She burns on the sofa, aimlessly sprawled in a desperate heap. Bitterness swirls like clouds of dust engulfing and obscuring her. It has been seventy-four hours en punto since she squeezed the detonator tight and caused millions of credits worth of damages in unrecoverable data to the Ballast Holdings LLC’s server farm located in downtown New Fredericksburg. About as clean of a win as it got.
It has been seventy-three hours, twelve minutes, and six seconds since she last heard from her liaison Cora. Brusque, to-the-point approval, coordinates for a safe house to lie low in, a good route to get there, and an order to wait for further contact was all she got. She remembered when this was fun. She remembered when there was more of a thrill to this. She remembered when Cora was the other kind of liaison to her, too - stupid. It has been one thousand two hundred and seventy-two hours, thirty-seven minutes, and eleven seconds since Nat Olesky got laid. Far, far longer than that since her and Cora broke it off for the final time.
She’s over it, she lies to herself. Just as she’s fine with the way things currently are. A fourth-rate capital firm suffered a minor setback. Victory for the Rose’s Reprieve. Victory for the people. She imagines something Orvo might’ve said if he was still around - no such thing as a small win. Just a win. Take a breath, you earned it. She misses him.
The ceiling fan above her jostles with every other full end-to-end spin, chk chk chk-ing along quietly. She imagines the fan collapsing atop her in some freak accident. All alone, done in by some fluke. She imagines the blades somehow being sharp enough to impale her. What if that’s how she goes - not herself, not the war, not in her sleep, not by some agent of the state, but by some haphazard piece of shit ceiling fan. Or a falling electrical unit. Or a collapsed elevator. Or…
She imagines a woman with painted lips curled into a wry grin eyefucking her. She imagines palming through her long, wavy dark hair before making a fist and pulling ‘til the woman’s ear is brushing up against her lips, breath hot against her. Tell me what you want from me, she imagines rasping, unable to keep herself from grinning right back against her as she feels the woman’s hands slide along her own hips. She exhales, pulling her belt away and undoing the first few buttons to her jeans, and imagines the woman shivering against her as she slides a hand past the waistline of her boxer briefs. Inhale, exhale - the swell of her chest rises and falls.
The phone rings. Her eyes snap wide open. The woman with green lipstick vanishes, and Nat is once more alone with her hand down her pants.
It has been seven seconds since Cora has attempted to reach her. The phone continues to ring.
