Status Updates From Quid Pro Quo (The Administr...

I love love love a strong narrative voice. Like where a normal person would be like “Her mom looks like an older version of her” this is how Taroth describes it:
“She had graying dark hair and a determinedly friendly smile, and she simply had to be Dillian’s mother. It was like looking at an age-enhanced picture in a long-standing open arrest file.”

everything serious seemed terribly wrong. “How about ‘regular fuck?’ ”
“Regular f—” Warrick spluttered, then started again. “I can’t introduce you to people—sponsors—as my regular fuck!”
Toreth smiled, his eyes still closed. “That’s your problem. Works for me.”
(Hahaha, maybe not the most polite relationship label)

“It’s a cat, of course...”
Toreth studied the apparition from a safe distance. “It looks like a badly stitched-together traffic accident in a scabby black fur coat two sizes too large. Why are its teeth sticking out like that?”
…A more likely explanation seemed to be that it had evolved in some deserted back street in the old city to hunt something large and slippery. Wet dogs, perhaps

“They had an arrangement about birthdays. On Toreth’s birthday, Sara would buy him some flowers, because he hated them, and take him out to some suitably weird venue for the evening, usually a strip club of some kind. On Sara’s birthday, Toreth would forget to arrange anything at all, so she would do it for him and he would pay.” I love their weird friendship.

Now she didn’t look so happy. “Ash told me all about him already. She said he had an aura.”
“Aura?”
“Like he wasn’t using extreme violence right that second, but the situation could easily change the moment you pissed him off.”
“Mm.” Not at all a bad description. “That sounds a bit poetic for Asher.”

“Theodora’s old-fashioned,” Rankin said, and Toreth wondered if he actually knew her on first-name terms. Probably. “She doesn’t approve of family-targeted sabotage.”

Time for a sharp lesson in unpredictability. “Although, on second thoughts, maybe I’m not in the mood either. Bye.” …Imagining they understood the rules gave people a powerful illusion of control, and that was why prisoner-handling theories all emphasized the value of intermittent over constant rewards. Toreth laughed to himself as he stepped out into the surprisingly warm night air.
(Tool of a f*ck buddy)

“Toreth had been quite prepared to plant evidence, but just as he’d hoped, (name) had been stupid enough to make things easy.”
Toreth is such a shady sociopath, he doesn’t even care about justice he just wants a good work record.

“His voice suggested that Toreth would be his absolute last choice for stopping trouble of any kind.” I mean, yes, correct 😂

The Confederation of European Corporations had written the corporate accords, the body of civil law that largely defined how corporations operated and behaved. The Administration reserved some areas for itself—regulation of taxation, laws about defrauding the Administration, a superficial skim of laws designed to protect the public—but for the most part, the large corporations set the rules that governed them.

“Liz Carey hates me, and she’s hatched an elaborate plan that probably ends with me being beaten to a pulp by corporate heavies in some back alley. I agreed to take her case because her voice turns me on. Of course, I’ll have to fuck her in the dark, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make if she keeps talking.”

The grey plastic strap had a fastener and a central guard to hold a prisoner’s teeth apart and stop them from biting themselves or anyone else. Single use, disposable and sterile. Not many workplaces offered such entertaining opportunities for stealing office supplies.

Just a perk of the job