A/N: I don't own any of the characters – they belong to the esteemed Terrance Zdudnich and all his collaborators on the Repo! Project. Testify!
Dedicated to my friend Tersa, the charming girl who introduced me to in the first place. Happy Birthday my dear.
*
Another Year
Acid rain was falling again; Graverobber ducked into a stone doorway as the sizzling precipitation began to burn holes in the sleeves of his ratty leather coat, clicking his tongue disapprovingly at the sudden shift in the weather. Just what he needed now; another happenstance delaying his business, which was so far behind schedule he was almost ahead of his demand.
He leaned against the door behind him and stared blankly out at the city, which hummed with light and noise despite the inclement weather. Over the loudspeakers, he could hear robotic female voices relating the fact that the weather situation was at code yellow. "All citizens should remain indoors until further notice due to dangerous weather conditions." He rolled his eyes; as if he had that luxury right now, unless he broke into someone else's indoors. He wasn't overly in favor of breaking and entering, especially since he would simply be unceremoniously removed from the premises upon being discovered, and then he'd be right back where he was now: having holes burned in his favorite coat.
The rain didn't usually get this bad; the acid content usually stayed low enough that people could commute safely if they made use of thick clothing and umbrellas made of metal. But of course, he laughed to himself as he continued to stare at the city, today of all days would be the time for the rain to pour and sizzle in the streets, for him to be trapped in a doorway rather than taking care of business. Murphy's law he supposed; anything that could throw a sturdy spanner into the works of his work would do so, especially when things had already managed to get so far behind.
He blamed the upheaval at GeneCo for this particular spanner; all nine hells had broken loose within a month of that little power transference and every aspect of the city, from the corporations to the climate, was still feeling the aftereffects a year later.
Amber had somehow managed to stay in charge and maintain her healthy addiction to the knife, even after her public humiliation on that fateful night at the Opera, the night of her father's death. The very thought of her in charge continued to cause Graverobber to crack a bemused smile even after the initial novelty of the situation had worn off. But it had certainly given his line of work a fanciful flair he had not previously anticipated. Instead of meeting with the insistent Ms. Sweet in dingy back-alleys after Z-Addict meetings, he was met by a butler behind a pair of oak doors and escorted by elevator to her office, where she sat elegantly in her father's chair, her pale face du jour cold and calculating as he entered in his usual manner. This had pissed her off to no end on his last visit on the previous Tuesday, another fact that caused him to break out in smiles and chuckles.
"Won't even make an effort with your appearance to come calling?" she had said, the luxurious leather chair's back directed at the door so that Graverobber couldn't see his client's face. He didn't need to see her expression to know that she had a derogatory sneer twisting her lips, or at least attempting to under all the surgery. "You look like you slept in a dumpster."
"It's a place to rest my head," he said, shrugging as he strode across the office and slapped his palms down on the antique desk. "Let's get on with it. I have places to be."
The chair turned in a clockwise motion and Amber spun into vision, her face pale and her hair an atypical blonde. She was turning conservative, Graverobber noted, suppressing a snide chuckle. The things big business could do to a person. "Do you really think," she said, her voice rising and falling in the same nasal tones that had assaulted his ears in the half-decade or so she had been coming to him for his unique services. "That I called you here simply on business?"
Graverobber shrugged as he took his hands off the table and withdrew his Z-gun from within the recesses of his favorite coat. "I have other reasons to be in the presence of the illustrious head of GeneCo? Do enlighten me."
Amber glared at him; her eyes had been blue that day, artificially so. "I can get 'Business' from trained nurses now," she said, her voice icy. "I have Z on IV now if I just say the word. No," she leaned forward in the chair, resting her elbows on the desk. "I wouldn't call you here unless I wanted something a little… different."
He suppressed a sigh, recognizing her posture (at this point it was impossible to read her facial expressions; they always told an amusing story about emotions that didn't exist). "Sorry my dear," Graverobber said, stepping away from the desk slowly. "I'm not in the custom of mixing business with pleasure any more, not even for the head of GeneCo. You get your nurses to whip you up a toyfriend, and call me when your empire crumbles and you need Z on the sly."
