Fffffwip.
Hissssssss.
W O O S H-
Fix eyed the door with a look of mild annoyance, his hands pocketed in his slacks while his cigarette hung at the corner of his lips.
“Better late than never.”
Alco shrugged his shoulders, their broad frame making his suit seem ill-fitting. Head in a permanent bow to ensure he cleared the doorway without knocking his forehead in the process, his gaze settled on the other in his company.
“Collar come by?”
Fix shook his head slowly. “Like he’d bother to come in person. He sent another message over the wire.” Freeing one of his hands to tap his temple, the smaller fellow launched his emails across the field of his vision. “Says he was sorry he didn’t come but he’s got business to deal with elsewhere- something about the center- et cetera. Basically told us to fuck off.”
Continuing his entrance, long strides led Alco to the circle of seating where he plopped down on the couch, allowing himself the luxury of stretching his limbs. It didn’t matter how many times he brought it up to the Boss - they weren’t looking to drop serious credits on remodeling the ceiling.
“I hate lawyers,” he stated flatly.
“You and me both. Regardless, he did address our inquiry. Said, as he put it, ‘the girl is taken care of.’ Vague as fuck but I can’t really imagine it being difficult. He could’ve made any number of calls and gotten her squared away.”
“Gimme a cigarette.”
Shifting to search his pockets, Fix shot Alco an accusatory look. “What happened to quitting?”
“In this shitstorm? Catch me in a couple of months when all the goddamn reporters are done making a scene.”
“Fair enough.” Leaning to hand off the carcinogen, Fix asked, “What do you think Boss is gonna say about all this?”
“Nothing,” Alco said softly between the act of lighting his cigarette and drawing the first deep inhale, “and I don’t expect him to. He ain’t in a state to deal with anything. Not with Kentaro-”
“Right, right… Don’t say it.”
“Say what? Kentaro’s dead? Look, man- I’m in the same boat as you. We’re dealing with a fucking full-blown mental breakdown of the only person capable of running this organization. Collar doesn’t wanna show his stupid fucking face, the chalk is threatening a lawsuit over her involvement, and the cent is quiet as a church mouse. If our financials aren’t bleeding out at this point, color me surprised.” Expelling a hazy plume of smoke, Alco sighed. “All the Boss has left is Kishi. How depressing.”
The pair shared a long moment in silence.
“…But we’re taking care of Kishi.” Fix brought his free hand to his hair, slicking back loose black quills in the process. “Might be depressing, but she’s fine. She’ll stay fine. She just needs to stay gone until the whole of this mess blows over.”
“Sure, yeah. If the collar has connections, I doubt we gotta worry.” A rare smile creased Alco’s lips. “No more dirty looks to look forward to.”
Fix snorted, his chin wagging with a shake of his head. “You can’t ogle her anymore, you mean.”
“We all did it. Don’t start getting holier-than-thou with me. Like, check it out- he made her for Kentaro, right? Perfect little trophy wife, drop-dead gorgeous… What role does she play with Kentaro gone?” Scratching his brow with his pinky nail, Alco leaned back and stared up at the all too familiar ceiling grates. “Think the Boss’ll marry her?”
Lucky for Fix, Alco wouldn’t see the look of revulsion darkening his sharp features.
“No… He’ll probably just…”
“Adopt her?”
Again, in the way long silences were prone to their private conversations, another plagued them.
Fix crushed his cigarette beneath the glow of the neon decal lighting encompassing the room.
“Maybe. She’s blood-related… technically.”
---
Gordy Pearson was a veritable font of suppositions concerning the Coda Clan.
While he wasn’t a criminal lawyer like his father before him, he knew just as much about the legal system. Someone was going to pay for Kentaro’s murder, but they’d never be fortunate enough to find themselves in a court of their peers. Instead, he wagered, the thousand eyes of Dead Dragons would follow their every move until the time was right. Then, in the same way locusts swarmed fields of healthy crops, the perpetrator would be wholly consumed. After this, the cadaverous clan would return to their slumber, dreaming of nothing and nowhere and no one.
