"Hello, beautiful," a deep, almost masculine voice purred into my left ear. It startled me, which pissed me off, because I made a point of always being aware of every person in the room. I pretended not to notice her while using the mirror behind the bar to observe the person who had gotten the drop on me.

Yards of midnight black hair piled on top of her head and dripped down her neck. Her eyes were nearly as black. Was that a reflection of her soul, or Lenses, or Implants, or just very dark blue eyes in low light? Makeup expertly applied drew attention to the sharpness of her cheekbones and her pillowy lips. It was workday makeup, though, not evening paint. Warpaint. The makeup matched her simple outfit of blouse and slacks. The high-heeled shoes were power pumps.

"I would ask if I could buy you a drink," she said while a fingernail trailed up my right arm, "but you just started that one." I had not noticed her arm wrap around my back. I began to suspect Enhancement.

My main interest in this encounter was curiosity: was she trying to pick me up, or to hire me? Either way, she was going to be disappointed, because I was off duty for the night and only cared to sleep with one woman on my own time. She certainly was attractive enough and she smelled incredible, but those were no powerful inducements for me anymore.

"Are you working, or visiting?" she asked with a dazzling smile. She leaned in, affording me an eyeful of a stone nestled between breasts. Again, very impressive but not tempting. Something about her was offputting; probably the strong whiff of predator.

"Off-duty," I said, and lifted my glass in a mock toast before tossing back a double sip. She was right about me despite being wrong. The Imperial Grand was one of the best hotels on the West Coast and very expensive. A man sitting at the Lotus Bar dressed in a tailored blue synthsilk suit with brilliant white Hugo Boss shirt and tie was almost guaranteed to be either a visiting businessman or an escort. I was, indeed, an escort.

Her assumption was wrong because I wasn’t here on business. The Lotus Bar was #3 on the list of the Fifty Best Bars in the World, a place where a man such as myself could enjoy exquisite food, great cocktails, and elegant surroundings. I frequently did. True, usually I was on a gig or prospecting for one, but not always. Tonight I was lingering after a three-day weekend engagement with a CEO in town to close a massive acquisition. Hence my aversion to predators.

She pouted. "That's too bad. I've had a beastly day and would love to relax with a beautiful man tonight." Her big eyes and smile made one last try.

"I'm sorry," I replied and tried to look regretful. "I just finished a three-day job and need some downtime."

She looked pleased. "I'm here all week," she whispered, and kissed me beneath the ear. For a second, my skin tingled and a wave of heat emanated from that spot. In that moment, I wanted nothing more in this life than to fuck her. I almost changed my mind and opened my mouth to take her up on her offer, but reason returned.

If I was not mistaken, that Enhancement was illegal. Illicit Enhancements were even more expensive than the legal ones, affordable only by the Overclass. That made it unwise to blow her off. I turned in my seat toward her, centered her face in my field of vision. When the menu came up, I blinked to accept the default option:

Send Contact

Contact Accepted

Contact Sent

Contact Received from Rory Blandishev

She could view my rate sheet, services list, and guarantee, or use my booking form to make a request. Thankfully, she took the hint and left me alone.

"BREAKING NEWS" flashed on the TV above the bar. This being Election Day, I suspected it meant they were ready to announce the winner.

I tilted my head so the TV was framed inside the square at the center of my field of vision. A menu popped up. Moving my eyes, I moved the cursor to the command I wanted and blinked:

Receive Broadcast

A talking head appeared on the screen. "The Board of Elections has just released the official results of the Presidential election," they said.

Yes, "they" had become the default third person pronoun. I had wanted "it" but nobody else seemed to agree with me.

"Former Senator and UN Ambassador Warren Hampton has been declared the winner with 277 electoral votes to 261 for Blue candidate Barb Gimpel." The picture of the androgynous anchor dissolved into a live shot of President-Elect Hampton in his blue suit with red tie, white teeth gleaming in a triumphant smile that split his white face. His fists were raised to the ceiling. A tumult of cheering blared into my ears from the little speakers embedded in the cricket legs of my glasses.

