“You sold our friend into slavery!?”

Erich sighed, resisting the urge to drop the call out of sheer force of will. Instead he turned his mind back to the disassembled laser rifle sitting on his desk as he responded.

“Hello Gravity, long time no see. How are things with you?”

Perhaps his lackadaisical approach might not have been the wisest decision, but his patience for his old friend was at an all time low.

“Cut the shit, Erich,” the woman spat back. “I just found out you sold Myra off to the Dome.”

Erich frowned as he found the root of the problem he was looking for. A cracked focusing lens.

“I needed collateral,” he sighed. “The Dome needed some sort of payment if they were going to even consider my harebrained scheme.”

Hell, he was only considering it because he was desperate. Same for Zig-Zag.

Sarah though?

Bronte’s just greedy like that, he thought as he considered the latest titbits of information he’d managed to derive from his watchdog programs. From everything he’d seen, she seemed inclined to agree to his plan; the lure of acquiring three – or more – new Meta underlings too strong for her to resist.

Which was kind of the point, he thought wryly.

“How could you?” Gravity hissed, drawing him from his musings.

“It was actually easier than you’d think. I just had one of my underlings walk up to her and spray her in the face with a concentrated chloroform solution.”

Admittedly, he’d had to make sure the bruiser didn’t swallow her tongue while he affixed the explosive collar to her neck, but his back tentacles had been up to the task.

I really do need to come up with a better name than ‘back tentacles’. He mused as he set about swapping the faulty part. Perhaps ‘artificial limbs’?

The underling who’d performed the drugging had unfortunately been killed in the process – via a final woozy handcuff shattering punch from the Bruiser, before she’d succumbed to his chemical cocktail - but Erich hadn’t been too concerned about that.

The man had been one of the Saints who’d chosen to bail rather than take a side in the brewing conflict between him and Bronte.

Erich had no use for defective parts, so it was no great loss.

He’d already written off the goons he did have as combat ineffective.

Those goons who had sided with him had done so entirely superficially. The initial allure of joining him had more been his position outside the conflict between Zig-Zag and Bronte.

Which meant that his sudden recruitment drive and decision to enter the fight in full had ironically hurt his position more than benefited it as more and more of his converts slipped back to the ‘better known’ leaders that were Bronte and Zig-Zag.

Perhaps he might have convinced them to stay, by leveraging his ability to provide better equipment, or even his own combat ability, but at the end of the day he’d decided against it.

What use were soldiers that only performed when victory was assured?

No, he’d sooner aim his efforts elsewhere, and use up his dwindling Saint support base while he still had it.

Eventually he’d be down to just the die-hard core of his supporters, at which point he could see about properly utilizing them once more.

Until then he was down to his drones and the Block Party.

“No, that wasn’t what I was asking,” Gravity continued, once more drawing him back to the conversation and away from the nuances of gang politics. “I’m asking you how you could, as a person, sell one of your only friends into a life of slavery?”

“Easily.”

Myra had made her choice and she’d picked her side. A part of him had hoped she might eventually side with him, but it seemed that for whatever reason, her loyalty had ultimately been to Zig-Zag.

Silence reigned over the line.

“I’m disappointed, Erich,” she said finally. “Bronte told me to tell you that she’s in. She’ll meet you with her team at the designated spot.”

Erich held his breath until he heard the tell-tale click of the woman ending the call.

“Son of a bitch!” He swore flinging the recently repaired gun against the wall.

Of course, as satisfying as it might have been to watch the thing shatter into a hundred pieces, he was a better engineer than that. Instead the thing simply bounced off the concrete and clattered to the floor.

Not that Erich really noticed as he ranted and raved.

“You’re disappointed? You’re disappointed!? You two-timing backstabbing-”

His burgeoning rant was cut off by a delicate, almost tentative knock on his door.

“You ok in there, uh, boss?”

As quickly as the white-hot flash of anger came it dissipated at the sound of the worried voice. It was young, likely just entering or on the verge of pubescence.

One of my ‘guards’ then.

A recent addition to his roster, was the role of overseeing the drones and making sure that another ‘bedsheet situation’ didn’t occur.

Considering the positions only task was to apply the common sense of a five year old to the machines, the role was often given to the younger members of his organization by the older - as much as a way to keep the youngest out of the way as anything else.

“I’m- I’m fine,” he said finally. “Just… made a mistake working on one of my projects.”

“Oh…” The voice responded. “Is… Is there anything I can do to help. The other kids don’t let me work on the robots much, but I’ve got to help sometimes.”

Erich resisted the urge to laugh. The very idea of him needing the help of one of his underlings? It was almost offensive.

Still, the offer of help had been a show of initiative, and the book had suggested that he reward that.

“No, I’ll be fine,” he said walking over to pickup the discarded weapon. “You just keep watching the door. You… You’re doing a good job.”

“Oh, ok!”

Once upon a time, Erich might have missed it, but these days he tried to pay better attention to the nuances of what his people were and weren’t saying.

Which was why he couldn’t help but hear the pride and happiness in the kid’s voice as they responded to his praise.

For some reason, he felt his frown lessening slightly as he returned to his desk, his dextrous artificial limbs cracking open the gun once more as he checked to see if his rash actions had caused any internal damage to the delicate device.

At the very least, as he continued to work, he didn’t feel quite as alone as he had just a minute prior.

“Son of a bitch!” Gravity hissed as she slammed the phone down, drawing a startled glance from the only other occupant of the room.

Grace didn’t say anything though. The former street rat turned shop-keep turned Gravity’s assistant tended to get even quieter than normal when voices were raised. The girl would just sit in frozen silence, as if waiting for whatever disagreement was occurring to pass.

Normally the sight of the girl sitting in silence was enough to cut Gravity’s foul moods short; or at least prompt her to vent her emotions elsewhere.

Not in this case though.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Gravity ranted as she paced around the small apartment the two of them shared. “The Dome? The fucking Dome!?”

Grace predictably gave no answer to her question.

“He can’t just- We don’t just sell people - our friends – off to be gladiators for a quick buck.” The woman continued. “I- I need to call someone. Stay here and don’t open the door.” Gravity said without looking back as she stepped into her room.

Grace watched her go without saying a word, even if inwardly she couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the older woman’s well meaning advice.

Well meaning, but blatantly obvious advice.

Even Grace, kept as far away as Gravity could get her from the ranks and file of the Saints knew about the current split in the ranks. And even the apartment block they were dwelling in was firmly in Bronte’s camp, that didn’t guarantee that everyone was a friend.

Hell, even if they were, Grace wouldn’t let them in.

The Saints might not have been the worst gang around, but they definitely didn’t live up to their namesake. She’d run from people clad in white and yellow just as often as she’d run from people in purple, red or half a dozen other colours.

She was also wasn’t stupid.

She was well aware that Gravity was in contact with someone she shouldn’t be. The late-night phone calls and frantic texts.

Whatever her roommate was doing, it clearly wasn’t in the interests of anyone clad in white or yellow.

She was also well aware that Gravity was probably even now trying to contact that person.

Not that any of that mattered to Grace. Even as she heard yelling through the thin walls of the apartment, she intentionally tuned it out.

So long as she had a roof, a bed, and food in her belly, nothing else mattered.