Chapter 2

Katy sat in her little hideout, staring at the crumbling walls and was at a loss. Since that day she made her vow to get revenge on the people that had killed her parents, she had been working towards this day. Today.

It had only been what, four or five hours? Since the governor was splattered all over the plaza. The city was crawling with Peace Keepers, the streets packed with people who would turn her in for the price of a good meal or to gain favor with the planetary government. She had enough food and water stashed in her hidey-hole to last her two or three days, but after that she would have to venture out again.

And do what? In all of her planning, in all of the years of plotting and dreaming about this day, she had never considered what came after. What was she supposed to do now? Even if no one else figured out that she was responsible for the murder of the governor, not to mention the collateral damage, she was still a fugitive. She had run away from the crèche and didn't have a job. Her education, what little bit she actually had, was mostly geared towards mayhem.

She couldn't get a real job, not without being on the government's Eligibility for Placement rosters and she couldn't get on the roster without registering. That also meant she couldn't get on the dole either, so if she was going to continue to eat, she would have to steal or find a black-market job.

Katy knew, but was loathe to admit it, even to herself, that she hadn't really planned on what happens next because she never really thought she would succeed. The odds had been so high, so stacked against her that she had been almost certain to be captured or killed before today. Why plan for a future when you didn't have one?

Over the next two days, Katy sat. She sat and thought, her mind running in circles, considering, making plans and then discarding them. The most common profession for lower caste women who had no skills or who were trying to live off the grid, was as a doxie, a whore. She knew there were plenty of men who liked young girls and, for a couple of years, if she was careful, she could probably make a pretty good living.

She had done that, or the next thing to it. She had spread her legs for three different men, that being the only thing of real value she had to offer. She had traded sex for access, for the gear she needed to exact her revenge. While she hadn't been a virgin even then, it had left her feeling dirty and cheap, not something she cared to repeat over and over for the next few years.

Sex had been discussed openly in the crèche. The supervisors and teachers had been very up front about the fertility blocks every prole child got before puberty. The lower-caste proletariat, the worker bees, needed permission to breed and you could only get your fertility block removed after you were married and were shown to be both free of defects and productive in society.

The kids in the crèche, being kids, experimented and, while it was frowned on, it was never actually forbidden as long as force wasn't involved. Even in the crèche, rape was a crime. Katy had been, despite single-minded plans for revenge, a normal teen and she had lost her virginity to a dark-eyed boy in the showers late one night. She hadn't particularly liked the boy, though he seemed nice enough, but she had been curious and, when the opportunity arose, she said yes.

It had been after lights out and they had snuck in together, holding hands and giggling. It had been over quickly and hadn't hurt overmuch, but it hadn't been anything special either. The next time wasn't until she had run away, on her own and working to track down the men who had ruined her life. None of the men she had laid with were cruel, but none had been particularly skilled or even concerned with her reactions. They had just wanted to satisfy their own lusts and had left Katy wondering if there was something wrong with her, that she didn't feel much of anything besides disgust.

When she was forced to venture out again, her food and water supplies exhausted, she went carefully. Keeping to side streets where the local gangs had disabled or blocked the public safety cameras, she skulked through the city. She had become, as an unintended consequence of her drive for revenge, a semi-talented thief. She used these skills to pilfer food and, occasionally, a few low-end bits of tech that she could resell to shop keepers who were not particularly worried about the provenance of the items they bought.

The months crept by, her existence barely more than hand-to-mouth, living in her abandoned basement. One of the shopkeepers she sold stolen goods to, a nice enough guy who sometimes bought her stuff even if he didn't think he could resell them, asked her a question that would set Katy on a track whose end she couldn't begin to guess.

"Katy, do you have ... well, friends out there? I know that you are hiding, and sometimes folks that are avoiding notice have other friends that are doing the same. Anyway, here's the thing. My niece Shelly, she and her mother, my sister, live with me. She's a nice girl, hardworking and honest. She just started over at the Citizen Housing Allocation office as a secretary. Her boss is this real son-of-a-bitch type who won't keep his hands to himself and when she complained, he threatened her with firing. She'd be on the dole and with a termination on her record, would be lucky to find another job, what with so few to go around. I was thinking that if you knew a tough guy, maybe he could talk to him for me."

Katy was silent, her mind turning over the questions and wondering if she dared. What was one idiot compared to what she had already done?

"What do you want done and how much are you offering?" she asked, as casually as possible.

"I don't want him killed or nothing, and I don't want him knowing it is Sherry who is the cause. I just want to put a scare in to him. I am sure there are other women he had pulled the same stunts with." the shopkeeper replied, wringing his hands. "I could offer fifty creds. I'd pay more, but that is all I have right now. If I was rich, I would just get me a Peace Keeper to do it, but they want too much money and they don't always stay bought."

Katy got the information and a description of the Boss man, telling the shopkeeper that she would ask her 'friends' and see if she could find someone willing to do the job.

She spent the next two days watching the Boss. He looked like an average worker. He wasn't a fat slob like the Peace Keeper or even a cruel man like the Sub-Prelate. He came to work on time, went home to his wife, seemed perfectly normal on the outside, but Katy didn't much care, at this point, whether he was a saint or a sinner. He was her meal ticket, if she could get the job done.