Private The Price of Freedom

[Reggie]

​

//: Tags: Malcoma Hesse
//: Livien Magnus, ORD RADAMA...

Harsh red neon cast the Corellian in an ominous light, making him appear much more sinister than he really was. A light drizzle had settled in over the capital, making the light-polluted skies above Livien Magnus appear hazy and thick. All the ecumenopoli were like this, Reggie thought to himself as he took a drag on his cigarette and added its smoke to Ord Radama's irreparable atmosphere. He'd picked this place as a show of good faith for his contact; A neutral world beyond the reaches of the SIA and the Corpos, right in the middle of their respective territories along the Hydian Way. But the longer he waited outside the Scarlet Sword, the more anxious he felt.

Malcoma Hesse was some sort of Freedom Trail operator from Alliance space. Part of the Family, or so he'd heard. Strange bedfellows for a bleeding heart, but you could same the same for Reggie and his pack of hack-rats. Code Zero wasn't exactly a charity case, after all. No, this whole Freedom Trail business was a personal accord for Reggie. He'd seen far too many good people go missing in the night only to wind up in some Zygerrian mineshaft in the ass-crack of nowhere, starving to death as they chip rocks for their masters.

He took another puff, shaking his head slightly. The smoke burned his lungs but he held it inside for a long moment before exhaling through his nose. "Things'll kill you," Das always said. Not as fast as an Espo mole will, Reggie mused to himself. God, he hoped this Hesse woman wasn't a rat...

The Zero kept his eyes peeled, glancing only as often as he felt wasn't suspicious, when he saw the silhouette of a woman approaching the cantina. She walked with a way about her that felt different than Ord Radama's usual rabble. A sense of direction. Intent. She wasn't here to wallow in cheap spirits, that much was for sure.

Surely, she was his contact. Reggie straightened his spine a bit and took a final drag before dropping and grinding the butt into the sidewalk with his boot.

"Show time," he muttered, wisps of cigarette smoke escaping his lips.

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

His glance didn't go unnoticed.

If she wasn't coming to the Sword with the specific purpose that drove her forward today, she might have been momentarily annoyed under the weight of a strange man’s gaze but then paid it little mind. Instead, she walked ever towards the man, slowing down as she neared until she was standing a few feet beside, rather than in front, of Reggie.

She had only taken one good look at his face on her approach. He looked a little like who she had expected. As a couple of citizens walked past them on the sidewalk before the cantina, she inspected her perfectly manicured nails on one hand. Once they had moved down the street out of earshot, figures small and faded in the light pollution haze, she spoke up without looking away from her hand. “Dukkra ba dukkra.”

She began pushing back her cuticles while waiting for his response. Something about how she did it made nail care seem more of a bored than a nervous fidget, though she was quite nervous. Passcodes had potential to cause more trouble than the security that they could afford if they were uttered to the wrong person.

Reggie

 

[Reggie]

​

//: Tags: Malcoma Hesse
//: Livien Magnus, ORD RADAMA...

Reggie smirked, eyes transfixed on a smattering of graffiti across the street. 'Dukkra ba dukkra' was Amatakka, as befitting a passphrase as any considering their business. 'Freedom or death.' He always found it funny that the Amavikkan used the same word for both concepts, but in a macabre way, it made perfect sense.

He echoed her words, a seemingly hollow "Dukkra ba dukkra" to complete the exchange and confirm their goals. Reggie nodded at the door to the Sword, gesturing for Malcoma to follow. He led the way inside, slow and steady, wading through patrons. The cantina's owner was an old friend. An Aqualish with a bit of a temper, but underneath her thorny personality and spiderlike ferocity was a heart of gold. The Scarlet Sword had played safehouse to Reggie and the Amavikkan dozens of times since he'd joined the Freedom Trail. It was clear she knew why Reggie was here by the curt nod the two of them exchanged as he passed by the bar.

A short ways more and they were standing before a nondescript door at the back of the cantina. It slid open with a sharp hiss, revealing a storage room. Reggie held his hand out with faux chivalry. "After you," he said, following suit and closing the door.

"This is a safe place," Reggie told her. "Pafra lets us use the Sword like a halfway house. She's the mean old spider at the bar." He snickered, sighing as stepped past Malcoma and leaned against a stack of metal crates.

"She's all bark. Or... hiss? Whatever the hell sounds an Aqualish makes. Anyway-"

He stopped mid-sentence, eyes locked on the woman. Reggie's demeanor was suddenly quite serious. The Freedom Trail was one of the Sector's biggest secrets. Only a select few even knew the Amavikkan existed, let alone that there was an entire network of safehouses and agents dedicated to delivering them to a new life. Malcoma knew the passphrase, but that didn't mean she knew the cause.

