Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Pretty: Changes

All of that changed one morning in his nineteenth year, when Ryan woke up with a tattoo on his arm. This wasn't some late-night drunken tattoo that he had hazy memories of getting, no way. No tattoo artist with an ounce of self-preservation would even think about inking someone with the tattoo Ryan had. Back in the day, before people knew what the Followers were about, people might have done it. But some serious shit went down, and now nobody would think of faking one of those tattoos. Wouldn't matter no-how if they did, anyway, since the higher-ups could always spot a fake, and then you'd be in pretty bad trouble. Couple of old guys with no arms still floating around the blocks to remind people about that.

Ryan had been marked with the sign of Munin, and that meant that he was, for some reason, about to begin his rise within the Followers of Memory, or as they called themselves secretly, Muninites. He gained some responsibility, and was still learning the ropes of being a lieutenant in the organization instead of a grunt when his life was changed again by a chance encounter with a pretty girl. He had been hassling a dealer, One-Pill, that the higher-ups thought might be running a side scam with the clients. This kind of thing needed real finesse, you couldn't just go and break One-Pill's face, you had to find out what he was doing and with who. Trace it back, and it'd sure be the Chasers. But whatever, One-Pill might be Ryan's track to his first real trophy, a Chaser with his guard down.

A chick like that shows up, smokin' hot, in her pajamas and barefoot, smelling clean and clearly in an altered mental state, that just blew a hole in the way Ryan had learned to think. Suddenly he was fourteen again, a project reject, never gonna get a girl the right way, the soft way, only the strong wrong way. He made a grab for Leah.

Next

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

Ok, the link worked AFTER I posted a comment. *shrug*

I'm enjoying it, and want to read more.