CIA00.3

===Jadi Morok and the Dark Sapphire===
====Chapter Three : "The 'Pitch'"====
====by Becky Dowgiert====
"I really hate it when people interrupt me when I'm trying to talk," the darkly-silhouetted figure facing Jadi and Menha commented mildly, his even tone in direct contrast to the weapon he held in a suddenly tightly-clenched hand.
Jadi took the hint and shut up.
They heard their captor exhale slowly.  "As I was saying," he continued, "I have an offer for you.  The Guild of Direct Action is looking for members of a, shall we say, 'higher caliber' than what we've accepted in the past.  You fit the profile of what we want in our new recruits."  He paused to give Jadi a chance to comment.
"I'm already a member of the Guild of Personnel Retrieval," he told the figure in front of him, matter-of-factly.  "Journeyman, second class."
"Yes, I know."
The fellow sounded smug, Jadi thought.  So they'd done a background check on him.  Big deal.
"So, I'm already spoken for.  Why should I leave my Guild now, and start all over again?"
"I think you'll find our benefits package very competitive, even after dues," the figure said, smoothly.
Hmmm...Direct Action *was* on an ambitious recruiting drive, all right.  Well, it wouldn't hurt to look...
"What's the offer?" he inquired, mildly interested.
The man rattled off an impressive list of benefits and perks that would supposedly come the way of all successful members of Direct Action, including much wine, women, and song.  Jadi's eyebrows rose a little.  He had no objections to those, on general principle.  In addition, the Recruiter added, their strong bargaining unit would aid in fee negotiations, guaranteeing increased profits.
Jadi considered momentarily.  It was, in the end, a typical Recruitment Pitch.  He was quite content with his own Guild.
He grunted noncommittally.  "I'll think about it."
He felt, rather than saw, the figure before him tense again.  
"Well, I'd advise you to think hard, Morok.  You'll never see a better offer.  And," he added, with a touch of menace, "don't think too long."
Jadi snorted, unimpressed.  "Can I go now?"
The figure stood, staring at him and Menha.
"C'mon -- I know my rights.  You can't hold me, once you've made the Pitch."
Their captor gestured.  "All right, Menha - release him."
The red-haired woman moved closer to Jadi and began to untie him.
He took the chance to glare at her.  She looked back at him without a trace of apology.  "I should've known," he muttered, disgusted.
Freed, he stood up, flexing his arms.  "You taking on women, too, Master...?" he let the sentence trail off deliberately, waiting for an introduction.  Of the guild hierarchy, only Masters and Guild Grand Masters were empowered to 'Pitch'.  A Grand Master would ordinarily be too busy, so this had to be one of the Masters.
"Master Nabov," the man in front of him said, lowering the gun he held and extending the other hand.  "No, of course
not," he said, sounding faintly scandalized.  Menha here...owed me a personal favor."
Jadi glanced at her.  "She'd probably do well in my sister's Guild," he commented, with grudging admiration.  "Or in the Guild of Creative Thespianism.  Excepting that they don't allow women."
Menha smirked and extended her own hand towards him.  "Journeywoman, first class.  I've heard a lot about you from Kirena."
"Hunh."  Jadi accepted Menha's hand, somewhat suspiciously.  "What are you doing, freelancing?"
"No...no, it really was just a favor for Tiren here," she told him.  "A one-shot deal.  I recognized you on the shuttle.  I knew Tiren had been wanting to Pitch you for some time, except you were off-planet.  I let him know you were coming, and he asked me to help out with the set-up.  That's all."
Leaving the darkened cell, they started down a lighted stucco-coated corridor.  Tiren Nabov turned out to be a tall,
thin fellow in his late thirties, dressed in a non-descript trousers and shirt.  His brown hair was cut short in one of the new popular styles.  His brown eyes were intense as he turned to regard Jadi one last time, at the door to the street.
"Think about it, Morok.  You'd do well here."  He paused.  "By the way -- heard you had some car trouble earlier today..."
Jadi blinked, annoyed.  "Nothing I can't handle."  Why couldn't everyone mind their own damn business?  It was
just an ordinary Conflict of Interests!
Tiren folded his arms and leaned against the wall next to the door.  "Whatever you say."
Jadi set off down the street once again, determined to get to his sister's office.
***
Kirena Morok slowly hung her coat up on the coat rack that stood in the corner of her office.  Sitting down at her polished desk, she leaned forward and put her head in her hands.
Travis was definitely starting to apply the pressure.
She thought back to the glorious beginning of her Guild, just a few short years before, and couldn't suppress a smile at the memory.  How sweet it had been!  If she only had half the energy, the ambition she'd had then, she'd be able to easily shrug off Travis's power play.  As it was, she barely had enough resources to fight back, and he knew it.
