Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (43 page)

She sighed. She reminded me of me at her
age. Crazy kids.

“Alright. But I’m not making any
promises.”

“Good. Just know that if you don’t take
the job, my ghost will haunt you forever.”

“Your fat ghost would be too slow to be
scary.”

I woke up to a bright light shining in
my face.

19-10 stood shimmering at the foot of my
bed.

“Hi,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“Do you know who I am?” 19-10 said. Its
voice was a scrambly electronic hash, nearly incomprehensible.

“19-10. Some assassin.”

“But do you know who I am really?”

“Not…19-10?”

“You do know me.”

“Are you asking me or telling me? You’re
hard to understand in that thing.”

“I’m saying you know me. Can you guess?”

I thought.

“Garm?”

There was a pause.

“Do I look like Garm? Could Garm fit in
this armor?”

“Delovoa?” I asked.

“That’s…stupid. You saw me and Delovoa
together at his apartment.”

“I just woke up, give me a break. I
don’t know who you are.”

“I’m Valia.”

I lay there quietly.

“No, you’re not,” I said.

“I just told you I am.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, I could say
I was Valia but that wouldn’t make it true.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“I don’t know. You’re an assassin. Maybe
you want me to kill Valia. Besides, she couldn’t fit in that armor any more
than Garm could.”

“I can shapechange. That’s my mutation. Do
you want to know about me?”

“Not really.”

19-10 was clearly not expecting that
answer and all four of his arms rose in frustration.

“What?”

“I mean, if you’re going to kill me,
then kill me. I don’t feel the need to sit through some boring story if I’m
just going to die anyway.”

“How the void do you think I could kill
you? Am I going to throw you into a star? I’ve been trying to find a way to
kill you for a year. All this will make sense if I explain it.”

“Fine,” I said. “But I need to pee.”

I started to get out of bed.

“Now?”

“Yes, I’m not going to be able to pay
attention to your story if my bladder bursts.”

It took a while to get off the bed of
course. 19-10 cautiously moved away, as if I could sleepily lunge at a
teleporting battlesuit.

I was in the bathroom for a while when I
heard from outside:

“How long are you going to be?”

“Until I’m done.”

“You haven’t even started.”

“I can’t pee with an assassin waiting
outside the door staring at me. You’re apparently new to old men and their
bathroom habits.”

“I’m not staring at you.”

“Stop talking.”

I was silent for a while longer when
19-10 added:

“Try running the water.”

“I’ve been peeing my whole life, thank
you,” I muttered.

“Not successfully.”

I turned on the water and tried to
relax.

When I was finally done, I crossed back
into my bedroom and began to climb into bed.

“What are you doing?” 19-10 asked.

“Getting into bed, why?”

“That takes forever. Can’t you just
stand and listen?”

“I’m sleepy. You woke me up.”

When I was finally settled, 19-10 began.

“So I am a shafeshifter—”

“How is that different than a
shapechanger?” I asked, referencing the word that he first used.

“It’s not, stop interrupting. It’s just
a mutation.”

“What level?”

“Five.”

I had originally been categorized as a
level four. Though at this point, I wondered if I would be much higher.

“The Messahn battlesuit was simply a
collector’s item when I found it. No one could put it on let alone use it. But
I could morph my form to fit inside. It took quite a long time to learn, and
it’s a confusing shape, but now it’s second nature. Inside here I have eight
eyes, no mouth or nose, four arms, obviously, and various other changes.”

“But you’re saying you’re Valia?” I
asked, skeptically.

“Valia is just a form. I don’t have a
true me. I could change shapes for as long as I can remember. I’m not a man or
a woman, tall or short, fat or skinny. I chose Valia’s shape because I thought
it would get me a position on the Kommilaire, and it did.”

“Did you think I cared she’s a cute
woman? I never touched her,” I said.

“I know quite a bit about you, Hank. It’s
my job. I knew you wanted more Kommilaire and figured you wanted more women to
round out your male-dominated force. And I knew you had a past relationship
with Garm.”

“Maybe,” I said begrudgingly.

“I took the assignment when I was on the
other side of the galaxy. I had heard of you even there. Hank of Belvaille.”

“Why would you want to kill me?”

“I’ve killed other ‘great heroes’ in the
past. In every case they were just normal people who had good marketing.”

“Who hired you?”

“Garm. Or I thought it was Garm. But it
turned out to be the Ank using her clone.”

“Why were you in the Kommilaire?”

“To find your weaknesses. Find out what
you did. The longer I stayed, though, the more I saw you really were your
legend. You were the same guy. Executing you would have made me the undisputed
greatest assassin in the galaxy. But I wasn’t sure I was capable of killing you
and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.”

“You saved my life a few times. Or maybe
not my life, but my skin.”

“I couldn’t let anyone else kill you. I
wouldn’t get credit for it. If some Totki killed you that would have meant this
was a waste of time.”

“Nice.”

“In the meanwhile, Garm’s clone hired me
to do other jobs. I assassinated more than a dozen people on the station. You
only heard of the big ones. I hired feral kids. I worked with gangs. I shot the
Ank—likely so they would be clear of any suspicion. I also told Garm’s clone
everything you were doing.”

