Pausing for a moment, I looked around the room a final time before getting up from the bed. "I guess it's time to go." I said before walking to the door. Buck led me out of the room and down to the garage area. There were 3 other cars here. I pointed them out. "I thought Buck only raced in his own car. Why are their others here?" I asked one of the mechanics. He smiled wide. "Buck doesn't race for pink slips. We do though. After begging him for the nineteenth time, he let me race for one. I won that red beauty over there." he explained. Another one walked over and displayed his orange car. "I got this one in a race. The fucking chump didn't know what hit him." he said. I was surprised. The impression Buck gave me was that he worked them like slaves for his own personal project. They had fixed his car up perfectly. They even changed the paint job. He pointed it out. "Why the hell did it go from black to blue, you humans?" he said with his arms crossed. He was not impressed. "We didn't have blue paint back then. Now we do. It's thanks to all of that money you gave us, Buck." one said.
Quietly, I made my way to the door. I was going to leave when Buck threw an arm over my shoulder. "You do not leave until I allow you to leave." he warned. I was not an easy mark. "I thought that these were your slaves. You do not pay slaves." I said teasingly. One of the mechanics laughed out loud. "He certainly works us like slaves." he said. I shrugged. "There's no way he'd let you drive his car for those pink slips if he did not like you at least a little bit." I pushed back. He just shrugged his shoulders and said "Buck's clearly a 'borg, but he likes cars. He can't be all that bad. Other than that, we don't know what the fuck he does. I don't want to know. All I know is that we get a text when he's on his way. We do what he tells us and we then we get paid a shit ton of money for it. That's all this is." The others nodded in agreement. I was a human. I was not going to argue with all that. If that was the full scope of their relationship with Buck, that was fine. Buck clearly had a ton of depth to his character. He would be someone I would want to get close to and befriend. Buck would not allow it.
It was time to leave. "I want to leave now, Buck. Let me go please." I said. He tilted his head towards me to show he heard me say that. He tightened the hold he had on me however. "Nope. Get in the fucking car." he said. I just looked at it. Going in his car was probably a bad idea. He dragged me over to it anyway. After shoving me in, he looked at the mechanics. "Do not tell anybody about this. If you do I will gut you humans." he ordered. They said they would keep their mouths shut. He then got in the car and we were off. As soon as we hit the major streets, we were shot at. Another assassin had found me. That was what the bounty system was like. The glass was totally bulletproof. "Fucking human scum." Buck growled. If he wanted the honor and glory of killing me by himself, he was going to have evade this assassin. He gripped the wheel tight. I buckled myself in this time. Buck weaved in and out of traffic and used his internal GPS to go through all sorts of side streets. The assassin was keeping up with him. That was until Buck hit the nitrous. That launched us onto the freeway.
