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The streets were crowded with blue collars, plugheads, homeless and the "respectable" citizens who had escaped their secure corporate enclaves to go slumming with the real people. She wondered if those people who so frequently moved through the streets down below did so because they couldn't stand to see their own reflection in the clean polished interior of their homes, and needed to be amongst the filth and degredation of the sinless in order to feel alive again.
Waiting for the monorail to arrive to take her to King Street station she saw two pretty, Ork girls hussle one such suit who came down from the top of his glass and steel tower to slum it with the lower class. He was probably out for the thrill, leaving the comfort and safety of his home and his simsense induced virtual brothels to fuck young girls in the ass; there was no amount of simsense programming that could accurately capture the pain and fear in their eyes as he penetrated them. The monorail arrived, and she stepped on, catching a glimps of one of the girls lifting the man's cell phone and credstick. She smiled as the carriage moved out of the station. You go girls.
She walked up the carriage, looking for a working telecom unit. The one she found was about halfway up the carriage that was in working order, and relatively clean. Half the vidscreen was covered in an elaborate graffiti tag. It looked old and faded, but it hadn't been covered by any others. The gang who tagged the vidscreen must have a big reputation if other taggers wouldn't touch theirs. She looked over her shoulders to see if there were any people standing around that were out of the ordinary. The only thing out of the ordinary was an off-duty Lonestar officer following the sports results on a nearby vidscreen that was bolted securely, high up the inside of the carriage. Public electronics like that, were usually harvested by streetcreeps, telecom and vidscreen units being the first to go. The Seattle Seadogs had lost again.
The face on the screen was that of Koh, polite as ever inquiring if she was calling from an outside line before putting her through to Brandt. Brandt had told her that he had come under official investigation a couple of times in the past, and that, unfortunately, it had always been because of someone else. Investigation into unlawful practices was like a virus, spreading from one person to the next by way of celular phones. The trick was to keep communication through a mobile medium to a minimum, and if there was no other way, to always call or connect from public terminals, and different ones every time. And all this so you couldn't infect the person you were calling to with the investigation bug that you might be carrying.
She was reminded by the two Ork girls, and the suit. Was the chance of catching some tenacious, horrible disease part of the thrill, too? She couldn't imagine the two girls to be herded by a sensible pimp that kept his girls clean and healthy.
Brandt looked more than a bit miffed when she asked if the package that she had ordered could be put on hold, and maybe even canceled completely. She hated doing this, because it made her lose credibility with the old man, something she had taken a long time building up. But her team simply wouldn't use the equipment, and though Wedge could probably move the merchandise further down the market, they'd stand to lose a significant nuyen amount on the resale. None of them stood to lose that much money. If she had to choose between paying Sergei protection money for her doss, or disappointing Brandt, the choice was easy. Was he going to feed her, or put her to bed in his gigantic beachfront property? Well, maybe he would, but at what price?
King Street station.
Getting close to the docks, she put a bit more energy into blending; not making eye contact with the crazies, never staring anyone down. Not smiling nor smirking, not showing anything that anyone could think to make money off. Nobody fucked with the dock workers here, at least, none of the small time crooks - thieves, hustlers and robbers - because they'd know that once the blue collars would complain to their boss, their boss would complain to the local syndicate, who in turn would send a couple of cats around to make sure something like that never happened again. The docks were pretty much an even split between the Yaks and the Mob, with some other syndicates thrown in for diversity. But especially the bigger two had, over the years, regained their sense of "civil responsibility" to actually protect those that paid protection money. But she didn't look like a dock worker, so she kept her head low, and her eyes peeled for trouble.
After 20 minutes of walking, avoiding most of the street-debris she came upon, the dreary sight of the four warehouses, standing together, each the side of a top down square, enclosing what used to be a parking lot for employees and cargo trucks. Back in the 20s the parking lot had be remodelled and restructured as real estate developers saw fit to accomodate the then trendy warehouse apartments that the buildings had been turned into. But the Crash had made sure that it had been a investor's nightmare. The project was abandoned, as was the development of the houses, which was why some of them didn't even have plumbing. The parking lot and children's playground were still there, only now they had been overgrown by thick, tough weeds.
