Friday Funwrite: Flea Market
Anything for a Bonus
What’s Friday Funwrite? You can read about it in this post:
Pernilin held his breath. He gagged anyway. I should have listened to Char. She’d warned him what the lower levels of Lagfri would be like. Though dim, the narrow halls were mostly spotless, kept clean by the automated systems and featureless bots that roamed at regular intervals. The smell came from the people. Or rather from what the people did. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. He wasn’t the squeamish type. At least he’d never been before, but that smell…he’d lost his lunch more than once on his way down.
He brushed his long wiry hair back and tapped his left temple. Directions scrolled in his enhanced eye. Even without the location systems working—they hadn’t below the G levels for decades—he would have preferred a map to follow. Description left too much room for error, and this labyrinthian section of the ancient space station was not a place for error. He’d overheard that he was the third agent sent to retrieve the item. The first two never returned, though some of their enhancements had appeared weeks later, already integrated into someone else’s body. A shiver ran through him at the thought of how they’d been disassembled and the question of whether they were still alive when it happened. Some implants needed a live host. He’d played dumb when given the assignment lest his employers discover just how good his hearing adjustment was. Still, he negotiated a bit of a bonus if he made it back. He assured himself he’d make it. I have plans for that bonus.
A few more turns, one quick dodge of some group of unidentifiable creatures scurrying around a corner, and he was in front of a nondescript third door on the right. So nondescript there wasn’t any obvious way to access it. No button or panel to activate before he did the next step.
I feel like an idiot. And he looked like one too, staring at the door. Even more so when he started talking to it. He glanced left and right, then said the passphrase he was given. “A pegasus sang to the sun, ‘Oh my lofty friend, let me land and begin again.’”
Silence.
The door remained closed.
He’d read the words just as they’d been written in his directions. What am I missing? He ran his hands around the edge of the door, looking for any switch he might have missed. There must have been something to trigger before saying the passphrase.
“No. No. That won’t do.”
He stepped back. The voice, a little on the high side, didn’t match his expectation for a contact in the deep insides of the infamous Lagfri Station’s black market.
“Don’t just stand there. The pegasus sang. If you don’t sing it like the pegasus, you don’t get in.”
He pulled up the directions again. They didn’t say anything about singing the passphrase. Definitely earning that bonus. Another look around, more for fear of embarrassment than being overheard, and he repeated the phrase singing the Pegasus’s part and hoping the tune met with his contact’s approval. His eyes watered, having breathed too much of the stinky air in the effort.
“Do I make you sing it louder? Hmm. A higher octave perhaps?”
Pernilin clenched his teeth. Remember the bonus. Remember the bonus. He opened his mouth.
“No! No. Come in.”
He stepped through the door before the contact could change their mind and it snapped shut behind him. Even dimmer than the corridor, he did a quick scan in all wavelengths, the data analyzed and fed to his neural implant.
Nothing. Everything but the visual spectrum was blocked. Then his enhanced eye went dark too, leaving just his one, unadulterated eye able to see. What he saw was a hulking silhouette half again as tall as he was and three times as wide. The man’s shoulders nearly brushed the walls on eithe side. Hot air, disturbingly sweet, blew from behind him, sending his long hair reaching out like tendrils.
Pernilin tried to step back, fearing the hair was actual tentacles of some kind, but found he was already pressed against the door.
A soft chuckle emanated from the looming figure. “That never gets old.” He twirled around, then clapped his hands.
Bright light blinded Pernilin. “What the hell?” He shielded his right eye, the other being completely useless.
“Ah, ah. Be nice now, or you’ll not get what you came for.”
Bonus. The big bonus. “S-sorry?”
“That’s better. Give it a few seconds and you’ll adjust. It isn’t that bright.”
A few blinks and indeed Pernilin’s vision returned. Then he needed to blink some more.
The man wore the most hideous pants he’d ever seen. They ballooned out at the thighs, which was saying something given the size of the man’s thighs, and were covered with a splattering of geometric shapes in every neon color imaginable. A pair of fushia suspenders, clearly unnecessary for pants tightly cinched around a muscular waist, stretched over a black t-shirt that appeared to be bursting over biceps as large as his head, with shoulders to match. Gleaming golden hair fell in waves around his shoulders with bangs styled to add several inches to his already immense height. He’d never seen anything like the man, or his fashion. And he didn’t like it one bit. Well, he did. It was amusing, unexpected, and disarming. That’s where the real trouble was. He was disarmed, physically and mentally. Just get to business and get that damned bonus. “I’ve come for—”
“I know why you’re here, little singing pegasus. Let’s not rush things.”
Pernilin’s brain struggled to make sense of the man in front of him. The high pitch voice didn’t match the oversized bio-enhanced body. A deep sense of unease settled in. He didn’t like contradictions.
