Ork in the City

Emma Gunnar fidgeted nervously as she waited. If you asked an average person which they would rather do, charge into a burning building or go on a date, even a blind date, the vast majority would choose the date and probably wonder at how messed up you must be for comparing the two. But Emma, having spent most of her life either dreaming of, training for, or, relatively recently, finally actually doing the former, would have gladly sprinted into a wildfire than be where she was right now. Which was a perfectly nice (perhaps a little too nice) restaurant waiting for a, by all accounts, perfectly nice Internal Operations Manager (whatever the hell that was). But appearances had to be maintained, and being a firefighter just over five feet with the build of a gymnast and the face of a model (both of which were career paths her high school guidance counselor had tried to encourage over firefighting) invited enough attention without being the cute blonde firefighter who didn't date. So here she was, finally agreeing to one of the endless stream of offers of set ups with buddies, brothers, cousins, or whatever, of the people she worked with just to appear normal. Because as much as she might have wished otherwise (and most days she did wish otherwise) Emma Gunnar was not normal. She'd agreed to dinner with a guy that she could tell Mikey barely knew. So, when it inevitably went nowhere (or to hell whichever came first) her working relationship with Mikey wouldn't be affected much if at all.

As she fidgeted her hand brushed the cutlery and an unpleasant tingle swept up her arm. She swore to herself, Damn, of course a place like this would still use actual silver silverware. Don't panic you can easily sort this out. Hopefully before Dan gets here. Luckily the waiter was just returning with her wine. "Excuse me; do you have any non silver silverware?" He looked at her slightly baffled. "Steve wasn't it? I have an allergy."

"To silver?"

"Yeah, to silver." 

He thought about it for a moment. "I think we have something that will work, I’ll be just a moment." He gathered the cutlery and started to leave then paused and turned back to her "Our chef has a fondness for garlic, that won't be a problem, will it?"

'Funny, never heard that one before." she replied sarcastically but with a slight grin. "No, garlic is just fine, so are steaks."

It was Steve's turn to grin at a bad joke "Like I said, I'll be back in a moment."

It was a fun bit of idle banter, too bad it was the highlight of the night.

*****

It's not like he was a bad guy. Emma sat reflecting on the previous night. It was Saturday morning and she was trying to meditate, but clearing her mind was next to impossible. No, in order for him to be a bad guy he'd have to have an opinion on something, generally speaking a functioning brain helped too. He had been completely bland, it had become obvious quickly that working as a cog in the corporate machine had stripped him of an alarming amount of personality, good or bad, and left him as some sort of pseudo zombie. Not actually dead but no longer truly alive, walking around trying to spread the disease to others, not through bites but through long winded, buzzword filled, rambles about nothing. Okay, he wasn't that bad. She scolded herself, he was just a little "flavorless" and you really didn't want to be there in the first place. He did offer to walk you home, even after you made it abundantly clear that nothing was gonna happen. But he lived only four blocks from the restaurant, she lived almost twenty, he had freaked when she had told him she planned to walk home near midnight and very little she had said had calmed him down till she finally agreed to take a taxi. 

She shook her head, focus! You're never going to clear your mind like this.

Someone knocked on the door. Fuck it. I'm not expecting anyone, besides I'm trying to find my inner peace, whatever they're selling probably won't help with that.

They knocked again, more forcefully. Whatever, inner peace is overrated anyway. She got up and made her way to the door. On the other side she was somewhat alarmed to find two men who were obviously detectives even before they said anything or flashed their badges. "Good morning officers, is there something I can help you with?"

If they were surprised at her IDing them before they said anything they hid it well "I'm afraid there is ma'am. I'm Detective Neal Barboza, this is my partner Detective Ben Anderson and we have a couple of questions for Ms. Gunner, is that you?"

"Gunnar."

"Excuse me?"

"Its pronounced Gunn-are not er." She wasn't sure why she felt the need to correct him except she suddenly felt quite vulnerable and needed to control something.

"Sorry, Ms Gunn-ar." He replied with emphasis "you are her though?"

"Yes, Why?"

"We have a few questions to ask you about Dan Mitchells."

It took her a second to realize they were talking about her date from last night. "Let me guess, he's dead and you want to know if the date went so bad I killed him?" she quipped sarcastically. "If I had had to listen to one more word about corporate re-dynamification or whatever I might have." It took her about two seconds of them staring at her stone faced for her to realize the truth.

Well Fuck.