2 A Day in the Life

As the sun rose early the next morning, Luke was just finishing up at the warehouse. Everything had been sprayed down, and what was left of Al had been sealed into barrels with an acidic compound. He pulled the car out of the main gate and stopped to slip another 100-credit note to the guard watching the front before he took off. That's just how things worked. Enough credits could get you anything that you wanted in this world, including helping someone lose their memory for a few key hours. Some days he felt like it was the only thing that kept him moving forward.

He had slipped into a sort of groove over the last few years working for Sunny. At first it was hard; things still upset him then. Those days were long gone now, it was just another job. When he started the club with Vicky, after Sunny had put them both through the Beacon Academy of Music, he had hoped that things would slow down a bit. He was already getting tired of it all. Things had slowed down in some respects, but there was an unspoken agreement between them and Sunny that if ever she needed something taken care of, they would be there. It was a thank you for giving them an education and their own club to play their music out of.

Luke had moved with his family to the south side of Beacon when he was still a kid. After his father's death from a heart attack when he was only twelve, his mother fell on hard times. They would often just barely scrape by from month to month, and as time went on, his hatred for his situation simmered with every passing day. He had it all when she was young, a big house, nice things, a loving family, and all the time in the world to enjoy it. As those things went away, all of his joy went with them. It was only his friendship with her neighbor, Vicky, that kept him together. They shared their love of music together and found that they had quite a lot in common despite Luke's more snobbish parents and upbringing. He tried his best to hold onto it even when they were poor, it was the only thing that no one could take from him.

When he was fifteen, Vicky introduced him to her aunt Sunny, and told him that she may be able to help. Sunny saw the hatred that boiled inside him and sent him to work with Vicky collecting credits from people who owed her. He especially loved the times he had to rough them up to get what they wanted. It was the dream job for him, not only could he take out his rage, but he was also able to help his mother get by.

His first murder was entirely accidental. It was years ago, before they had gone to music school. He was just a month shy of his seventeenth birthday. After a jewelry store that Sunny owned was robbed, Sunny got a tip on the location of one of the robbers. They were sent to find him and get the names of the rest of the thieves, at any cost. He was grateful for everything that Sunny had done for him and his mother, and he was going to get the job done correctly.

When they found the guy, he beat him with everything that he had in him, but the guy wasn't giving anything up. He kept getting angrier and angrier until finally, when the guy spit blood in his face and laughed, Luke saw red. He started hammering the guy as hard as he could. Eventually, Vicky had to pull him off, and he saw what he'd done. His skull was caved in, and he didn't have much of a face left to speak of. He started to panic, realizing what he'd done. He had visions of being locked in the castle dungeon for the rest of his life, or facing down the hangman's noose. It took Vicky wrapping him in a hug to break him out of it.

After they left, he was dreading telling Sunny what happened. He figured he would be, at best, disowned. He left a man dead and had nothing to show for it. When they finally spoke with her the next day, Sunny just placed a hand on his shoulder and told him not to cry for the dead man; he had it coming. She even told him that she was proud of him. He never cared about the thief, he was only concerned about letting her down or getting locked up. He should have known better than to steal from one of the most powerful people on the Southside.

Eventually, Sunny asked him if he thought he was capable of doing it again. There was an informant in her crew who was going to become a witness in a case that they were trying to build against her. She didn't know who she could trust, and the only people she knew for sure weren't against her were Vicky and Luke. He was more than ready to make up for not getting her diamonds back and took the chance without a second thought.

They followed him to his home one night and broke in, just in time to see him packing his things and preparing to head into protective custody. Luke pulled his small, snub-nosed pistol from his pocket, but when his finger was on the trigger, he hesitated. He noticed them, reached down into his bag, and pulled out his own gun. It was a split-second decision, and Luke beat him to the punch, raising his pistol and shooting him just above his right eye. As he watched him slump lifelessly onto the bed, he felt a wave of relief wash over him. It was either him or the other guy, and when put in that situation, he decided right there and then that it would always be him. That was the last time he hesitated.

For the rest of the year, taking care of Sunny's problems became a way of life. Then, on Vicky's eighteenth birthday Sunny offered to send them to music school. They didn't even graduate high school, but Sunny knew the right people to guarantee them a spot. It was the only thing did when they weren't working for Sunny. He played the guitar and she played the keyboard, and they were pretty good for not taking a single lesson. They still helped Sunny out when she really needed it, but they were basically out of the life while they were in school.

Four years later, they had degrees. Not long after, with money from Sunny, opened up The Hop! to rave reviews. Some nights it was for more laid-back blues and jazz that Luke enjoyed, and others it was for the more abrasive electronic music that Vicky had become enraptured with. Of course, all of that came with a price.

