After we left the parking lot, I drove in silence for a while. For her part, Natasha didn't seem to mind, what with this probably being one of her first opportunities to observe my world during the day and not be worried about being discovered for what she was. It was around the time of the eighth pothole in the road that I decided I had had enough of the quiet.
"So what do you think?" I asked, looking back at Natasha in my rearview mirror.
Shifting from staring out the window, Natasha made eye-contact with me. "What do you mean?"
"What do you think about the city?"
Natasha furrowed her brow in thought, shifting to star back out the window. Her eyes tracked the people we passed moving along the sidewalks and into the stores and businesses we passed. While I couldn't make out exactly what she was looking at, based on how intently she had returned to staring out the window, I thought that she was attempting to absorb as much as she could.
"It's…pretty similar to the one a grew up in," she eventually said. "Not in the architecture or the technology, all that is strange to me. The commoners though, they are much like those from my own homeworld."
"Commoners?"
"Yes," Natasha said, moving away from the window to lean forward into the gap between the front seats. Her gaze was intense, and I had a hard time focusing on the road with her being so close. "All those people outside that we have passed by? Commoners."
"We think of ourselves as citizens," I hurried to defend myself and them.
"A fancy word for the same thing," She interrupted me before I could elaborate further. "They, like many of my own people and other races I have met, are the unwashed masses unable or unwilling to seize better control over their lives. Doomed to a life a drudgery without the possibility of moving up the social ladder. Unlike those like us."
I turned over her words in my mind. Part of me wanted to reject her claim directly out of hand. After all, my country was founded on the ideas of equality and specific freedoms invested in all regardless of race or creed. But then I thought about it a bit more in the context of my neighborhood, and the neighborhoods beyond it. Homes and businesses that had become progressively more rundown and less taken care of since I was born. The people that lived around me following set patterns in their lives, trying to survive doing whatever work they could do in a country limping from one economic disaster to another, all the while a small percentage of our countrymen basked in ever greater amounts of wealth. Those bastards made me angry, but the fact the rest of the country constantly rolled over to let them do it again and again made me furious. So, no matter how much I wanted to reject what she said, all those memories of people and events mirroring the claims of lack of control or power put the lie to my unspoken response.
In the end I could only give a dissatisfied grunt.
"See! You know of what I am speaking," she nodded her head, causing her unseen golden earrings to jangle against each other. Natasha gleefully pointed a long, delicate finger into the side of my face. "And that is part of the reason I'm looking forward to our Blood Bond. That look on your face right there!"
"What do you mean?" I asked as we neared our destination. Rundown and in disrepair, much like the rest of the ones on the block, I couldn't help feel a small feeling of relief that we had gotten here without incident. My attention became split from what we were talking about as I noticed Karl's car was parked out from of his building. Good, it looked like he was already in for the day. That would save them some time from having to track him down.
"That look that says that you are both aware and in agreement of what I said, as well as how angry you are with it," Natasha firmly grabbed my upper arm in excitement. "If nothing else, the coming integration of your world will provide you an opportunity to act on that anger." Her grin grew positively demonic, "And I can't wait to be a part of that!"
I pulled the car into the empty parking space next to Karl's beaten down old car. Turning it off, I shifted in my seat to look Natasha directly in the eyes. "I think you are overestimating my ability to affect any sort of change, even with the coming integration. There are just too many people more powerful and more connected than I am." So saying, I unlatched my seatbelt and made to get out of the car.
"I don't think I am," Natasha said, hurriedly getting out of the car right after me. "You see, you have one major advantage over all those other people waiting for the integration to happen."
"Oh? And what is that?" I asked, half-distracted by the front door of Karl's building being slightly ajar. The lights weren't on inside either. That was very unlike the professional bookie. Say what you wanted about the man, but he was not one for leaving the door open or the lights off when it was time to make money. Glancing around, it struck me how no other cars were in the parking lot. On a workday. Something was not right.
Natasha stepped up alongside me, hands darting under her loose clothes in search of two of the daggers she kept secreted on her person. Clearly taking her cues from my being on edge, her green eyes darting here and there looking for threats. In moments they locked on the door leading in to Karl's office space. "Why, me of course." She pulled long, wicked blades free and stepped in front of me as we continued moving closer to the doorway, almost like she was acting to protect me.
And that's when I first heard the sound of muffled, agonized screaming.