This was absurd.  Mar had no right to be here, not now.  Her profoundly awful timing was costing Joey precious daylight.  If she didn't visit the chemist before noon, his orders for the day would be filled, and she would have to wait another day.  Another day she couldn't afford to waste.  She fought back the urge to grab hold of Mar's outreached arm and twist it until it snapped, so that she might unravel conveniently out the door frame.  If not for the woman's position as someone who could potentially compromise her personal interests, it might have been her first instinct to act upon.<br/><br/>Joey snarled at her instead, but said nothing further while her implants were tended to, her lips shaping into a distinct grimace.  She couldn't help but note at the irony here.  She was playing dumb, trying to avert the attention away from her very illegal transaction, from someone engaging in something equally as shady.  It raised a wonder just what sort of dealer she'd stumbled into.  It seemed innocent enough on the surface, but there was definitely something sketchy happening here.  Not that it would surprise her if someone like Mar would engage in unorthodox approaches as a bounty hunter, though she did have to wonder just how far she would go until the bounty ended up on her own head.<br/><br/>Deftly she took some steps back, not peeling her eyes from them until she was surrounded by cluttered shelves full of odds and ends.  When she turned, she reeled back in surprise after coming uncomfortably close to the shopkeeper's personal android, “Gil.”  A broken chirp of profanity was barked before she caught herself on another rack of trinkets.  Jo did not like the way that<span style="font-style: italic">thing</span>looked at her.  It was too quiet.  It was too happy-looking.  It was too damned tall.  She straightened herself up, her posture at its peak impressiveness, but the mechanical being seemed entirely undaunted.  Still, she made a show of letting the thing know she was not interested in being shadowed.<br/><br/>A mindful eye was kept on the front of the shop while she pretended to peruse the goods lining his walls.  Honestly, would it have put him back any to at least implement a few housekeeping functions in his pretty droid's programme?  Jo swiped a tentative hand over the collection of what she assumed was perhaps a century of accumulated dreck, wrinkling her nose in disgust as she observed how it clung to her fingertip.  She turned and wiped it away on the android's chest.  If it was going to linger there, it may as well make itself useful.<br/><br/>So maybe she preferred things tidy like, admittedly uncharacteristic of someone who grew up around the filthy residue of the mines and the unhealthy scavenging romps often taken by scappers.  She at least kept her quarters fairly neat.  This shop had no excuse.  Instinctively, Joey began to sort through the items piled in the back, her eyes trained for things that might be useful.  Very few of them held her interest.  She continued this process for several minutes, glancing less and less toward the counter as she contained her focus.  She'd almost sorted through the entire length of a holding shelf when something did, in fact, pique her interest.<br/><br/>Somewhere in the forgotten depths of trinkets she'd located a HexTech- a gadget that was one hundred and eighty percent guaranteed to get you arrested for using it.  It's use was quite simple- it screwed up<span style="font-style: italic">everything</span>.  Any and all sorts of signals or communications immediately are flooded with static.  It released an almost undetectable pulse that locks up the operation of biotic implants and other augmentations.  Predictably, this made it very dangerous, as some people rely on such implants to survive.  The “killswitch” as she's heard some call it, was used quite infamously in a heist almost a decade ago, which resulted in a manhunt for someone they could not identify for over three years due to his constant interference with police intel.  When it was later discovered that it was because of a HexTech device that all this was possible, the government began setting out to destroy every last one of them.<br/><br/>Apparently, they missed one.  To her dismay, it didn't look to be functional anymore.  Curiously, Jo started taking it apart to inspect its innards.  To her surprise, it wasn't missing anything part-wise.  Maybe it only needed a charge.  To test this theory, she glanced toward the counter once more before withdrawing Jenny.  She could feel the android behind her, shifting with alarm, but she held fast to the trigger and pumped some good old fashioned electricity into it.  The thing buzzed into life, stalling only a moment before presenting her with a single option- “Hex.”<br/><br/>She pressed it.<br/><br/>The change in the atmosphere was sudden and pronounced.  Her ears began to ring, and the android behind her couldn't have been faring any better.  The light seemed to almost flicker in response.  She cut the interference as quickly as she was able, silencing it nearly as quickly as she'd started it, with a burning question now flirting with the forefront of her mind.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">He was no ordinary secondhand merchant, so what was he?</span>