“Why the long face?”

Indie looked up from her spot on the lounge-room floor towards whoever had spoken to her. A tall lanky woman in an blue Alliance hoodie, jeans and with a curious look in their eyes was examining her from behind the lounge. They brushed back their tangled bright orange hair, one side of their head was shaved and their bottom lip glistened with a half-dozen metal rings curling around it.

“I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I’m a dirty Alliance.”

Indie looked down at her own jumper, then back at the console she was busy setting up.

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

The woman jumped over the back of the lounge and sat down behind her, “If it matters, I raid on my Panda Shaman - she’s Horde.”

Indie’s neck bristled, but she ignored it and continued plugging things together, “That’s cool… I guess.”

“Last night we finally managed to down the Crimson Wing of the Omega Engine.”

Indie nodded slowly. Her guild had done the same thing.  

“It was rough, if not for our guild leader Diefu we’d have spent the entire night wiping again.”

A shiver ran down her spine, she turned her head to look at the woman. They had a distant grin on their pierced lips.

“Did you say, Diefu?”

The woman snapped from their reverie and glanced at her, “Yeah, she’s my guild leader. Real cool chick,” they smirked, “spends all day building computers for rich socialites.”

Indie’s hands trembled, it only just tweaked but that voice was familiar. She couldn’t place it but she knew her raid team, and she knew who this woman was.

“You’re-“

They flashed a grin, “I’m Clementine, good to finally meet you Indie.”

So this was the woman Kriem was constantly talking to, and about, her ‘fixer’. It didn’t surprise Indie in the slightest that this woman knew who she was but, they had been friends for years it was… strange to finally meet them.

“You’re,” Indie steadied her hands, “always how I expected.”

Clementine pulled herself down onto the floor, “Thanks. I’m happy to see you got that job.”

“Oh,” Indie blushed, turning back to focus on her work, “sorry, I’ve been busy…”

“No, it’s fine, I know you don’t like talking about that stuff in guild chat.”

Clementine offered their hand, and Indie gratefully gave them some wires to untangle.

“This is… weird.”

Clementine looked at her, “Why? We’ve known each other for years, now maybe we can know each other outside the game.”

Indie sighed, “I’d kinda like that.”

Clementine blushed, fell silent and engrossed herself in untangling cords. Together they plugged together the consoles and tucked them away in their spots by the ridiculously oversized television screen. Clementine offered her a controller.

“We should test it works… even if it’s a console.”

Indie smiled, “I haven’t played a fighting game in years.”

“Don’t worry,” Clem sat down on the lounge, “I’ll go easy on you.”

Indie sat down next to them, and immediately made Clem regret their decision. Five rounds in and Indie was back in the swing of high-school with the boys, kicking all their asses at Mortal Kombat. Clem ended up laughing as her character was brutalised, then fell into a sombre kind of thought.

Indie was curious, Clem was essentially her best friend… as sad as that might be to realise given she had only just met her in meat-space.

“What exactly is Kriem’s deal?”

Clem glanced at her, losing whatever was troubling them, “Oh, she’s cool. Some kind of baroness from Austria or something. Family lost all its money but she managed to get enough back to basically buy the entire town.”

“Yeah, I get that but what’s her deal with me and my friend?”

Clem grimaced, “Well, it’s gonna be a bit awkward.”

“What is?”

Clem put down their controller mid-fight, so Indie paused the game and prepared for something world-shatteringly awful.

“Kriem does this thing where she scouts for people she needs for whatever reasons, right. It sounds creepier than it is, but she’s known about you guys for a while now.”

Indie’s skin crawled, “That does sound creepy.”

“She needed a programmer a while back, so I suggested we look into hiring you. Originally I was just meant to ask you but I found out your sister is a lawyer and her friend is a bartender with a management degree.”

Indie’s hands were trembling again, “H-how’d you find that out?”

“I’m a fixer, Indie. It’s my job to find out things.”

Indie looked away, contemplating running… but that would be juvenile, maybe.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t spy on you. You mentioned your sister works at a law firm, and there is only one in the city. Not to mention she’s the only female intern who has a younger sister. You’d be amazed what surveys can uncover.”

“So,” Indie looked up at them again, “you told her about me?”

“You said you needed a job.”

Indie leaned in to awkwardly hug them, it was… awful, “Thanks.”

Clem patted her back, her entire body was quivering with discomfort, “My pleasure, Die.”

She let them go and quickly stood up, avoiding eye contact. Clementine followed her into the kitchen, where she grabbed herself one of her cans of drink from the fridge.

“Listen, Indie, Kriem really likes you. She’s asked me to offer you a permanent job fixing her computer problems across her whole, uh, empire.”

Indie trembled, nearly spilling energy drink down her front.

“She’s offering seventy-five thousand a year plus board and amenities.”

Indie didn’t understand half of it, but the figure sounded reasonable enough, “Board and amenities?”

Clementine took a drink for herself, “She wants you to live here, in the Disablot and is offering to pay for all your food, drink, a car, whatever you need for that whole living thing we humans tend to do.”

She nearly dropped her drink, “Live here, and pay no rent or buy food or… w-what’s the catch?”