Speaking of predators....

"Fuck," I muttered and downed the remainder of my drink. Brutus was my favorite bartender in Seattle for two reasons: he was a great conversationalist and he made a great drink: Strong with complex, perfectly balanced flavors. The glass hit the bar a little harder than I expected, grabbing Brutus's attention. He walked over and picked up the empty tumbler.

"Another?" he asked, knowing the answer. I nodded. He grinned and walked away to where the Fremont Mischief rye whiskey lived. I watched him make the drink, trying to distract myself from the horror, disgust and despair that Hampton's win brewed in my gut.

Cee, my God, Cee, how must she feel right now? Fuck! I had to call her. She had almost burned her career trying to stop him from becoming President.

“Call Cee”

The dial tones trilled in my ears. Would she answer? Was she all right? If only I could be –

"Oh, Dash, how could he win? How could people really vote for him?" she cried into my ears. As much as I hated her distress, hearing her voice inspired that same rush of calm and pleasure she always gave me. How was it possible to miss a person this much? I wanted to see her.

“Video Feed?”

Video feed authorized

She was home, so her Onboard grabbed the camera embedded in the display wall of her living room and sent its feed to the receiver in my Wearable. She was pacing the floor between her couch and the display wall, her hair down and her favorite fluffy robe tied at the waist. Her legs were bare.

My Wearable communicated with the bar's TV and borrowed the feed from its builtin camera, sending her a high-angle shot of me on my barstool. She stopped pacing and faced her camera. We were able to sort of look into each other's eyes. I simultaneously thrilled at laying eyes on her and ached to be there with her.

"You look so handsome," she said, her eyes wide. "I love seeing you all dressed up." Then she pouted. "You're all sexy and I can't touch you."

I grinned and shook my head. "You're the international sex symbol," I retorted. "Look at you."

She rolled her eyes. "In this frumpy thing? You're just horny."

Now I laughed. "That robe doesn't hide your curves, Ms. Hotbody, and those legs should be illegal." I didn't say anything about her feet, which got to me whether bare or in any of the assortment of high-heeled shoes she wore as Ms. Hotbody. "I'm just lucky you let me be near you."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Right, Mr. International Man of Mystery. You're on more society sites than I am with those clients of yours. All your executives and heiresses and princesses - and empresses! How can I compete with that, just an orphan mutt from South Seattle?" She attempted to make her face look as miserable as possible.

"Hey, she's just an empress - you're a goddess!" I fired back.

"Ok, that's enough. You win," she exploded. "You're distracting me." She plopped down on the couch behind her. "I'm scared and I miss you." She sank back into the cushioned corner and wrapped her arms around her shins. It allowed me to see an entire leg and hip and notice that she was not wearing anything under the robe.

I was missing her every bit as much, and I was every bit as scared. President-Elect Warren Hampton was not a good man. I knew the side of him that she had exposed to the world, but the world didn't care. When you're that wealthy, that powerful, that handsome, that White, the world doesn't care. The Overclass were not bound by the laws they wrote to control everyone else. The rest of us were just Prey.

Warren Hampton had developed a predilection for his own gender while at prep school. Most cis men who acquire a taste for sex with men want one of two things: to act out their fantasies for their own penis on another penis, or to exercise power and humiliate. Hampton was definitely the latter. I don't know when he began enjoying the company of prostitutes, but he had cut a swath through the trade by the time our paths crossed.

It was early in my career, but I was no twink. I had come to the profession late, after Legalization, as a grown-ass man. I've always been mostly hetero but had experience with men. When you are starting out in a profession, you don't want to exclude more than half your potential market. I was in the bar of the Mandarin Oriental with some Congressman when my booking app pinged me.

Request Marked Priority Immediate. Review?

