Chapter 20:// Eating up

 

Singh bit down on the sinful meat, and closed his eyes in delight.

Sacred indeed.

He waited for the old man, so he might as well feed himself, since he was already here in the fast food restaurant.

He didn’t have to wait long, the old man was always punctual. That might have to do with being the errand boy for self-appointed gods, and living to tell the tale.

He was nervous, his eyes darted around to the other customers. He waited for some sort of confirmation, a facial scan perhaps? He must have gotten an all-clear, because Bhai Sharan saw his shoulders relax visibly.

Singh didn’t like all those augmented reality things people pun on their heads these days. It made everyone distracted, twitchy. You could see a user from a mile away, glancing around at invisible stuff, grinning to himself like an idiot, distracted all the time. He could understand the need for them, but he didn’t like the disconnect one got from the universe. These techno-freaks thought they were connecting themselves to the world, but in reality they were disconnecting from what mattered.

The old man sat across him on the table and tapped on the menupad for an order of coke.

Bhai Sharan greeted politely, nodding. You could be fearsome and polite at the same time.

The old man was nervous. Again. He was waiting for his sugar fix.

Bhai Sharan rolled his eye. The glass one didn’t roll that well. How did spineless men like that one, have the power to order assassinations and determine the fate of thousands of lives?

How did these men even survive?

A pretty young girl brought the coke to the table, and the old man grabbed it and sipped it down.

He composed himself, and then, visibly relaxed, he said, “Part two of the plan is complete. This is where you come in again.”

“Yes, I kept an eye on the mark. News have already reported it,” the snake-charmer said.

“Now, for the next part, you are to capture the mark and run this device next to him,” the old man said taking out a device from his briefcase. He slipped it under the table discreetly.

Bhai Sharan felt the device, and glanced at it quickly before slipping it in his belt pouch. It was a wiper, he had used one before. It forcibly connected to nearby devices and wiped data, erasing all evidence. For the operator, it was simply a single push thing, the whole process would have been programmed by techs beforehand. “Understood,” he said.

The old man sipped some more coke. “You have a plan for capturing the mark?”

“He’s in a temporary holding cell for augmented people, one of those automated ones. It will be done tonight,” Singh said.

“How do you plan on subduing him?”

“My Kaur has a genetically modified venom, for that precise purpose,” Bhai Sharan said and smiled. “She likes them raw and squirming…”

The old man gulped. “I hope you can handle her. We need the mark to… To take the fall for this. An ordinary worker, getting evicted, underpaid, with a barrage of medical expenses following a work accident? The well documented shock and depression after the loss of a limb? Who then gets a visit from the man lobbying publicly to shut down his job? It fits the criminal profile, they won’t take a second glance at it. He must be kept alive, but with no evidence of tampering.”

Bhai Sharan nodded in agreement.

“Your plan is perfect. I’ve already wired the bonus, the results are better that we ever anticipated.” The old man finished his coke loudly.

The snake charmer frowned.

“What?” the old man asked.

“What if someone believes him? That he’s innocent?”

“But this is the perfect crime!” the old man whispered. “Having a man’s own prosthetics murder someone, then erasing the evidence? Who would believe him?”