Entry is an Arm and a Leg

Chapter 6: Entry is an Arm and a Leg

 

Pyos lounged under an overhang beside the warehouse entrance, hands in his pockets, rolling a toothpick back and forth between his teeth. The rain had ended less than an hour ago, and the puddles in the narrow Fuevok streets shone with moonlight. The night was unusually quiet; Pyos could hear runoff dripping from the slat roofs half a block away. He stayed silent as well. Besides the rhythmic waving of the toothpick, he did not move so much as a single millimeter.

 

Everyone else he knew hated taking fourth-quarter shift, but Pyos didn’t much mind it. He didn’t care when he slept. In fact, if he could abolish sleep altogether, he would; it kept him away from more interesting and meaningful uses of his time, and he had terrible dreams anyway. He was glad he never remembered them.

 

Pyos’s ears were sharp. The a shuffle of movement down the street caught his attention, and he looked without moving his head. There was a young man working his way down the road toward the warehouse, moving cautiously, sidestepping puddles with practiced ease. Shifty. Pyos watched him approach with narrowed eyes, stilling his toothpick.

 

The kid passed right by him on the other side of the street. Pyos could see his chest heaving�"breathing quick and shallow, anxious. He was sixteen or seventeen at the very oldest, and even that was a generous estimate. He had the round face of a child and trembling hands.

 

A thief. Or an idiot. Or both.

 

The kid placed one hand on the handle of the warehouse door and Pyos struck. There was a single crack, loud in the still air, and then the kid was on his back. Pyos crouched over him, one hand pressed over his mouth. “You’re not gonna start screaming, are you?” he said pleasantly.

 

The kid shook his head, gray eyes wide. Pyos removed his hand and the kid made a high-pitched tangle of sounds in his throat, but did not scream. He was breathing twice as quickly now, hissing each breath through gritted teeth. His right leg made an unnatural angle on the ground.

 

“I see you’re not a liar,” Pyos said. He was grinning, teeth flashing white in the moonlight. “You know this warehouse is spoken for, yeah?”

 

For a moment, the kid merely stared back as if transfixed. He was shaking all over as if he had just been pulled from icy water. When he finally found his voice, it was rusty and tremulous. “N-no.”

 

Pyos tapped him between the eyes. “I thought you weren’t a liar! Everyone knows who owns this warehouse. Let’s try again: you know this warehouse is spoken for, yeah?”

 

Pyos had moved his hand from the kid’s mouth to his chest, pressing lightly�"but enough. The kid could sense an iron strength behind that hand. He had never felt so fragile; he was in agony and pinned beneath a blue-eyed monster who smiled like a Fuevok junkie. “N-nnn-yeah,” the kid replied, slowly.

 

“Good, good! Now, who owns the warehouse? You know, right?”

 

“The. The Olika?” The kid tried to stifle a shiver and failed. The spasm tensed his leg and he nearly cried out. Surely this person�"undoubtedly an Olika enforcer�"was going to finish him off soon?

 

“You. Are. Right!” Pyos tapped the kid again with each word. His hand settled back to rest on a knee as he crouched, almost casual. “What’s your name, you thief?” His tone was nothing but cheerful, but he did not lift an ounce of weight from the kid’s chest.

 

“A-Anika.” The kid swallowed. “I’m Anika.”

 

It seemed impossible that the monster could smile any wider, but he managed. “Hello, Anika. I’m Pyos.”

 

“Pleased to meet you,” Anika said without thinking. The words crept out before he could bite them back, guided by habit, and they made a liar of him.

 

Pyos tipped his head to one side, like a cat. “What did you think you were gonna find in there, Anika?”

 

Anika could feel the mud soaking through his clothes. It was cold. He closed his eyes, but that only made him feel worse; he was dizzy and without his sight, he felt like he was flying through space. “I-I dunno,” he said. The pressure on his chest increased very slightly, and Anika was persuaded to continue: “S-something to sss-sell. I d-don’t, I don’t have any money or anything. I’m h-hungry. That’s all.”