"Tell me why you do this," he asked plainly. His eyes were sharp and unwavering. Reggie was a master of insight, but Malcoma was like a walking storm cloud. The Corellian couldn't quite get a bead on her, and that made him uneasy.

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

With every step further into the cantina, regret clawed its way up her insides: starting in the pit for her stomach, then clawing its way into her diaphragm, lungs, heart. Its cold fingers constricted the base of her wind pipe when Reggie led her to the storage room, but she managed to collect herself. She glanced at his extended hand before looking back at him. She forced one of her signature, tight-lipped smiles for the sake of faux politeness, paired it with a judgmental hmm, and showed herself into the room.

Her personal bodyguard, Damris Inkari, had all but begged her to escort her here. Mal knew she had done the right thing by denying him that. At best, another presence would have thrown off the already precarious vibe of the meeting; at worst, Damris would be somehow exposed as a former CSF detective, and then things would have really gone downhill.

Reggie would probably be able to tell that the headmistress was breathing more shallowly than she had been when outside, but the difference was difficult to spot. She clearly reacted like this at least every so often to clandestine meetings like these, and had assumedly learned quickly to hide it by shifting her weight in a certain way, fluttering her eye lashes slightly more often, inconspicuously wetting her lips—all to appear less like a lost damsel in distress.

Not doing so quickly made a girl into a target in scenes like the ones she frequented, one which was bound to be taken advantage of sooner rather than later, and this place had yet to prove to her that it was as safe as he said it was.

As he mused about verbiage, Mal listened passively, patiently, crossing her arms to further distract from the irregular rise and fall of her chest.

She jumped on her chance to speak. "Because the third time's..." The charm? "...my limit." She smiled again, this one as bitter as the first but not directed at him. "Three times enslaved, three times freed." Her voice was even, distant, as if she wasn't talking about herself. In fact, she remembered, or had worked to recall through psychotherapy, each and every major experience during those times, but she was not here to beg pity from a spirit, kindred or not. "I'd rather not see the cycle continue. Not for me, not for others."

She paused, taking time to breathe in and out a sigh. "I'm of the opinion that as much is up to us." Us was a new concept. She had always had partners in her freedom business—Kandra, Damris, Iayn, Sonti—but had never considered the other individuals unaffiliated with her directly saw to similar outcomes. "The law is too friendly with slavers."

Her last two comments she took time to enunciate clearly. Had she not, she might have very nearly growled those words. Her take on the law didn't apply nearly intergalactically, but it held enough places, she felt, to make the generalization a fair one. Malcoma was a criminal herself, yes, but she felt that her ends justified her means. In that she had good intentions, arguably the best, she tried to be fair when appropriate. After all, fairness was the value she had clung to the tightest all throughout her years enslaved. There was something magical about cultivating a behavior that was so desperately lacking in hutt palaces and the dank cargo holds of bounty hunters' ships.

But, the law. It rarely directly protected slavers or encouraged their trade, though it could reinforce the cycles of vulnerability. Other times, corrupt authorities could all but deliver victims back to slavers who they had recently escaped from. Both traps were ones a younger Malcoma had fallen into out of no fault of her own.

She wanted to fill the holes with the bodies of dead slavers so that no woman or man fell into them ever again.

Her breath began to even out.

Reggie

 

[Reggie]

Tags: Malcoma Hesse
Location: Livien Magnus, ORD RADAMA…

“The law,” Reggie said bitterly, “sleeps in the same bed as the slavers. Been watching the Corpos rub shoulders with them my whole life.” There was a hint of defeat in his voice, a subtle shadow behind his words that suggested he knew the cycle was endless. But the gold shimmer in his eyes told Malcoma that their Amatakka passphrase rang true in a personal sense for Reggie: Freedom or death.

“But if anyone is going to make a difference, it might as well be us. It has to be us.”

He eyed the woman for a moment, still unable to decode her but willing to work around it for the time being. He broke the silence with two simple words: “You’re in.”

A smirk broke across his face. Two simple, dangerous words. He could already hear Gaz now, chastising him for bringing another shadowrunner into the fold. “All you Goddamn humans are the same,” the scruffy Latero grumbled. “Always gotta stick yer nose where it doesn’t belong. Always gotta be the hero.” Reggie had made the mistake of bringing in a new agent without Gaz’s knowledge a few years back. A young guy from Corellia, witty and good with a slicer.