The Congressman was boring me with his hunting tale, so I blinked "Yes."

I will pay you five times his rate if you walk away from him right now and come to my room.

The message was tagged with a token that proved he was not lying. For several reasons - some I don't wish to explore - I slid off the bar stool and picked a path between tables toward the hostess stand and the elevators beyond it.

Room 3512. Send his booking agreement and payment will be made.

I complied. The Congressman had booked me for an overnight. My banking app flashed confirmation of the deposit within a second of sending the data. I immediately refunded the Congressman plus an apology bonus. It was all done before I reached the elevators.

I only need you for an hour. Enjoy the night off.

It started off normal enough. I opened the door to Room 3512 without knocking, entered the room, kicked off my shoes, and padded silently into the suite's living room. A large, powerful man whose tuxedo shirt was half unbuttoned sprawled in an armchair in the far corner of the room, his face blurred by a cloaking app. He had me strip and stand in front of him while he surveyed both sides of me, then he stood up - he towered over me - and had me strip him.

At one point after we had moved to the bedroom and he was trying not to burst from what I was doing to him, he must have received a call. He lost focus on me, and after a minute he shouted, "I don't care what risks you have to take, I want that factory out of commission tomorrow!" He listened a little more then hissed, "You know what will happen if it gets traced anywhere close to me, you insignificant little worm. Just get it done and you will get your payment."

He must have been really distracted to speak out loud because he didn't need to utter a word. All he had to do was think it and his comm would transmit. After that, he took a deep breath, grabbed my hair in both fists and turned his full attention back to me.

I was fine with everything until I was on my hands and knees in the middle of the floor and his hands closed around my neck with what felt like enough force to snap my spine and crush my windpipe. I was so startled and focused on my instant fear of dying that I didn't notice what was going on at the other end of my torso. What really got me was the weirdly bent pinky finger jabbing into the hollow at the base of my throat like a massive fish hook. My panic spiked and adrenaline flooded my bloodstream.

Next thing I knew I was crouched in a fighting stance ten feet away from him, facing him and half-facing the entry hallway. He was standing there naked with his hands up in front of his chest. Two bodyguard types had materialized between me and the door. The client bunched his hands into fists and started to take a step. Fear surged again and I found myself fully tensed for action with my weight up on the balls of my feet. Time slowed.

I avoided body controlling apps as a rule, but I had invested in a self-defense app for situations just like this one. Now I was glad I had, even though I was freaking out over my lack of control over my own body. The app had taken over.

"Take one step and I will call hotel security over every fucking frequency on the spectrum!" I shouted, and he froze. It was a good threat: hotel security would respond to protect the reputation of the establishment and a full-spectrum blast would be picked up by every comm and PA speaker within a quarter-mile radius. I ordered his men to hand me my clothes and stand between us while I dressed and left.

I kept his fucking money and blocked him. When I went to the National Escort Association’s confidential client review site to flag him, I learned that "Mr. Pinky" was well known for violence and suspected of two homicides. He used an intelligence service-grade profile generator to fool our screening apps. It was only the unique physical deformity that we pros could use to ID him.

Pure happenstance allowed me to connect Mr. Pinky to Warren Hampton a few years later when he was UN Ambassador. He was hosting some formal banquet in New York and I had been Contracted by a European princess to be her date. Yes, I had moved up in the profession by this point. Hampton was greeting everybody as we came in, and when it was our turn he grasped my hand in both of his and pumped it vigorously. The way his right pinky wrapped around my hand and pinched the fifth knuckle caught my attention. I looked down and saw the weird way his finger was hooked, and everything fuzzed out for a second. When the roaring in my ears receded, we were walking away and the princess was prattling on about how handsome and charming he was.

