<b><span style="text-decoration: underline">Valerie</span></b><br/><br/>A frown appeared on Valerie's features when Kal exchanged a nervous chuckle with the businessman after she had spoken up. His remark felt chastising, and even if true, was she not being very professional? It stung her pride to be treated like a dumb child, she was sick of that years ago. She wore a wry expression on her face while Kal pulled out a small handheld device. She didn't recognize what it was, but she quickly deducted that it was some sort of dummy device. It felt strangely clunky and obsolete, wouldn't an isolated system on his deck be more practical? It'd mean one less thing to carry around and was just as effective against those script-kiddies running decades-old hacking scripts on decades-old machines.<br/><br/>Valerie diverted her attention away from Kal's dummy deceive, and to the two guards with their MP's. They looked nervous and twitchy, which made Valerie nervous in response. Almost instinctively she looked for the building's floorplan on the 'net in case things got too twitchy. It wasn't like Valerie wasn't used to men with heavy weaponry. Heck, PMC soldiers didn't even get noticed while patrolling, such a common sight they were. But those mercs had been professionals, a complaint filed against them could see them, well, down here in the dreg. They were reliable, rarely polite but never far away. Every young women in the Heart knew that subscribing to the local PMC's alarm app meant that help was never far away if you got into trouble.<br/><br/>Down here there were no PMCs patrolling though, and an alarm app would be the equivalent of a scared sheep baa-ing in a dark forest full of wolves. Here there were only a lot of twitch men and women with a lot of guns. Each day Valerie was surprised that the Dreg hadn't yet wiped itself out in a horrific spiral of violence and death.<br/><br/><br/>Kal and Monty shook hands, signaling that the deal was done even if Valerie could tell there was some lingering tension. It just meant that the wheelchair-bound girl was all the more relieved when she rolled out through the door held open for her. The air in the Dreg was worse than even in the Heart, but it felt like fresh air compared to the atmosphere inside. The sentiment seemed to be shared, if Kal's sigh as he stepped out after her. When he looked at her with those piercing cybernetic eyes, Val looked away with her tellingly human ones, unable to meet his gaze as he lectured her. So she had screwed up, shit.<i><span style="color: grey">"Je suis désolé."</span></i>Her buggy voice assistant made that sound rather mechanical. Stress and nervousness always messed with it.<i>"I'm sorry. I didn't know. The last thing I'd want is for you to get shot."</i>She got her voice back under control and in a more human tonal range. Which meant that that pleasant french accent rolled off her lips.<i>"Les corporations, for them, information is everything. Knowing more than your competitor and whomever you deal with means you can get a better deal."</i><br/><br/>Valerie watched Kal look around, surveying their surroundings. Val for her part mostly just watched the datastream for anything of note or suspicious. She had learnt that sudden small spikes of local communication could predict ambushes or attacks, even when she couldn't read the messages. For the physical world, Val trusted in Kal's senses. He had survived this long down here, after all. The motor in her wheelchair gently buzzed as she got into motion, controlling it through her direct connection with it's machinery.<i>"I'll buy you a drink in you know any nearby safe bars. Rien de cher, mais."</i><div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>