Work Text:
I lean as far as I can across the bathroom counter to stare at the little details of my face, holding onto the towel rack with one hand and smoothing my pajama shirt against my chest with the other to keep it off of the damp sink surface.
I don't look in the mirror often, I reason, so I really should try to notice all the details. The little sun spots on my cheek are darker than I remember them being and the little bumps under my eyes have multiplied. I run my fingers lightly across my cheekbone and then feel the old scar on the outer corner of my left eye. It's less raised than it was before and barely visible. I feel a sudden sense of melancholy wash up from my stomach and catch deep inside my throat, feeling that all the parts of me that made me more than a lesser copy of my mother would all fade away. I'd be a husk, like a stamp from an empty town on a forgotten piece of mail.
I rub a small dollop of concealer beneath my eyes and on the dark freckle on the underside of my chin. As I lift my chin to catch the light, I see a little bump on the inside lip of my jawbone. With my free hand, I try to feel around it, sense its shape. It's a hard protrusion like a spinous process poking through the thin skin and fat of my jaw. I have a vague memory of bone spurs in my family history, but I don't think bone spurs happened on the skull. And weren't those supposed to be sharp or painful?
There's a pharmacist near Kabuki that gives free medical advice sometimes. I remember, he was a medic in the corporate war before last, god knows which side, and he'd diagnosed my roommate's cyber-arm rejection before it became a ten thousand Eurodollar surgery. I could go... next Wednesday? I have the day off, but I was still on call to cover shifts at the BD Rental Centre.
I put on my work uniform, try to flatten the stubborn frizz at the front of my scalp and leave the apartment.
The sky is still a hazy grey-blue and the cramped features of the megabuilding and its 2040s lighting do nothing to brighten my way. The newscast in the elevator is reporting on banal euro celebrity drama, but I watch Ziggy what's-his-face quibble about hyper-divorce and cross county cyberflirting anyway. Apparently, everything is more sensual in Europe.. and for those of European descent. I'm not 100% sure what that was supposed to imply for the rest of us.
Mei Cheung, my second or third cousin, mans the noodle stall right outside of the building's entrance. She's older than me by a few years and prettier by several degrees. She is kneeling down in front of her century old stove as I pass by, and I can see even from a distance her stubborn frustration with it. When she notices me, she straightens up and waves.
"Lan...." she says as she pulls herself up with the counter, "I'm working all day in the summer heat while you sit inside and eat tomato sandwiches with corpos."
"I serve tomato sandwiches to corpos, once a year when they're in season," I reply. Her hair is curled today, “I can't afford a sandwich with tomato in it."
Mei's green eyes lit up blue as she transferred 30 eddies into my account, "Come back after your shift, I have gossip."
30 Eurodollars is, of course, not enough for the famous and dubiously seasonal Hometown Deli tomato sandwich, but it's enough for half with my employee discount, something Mei had clearly done the math for already.
I throw Mei a heart with my thumb and index finger and jog past her stall to catch the small crowd crossing the street towards the NCART elevator on the street corner.
Though the streets in front of megabuilding H10 are mostly empty of cars, the train car is already full of people getting to work. The constant rattling of the train car against the rail makes the loud shuffling of feet and clothes even louder and more disorienting. I put my fingers up against my neck port, my daily, twice daily, ritual to make sure the duct tape over my shards was where I'd put it that morning. It wasn't like anyone was going to take them anyway, not before dawn or right out of little China. The only chip in my port today is a pulpy romance novel about a woman falling in love with a rogue ai. But it's banned in Night City. I had to pay a dealer to get it for me, so the duct tape is worth its weight in oil.
There'd been a cyberpsycho attack in the Alexander street station. I guess the bodies are still there, because all the passengers are made to divide into single file lines and be escorted to the exit or the A line platform. I follow the flow of traffic with my head down. MaxTec aren't like cops, they don't do arrests or unlawful searches, but they use their rifles to prod and many eyed helmets to leer. And it's not a secret not all cyberpsychos were that way before MaxTec got there.
