“Damn...” Luke shies away from Merry after seeing how she turned her partner (in crime and in love) into a skin with cold ruthlessness. “Remind me not to anger you.”
“I should’ve known.” She wipes off her tears, stung by the betrayal. “Once a crook, always a crook. And what’s worse is that I know why he loves the life.”
“Not like it’s hard to figure why,” your Society fellow comments. “Living on the edge can be an addictive drug.”
“I know! But living on the slums afterwards? That’s no life.” She sighs, resigning to a fate she refuses. “You were right, cousin. You were right.”
“I just don’t want him to screw my family while at it. I’d say the same for you, but... well...”
“That’s what pisses me the most. I have big plans for your sister. She’s smart. She’s stupidly hot. She could eat the world if she wanted. But she’s underselling herself. She wants to ‘break the boundaries’. You know how many boundaries she could break if she could become a billionaire?”
“And here I thought Tina was too ambitious.” You check your surroundings, as you were deliberately driving in circles waiting for the hit. “We should find a place to change. Also, you want to check him yourself, or--?”
“Of course I’ll check him myself. There should be some public baths on the nearby park – leave me close and I’ll change there.”
“I know of another place,” you tell her. “Will need to keep an eye, though – Edgefield might not be too dangerous, but better to be safe.”
--
You wait a couple minutes behind an abandoned store you used as a hiding spot in your younger days, close to your old home. Compared to Tyneside, you have little to worry about random people hogging these spots, though you do keep an eye on the police that often checks the area.
Luke shivers as he notices the tall, athletic man stepping outside of the ruins, his ballsack swinging freely. You know it’s Leslie, but you never noticed he was packing. And Claudia’s mind is playing a cruel trick on you, for you know why Meredith is so smitten by him.
Now that you see him naked, he could easily make a life as a physical trainer and nobody would be the wiser. He’s not ripped, but he’s still muscular, with strong arms and calves, and the signs of a well-maintained pack of abs. Even the scar on his face makes him look sexy, rather than crooked.
Soon, she drops Tina’s clothes near Luke and grabs your father’s coat from the pile from the floor behind the front seat. (You silently apologized to him for allowing them to do so.) Her actions contrast wildly with her partner’s rough look. “Alright. Let’s finish this.”
“Before that,” you warn her. “I recall losing myself in Claudia when I used that thing.”
“Right,” she says in Leslie’s deep voice. “Just remind me that I was the one that shot, and insist on asking where I am. That should shake me up.”
“What are you talking about?” Luke asks.
“It’s the brown pen. When you use it at first, you wake up thinking you’re the person you’re wearing.”
“Right. And because we shot him...”
“Like I said – remind me that I did it, and insist on asking where I am. Can’t promise you anything, though.”
After giving a confirmation to Luke, he clicks the brown pen, and Merry falls unconscious. It lasts very little, however, as you see her wake up – and by the looks of it, very angry. “What the hell was that!?” she howls in Leslie’s voice.
“That was Meredith,” you tell her, reminding her of who turned him. “She had to do it.”
She looks at you with dark eyes, and you can see her – or rather, Leslie – seething. “What do you mean she had to do it?” She looks at herself, shocked. “Hold on. Why I’m outside your dad’s skin?”
“You should be asking where she is. Remember?”
“She was behind me! I was telling her about our plans, and she out of nowhere went and--” You see how her expression changes into a startled one. “Yeah. Yeah, that seemed to do the trick.”
“Merry?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” She takes a deep breath, wiping the sweat and slob off her partner’s lips. “Good to know he’s just confused and not angry. Remind me to wipe his memory before we wake him up.”
“Hold on,” Luke questions. “What do you mean ‘wipe out his memory’?”
“It’s another function of the white pen,” she explains. “That one has two functions. One’s the one you saw – seal or open up people’s skins. The other’s like the flash thingie in Men in Black – one zap, and they forget a couple minutes.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It is. At least, it’ll be now.”
“I’ll be driving while you ask him. Is he planning to retire, or not?”
“Ask him?”
“Yeah, Luke.” You step out of the back alley, watching for cars. “The brown pen works that way. You ask a question, you get an answer from them. And they can’t lie to you – at least, Claudia hasn’t lied to me. That, plus you get how they’d behave.”