He turned to leave and heard Amber stand up, violently shoving the chair backwards so hard it almost crashed into the bay window positioned behind the desk. He felt her bony fingers wrap around his wrist and yank at his arm, surprisingly strong for such a small girl. She dragged him around to face her and her other hand found his shoulder, her artificial nails digging through the fabric of his thick coat and causing him to wince. "It's cute how you think you have a choice," she said through clenched teeth, her eyes wild. "Really it is."
Graverobber acted without thinking, instinctually jerking his right hand back and lining the Z-gun up with Amber's arm. He gave the trigger a solid squeeze and heard the gun thrum, felt the little vial of blue liquid vibrate and within seconds Amber's grip on his wrist and his shoulder slowly slackened, her body slumping into his as the drug took effect.
"It's cute how you forget how much I own you," Graverobber whispered into her ear as he held her upright for a brief moment before gently guiding her over to the leather chair and positioning her so she wouldn't injure herself upon coming out of her drug-induced numbness. She mumbled something unintelligible under her breath as he left and he ignored it, nodding to the apparently unfazed butler as he entered the elevator. "I'll let myself out."
Ms. Sweet had called him the following day and he had let the call go straight to message. He listened to it later in a fit of boredom between grave runs, and his peals of laughter rose in volume with every instance of her voice rising in pitch. She wouldn't call again for a while; he knew this to be certain. She'd dope herself and change her face, her boobs, her eyes… anything she could change, he knew she would. She couldn't live without the Z, like so many of his clients. He shook his head, still smiling, thinking of the half-starved scrawny girls who regularly clawed at his feet, begging and fawning for a hit, some of them fresh out of Z-Addict meetings with words encouraging strength and sobriety ringing fresh in their ears. He wasn't proud of what his business did to their willpower, their lives, how it made them sell away their homes, their friends, even their families, just for a hit that would allow them to continue to seek personal perfection under the knife, to find a chemical numbness to deaden their overstimulated lives. No, he wasn't proud, but a man couldn't feed himself on feelings of pride. Superficial though it may be, those groaning addicts were his bread and butter, and always would be.
The rain continued to pour and he began to get antsy, his hands tapping with agitation against the crumbling brick of the doorframe. He felt trapped by the itinerant weather and his eyes began darting around, seeking a path of least resistance that would lead to a sewer or similar covered route that would get him back to work. His search yielded no likeable results and he sighed irritably, slumping back against the wall and sliding down until he sat on the steps leading up to the door. At least the universe was consistent, he thought to himself as he stared up at the clouds and listened to the rain sizzle on the pavement. It wasn't gentle about giving him the occasional kick to the curb. Or the nuts, depending on the day.
His wandering eyes fixed on a house a block down from his place of refuge, one he normally would have passed over as insignificant had it not been for the unnatural glint of light that had caught his attention. Something reflective there, a mirror or an opening window perhaps?... Graverobber sat up a little straighter and stared intently at the spot where the glint had come from, recognizing the house now that he had gotten a better look at it. The kid's house, the girl with the Repo-man dad and the fake illness. Orphan girl now, he thought to himself, pushing himself up into a standing position. He wondered how she was doing, how she'd managed to adapt to life without a cloying, overprotective father breathing down her neck.
He saw the glint of light again, suddenly flashing against the falling, sizzling raindrops and he stared intently through the grey evening sky, trying to make out the source of the anomaly. He just managed to make out the circular lens of what must have been a telescope before suddenly it was jerked backwards, vanishing through the curtains of the window through which it had initially emerged. He blinked, and then leaned forward as the thick curtains in the distance were pulled aside and a face swam into view.
She was just as pale as she had been a year ago, Graverobber noted. The city didn't see much sunlight that wasn't artificial and used in tanning beds, so the tone of her skin was unsurprising to him. Her hair was shorter, and real, slowly growing back after years of false treatments for a disease that was not real. It brushed her chin in dark brown curls, much more attractive than the thick black artificial hair she had sported at their first meeting. He could barely make out her expression from here, but he thought that she might have been smiling.