Having known Masao since their college years, Gordy considered himself an expert on the comings and goings of the Boss.
He also knew about the box.
Shuffling paperwork back into a presentable pile, Gordy tossed it into his incomplete stack so he was free to study other things. Kishi’s case file was a doozy. More than anything, he was surprised. Whether it was in Neo Paradiso or abroad, the young woman was well acquainted with scandal. Kentaro must have really loved her to have let her run loose like a wild animal. His gaze narrowed, expression slack. Did Masao know the extent of Kishi’s recklessness? Did he care?
His friend wasn’t known for his ambivalence, yet Kishi remained wild. Untamed. Gordy scanned the dates and times of the incidents, half assuming the woman was in Utopia or Metropolis during the last incident, but there was no record of anything. No comings and goings. No visual upload of Kishi entering or exiting the estates. No jumbled message left on the neuralnet. Nothing.
Of all the strange occurrences leading to Kentaro’s death, Kishi’s vanishing act was certainly one to look into.
He wrote a message to the meatheads in charge of the Yakuza’s daily doings. Isao Kuroda went by Fix to his fellow clan members, but Gordy wasn’t of the Dragon, thusly didn’t humor Isao with his favored nickname. He kept things official; business-oriented.
<Mr. Kuroda,
My deepest apologies for not being able to meet you and your associate, Mr. Ikehara, in person. I have some business I need to attend to at Central Station Hall. There’s a guest speaker discussing their work in revising polygenic scores and I’ve been dying to hear their speech.
As for the matter of Kishi Coda, I’ll arrange for one of my associates to pick her up and take her to the Marlow West on Central Boulevard. She’ll be safe there for the time being. Within the week, I’ll decide what course of action is best for Ms. Coda.
Best of luck with your poker game.
Regards,
G. Pearson>
—
Redolent? To some degree. What else?
Olivia sniffed the air in quiet contemplation, curious about the odor. Craning her pinched features, she veered left, stepping through the office and down the stairs parting the levels of the massive room.
The lower she went, the more offputting the smell was. Whatever tangy aroma first roused her interest soon only served to weakly mask a stench most foul. Rotten, putrescent and foreboding; she felt the first palpitations of fear as the trail led her to the gentle hum of the security safes lining the bottommost step.
Hesitant, she slowly knelt with audible pops of her knees. Placing one palm facedown to steady her kneeling, the other punched in the code to the first safe.
44612641
The safe hissed open, revealing the same genetic samples she had come to expect. She closed it quickly to move on to the second safe.
94382915
Nothing.
73324392
Nothing again.
By the time she opened the final safe, she thought herself quite mad. It obviously wasn’t coming from the compartment in question. Whatever the source, she need only scold the cleaning staff and it would be taken care of. Under her breath, she chuckled weakly, feeling old and senile and entirely too jumpy for her own good.
94253310
The safe popped open with a wet unsealing of the vacuumed insides until the contents met with the halogens brightening the office. There were several seconds of silence as she tried her hardest to determine just what she was seeing, but when the realization struck, it was too late to unsee it.
Olivia Wu screamed and, in the middle of that scream, promptly passed out.
—
Lights strobed, the flare and cast of contrasting sparks decorating the sprawling dancefloor.
Where the club ended was unclear, but it began with a wide maw that trafficked ravers in two crowded lines, leading them down a flight of narrow stairs until the dingy basement-esque landing fed clean beneath a cloud of neon decorations. The dancefloor, in turn, was a massive stain of dark tile, eventually bleeding into beginnings of a ramen shop with minimalist stools for seating and a very old processor bot behind the counter. Next came an augment station for gearheads and gadget chasers alike. The tinny drill sound of augments being inserted into craniums was hard to miss, and inescapable if one needed to get past the process.
A bathroom was carelessly crammed into the complex just beyond the augmenters, sandwiched right before the walls stretched into cubes of containment. Rooms. Rooms to rent to escape the thumping bass, rooms to hide from the light, rooms to ignore the stifled screams of first-time jackers and alpha enthusiasts. They were desperately tight rooms with little redeeming value aside from their promise of privacy.