Many different residents of the warehouses had tried to clear away the weeds, to make the place a bit more livable, but pollution had made them nigh indestructable. Whole new species of weeds, as of yet undiscovered by modern day science and biologists, were growing between the four concrete barriers of the derelict tenements.
Upon reaching the entrance of her hallway, she saw Anita's boy standing quietly off to the side of the building. He wasn't alone, like she had expected him to be, but was accompanies by two boys and a girl, of roughly the same age as he. Even with her hearing amplification she could hear them talking. They were just sort of standing there. She looked up towards to second floor, half expecting Anita, her neighbour, to look down from a window, making sure that her boy wasn't being harassed or mugged for his clothing and shoes. She wasn't. Going into the hallway, she raised the grate to the elevator, lowered it after stepping inside, and flipping the switch, sending the unreliable machinary into action, slowly raising her past all the floors. Even though she knew the apartments weren't going to be any different than they normally were, she still looked inside. She always did.
First floor was empty and boarded up. A lot of people boarded up their doss when they left for short periods of time. She didn't because she paid the local thugs well. She felt she had a good understanding with them and that she was a well-liked tennant. The second floor apartment showed the usual, an apartment of a working, single mother who bent over backwards to make ends meet. The apartment was oddly cosy and felt like an actual home, even though Anita had little to work with. Anita was sprawled out on her decrepit sofa, plugged into her cheap simsense deck, riding the electron rollercoaster. No wonder her boy was out unattended. He was running around while she was getting high. The third floor was hers, and upon reaching it she knew she was in trouble.
Sergei was sitting in her only comfortable chair, in the middle of the apartment, facing the elevator, feeding his nicotine addiction. His pale, nearly translucent skin made her shudder, as it always did, and kept her wondering what shit he used to stuff his veins that made his skin turn out like that. She steadied herself and raised the grating of the elevator. As nonchalantly as she possibly could she walked in with determined and strong strides, walking up to the table near her kitchenette, dropping her bag and zipping open her jacket. She asked Sergei what he was doing at her appartment, making sure he knew that she didn't expect him for another month-and-a-half to collect the next payment for the Russians. She felt she couldn't look at him, so she pretended to fiddle in her bag, turning the audio all the way up on her amps, making sure she could at least hear what he was doing. She also extended the blades from underneath her fingernails of her right hand.
She heard him light another cigarette and get out of the chair. He walked up to her, so she was forced to turn around and retract the blades. She looked him in the eye as he came closer and closer. He had a hungry look in his eye, but not the one that she had grown accustomed to over the years. It was similar, but there was something more vicious about it. Something barely restrained. He took another drag of his cigarette as he stood up against him, nearly pushing her up against the table's edge. She could smell him. He smelled nice. He exhaled, quickly, turning his face away from her to make sure that none of the smoke came near her face. With his cigarette clasped between his fingers of his left hand like a dart, he extended his pinky and gently removed some hair from her face, putting it back in place. It was almost sweet and loving, were it not for the fact that she could see his lips tremble with some sick desire.
She knew what was going to happen next. If she'd cooperate it would be over quickly, and perhaps not even entirely unpleasantly. She gently closed her eyes, pretending to enjoy the show of affection. Then, she was startled by the sound of a sudden rustle of fabric as Sergei retrieved something from his pocket. A jabbing pain in her side, right underneath he breast. He stepped back, smiling, holding something that looked like a pistol, but she couldn't be sure for her vision started to swim before her eyes. She felt her knees buckle and she instinctively extended her blades. He took another elaborate drag of his cigarette as her knees hit the floor and she fell face forward to the cold concrete. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she felt herself falling through the floor, through the ground below, ever faster into unconsciousness.
When she woke she felt groggy. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly. She was sitting in a small space, what looked like the back of a van. Her hands were securely tightened behind her back with what felt like manacles. Her feet were tied together with strong, plastic strips. Her mouth was filled with a rag tied around the back of her head, whose presence made her want to gag, but only when she tought about it being there. Opposite of her, though barely recognisable was Isabella, also tied up. She looked like she had been severely beaten. Her face bruised, her elbows and knees scraped and bloodied, and several angry lacerations on her arms and torso. Their eyes locked and though there was no friendliness there, only hatred, but oddly enough no hostility.
The third person in the back of the van was Sergei. Still smoking. Still hungry.
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