We Are
Book 3: Opposing Interests

“I’m innocent, though!” my captive protested, from where he was tied up in the back seat of my car.

“Innocent or not,” I said, coldly, “I’m going to be collecting a mighty fine bounty for bringing you in. The court system can determine your fate from there.”

“I was really well framed, though!” he reasoned, “I can prove it! Please give me a chance to prove it! It’d be wrong to turn me in when I can prove my innocence to you!”

“Why not prove it to the courts?” I questioned, to which he responded, “Too many people in law enforcement are in on this, which means that I won’t get a fair shake. I’m not saying that they always try to be unfair to people, but they’re usually happy to be unfair to people when being fair to them would hurt law enforcement’s reputation.”

“Riiiiiiight.” I said, in an unconvinced tone of voice, “But isn’t that what defense attorneys are for?”

“Defense attorneys can’t defend you if you get assassinated, though, can they?” he argued, and I sighed in irritation, and responded, “Now they’re going to have you killed before you can get a decent defense? Gimme a break…”

He continued on with his jumbo-jumbo for a while, and I had almost reached the police station to turn him over and collect my reward when my car suddenly got flat tires and couldn’t drive anymore.

Wtf!?!?! I had extra strong tires, too, which meant that something bad-for-me had just happened…

I drew my gun out, and looked around, but suddenly a gas of some sort was in the vehicle; and I was knocked out by it before I could even get out of the car to get away from it!

When I came to, I was back at my abode, and dashed over to the window to see that my car was outside and still had flat tires.

So, Mr. I’m-innocent-I-swear had gotten away from me with the help of a pretty powerful ally, eh?

Dammit! That bounty was one that I was quite irritated to’ve had get away from me! Not that I was broke, or anything, but I was certainly feeling the blow from his escape pretty hard.

Ah, well, I supposed that sometimes-getting-in-over-one’s-head was just a normal part of being a bounty hunter.

One thing was for sure, though; Mr. haha-I-just-got-away-from-you wouldn’t have things go so well for him if the two of us ever crossed paths again…

I shook my head, and reminded myself that forming grudges was an easy way for a bounty hunter to get distracted from just doing their job and taking the wins and losses as they came; and a part of taking THIS loss would be to move away from this city, because I didn’t like the idea of the people who’d gassed me into unconsciousness knowing where I lived.

And, so; I gathered up my few belongings, let the apartment manager know that I was going bye-bye, and was driving off into the sunset within a few hours.

“Where should I go next?” I thought, as I drove, but decided to let it take me by surprise. If even I didn’t know where I was going, then surely my foes wouldn’t either.

Suddenly, I realized that there could be a tracking device on my car, and so I pulled into a little market’s parking lot and checked the car for tracking devices.

Damn! There were several of them! Weird…

Ah, well; I supposed that it’d be easy enough to just put them all onto other cars that were in the parking lot, which would be a great prank to pull on whoever was trying to track me.

And, soon enough, all of the trackers were attached to other cars, and I was driving off without a single tracker on mine. I’d also, of course, bought a tasty sandwich and beverage at the market, and was enjoying them as I drove.

I turned on the radio, and heard a voice saying, “…election coming up soon, riots are expected to erupt regardless of who the winner might be. I swear, nobody knows how to accept defeat anymore! It’s like with a sport; if you lose a game, then get straight to practicing and whatnot, and don’t focus your attention on trying to convince people that you didn’t really lose the damn game! And, hey!, maybe the refs were unfair, or the other team got away with a cheat of some sort, or whatever; but do you really expect to be able to get the result of the game overturned? Better to try to make sure that things are done fairly during the next game. It’s like my great aunt used to say!, “Ya gott-“”

I switched the dial of the radio over to a music station, and I heard music that was accompanied by a voice that was singing, 🎵..through this, the distance can’t be crossed or closed; by this time, we’ve gotta admit it’s out of our control; we signed up for so much more than this, and didn’t get wh-🎵

I switched the dial again, to hear a voice saying, “…but Neanderthals had fertile children with other humans, and are ancestors of many humans who’re living today! To say that they’re another species of human is absurd, and they should simply be classified as Homo sapiens, dammit!” “With all due respect, just because two beings are able to produce fertile children together doesn’t mean that they’re of the same species. The definition of species is much more complicated than th-“

I turned the radio off, and thought about what to do next. I supposed that I’d just find a new city that had some work for a bounty hunter such as myself, and get to securing my next reward, just as I’d done the last several times that I’d moved to a new city.

I could try to look for other work, but what would I do? I supposed that, if I lived very conservatively, I could take a few years off and enjoy the fruits of my labor; but if I just worked for a while longer then I could probably have enough resources to retire permanently within a few years!

Hmmm… I could try to get good enough at a game like poker to make a living that way. I was pretty good at reading people, and a lot of players would probably be easy to outsmart if I were to get good enough at playing.

It was a thought… Just a thought, mind you, but something inside of me liked the idea of giving it a try, if only to see if I was actually capable of pulling it off! I did like a challenge, after all, and could always return to hunting bounties if it didn’t work out.

I’d have to think about it…

I turned the radio back on, and flipped it to another channel, to hear a voice saying, “…many more instances of law enforcement officers getting away with violating people’s rights because of qualified immunity will it take to get us to finally say, “Enough is enough!” and do away with it! There is bipartisan agreement that qualified immunity has to go, but it never happens!, and I’m asking everyone to call your representatives and demand better! And don’t forget to demand that no-knock warrants be done away with too! How many more people have to die because of a bull$#!+ no-knock warrant before we FINALLY manage to take that blatantly unconstitutional power away from the government?!”