On the next train, a band of four men in Halloween costumes play pseudo-heavy tango scop, so I turn up the radio in my internal and try to focus on my romance novel. The AI is finally realizing his feelings for the main character, but lashes out because he only knew violence on the other side of the Blackwall.
I finally get out of the low NCART station and start reciting my to-do list. Vino, that chain-smoking drunken excuse of a line cook, worked yesterday, so I need to check the bathroom for junk and make sure there's enough cauliflower garnish prepped. I also need to chop dragon fruit leather and, probably, switch out the Broseph Keg.
On the covered stair case leading to reconciliation park, some 'tino gangoons smoke, drink, and shout as pedestrians walk by. When one wolf-whistles and calls my ass "smoking hot", I remember I need to rinse the last shipment of hot sauce packets, since they always come out of the box sticky.
Once in Reconciliation, I look down and follow the paths straight down the middle, trying to not to step on any drunks or homeless, but, as always, there are a few sprawled across the pathway writhing in drug induced stupor, and I leap over them carefully.
Sizzle words: real, import, tomato, crunch, chic, Hollywood. It'll sell best with the lunch crowd, it being a sandwich and the upper class is obsessed with eating the right foods at the right meal times. Last week, the floor manager gave me the note that I needed to behave more “exclusively”, so I also needed to be smug about the drink menu.
Another 'tino gangoon is sitting on the steps right up to the strip mall where the restaurant is and he says something at me as I pass, but I can't hear a thing with my radio turned up so high from the train.
I knock on the front door of Hometown Deli, and Javier, the sous chef, unlocks the door for me. His eyes are red and his lips are cracked and bleeding. On his forearms, where I could clearly remember were tattoos dedicated to his wife and kids, he has brand new synth skin, a little too red for his complexion and completely blank. I smile, thank him for letting me in, and don't mention his appearance.
The early lunch crowd is about 50/50 food order and drink orders. Maybe a third of those food orders for the tomato sandwich. As always, I'm the server with the highest PPA (per person average), and though most of those eddies are expensive liquor, I'm doing well with the special too. The sizzle words crunch, chic, bread, nostalgia and tomato are giving good outcomes. The word Hollywood made some of the men look at my breasts, so there's probably some Hollywood related xBD going around those corpo circles. I make mental notes of all of them. When I have a free moment around 9:54am, I do the math on my tips and am very happy to see a solid 8% average. Then, I sweep under the vending machine where the tipsy corpos always drop candy wrappers and cigarette buds. Soon after, three customers come in looking for whatever was the special and 'your most expensive wine', so I give them three tomato sandwiches and a bottle of vintage Parisian chardonnay. I charge double for the wine and they leave a paltry 2.4% tip.
I go back to my station at the bar and look for something to do. And then she walks in.
She’s wearing stained construction site cargo pants and a white cropped bodice tank with a comically fortified leather jacket. Her tattoos peak out from her waistline and the cuffs of her jacket and there’s a bulge on the side of her hip that has to be a submachine gun. She has multicolored short hair, a pigment style I'd seen an ad for that morning. It’s brand new. Her hair is parted down the middle and tucked behind her ears.
Her small piercing eyes sweep the room in an alien manner. I try to busy myself, cleaning a glass or wiping the counter top, but I can’t help but to steal glances at her, can’t help but to notice her expensive Kiroshis, the kind no civilian has the scratch or occasion for. As she casually strolls into the building, her gaze washes across the dining room and lands behind me -- through me -- as she studies the kitchen from the window behind the bar.
Looking at her is like staring into a disco ball of terror, throwing the scent of danger in every direction. I close my eyes, just momentarily, and try to recall what I'd been doing before she'd walked in.
I find a table to bus on the right side of the dining room but once I get back to the bar, there she is. She’s still only half looking at me, still keeping an eye on the kitchen.
"What kind of wines do you have?" There’s an odd casualness injected into her city center accent.
"If I list them all out, will their names tell you anything?" I grimace internally as soon as I say it.