He ended up becoming one of the Trail’s best runners, but Gaz wasn’t one to give credit where credit was due. “It feths up the whole karkin’ system,” he complained. “Adding more moving parts to the machine, it’s bad for business.” But that crafty Corellian kid wasn’t just another cog in the fight against the Corpos. Neither was Malcoma. Reggie looked her over, thoughts refocusing on their current situation.

“Have any questions?”

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

If Malcoma could have known Gaz' opinion on recruiting to the cause, she wouldn't have been offended. After all, she felt much the same. She had taken a long time to accept any help after her first partner in this strangely benevolent crime had retired on her, and continued to be hesitant to bring on new partners even today.

It would have felt strange to be on the receiving end of... suspicion, stubbornness, self-righteousness, whatever Gaz would call it.

Even so, it wouldn't have given her pause from exhibiting much the same quality. It was what made her a good business woman; the same was probably true about him.

She shifted her arms to rest on her hips. "Since you've broken my ice," she began, dryly suggestive as her eyes bore into him, "yes." She tried very hard not to ask anyone questions that she did not know the answers to already, but in some situations—like this one, where she was rather utterly out of her comfort zone—that was impossible. All she controlled in these cases was her acceptance, and her ask. "Have you ever made that bed?"

She smiled for only a moment before adding, "Laundered the sheets? Even unintentionally, in hindsight?"

Her smile was back, not entirely accusatory but not innocent either. She had done her homework before this meeting too; Reggie wasn't alone there. They seemed to have in common affiliations that were unexpected or even ironic given their goals, other people and ideals they were beholden to which previous versions of themselves would have never associated with but had nevertheless allowed the current versions to come into the positions they had made for themselves out of it—because of it.

The difference, then, was that Malcoma had come to love her Family and let them in on her secret. She hoped that neither had occurred between Reggie and the Corpos.

Then again, maybe her bias against men was simply getting the better of her, as it normally did.

"I'm just curious. No judgement."

Reggie

 

[Reggie]

Tags: Malcoma Hesse
Location: Livien Magnus, ORD RADAMA…

Reggie’s eyes squinted a bit as he sought for words to say. In bed with the slavers? Hardly. His family was just as close to being Amavikkan as the runaways he helped on the Trail. The Corpos, however, were a different story. He eyed her as he chose his words carefully.

“I’m a Zero,” he said rather plainly, almost as if he expected her to already know. But to cover all the bases and be as transparent as possible, he filled her in.

“The CSA has a funny way of making the best of every situation. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones,” he corrected.

“They like to keep their hull airtight. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. If they do, it’s taken care of in-house and covered up. But somewhere along the line, the Corpos decided that the best way to prevent breaches is to inoculate the system itself.”

Reggie exhaled what seemed like years of frustration with his circumstances. Unlike Mal’s love for her benefactors, the wolfish Corellian hated his ball and chain with a passion. He spent his youth fighting so hard against the Corporate Authority, kicking the hornet’s nest until they finally noticed him. And when they did, they didn’t sting. They made him part of the hive.

“Code Zero is how the Espos and suits handle their enemies. They find you, they torture you, and then they give you a choice: death, or…” he trailed off, raising his arm to show her the faded Zero tattoo that marked his wrist.

“… the Code.”

“Hackers, slicers, assassins, gunrunners…” he was counting them off on his fingers at this point, “…spice dealers, thieves, data brokers - you name it, Code Zero takes it.”

He smiled a bit. Part of him was actually proud of the ragtag band of shadowrunners that the Code had picked up over the years. Gaz, Krieg, the Doc, and Das - they were just as much a family to Reggie as his blood kin. They looked out for one other. Shared intel, lent a helping hand when it was needed. But more importantly, they were all playing the game.

Reggie blinked at Mal, eying her carefully with cold regard. He wasn’t sure if he’d said too much or not nearly enough - another aide effect of the woman’s steely demeanor. Unreadable, untraceable.

“We sleep in the same hotel,” he said, circling back to her question, “but I’m a few doors down from the Corpos. They complain about the noise, but they know better than to send the cops.”

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

His interpretation of her question strayed a bit from her intention, but she let it be rather than give clarification. After all, sometimes an answer to the interpreted question was much more valuable than that of the intended question. It indicated toward a person's thought processes, for one, and, for two, it was at times more insightful than what might have been expected.

Both were the case now.

