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.“I honestly don’t know.It’s a job.Gotta do your job, right? Though I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”Kinsella looked at him appraisingly.“You security guys are a different breed.”“I’ve heard that.”“Huh,” Kinsella said.He chewed his lip, staring at Hogg in a way that made him feel extremely uncomfortable.“Goddamn,” Kinsella said and began pacing.“Now, that is an interesting possibility.Not that I’m sure I’d trust you enough to try.” He stopped.“But what the fuck.Everything’s worth a shot.” He turned to Hogg.“Do you have handcuffs? Binders? Whatever?”Hogg nodded.“Good.Put them on yourself.”Hogg fumbled in his belt for the binders.Cuffing yourself was a pretty clear sign that something hadn’t gone according to plan.But then he remembered that he hadn’t actually had a plan coming here.Just a lurchy sort of instinct that he should go at Kinsella and see what happened.And now he knew what happened — you got shot a few times and had to cuff yourself.He held up his bound wrists, showing them to Kinsella, who gave one of his all teeth smiles.“Amazing.” He began nodding tightly, clearly plotting something.“We’ve got that cart still, right?” he asked one of his men.“Okay, cool.Go get that.We’ll need to put him on it.” He crouched down to talk to Hogg, “I’m going to have to shoot you again.”Hogg’s shoulders slumped.“Are you sure?”Kinsella nodded.So, they shot him again.§The trolley slid to a stop at 10th Avenue, which was as far south as it still went; someone evidently had the sense to change the trolleys’ programming so that they wouldn’t start slamming into closed bulkhead doors, although Bruce supposed it was perhaps more likely that the trolleys had simply changed their own programming in the absence of any signs of operator sense.He stepped out of the rear doors, Ellen and Griese in tow, and headed confidently towards the escalator beside the intersection.“I think it’s a stupid plan,” Ellen said as they descended down to the first level.“Obviously,” Bruce replied.“The stupidity is key.We need a lot of stupid for this to work.”“Dammit, Bruce, it’s dangerous.”“It’s safer than what you were planning,” Bruce said and looked over his shoulder at the couple.“With that little toy of yours.”Ellen snorted.Griese looked back and forth between his wife and Bruce.“It’s not little,” he eventually said.Bruce laughed.He had found them in one of their old hideouts, where they had spent most of the previous day tinkering with their smart rifle.A bulky, ugly, and profoundly lethal weapon, it was also a grim reminder of the ill–fated Breeder raid on the security base they had participated in a decade earlier.When they reached the bottom, Bruce moved away from Africa.He spotted a few people pointedly loitering, but not many, not yet.Good.“You know how that thing works?” he asked.“I’ve read the manual a few times,” Griese said.“Before bed.You know.Light reading.”“I don’t want to know what you guys do in bed.”“He just reads it, Bruce,” Ellen chimed in.“But he does read it aloud.Slowly.With a sexy lisp.” She fanned her face, her eyes fluttering.Bruce made a pained smile, wishing he hadn’t brought up bed stuff at all.“Do you even know if it works?” he asked, shifting the subject.“It messed up that old bed pretty bad,” Ellen said.Bruce recalled seeing a shattered bed frame in the hideout, but hadn’t asked, because again, he never could tell with these two.“At the very least, we know when we pull the trigger something interesting will happen,” Ellen continued.They reached Flint Street and turned south.This was a smaller street, a wide hallway really, and was thankfully completely deserted.They stopped at 9th Avenue, a half block from the closed bulkhead door.Bruce hoped it would be equally deserted on the other side.“We should all go,” Ellen said.“This is a bad idea.”Bruce shook his head and examined his terminal.Three minutes to go.“Could.But three people will be more noticeable.And you’re not dressed right.Give me a hand with this.”Bruce began stripping off the plain coveralls he had been wearing, revealing a rough approximation of a security uniform underneath.Ellen helped him ball the coveralls into a bag and hoisted it over her shoulder before stepping back and examining him.“Well.Okay,” she said, not conveying any sense of confidence in his disguise.“But I wouldn’t get too close to anyone.Because you look not a little bit like a stripper.”“But an expensive one, right?”“Sure, sweetie.”Bruce’s terminal beeped.One minute to go.“Get ready,” he told Griese, who opened up his bag, revealing a sea of red pills inside.“That cost much?” Bruce asked.“Personally? No.Just cashed in one real big favor Ellen had with a guy in a fab plant,” Griese replied.“She won’t tell me how she got it, so I’m just going to assume it was something incredibly innocent.”Ellen blushed.“Least I could do for Laura.”“You could have done nothing at all,” Griese said.“That probably would have been less.”Shouts and hollers came from up the street.“Okay, guys,” Bruce said, punching his friends on the shoulder in an attempt to ward off any hugs.“Thanks.And if you really want to help out, when we’re done here, get your little toy and sit tight.Somewhere where you can move quickly
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