The club made good money, but was otherwise a front for Sunny's drug-running operations, but neither of them cared. They got to play music and they got a cut of the profits. The only thing they ever had to do was keep the club running and occasionally solve a problem or two for Sunny when she needed it.

Luke considered it more than a fair trade and was happy to oblige, at least at first. Now though, after almost five years, he was getting tired. Sunny's recent operations were drawing heat from the royal guard, and they were finding themselves with more and more people that needed to disappear. Then there was Al, her friend from music school who had made the mistake of taking out hundreds of thousands of credits in various loans from Sunny and never paying them back. He had even tried to take out a loan from one of Sunny's rivals. That was the last straw.

She had to make an example, and let everyone know what the deal was. Al had to go, and that was all there was to it. Luke wasn't happy about the assignment at first, but soon he started to see it as just another job. What was one more body stacked against dozens of others? Someone was going to do it, so it may as well be them. At least Al wouldn't have to suffer, well he wasn't supposed to suffer. That was what the ice pick was for.

He thought on all this as she drove home and the winter snow began to fall on the capital city. By the time he made it back, the sun was high in the sky and he was ready to be done for the day. He unlocked the door to the large apartment that she and Vicky shared (a graduation present from Sunny) and began taking his clothes off, letting them stay where they fell as he headed for his bedroom. He was out as soon as he hit the pillow and he ended up getting some of the best sleep he had in months.

On the other side of town, in a small apartment above a bakery, a tall, thin woman with wavy brown hair was worried sick. Her husband didn't come home the night before and hadn't called to tell her. That wasn't like him at all. Sometimes he would go out and end up having a bit too much to drink, sure, but he would always call if he wasn't going to come back for the night. Lisa was starting to get desperate. She had called all of his friends and even his uncle, but no one had heard from him. She heard he was going to the club to meet up with their friends from school, Vicky and Luke, but she hadn't been able to get either of them on the phone all morning.

Finally making one last attempt and whispering a silent prayer to The Empress that someone would pick up, she made another call to the club. As the phone continued to ring, she was about to give up, but The Empress must have heard her, because there was finally an answer.

"Yo," The voice on the phone called out.

There was only one person she knew who would answer the phone like that, and it was exactly who she was trying to talk to.

"Vicky is that you?" She asked with desperation in her voice.

"Yep, who is this?" Vicky coolly answered.

"It's Lisa, have you seen Al? He said that he was going out last night and that she would be stopping in."

"Hmm," Vicky replied, seemingly thinking about it. "Nope. He called Luke yesterday afternoon and said he'd be coming out, but he never showed up. Too bad too, I was looking forward to partying with him. You know how he gets when he starts drinking; he's the life of the party. Is he not at the bakery already?"

Lisa took this in. Her husband had usually been reserved, but after a few drinks had certainly become quite a bit of fun, and now he was gone and no one knew where. She started panicking more. Maybe he'd had a few too many before he hit the club and got lost somewhere. He was always complaining about paying club prices for their drinks.

"No, he didn't come home last night, and he didn't call either. You know he always calls. Please, you have to help me find him. I'm worried sick right now, and I'm starting to lose it. I don't know what to do and…"

Every word was coming out faster and faster as Lisa began to lose herself. Vicky was quick to step in.

"Calm down Liz, I'm sure everything's fine. Why don't you come over and I'll make some calls. We'll find him, I promise."

Lisa was let out a sigh of relief, although she had a feeling deep down inside her that something was horribly wrong. She dismissed it as best as she could and headed down to the club to continue her search.

Back at the club, Vicky was hanging up the phone, and letting out a sigh of her own. She knew that it was going to be one of those days, and she was beginning to regret telling Luke that she would see to calming down Lisa. The whole thing didn't really sit well with her. They had all been friends since music school, and she liked them both. She understood that her aunt's methods could be seen as…extreme by people who didn't understand how the world worked, but she knew that it had to be done. It was what it was, and that's just the way things went in those situations. Once he got in bed with Neon, that was the end of the line.

It still wasn't fun having to kill one of her friends. She could usually find fun in this job. She loved almost every aspect of her job. She got to take care of problems for her aunt, she got to play music for the adoring masses of the capital city, and she got to try out all the best drugs that came through town, because they were coming through her club. She had a pretty good life, and as a soon-to-be full member of one of the most powerful crews in the city, she could do pretty much whatever she wanted. The hits were just icing on the cake. She'd always felt that rage deep down inside her, much like Luke, and it was a good way to get it out, especially when the jobs required getting information before she put them down; those were her favorites.