I switched the radio to a classical music station, and decided that I’d do some research during my next stop about where you could find poker tables where the house took less of the cut than usual; for, I knew that (no matter how good you were) if the house took enough from the players it would eat away at profits pretty significantly.

After a few days of mellowing out, driving, and researching; I finally arrived at a city that seemed suitable to me, and began practicing playing poker on online tables where there was no real money at stake.

This, of course, wouldn’t be a situation where my ability to read people well would come into play; but I had to be good at the game or else reading people wouldn’t mean much.

Eventually I felt good enough about my grasp on the game that I hit up some real tables to see how I’d do.

After a few months of playing well, and trying to read other players the best that I could, I was happy to be ahead as far as poker went; though I was certainly making less than I would from a regular job.

That was fine, though; because this made me able to not have to dig into my savings very much, and so I wasn’t bothered that I wasn’t really gaining much in the way of new savings.

Plus, if I kept on improving, then presumably I could get better over time and begin turning more of a profit.

Then, as I was leaving a poker table one night, a man approached me and asked me if I’d be interested in getting into some work where I’d be able to make a bit more money.

I told him that I wasn’t interested, and he scowled and told me that I’d be turned into the cops for some illegal things that I’d done in the past in order to secure bounties if I didn’t do as he wanted.

“Ah, so it’s gonna be like that, is it?” I fumed, and questioned, “What kind of work is it, anyway? Though, my answer will be a “no,” regardless of what kind of work it is.”

“We have several murderers who’ve been determined to be not guilty by the courts who we’d like for you to bring to us, dead or alive.” he responded, to which I retorted, “I just recorded you saying that, @$$wipe, and if you ever turn me in for whatever crimes you think I’ve committed, then I’ll turn you in!

And, seriously, why the <? would I want to help you bring down people who the courts tried-and-failed to convict? You know how many innocent people get convicted and cleared by DNA evidence later? And you want me to go after the ones who the law couldn’t even convict?!? Not a chance…”

As I walked away from him, I noticed that he had a disconcerting grin on his face, as if he knew something that I didn’t know.

Dammit!! Things had been going pretty well for me in this city up until now, but how was I supposed to feel good about staying here after this troubling encounter?!

Suddenly, a voice (from inside of my car?!?) said, “We saw what just happened, and applaud you for not joining that @$$hat in his supposed quest for justice.”

“Who the <? are you, and why are you in my car?” I questioned, in frustration, to which he responded, “My name’s Shoma, and I’m going to offer you a way to live a life of excitement AND a way to make it so that dip$#!+s like that dude’ll be way less likely to want to try to cause trouble for you.”

“Look, dude, idk how the hell you got into my car, but I don’t need your help or anyone’s help!” I raged, to which Shoma shrugged, and responded, “Suit yourself. If you ever change your mind, though, just text the number that I’m leaving in the car.” and, with that, he was gone.

I would’ve probably ended up deciding that I’d just imagined him, but the piece of paper with his number on it was evidence that I hadn’t imagined him and that he’d really just kind of popped in and out of my car somehow. None of it made any sense, though… Perhaps the paper with the number had somehow already been there.

When I got home, I was about to destroy-and-throw-away the paper, when (for some reason) I had what seemed like an intuition of some sort that made me decide to put the number into my phone before destroying the paper.

It was ridiculous! I was never going to call captain-imaginary’s number, so why was I keeping it?

Suddenly, after I’d entered my abode and was drinking a glass of wine and relaxing, I saw through my window that someone had just broken into my car and was apparently trying to hotwire it!

Oh, hell no!

I dashed towards my front door, but was stopped in my tracks by an explosion outside of my apartment which caused me to immediately hit the floor to make it less likely that flying debris could hit me!

Some debris did break my window, and injure me somewhat, but I was in enough of a state of shock that I was just sort of frozen in place on the floor for a while.

When I finally got out of dazed-mode, a police officer had sat me up and was asking me what’d happened, and a medic was checking me to see if my injuries warranted a trip to the hospital.

The medic did indeed decide that a trip to the hospital was warranted, and told the officer that I could be asked questions at some point after I’d been taken there.

As I was being taken out, I saw that my phone was being put into an evidence bag, and I was thankful that I had it well password-protected; and managed to let the officer know that I did not consent to having my phone looked at by the police.

“Gotcha.” he said, “I still have to keep it in evidence, for now, though.”

Once I’d been taken to (and checked over at) the hospital, and was finally getting close to them clearing me to leave; the same officer arrived in my hospital room, handed me my phone, and said, “You mind if I ask you a few questions?”

I didn’t object, and he asked, “Do you have any enemies? We checked the camera feed at your apartment complex, and saw that it was apparently some car-thief who triggered the bomb, which means that it was probably meant for you.”

“I used to hunt bounties,” I replied, “which could’ve landed me some enemies.”

“Oh, yes, that definitely could be our answer.” he agreed, and added, “You’ll probably want to accept our offer to have you stay at a secret and secure location for a while, seeing as whoever seems to be targeting you might not be interested in giving up quite yet.”

I accepted the offer, and was soon staying in a house that had round-the-clock law enforcement protecting it and wondering how long it’d be before I could get back to my regular life again…

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