Kroleths smelling blood, she thought, deeply depressed.
How sad, that her all-women Guild should sputter and fail, become just a minor footnote in Kapone's history books...
Listen to yourself! she scolded inwardly.  We're not beaten yet!  Are you just going to roll over and die?
Lately, she felt like doing just that.
If only the nightmares would stop, if only she could get some real rest!
They were getting worse, much worse.  One particularly bad one recently had sent her to her computer moments after she had tumbled out of bed, pale and gasping.  As she'd awoken fully, she'd found herself at the terminal, typing a frantic e-mail message to...Jadi.
She'd raised him after their mother had died, been his guiding hand through his formative years, proudly seen him initiated into the Guild of Personnel Retrieval, watched him begin to rise through the ranks...
And of all her family, it was him she found herself turning to.
The instant she'd sent the message, she'd felt foolish, yet also relieved.
She knew it was crazy, but there were...*things* in her dreams, things that told her they were coming for her.  They
were just dreams, but -
She believed them.
I'm going insane, she thought, her face crumpled in despair.  
It must be the stress; yes, that's it.  The stress of dealing with the Guild, and Travis, and everything...
She'd recently had a complete physical, not telling her physician of her nightmares.  She'd been declared in reasonably good health, if a bit fatigued.  Those around her, of course, automatically attributed it to the stress of her position as a Guild Master.
She didn't dare reveal her problems to them; they would cluck sympathetically, and then word would get around that Kirena Morok was cracking up under the pressure.  Kirena Morok couldn't handle it.  Her great venture had failed.  Women just weren't strong enough to have their own Guild.
Kirena sat up suddenly.  She wouldn't, couldn't let her Guild down.  They were all counting on her.  Rubbing dry,
burning eyes, she reached forward once again for the stack of paperwork Travis's henchmen had interrupted.
***
Jadi had gone just half a block when he heard a feminine voice behind him, calling.
"Jadi!  Wait up!"
Sighing, he turned.  Menha hurried up to him where he stood, waiting.
"It looks like I'm going your way.  Mind if I join you?"
He resisted the impulse to say the first thing that popped into his mind.  "Long as you don't try to talk me to death like you did on the shuttle," he said instead, shortly.
She looked miffed, then laughed.  "You certainly didn't seem to be listening.  I am right, you know.  A little exercise never hurt anyone."
Refusing to reply, he strode stolidly ahead.
"Going to see your sister?"
"Lucky guess."
She walked companionably alongside him, not seemingly off-put by his brusqueness.
Eventually, he glanced aside at her.  "I heard the Guild was doing all right, in the News, while I was on Deremar," he
commented.
"We're doing well enough," she answered, automatically and loyally.  "We may be the only female Guild, but we plan to be around for a long time." She looked at him somewhat defiantly.
He looked back at her, then away.  Well, they were putting up a good front.
Why was his sister so frightened?
***
Kirena Morok, trying to pick her way through her never-ending pile of paperwork, made the mistake of leaning forward and putting her head down on her folded arms, to rest for a moment.
Exhausted, she fell instantly into a deep sleep...
...and was drawn immediately into the land of her nightmares.
She found herself standing on the bare plain again, under a brooding, cloud-covered sky.  As always, the sight made her flinch and wrap her arms around herself.  The brooding anxiety that was her constant companion these days began to simmer and percolate into fear.
She was trapped here again.  They would be coming for her soon.
Closing her eyes, she whimpered, hating the sound.  If only she could get out, wake up!
But it seemed that the things were able to get closer and closer, each time, before raw terror gave her the frantic strength to break out of the hideous dreamscape.
Bending over slightly, she began to hyperventilate.  She could hear them, now.
She tried, for the umpteenth time, to move forward, to run, but could only take a few ineffectual steps, before despair took hold of her and she fell forward, onto her knees.
"Noooo," she keened, from between clenched jaws.  She tried to get up again, but she could barely move at all; it was as if she was becoming progressively paralyzed with every second that went by.
***
An ungodly scream rang out from the office of the Grand Master of the Guild of Poetic Justice, through the windows that were open to the spring air.
Down on the street, the passers-by looked up, startled.
More screams were heard, hair-raising in their intensity.  The pedestrians gaped.
One couple, a man and a woman, both in tailored suits and brown overcoats, stood on the sidewalk opposite the Guild offices.  Looking up at the fifth-floor windows, they slowly smiled.
***
A block away from the Guild offices, Jadi and Menha froze abruptly, as a series of desperate screams belled out
obscenely into the warm afternoon.
Jadi's face crumpled in horror.  Even at this distance, after being away for five years, he recognized his sister's voice
immediately.
"KIRENAAA!!!" he shouted.  He began to sprint, Menha keeping pace at his side.
To Be Continued...