I exhaled.

“You suck.”

“But I started to realize that if I did,
through some miracle, manage to kill you, I would be killing everyone on this
station. Men, women, children, gas clouds, insects, robots.”

“What do you mean?”

“You keep this city together. I don’t
know how you do it. It’s insanity here. This city is like the organic,
traumatic center of a star, ready to explode outward at any second.”

“So I’m gravity? Why is everything a fat
joke?” I complained.

“It’s not just that you’re big. You
almost never beat people up. But I could see you really did love this city and
it was fated to fall without you. I don’t just take any contract. Killing you
was one thing, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do that now that I knew you,
but I was certain I didn’t want to slay all of Belvaille. When you started
unravelling what the Ank were up to, I wondered if I was also being
manipulated.”

“Well, you were.”

“I know that now.”

“So why are you here tonight?” I asked.

“To say goodbye. My employer is gone and
I was working under false pretenses. And even if I wanted to, I don’t know how
to kill you. And trust me, I know a lot of ways to murder. I fed you like two
pounds of poison and you didn’t even notice.”

“Yeah, poison doesn’t really work on me.
It’s just food,” I said. “Don’t worry too much. I’m expecting a massive heart
attack any day now.”

“I’d also like to say that as Valia, I
learned a lot from you.”

“Glad to hear it. I haven’t been a
perfect gentleman my whole existence, but I’ll just throw out there that
assassin isn’t the best career. There’s not much worse than looking back on
your life with regret. I can speak from experience.”

“We each have our own paths, but like I
said, I did learn things.”

“So can you take off your helmet?” I
asked. I think I was still a bit unsure it was really Valia.

“No. I have to change forms.”

“You done with the Kommilaire, then?”

“I’m done with Belvaille. Time to relocate.
I go where the jobs are.”

“How do you know I won’t stop you?”

“I can be any form I want to be. Unless
you stop every ship from ever leaving, I’ll get off.”

“Well, that’s got to be handy for an
assassin,” I sulked.

“It is. Take care, Hank.”

“What’s your real name?”

“When I’m an assassin, I’m 19-10. But
when I’m living my life normally I think of myself as Jia-Kard.”

19-10 vanished, taking his light with
him. Or her.

“Show off,” I said.

I woke up the next day, started to make
the long journey off my bed, and found it was quite easy to navigate.

In fact, I spun and almost threw myself
onto the floor. I landed on my feet, however.

My feet! I could see them. I looked at
my hands, my nimble fingers, my arms that no longer resembled construction
pillars.

A chill went up my spine. A chill I
could actually feel.

I ran to the bathroom. Ran!

I turned on the light and looked in the
mirror.

It was me. My grayish white hair hadn’t
changed a bit. But everything else had.

I was small. Not small, but fit. It was
my body from a hundred years ago. I flexed. I turned. I patted my chest. I
could feel through my hands, through my skin.

I jumped!

I all but giggled like a demented little
girl in a tickle factory.

I stared in my mouth, put my fingers in
my ears—my glorious ears!

I danced around, twirling and hopping
and laughing. If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up.

Then I stopped, struck with the sudden
realization.

I had died.

I had died and gone to heaven.

I’d finally done enough good deeds to
erase my debts.

Just to be sure, I splashed water on my
face. I could feel the cool water in my hands. Dripping from my chin and nose.
I breathed the water it into my lungs. Coughed.

Even coughing was great.

Cough.

Cough.

Cough.

Okay, maybe not that great. Maybe I
shouldn’t breathe water even in heaven.

My mouth dropped open when I realized
the possibilities:

Food!

I could taste water, just imagine what food
would be like. Real food. I hadn’t tasted sugar in decades. Savories. Sour. By
the Blue Stars, give me something sour!

I was hurrying into my living room to
reach the kitchen when I saw him sitting there.

Jorn-dole’s golden hair caught the light
and he wore a pleasant smile.

I stopped in my tracks.

“Jyonal,” I said to him.

“How did you know it was me?” he
answered.

“I don’t know many people who could do
this. You modified your own body in the past and offered to modify mine.”

Jyonal was a level-ten mutant I knew
from Old Belvaille. He was, as far as I knew, the most powerful mutant in the
galaxy. And a drug addict.

“How have you been, Hank?” he asked,
casually. As if he hadn’t just reshaped my entire body.

“Uh, fine. You? How’s your sister?”

“You know Jyen. Got married. Divorced.
Married. Kids. Divorced. I can’t keep track. I said I wanted to pay you back,
but she was against it.”

“Pay me back for what?”

“For saving us,” he said, shocked. “I
don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but when my sister and I first came here, we
were in terrible trouble. You took us under your wing and protected us. We
would have surely died without you.”

He was painting me to be nobler than I
really was. Helping a level-ten mutant was like a Therezian putting his foot on
you and “asking” you to be squished—you didn’t have much choice.

“It was my pleasure,” I said.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was going
to help you at first. I heard all this talk of you destroying the Colmarian
Confederation and had to see for myself. If anything, I think you changed for
the better. Except for being incredibly unhealthy.”

“Yeah. How did you fix my body?” I
asked.