“Maybe I don’t drink champaradis every day, but chateau delan is all the rage back at Arasaka,” she counter, then watches my reaction. “They teach you to disrespect your customers here?”
I gulp, “Well, er, yes, ma’am, some believe it’s part of the dining experience.”
The merc laughs and flashes her straight white teeth in a wide smile, “well, yes I suppose so. Can I just get a… Centzon Tetochtin and a sandwich? You have sandwiches here?”
I try to regain my composure. "Of course, actually our special this week is more than a sandwich.” I can’t believe my ability to stay on script. “It's a succulent and crunchy dish of warm nostalgic sourdough bread slices smeared with eggy mayonnaise and real tomato slices. It has a Hollywood-"
"So, like, a tomato sandwich?"
"The tomatoes are imported from a chic small batch vineyard in Italy."
"So how much for the sandwich?"
"120 eddies and another 77 for the Centzon"
She transferrs the money to me. I can see the intricacies of her irises as they glowed and wondered if they were custom made after her organic eyes. That’sthe sort of thing rich arasaka types did.
With disturbing amiability, she sits down in one of the high bar stools and wait for me to pour her drink. After I've done so, and served a few customers, she smiles and waves me over to her.
"I'm V," she says flashing her pearly whites again, "I was wondering if an old friend of mine was here today-- Vino?"
An old friend? East coast Italian Vino? Sous chef who faked a chicano accent to sound tough Vino? Always borrowing money from the chef to spend on Jig Jig street Vino?
"Sorry I don't think anyone named that is here today"
V look down at her drink and smiles, "Ah... worth a shot, haven't seen him in years," She looks at my name tag, "Thanks... Laura."
To her credit, V is a good liar, and her target probably does have it coming.
When I give her the special, she nods, thanks me, and doesn’t bring up Vino again. She clearly knows that I’m lying by omission.
On my fifteen minute break, I go into the storage room to dig cigarettes out of my emergency raincoat. When there aren’t any, I grab my lighter anyway with the hope I can bum one off someone in the park.
It’s just after 1pm and the park is full of people of all kinds. Maybe today isa Buddhist holiday, ‘cause the place is teeming with those orange robed monks. I follow the garden path across the way and hugg the edges of the clearing when I get near the gazebo, where some gangbangers are drinking and yelling. There’s a civvie woman with them as well, maybe a joytoy. She’s dancing and the jingling of her sequined skirt echoes through the trees.
I keep my head down as I walk past, and collide suddenly with someone's large arm.
"Here to bum a cig? or just eavedropping?" Vino is leaning against the half height wall and watching the woman dance. He’s out of his work clothes, instead wearing a garish pink kitschy jumpsuit, and holds a lit morley between his fingers.
"I'm just going for a walk." I lie unconvincingly.
The cook-- the doomed cook-- pulls out his carton of Morley Fusions and offers one to me.
"No serious man, I'm just walking"
He raises his brow.
I take the cigarette and use my own lighter to light it. I can’t think of any excuse not to and apparently I’m less willing to go a day without smoking than to take it from a dead man.
Vino smiles at me in a half contented, half amused expression. He takes another drag and tucks his greasy black hair behind his ear.
On the other side of the gazebo (where the girl is having her clothes tugged at by the gangoons), there’s a small pointy chinned man walking towards us. He has a duffel bag in one hand and repeatedly wipes his other hand onto his bright green skinny jeans.
Vino smiles, he notices the man too, "Gotta go princess, that's my cue." and he starts making his way over to the man.
I grab his arm before he can turn all the way away from me, trying to tell him to stop, but the words get stuck in my throat.
He turns back around with a smug grin, "Can I do anything for you?"
I frown and try to look stern, serious, "There was someone looking for you today, at Hometown, a merc. You need to get out of town, get your wife out of town."
Vino chuckles, "Don't worry, I got debts to pay but I'll be a rich man come tomorrow morning," He smiled, more smugly, then gently took my hand off of his arm and left a kiss on my fingers. His chapped, nearly bloody, lips leave little scratches on my skin.
