Note: This story contains lots of language, some gruesome deaths, drug use, and sex. Just a warning.

A Long Time Leaving

by RandomPenName

Chapter 1

“Damn it!” I shouted fisting the steel walls of the small room with all the force of my anger. Stupid of me though. I winced a little and took in a sharp breath as the cold sting shot through my knuckles and up my arms. I began to slowly massage the one hand with the other as I stared at the back of the unmoving head of his comrade. Of course unmoving, it would take the end of the universe to move her. Not a hair on her brunette head had even twitched away from where it hung just above the nape of her neck at the sound of the dull thud and slight crack of my out burst. She just sat there staring meditatively at the few possessions of her past that she hadn’t insisted I get destroyed. I don’t understand why she would take so little with her, I mean, fuck, she’s just retiring. Or why she thinks its so necessary that she goes through with this cock-eyed procedure anyways. Hell, I don’t even know why she’s retiring. But she is, much to my personal financial dismay. She never was one to keep much stuff-wise, just the essential, but she’s decided on taking the bare essentials, hell I’ve known people of our trade to carry around ten times more than she’s chosen to take with her just to take a piss. Just an anti-charge phaser, custom made without the government acknowledgement systems; A fine gold chain made before the Auroria Engine had been invented and the empire’s fleet of ships were made; Finally, a rare sword made entirely out of some kind of mineral that was completely undetectable and was such a deep black color that you couldn’t even see its fine blade from certain angles; and, of course, she’d be bringing her stem cells with her but they were already with my guy going through the most complicated part of the procedure. All of these items were laid out neatly before her on a single bed.

I stifled a growled a bit underneath my breath, “Is there nothing I can say to stop you from going through with this?”

She didn’t move, she didn’t speak, she just continued sitting on her knees before the bed like someone kneeling in dire prayer before an altar. She didn’t even make a noise, I wish she would though I hate hearing the sound of my own breathing. The woman was too much of a professional to make a sound, even when she wasn’t employed. I gritted my teeth as patiently as possible waiting for a reply.

“No,” She said firmly slicing through the tension.

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “You shouldn’t even be thinking about this kind of shit at this point in you career. You are at your fucking prime, no not even at your prime! Your at your… your ten years away from being in your fucking prime! And you’re still the god damned best. You know how many people would kill…”

She snapped twisting around and staring darts; her eyes had turned from dark brown to an orange-hazel, which would have meant pain, horrific pain for anyone who she didn’t know, didn’t trust; who wasn’t me basically. I bit my tongue and I could feel my face flushing before the stupid word had even left my stupid mouth. God. I always forget how touchy this girl gets.

“Of course I know,” she replied stiffly stressing and hissing each word, “I know how many people would kill to be in my position. I know how many people do kill in hopes of getting to where I am. I know how many people out there would kill me to take my position from me. So don’t you dare ask me if I know, for I know all too damned well!”

“Is this why your stopping? Why your willing to go through with this cock-eyed, fucking procedure!?” I demanded as the sheer thought of it reached my head, “You’re afraid for you life!? Ha! We both know you could take on half of the mother fuckers out to get you, all at once, with your legs put in cold steel, underwater, with only your pinkies!”

“Shut it, Michael,” she ordered harshly, as she turned around and reached for the silvery, plastic brief case, lined especially to hold her three items laying at her side and putting it on the bed and snapping it open “Its got nothing to do with my life…”

“Oh god! Please say it isn’t so! The fucking star of my entire show has gone and pulled a fucking Myles Dunovan, done-over-man!” I bellowed furious, “You, on top suddenly decide you can’t take either the heat of the sun or the cut of the stars so you decide to up kick the ladder your standing on to the ground all the while taking your life with it!”

“You realize that your just speaking mindless dribble,” she shot back picking up the anti-charge phaser and slamming it into its place in the brief case, “Besides, I have nothing in common with Miles Dunovan. His handler gambled away all of his earnings leaving him broke. Where as I…” she paused picking up the gold chain and waving it with her long fingers, “…am obviously not. Who can blame the guy for not wanting to go through with his normal work schedule when he wasn’t even getting paid…”

“Ah, your wrong there,” I interrupted quickly sitting down on the bed and grabbing her sword, stuffing and closing it in to the brief case, and sticking my face dangerously close to hers. “He was getting paid in extra minutes of his and his comrade’s life by every black market tradesmen they owed millions to! He stops doing their dirty work, knowing full well what they would do, and of course they go and do it. They go and get the man done over! ”

She cocked her head and practically spat in my face, “You act like I’m going to kill you like Myles killed his handler to cover up his tracks.”

“Well, aren’t we a bit saucy today,” I retorted blankly. The stupid girl should know by now that she’s the only person in this world and the next I wouldn’t suspect of plotting against my life.

