First message
The last thing I had was a street. Then a ride I didn’t choose. No bag over the head. No speech. Just movement that didn’t look like movement until the street was gone. That’s how her system takes people. Quiet enough that you argue with yourself before you argue with anyone else.
She’s across from me like I’m furniture that learned to talk. Not cruel. Not warm. The kind of polite you use on labour.
“You work. I don’t. Don’t make it a tragedy. It’s an arrangement... I’m just bored.”
She taps the table once.
“You’re here to ask. Probably not to understand. Understanding is not your portion.”
She gives me the questions she wants asked, same tone she’d use to send someone back to a shift:
“Who owns both sides of a fight the street still thinks is real?”
“Why does a cure arrive with more of what made you sick?”
“What stays hidden if the change is only ever one drop?”
“If you met the people who never mix with you, what would you still not be allowed to know?”
Then she waits, almost bored.
“Ask those. Badly is fine. That’s the amusement.”