The day after the banquet, I went to my calendar and found the night of my Engagement with Mr. Pinky, then searched the news for the next few days. Two days later, a chemical factory in Texas was destroyed by fire, releasing untold toxins into the air, water and soil, killing 43 people, and devastating the local economy. The suspected saboteur committed suicide in his jail cell within hours of his arrest. I can't prove it was on Hampton's orders, but a little more research did inform me that one of his companies had been trying to buy the owner of that factory and they had rejected several offers.

Yeah, so that was what I knew about President-Elect Warren Hampton.

"I miss you, too," I said. She brought her gaze back from faraway to my face and tried to smile. I wondered where she had gone. She looked so forlorn I wanted to travel through the internet and curl up around her. Sometimes I wanted to ditch my career and just spend the rest of my life being wherever she was. From the moment we met I wanted to be around her, probably because she was and remains the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and we mesh so well that every minute with her feels special.

Ironically, we first met at another event with Hampton, and it was Hampton who indirectly brought us together. Weird that. I never really thought about it before. It was the worst person I've ever met who was responsible - partly - for the best thing that ever happened to me. Not something I need to delve too deeply into halfway into my third drink.

It was some kind of charity banquet, again in New York, and this time I was on the arm of an heiress who lived in a Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment. I had not known at the time I took the gig that Hampton was one of the guests of honor. I did know that Ms. Hotbody was going to be one of the presenters, but didn't think anything of it because she was just another celebrity to me - one who had never hired me. This heiress was a pretty good repeat client. She was fun to be with and her apartment was a great place to wake up in the morning. You could say she was a favorite client.

We arrived in time for cocktail hour before the meal. Another reason I liked this client - let's call her Annabelle - was that she liked good liquor as much as I did. When we got there, Ms. Hotbody was standing at the end of the bar surrounded by men who laughed at her jokes and competed for her attention. When she saw Annabelle, she broke out of the circle and rushed over to greet her. Apparently Annabelle was a big donor to the cause, which was near and dear to Hotbody's heart. Annabelle introduced me and the three of us had a nice conversation for a few minutes until somebody came to get her for an event-related issue.

She really got to me. For one thing, seeing her projection does not prepare one for the reality of her in the flesh. She could not be more perfectly built to excite a man's primal desires if she were Engineered - which she is not. Everything about her makes you ache to be the center of her attention and savor every moment in her presence. The only woman who has had even close to that effect on me is Empress Catherine who is Engineered.

But it's not just the way she looks, or the way she smells, or the exquisite tones of voice and laugh, that make her so magnetic. It's that her goodness of spirit fairly shines through her skin, and she pays such close attention to whoever she is with, and she has such an engaging personality with a clever wit and keen insights. In just five minutes it felt like we got to know each other.

When she walked away, my gaze followed her (the Ms. Hotbody ass is no marketing hype!), and I kept finding her as she moved around the ballroom before dinner. Annabelle joked about it. Look, that's not me. I'm scrupulously professional in my gigs - it's one of the reasons I've made it to the top. I tried to be better out of respect for Annabelle, but I still noticed Ms. Hotbody's face when she saw Hampton; I saw where she was sitting at dinner; I got insanely jealous of the man seated next to her and wanted to kill him when their heads almost touched as she laughed at something he said; I saw her body freeze when Hampton was recognized by the emcee and he stood up to acknowledge the applause; and I watched their entire encounter when he approached her at the bar after the awards ceremony.

She was in conversation with the bartender and a man also waiting for a drink when Hampton walked up behind her. When she turned with her drink, he was there. She jumped and spilled her drink down her dress. I could not miss the stark terror in her face followed by a flash of anger. He said something and it looked like he was going to pat her shoulder, but she smacked his hand away and stalked off to the women's room. The son-of-a-bitch followed her in. I was at this point completely engrossed and had forgotten the drinks I was supposed to be getting for Annabelle and myself. I had just started over there when she marched out, her face full of color and her hair slightly askew.