A thin white hand reached out through the curtain, a gesture of friendship, even longing. Graverobber smiled, a grin that was the closest to genuine he'd made in years. He raised a blue-stained hand in return and nodded to her, then watched her disappear through the curtain as suddenly as she had arrived there.
He continued to smile bemusedly as the rain fell in hissing drops to the ground, sitting down on the steps up to the door again and watching small potholes begin to form in the street under the rain. Such an unusual kid, he thought to himself as he pulled his pocket-watch out of his coat and fiddled with it absently. The world's gonna eat her alive if she doesn't have someone to look out for her, someone to make sure she doesn't stumble into a world of hurt.
That wasn't his job though of course; he had enough to worry about with his clients and trying to find his next meal. Concerning himself with a naïve kid wouldn't get him anything other than a world of stress. He pushed the pale face and curling brown hair out of his thoughts and into the same place he reserved for the variety of new parts Amber regularly equipped herself with: a place he intended to mark 'do not enter' from now on.
It was another half an hour before the rain let up, and he was on his way down the street the second it did, coat swishing through spitting puddles that ate away at the street beneath his boots.
Harvesting never took long any more he was so practiced at it, but tonight it went especially quickly. Graverobber knew that no one would be out and about looking for thieves at this hour or in this weather. A person would have to be crazy to run around after an acid rain fall stealing Z from the corpses piled in pits. But he was the best, and that made him willing to be just a little crazy for the sake of his work, digging through piles of rotting bodies, breaking into crypts, doing whatever it took to gather the liquid that allowed him to deal in other people's happiness.
New vials secured in the pouch in his bag, he left the stinking pile of corpses behind him and headed for one of his hotspots: a Zydrate Addicts meeting house in a back alley near the Opera, or at least what used to be the Opera. The walking corpses filed out right on cue at eight o'clock and gathered in pathetic clumps under the fire escape stairs, bumming cigarettes and chatting about nothing.
The perfect willing audience.
He strode into their midst and waited for the regulars to take notice, which took no time at all. The usual gaggle of emaciated girls stumbled up to him, some of them on their knees, begging and pleading for a hit. He handled them as he always did; accepting payment and administering hits in the most convenient patch of skin, and as his crawling, simpering clients stumbled away to enjoy their numbing bliss, his attention was drawn away from the main rabble and into the outskirts of the crowd, to a thin girl in a tight shirt with purple streaked hair leaning against a blond fellow who looked as gay as the day was long. Both of them were giving him a look he had grown accustomed to seeing from the insatiable Ms. Sweet, but he had no qualms seeing that look from anyone who wasn't her.
He put on his best charming smile and pulled two glowing vials out of his jacket, holding them between his fingers like fat cigars as he walked over to the couple, who stood slumped against a concrete wall under a balcony.
"Looking for a hit good sir, gentle lady?" he asked, giving a mock bow and holding out the Z, watching as the pair eyed the vials with hunger so intense he could feel it radiating off them in waves. "Fair price for you."
"Actually," the man spoke, his voice honeyed, as if it had once been cultured. "We'd be interested in that and a wee bit more if you're not in a hurry to run off home when you've completed your business transactions for the evening."
"Is that so?" Graverobber smiled down and the slight girl, who was shorter than him by almost a foot.
The girl giggled softly and gave her companion a shove, muttering "Honestly Bal, you're terrible."
The man laughed back and put a manicured finger to her lips, leaning forward and handing Graverobber enough pay to keep him fed for two solid weeks. "Yes indeed my friend," he said, grinning. "If you're interested."
"Really…" Graverobber smiled a devil's smile at the pair, pulling his little gun out of a hidden pocket. "I suppose I'm interested. What's the occasion?"
They were silent for a time and he took it as an opportunity to do his business, first giving the blond fellow a hit (a shot in the arm; fairly typical for a long-term user) and then turning to the girl, injecting her dose through the thigh, a favorite for the ladies. She leaned back and sighed softly as the numbness began to spread. "It's my birthday," she whispered in a dreamy voice.
Graverobber laughed and put his arms around the now-stumbling couple. "What a lovely coincidence my dear," he said as they walked away from the alley of satisfied customers. "It's my birthday too."