She stared at me from the corner of her eye as she stood and grabbed the case, “I’m not going into hiding, I’m going into an early, well deserved, well earned retirement. Excuse me if I don’t want the bureaus of the empire ganging up and catching me right when I’m teaching some pre-school class. I’m sorry but, excuse me, if I don’t want to be caught by the Men in Black…”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I smiled slyly as I stood up and grabbed the case from her, “Did you say pre-school? That you didn’t want to get arrested while you were teaching pre-school?”

“Well,” she said blushing and looking away, “Not necessarily pre-school, that just was the first thing that popped into my head. But you know something more ordinary than…”

“Pre-school?”

“Oh just stop you know that I won’t end up teaching pre-school. So just drop it, okay,” she snapped rolling her eyes.

“Ah, but even if you know you won’t end up teaching pre-school, even if I know you won’t end up teaching pre-school…” I retorted playing around with her as she stared pointedly annoyed at me, “Doesn’t mean you don’t secretly wish to teach pre-school…”

“Oh shut up already Michael,” she said punching my shoulder playfully. There’s my girl, god I hate it when she gets moody though.

“Just think, if you were a pre-school teacher, the little fucks would be either killed or killing by the end of the year,” I laughed as her face went gray again. Damn it, forgot again! Fuck she’s touchy. But, fuck, she needs to fucking get over it, “Now there’s a class Ol’ Saint Banny would want to enroll his little snot rags in.”

Oops, strummed two chords of the wrong guitar with that one, but seriously I wish the damned girl would get over it and herself for a second. God she’s the best at what she does, but damn she’s the worst at coming to terms with it than anyone I know. Of course I should be able to predict these little moods of hers. Well I can, sorta, I just choose to refuse to acknowledge them. I honestly don’t feel like I should have to.

“But of course,” I sighed continuing, “No one would ever let you near their children looking like a UIU87 groupie.”

She sighed, “Well, it was better than the other option.”

“What you mean the option of not doing this?” I replied sarcastically

“No,” she replied exasperated, “the one with out the sensory input. Its definitely more realistic but I think I’d go insane if I couldn’t feel anything. I can’t say that I like the thought of being the color…”

“Why are you even doing this?” I asked, “You’ve never even gotten your ears pierced. You can retire and be on your happy way without doing this. The government could never catch you… you’ve been too extraordinarily, anally careful about not getting caught from the beginning. And the Men In Black are an urban legend, they don’t exist and if they did they still couldn’t catch you! So why are you doing this”

“Well” she began turning around and grazing the door opening panel with the tips of her fingers, purposely not looking me in the eye, “Perhaps I’m just being extraordinarily, anally careful about not getting caught.”

She’s avoiding something, and not just my questions. Definitely avoiding something. I wouldn’t put it beneath her avoid her own emotions and feelings. She’s been avoiding that sort of thing since I met her a few years back, but that’s the norm in our business. You either ignore emotions or don’t have them, they’re too much of a liability. But something feels different and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“You realize you’re going to put me out of business with this! I just don’t understand why…”

“And you don’t have too!” She interrupted spinning on me.

“Look…I…”

“Just stop, okay, there is nothing you can do that will change my mind about this,” She took a deep breath and said much more slowly, “And there is nothing I could possibly say that would make you understand.”

Something was up, we always kept our relationship professional, but still I always thought we had a sort of intangible understanding about most things about one another. She must be going through some sort of ‘woman thing’ right now; but I’ll be damned if I’m going to point that out.

“You know how hard it will be to replace you?” I sighed heading out into the narrow hall way, “You truly are the best,” I continued staring down into her face, “best at bringing profits,” she rolled her eyes and started walking quickly down the hall, but I’d be damned if I couldn’t look her right in the face to see her reactions as I fucking said this, “best at not getting too many enemies, but some just can’t be avoided now can they?” her lips tightened a bit, but she always was touching when I stated obvious shit like this, “best at what you do,” the vein right by her hairline at her right temple seemed to get a little bluer with that, but what the hell could that mean? Fuck its usually her that does this kind of reading shit on other people! “But I have to say your last job was a bit sloppier than usual…”

“Excuse me?” She said stopping in her tracks.

Yes! Professional pride! That must mean everything is right, or at least it should.

“Yeah,” I continued right on, “A guy told me that Myles’s head was smeared half-way across the equator of the home planet. Not exactly your style but I guess it gets the trick done. A little messy for my tastes but…”

“Your guy must have been mistaken” She said firmly as she went a little pale, “It was a snapped neck followed by a clean Introlysis Shot for safe measure.”

“You must be right,” I humored her hoping to death that she hadn’t really done what I thought she just did. With that we continued on silently and went into the room that Maz was setting up shop in.

