Read Online Ecstasy by Susan Kaye Quinn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Susan Kaye Quinn
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too, yes?”
I nod, eyes narrowed.
“I designed that as well.” Mr. Brodsky shakes his head, and his unnatural gaze falls to the benchtop of toes again. “So useless. Meaningful only to bureaucrats and technologists and businessmen. So much wasted time. But now… now… when I’m finally getting to something with purpose, that’s when the time, she slips away like a frightened kitten.”
I’m starting to worry about Mr. Brodsky’s mental state. But that’s not my job; I’m just here to pay out. “Mr. Brodsky, if I could just have you—”
He moves, fast. Much faster than an old man should, but then he’s not really old. He clenches my shoulders in his bony hands, drilling me with that artificial eye. “She doesn’t have that much time!” My shoulders bunch up, but his strength is impressive. He must have been on the receiving end of life hits for so long that he’s one of those perpetually young payoffs, who live off the hits right up until the day they die. Those payoffs literally live day-to-day. Week to week. As long as the life hits keep getting doled out to them.
But something doesn’t add up. “Who doesn’t have that much time?” I ask.
He comes out of the fury, relaxing his hold on me and patting down the bunched fabric of my trenchcoat. “I’m sorry, debt collector. This… it isn’t your trouble.” He gently takes my hand, avoiding the bandages still on my knuckles from when I punched the elevator, and taps cool fingers on the recorder. Then he holds my palm up to face him. “This is Dr. Leonid Mikailovich Brodsky. I understand the risks and benefits of the life energy transfer this young debt collector has come to administer. I accept them and approve the transfer.”
His pale fingers release me, and his eyes have gone dull. “How long have you been collecting, son?”
Again with the personal questions. “Two years, sir.”
“Only two?” His furry eyebrows hike up a millimeter. “You look older than twenty.”
Just what I need. A payoff reminding me I look like shit. “Thank you, sir.”
“Did the Agency take you early?”
“No, sir, I started at eighteen like everyone else.” The truth is I ran to the Agency office as soon as I knew, but they wouldn’t take a seventeen-year-old kid, even when my mom signed off on it.
“Tested in?”
“Yes, sir.” The law prohibits testing before the mandatory age of eighteen, supposedly to protect debt collectors from being targeted as children. But that just makes collectors who express early an easy target for the mob. Only ten percent of the population carries the genetic marker for collecting, and even with the marker, odds are still good you won’t express.
My luck has never been good.
You’re not tagged as a debt collector in the government records until you’ve demonstrated that you can, in fact, collect life energy. But once that happens, you’re in. Some collectors make a run for it, turning down Agency training to try their luck with the mob. But by the time I arrived at the Agency, I’d already tangled with the mob and barely made it out with my life.
He’s shaking his head. “So young, and yet already doing this… work. It’s a shame.” He looks in my eyes. “This is an abomination, this thing we do, yes?”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“These three weeks that you have for me,” he says. “I do not deserve them. They belong to the poor soul you took them from.”
My eyelid starts to twitch.
“But I will not turn them down, because, you see…” He spreads his hands wide. “I need them. This project I am working on. It is of the utmost importance.”
“The one for… the girl.”
“My granddaughter, yes,” he says. “But not just for her. For all the young who are struck down, yet have so much life left in them. Life energy that is untapped. It is also for you, my young debt collector.”
My eyebrows raise.
“I am working on a device that will change everything.” He pauses,
I nod, eyes narrowed.
“I designed that as well.” Mr. Brodsky shakes his head, and his unnatural gaze falls to the benchtop of toes again. “So useless. Meaningful only to bureaucrats and technologists and businessmen. So much wasted time. But now… now… when I’m finally getting to something with purpose, that’s when the time, she slips away like a frightened kitten.”
I’m starting to worry about Mr. Brodsky’s mental state. But that’s not my job; I’m just here to pay out. “Mr. Brodsky, if I could just have you—”
He moves, fast. Much faster than an old man should, but then he’s not really old. He clenches my shoulders in his bony hands, drilling me with that artificial eye. “She doesn’t have that much time!” My shoulders bunch up, but his strength is impressive. He must have been on the receiving end of life hits for so long that he’s one of those perpetually young payoffs, who live off the hits right up until the day they die. Those payoffs literally live day-to-day. Week to week. As long as the life hits keep getting doled out to them.
But something doesn’t add up. “Who doesn’t have that much time?” I ask.
He comes out of the fury, relaxing his hold on me and patting down the bunched fabric of my trenchcoat. “I’m sorry, debt collector. This… it isn’t your trouble.” He gently takes my hand, avoiding the bandages still on my knuckles from when I punched the elevator, and taps cool fingers on the recorder. Then he holds my palm up to face him. “This is Dr. Leonid Mikailovich Brodsky. I understand the risks and benefits of the life energy transfer this young debt collector has come to administer. I accept them and approve the transfer.”
His pale fingers release me, and his eyes have gone dull. “How long have you been collecting, son?”
Again with the personal questions. “Two years, sir.”
“Only two?” His furry eyebrows hike up a millimeter. “You look older than twenty.”
Just what I need. A payoff reminding me I look like shit. “Thank you, sir.”
“Did the Agency take you early?”
“No, sir, I started at eighteen like everyone else.” The truth is I ran to the Agency office as soon as I knew, but they wouldn’t take a seventeen-year-old kid, even when my mom signed off on it.
“Tested in?”
“Yes, sir.” The law prohibits testing before the mandatory age of eighteen, supposedly to protect debt collectors from being targeted as children. But that just makes collectors who express early an easy target for the mob. Only ten percent of the population carries the genetic marker for collecting, and even with the marker, odds are still good you won’t express.
My luck has never been good.
You’re not tagged as a debt collector in the government records until you’ve demonstrated that you can, in fact, collect life energy. But once that happens, you’re in. Some collectors make a run for it, turning down Agency training to try their luck with the mob. But by the time I arrived at the Agency, I’d already tangled with the mob and barely made it out with my life.
He’s shaking his head. “So young, and yet already doing this… work. It’s a shame.” He looks in my eyes. “This is an abomination, this thing we do, yes?”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“These three weeks that you have for me,” he says. “I do not deserve them. They belong to the poor soul you took them from.”
My eyelid starts to twitch.
“But I will not turn them down, because, you see…” He spreads his hands wide. “I need them. This project I am working on. It is of the utmost importance.”
“The one for… the girl.”
“My granddaughter, yes,” he says. “But not just for her. For all the young who are struck down, yet have so much life left in them. Life energy that is untapped. It is also for you, my young debt collector.”
My eyebrows raise.
“I am working on a device that will change everything.” He pauses,
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