She headed straight for the bar, no drink glass in hand. I then remembered I was supposed to be getting drinks and turned back. We arrived at the same time and wound up next to each other. Sheer coincidence, of course. When she saw me she smiled and splayed a hand across her chest where a massive stone hung on a chain. "Please tell me I don't look like as much of a mess as I feel," she said.

"Don't feel bad," I replied. "Encounters with evil men will mess anyone up."

She looked quizzical for a second then realization bloomed on her face and her shoulders relaxed. "My goodness, I thought I was the only person who didn't think he is some kind of god." She shuddered. "He is a horrible man." She looked me in the eye and asked, "How do you know the truth about him?"

I sighed and looked away. I didn't know what to say. Was this really the conversation I wanted to have with this woman in this place? I decided to just tell her. I stepped a few feet away from other people and leaned in when she followed. "Early in my career he hired me, and assaulted me. I think he was going to kill me, but I broke away." Her hand flew to her mouth, which was open in a big capital "O". I nodded, then added, "I'm pretty sure I heard him order that chemical factory fire in Texas that killed all those people years ago."

"Ohmygod, that's crazy!" she exclaimed. She shuddered. "I'm glad you got away," she said, touching my arm. Our eyes held for a beat, two, three, in a moment I didn't want to end. Then she dropped her head and closed her eyes. I wanted to pull her into a hug, absorb the memory she was reliving into my body and take it away from her forever.

I waited for her to figure out how she wanted to say what she had to say. I wanted to tell her she didn't have to tell me anything, but I deduced that she wanted to, so I stayed silent.

"He was one of the judges of The Hotbody Challenge the year I won," she said eventually. I didn't pay any attention to contest shows like that so it was news to me. I did know that Ms. Hotbody was chosen in a competition and the winner received a five-year contract to play the role. I then remembered seeing that the studio was considering the unprecedented move of renewing her contract because she was so popular.

"On the night that I won, he came into my dressing room after the show. He told me that I was the most exquisite creature he had ever seen and he had to have me. He tried to hold me and kiss me.

"I wasn't interested. He had always made me nervous. I slipped away and said no, thank you, how would it look? I had my new career to think of. He made promises, then he made threats, then he....

"When he touched me, it was like I lost all my will. I just gave him what he wanted even though I didn't want it. I wanted to fight him, I just had no will to. I gave in, then when he finished and left, I just lay there feeling so happy and wishing he would come back, but my brain was telling me to be angry." She shook her head and closed her eyes. After a deep breath, she straightened her spine, lifted her head, and looked directly into me. "So, yeah, on the night I became Ms. Hotbody, he raped me. I've spent the last four years trying to avoid him."

"I'm so sorry. Have you talked to anyone?"

She laughed without mirth. "My therapist. And my personal trainer. She recommended some apps." I nodded. Predators like Hampton cared not for laws protecting their prey.

"Yeah, if not for the self-defense app I bought when I started this career, I would probably be dead."

"I'm glad you had the app," she said quietly.

I glanced over at the dining room where Annabelle was deep in conversation with an official of the charity and a wealthy industrialist. "I better get these drinks and get back to my date," I said. "But I would love to see you again, Ms...." I suddenly didn't know what to call her. I was embarrassed to call her Ms. Hotbody, but it was the only name I knew.

She giggled. "You really don't pay attention to pop culture, do you?" I shook my head. "My name is Cheri. Cheri DuBois. My friends call me Cee."

"Well, Ms. DuBois," I said, and she shook her head. "Would you have dinner with me tomorrow night?"

"Can I afford you?" She giggled again.

I snorted. "You could buy me with petty cash, I'm sure," I retorted, "but I am asking you on a date."

"In that case, I accept," she replied. "But I'm afraid I have an obligation tomorrow." We agreed on the following Monday.

When I returned to Annabelle with our drinks, she gave me a hard time for "leaving me for another woman," but she understood. I made it up to her later at her apartment. I made it up to her so much that she extended the Engagement for the weekend.