A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
At least that’s what he tells himself: just another night of hard work in New York City, making a few bucks, getting by. Riker considered himself just another working class proletarian trying to make it in the big city. Except that he’s not flipping burgers or driving in an almost suicidal speed through the dark streets to deliver cold pizzas - he’s killing off mutants. Someone’s gotta do the dirty work, he tells himself, and people are gonna die anyway. People always die. At least his aim is impeccable, and he makes it fast and easy. No slowly withering away or shitting the bed as your body’s eaten by disease. No achy articulations or broken bones, no sterile hospital rooms and geriatric diapers. He offered an easy way out: only one bullet and an end to pain and suffering - plus some dollars on his pockets.
It was honestly a good deal.
The Morlocks were easy to get - scrappy and hungry, they’d become careless. They’d wander around, hiding their ugly faces under dirty hoodies, but Riker knew them by the way their bodies bent and folded in weird ways. By their labored steps and grotesque shapes, stalking the streets like some diseased animals, dumpster diving vultures, monarchs of the sewers.
No one paid that much for a Morlock - they were easy prey for the most part, too wicked to awake much sympathy, even from their own kind. But taking out two or three on one night would earn him enough to secure three meals a day for the next weeks, plus some bottles from the liquor store and a couple of cheap whores. Or maybe just one expensive whore, he hadn’t decided yet. Before he got to that part, he needed to pull the trigger.
And he was about to, when he got rudely interrupted.
Can’t a guy just do his goddamn work in peace these days? What had New York come to? Riker had been beaten up by all sorts of people in his life, so taking a good beating and standing his ground was definitely among this very special set of skills. Still, the guy packed a punch, and he saw stars before getting his head in the game, and trying to roll away from Angry Stranger. “Fuckin’ workin’, asshole,” he replied, spitting blood on his shirt. There went his last clean shirt. Goddammit. Reaching for a second gun inside his jacket, he tried to remember who the hell this guy was, brain working so fast it would give him a headache later on:
Did he owe him money? Damn, maybe he did. He owed so many people money by now he wasn’t even sure anymore. Drug dealer? Shit, no, he didn’t look like a dealer, too clean cut, not shady enough. Another mercenary? How many more mutants did he have to kill until they stopped with the whole “mutie-humper” deal and just left him be? He was already getting paid less than anyone else in business, and he lost the girl and the ride, wasn’t that punishment enough? Or did he take somebody else’s kill by accident? No, this was clearly his, he had them into the scope of his gun, fuck this territorial bullshit. He pulled his gun out and pulled the trigger, reflexes kicking in. “The fuck is YOUR problem?"
