(a month later)
It was late -- far past midnight. Salvador’s men, together with Kay and the man himself, were drinking almost mindlessly after a long day of work -- or whatever. They had a lot to celebrate and at the same time a lot to cry about. A small uprising --a wife and her kids daring to fight an officer about the agreed payment-- had been smothered --quite literally.
Kay and Salvador were sitting in the corner of the place, both mostly looking at their glasses slowly but steadily getting more and more empty, only to be refilled by the waiters when they got actually empty.
Kay sighed and looked at her boss. “You know, I know it’s my job and all that, but I hate this. Look at them -- if this was the right thing to do, we all should be celebrating instead of trying to drown our consciences in a glass of cheap booze.”
Salvador looked back at her, and for one time he was fully serious, as he slowly opened his shirt to reveal the scar on his chest. “Yes. But we have no choice. As you once said, if things change, we’re screwed.”
Kay looked at her glass again -- all the booze had finally had an effect, no matter how small. “There’s ALWAYS a choice.”
The man smiled. “Well, I’m NOT going to risk it. I’ll be doing my job. So you try and fight it -- you know what I have to do about that.”
Kay looked at him again, almost laughing. “As if you could stop me.” She now laughed fully. “No, no, you can’t, your guys can’t... But I know who can. The damned chip. … Fuck.” She laughed again. “I never thought I’d end up as a slave of the drug trade, Salva.”
Salvador laughed back. “Neither did I, yet here we are.”
“You see, all the ‘but we’re helping them, we’re giving them jobs, we’re giving them a life!’ -- all bullshit. All we give them is the bare minimum to survive, so they can bear this hell. So they have hope. And don’t fight back.”
The man nodded.
“Fuck. I never signed up for this. … This is, in fact, everything I always stood against. The money governing people. The rich doing their bid as the poor idiots are enslaved by… money and fear.”
Salvador laughed. “We have no choice, Kay.”
Her eyes seemed to gleam for a split second as she muttered to herself. “There’s always a choice.”
