"I Hate Dresses"

[Sammy Riot]

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I Hate Dresses
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Star’s End shimmered like a mirage built from arrogance and credit lines. Its towers were all steel and hubrjs, twisting toward the clouds as if they could claw respect out of the sky. Clean streets, hovercars like beetles on rails, citizens dressed in tailored lies. Sammy walked through it like an old wound that never healed right... wrapped in silk and smothered in disdain.

The dress clung to her like betrayal. Solid black, cut high on one thigh, backless. It wasn’t her. It felt like being shrink-wrapped in someone else’s skin. She didn’t wear heels; Ashwake hadn’t pushed that far... but the boots were polished and narrow-toed, just acceptable enough to pass as fashion-forward. Her pistol, Old Reliable, rested in a thigh holster beneath the slit. The Eraser was back at her room... too conspicuous, too loud. Tonight had to be quiet.

She hated it.

Ashwake’s voice crackled through the comm once as she approached the bar, woven into the crystal earring Sammy wore only because it doubled as a signal relay.

“Confirmed. He’s here. Table six. Profile active. He’s wearing silver.”

Sammy didn’t respond. She walked in.

The bar was upscale, all mood lighting and glass sculpture. The sort of place where the drinks were overengineered and the staff pretended not to notice power imbalances in full display. Her target was exactly as described: late forties, leaning into the lean build of someone who paid others to suffer on his behalf. Silver lapels. Crooked smile. Greasy charisma clothed in affluence.

He stood as she approached. A half-bow, performative.

“You must be... Callista?”

Sammy smiled. It hurt. “You can call me whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to pretend I like it.”

He blinked once. Then grinned wider. He liked them spicy.

The dinner was... tolerable. He liked to talk. Sammy let him. Between sips of something amber and overpriced, he bragged about influence like it was an aphrodisiac. Trade deals. Policy sways. Private orbital retreats. She catalogued everything he said and half of what he didn’t.

He touched her hand once. She let him. But her eyes told him not to try again without permission. That look had been trained, battlefield-forged. It said “not yet,” and men like him lived for the “yet.”

By the time dessert arrived; a minimalist sculpture of fruit and foam, he leaned close, voice dipped in conspiracy.

“I don’t normally do this, but... I’d love to keep this going somewhere more... private.”

Sammy tilted her head just so, enough to let one black curl fall across her cheek. “Only if you don’t bore me, worm.”

He laughed. Nervous, a little too loud. “I think you’ll be... pleasantly surprised.”

He wouldn’t be.

His penthouse was on the eighty-third floor of a tower shaped like a dagger blade. Inside, it was everything she expected: glossy, curated, and sterile. The scent of synthetic jasmine clung to the air like deodorized shame. She walked ahead of him, eyes scanning, noting every camera node, every motion-sensor panel. Minimal security. His hubris was his shield.

He brought out a drink; top shelf liquor, the label claimed, and handed her a glass. She took it, let it warm in her palm.

He moved closer. One hand on her hip.

Sammy smiled without warmth. “Take your shirt off.”

He blinked, surprised... then eager. “Yes, yes, ma’am.”

The moment he turned to do it, she stepped in behind him.

Thwap.

The sound of flesh and bone meeting precision. Her elbow cracked against the back of his skull with a wet thud, and he dropped like a marionette with cut strings. Sammy caught him before he hit the floor; more out of efficiency than concern, and laid him down against the wall with none of the gentleness he might have hoped for.

“Lights to minimum,” she said aloud, and the room obeyed.

She moved fast. Not rushed. Purposeful.

The bedroom was designed like a luxury advertisement. Clean lines, white sheets, and subtle lighting set to suggest romance. Sammy moved past it, scanning for heat signatures. Nothing in the vents. Nothing behind the mirror. That meant the data shard had to be low-tech.

She opened drawers. Caught glimpses of his preferences... cuffs, wipes, a satin blindfold. And then, tucked beneath a silk-lined box of luxury condoms, she found it: a matte black chip no longer than her finger, unmarked but heavier than it should be.

She pulled it free, flicked on her scanner. The interface blinked green. Match confirmed.

Sammy pocketed the shard and stood there for a beat, looking down at the man who’d started the evening thinking he was the hunter. Now he was unconscious, mouth slightly open, hair mussed, sprawled in his own fantasy gone wrong.

Her expression didn’t change. But she made sure to leave the box of condoms open beside his face before she turned toward the window.

It wasn’t locked. Of course not. Men like him never expected to be left behind.

She opened it, stepped out onto the ledge. The wind hit her like cold hands, dragging the silk dress against her frame in a snarl of fabric. The city glowed beneath her in pulses—hovercars, advert drones, soft-lit towers advertising things you could never afford without losing your soul.

Sammy didn’t look back.

She stepped off the ledge and caught the tether Ashwake had sent up five minutes prior—a black cord unspooling from a glider drone hovering just beyond the building’s sensor perimeter. Her boots locked, her arm clicked into the bracer, and the drone reeled her out and away, up and into the night sky.

Star’s End shrank behind her.

“Package retrieved,” she said into the comm.

Ashwake’s voice hummed back. “Was he... cooperative?”

Sammy exhaled. “He’s gonna wake up with a headache, a half-empty bottle, and no idea why he’s bleeding from the scalp.”

“Charming.”

Sammy pulled the cigar from her boot sheath, lit it with a microflare from her thumb ring, and stared down at the skyline.

She hated the dress.

But the mission was clean.

That almost made it worse.