Freedom Incorporated by Peter Tylee (the best ebook reader for android .TXT) 📕

this bar in Chicago. Junior, you know the one I mean.” Esteban clicked his fingers, trying to remember. After a moment the frustration got to him and he scowled. “You know… well shit it doesn’t matter a flying-fuck anyway. So we’re at this bar and I buy him a beer but he says no thanks. So anyway, I flick my bottle cap at the bartender when he’s turned away and got him smack in the back of the head.”

He stopped to take a swig on the beer, swilling the liquid around in his mouth to remove the fur from his teeth before swallowing.

“And you know what this guy did?”

Adrian looked impatient and tried to hurry the story along. “What?”

“He says I should apologise to the barkeep.” Esteban paused, as if he expected the gravity of his words needed time to sink in. “Me. Apologise! Well I slapped a 20 on the bar and left. So this guy’s waiting for his ‘wife’ for near on three hours before giving up and heading home. But he never makes it, he just - poof - vanishes, nobody ever found his carcass.” He left the insinuations hanging, the way he usually did. Even when he was drunk, his survival instincts saved him from confessing to anything he shouldn’t.

Adrian stood. “Fascinating, truly.” He drew a neatly folded handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at the memory of perspiration on his brow. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. I need some aspirin before work.” He picked up his briefcase and headed toward the portals.

“And I need a shower.” Junior stood too.

“But we’ve got hours before work.” Esteban drained the last of his beer. He already knew he wouldn’t take another; he didn’t particularly enjoy drinking alone.

“Yeah but I feel disgusting and sticky.” Junior couldn’t stifle a smile. “You know how it is.”

So Esteban was alone. He shrugged and swaggered to the toilets, letting out a content sigh when he emptied his bladder. His urine was dark and pungent, his kidneys overworked from the beer he’d consumed the previous night.

His birth parents were Hispanic, though that meant nothing to him. He was a capitalist child, a pure product of market forces. His true parents were Supply and Demand, and his only siblings were Price and Contract. Esteban scratched the hair on his chest; it ran the length of his abdomen and merged with the forest on his groin. Taut muscles rippled under his skin. A gruelling daily routine of push-ups, weights and sit-ups kept him the fine physical specimen that he was. His physique was his last link to the past - to the part of his life that he’d enjoyed the most, the only part capable of thrilling him. And now it’s gone. His eyes narrowed and hatred made him punch the flush sensor hard enough to rattle the reservoir nestled in the wall.

I’ll get you back. Revenge flirted with his mind.

He washed his hands and admired his biceps, triceps, lats and abs in the mirror. I’ll get you, you little fuck, worse than you ever thought was possible. Then he dried his hands with the blow dryer.

Esteban was the assassination co-ordinator for UniForce, the company that specialised in the detection and apprehension of convicted felons for warrants that the criminal division of the WEF sanctioned. At least, that’s what the company’s glossy brochure said. There was no mention of the assassination branch because, technically, it didn’t exist. No fame, no glory, no pat on the back for a job well done - Esteban could expect nothing like that for his clandestine role in securing peace on Earth. But the lack of recognition didn’t bother him, much. Appreciation from the CEO was enough to quench his thirst for praise. But it did bother him that he could never again work in the field as an active assassin.

“I’ll squeeze your balls so hard you’ll wish your daddy never raped your mommy.” He knew it was possible to ruin someone’s life without taking it; he’d succeeded with that already. But he wanted more; he needed to inflict more pain than he could physically beat out of someone. Torture is, after all, most effective when performed inside the victim’s mind. Thoughts could cut more painfully than blades or lasers. Esteban knew that a body was a poor vessel for the delivery of pain, but he was only just learning how much fun it could be to ruin someone’s life.

He went back to his bedchamber and watched Claire from the doorway. He didn’t cast a shadow but his mere presence was enough to stir her. He couldn’t be sure whether she’d been asleep. Just watching her there, naked and sprawled on the bed caused the sweet rush of blood to his groin.

She raised her head from the pillow, her sunken eyes void of emotion. She knew what he was there for, just as the other women knew when their masters entered their chambers. It’d been so long since she’d last seen the sky that her skin was pale and thin, almost waxy. Claire rolled onto her back when Esteban unzipped his fly and kneeled on the bed. Her ribs stuck out alarmingly and her skin stretched over them as if whoever had assembled her forgot the padding and added the outer layer prematurely. But her breasts were unnaturally large and looked odd juxtaposed with her gaunt frame.

She spread her legs. The thought of resistance never registered with her anymore, it hadn’t registered for a long time. Months? Years? She couldn’t remember. Time had blurred into one endless thread of misery. A wince crossed her face when he thrust too deep and it hurt when he pulled her limp hair. His breath reeked of stale beer and cigars and she turned her head aside when he tried to kiss her on the mouth, regretting it when he thrust deeply as punishment.

When he was finished he stood over her, stroking her forehead without emotion. She rolled away, feeling nauseated by the stickiness between her legs. Then he fingered her scar, the tip of his finger tracing the inch-long incision where the surgeon had extracted her microchip.

How appropriate. The voice in Claire’s head scoffed in contempt. I should be dead. Such was the power he held over her. With a simple twitch of his finger and a light brush across her skin, he’d reminded her that she was forever the property of the Guild. There was only one way out of a building that had no doors, and she couldn’t operate the portals without a microchip. So they’d trapped her there, in a living death with a handful of equally mistreated sufferers.

“You stink.” Esteban snarled at her.

Look who’s talking. She didn’t dare breathe the words.

“Take a shower before I get home tonight, okay?” He waited in vain. “Okay? Answer me!”

She mustered the strength to nod though he would never understand the effort it required. “I will.”

Satisfied, Esteban wrapped a towel around his legs and headed for the showers, light-headed from beer and the exertion of sex. With his desires slaked, he turned his thoughts to what was waiting for him at head-office in San Francisco. Yeah, you’re gonna wish you never heard the name Esteban Garcia Valdez you motherfucker.