\+/ Night City Stories \+/ Chapter 7 - Square One
\+/ PAST \+/
Marilyn's deep, labored breaths grow from feint to apparent. The sound of her shoes slapping pavement and cracking broken glass ties together with the sounds of loud music, sirens, car alarms and gun shots. Marilyn, having never done this before is clearly in a panic. Her mouth wide open and her pupils dialated illuminated her big beautiful green eyes under Night City's neon glow. The fabric of her jeans rubbed together vigorously as she hops a loud clanky chainlink fence before sprinting down a back alley. Marilyn hesitantly takes a final leap over a 10 foot dead drop; the impact makes her fall to her hands and knees. Scrambling back up to her feet, she takes on a brisk and steady walking pace up the dimly lit street towards a parked Cortes while ocassionally looking over her shoulder.
She swings the passenger door open and hops in out of breath and close to hyperventilating. Brian sits in the driver seat calmly smoking a cigarette before slowly looking over at Marilyn struggling to catch her breath. She glances back over at him, reaches over and yanks his cig out of his mouth before using her labored breathing to take a deep puff of it. She rests the back of her head on the headrest continuing to smoke. The Night City Synthwave playing on the radio has the volume lowered creating a calming atmosphere in the car.
"Shard?" Brian asks in a dead tone.
Marilyn produces the shard from her jeans pocket, looking at it with longing curiosity; Brian quietly observes. She goes to slot the shard before having her forearm quickly grabbed, the speed of the grab makes a skin slapping noise that startles her.
"Klep...the shard. Not slot it." Brian says as he calmy takes the shard out of her hand before holding it up in front her. He continues.
"This is corpo trash Mare...the less we know about it, the better. You can use your imagination to discern what's on it...and i'm sure it'd be pretty spot on...Some corpo gonk trying to get a taste of the NC night life...probably got a bit too comfortable and started opening his mouth...or has an aquired taste for something he'd rather no one know about.."
Marilyn, taking another drag of the cig then promptly responds. "A corpo this sloppy...couldn't we see whats on it and like...use it to our advantage or something..? Maybe get some extra eds out of him..? Or a favor...?"
Brian looks over at Marilyn with a proud smile. "Easy tiger...this guys a low level corporat...wouldn't have much worth extracting...But yes. you're right."
He pauses before raising his eyebrows and titlting his head to the side. "Already using your discretion to look for potentially unseen opportunities to be siezed...I'm not creating a monster am i...?"
Marilyn looks at Brian and grins before looking forward again and puffing the smoke. Brian continues.
"And The Moxes that had it...?"
Marilyn looks back at Brian with a now serious expression, almost forgetting that part of the job.
"Oh, uh...they love me. She chuckles. Initiation for me is 'sometime in the near future' she said."
"Good..." Brian responds before promptly starting the car.
Marilyn sits up in her seat. "So where we going..? Off to the rat?"
"Off to the gym." Brian responds. "If we take longer...he'll think the job was harder."
The pair look at each other at the same time "Extra Eddies!" they both exclaim in sync as they laugh together while driving away.