Just a job. [For Caine Wise]

[theycalledmeacurse]

She couldn't catch a break. That was the thought running through Rogue's mind as she waited in the rain at the meeting point, across the street from a random restaurant in a not quite seedy but not rich part of the city she'd dropped into and been trying to make a life in before things had gone south. She'd been on the planet for all of two months before she'd somehow managed to catch the eye of the wrong person. The type of person to run a genetic scan and take a keen interest in the anomalies found - an Earth human, a tersie, but different. Unique.

Rare. That had been the word the dealer had used when he'd been trying to restrain and drug her. She'd fetch a pretty penny on the black market, where certain noble houses went to find additions to their collections.

Rogue hadn't meant to kill him, but she almost had. The bastard hadn't wanted to let go, so she'd turned on her power and held on until she'd been able to pry his fingers away. It had been long enough to leave him in a coma, and if she was lucky he wouldn't wake up until she was on the other side of the universe.

Absorbing him had given her one hell of a headache, but it had also given her enough information to follow the channels to hire someone to help her. Rogue wasn't a helpless little girl anymore, but she was out of her element when it came to space and navigating beyond the planets she knew, so a bodyguard to get her from point A to point B was necessary. It had taken a lot of greased palms, but she'd finally gotten a message into the right hands and now here she was. Waiting. Hoping this would work and she could just find somewhere to live her life and not have people constantly trying to put her in a cell or a lab.

Was that really so much to ask?

Comments

[skyjacking]

A job was a job. He kept telling himself that constantly. It helped him keep his focus, helped keep his center aligned. And any job that kept him beneath the radar of all the Great Houses was a much appreciated. And although Caine didn't really like Stinger sticking his neck out for him--his former commander, now back in the Aegis, tossed many bones Caine's way these days--he knew the old man was going to keep tabs on him, regardless. Still, the lycantant supposed it was good to have at least one friend in the universe.

This new job was supposed to be a cakewalk. A little bout of escort duty: ensure the client made it to the destination in one piece, no questions asked. Stinger had assured him that everything was legit and aboveboard--just a lost Tersie wanting to planet-hop around the star system. But not to Earth; Caine had made that adamantly clear. There was no way in all the hells he was going to go within ten parsecs of any planet on the Abrasax payroll. He'd had more than enough of Balem and Titus Abrasax to last him a thousand lifetimes.

Caine turned the corner, heading for the scheduled meeting location, eyes, ears and nose automatically cataloging everything. It was more than taught, it was instinct, the natural inclination for a wolf-Spliced being. Ah, there. He spied his contact across the street, not looking that out of place, really. If not for the white streak in her hair, Caine wouldn't have given her a second look. He turned up the collar of his long coat against the drizzling rain, crossed the street a few yards down, and made his way unobtrusively towards the package.

He paused behind her, close enough to be heard but far away enough to allow passersby between, looking not at her but at everything else around them, one hand resting on the holstered gun beneath his coat.

"I'm your transport. Are you ready?"