She was always a little different when she was a girl. She loved her friends and family, but everyone else was a little afraid of her. She would fly into rages sometimes at the slightest provocation and would fight anyone that got in her way. Her mother gave her music as an outlet in the form of a keyboard when she was younger, and she loved it. She would spend hours on it every day after school.

Everything changed when she was seven. She was on her way home from school and found police all around her house. Her parents had told her that someday something like that might happen, and they might go away for a while, but she never really understood what that meant.

Her aunt met her at the door with tears in her eyes and took her inside. She didn't know the full details until she was older. All she knew then was that her parents were gone. Her rage took over that day, and didn't go away for a long time.

Sunny sent her and her older brother Max up to the sixth district to stay with their grandmother, but it didn't last long. She kept getting into fights, and even ended up putting one girl in the hospital after being picked on at school. It ended up being too much for her aging grandmother to handle, so she was back with Sunny by the time she was ten with Max staying behind. Sunny tried for a while to reign Vicky in, and her new friend Luke seemed to help a little bit. He was the one person she never got angry at. Eventually, Sunny knew she had to put the girl's talents to use. If she couldn't stop her anger, she would give her a better outlet for it.

At twelve she was making deliveries, and by fourteen she was shaking people down. Later that same year she got a chance to exact revenge on one of the people that killed her parents. During the two years that Vicky was with her grandmother, Sunny had waged a brutal war against the people responsible for her sister's death. She wiped out an entire syndicate and sent anyone who was still alive into hiding. After years, she finally managed to track down the last one.

She took him to the warehouse Vicky along with her to finish the job, and Vicky loved every second of it. By the time they were done, he was begging for death, and she was more than happy to oblige. When she stuck the blade in, it was the ultimate rush, like a total shock to the system. Everything she thought she knew changed at that moment. She wanted more, so much more.

She kept it a secret from Luke for a long time, she knew that he wouldn't be able to understand. He knew what Sunny did, or at least had a vague idea, but she didn't think she could ever tell him just how much she loved it. She even consoled him when he beat that no-account thief to death, when really, she was proud of him and looking for that same fire in his eyes when he did it.

After graduating music school, she was ready to go into the club business. She loved being an entrepreneur and she loved being able to get people high and show them the wonders of the compositions she poured her heart into. She wasn't some cheap re-mixer like other DJs in town. Everything was her own, down to the last detail, and she was very protective of her music. She saw the opportunity to help out Sunny with hits as a bit of fun and a way to pay Sunny back for everything her aunt had done for her.

It was days like these though that she didn't really like. Lisa was one of her good friends, and it felt wrong to lie to her like that. She felt even worse for what she was going to do later in the day when Lisa arrived. It was all okay though, she had to push through and get it over with. It was for her aunt, so it was worth it. She would do anything for Sunny, and would do it with a smile on her face. As she was thinking of this, she had her own little moment of panic. She had forgotten to call her aunt the night before and tell her that it was taken care of. She didn't want her to be worried.

She picked up the phone once more and dialed Sunny, hoping that she wasn't upset. She picked up quickly, to Vicky's surprise.

"Hey Auntie, it's Vicky. Sorry I forgot to call last night, things were crazy at the club. It's all taken care of though."

She heard her aunt give a little chuckle on the other side of the phone. "Good. Thank you, I'm sure it must have been tough, but you understand why it had to be done right?"

Vicky didn't even take a moment to think before answering.

"Of course I do. I'm sorry it had to come to that, but he should have known what he was getting into when he went to Neon. I just feel bad for having to lie to Lisa. What am I supposed to tell her? She'll think that Al abandoned her or something like that. She doesn't really deserve that, but at least it's better than her finding out the truth I guess."

"Stay strong dear, I know you have it in you. I want to stop by tonight so we can talk about a few things. Do you have time?" Sunny replied warmly.

Vicky smiled. She hadn't seen too much of Sunny lately, and always loved spending time with her.

"We've always got time for you, Auntie. Just let me know when you want to come in and I'll be ready."

They said their goodbyes with Sunny planning on meeting her later. Vicky's potentially distressing day got a little brighter. She hung up and got things ready for Lisa to arrive, popping a few pills and putting on her best consoling face. She had a job to do.

Just about three blocks from the club on the seventh floor of a large building was Sunny Morella, sitting in her office. After hanging up the phone with her niece, she started planning her day and reminiscing a bit on just how well Vicky and Luke had turned out. They were a great investment and the closest thing she had to kids of her own. Her entire business was doing pretty well, too. Why shouldn't it? It was in her family for generations after all.

