey.” Rising up to stand on tiptoe, she met his lips with hers, biting down on the bottom one until she drew a squeal up his throat. Her compact little body was now pressed flush to his, and dammit, he was growing harder by the second.

But then, she drew away, turning on one foot like–what was it called again? Oh, yeah: a ballerina. “Watch yourself out there,” she said. “Don’t let them drag you off to the re-ed!”

That was how August met June.

***

Just as the world turned into a totally different world in the secret sewer lair, June turned into a totally different June. Out on the surface, she was ready to go toe-to-toe with anybody, enforcers especially. Down here, though? She was gentle. She’d given the signal already when she shimmied down the manhole, but as she came up the walkway to the main chamber, she kept her footsteps light so she wouldn’t be startling. She knocked on the wall to approximate the drumbeat of the song that had been stuck in her head since what felt like the beginning of forever, just so there’d be no mistaking it was her.

And when she reached the heart of the lair, August swiveled around to face her in his computer chair. “Well,” he said, “if it isn’t the heart of the operation!”

He was surrounded by monitors on the desk behind him, each one flashing readouts that she couldn’t hope to decipher, but she didn’t mind that. She liked that he was smart, even if she couldn’t always keep up. Rushing to meet him before he could think about getting out of the seat his generous hips filled armrest-to-armrest, she threw herself upon him, letting out a squeak of delight as she sunk against his belly, his warmth welcoming her into him. “Missed ya!”

“You always do, and I’m glad for it.” Pulling her in by the waist, he turned her around to sit her upon one thick thigh. Her legs dangling between his, he worked off her snow-covered cap and tossed it over his shoulder, onto the desk, to ruffle her hair. “It keeps you quicker out there.”

Her heart felt like it was melting in her chest. What he really meant was, ‘It brings you home to me faster,’ but it was a dangerous world, and no place for safe words.

She tapped her wrist against his, syncing the transfer of funds between implanted chips of his own invention. “So, you got the co-ords for my next mission?”

“I gave it to another courier,” he said, wrapping an arm around her, tucking her against his soft, doughy side.

“What? Why?” she whined, even as her head lolled back to rest on his shoulder. “I only done, what, four today? And the last one was easy, I didn’t even need the truck!”

“Maybe I just wanted to keep you here,” he teased. “Maybe I’m just fucking greedy.”

She could smell the sugar on his breath, and he smelled like the outdoors, too. A few snowflakes clung to his collar. He must have had business at the one horizontal entrance point that wasn’t bricked up–the one that opened up under the bridge in the park. She’d have passed him on her way in if he’d needed to come up the manhole, and that would have been a tight squeeze for him anyway, which was kinda reassuring. She hated to think of him sticking his neck out in the chaotic heart of the city.

So yeah, she understood how he felt, all protective like that.

And although she wouldn’t admit it out loud so easily, it was nice, feeling kept.

“Ya know,” she teased, “I could totally just take a job from someone else. This city’s full of people that need shit taken places.”

“Sure, but then you would have to get up off this big gut.”

“You gotta point. I do like it,” she conceded with a sigh, laying a hand over the rounded crest of his upper belly.

“Good thing it likes you back.” Cupping its soft underhang through the fabric of his sweater to jiggle it in tandem with his next words, he said, “It goes, ‘Feed me, Junie! Feed me and make me fatter!’”

“Dork!” Leveraging her own, comparatively smaller weight to swivel them both towards the desk, she snatched one of the remaining donuts out of the box and shoved it in his mouth. He let out a muffled moan, eyes blown wide in surprise as if he didn’t know better than not to expect it. “C’mon, you and I both know why you always save me two when you know I really just want the one.” As he squirmed underneath her, struggling to swallow, she began to pull her own pastry into neat quarters with her fingertips. “So, what did you have me running, anyway? And why did it fetch so much?” He tried to form a response through a mouthful of icing and dough. She rolled her eyes affectionately, gesticulating with a torn-off piece of donut in her hand: “Didn’t nobody ever tell you it’s rude to talk with your mouth full?”

He shook his head, equally amused, and gulped down the bite of donut in his mouth, setting the rest down next to her pieces. “A very discreet new client heard through the grapevine that re-ed technology could be reverse-engineered.”

