Pros:

If I go to Sanitarium with Satsuki, I can help protect her.

I'll be able to catch up with old friends

Cons:

Zydrate

"What are you doing?"

I hunch down over the (relatively) fresh corpse, trying to hide the syringe in my hand. "Koichi…" Looking over my shoulder, I see my brother-in-law standing in the doorway, a biohazard container in his hand. "Well, I was just thinking….it'd be a shame to let extra credits go to waste, so…"

"So you're dealing now?"

"NO! Just harvesting it from the bodies whose organs you've already repossessed. Why do you care; you don't work for my bastard brother anyway."

"Then what's it for?"

"You remember Kittie's dad? He's having…a little trouble, so I offered to supply some for about a third of the profit." A pleading note enters my voice. "Heidi just had another baby, Koichi. He needs the credits."

"Then let him go to the graveyard and harvest his own zydrate. You're too interested in helping him. I don't want you around him."

I suppress a sigh of frustration. As if it wasn't annoying enough that it took him four years to finally get around to finding his sister-in-law after the deaths of his brother and niece, now he's getting territorial. If I can believe what he told me – it would be incomprehensible if I hadn't already seen evidence that out-of-the-ordinary things can happen - it's perfectly biological and normal for him to get territorial. However, I'm used to a bit more…human…way of courtship. Not "You stay here and do as you're told and I'll provide for you." I don't know if I can tolerate it for much longer.

So I say the right things and promise to stay in until he gets home. Then as soon as he leaves I make my way to the alleys around the Square with six vials for the graverobber. As I wait for the former rock star, a familiar figure in a leather duster passes me. A pair of green eyes meets mine. He stops for a second, but says nothing before continuing on his way to work. There is nothing to say.

"Evie…" I shake it off, smile, and turn to the one person who wants as little of me as I do of him. I hand him the velvet bag, and he sinks to his knees in front of me and puts the tip of the gun under my skirt against my inner thigh. As waves of euphoria wash through me, I have to struggle to say, "Karl…" instead of the name that belongs to the face in my mind. I receive the rest of my payment there in the alley like a common drab, but I don't care. He doesn't either.

AN: So last time was chapters one and two together. This one is short too; I fail at long chapters. Sue me.

And NO, Karl isn't "Graverobber" from the movie. Alternate RP timeline.