She was the head of one of The Fourteen Tribes. Centuries ago, after The Empress had risen to power and The Last War had ended, the grand city of Beacon was founded, bringing together all of the refugees from the wastes together in a home that they could all share. As The Empress consolidated her power even more, she reached out to the heads of different influential families in the city who had supported her ascension.

She offered them lenience from the law in their dealings, as long as they kept things covered up and didn't question or disturb her reign. They were given essentially free rein over different parts of the mega-city, and Sunny's family had inherited the docks, which, despite being one of the poorest areas of the city for citizens, made her family millions over the years.

By the time Sunny was born, the tribes were down to just nine, with the rest having been either totally wiped out or absorbed into other families over the centuries. There were hundreds of full members across Beacon and thousands more associates. There were rules to joining, of course. Anyone could be an associate as long as they knew someone, but to be a fully-fledged member you had to meet certain criteria.

Firstly, you had to be from Beacon. There were no exceptions to this rule. There were plenty of well-respected people who hailed from the country's other remaining cities, and there were even a few nomads in the organization as well, but none could ever be full members. The same went for anyone who could trace their lineage back to at least some relation, no matter how tenuous, with the original tribes. This had less to do with nepotism as it did with making sure they didn't fall on the wrong side of The Empress. She had granted their families exception and no one else, so anyone who was making real moves had to be directly connected with the family.

Becoming an official member came with privileges that many would kill for. Anyone else in any crew can't fuck around with you without serious retribution. Most of the crews operated independently of each other, with an elected leadership parliament in each district of the city. Sunny and three other tribes operated in the Southern districts.

She had been in it her entire life. Growing up, her father was the boss and her younger sister Tantarella had been in it with her as well. Her father was sentenced to prison for life over some business in Endlane, and she took over. He went one step over the line, operating outside of the city, but he knew the risks. He died from cancer on the inside a few years later.

Her sister got out almost entirely after Max, and later Vicky, were born, but apparently, some people didn't get the message. They shot her and her husband eighteen times and left them in their car on the docks. Sunny and her crew were all devastated and spent countless resources on finding those responsible. She got her bloody retribution in time, and the nine tribes were down to eight.

She was so proud of Vicky when she set her loose on that last one. The kid was a natural, so was her friend Luke. She cried at their graduation, watching them walk down the aisle with their degrees in hand. She was so proud that she set them up with a nice place and a club to play music in, which of course acted as a convenient place for a front her budding new enterprise.

Sunny had it all. She had money, she had power and, most of, all she had the respect and fear from all who knew her or even knew her name. She loved every second of it, and always wanted more. She wasn't greedy, not really, she just thought that she deserved it after almost twenty years as the boss. She didn't like the killing as much. It was a bad way to do business. You can't get repeat customers when they are all buried in the mountain or in dissolving in a barrel somewhere. Regardless of how she felt about it, sometimes it had to be done.

It was unfortunate about her niece's little friend, Albert. She had met the man a few times in the past, and his wife Lisa had even worked for Sunny a bit before. She liked both of them just fine. She was even content to let the debts go until she found out that Al was taking out loans behind her back.

Business is business after all. She didn't originally even want to give the job to Vicky and Luke but as the days went on, they were the two that she trusted most with jobs like that. Most of her employees were only that: employees. Those two were family, and she knew that they would do anything she asked, and do it well.

She thought on this as she sipped her morning tea and looked out at the falling snow. She had a good feeling about the day. Things had been going well lately, although there had been a bit more heat than she would have liked. That would all be dealt with in time though. Credits made the world spin, and she had more than enough to pay off anyone who would try and throw a wrench in her operation.

She had guards, judges, nobles, and everyone in-between on her payroll, and they almost always came through for her. On the off chance that they didn't, she had her beloved niece and her best friend to take care of the situation for her. Life was good for Sunny, and she thought that it would go on forever. She had a busy day ahead though filled with planning for the next new expansion, things were looking up.

And so, as Luke slept, Lisa poured her worried heart out to the woman that killed her husband, and Sunny planned her eventual takeover of the city, Beacon kept moving with no one the wiser. To the average person, it was just another winter day in the capital filled with fun and frolicking, perhaps making a snowman or two and sipping cocoa by the evening fire.

They never knew about the world around them. They never wanted to know either. Their lives were just fine without the knowledge of the grime that lay just beneath the gold and marble of the massive city that The Empress called home. It was the perfect place for people like Sunny and her crew to hide in plain sight. A murder here, some extortion or a beating handed out there, everyone got by and the world kept turning.