Strut.

Ross strolls out of the museum and down the steps, right into the oncoming traffic. Car breaks squeal and drivers honk, and Ross receives more middle fingers than he can count, but he keeps on walking. Who waits for stoplights anymore? The invincible Ross Cester isn’t about to be taken down by a Buick.

He continues on the five-block walk, not bothering with a taxi because it’ll take too long in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. If there’s one thing Reagan hates, it’s tardiness. Actually, Reagan hates a lot of things, but being late is up there. In any case, Ross isn’t too keen to start the night off on her bad side, which, as you might imagine, is quite a lot uglier than her good one.

He turns down the alley near a dance studio and bounds up all four flights of stairs, hastily twisting his key to open the door to the studio. When he walks into the big, white room, he only notices the girl standing in the middle of it.

“Two minutes late, Ross.” She clicks her tongue impatiently.

This is Reagan. She is a force to be reckoned with.

Today, her hair is a strange russet, auburn red. Her clothes are black and tight, her boots high-heeled and pointy. She stands with her arms crossed, weight on one leg. Her dark eyes, almost black, shine in the stark lighting.

“Well?”

Ross collapses onto an armchair, out of breath from his rush to be on time. “Yeah, he’ll do it. But we’re paying him a thousand dollars.”

One of Reagan’s eyebrows arch. “We? Ross, you and I agreed on three hundred.”

“Yeah, well, Li doesn’t.”

“Then you’ll pick up the slack yourself.”

Ross sighs, exasperated. “Reagan, really? Come on, I–”

“I’m sorry, but we agreed.” She looks at him. It’s enough to get him to back off.

That team dynamic they had at the beginning, well, it’s almost gone now. Reagan doesn’t like having an equal. She wants to be better than everyone—even her twin brother. She wants it to be her name alone that people whisper, not two names as one. It’s turned into more of a master-servant thing. Ross is like an assembly line worker: she gives him one small job to do at a time, never letting him see the full picture.

Ross will pay for letting that happen later. But right now, he’s paying for his lateness, and for breaking an agreement.

Reagan sweeps her way into the back room, presumably working on some new outfit for the client they have coming the following day. Ross stays seated for a few minutes, catching his breath, before following her in.

“So.” He grins down at her bent-over form, sewing machine whirring as background noise. Brandon hovers around her elbow, arms filled with fabric. “Alexis Flight is next. Don’t think we’re biting off more than we can chew?” The exasperation with his sister is gone. There’s no point in holding a grudge against Reagan Cester, not when she could hold on a million times better.

“No,” she answers, not even glancing up. “Never.”

Ross laughs at his sister’s vigilance, but at the same time feels a little overwhelmed himself. “What’s the plan?”

This time she smiles. “You’ll see.”

“Oh, will I?” He’s actually curious. He actually wants to know.

“Yes.” Her smile grows wider. “You will.” She straightens up, examining the straight line of stitches in the fabric. “Brandon.” He hands her the scissors; she snips the thread tale. He takes them back, along with the dress, and wordlessly leaves the room. Reagan turns back to her brother. “All in good time, my friend.”

Ross looks after Brandon. “What’s that you’re making?”

“A dress. For yours truly.” She shakes back her hair like a lion’s mane. “So, about the thousand dollars… can you relay the conversation exactly to me?”

“I don’t know, I don’t have a stenographer…” Ross trails off, smiling at his own bad joke, then turning serious. “You know we’ve been giving him under-rate for the last few jobs, and he just snapped and said guys who barely scraped the surface made twice as much as him. Which they do, because they work for people who know nothing about this. And he said the thousand dollars would pay for this, along with the debt. He wasn’t fucking around, Reagan.”

“And you just submitted to that?”

“No! I told him he should think about who had the upper hand… he just laughed and said didn’t he have the upper hand, since I wanted what he had? And I mean, that’s true, so…”

Reagan rolls her eyes, biting back an “Idiot!” from springing from her mouth. “Ross, he doesn’t have anything near the power we have–How could you just agree to that?”

“Because Li is smart, Rae! He’s not some dumbass we can threaten and except him to be cowering at our feet! Maybe two years ago, when he first started, but now? And, Reagan, he’s better than that.”

“So? It’s more money out of our pocket Ross. You go back and tell him–”

“No! He deserves it!”

This stops her mid-argument.