 

Pyos nodded absently. He pulled a phone, Olika-issued, from his pocket and selected the first number in his contacts. The call took an extra few moments on its way through the scrambler�"a necessary expenditure, if they wanted to keep their conversations out of the system phone logs. “Be nice and quiet for a minute,” he told Anika.

 

A gruff voice picked up on the other end. “Yeah?”

 

“Hi, Shada!” Pyos said. “Someone tried to steal from the warehouse. I got him here.”

 

“What? Who? Who the hell’s stupid enough?”

 

Pyos glanced down at Anika. “He’s just a kid. Like, a street kid, yeah? Fuevok native. Says he just wanted to get stuff to sell, for food.”

 

Reclining in his office chair, Shada frowned. “Is he telling the truth?”

 

There was a momentary pause. Then, “Yes. I think so.”

 

Shada chose to trust Pyos’s judgment. Pyos read people well�"almost eerily so, in fact, and Shada doubted a kid off the street would have the practice necessary to fool him. “He is still alive, I assume?” There was the subtle edge of a rebuff in his tone. Pyos had been overeager before, and as a result, instead of coaching him through interrogation techniques, Shada had to coach him through proper body disposal techniques. It had been a long night.

 

“Yeah, he’s okay. I just broke his leg a little bit.”

 

Shada repressed a snicker. “Yeah, alright. Scared as f**k, I imagine,” he said.

 

“Should I kill him?” Pyos studied the sky nonchalantly, seemingly oblivious to Anika’s sudden panic. The would-be thief sucked in a panicked breath, his heart beating so hard he felt like it would bust his ribcage.

 

“Please no,” Anika whispered. “Please, please no.” His eyes stung with sudden tears, and he squeezed them shut so the Olika enforcer would not see. Pyos shushed him without looking, tapping his fingers against his lips.

 

Within Lachaskan city limits, Shada drummed his own fingers pensively on his desk. “…Guess not,” he said. “Can you keep him there until shiftchange?”

 

Pyos grinned. “Yeah, no problem. Guy’s not going anywhere.”

 

“Good, then do that. When whoever we’ve got to relieve you gets there, you bring him in to the Fuevok compound. I’ll have a chat with the kid.”

 

“Will do!” Pyos exclaimed. Shada’s reply was a click and an empty dial tone�"he had never been one for light conversation.

 

Pyos closed the phone and shoved it back into his pocket, where it clicked comfortably against his favorite knife. He patted Anika’s cheek cheerfully; Anika flinched, making a tiny wail of fear in his throat. “My boss wants to talk to you,” Pyos said. “We’re gonna hang out here until shiftchange, and then I’ll take you in. Don’t worry about your leg, we can go slow.”

 

Anika looked wild-eyed at Pyos. His leg was close to the bottom on the list of things he was currently worried about.

 

Pyos rose to his feet and stepped away, although Anika could hear the shuffle of his shoes just beyond his peripheral vision. It seemed he wasn’t being killed yet. Maybe he would get lucky. Maybe they would let him go. But there was no hope in Anika’s heart as he lay on his back in the mud. An eternity passed in the next two hours; he dozed, but the pain in his leg drew his focus, filled his head, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. At one point, Pyos threw a blanket over him and it took him twenty minutes to notice. When the sound of approaching footsteps�"the next shift arriving�"first touched his ears, it was a strange blessing.

 

“This the dumb f****r tried to rob us?”

 

Anika couldn’t see who was speaking. Pyos’s response was prompt and sunny: “Yeah! Been sitting here with him for a while. Guy’s not too into talking.”

 

“Hah! Must’a scared him. You’re a scary guy.”

 

Pyos laughed. Crouched beside Anika again and put out a hand. Mutely, Anika gripped him by the wrist and began to haul himself up, trying to move his leg as little as possible. It was a pointless effort. The most miniscule twitch of his knee sent waves of agony bristling through his entire leg; by the time Pyos had gotten Anika balanced on his one good foot, Anika was breathing in ragged sobs.

 

“Whoa there,” Pyos said, looping an arm around Anika to steady him.