<b>Darion / Valerie</b><br/><br/><br/>"Exciting. Guy with the bullets, come with me. Knife guy, carry on drinking." Mirrorshades said flatly.<br/><br/>He turned and head out the door. The man with the PMC patch on his arm and the knife on his belt grumbled and sat back down.<br/><br/>The door to the alley swung open and Kal stepped out. He gave a quick look both ways and headed over toward Valerie. "Anyone give you any trouble?" He asked, quietly, to keep the 'new guy' out of earshot.<br/><br/>Kal gave a look in Darion's direction as the man joined them. "Gun Guy, this is Wheels. Wheels this is Gun Guy." Kal introduced them. "I'm Blue."<br/><br/>He started down the alley away from Gaoxing, expecting the two to follow. He was already running over theoretical logistics in his head, rolling over what he could remember of the area they were headed to. He stopped suddenly and turned around.<br/><br/>"Can you hack into shit without any hardware?" Valerie's warped profile reflected in his glasses. "Like security shit. Cameras or whatever. Or do you need one of those big computer rig things, a Deck, or whatever you call them?"<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><b>Spook</b><br/><br/><br/>They followed the road, banking gently as they rode on the edge of the world. It was empty but for them, those seven women for whom the road beneath their tires may as well have been open sky as they soared above the blackness they called home. For this moment at least their world was blue and gold.<br/><br/>Each of them looked out over the expanse of sky and water. They looked into another place so strange and unknown to them but for those few moments when they crossed the boundaries between worlds. It was a place which they could only glimpse, but stirred something within them. In that world of sky and sea and stars stretching out forever was something inescapably familiar that quieted the soul.<br/><br/>Spook felt the machine between her legs slow, Cat easing on the throttle as they banked left, away from the world of blue, back into the world of steel and concrete. A sign shone above a ramp that peeled away from the road. They passed beneath it, sun at their backs. Pangu closed in around them once more. The sky vanished as they passed into a tunnel. Cat opened her mouth wide as she felt her ears pop. A moment later Spook became aware of the pressure change. They had been gaining altitude.<br/><br/>The lights on the sides and roof of the tunnel flew past them in a blur of yellow. The roar of the five bikes felt like it shook the walls. There was profoundly less graffiti than Spook would have expected in the Dreg. Ahead, the tunnel banked and the momentum of the bike shifted as the road inclined steadily. Minutes passed as they rose steadily. They passed a large screen in the wall, on it was an artistic image of a a prosthetic limb, a logo beneath it, and the words, "A Subsidiary of APTS Cybergenics."<br/><br/>It was an advertisement. There weren't advertisements in the Dreg.<br/><br/>The tunnel flattened out. A sign overhead read that they were merging onto a high volume route.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>