When he had shown her his tattoo, she drummed her fingertips against the leather clinging tightly to the hips. On her right hand, three plus her thumb were organic with their medium-length, almond-shaped nails painted black; and the last was a white and golden cybernetic with a plastic, but otherwise matching, nailbed. She wasn't one for the symbolism—it did have some practical features, yes, but that wasn't nearly enough to redeem it as a concept. What stood to some as a prestigiously dangerous signifier that one was not to be messed with stood instead to her as a mark of ownership that would, in one way or another, follow a girl to her grave.

She might like The Family on the whole, but that was one disrespect that she pretended she didn't care about.

"Same hotel, can't burn it down, I understand.

"My hotel," she continued, switching very quickly from the metaphorical to reality, "on Coruscant, takes in former slaves. I offer them jobs, teach them skills, and take care of them until they can stand on their own. There's no limit on how long they can benefit from my goodwill," she shrugged, "but that means that vacancy is an unexpected occurrence.

"If you know what I mean, then you've guessed my dilemma. There's many perpetrators, each of whom have many victims, and only a handful of individuals interested in... long-term solutions." In other words, slavery, even just on one planet, was an overwhelming problem and Malcoma plus Damris were just two people. She periodically humbled herself to ask for or accept help, but adding a few too her team still did very little to even the odds.

"This is all to say that I, personally, am rarely able to sponsor new girls... and boys," she smiled tautly, clearly biased towards her own gender but adding in the other to be nice, "at present, but I am aware that you have a different solution. I've even learned a small bit of their language to come here tonight."

She was, of course, referring to the Amavikkan.

"Am I to be a ferrywoman, Reggie?"

Reggie

 

[Reggie]

Tags: Malcoma Hesse
Location: Livien Magnus, ORD RADAMA…

“You are,” Reggie said bluntly. Truthfully - heartbreakingly - he didn’t care what happened to them after they passed the Trail. He couldn’t. There were too many of them, too few Zeroes. Too many Corpos, too little time. Pick your excuse.

The thought put a bitter taste in his mouth that made the corner of his lip quirk up. It was ann unfortunate subconscious reaction, one he regretted and immediately corrected. Already, Reggie thought he’d said too much. He was starting to get a feel for Ms. Hesse, which could only mean that she had a bead on him as well. It was time to rein it in, hold it closer to his chest. Reggie was always good at receding into himself. Only way to survive, really. He’d have shrugged if he weren’t standing there, naked without the full coverage of his anonymity and secrecy.

“The Amavikkan only need each other,” Reggie said. Not unlike the Zeroes, really. They only truly existed so long as there were two. And even then, as with the Amavikkan, it actually needed just the one to keep the stories alive until another came to stand beside him.

If not, well- that’s one of the things that scared him most: being forgotten.

“They don’t need accommodations, or amenities, or jobs. They just need freedom, Malcoma. Plain-Jane, unadulterated freedom.”

Reggie eyed her with seriousness. He was trying to size her up, to gauge before asking what her decision would be.

“I knew you had the means to move these people,” he said, “and now I know that you want to. All that’s left to know is will you?”

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

Mal rose and then lowered her brow, seemingly unbothered by his response. "I will," she promised though her voice didn't sound entirely sincere, "if you think that's all they need."

She'd never show it but his apathy crawled under her skin like a high fever. Even though she didn't know much about them, she was sure that the Amavikkan didn't need help. The culture and individuals who identified with it had survived, even thrived, in the ugly face of slavery for ages. They didn't need blood money or positions in and protection of the mob. Truthfully, neither did Mal nor any of the girls currently in her care. There were ways to survive and thrive without crossing over onto the wrong side of the law, but, the way she saw it, she didn't owe the law anything. It had failed her two times already. The least amount of revenge she felt entitled to was breaking all the laws she wanted.

But she'd respect it if not every former slave was as scorned, or at least didn't allow themselves to carry it around like a scar that would never heal.

"Got a job for me now or are you just sizing me up?"

She'd take no offense if it was the latter.

Reggie​

 

[Reggie]

Tags: Malcoma Hesse
Location: Livien Magnus, ORD RADAMA…

Reggie scoffed a bit, though he didn't mean to. "They need more than that," he said to her first comment. "They need so much more than that. But I know more about what goes in Pafra's bartender special on Thursday nights than I do about you. The Freedom Trail is a meritocracy. Gotta prove yourself." He moved his head in a lazy serpentine fashion, as if trying to see something behind her eyes. "Something tells me you know all about that."

He glared at her with piercing eyes, the kind that can slice through facades, melt the smoke and mirrors. Reggie couldn't sense anything to suggest they were there, and after a moment of silence, he spoke to answer her question. "I've got both," he said. "A small job, easy enough. I've got a contact that you can meet when you're ready. He'll fill you in on the rest."