<b>Kal / Valerie / Darion<br/>
</b><br/>Everything was blurring in front of him. He was tired. He was heavy, he<i>felt</i>heavy. It was all the same, he mused to himself; it was all the same as it had been the last time. The hole was just in a different place.<br/><br/>"Yeah... look at that." The street surgeon peered into the bloody orifice in Kal's abdomen. "Ripped you up good there."<br/><br/>Kal stared at the ceiling, at the lights tinged with old faded stains. The smell of antiseptics was heavy, the wall and floor sprayed down to clean off the repetitive blood sprays and viscera that had hit them at some point. Most of it looked clean.<br/><br/>"Alright, you want to do this awake?" He asked Kal, sitting back and looking at the man. The lens apparatus on his head rotated, re-magnifying so that he could see the patient without removing it. Cords hung from the ceiling above, plugged into it, hooked into surgical machinery at Kal's flanks on the gurney.<br/><br/>"Knock me out." Kal told him, though he wasn't sure to what end. He wasn't feeling much right now anyway. "And patch it up nice... Don't need anymore scars."<br/><br/>The surgeon smirked. "You sure? Could get another one of your smart-ass tattoos. Could say, 'You missed again ,sorta.'" He grinned at his own joke, two of his teeth a peculiar shade of white to the rest.<br/><br/>"I'm good."<br/><br/>"Alright. Ride the rainbow, sunshine." He stuck the needle in Kal's arm. His world went black.<br/><br/><b><br/>
***<br/>
<br/>
</b><br/>The surgeon walked out of the room, sliding the door closed behind him. He looked at the whoever in the hallway. "Yeah, he'll live. He'll be out for a while, disoriented as hell when he wake sup, but he'll be fine. You got the stuff?"<br/><br/>He extended a pink mechanical hand for his payment as agreed. A cut of the take. A prosthetic limb, something he could sell easy with his connections. He took the thing and looked over it, scratching at his shaved head for a moment before nodding.<br/><br/>"Good stuff..." He started down the hall, then paused, turned. "You know he's one of Chul's guys, yeah? Well, had to tell him I had one of his boys, so he's on his way, or one of those guys is... Didn't know if you'd need to know that, you know? Figured I'd tell ye'. Have to tell him when I got one of his."<br/><br/>He waited, looking at them, then continued on, disappearing down a side hall, looking over the limb.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><b>Spook<br/>
</b><br/>The lift jolted, began descending with the loud rumbling of machinery and whine of metal. She could smell the oil, the thick metal grate beneath her feet shuttering. He watched Spook as she descended, a half smile upon his lips, his eyes following her until they could see one another no longer, and she was alone with the machines in the lift.<br/><br/>She descended back down into her world, meter by meter. She watched the structures changing beyond the lift. The lift was in an industrial sector, but even in a place so inherently prone to the buildup of grime, the change in the world around it was apparent. It got hotter the further she descended, the air becoming heavier, feeling as though it clung to her.<br/><br/>The ambiance beyond the lift grew dimmer, while the lights grew brighter, smaller, more focused. Sharp key light of color punctuating the gloom. Advertisements with the familiar words of the mid city she had left disappeared. Words like APTS, Tenzou, Technica Global. They were replaced with sharp, gaudy, glowing signs of neon and electric blue and pink. They didn't promise employment or prosperity. They promised guns, alcohol, women; they skewed ever more toward vice. The distant sound of gunfire reached her ears, just close enough to hear over the reverberating sound of machinery around her.<br/><br/>She knew that smell, that dirty feeling on body that no shower would get rid of. She was back in the world of kill or be killed, play the game or get played by it. The lift slowed and stopped, the gate rising with a  clatter, before her a street, a crossroads.<br/><br/>Lingering in the back of her mind was that little piece of information. She had left as anyone, any Dreg savvy gun spinning badass bitch. But as she stepped off that lift and into the crossroads, she knew she had brought something new with her. She had something from up there, something from the world of people playing god. She had a slice of that illusory power, had a bit of that all seeing eye.<br/><br/>And so there she was, standing at the place between places, anywhere to go. A cursory glance pointed out a problem. She had no idea where she was in the Dreg. A problem, perhaps, but today it was opportunity. Pussy shops, bullet stores, alcoholic holes to drown in, signs stretching up sides of buildings, glowing for her attention. Trench coats like walking body bags, glowing eyes and assless chaps. Now she stood out, all stark white in Watchtower's finest consolation prize for not getting herself killed. Might be a good time to find some new threads. Might be a good time to hunt down Mary and bring her a little something she may want to hear. Hell, maybe it was time to cut out her own slice of hell and start playing for keeps. Then again, after a day like that, it might just be time to fuck.<br/><br/>One thing Spook knew, the game had changed. She wasn't holding jack shit in her hand and bluffing like she was aces. She had herself a genuine ace in the hole. And it's like they say;<br/><br/>You go big, or you die tryin'.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>