The bed took up the majority of the flat, sharing its limited space with a closet that housed a toilet and a sink. No shower, no tub. A digital screen spanned the far wall opposite the bed, giving the current occupants a choppy Datafeed of the nightly news. It droned on, monotonous, with a friendly pair of Synth broadcasters offering perfect smiles. Ignoring it, Kishi had up her own feed playing in her head, a window of information projected directly to her eyes. Her companion was less fortunate, she guessed, because he hadn’t withdrawn into tending to digital matters as she did. He simply talked and talked and talked. It had been hours and he still hadn’t shut up.
“What does that make you?”
Kishi’s dark brows knit across their slight ledge, casting minute shadows over bright blue eyes.
“Not a synth.”
He shook his head, a half toppled green mohawk wagging with the motion. “No, like, uh… Fuck, you know. Ethnicity. Kishi is a strange name, right? Your tattoos are pretty fucking weird, too. Don’t know too many people with old school Japanese traditional stuff, you know? Not their whole back, anyway. Not their whole damn back.” He fidgeted with his hands but never seemed put off by how dirty they were. “I like your tattoos but they’re fuckin’ weird. Dunno if I’d have gotten them.”
“Best you don’t,” she assured softly, a hint of a smile curling her lips, “or you’re liable to be mistaken for someone you’re not.”
“Hm. Yeah, something like that.” He stared curiously, leaving the weight of his gaze on her neckline. “But you don’t look Japanese so it’s kinda dangerous for you to be done up like Yakazu, right? I got a buddy who can cover a big tattoo like that. He’s cheap, too. Good dude. He’ll even do payment plans if you’re strapped for credits.”
Kishi wrinkled her nose.
He noticed, so he added cautiously, “Unless you’re actually Yakuza. Shit happens. I won’t pry about it if it makes you uncomfortable or whatever.”
“I don’t look Japanese,” she started softly, “because I’m a splice. They used like 30 genetic samples when I was created. Japanese was one of them, but so was Icelandic, French, Italian, Korean, Egyptian, Russian, Pakastani- you get the idea.” She chuckled dryly. “Pretty costly stuff but it worked out for me.”
“Oh! So, like, your parents just opted to pick an’ choose what you look like? Are they Japanese?”
“Something like that. I don’t have parents, I guess. I have a father figure but he’s not my father. He’s more of a benefactor.” Eyes staring sightlessly at the datafeed, Kishi shrugged. “He raised me with a purpose. I had everything planned for me. Everything.”
Her companion sucked his teeth.
“So it’s all kinda up in the air for you then? I mean, if there’s a plan, that’s good, but this sorta place doesn’t seem like somewhere anyone with a plan would end up.” Glancing away to assess the state of their lodging, he snorted. “Wouldn’t be sleeping with me, at least. Alphas don’t play with betas unless they’re in trouble.”
Kishi didn’t answer. He was right, after all. Alphas didn’t play with betas unless they were in trouble. The elite of Neo Paradiso kept to their high towers in the clouds, centralized in the heart of the megacity. Why was she in Darkside, in the stretch of the skin district known as Sinner’s Alley? Splice boutiques made their start in places like this, but the rich cleaned them up and commercialized the industry. No more chop shops supposedly. No more meat markets where healthy bodies were sold to disease-riddled scum.
You could graft your genetic signature into just about anything, but brains were difficult to transplant. The rich could manage to move from body to body, but the poor simply replaced their dead parts. The easiest way to do that? Harvest a Splice made from your genetic coding. When she first learned about Hybrids and Splices, she cried for days. Maybe someone tried to console her, maybe they didn't. Who cared. Years later, in the back of her mind, she was crying. Had she ever stopped?
“-even if that’s the case, it’s alright. I’m not here to look into your background or whatever. You don’t have to get into it.”
“Oh. Yeah, yeah. Right.” Feigning a smile, she projected her data relay to her left eye while the right returned to viewing the space they presently occupied. “I’ll be back in a tick. Getting hungry. You want anything?”