“I can see you aren’t the enthusiastic type. I’ve got enough for both of us.” He twirled again, ending in a pose, pointing his fingers and winking.
Pernilin swallowed.
“Welcome to the Flea Market! You can call me Dale.”
Play along. Just play along. “Hi, Dale.” He did his best to smile and look friendly, despite having the sensation of standing naked in front of a stranger. Without his enhancements, he might as well have been.
“Follow me.”
Dale turned and walked down the narrow room to a counter at the end. He slid behind it and beckoned Pernilin forward.
With Dale’s massive form out of the way, Pernilin noticed the walls were lined with drawers from floor to ceiling, most of them smaller than his hand. None had labels. Not that he could see with his one eye, anyway. He reached the counter, illuminated around the edge with blue light similar to what he’d seen in the club he visited the night before. The top was a gloss black with a square hole in the middle. In front of Dale, it appeared like child’s play furniture.
“Now, you came for the Deluxe C and C package.” Dale pressed his lips together. “Are you sure you want it?”
Pernilin frowned. His mission was pickup and delivery. Not negotiation. “Yes.”
Dale did something behind the counter, and a silver box popped up in the hole. “So small.” A grin crossed his face. “And yet so powerful. Deceptively so. A miracle really.”
Pick up and delivery. “That’s nice.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out the small bag with three memory crystals and slid it across the counter and reached for the box.
Dale smashed his hand and held it there. “No takey takey until I say so.”
He held back a scream. No enhancements meant no pain blockers. A single finger stuck out from under Dale’s massive paw, bent in a way it never had before.
“Fine,” Pernilin squeaked out.
“Good.” Dale didn’t release his hand. “I have a rule see. I require everyone to know what they’re getting. They,”—he waved his other hand upwards—“know that. I guess they’ll just keep sending you poor saps down until one actually does as they’re told.” Something akin to sympathy appeared on Dale’s face as he leaned forward.
“Keep sending…” He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud. There was no doubt what—who—Dale was referring to.
“I shouldn’t have told you that, my pegasus. But I liked your singing.” He leaned back, all traces of emotion gone. “In here, this little silver box, are fleas. Those glorious little buggers that seem to appear everywhere there’s warm-blooded creatures to feed on. Doesn’t matter how far you travel, how sterile the environment. Fleas always hitch a ride. Which is surprising considering how easily they’re killed. Or their ancestors were.” He picked the box up and waved it. “These are some of my most special bio-engineered creations. C and C. Chaos and Catastrophe. That’s what they’ll do. Wherever they’re released, they’ll infect those they bite with the nastiest neurological toxin. It’ll make them go mad. There will be chaos and will lead to catastrophe.” His blue eyes drilled into Pernilin, a glee behind them that contradicted his prediction. “So, my little singing pegasus, do you know where your masters want to unleash them?”
The pain in his hand drifted into the background as the realization of the question settled in. Pickup and delivery. “No. I’m here for pickup. That’s it.”
“Don’t you wonder? What if it’s your homeworld, or where your lover lives, your children, or whoever it is you care about? There is someone, right?”
Char…no. Pickup and delivery. “Above my paid grade.” With the bonus, they could go wherever they wanted. Away from whatever was in the box.
“They’re engineered to survive. There’s only one way to kill them, and that costs extra. Your masters didn’t pay for it.” He grinned again. “Not yet.”
Pickup and…don’t get dissected for parts.
“I have others, you know. This is a flea market, after all. Why not swap it out for, say, these,”—a drawer behind him and high up opened—“these magnificent ones don’t just bite, they burrow in. It doesn’t kill, just feeds and reproduces. Of course if a lot of them bite, well…”
Dale watched him, then launched into offers of different fleas, drawers snapping open and closed as he described each.
Pernilin shoved down the vomit building in his throat. Bile burned as he said, “I gave you the crystals. Give me the box.”
Dale released his hand and swiped up the small bag from the counter. “As long as you’re sure.” He held out the flea box.
A slight nanosecond of doubt crossed Pernilin’s mind. He grabbed it with his good hand, stowing it in the same pocket where he’d retrieved the crystals.
Dale chuckled behind him as he walked toward the door. “Let the chaos begin!”
Notes on This Story:
This ended up being longer than I intended, but also shorter than I needed it to be. Dale, for those who didn’t live through the 1980s, wore the bright colors that decade is known for, and had the hair to match. If I had another week to write, he would have been playing some metal and headbanging for Pernilin before he let him leave. But alas, time is limited. I’ll have to bring the music loving black market retailer into another story someday.
That is all, unless you want to share your thoughts on what you would do if you were Pernilin. I’d love to know.