protocol_01.00: handshake
It's raining. Anna huddles down further into her coat and ducks into the open door of the bar. The bartender looks up at her, then turns to deal with her other customers. She'll get to Anna when she needs to. It doesn't matter, not really. No one else pays her any mind, not even when she winds her way between tables up to a lone stool in the corner of the bar.
The bar itself is the dark and smoky kind of place that was so normal down here. In this place, Anna looks out of place, her long coat not quite hiding that she's dressed too nicely to be in this part of the city. Pretty little rich girls from above don't come down here, not unless they're running from something.
Elsa is going to kill her.
She taps the metal of the bar top nervously, and the bartender saunters down over to her, raising an eyebrow. Anna bites her lip and ducks her head.
"What'll it be, sweetheart?" the bartender drawls.
"Um...a beer?"
The eyebrow goes higher. "You're going to have to give me more than that."
Anna fights a blush. She looks around to the taps and points at one. "That one?"
The bartender gives her a look. "All right, sweetheart. Whatever you say."
Anna just wants to curl up smaller on the stool. She stares at the beaten metal of the bar, all shiny and worn from how ever many years of service. At least it's clean. She jumps a little when a mug full of ale is placed in front of her.
"You want to open a tab?"
"N-no. I'll...I'll just pay now." She fishes around for a credstick, and the woman gives her a sharp look when she hands it over. Not many people down here have that sort of credstick. Another thing that makes her stand out. When the bartender gives it back, her hand lingers for a second, and Anna can read the quiet message in her expression plain as day. Watch yourself sweetheart, you're not safe here.
"You need anything else, just let me know."
Anna smiles back weakly and the bartender walks off with a single backwards glance. She forces herself to take a sip of the beer and makes a face as the taste hits her tongue. Maybe next time she shouldn't pick at random.
Her hair drips down the back of her neck, and she pulls the wet coat tighter. The beer doesn't even burn going down. She's cold and wet and the smoke from bad cigarettes is starting to irritate her eyes. One of the screens above the bar is showing some soccer game. The captions are in Spanish, which admittedly is better than listening to one of the English-speaking holo-announcers talk. The other screen shows some news program, the ticker on the bottom listing off the usual stocks: Synergen, Halodex, Ichiban-Bijou, Helios, Nestor. Apparently the news story occupying the talking heads is Synergen's latest train design. It's irrelevant to the people here, whatever it is.
She lets her gaze move over the rest of the room. It's mostly workers coming off their late-shift. God only knows where from. They smell of smoke and ozone, of grease and metal. There's a skiz in the back corner, jacked into the 'net and possibly blasted out of his mind, eyes glazed and head thrown back against the peeling vinyl of the booth. His friend? boyfriend? is sitting opposite, attention torn between him and the game. He catches her looking and raises his glass in an ironic salute. Welcome to the rest of your life, you poor bastard.
Charming.
Anna forces herself to take another sip, this time trying to ignore the taste. It's bad enough that it looks like she doesn't belong here; she'd like to not make it obvious that she doesn't want to be here. Maybe it means she lives longer.
"You know, no one's forcing you to drink that." The man next to her has a nice voice, soft and kind. She looks up. He looks good too, red hair combed neatly, sideburns trimmed. His clothes are worn, but his hands are clean. He smiles at her, reassuring, and Anna lets herself smile weakly back.
"I did pay for it," she says quietly.
"Still. What's a girl like you doing all the way down here?"
His smile is gentle. Regardless, she stiffens up. His eyes widen a fraction before he starts backpedaling. "I mean, look, it's kind of obvious that you're not from around here." Before she can curl up into her coat, he continues. "Not that it's a bad thing. It's just, well, you stand out. And there are people who'd take advantage of that." He's smiling, still gentle and earnest. "I hate to see it happen."
A nice guy all the way down here, in this dingy bar. That's got to be some kind of rarity. "Right."
"Okay. Hi. My name is Hans." He holds up a hand when she looks at him suspiciously. "You don't have to tell me your name. Really. It's a good instinct."
Hans just exudes honesty. It's dripping from his expressions, and thrumming in the cadence of his words. It's an earnest charm, backed by the fact that he's rather easy on the eyes. Anna's not too proud to admit that. He's concerned about her safety; she's a slip of a girl down in a place where she doesn't really belong. Hell, Anna would have guessed they didn't make them like him anymore.
But he seems genuine. Their conversation goes back and forth, him going over some basic tips and tricks for staying in one piece down here. He keeps the attention off of her, for the most part. The guy from earlier has his boyfriend hauled up over a shoulder when he tries to catch her attention; Hans sends him scurrying with only a sad backwards glance.
Hans makes it easy. Easy to listen, easy to trust, which seems like it's in short supply. They talk about everything and nothing, and he never pries deeper than she's willing to go. So as the night goes on and the bartender stops shooting her looks and shaking her head, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
"Hey, I know this is awkward and maybe I shouldn't be asking, but do you have a place tonight?"
Anna shifts uneasily on the stool. She doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to talk about the possibility of a shelter or the streets. She doesn't have to. Hans picks up on it. "The shelters...they can be kind of rough. And the streets are worse." He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. "I've...I've got a place. Well, it's a hotel room. Wait!" He waves his hands around at her alarmed look. "I mean, I'm leaving tomorrow. Early. I wasn't even planning on sleeping there tonight. But I can extend it a few days. Just...just so you can have a place for a little while. I won't even be there."
It sounds like the stupidest thing she could possibly do, but she's cold and tired and the promise of a warm bed sounds so very tempting. So she says yes, because Hans is a nice guy and has given her no reason not to trust him.