“Nah, I’m still buzzed. Maybe in a bit.” His body collapsed into the mattress. “You need me to come?”
“Nope. Alpha has this. Just chill.”
Slipping back into the skintight bodysuit she had been wearing when she arrived, Kishi stepped into her heels and tossed her hair into a wavy ponytail. Then, almost guilty over her plans, she added to the nameless partyer, “I never caught your name.”
“Rolfe.”
“Nice.”
She would never see Rolfe again.
Entering the club for a second time that evening was still jarring. She had forgotten the sound while tucked in the noise-proof cube of a room. The moment she transitioned into the hall leading toward the dancefloor and it’s connected businesses, the noise succeeded in smothering the rest of her senses. Even then, hustling through the warm crush of bodies undulating against her while bombarded by thundering drops and harsh pitches, Kishi worked tirelessly on her project. The span of the neuralnet was wide and the vision it offered was murky. Like everyone else, she was anonymous. With that sort of anonymity, she was free to find means to deal with her current problems.
Alphas don’t play with betas unless they’re in trouble.
[Headspace Headstone has connected.]
»//Headspace Headstone: Anyone around sinners alley rn?
»//bIIIIgnrdYYY: not if ur expensive
»//poxtoxshoxcox: thirsty fuck
»//Deckgrl3847: y would u go therre at night? tf?
»//01000011 01101111 01110111 01100010 01101111 01111001: Could be if it’s worth coming
»//Headspace Headstone: what would make it worth coming?
»//01000011 01101111 01110111 01100010 01101111 01111001: Me coming
»//poxtoxshoxcox: LMAO
»//Headspace Headstone: :/
»//Headspace Headstone: useless
»//Headspace Headstone: if someone wants to make fast credits, dm me. need help at SA. prefer if you’ve got a vehicle of your own.
[Headspace Headstone has disconnected.]
Finding herself met with a stale shower of rain as she finally left the club, she noted the name. Club Cancer. She couldn’t help laughing. Of course, it was.
Hissssssss.
W O O S H-
Fix eyed the door with a look of mild annoyance, his hands pocketed in his slacks while his cigarette hung at the corner of his lips.
“Better late than never.”
Alco shrugged his shoulders, their broad frame making his suit seem ill-fitting. Head in a permanent bow to ensure he cleared the doorway without knocking his forehead in the process, his gaze settled on the other in his company.
“Collar come by?”
Fix shook his head slowly. “Like he’d bother to come in person. He sent another message over the wire.” Freeing one of his hands to tap his temple, the smaller fellow launched his emails across the field of his vision. “Says he was sorry he didn’t come but he’s got business to deal with elsewhere- something about the center- et cetera. Basically told us to fuck off.”
Continuing his entrance, long strides led Alco to the circle of seating where he plopped down on the couch, allowing himself the luxury of stretching his limbs. It didn’t matter how many times he brought it up to the Boss - they weren’t looking to drop serious credits on remodeling the ceiling.
“I hate lawyers,” he stated flatly.
“You and me both. Regardless, he did address our inquiry. Said, as he put it, ‘the girl is taken care of.’ Vague as fuck but I can’t really imagine it being difficult. He could’ve made any number of calls and gotten her squared away.”
“Gimme a cigarette.”
Shifting to search his pockets, Fix shot Alco an accusatory look. “What happened to quitting?”
“In this shitstorm? Catch me in a couple of months when all the goddamn reporters are done making a scene.”
“Fair enough.” Leaning to hand off the carcinogen, Fix asked, “What do you think Boss is gonna say about all this?”
“Nothing,” Alco said softly between the act of lighting his cigarette and drawing the first deep inhale, “and I don’t expect him to. He ain’t in a state to deal with anything. Not with Kentaro-”
“Right, right… Don’t say it.”
“Say what? Kentaro’s dead? Look, man- I’m in the same boat as you. We’re dealing with a fucking full-blown mental breakdown of the only person capable of running this organization. Collar doesn’t wanna show his stupid fucking face, the chalk is threatening a lawsuit over her involvement, and the cent is quiet as a church mouse. If our financials aren’t bleeding out at this point, color me surprised.” Expelling a hazy plume of smoke, Alco sighed. “All the Boss has left is Kishi. How depressing.”
