Jammie was only partially satisfied with the results of her extremely troublesome discussion with Mr. Zarkeries. Partially because her account was increased by not even half of the amount promised, just a bit less than two hundred thousand credits.

Still, a lot of money. Her maintenance job salary of fifteen hundred credits per month would need to be saved for ten or more years to come up to that amount. And what about her parents who jointly together could not make even half of that?

She thought about calling the old goat on the comm and giving him an ear-full, but then she took a few long breaths, read the message that said, “The rest, when the client pays,” and understood that is the most she is going to get out of him right now.

I will not agree to this. Because, knowing a little bit about that old man, he’d always keep on saying that the client has not paid yet, regardless if that is the truth or not. But, let him think he won.

‘I don’t care about money not even a little!’ she imitated the old man in her head. “What a lier!”

She decided to send a hundred and fifty grand to her parents right away, not trusting that somehow the old goat will not find a way to wiggle his greedy fingers into the security of her account and steal her money back.

“They’ll be happy. And if they ask where all that money is coming from, I’ll just have to tell them I am doing some equipment-fixing side job. Do not want to lie to them, yet, they do not need to worry by knowing the full extent of the truth.”

That sounded very satisfactory.

As did another thing.

While she was in the most fierce part of the discussion with Mr. Zarkeries, she ended up sticking one of the spy balls to the counter. The ball number six, the last ball she fixed and that she decided to keep to herself, a sort of borrowing it just in case.

“Well, if the old man never pays me, I can always try to sell this one,” she thought, her doubts lingering even while she worked on them.

She swiftly realized how right she was to be suspicious.

But now, she had to accept the fact that she did not know anyone on the black market who she could trust to sell the ball to.

If Mr. Zarkeries is this hard with the money here, what can I expect from someone I meet somewhere in the dark alley? I give them the ball, and what do I get in return? A bullet to my head? No. I do not need to get greedy.

Greed kills more men than a sword.

And now, she found a new use for it.

I will find how much he sells stuff for, and then I can press him to give me my fair price. That way I will be right to say I never stole anything from him. I could always say that the ball never even left his store. I just used it to my advantage. That seems fair. With the game they are playing here, more than fair.

So, in the end, she glued that strange ball below the counter and it stuck there like a piece of chewing gum. Then after her shift was done with the Maintenance and she went to her humble quarter, she decided to activate the app on her comm and morph the ball into the counter.

She tested the sound and the video but was not happy with the view. So she waited for the night hour when the store was closed and lights dimmed, to move the ball to a better place.

It was rather easy, as fun as anything she did during the last few weeks.

First, she opened up all the available insect pages in the app’s option and selected a Revtorian fly bug. Morphing took a minute and used about ten percent of the ball's energy, the process which she made a mental note not to over-repeat.

Then she used the moving commands to move the ball all the way up to the ceiling, and then, used the command, “Blend in,” for the ball to become nothing more than a dusty part of the ceiling that needed to be painted fifty plus years ago.

“The energy remaining, seventy percent,” she read the stats to herself and sighed. “I guess they are not all-powerful after all.”

She thought about shouting it down so to preserve the energy. But what was fun in that?

Besides, she wanted to test it and see how much juice it would use if it stayed on ‘Alert’ all night.

Happy with herself and how the day progressed, she lay down on her bed, the sleep coming to her swiftly and easily.

Her comm woke her up a few hours later. It was the ball’s app alarm.

“Come in!” she heard the voice of the old man and brightened the screen to see better.

Obviously, the app was alarming her for a few minutes already, and she considered rewinding it all to see what happened before.

But I can do that later, she thought as she started to watch the video of three dark-shaped figures go inside the shop.

What kind of business deals does he have this time of night? Is he going to sell one of the balls right now? And for how much?

She was suddenly fully awake, her heart racing with excitement.

“We are here for our payment,” said the tall figure to the right. Even though the figure had a hood on, the deep hoarse voice and the height of the figure made Jammie guess that he was not a human.

“So, selling Union’s tech to non-humans? Oh, boy, would the Union love to get its hands on you, Mr. Zarkeries.”

“And what payment would that be?” the old man asked him.

The three visitors approached the counter, then spread out a bit, a good two meters between them.

“We did the job. The payment is due,” a woman’s voice could be heard, coming from the shape on the left.

Jammie wished to see her face, but the positioning of the spy ball did not let her.

Do I move the spy ball to a better place? Do I do it now?

No… Don’t risk it. Just calm down.

And next time, think. You need to put the ball somewhere so you do not record just the tops of people’s heads.

“The job is not done,” the old man said wearily. “You have to return the equipment first. Did you recuperate it? Where is the equipment that was entrusted to you?”

“What?”

“It’s worth more than its weight in gold. It was entrusted to you. Not given. Where is it?”