The hotel he leads her to is old and worn-down, but the room is well-lit and clean. A tablet is in the corner of the desk, on top of a pile of neatly-stacked papers. A briefcase sits closed on the chair.
"I'm going to go get some ice. Make yourself comfortable," he offers before ducking back through the door and leaving her alone and dripping wet in the middle of the hotel room. Anna pulls her coat tighter and looks around again. A holo-reader sits on the nightstand, carelessly tossed. She walks over to the screen on the wall. There's nothing but the standard hotel channels.
There's only one bed.
The door opens. Anna turns her head, and sees that it's just Hans, back with the ice. He's got a bottle of water in his other hand. "The tap water sucks," he says.
Anna smiles weakly. "Thanks. Really. I don't...I don't…" She sniffs, hard, the weight of her situation coming down on her like a sack of bricks.
"Hey, hey. It's going to be all right," Hans puts the ice and bottle down and draws her into a hug. "Really. I can help you. Just let me."
Anna sniffs again into his shoulder.
The click of a gun cocking echoes in the ensuing silence.
"What?"
Anna takes a step back, barrel of the gun still pressed to Hans' breastbone. "You know, the knight-in-shining-armor routine might have actually worked on me, if it was my first night down here. But you're about three years too late." He gapes at her, and she digs the barrel in a little deeper. "Yeah, I know all about you, 'Prince'. Find a girl new down here who doesn't know the score, play the knight routine, take her someplace 'safe'." She nods her head at the water bottle. "What's the drug you slipped in there? Something that'd leave me strung-out for days, addicted and dependent on you when you come waltzing back to pay off the room. Then I'd be just another junkie willing to do anything to get a hit."
His face twists in a snarl. "Who the fuck are you?"
Anna grins, wide and feral. God, she hates trash like him. "Nobody. Just another girl. But if you're so willing to help, well, least I could do is oblige you." She pushes him backwards with the gun, until his knees hit the bed and he falls back. Anna keeps the gun trained on him, point-blank, right at the heart. "Here's how this is going to work: I know your game, Prince. And I'm ending it. No more girls. No more drugs and prostitutes. And you tell me what Fisk is."
"How the fuck do you know about Fisk?" he growls. His handsome face doesn't look it now, twisted in hate and almost as red as his hair. How he got this far without being able to hold up the mask when things went south, she'll never know. He stares up at her, but she sees his left hand inching towards the nightstand. Of course he had a gun there.
A bullet whistles past, the silencer muffling the sound of the gunshot. Hans flinches back from the nightstand that has a pretty new bullethole in it. Anna thumbs back the hammer on her second pistol.
"You're a moron. Really? Let's try that again. What is Fisk?"
Hans swallows hard enough that Anna can see his Adam's apple bob. "And what do I get out of this?"
"Right now? How about walking out of here without an extra hole in your head," she says flatly. She aims the second pistol a bit lower. "Or in other parts of you."
"Fine! It's a shell company." Anna raises an eyebrow. "Shipping and other transport. I don't know who owns it. I've only ever worked with them through Schwartzwald." He sneers at her. "That's all I've got."
It's good enough. It's what she came here for. "Fine. You get to live. But you aren't ever going to pull this shit again."
"Yeah? And how are you going to stop it if you're not willing to kill me, bitch?"
Anna smiles wide, sharp as a knife. "Simple. I hear one word, and all your data and your face get sent straight to every Fed in a thousand miles. Plus to every gang leader you ever pissed off." She leans in closer. "Think you can run fast enough, pretty-boy?"
He goes white, and lunges at her, snarling. She's faster, though, cracking the butt of the gun across his temple. He drops like a stone, out cold.
Anna holsters the guns and lets out an exasperated sigh. "Okay, that was a little messier than I hoped."
She'd like to torch the place, but the hotel management doesn't actually deserve that. Instead, she pops the lock on the briefcase, and then grabs the small stack of papers and the tablet on the desk. Elsa might be able to find something else out of them. She stuffs it all into the briefcase, picks it up, and turns the coat inside-out as she walks out of the room. The "new" outer layer is worn and a little dingy. By the time she's on the street proper, she blends in perfectly with every other person on the street at this hour.
She's about three blocks away when she turns the sub-vocal microphone and subdural earphone back on, and she braces for the worst.
"Jesus christ, Anna, what the hell were you thinking?!"
"Hello to you too, Elsa. So good to hear from you."
Anna can almost imagine her sister grinding her teeth. "Don't give me that. Do you have any idea how worried I was when you had the comms turned off?! All I could do was watch. I had no idea what you were doing. What if you needed backup?"
"I was fine. I had it under control."
"That doesn't make it better!"
"Elsa, I had one shot at this. One. And you were offline, and I couldn't wait."
"You know I couldn't help that." Her voice skips a little, and Anna knows that was a low blow. She winces.
"Yeah, I do. But I had to go tonight."
"Why? What was so important that you had to do this without backup?"
Anna stops and leans against the brick wall of an alley. She feels the cold stone against her back, and she tilts her face up, letting the rain run down her cheeks. It feels good. "Elsa. I got a lead. T dropped me the hint earlier tonight. The asshole was leaving in the morning so I had to go."
The line is silent for awhile. "What?"
"I got a lead, Elsa," she repeats, breathless and laughing. It's pouring rain, and she's just letting herself get soaked, but she really can't care right now. It was all worth it. Because for the first time in forever, since that night that changed everything three years ago, Anna knows they're on the right path. "I'm coming to you. We're going to get you out."