The pair shared a long moment in silence.
“…But we’re taking care of Kishi.” Fix brought his free hand to his hair, slicking back loose black quills in the process. “Might be depressing, but she’s fine. She’ll stay fine. She just needs to stay gone until the whole of this mess blows over.”
“Sure, yeah. If the collar has connections, I doubt we gotta worry.” A rare smile creased Alco’s lips. “No more dirty looks to look forward to.”
Fix snorted, his chin wagging with a shake of his head. “You can’t ogle her anymore, you mean.”
“We all did it. Don’t start getting holier-than-thou with me. Like, check it out- he made her for Kentaro, right? Perfect little trophy wife, drop-dead gorgeous… What role does she play with Kentaro gone?” Scratching his brow with his pinky nail, Alco leaned back and stared up at the all too familiar ceiling grates. “Think the Boss’ll marry her?”
Lucky for Fix, Alco wouldn’t see the look of revulsion darkening his sharp features.
“No… He’ll probably just…”
“Adopt her?”
Again, in the way long silences were prone to their private conversations, another plagued them.
Fix crushed his cigarette beneath the glow of the neon decal lighting encompassing the room.
“Maybe. She’s blood-related… technically.”
---
Gordy Pearson was a veritable font of suppositions concerning the Coda Clan.
While he wasn’t a criminal lawyer like his father before him, he knew just as much about the legal system. Someone was going to pay for Kentaro’s murder, but they’d never be fortunate enough to find themselves in a court of their peers. Instead, he wagered, the thousand eyes of Dead Dragons would follow their every move until the time was right. Then, in the same way locusts swarmed fields of healthy crops, the perpetrator would be wholly consumed. After this, the cadaverous clan would return to their slumber, dreaming of nothing and nowhere and no one.
Having known Masao since their college years, Gordy considered himself an expert on the comings and goings of the Boss.
He also knew about the box.
Shuffling paperwork back into a presentable pile, Gordy tossed it into his incomplete stack so he was free to study other things. Kishi’s case file was a doozy. More than anything, he was surprised. Whether it was in Neo Paradiso or abroad, the young woman was well acquainted with scandal. Kentaro must have really loved her to have let her run loose like a wild animal. His gaze narrowed, expression slack. Did Masao know the extent of Kishi’s recklessness? Did he care?
His friend wasn’t known for his ambivalence, yet Kishi remained wild. Untamed. Gordy scanned the dates and times of the incidents, half assuming the woman was in Utopia or Metropolis during the last incident, but there was no record of anything. No comings and goings. No visual upload of Kishi entering or exiting the estates. No jumbled message left on the neuralnet. Nothing.
Of all the strange occurrences leading to Kentaro’s death, Kishi’s vanishing act was certainly one to look into.
He wrote a message to the meatheads in charge of the Yakuza’s daily doings. Isao Kuroda went by Fix to his fellow clan members, but Gordy wasn’t of the Dragon, thusly didn’t humor Isao with his favored nickname. He kept things official; business-oriented.
<Mr. Kuroda,
My deepest apologies for not being able to meet you and your associate, Mr. Ikehara, in person. I have some business I need to attend to at Central Station Hall. There’s a guest speaker discussing their work in revising polygenic scores and I’ve been dying to hear their speech.
As for the matter of Kishi Coda, I’ll arrange for one of my associates to pick her up and take her to the Marlow West on Central Boulevard. She’ll be safe there for the time being. Within the week, I’ll decide what course of action is best for Ms. Coda.
Best of luck with your poker game.
Regards,
G. Pearson>
—
Redolent? To some degree. What else?
Olivia sniffed the air in quiet contemplation, curious about the odor. Craning her pinched features, she veered left, stepping through the office and down the stairs parting the levels of the massive room.
