Page 52 of Her Sloth

She, too, lets her head fall back at the headboard.

“I’m not doing it for her, because she is dead,” she then says, and my entire body feels like ice. “She doesn’t care about any of it anymore.”

I swallow. Hard.

“I’m doing it for you,” she says. “So you can find peace.”

There it is again, the flutter. I let my head fall to the side, and I watch her staring at the ceiling thing, whatever it is called. I am not fluent in rich people stuff.

“That’s giving me at least some purpose,” she adds.

Of course she is doing it out of selfish reasons, says a slightly disappointed voice in me. And she should. I don’t even know why I react this way. She’s Elise’s sister!

“Nikki is in,” I say. “I might have to bring in Illy; she’s the girl for all things tech. She knows how to hack almost anything, including those modern chips that track everything in cars.”

“She tracked my phone, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I say hesitantly.

An awkward silence follows.

“We are going to take them down one at a time,” I say to cut the silence. “We attack the seven parent corporations, one by one. Starting with the Bank. We take everything.”

“You wanna rob them?”

“If we take their business, there is nothing left.”

She scoffs in a way I don’t like.

“It’s not the streets,” she says. “You aren’t going against a single gangster with cash. That conglomerate is like a hydra. You cut one head off, and three others grew back. That bank doesn’t have the money they shuffle lying around.”

“How then?”

She doesn’t say anything for a while. She just leans against the headboard, her eyes closed. I thought she'd passed out, and I twitch when she suddenly speaks.

“You ruin them,” she says. “It’s the only way.”

“And how do we ruin a multi-national hydra?”

She laughs and finally opens her eyes, looking straight at me.

“Nothing easier than that,” she says, a devilish grin on her face. “A company is nothing when nobody buys their things. A bank is nothing if nobody gives them their money. A foundation is nothing if nobody needs the funds.”

“True,” I agree with her, while I don’t see how any of it is achievable.

“What we need is public attention to what they do, public uproar, scandal. In a way not even the government can look away,” she says and jumps up from the bed. She is…elated. Her eyes glowing, she walks up and down in front of the bed and me, bottle in one hand, the other gesturing.

“What we also need is a destabilized internal structure. Rig what we can. Systems. Cashflow. Contracts. Insider Trading. Strengthen competitors.”

She freezes. “And last but not least, we are going to take what we can and give it to those in need.”

I don’t know what to say, because it sounds so much above my head that I can’t even grasp her idea. It’s like a fairytale Robin Hood story fueled by too much alcohol.

“It’s impossible and insane,” I say, and before I can continue, she falls into my words and stands in front of me with her fists on her hips.

“It’s not. Insane is to think you can rob a corp⁠—“

“Shut up and listen to the rest I have to say before you interrupt me,” I say, falling into her words myself.