“None, you’d have the room just upstairs, across from mine. She’s going to offer the same for your sister and friend.”

“I don’t get it… why?”

Clem grimaced again, “Well, it’s not entirely selfless. She wants to buy your house so she can build an apartment block on the land. This is just the most convenient way to get you off your property.”

There was something about Kriem, and even Clem, that stuck in Indie’s throat. Something seedy and dark, but everything seemed so above board, so neat and clean and pure.

“Think about it, but she’s already offered your sister a job as her lawyer.”

Indie scoffed, Skye was as suited to being the defendant of a rich socialite, as Indie was to running for political office. They both had an honest streak a mile long, and Skye in particularly wanted to be a public defendant but Indie had always… she’d always been an anchor.

“Your friend has already agreed to manage the new nightclub. Something tells me, she’ll be well suited to that.”

Indie sipped her drink, unsure how to respond. She knew that Scarlett had already taken the job, but didn’t know if that included the board.

“Give it some thought.”

Indie nodded, “Y-yeah, I will. Thanks.”

Clem pulled a business card and a pen from their front pockets and jotted down a phone number.

“Here’s my mobile, call me any time you need help or, wanna hang out.”

Clem flashed a bright smirk, Indie examined the card.

Clementine Kaiwi, Solutions Expert. The phone number looked real as well. Indie went to thank them, but Clem had already disappeared.

“Thanks… I guess.”

Indie sighed, there was plenty more coding to do to fill her day with.

***

“What, you think throwing a hundred thousand dollars at me will turn me into some kind of whore?”

Skye waved her phone, her heart was arresting and her lungs burned with hoarse rage.

Kriem simply waved off the assumption, “You think I’d value you so lowly? That money is for the contract you signed when you started work for your firm.”

Skye shrank, unsure, “You quit my job for me?”

“No, I just wanted to shred your contract. I read it and it was selling you short.”

Kriem lit up a cigarette, sitting on the veranda looking out over the city was undeniably spectacular. Skye stood watching them nonchalantly disarming her whole argument.

“I was suggesting chasing your passions, I know of some good instructors including myself that could help you. Almost no instructor worth the time to learn from would do anything sexual. It’s like learning to pole-dance, now.”

She and Scarlett had actually tried pole-dancing. It was a bit of fun, and she got to perv on the other ladies learning it.

“My only interest in you and your sister is professional. Scarlett though,” Kriem bit her lip, “It’s a bit more complicated.”

“Look,” Skye turned her eyes onto the city, afternoon sun setting on the horizon, “I don’t care what Scarlett does… I know her, I trust her judgment.”

“No you don’t.”

Skye glared at them, “What?”

“You don’t trust her judgment, you want to protect her. I like Scarlett, and I know her type. She, breaks hearts. She, doesn’t get attached. Business and pleasure are separate things to her, I was a lot like her.”

Kriem took a long, sultry drag on her cigarette, hazy white air cloying around her lips, “I like Scarlett, but she isn’t ready for a relationship and she might never be. That’s something we both need to accept.”

Skye sighed, had she really been so petty and transparent? How deeply could this woman see into her soul… and was it as ugly as she felt.

“I need a lawyer, Skye. Someone who can defend my workers and myself. When you amass an empire, a lot of ugly people crawl out of the darkest corners. Cockroaches and rats, coming to gnaw away at people’s lives until all that is left is rot.”

Kriem extinguished what was left of her cigarette, leant back and looked Skye in the eyes, “It doesn’t matter how good you are, or how clean your hands have stayed. Money is the root of all evil, it corrupts and stains everything it touches. I need someone to fight my legal battles, to keep my people safe from corporate greed and corrupt unions.”

It almost sounded as if, this socialite with more money than God wanted to do something noble. The sceptic in her wanted to laugh in their face and walk out of this mansion forever. But, what if they were telling the truth? Everything Skye had ever read about this woman screamed at her, tried to defy the feeling in her gut she was being duped.

“Think about it,” Kriem stood up, “and think about my offer to help. I know it is a little peculiar, but life is short and we should fill it with things we enjoy, right?”

Kriem stepped towards their bedroom door.

“Thanks,” Skye finally managed, “I… thank you. I’ll think about it.”

Kriem smiled, shutting the door behind them.

***

Home was a strangely sombre affair for Indie. She’d never looked at it through the lens of giving it up. It was melancholy even though she’d never liked the place. She had never really imagined she’d leave it, or have the chance to at least.

She logged onto her computer with it weighing on her. Normally decisions were made for her, but given what Skye had told her in the car, Skye wasn’t about to give up their home even if she no longer had to worry about the rent.

She checked her messenger chat, her guild chat room was empty except for a single familiar name.

Indie sighed, sure was.

She didn’t own any shooters, nor did she have the speed to download a whole game in a night.

Her phone dinged, it was an email from Steam, then it dinged again and again, dozens of times. The IM window flashed as she checked her email on her phone, Clem had opened up a private chat.

Indie sneered, were they really doing this now?

Her sarcasm hang, there was no response so she went about loading up and checking through all the dozens of games Clem had just bought her - each with a different note, none of them urging her to do anything but game with her.

Silence at the other end, and then Clem logged off. Indie had a bad feeling welling up in her gut.