"Auction of Lost Children" A/N: Pure invention. No explanations required. Title half-ganked from a very good French sci-fi movie, "City of Lost Children."

KARMA: Auction of Lost Children

She's taken out prostitution rings with Jet and Spike before. A little undercover work, a push-up bra and more makeup than a drag queen, it's easy money. Faye isn't above elbow-chucking the gropers and she's used to being undressed by men's stares, so though it's annoying and demeaning, she can deal with being treated like a hooker long enough to slap cuffs on some fuckwad pimp. And none of them ever suspected that the new talent with the long waist and large chest was actually a bounty hunter. Men can be so blind when they want to be.

She is who she is, Jet and Spike's jibes aside, not a hooker, just ramblin', gamblin' Faye. She got the chance to make that call for herself. These children haven't.

Faye grits her teeth as she watches the auction. Somewhere in the crowd, the bastard responsible for tearing these kids away from their lives is waiting for his just desserts. Some of the kids cry softly, hysteria kept at bay with drugs. Some look almost goofily confused. Some have their heads up, eyes hard, little street-toughs. She sees Ed and Spike in those faces, lost children without caretakers, without homes.

Faye doesn't know where these kids were snatched from or what their stories are, but she knows, with the solar system being the big, cold place it can be sometimes, that this is a trade-up for a couple of them. Which just makes it all the sadder.

Her communicator hisses at her hip, and Faye fades out of the crowd into an alley.

"Yeah, Jet, what's up? I haven't ID'd our guy yet, but he's definitely still in business."

"It's not Jet. Where are you?"

"Spike, you're not in this," she says, but she's glad to hear his voice at first. There's big muscle here, bigger than she can take out even with a couple of guns and her fair-to-middlin' hand-to-hand skills.

She frowns. Spike's not the winning hand, she reminds herself. He folds. If the big nasty breaks out, it's on her to protect them both. Best to keep him out of it entirely. "I've got it under control. Go home."

"No deal. Tell me."

He has that tone in his voice, the hard tone that brooks no argument. Faye gives up. "Old City, Baines West. The auction's the main event, you can't miss it."

"Auction?"

"Yeah. Job brings his cargo and sells it off to the highest bidder. Apparently brothels come from all over the solar system to bid." Faye can't keep her disgust out of her voice. "He hasn't shown his snout yet."

Spike's voice growls over the communicator. "All right. Don't do anything stupid. I'll be right there."

Faye cuts the communication without saying goodbye. What the hell does he think she's going to do? She knows she can't do anything for those kids already up on the block, but if she plays her hand right, she can keep any more from going up there in their place.

According to Jet, Job's the main wheel in child prostitution, having ruthlessly undersold and murdered all the competition; take him out, and the solar system suddenly becomes a little bit safer for the tinker toy set. It's one of those bounties where the bounty hunters get to be heroes, and she's not poised to fuck it up.

So get off my back, hairball, she thinks, and sticks her tongue out at the communicator.

She rejoins the crowd, not wanting to miss her chance to ID Job. She can't take him down here, but the plan is to follow him until he's a little separated from the main event, take out his bodyguards somehow, and slap cuffs on him. Also according to Jet, Job isn't much for wet work himself; he hires street samurai to protect him. There'll be some nasty.

With Spike in play, Faye's biggest concern is how to keep the necessary nasty from escalating. All he needs is someone's boot in his gut and it's disc-skip back two months and instant replay.

She senses him before she sees him, invisible fishing wire in her vertebrae connected to his sternum: she feels his movements in her spine.

He slouches through the crowd, moving slowly, drifting almost aimlessly to her. Nothing appears to be paining him, but Faye figures he's got something he's holding in.

"Yo," he says. "You two nurses had a good try cutting me out of this one."

"All I care about is my share of the take," Faye says lightly. The auctioneer's babble covers their soft conversation. "You can do whatever the hell you like."

"And planets continue to be round," Spike says, bored.

Faye frowns. She and Jet have been living on lean woolongs, pumping money into Spike's considerable medical bills. All the more reason to keep his skinny ass off the floor this time.

"This guy. The visual. Is it gonna be accurate?"

"Our boy's got a phobia about biosurgery," Faye whispers back. "You can tell by how astonishingly fucking ugly he is." She fills Spike in on the plan, eyeballing him to see if he'll follow it; if he won't, there's not much she can do but damage control.

He watches the stage, the little kids, and his eyes narrow, but he doesn't tense. Faye exhales slowly. Good, that's the hard part over.

"Guy. There," he says, bending down so the word is just a breath in her ear. "I'm going. Follow." And he's gone.

Faye does, trying for the same aimless, drifting motion he uses. For once, her looks aren't a problem; she's attracting attention, but the oglers take her for a working gal and their eyes slide right over her as part of the scene. Spike somehow manages to look like some brothel owner's bored bodyguard, glancing around for his master without much interest.

She still doesn't have a visual of Job, but Spike must see something from his superior height. All she sees is shoulderblades and scalps.

The crowd thickens as they draw close to the stage, and the auctioneer's jeering babble pounds in her ears. Faye winces, feeling the birth of a headache in her temples.

A flicker of movement. Spike slides to the side, and Faye gets a glance of Job clambering into a souped-up cross between a limosine and an armored tank. Then children exiting the stage in leg irons obstruct her view.

"He's on the move."

"What now?" Faye asks.

"I tagged the car, tracker," Spike says, turning his palm towards her just enough for her to glimpse the tiny dart gun he had up his coat sleeve. "Wait. See where he ends up. Hopefully in a bar somewhere. I could use a drink." He spins and walks back through the crowd, leaving Faye staring after him.