"Ginger, you are one callous old witch."

"Why thank you, Jared. You can leave now." the old lady intoned, not bothering to look at the man who was so blatantly trespassing into her home. She had her hands full, balancing a tray on the bed covers as she hand fed her most recent house guest spoonfuls of steaming rice porridge.

Her house guest was a frail girl, perhaps no older than 12, who was recently recovering from an organ replacement surgery, her lips were still slightly chapped from the long hours under the hospital air vents. She opened her eyes as she slurped, exhausted eyes never rising from the spoonfuls to look at the man in the room.

"Oh C'mon, Ginger, Just hear me out!"

Gingee 'Ginger' Parker, pressed her lips firmly together. Her face, crumpled with fine wrinkles, was pale with her anger. With her full head of white hair that frizzed slightly in all directions and papery skin, Gingee looked like a mythical crone from some distant winter woods. And when the man tried to speak again, she silenced him with an icy glare.

Jared huffed and leaned against the wall, hands stuffed into the pockets of his cheap business suit, beer belly jutting forward at an aggressive angle. He could see him using his belly as a coffee table even while standing up, and he recently had if you were to note the brown stain on the center of his tie.

Gingee banished Jared out of the guest bedroom with a pointed jerk of her head, finished feeding the ailing girl in bed, and carefully cut away the white paper medical wristband.

The girl spoke, voice faint and raspy, "Granny, is that the man going to take me home?"

Gingee smiled gently as she whispered back, "No honey, me and my friend will drive you out ourselves. Than once were outside the wall your father will meet us at the rest stop. You'll finally get to be with your parents."

"That sounds nice." The girl sank backwards into her pillows before plaintively asking, "Do I have to go into the piano box again? Can't I ride shotgun with you?"

Gently, "I'm sorry, sweetie. I know the piano box is stuffy. But the cameras will wonder why they saw you leave the city when they didn't see you enter it. And since your still healing, it will probably hurt to sit straight up tomorrow. At least in the box you can lie down."

"Oh. that makes sense." said the girl, sinking further into her pillows, and in less than a minute, she was sound asleep.

Whispering, "You have been so brave."

Gingee quietly exited the room, shutting and locking the door behind her before striding into the kitchen to glower at Jared.

Jared was poking into her fridge, "Why don't you have any beer?"

Gingee, "Even if I drank beer, I wouldn't give you a sip. I told you that I wasn't interested." She slammed the fridge closed, nearly catching his fingers.

She hated it when he smiled, his teeth were so yellow. "Your 'Piano Seller' Gig is going well, I see. How much do the parents pay you to smuggle their kids around in the back of that old truck?"

It was a huge insult to Gingee that anybody thought she did this for the money. Did it look like she was living in the Ritz? Half the time, the families she served couldn't pay her a dime. But all that was none of Jared's business. "If you came here to blackmail me, at least give me the dignity of bringing a gun."

"Nothing so hostile!" Jared smiled again. It wasn't helping his cause. "You've been so unfriendly these days, Gingee."

"And you got ugly."

Jared, kept smiling, though thankfully it was closed lipped and she no linger had to look at his disgusting teeth, "Like you're one to talk, hag."

"I'm 85. What's your excuse?"

"Ooh, sharp as a whip! You still got it." He snapped his fingers repeatedly. Gingee wondered who he was trying to fool. That gesture was no longer hip, in fact it had never been hip, why did he still do that?. "It might sooth you to know that I'm not here for myself. Nor for the brotherhood. This is a mission of mercy."

Gingee had moved as they talked, slicing a lemon with her biggest kitchen knife, never letting Jared out of her sight. She grunted at his mention of the Fraternity. Gingee believed that one should not discriminate against those who held opposing political views. After all as a Sovereign Citizen, and the only one still living in Kaipen Nung she would never survive if others acted on such discrimination with her. Such a poorly informed populace couldn't distinguish her from the Anarchists anyway. She struggled to be impartial when it came to that party- that party that she had seen started by delusional old men .

But she would have despised Jared for his personality alone, let alone his adverse political leanings. So why hold back?

"I've got a client for you"

"I don't have clients. I take or reject cases."

Jared sarcastically mimics a film trailer, "Very Film Noir of you. 'the Ginger Parker as Humphry Bogart. She's like Betty White. But with none of the class."

Gingee threw her knife at him. It missed. Which was a shame too because Jared hadn't noticed in time to even flinch.

"You're only proving me right, Ginger." Jared said, slowly backing away from her even as he kept a stoic expression. Gingee advanced menacingly and Jared scrambled for his cell phone, waving his other hand at her in supplication.

"I give, I give, IgiveIgiveI'msorry." She kept backing him up, snagging a long umbrella somewhere along the say until he was nearly at her front door. "Waitwait, Ginger Stop! There really is a situation. Somebody got seriously infected, their life may hang in the balance."

Gingee did stop, her umbrella still raised like a fencing sword, the tip dangerously close to his eyeball. "Next time start with that. What exactly did you frat boys do?"

"We found them like this." Jared said defensively, pulling a stream of photos up on his cell and showing them to her. Hesitantly, Gingee dropped th umbrella and took the phone and began swiping through.

"Oh... poor baby." She had been a nurse once upon a time. Barely trained, thrust toward patients to cope with a terrible war, she hadn't continued as a nurse after the war's conclusion over 50 years ago. But she recognized what must have happened. "How long did this go untreated?" She tsked.

Jared demonstrated a masterful poker face. "It took a long time for them to find a doctor they could trust. By then the site was infected."

Gingee was heartbroken on this stranger's behalf, yet she was also frustrated. "There isn't a hospital on this entire continent that would have turned him away!"

"They."

"Yes, whatever! Why wait? He's a- They're a criminal, aren't they?"

Jared swiped back to a picture of the individual's face. "Not Exactly,"

Gingee Screamed, nearly dropping the phone. Jared flinched back, clutching his chest.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack! Calm Down!"

Gingee gasped for air, "sorry." she said as she looked closer at the picture. It wasn't Him. The straight black hair was much longer, the face sightly thinner, cheekbones slightly more pronounced.  And their skin was slightly darker, closer to the color of cashews.

"I guess you see the resemblance. I'm surprised I didn't think it was that obvious." Jared said, straightening his stained tie. "So, will you do it."

Gingee paused.

"They're already here in the city... but none of us at the fraternity know how to get them into the hospital without setting off a lot of alarms. And I think we know what would happen to them if... the Duke found out. It all comes down to you, Ginger. It really does." Jared grasped both of her shoulders, shaking her a little for emphasis. "Without your help, they really will die."

"Don't some of you have private doctors? you don't need me for this."

"Not to cure the infection, we've already given them the medicine and they're recovering on schedule... But they  want to complete the process."

"Process?"

"You know, Surgery."

"What, I don't use any of those kinds of Surgeons!"

"But you could find one? Ginger, I'm not asking for me. They are suffering. They just want to start over! ...Or are you really going to condemn someone for who their family was?"

Ginger glared at him, fire in her eyes, white hair fanning out, catching the light as if it might be crackling with electricity. She raised her umbrella and proceeded to beat Jared with it.

"Ow! Oof- GINGER! This isn't very mature!"

Though she was getting winded, she whacked him with her umbrella until he backed into her front door. Jared took a good smack in the nose before he opened it and scrambled behind it, using the door as a shield. She stopped attacking just long enough to pull the door from his grasp.

"I'll do it. Now **** off." she hissed.  And then slammed the door shut, right in his face.