The lower she went, the more offputting the smell was. Whatever tangy aroma first roused her interest soon only served to weakly mask a stench most foul. Rotten, putrescent and foreboding; she felt the first palpitations of fear as the trail led her to the gentle hum of the security safes lining the bottommost step.
Hesitant, she slowly knelt with audible pops of her knees. Placing one palm facedown to steady her kneeling, the other punched in the code to the first safe.
44612641
The safe hissed open, revealing the same genetic samples she had come to expect. She closed it quickly to move on to the second safe.
94382915
Nothing.
73324392
Nothing again.
By the time she opened the final safe, she thought herself quite mad. It obviously wasn’t coming from the compartment in question. Whatever the source, she need only scold the cleaning staff and it would be taken care of. Under her breath, she chuckled weakly, feeling old and senile and entirely too jumpy for her own good.
94253310
The safe popped open with a wet unsealing of the vacuumed insides until the contents met with the halogens brightening the office. There were several seconds of silence as she tried her hardest to determine just what she was seeing, but when the realization struck, it was too late to unsee it.
Olivia Wu screamed and, in the middle of that scream, promptly passed out.
—
Lights strobed, the flare and cast of contrasting sparks decorating the sprawling dancefloor.
Where the club ended was unclear, but it began with a wide maw that trafficked ravers in two crowded lines, leading them down a flight of narrow stairs until the dingy basement-esque landing fed clean beneath a cloud of neon decorations. The dancefloor, in turn, was a massive stain of dark tile, eventually bleeding into beginnings of a ramen shop with minimalist stools for seating and a very old processor bot behind the counter. Next came an augment station for gearheads and gadget chasers alike. The tinny drill sound of augments being inserted into craniums was hard to miss, and inescapable if one needed to get past the process.
A bathroom was carelessly crammed into the complex just beyond the augmenters, sandwiched right before the walls stretched into cubes of containment. Rooms. Rooms to rent to escape the thumping bass, rooms to hide from the light, rooms to ignore the stifled screams of first-time jackers and alpha enthusiasts. They were desperately tight rooms with little redeeming value aside from their promise of privacy.
The bed took up the majority of the flat, sharing its limited space with a closet that housed a toilet and a sink. No shower, no tub. A digital screen spanned the far wall opposite the bed, giving the current occupants a choppy Datafeed of the nightly news. It droned on, monotonous, with a friendly pair of Synth broadcasters offering perfect smiles. Ignoring it, Kishi had up her own feed playing in her head, a window of information projected directly to her eyes. Her companion was less fortunate, she guessed, because he hadn’t withdrawn into tending to digital matters as she did. He simply talked and talked and talked. It had been hours and he still hadn’t shut up.
“What does that make you?”
Kishi’s dark brows knit across their slight ledge, casting minute shadows over bright blue eyes.
“Not a synth.”
He shook his head, a half toppled green mohawk wagging with the motion. “No, like, uh… Fuck, you know. Ethnicity. Kishi is a strange name, right? Your tattoos are pretty fucking weird, too. Don’t know too many people with old school Japanese traditional stuff, you know? Not their whole back, anyway. Not their whole damn back.” He fidgeted with his hands but never seemed put off by how dirty they were. “I like your tattoos but they’re fuckin’ weird. Dunno if I’d have gotten them.”
“Best you don’t,” she assured softly, a hint of a smile curling her lips, “or you’re liable to be mistaken for someone you’re not.”
“Hm. Yeah, something like that.” He stared curiously, leaving the weight of his gaze on her neckline. “But you don’t look Japanese so it’s kinda dangerous for you to be done up like Yakazu, right? I got a buddy who can cover a big tattoo like that. He’s cheap, too. Good dude. He’ll even do payment plans if you’re strapped for credits.”
Kishi wrinkled her nose.
He noticed, so he added cautiously, “Unless you’re actually Yakuza. Shit happens. I won’t pry about it if it makes you uncomfortable or whatever.”
“I don’t look Japanese,” she started softly, “because I’m a splice. They used like 30 genetic samples when I was created. Japanese was one of them, but so was Icelandic, French, Italian, Korean, Egyptian, Russian, Pakastani- you get the idea.” She chuckled dryly. “Pretty costly stuff but it worked out for me.”