“You don’t actually like him, do you, Ross?” Her face is incredulous.

“I dunno… I guess he’s sort of grown on me. He’s a good like, adversary. He’s stubborn, doesn’t just give in,” Ross admits.

“Obviously. Ross, you can’t let people get in your head like this!”

“In my head like what?”

“Just in your head, period! Don’t think of them as any more than objects, Ross. They don’t mean anything to you.”

Even Ross sees the hatred in these words, and he pauses momentarily, caught slightly off guard by the maniac glint in Reagan’s eye. “Right… Yeah. Okay.”

“I’m serious, Ross.” Her voice is quiet.

“Of course. Don’t worry about it, Rae.” He hesitates. “But I’m still giving him the thousand. It’ll be easier, more convenient this way.”

Reagan eyes her brother momentarily. She then turns her back on him, walking towards the back room again. “Go home, okay?”

“Don’t need any help?”

She sticks her head around the corner to face him. “Brandon’s here,” she simply says in answer.

“Right,” Ross mutters, already leaving.

Reagan turns back into the room, seeing Brandon cutting another dress from a template. He had been looking at her, but when she turned back around his head snapped down, and he’s now utterly absorbed in the repetitious work. Reagan smirks and goes to his side, placing her hands over his.

“You can stop that now.”

“Okay,” he agrees. His eyes are still cast downwards, afraid to look at her.

“Brandon,” she says suddenly. “What do you think of Ross?”

Brandon is astonished. She’s never asked for his opinion, his real, honest opinion, about, well, anything before. She’d ask, “Does this look good on me? Is that fabric okay?” but it wasn’t because she actually wanted help making a decision. She already knew, she just wanted the admiration.

If you haven’t noticed yet, Reagan is a fucking nutcase.

“I–I–” Brandon stutters, still caught off guard.

“I mean really, Brandon.”

Is this a trick question? Brandon pauses before answering, deciding she’s maybe fishing for compliments. “Well, I think you’re a lot smarter than him.”

Reagan stares at Brandon for a long second, then shakes her head. She’d trained him almost too well; but then again, he was her first project. Perfection came with practice, and by this point she had it down to a science. Brandon had been overkill.

“Brandon, have you seriously stopped being able to form opinions.” She didn’t phrase it like a question. “Come on. You’ve known him for two years. What do you think of him?”

In truth, Brandon and Ross had barely spoken a hundred words to each other in these two years. Brandon hardly knew him it all. Of course, not knowing someone is more than enough to form an opinion on them in this judgmental world, but Brandon wasn’t sure of Reagan’s intentions.

“I… I think he’s a pushover.” Reagan gave him another look, but before she could speak he began talking again. “No–Really. He just listens to everything you have to say. It’s like you’re his boss; I mean, you’re clearly in charge of him. It’s… a lot has changed from two years ago.”

This is perhaps the longest string of words Brandon has spoken to her face since that fateful night.

Regan smiles. “Oh, Brandon. You’re so thoughtful… paying a lot of attention to Ross lately, huh?” She nudges him, an undertone of bitterness blooming behind her sweet façade.

Brandon blinked several times, closing his mouth against angry words. How could he be so stupid–after what she just said to Ross! She’s not going to treat him like a person. When Brandon stops blinking, he looks back at Reagan’s smiling face and represses a sigh, represses the urge to throw something at her, and returns to looking at the ground.



Ross goes home, like Reagan tells him. He pulls some strings, gets a thousand dollars cash. He orders a pizza. When the delivery boy knocks on the door, Ross opens it and grabs his sleeve, pulls the lanky, pimply kid into the apartment after him. He hastily shuts and bolts the door behind them.

The guy’s scared. It’s nearly midnight, and you never know what sort of people are going to be ordering pizza at midnight, especially in the city that never sleeps.

“Hey, listen, kid,” Ross says. He flashes the guy the cash. “I need another delivery, yeah?”

The pizza boy is uneasy. This isn’t in his job description. “Well, I don’t know if my boss–”

“Your boss, whatever. This is about you and me.” Ross gives him the address and waits patiently.

“I–I don’t think I should–”

“Look, kid. I need this. Don’t give me any trouble and I won’t give you any trouble, deal?” Ross is turning on his menacing side.

The guy still looks unsure.

