s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

she was grateful that someone actually cared enough to try.
Two weeks later, the tables were turned. It wasn t Jack who came to the King
Crabs. Little Sister had come to him. He woke to find her standing in his doorway,
holding her stomach, bleeding on the floor. She was weak and could barely speak. During
a gang fight, Little Sister had been stabbed in the stomach. Her friends wouldn t help her.
They left her to die. She didn t know what else to do. She came looking for Jack.
The Jack of Spades was surprised she was able to track him down, figure out his
location in the middle of the night, with a six-inch gash in her guts.
All she said was,  Help me, before collapsing onto the floor.
Jack scooped her up and took her to the Crab Town clinic run by the Queen of
Spades. The clinic was a grubby old hospital that was falling apart worse than any other
building in the area, but it was the best Crab Town had.
When Jack entered the lobby, the place was littered with balloon people floating
in the air, their strings attached to the floor. They stuck around the clinic, hoping the
impossible hope that someday the Queen might be able to restore them to human form.
 What happened? the Queen asked Jack as she looked at him with bloodshot
eyes. She always had bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep and nourishment. She was so
focused on helping other people that she never had time to take care of herself.
 Stab wound, Jack said, putting her on an operating table.  She s lost a lot of
blood.
 I ll see what I can do, said the Queen, getting straight to work.
Queen was a doctor who quit her job at the hospital in downtown Freedom City.
She was morally opposed to how the hospital was treating patients. They only cared about
making money off of the sick and wounded, and cared very little about helping them. The
balloon people scam was one reason why she had to quit. It was a way for them to get free
organ donation and then charge the rich out their ass for their desperately needed
transplants. The hospital also regularly diagnosed their patients with bogus ailments in
order to give them expensive, unnecessary operations. Many of these operations only
harmed the patients and sometimes they would have to return to the hospital a week later
to fix the damage the doctors had done. Then they would prescribe them expensive
medication that they didn t even need, promising them that they risk serious health issues,
including death, if they don t take the pills regularly, for the rest of their lives.
The Queen and a couple of her colleagues quit the hospital and set up the clinic in
Crab Town, using her own savings to help the unfortunate people living there. She
offered her services for free, but it only took a couple of weeks before her lack of funding
prevented her from helping most of the patients who came to her. It wasn t until she
joined the House of Cards, who donated a large percentage of their earnings to her cause,
that the clinic actually became operational enough to help the Crab Town citizens. But it
was never enough. People still died in her care everyday.
Jack was praying that Little Sister wouldn t be one of the unlucky patients that
day. As Queen gave her blood (most of which she knew was radioactive) and closed up
the wound, he watched Little Sister gazing up at the balloon people hovering above her as
if they were angels coming to take her away.
When there was nothing else Queen could do, she said,  As long as she can fight
the infection, she s going to pull through.
Jack was relieved.
When Little Sister awoke near dawn, she was surprised to see Jack standing above
her. For a second, she had forgot what had happened. But once she tried to stand up and
cringed at the wound, she remembered.
 You re going to be alright, Jack said.
She wouldn t look him in the eyes. After a long silence, Little Sister said,  You
made a mistake.
 What mistake?
 You should have let me die.
 You would prefer to be dead?
Little Sister squeezed her fist open and closed.  I might as well be dead. By asking
for your help, the King Crabs will never take me back. They ll think I m too weak.
 Weren t you their leader? Don t you tell them what is weak and what isn t?
Maybe all of you should change the way you think.
She shook her head.  They surely already chose a new leader. If I went back to
them, the new leader would treat me as an enemy and a traitor. She was almost crying
with her words. She had to pause for a moment in order to compose herself.  Without the
King Crabs, I m not going to last long. I ll be dead by the end of the month.
Jack handed her a card, the two of diamonds.  Not necessarily.
She took the two of diamonds.
 Join the House of Cards, he said.  You ll get a new lease on life. And maybe,
one day, we ll create a better life for the people of Crab Town.
Little Sister joined. At first, she did because she didn t have anywhere else to go,
but she quickly grew to love the job. She hated being treated like a kid by the rest of the
Cards, but she had a lot of fun robbing banks and breaking into the homes of the rich.
Because she was the expert on building/repairing sail-bikes, the King Crabs
eventually lost their advantage over other gangs. When they found out Little Sister was
still alive, they tried to get her back. They didn t care that she had betrayed their rules.
But she refused them. She had a better life with the House of Cards. Once her old gang
threatened to kill her if she didn t go back to them, she had the King of Clubs and his
thug-like army take them all out. Now the only people using sail-bikes in Crab Town are
the House of Cards. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]