“Oh! So, like, your parents just opted to pick an’ choose what you look like? Are they Japanese?”
“Something like that. I don’t have parents, I guess. I have a father figure but he’s not my father. He’s more of a benefactor.” Eyes staring sightlessly at the datafeed, Kishi shrugged. “He raised me with a purpose. I had everything planned for me. Everything.”
Her companion sucked his teeth.
“So it’s all kinda up in the air for you then? I mean, if there’s a plan, that’s good, but this sorta place doesn’t seem like somewhere anyone with a plan would end up.” Glancing away to assess the state of their lodging, he snorted. “Wouldn’t be sleeping with me, at least. Alphas don’t play with betas unless they’re in trouble.”
Kishi didn’t answer. He was right, after all. Alphas didn’t play with betas unless they were in trouble. The elite of Neo Paradiso kept to their high towers in the clouds, centralized in the heart of the megacity. Why was she in Darkside, in the stretch of the skin district known as Sinner’s Alley? Splice boutiques made their start in places like this, but the rich cleaned them up and commercialized the industry. No more chop shops supposedly. No more meat markets where healthy bodies were sold to disease-riddled scum.
You could graft your genetic signature into just about anything, but brains were difficult to transplant. The rich could manage to move from body to body, but the poor simply replaced their dead parts. The easiest way to do that? Harvest a Splice made from your genetic coding. When she first learned about Hybrids and Splices, she cried for days. Maybe someone tried to console her, maybe they didn't. Who cared. Years later, in the back of her mind, she was crying. Had she ever stopped?
“-even if that’s the case, it’s alright. I’m not here to look into your background or whatever. You don’t have to get into it.”
“Oh. Yeah, yeah. Right.” Feigning a smile, she projected her data relay to her left eye while the right returned to viewing the space they presently occupied. “I’ll be back in a tick. Getting hungry. You want anything?”
“Nah, I’m still buzzed. Maybe in a bit.” His body collapsed into the mattress. “You need me to come?”
“Nope. Alpha has this. Just chill.”
Slipping back into the skintight bodysuit she had been wearing when she arrived, Kishi stepped into her heels and tossed her hair into a wavy ponytail. Then, almost guilty over her plans, she added to the nameless partyer, “I never caught your name.”
“Rolfe.”
“Nice.”
She would never see Rolfe again.
Entering the club for a second time that evening was still jarring. She had forgotten the sound while tucked in the noise-proof cube of a room. The moment she transitioned into the hall leading toward the dancefloor and it’s connected businesses, the noise succeeded in smothering the rest of her senses. Even then, hustling through the warm crush of bodies undulating against her while bombarded by thundering drops and harsh pitches, Kishi worked tirelessly on her project. The span of the neuralnet was wide and the vision it offered was murky. Like everyone else, she was anonymous. With that sort of anonymity, she was free to find means to deal with her current problems.
Alphas don’t play with betas unless they’re in trouble.
[Headspace Headstone has connected.]
»//Headspace Headstone: Anyone around sinners alley rn?
»//bIIIIgnrdYYY: not if ur expensive
»//poxtoxshoxcox: thirsty fuck
»//Deckgrl3847: y would u go therre at night? tf?
»//01000011 01101111 01110111 01100010 01101111 01111001: Could be if it’s worth coming
»//Headspace Headstone: what would make it worth coming?
»//01000011 01101111 01110111 01100010 01101111 01111001: Me coming
»//poxtoxshoxcox: LMAO
»//Headspace Headstone: :/
»//Headspace Headstone: useless
»//Headspace Headstone: if someone wants to make fast credits, dm me. need help at SA. prefer if you’ve got a vehicle of your own.
[Headspace Headstone has disconnected.]
Finding herself met with a stale shower of rain as she finally left the club, she noted the name. Club Cancer. She couldn’t help laughing. Of course, it was.
BDRP Admin. Writer. Villain. Personal Blog.