“There’s something in it for you,” Ross presses, waving an extra hundred between two fingers.

“How… How much is in there?” he asks, eying the rubber-banded wad of bills.

“A thousand,” Ross answers shortly. “And he knows it’s coming, so don’t try taking any. Asian guy’ll answer the door. Tall. Glasses. Don’t give it to anyone else, hear me? I will find out, I promise you.”

“Fine, I’ll…” He eyes the stack again, greed pushing through reason. “I’ll do it.”

Ross smiles. “Excellent.” He shoves the money into the guy’s hand and pushes him out the door, turning to the pizza. It boasts to be New York’s finest. Well, Ross will see about that.



Li’s bent over the computer, eyes wide. The room was dark but for the light of the screen, illuminating everything in a blue-white tinge. His pupils move rapidly, darting across the page as his hand grips the mouse. Li is surrounded by papers. The entire contents of the folder Ross had given him is strewn around the room. More papers, papers he had produced himself lay in stacks, decorated in his scrawl with black ink. It’s late, and Li is tired but breathing hard.

Li said he wouldn’t start the job until the money came, but truthfully, he can’t stop himself. He couldn’t resist a new case.

Truthfully, Li loves this. Knowing everything about a person, from their credit record to their social security number, and them having never even seen your face. It’s a thrill. You feel so powerful.

At the moment, Li felt very, very powerful. More powerful, perhaps, than he had ever felt.

On the screen, there’s a transcript. He’s been working on this particular one for an hour; several more like this litter the floor. But this one, this one is indefinitely more important.

In the second window on his browser, there’s a security video, taken from a warehouse. It zooms, but it’s grainy. Just enough to pick out the two men facing each other. One of these men will remain unnamed, the one with his face visible. The other one is Charles Flight.

You can see this unnamed man’s lips moving, see him throw his head back in a laugh. This video has been playing on repeat for the last twenty minutes while Li pours over the transcript.

See, Li can read lips. This is where the transcript comes from. And this transcript is why Li is the best of the best. Most people, they wouldn’t bother to dig this deep. They’d only give the bare minimum. But Li, this is his passion, and it shows. This is what sets him apart.

Li works like a machine, never processes one word while he translates mouth movements to type. And so now, when he finally reads it over, this comes as a shock.

Li’s mouth moves, synchronized with the words the man is speaking. His eyes are blurring, he’s reading so fast. His breath is heaving as he comes closer to a conclusion.

And when the man leans back to laugh, it’s the last time. Li gets it.

There’s a knock on the door.

Li’s so startled he shoves himself back from the desk, falling out of the rolling chair onto the floor. Shaken, he stumbles to open the door.

Standing in the threshold is a skinny, pale boy with a ad case of acne. He’s dressed in a pizza delivery uniform and he’s holding a pile of nearly stacked and wrapped cash as if it were a bomb. The look on his face, it would only be appropriate if he was about to be murdered by Freddy Krueger himself.

Wow, Li thinks. This kid is a little worse for the wear.

That‘s when he puts the money together and realizes, oh. Ross sent him.

Oh.

Well, that explains a lot.

Li doesn’t look so hot himself, in all honestly. Not as terrified as the boy, certainly, but he has that sort of crazed look in his eye, the kind you get from sitting still and concentrating too hard for too long. His hair is disheveled and his glasses askew.

The unlikely pair stand and regard each other for several seconds. Then the boy breaks the silence in a thin, shaky voice. “Just take it.” His voice cracks halfway through the sentence. Li wonders briefly how old he is. “Quick, before anybody notices.”

Li blinks, and reaches out his hand, taking the bills. He notices the kid’s eyes following it, yearning. He notices how when his hand came out, the boy jerked back.

“I-It’s all there. All of it. P-p-please don’t hurt me.”

Jesus Christ, what did Ross do to him? Li thinks. Maybe the kid’s just easily scared. Ross wouldn’t have done anything that bad…

“Yeah, thanks, buddy,” Li says, stepping back into the dark room and abruptly closing the door. He bolts the door and flips a switch; the light burns his eyes. He then counts the money. Once. Twice. Three times, then four.

It’s all there. This has never happened before. Ten new, fresh–albeit a little sweaty from the boy’s hand–hundreds fanned out facing him.

Christ, Cester, you’ve outdone yourself.

The transcript remains forgotten on the screen.