“You don’t get memories, though.” Merry expands your explanation, acting more relaxed than the real Leslie. “He thinks that’s why your dupe’s acting weird. Memories are what makes us live and whatnot.”
“Good to know, but that wasn’t the question.”
“He just felt like adding in. As for his plans...” She sighs, rubbing her partner’s forehead. “He is planning on retiring.”
“Guess I’ll have to be out of your lives, then.”
“He’s still lying to me, though. He thinks I wouldn’t get it, but I do. Hell – your boytoy does.”
You brake unexpectedly, feeling the whiplash. “What do you mean by my ‘boytoy’?”
“We’re not anything,” Luke clarifies. “In case you’re wondering. Just... friends.”
“That’s what he thinks, cousin.” (That confirms that it’s her talking.) “He thinks you’re a thing. If I hadn’t talked to you, I’d think the same.”
“Well,” you shut the idea down, “we’re not. I barely know him.”
“Claudia and I weren’t close.”
“Like I said, I know. Anyways – as I was about to say, Les wants to retire from the life because of me. But he’s addicted to the lifestyle. Once a crook, always a crook.”
You notice her break down as, you believe, she hears her beloved tell everything to her. “He does love me. I wish I could see what he wants for us – he says he’s seen a perfect island where we could live the rest of our days, but I can’t share that.”
“That proves he’s honest.”
“That’s not what pisses me off,” she continues. “He’s been lying to me about the pens. The moment he learned about the other two ones, he started building ideas in his mind. Create clones of us to throw our trail off, then have them escape and take the blame over and over again. And what’s worse... he’s planning to build a crew.”
“You don’t work with a crew?”
“We’re small-time burglars,” Merry clarifies. “The heist where we found the pens was our first major hit. He didn’t want to tell me how excited he was. This would’ve been his ticket to bigger hits.”
“So, he wasn’t planning to retire.”
“Only when we had more money. Not half a mil. More like half a billion.”
“But that’d take you a lifetime! Between expenses, downtime, investigation, equipment--”
Merry turns towards Luke, puzzled. “How do you know all that?”
“Blame my affinity for roleplaying games. There’s a game I played back at college, before I dropped and a bit afterwards, dealing with heists. Teaches you the ropes in a way.”
“Well, it’s not as fun. I wanted something different, though. When I turned my cousin Marie into a skin, and then turned her daughter into one, I figured we could use this hit and the pens to go legit. But Les... He wants to make riskier moves. He wants a team he can trust with the pens.”
“He wants to go big.”
“He feels we’ll reach the half-bil goal before I could make it on investments.” She sniffs, shaking her head. “He was planning to let me do the investments while he did the heists. He plans to use the money to pump my investments so we can eventually go clean. Once we hit half a bil in assets, we’d be out. We’d marry. We’d...”
“You’d have a life.”
“Exactly. Except it just got worse.”
The revelation shocks you silent. You feel the closeness of a car going faster than you on the opposite side as you digest it. “What do you mean worse?”
“When I told him about your friend and how he got the pens, he wanted to see if he could take over the operation. Keep the pens away, so that no one could get us. Give it to his crew so they could do heists. Change the game plan for good.” She looks at your companion, pointing at him. “If he heard about your willingness to fence stolen goods, he’d let you in.”
“And what about me?”
She closes her eyes. “He thinks you’re not a threat as long as you’re out of our way. He’s actually happy you’re going through with becoming her. He thought you’d chicken out.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m happy with him.”
“He’s planning to drop your folks as soon as the operation’s underway. He agrees with you – they don’t deserve getting heat because of us. But that’s not the issue.”
“What’s the issue, then?”
“It seems these aren’t the only pens in existence.” Again, Merry summons a deep silence inside the car. “And he’s planning to ask a big favor from you, actually.”
“A favor? Which one?”
“He knows the location of two other pens. Different ones, not like the ones we’ve seen. He was planning a heist until he heard where you’re working. Now he wants you as an inside man – woman, I guess.”
You brake unexpectedly once more. “You’re telling me there are two other pens inside the Library?”
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