I tried running from the memory and the mourning.
I tried running from the memory and the mourning.
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Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-10-2014, 07:35 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-10-2014, 07:37 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-10-2014, 07:39 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-10-2014, 07:58 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 10:10 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:15 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:26 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:30 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:32 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:33 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:34 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:43 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:47 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:48 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:50 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:52 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 03:58 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 04:05 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 04:15 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-11-2014, 04:15 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-13-2014, 03:17 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-14-2014, 05:21 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-14-2014, 05:21 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-15-2014, 11:50 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-15-2014, 11:52 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-15-2014, 11:59 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-16-2014, 12:06 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-16-2014, 01:27 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-17-2014, 02:02 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-17-2014, 02:08 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-18-2014, 07:37 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-26-2014, 05:00 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-29-2014, 12:59 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-29-2014, 04:59 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-03-2014, 01:57 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-03-2014, 01:57 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-03-2014, 01:57 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-03-2014, 01:58 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-03-2014, 01:58 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-05-2014, 03:55 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-05-2014, 07:20 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-05-2014, 10:05 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-06-2014, 01:24 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-06-2014, 01:38 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-07-2014, 06:32 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-10-2014, 03:55 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 02-18-2015, 03:54 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 02-27-2015, 03:51 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 03-15-2015, 08:11 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 03-24-2015, 10:48 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 03-26-2015, 11:09 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Ghostly - 03-29-2015, 02:00 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 03-29-2015, 02:03 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 03-30-2015, 05:56 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 04-21-2015, 08:59 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 06-15-2015, 10:21 PM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 06-30-2015, 08:53 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 07-30-2015, 10:06 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-07-2015, 01:39 AM
Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-26-2015, 01:07 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-16-2015, 06:17 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-07-2015, 04:42 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 01-11-2016, 05:54 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 04-06-2016, 09:42 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 06-10-2016, 03:51 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 06-27-2016, 09:42 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 07-23-2016, 03:05 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-03-2016, 09:00 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-09-2016, 06:47 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-10-2016, 10:39 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-12-2016, 11:04 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-31-2016, 08:58 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-02-2016, 07:24 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-02-2016, 10:50 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-06-2016, 07:17 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-17-2016, 06:10 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-19-2016, 11:58 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-19-2016, 03:48 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-23-2016, 07:02 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-29-2016, 01:06 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 10-08-2016, 04:06 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 10-10-2016, 04:15 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 10-14-2016, 06:52 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 10-17-2016, 12:03 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 10-18-2016, 03:22 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 10-24-2016, 06:21 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-05-2016, 07:31 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-10-2016, 08:41 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-30-2016, 08:08 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 03:00 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 03:30 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 03:52 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 04:27 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 04:53 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 05:16 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 05:40 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 06:06 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 06:30 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 06:55 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 07:18 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 07:47 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 08:28 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 08:52 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-01-2016, 09:15 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-02-2016, 01:10 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-05-2016, 11:00 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 01-04-2017, 04:51 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 01-06-2017, 04:10 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 01-14-2017, 10:31 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 02-13-2017, 04:08 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 02-20-2017, 02:17 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 05-11-2017, 11:57 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 05-25-2017, 11:44 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 06-16-2017, 02:14 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 06-21-2017, 06:52 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-18-2017, 03:57 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-29-2017, 10:35 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 01-16-2018, 09:12 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 02-08-2018, 06:40 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 02-19-2018, 03:50 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-01-2018, 11:30 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-04-2018, 02:44 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 01-03-2019, 06:51 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 03-24-2019, 01:23 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 08-27-2019, 02:21 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 04-27-2020, 02:23 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-25-2020, 05:30 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-25-2020, 05:36 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-25-2020, 05:36 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-27-2020, 08:13 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 01-21-2021, 03:40 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 04-13-2021, 05:28 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 06-09-2022, 07:06 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 09-30-2022, 11:45 PM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 11-05-2022, 04:28 AM
RE: Kat's Blurbs [Read only] - by Kat - 12-04-2023, 04:52 AM