“Does it count as ‘could be’ if you’re the only one that can pull it off?”

“Oh, shut up, you. Do you really need to go giving me a big head when I’ve already got such a big everything else?”

“I’m only telling the truth,” she replied sweetly.

“Anyway, I’d normally have my reservations about the…modifications…the client requested, but for that price, how could I say no? Oh, and speaking of profits…you’ll never guess what I scored while you were out, in exchange for that two-way neurupload recorder for the You-Know-What.”

“Well, if I’ll never guess, why don’t you just tell me?”

“Go ahead then: pop open that drawer by your left foot,” he instructed her.

She stuck the toe of her boot into the drawer handle and gave it a tug. Inside, she found a white paper sack, the kind you get at the doctor’s, and when she took it out to read the label…

“No way,” she breathed, staring, slack-jawed, at the AureMorph dosing information stamped onto the label. “You know what this means, right?”

Well, it meant a couple things. It meant they were sitting on a bigger crime than ever before. Possession of AureMorph without a prescription wouldn’t just get you thrown in the re-ed; this was physical prison shit.

But if they managed to move it, they’d be rich. Not only filthy, but also stinkin’.

Still, she felt like she had to talk about the high risk attached to such a high reward, even if she couldn’t believe hearing words of caution come out of her own mouth: “Auggie, if we’re caught with this…”

“We won’t be. As long as you don’t do anything reckless,” he said. OBVIOUSLY, he had to be completely serious and not playing with her at all (not), because bringing the substance into their hideout totally wasn’t reckless at all (double not). “Besides, even if the Initiative does show up to turn the place upside down, there won’t be any left.” He reached over her and pulled a bottle of nutri-tabs from the top desk drawer, over a month’s supply.

“Oh…oh,” she breathed, blinking in surprise as his true intentions dawned on her. “So you DIDN’T want to unload the dose on someone else and get rich.”

“Please,” said August, “you’ve told me what you used to do before you were a smuggler, and you didn’t even like it.” That much was true; the ‘important’ schmucks who used to parade her around on their arms at their fancy theatre plays and expensive business galas weren’t shit. Nowadays, she ate out of paper boxes and drank out of repurposed jam jars not because there weren’t any nice–albeit stolen–dishes in the hideout, but because the polished platters and flimsy flutes made her feel like she was performing instead of eating and drinking. She’d take fighting for her nights over dancing for them any day of the week.

“It’s hard to give anything to a girl who doesn’t want much,” he went on. “But just think of it: all it would take is an hour, and a bit of a caloric surplus–”

“A BIT?”

“Okay, maybe a massive one. But it would be so easy, June, and you could mold me to your exact specifications. I could be perfect for you.”

Let it be said that June wasn’t the brains of the operation. In that, she both prided herself and took comfort. Aside from all the dodging fire and running from people, her days were easy, and each of them ended in her getting to come home to her favorite person in the world. It was a good way to live. But right now, she had to think fast.

She may have been perfectly content to admit, when they’d first met, that she was every bit the blubber-hungry little gut-slut the Initiative wanted to warn everyone and their cousin about, but that didn’t mean she’d ever wished August was any other way than how he was, all the time. Sure, he’d really packed it on now that she was around to happily run his errands, but he’d been perfect for her back when the soft expanse of his belly was just a modest handful to cuddle up to, and he was perfect now.

And he’d be perfect tomorrow, too–yes, because he was friggin’ sexy, but more than that, because he was smart. He was funny. He made her feel like she was important enough to protect, and safe even in the throes of her craziest antics, and that? That was so much more than any pills and creams could do.

Tossing the paper bag onto his desk, she half-turned on his lap and slung an arm around his soft shoulders, fixing him in the eyes with a stern stare. “Auggie, for a genius, you can be such a fucking idiot sometimes. When are you going to finally get it?” She brushed a stray, dark curl of hair from in front of his eyes. “I don’t love you because you’re fat. You’re fat BECAUSE I love you.”

“You…you love…?” He cleared his throat, his face suddenly bright red by the monitor light. “Well then, I suppose we can just get rich. We can always figure out what to do with the money later, right?”

Satisfied, she grinned and pressed a loud kiss to the plumpest part of his cheek–MWAH!

She was starting to get why he liked calling the shots.