“Fuck your equipment!” the figure in the middle screamed at him. “We want our money, old man! And we want it now!”

The man moved his coat out of the way, revealing the dark shape of the weapon there.

“If you don’t pay us what is owed, we’ll take it by force,” the man said, suddenly a rifle in his head, pointing it straight at the old man’s face. “And take everything from you. Your credits and your life.”

Two more weapons materialized in the hands of other guests, both pointing at the old man.

Jammie was shocked, and suddenly scared. Not that she liked the old man that much, but, he might just prove to be her diamond mine.

The old man raised his hands up, and said in a suddenly fearful voice, “No need to bring weapons into this. We can deal with this rationally.”

“Rationally? We risked our lives and now we want our money! Now!”

The weapons clicked and the lights in their barrels turned threatening red, ready to vaporize the old man.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Your ways have suddenly caught up with you.

It’s true. Greed kills more men than the Mokrian plague.

And now, they’ll probably kill you no matter what you do.

What could she do? What could she do to help the old man? Not that she liked him one bit. But, she needed him. No matter what. Call the security? By the time they get there, it will be all over. Maybe create a distraction? But a distraction for what? For the old man to escape? Give him a chance to run?

He was so old he could hardly move. How could he ever run??

“You’ll shoot me if I don’t pay you?” asked the old man, suddenly looking very old and feeble, his voice trembling.

“We sure will.”

“All of you?”

“All of us!” answered the none-human to the right.

“And how much do you want?”

“Everything you have!” the woman said. “And we know you have millions, old fool!”

"Oh, fuck, oh no, oh no..." Jammie cussed. “And just when I started to get a good thing going.” If the spy bug was a weapon, she could… she did not end up dreaming the scenario.

Because the things happened then, the thing that Jammie rewatched later, and rewatched it again, and rewatched it for like twenty thousand times more.

One second, the old man was there, looking scared and defeated. The next one, he was on top of them.

When she analysed the video later, playing it at the slow speed, frame by frame, and only then she saw the old man jump over the counter, pushing off it with his left arm, his bare feet landing in the face of the woman that went instantly flying backward as if a mule hit her with her back legs.

The old man dropped then to the ground, rolled around, and, kicked the man in the back of his knees, making him bend down. All done before the man had a chance to turn around and fire at him.

“Nobody can move this fast. Not even Gornian Rattlesnake,” she thought, making a mental note to find out exactly how fast did the old man move and compare that to the striking speed of that famous reptile.

Then the little old man jumped on the back of the gun-hodling man, tilted the gun toward the third figure, and pressed the trigger. The red light burst out and the non-human figure was nothing but specs of dust flowing through the air, slowly falling down.

Hanging on his back, his arms wrapped around his neck and snapped it in less than a blink of an eye. Snapped it as if it was a small, dry twig.

It was all over by then. Not even one second.

The old man then went lazily to the woman that lay on the floor, walked slow, almost as if he became an old man again. When he came to her, he did not check if she was still breathing but pulled her by her hair, moving it to the dead man by the counter.

She did not make a sound, and Jammie wondered if she was still alive.

Then she saw him take a deep breath and shook his head repeatedly as he stared at the two motionless bodies there.

Then he slowly went around the counter and disappeared to his office.

He did not stay there for more than a few moments, coming out with a long dark-brown, almost wooden-like staff. As he moved around the counter, he tapped the staff and it lighted in dark green color.

Jammie saw nothing like that staff before in her life and watched it in horror when he placed it against the head of a woman, engulfing her all in the same dark-green glow.

He did the same to the dead man, and then, puff… the green mist disappeared and there were no more bodies there anymore.

Jammie watched it all in horror, not believing her very eyes. But it was all there. And if she wanted to, she could spend the rest of her life rewatching it.

There were no traces of those three people there anymore. But there was something that the old man decided to pick from the floor.

As he examined it from the palm of his hand, Jammie realized it was one of the spy balls.

So, that's where one of them went.

Then, Mr. Zarkeries spoke softly to the ball as if it was a kitten, as if he had not just killed three, what seemed to be, very tough mercs. He sai. "Oh, don't you worry anyhing. We'll put you in a safe place."

Hearing that, Jammie reacted fast.

She decided to risk it.

Maybe it was on the account of being the middle of the night, or maybe it was from watching those three people die by the hand of a man she would have never thought of as a murderer. She wanted to know more. Wanted to know all there was to it.

So, as the old man came around the counter, she tapped on her comm, made the ball turn back into the bug, and moved it to fly up and behind the old man, following him out of the room.

As she was doing it, she felt her fingers quiver.

For the first time in her life, she felt the strange crowing in her stomach, her heart pounding, her mouth dry as sand.

For the first time in her life, she felt truly scared.