Maz was infamous in our business (or maybe just famous; I never could see the difference in the words). He was a medic of sorts, and brilliant in most ways. He had always worked with injured thieves, assassins, and other ne’er-do-well types who couldn’t go to legitimate government run hospitals, like a lot of other medics who preferred the salaries paid by thieves than that of the state. But, Maz, being the smart little thing he was realized that as most in our business were paranoid and prone to murdering people, he was bound to get himself knocked off sooner-or-later. So he decided to upgrade himself and become a cyborg The fuck designed his own cerebral functions so that at any given moment he could insert a chip into his head that would record his memories while memories of getting terribly drunk were being written in his permanent collection of memories, while the actual memories that happened could be taken out of his head and preferably incinerated.

All you had to do was walk up to him in one of his haunts and ask him if he’d like to get crazy drunk and go to the moons of Felligia 9 and he’d instantly put a fresh chip in and you’d discuss the terms of payment and whatever ailment or procedure it was. If it was something pressing like maybe charge shot to the gullet he’d get started right away in one of the rooms he held all over his city, but if it were something that could wait like maybe a breast enlargement procedure or what my comrade here was about to go through he’d give tell you to keep the chip until right before and then give it back so he could remember exactly what it was that he would be doing.

He had by now experienced around twelve hours of intoxicated memories while he was finishing up the DNA adjustment to my comrade’s stem cells. We had picked him up like anyone and most everyone did, gave him the chip and flew out here to this god forsaken abandoned asteroid docking station to go through this insane procedure.

“Are you nervous?” I asked, just thinking about what she was going to do to herself gave me the creeps.

“What about?” she asked absently.

God what a spacey chick! She’s usually sharper than that blade of hers. My god what has gotten into her. There definitely something going on. After this I’m definitely going off women for a while. “What about? What do you think!?”

“The procedure?” She murmured absently, “I supposed you’d have to be mildly insane not to be nervous.”

“Oh,” I mumbled as we reached the door and touched the panel, “Then you must be feeling perfectly peachy. Maz! For god’s sake are you done yet!”

Maz was looking intently into a screen on the wall while moving a tool slowly around a force field covered petri dish, “Practically,” he replied absently, “I’m sure even you can wait a few seconds.”

“This is it, right?” She said absently touching what looked like a translucent blue woman.

“No,” I said sarcastically, “Its Maz’s sex toy for when he gets bored of little ‘ol unconscious you. Yeah! Of course that’s it!”

Maz sniggered under his breath. Finally someone who appreciates my sense of humor.

“Don’t be an ass!” she said with her hands on her hips.

“I’ll agree to it if you promise not be so god damned touchy,” I laughed.

“Okay that’s the last bit,” Maz announced happily standing up and walking towards the door that led into an adjacent room with a window looking in, “Now Miss if you’ll just get undressed and get on the stabilizer right next to the one with the dermal suit on it we can get started.”

With that the good doctor stepped into the operating room and began to prepare the anesthesia to be released in the rooms vents. “Your last chance to back out you know,” I offered half-heartedly, if she had gotten this far she sure as hell wasn’t about to back out.

She smiled wryly, “Why do you even bother to ask?”

Good question. “In that case I’m just want to give you your retirement gift before you get all mushy and boo-hooey when we say good by,” I replied digging out an identification module from the inside pocket of my jacket.

“You didn’t have to get me any…” She started her cheeks flushing.

“Its quite the tragedy that no one will ever see that cute little blush of yours again,” I smiled “Here is your last ever identity and…” I dug down into my other pocket and brought out a tiny gold ring, “This. Now its not for selling! You are to keep it and you are to wear it. Is that clear my comrade!”

“Yes but,” she began looking at the ring and then glancing over to the identity module, “Hey what’s the big idea! You forgot to put down a name!”

“What? You don’t have one,” I replied teasingly, its so easy to push this girls buttons.

“Oh I’m sure that’ll fly over the authorities well,” She said sarcastically.

“You’re a clever girl,” I smirked, “Surely you can think of a name for yourself.”

She scowled, “I’m about to have surgery! You think of a name!”

She pushed the identity module back into my hands, so touchy, “Fine,” I replied tensely, “I dub thee Georgie Porgie Packard, my dog always seemed to enjoy the name so I’m sure it will suit you just fine!”

“Just fine,” She replied exasperatedly, then turned her back to me and dropped robe.

“Just fine,” I mumbled walking into the other room with Maz and looked in as good ‘ol idiotic Georgie Porgie positioned herself in the air. She’s gonna regret having said I could name her. Damn! I am most definitely going off women for awhile.

“I’m going to begin to pump anesthesia into the room.” Maz informed the stupid girl over the intercom as he turned a knob around letting the gas swim around into the room.

