“You got it?” Fethna asked as Nattali got into the car.
“Ye of little faith,” Nattali said, pulling out the folder from under her jacket. It hadn’t been a particularly hard lift, just distract the guards and the receptionist was practically gagging to get someone as important as the Lieutenant of the Fifth Quarter at her door.
Whoever that Lieutenant was, they’d be getting a rather large bill. Not that Nattali cared, they probably had enough money to pay it three times over.
“You are a superstar,” Fethna asked, grabbing the document and opening it. Her eyes scanned the information hungrily.
“Will this exonerate me then?” Nattali asked, waving her wrist and her bracelet in the air, “so I can get this damn thing removed.”
Fethna looked up at Nattali, sighing.
“You know the rules of your release,” Fethna said, “two years with the Workers, that’s the rule.”
“Niel Ranthe made it out in six months,” Nattali said. The posterboy of reform they called him. The joke was on the Workers though, he was back in the palms of the Seven Cloaks conning his way through the rich and famous.
“You and I both know that Niel is not the reformed character everyone thinks him to be,” Fethna said, handing the folder back to Nattali and turning on the car, “and you’re worse.”
Nattali couldn’t help but grin. She was worse? That meant the Workers saw her as more of a threat than the infamous Niel Ranthe.
“That’s not a compliment you know,” Fethna said, pulling out into the main flow of traffic on the airway. The car hovered as it picked up the automated electric signals from the grid, before shooting off up into the upper pathways that zig zagged their way over the city.
“It is,” Nattali replied, opening the folder, “you see it too, the payment?”
“Yep,” Fethna said, plugging in the coordinates of their next location into the car, “what do you think about paying a visit to Lucian Ule’den himself? See what he has to say to being paid 1,000 credits of bribe money.”
Nattali grinned further. They got to insult the man who had her originally put away for art thievery? This was basically like New Years celebration and her birthday in one.
“Most definitely,” Nattali replied.
This flash fiction was first posted in 2020
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Alex.J.Cobalt 