Region 26. We had ended up in Region 26, and when we walked from out under the apartment and I saw the red glow, I began to realise who I was working for.

We hitched a lift in a kar through the streets of the region, with money being traded for flesh on all sides. There was more skin on display than at a butchers, and as we pulled up behind a building with a sign on the back entrance saying 'DIRTY WORK', I turned to Markro, all my sense of right and wrong beginning to drain away. I knew that I wouldn't be exactly working for the good guys, and would probably end up doing some pretty bad stuff, but even so...

'Your boss runs a strip club?'

'Amongst other things,' he replied. We opened the doors and clambered out. The morning air was beginning to warm, and thankfully there was no rain here. If it had been raining I think I might have turned around and walked away at that very moment, job or no job.

'Well,' I said, walking with the others towards the door, 'this I didn't expect. Somehow.'

Ashrore unlocked the door and we went inside. Even back here the dark corridor pumped and pulsed with the sound of techno, and we could hear the sound of a few baying wolves, or 'customers' as I learned to call them. We walked single file down the hallway before Markro stopped outside another door, leading to a small hallway to the boss' office.

'You girls go get ready,' he said, 'you're on soon, aren't you?'

'The bossssss hassssss given ussssss the day off, asssss thanksssss for coming to fetch you two,' the other Trovation said. Markro nodded and saluted them. They headed down the corridor and into a room on the right, as we ducked into the boss' hallway.

This hallway was perfectly kept, not a speck of dust anywhere. At the end of the hall were two guards, big and tough Kakrs, guns in hand (XF-40 Betas, for anyone wanting to know). As they approached, they raised their weapons and pointed the ends of the barrels at me. I wasn't pleased.

'Guys, it's me, Markro. And this guy here's now working for the boss.'

'You sure about that?' the Kakr on the left asked.

'Yes, I'm pretty damn sure. Go ask him if you'd like.' The two Kakrs, anthropomorphic bulls with biceps the size of small planets, looked at each other for a second, as if to have a telepathic communication on the subject. I later learned that the two of them were twins, so they actually might have been.

'Alright then,' said the one on the left. He turned around and activated a Halo-Core. 'Boss, Markro and, the new guy, are here.'

There was no reply heard, but apparently the guard got one, because he opened the door and stood aside for us.

'Thank you,' Markro said, his words slightly dipped in venom. We went passed, and though I tried to keep cool, I still shivered ever so slightly as I passed the guns.

The inside of the boss' office was covered with rich artefacts. That was the first thing that struck me as I entered the room. It glittered with riches, from statues carved from exquisite rock with staffs topped with gems, to large pieces of artwork which I actually recognised, which tells you how expensive they were. I later learned that a good deal of them, if not most of them, weren't obtained through buying, though I never learned which ones.

Behind a desk directly in front of us sat the boss. His goatee and deep eyebrows were exactly as they had been during Markro's call. He wasn't a large man, and he wasn't well built, but I wouldn't have liked to take him on in a fight. He was well proportioned, and looked like he could take care of himself. I would try and describe him in other words, but Grasslea is more of a myth, an abstract concept. If you haven't met him, you can't begin to imagine him.

'Xayne,' he said, not rising from his seat. 'You made it in one piece. I hear there were a few scuffles along the way.' His voice, although commanding, did not exactly inspire fear. It was just simple respect, and an absolute domination of all that came within his domain.

'We managed to take care of them,' I replied, hoping that he wouldn't shoot me dead on the spot for not saying 'sir'.

'Here's the letter, boss,' Markro said, taking the letter out of his coat and placing it on the table. Grasslea looked at it and smiled.

'Thank you, Markro. This will wrap things up nicely.'

'Boss, someone sold us out. Someone knew that...'

'I know. That was the plan.'

'Sir?'

'This letter,' he said, pointing to the envelope on the table, 'which you have so kindly delivered, is how we have landed a mole in the club, and their associates, behind bars thanks solely to its influence within the last few hours.' Markro looked puzzled.

'In the last few hours? But that envelope's been with me for at least eleven hours...'

'I know.' Grasslea got up and walked around his desk, before perching on it, our side, like a teacher trying to have an informal but instructive talk with his pupils. 'Let me explain.

'There was an informant in the club, I knew that. I even knew who it was. But I had no proof. I've also got people watching, and I have to let them know that I'm not to be messed with. And so I planned something. A magic trick, you might say.

'I let them know through an anonymous tip-off that someone in Region 57 had evidence of their misdoings, which was a complete lie. The only evidence of them doing something was in my head, and that means sod all. And so I predicted everything that would happen, or mostly.

'I predicted that they would try to anticipate me sending someone to collect the letter to use against them. They sent people there to try and kill whoever I sent. That's a 'use of deadly force' at least. Intent to kill, that's another. You would obviously try and escape on the train, and the little incident there would go under terrorism. You look like an innocent victim trying to get away.

'I didn't expect you to jump, but that was ok because you escaped and I've ended up with a new guy to replace Serbgae. I told you to get to the tunnels, which was as planned, and I would have told you to go there anyway, so that I could get this set up at the end. Everything they've done is caught on security, and I know a very good hacker who can get in and edit anything that doesn't quite match our story. And when they trace it all back to our mole, well then its goodnight and have fun, kids.'

We stood in silence for a few seconds, not quite ready to comprehend the explanation we had just been given. He had set us up, so that he could set someone else up? We were just pieces to be moved around by a skilful tactician. And yet...

'But the letter,' I said. 'What's in it?'

Grasslea grinned, the biggest grin I've ever seen on a man, the grin of someone who is about to deliver the killer punch line to a joke. He picked up the envelope, held it in both hands, and ripped right down the middle. He continued to tear the envelope into dozens of tiny pieces, before throwing them all over his office like confetti.

'Absolutely fuck all,' he said.

And so that, dear readers, is the story of how I came to work for Grasslea, a man who ran both a strip club, and possibly the sharpest mind I have ever come to know. I was privy to a calculated scheme, where a mole sent down assassins to stop another gun-for-hire from stealing an empty envelope, thereby accumulating enough video footage and personal confessions to land them all in cells on Kalvulseah, that mighty prison planet from which nobody escapes. Markro and I had been used, yes, and placed in such peril that a few hundredths of a second might have cost us our lives. And yet Grasslea's belief and faith in Markro, more than the entire plan itself, was what sold the job for me. More than needing the money, I was able to get past the fact that the guy I carried out illegal schemes for ran a strip club called DIRTY WORK because he was, perhaps, more human than any other human being I've ever met.

You only get a compliment like that once, boss, so don't get used to it.

END OF STORY ONE – THE FIRST RUN