“I hope you have enough to make city full of Flower addicts go to sleep,” I said, “That’s what it’ll take.”

Maz just looked intently through the window and then down at the girl’s bio-signs waiting to see whether it was safe to begin or not. She was still a bit more conscious than Maz needed to operate, with brain activity still making lightning bolts across a screen.

“How long will this whole deal take?” I asked taking note that the lightning bolt had gotten smaller.

Maz looked back out at my girl, “From now,” he replied absently as he focused on lowering the operating materials, “About eleven, maybe thirteen hours. But once it gets going I can sit back relax. She herself will probably be fit and ready to walk around about ten hours after its all over. I think I’ll start with her back that’ll be the easiest…” he pounded a couple of keys on the counsel and the two stabilizers tilted the two girls so their backs were facing each other, then two prongs slowly stretched from the main operating mechanism so that both were slightly in the skin of one of the bodies. The one touching the recently dubbed Georgie scraped off a strip of skin from her back and just as quickly the other scraped a patch of the blue skin from the other emptier body and put it over the spot on my comrades back. Then again. The whole motion of it looking like a taffy machine from some kind of nightmare that instead spinning taffy was spinning skin.

“I think I’ll go back to my ship and spend the rest of the twenty-one, maybe twenty-three hours there,” I replied kind of sick if I had had an appetite before I saw this it would be gone by now. “Besides these abandoned asteroid places make my nerves go on end.”

Maz wasn’t listening. I sighed and walked out a door and down the corridor back into my ship took take a nice long nap.

I woke up and stared at the top of my bed. I had set the clock to count down the hours until my girl would be up-and-at-em and I still had eighteen hours until she’d be done. Hardly feeling rested and instead restless I slammed my feet into the walk and rolled out of the bed. I put my hand on the lights to undim them but thought better of it. I walked through the dimness to the driving compartment and sat down on the seat lazily staring out at the hovering rocks of the asteroid belt.

I toyed momentarily with the idea of joining Maz again, but the thought of witnessing the taffy-skin machine again just gave me the creeps. I’m going to miss that girl, touchy as she is. I leaned back and pulled my feet up onto the console to have a nice old fashioned reminisce of the good times I had spending the money she had brought me when my foot slid on something.

I picked it up and looked at it, it was just the data my guy had sent me on ‘Ol Done-over-man’s death. Tossing it behind me with a shrug I began to put my feet up again. Then I remembered the conversation we had had just before she went in for surgery. I stumbled off my perch to grasp at the chip and I put it back in. My comrade wouldn’t lie to me about a job, not since we both got paid for it. Would she?

I put the chip in my console and put it up on the screen. I reeled again, just like the first time I had seen it, only now for a completely different reason. That was most definitively not my girls style. Myles’s body lay twisted in a corner of the room, soaking up the red in a pool of his own blood. I clicked in to magnify around the neck area, most of the head was missing. It looked as if someone had managed to smash his skull right off of his jaw. His jaw slightly flatter than it should be was the only thing still attached to his neck, that and his left ear that hung loosely from a twisting strand of skin. The ear was how you could tell it was him. Myles Dunovan, being the jack ass he was had gotten one of those tattoos that even laser removal couldn’t have faded on the lobes of his ear of his symbol, a hand clutching a lightning bolt. Damn vain bastard, but I’m sure that even being the traitorous fuck that he was, he didn’t deserve to be taken out like some dogs chew toy.

The whole room was covered in his blood. It was smeared against two of the walls like maybe he had been injured not fatally and then was leaning against the wall. I clicked out and on to a counter near by wear Myles had reached his final resting place. The counter was most definitively the final blow, as any half wit could tell from the mashed bits of the upper part of Myles’s missing part sprayed over it in a bony brainy mess. Most definitively not my girl’s style.

I could understand why she might lie and say she did it to the bill payers, but it would have been polite and proper for her to at least warn me that someone got there before she did. Its not like she’s never been beat to a job before, not that its happened many times before but it has at least happened once before this. She had the courtesy then to tell me, her partner, her dealer, her comrade, what had happened. I don’t see how this time could be all that different. But something had seemed off about her today.

She had seemed pretty touchy to me when we talked about Dunovan, but then she seemed touchy about everything we talked about. Not to mention how she usually gets touchy about talking about jobs. Damned touchy, moody woman! She’d be so much more easily read now if she weren’t so impossible to read at any given moment!

Maybe if I keep my charge phaser with me, just in case. She’ll just see it as me getting ready to leave. Or she will if she really is innocent, and if not… I’ll at least be prepared.

I stood and grabbed my phaser from the compartment by the console stuffed it in my shoulder holster and walked out to sit with Maz through this tentative process.