Page 33 of Red Scale Daddy
“Dux.”
I enter it.
The system processes, then confirms.
His name appears beneath mine.
It feels wrong.
It also feels necessary.
I close the display and bring up launch preparation.
Behind me, the station continues its endless mechanical rhythm. Ahead of me, the path into the core waits, silent and unforgiving.
I do not look back.
“I am not taking a partner,” I say.
Dux settles into the secondary chair with a faint creak of protest from the structure. “Good.”
“I am taking a risk.”
“Better.”
I allow myself one final breath of stillness before everything changes.
Then I begin.
“Prepare for departure,” I say.
And this time, when he answers, there is no hesitation.
“Ready when you are.”
CHAPTER 6
DUX
By the time I return to Shot in the Dark, the bar smells like spilled liquor, burnt wiring, antiseptic spray, and bad decisions that have begun to dry on the floor.
The front sign flickers above the door in weak violet pulses, throwing broken light across the corridor like a dying emergency beacon. Inside, the music has stopped, which makes the room feel larger and uglier than usual. Without bass rattling through the tables and laughter covering the stains, the place looks exactly like what it is: a refuge for people who have run out of better rooms to ruin themselves in. Chairs sit crooked. Glass glitters beneath the counter. A smear of blood leads toward the side exit, where Loklo has apparently dragged our earlier guests with his usual respect for presentation.
He is behind the bar with a mop in one hand and murder in his eyes.
“Oh, good,” Loklo says, voice dry enough to qualify as a desert hazard. “The conquering idiot returns.”
I duck under the broken ceiling panel and step over the cracked remains of a glass that had probably deserved better. “You always greet management that way?”
Loklo plants the mop against the floor and leans on it, his half-Vakutan features arranged into theatrical exhaustion. “Management usually stays long enough to manage. You vanished after recruiting yourself into a suicide expedition with a woman who carries conductive dust in her sleeve and looks at people like she’s deciding where to install bolts.”
“That dust trick was good.”
“It was terrifying, which I admit is adjacent.”
I move behind the bar and begin shutting down the taps. The handles are sticky beneath my fingers, and the scent of cheap spirits rises sharp and sweet from the drains. “Where are Pell and his charming associates?”
“In the alley, rethinking their vocational paths. Pell cried. The Fratvoyan bit one of his own knives by accident. The Kiphian said he would sue, then remembered he was conscious only because we allowed it.” Loklo drags the mop through the largest puddle with unnecessary violence. “I gave them your warmest regards.”
