There's A Reason We Have Two Hands

[Gramps 2,227]

Kveta was relieved. These people were her people. Maybe so, anyway. She felt a breath she didn't know she'd been holding in escape from her lips. She had set the glass of whiskey on an end table next to her chair, and now her right hand brushed across her left hand's fingers, searching for the absent ring she wore upon her hand when in private. The ring that reminded her of her duty. Not her own ring, but the ring of her predecessor.

This was still his Hand, as far as she was concerned. She was just filling in.

But what Hand? After the orders were given, she'd become a one woman show. After all. She was the Hand of the Council. But there was no Council any longer.

 

Two Months Prior

Teffilin City

"THAT MAN STOLE MY PURSE!" an elderly woman screamed in terror as the man with the holo-mask ran past her, his entire body obscured by static walls of hologram. It was a scene straight out of a movie, as he ran down the city sidewalk in the midst of day, pushing shocked pedestrians out of his way.

It wasn't like Jerry had planned on being a purse snatcher or anything. He'd gone to college. He had been at the top of his class just five years ago. A promising career in the banking industry beckoned to him, if he could finish his degree. He would help manage some rich guy from the K Empire's investment accounts, and then retire early to a lovely life in the Tri-Aid Galaxy. It was all mapped out for him.

And then his sister got sick.

At first he'd been able to pick up extra shifts at the roboclub to make up for the bills, but then it got harder and harder. He was faced with the difficult decision of rather or not to drop out of college so he could work more. It wasn't something he wanted to do. This was his future. His lively hood, for Aser's sake! But his sister was his reason for living. They only had each other, since the accident that had claimed the life of his parents.

He didn't want to quit college, but he didn't have a choice.

Then the war had happened, and everything had changed. That roboclub where he'd been working had been reduced to a pile of ash. And his sister was only getting sicker. To make matters worse, it was now impossible to get the drugs she needed to survive. With the military still enforcing curfews every night and rationing supplies, and the Senate waging some sort of war against the pharmaceutical companies in the name of Aser, things were tough. Raleigh was getting sicker.

And so, here he was, robbing some poor old lady of her purse.

He ducked into an ally, thinking he'd finally lost anyone who might have been chasing him -- not that there was anyone chasing him. His head turned back to check as he turned the corner, when he felt all the air in his body forced out as some body of mass swung across his chest. His head quickly turned forward to see that it was an arm pushing into his chest, and when he fell to the hard ground of the alleyway, he was able to look up and see that the source of the arm was an absolutely beautiful Zarethian woman, born in one of interior ships from the look of her pale skin. His hologram mask flickered before shutting down completely, disabled by his fall to the ground.

"Give back ze purse," the woman demanded.

Jerry felt a slight chill run through his body. Her voice was huskier than expected, her accent thick. Kragilan dialect. Definitely part of the inner fleet.

"Means nothing, da?" Jerry replied in the same dialect, the one he forced himself to suppress living in the capital among citizens who mostly spoke either with the Pronounced Zarethian Dialect or in the Common Language. Capitalites. Psh.

"Means something, ya," Kveta replied to the man, nodding towards her left hand which had been firmly clutched to her side. That was when Jerry noticed that she held a pistol in that hand, pointed straight at him. Who was this woman?

"Okay, okay," Jerry replied, extending his hand with the purse in it.

"Toss it," she demanded.

He obliged, and she caught it in her right hand.

"Who are you?" Jerry replied, speaking with a proper Capital accent once more, "Capital police?"

"Zarethian Hand," Kveta replied, making it a point to show him her badge after returning her sidearm to its holster. She was neither dressed in military uniform or professional detective attire today, instead wearing the thick leather jacket she had grown accustomed to on undercover missions upon her petite body. Under it she wore a simple green blouse and dark dyed denim jeans. A simple outfit for a not so simple girl. It was the kind of outfit she felt most at home in -- street clothes.

"What's Zarethian Hand doing catching purse thieves?" Jerry asked.

"What's a man who was top of his class as ZYU doing robbing old ladies of their purses in the Vitaly district of Teffilin City?" Kveta retorted.

A look of bewilderment and fear spread upon Jerry's face. How did this woman know who he was? Sure, he had done this a few times before, but it wasn't like he'd committed any fe- Wait, had they found out about the hack? He'd only done it to make a little extra money. How was he supposed to know the identity of the man he was hacking was a businessman from Pleasure Planet?

"Look," Jerry tried to reason, "It was innocent, really. I didn't mean t... Look, maybe I can work something out with the guy. He- I-"

"Relax, boraki," Kveta replied, using the slum term for 'troublemaker'. She started walking towards him, extending her hand to help him up. "I'm not here to arrest you. On the contrary. I'm here to offer you a job."

"Me?" Jerry asked, taken aback. "But why? Aren't there plenty of candidates better qualified than me to join the Zarethian Hand?"

"There are," Kveta admitted, "But you know, the thing about hands... There's a reason we have two of them."

 

Present Day

They had demanded that she stop grandstanding. Very well. Perhaps it was time to get straight to the point. But she couldn't tell them everything. Hermitage had sworn her to secrecy. That meeting, all those months ago, had never happened. Her team -- the one they'd already found -- wasn't supposed to exist. How much had her team revealed though? How many of her people had they gotten to?

It didn't matter. She still had to start opening up, or she was as dead as they probably were.

"What kind of report? A report from the Hand of the Council," Kveta revealed. Her hand left the comfort of the arm rest of her chair, to her chest. She reached inside her chest and dug for... there it is... The ring which she pulled from her blouse, now attached to a chain to make a necklace. She held the necklace with the ring on it up for those present to see. It bore the same markings as the ring Regis Hermitage had worn. It was his ring after all.

"I have two questions for you all. One, do you know what this ring means? And two, how much do you know about the current state of the Zarethian senate?"

[Quack 1,568]

i always thought the reason was so we could eat 2 slices of pizza at the same time