Faith kills people for money.

Fred's company buys and sells souls, tortures and maims, ruins lives, eats children, buries champions, but Fred works in a shiny clean lab and saves at least one distressed maiden per week, and for that she gets her pick of sporty cars and a penthouse suite that's emptier than the Hyperion ever was.

Faith's a hero somewhere deep inside and hates what she does, even when the money's good, even when the money's fucking fantastic. She does it anyway, twists the knife, thrusts the sword, beats down her prey with her too-strong body. Faith kills face to face, and she listens to every last breath her victims take before she leaves them lying broken in the dark corners of the world, of her mind.

Fred was never supposed to join this fight. She's warm and bubbly and personable, and she has the sort of relentless curiosity that picks and picks and picks at puzzles, until they unravel in her mind. She loves mixing chemicals so that they go poof when just enough catalyst is added, and thinking through physics equations that come out the same every time, no matter what. She's happy with her work and counts battles won, not wars lost.

Faith has the grit of a thousand highways ground into her skin, under her nails.

Fred breathes the ancient dust of a sarcophagus and thinks of buried treasure.

Who's the dirty one?

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May 4, 2005