"They'll kill you before then and take whatever goods you have for themselves." I tried to keep an even tone but I could tell from his expression that I was letting emotion bleed through.
"Here," Vino handed me the rest of his cigarettes, an almost full carton, "Tomorrow I'll be rich or dead, either way, you'll need 'em more than me."
"Vino, I'm serious."
"Finish smoking now princess, or you'll get back to work late."
I try to think of a clever comeback, but he walks away to meet his nervous friend before I can. They’re clearly co-conspirators and it has to be an extraordinary amount of money to settle all the debts I know Vino owed. From a distance, all they remind me of is scheming schoolboys. Just naive stupid boys.
Maybe Vino doesn’t want me to watch them talk, or they need to be somewhere quick. They scurry off into the distance and I’m left behind, still leaning against the little half wall and hoping the burning in my throat will give way to some euphoria, but no dice.
There aren’t any other shady characters for the latter half of my shift. The tips were better and I sell significantly more drinks than food. One corpo, a youngish guy with cropped hair like a soldier, talks my ear off about the probably classified work drama that'd brought him to the bottle. It’s a distraction from tasks I'd honestly rather been doing, but the noise is nice, the chatter. I try to give him some advice that isn’t completely gonk-brained, and he leaves a decent cash tip. Before I clock out at the end of the night, I use my stash of cash tips to buy a sandwich for Mei and I. I cut it into two neat triangles and wrap them both in the blue hometown deli branded wax paper.
The moon is starting to set and Fernanda the night bartender walks in, so I clock out and wish Javier a good night and swift recovery from whatever is up with his arms and leave.
I keep my head down as I walk through the park, avoiding any criminal elements, I suppose. There’s a homeless man perched in one of the little trees on my usual route and I decide to take a longer way back to the NCART station. There isa sort of childlike madness about him that made me think he might start throwing feces.
Mei has a customer at the noodle stand when I get back. She’d taken her hair out of the tight bun she’d had in the morning, and instead wore her long black hair in a low ponytail. I take one of the stools at the end of the glass counter and wait for her to be done talking to the customer, a Nigerian woman I recognize from one of the upper floors. Mei turns around, takes nigiri out of the fridge and a bottle of broseph out of the cooler and serves both to her. The woman takes the food and eats it without saying anything. Looking at her out of the corner of my eye, I realize she is listening to someone on a holocall.
Mei turns to me now and props her chin up with her elbows on the counter, "You got the scratch to be sitting in that there seat?"
I dramatically produce half of the sandwich from the bag in my coat, "Officer, I'm sure we can figure something out."
Mei takes the sandwich half out of my hand and drops the bit, now inspecting the sandwich, as if to check if it’s what she'd asked for, "Anything interesting happen in The Glen?"
"No, not really," I say, ignoring the obvious events that need not be shared, "oh, there was a cyberpsycho attack on the alexander street station... before I got there, I was escorted to my platform by MaxTac."
"Ugh," Mei frowns then sighs, "I don't understand how anyone can put chrome in their body with how much it messes you up."
I cock my head in confusion, "You do have chrome in your body."
"Yeah but it's medical, I mean turbo penises and rocket launcher arms."
"Nasal filters and neural links still carry a small of cyberpsychosis, or they like, contribute to the prevalence," I’m repeating something I've read, "Someone people weigh the risk and decide it's worth it, or it's not even a choice, lots of those psychos are vets."
Mei shrugs. She puts the sandwich down on the counter and turns away to clean the stove a bit, "I'm gonna be on the clock for a few more minutes," she says, turning only her face to talk to me, "Eric is running late, something with the toddlers."
Fifteen or so minutes later, most of which I spent listening to a radio broadcast of *Info Flash* Eric shows up and relieved Mei of her post. She disconnects her neural link from the drawer, gives a short list of what I think is inventory items to Eric in Mandarin , then shuffles past him out of the booth so Eric cantake over.
She swings around the side of the stand to where I'm sitting and grabs her sandwich from the counter. Because I want to smoke a cigarette and my legs hurt from work, we sit together on the big steps outside of H10. I keep my sandwich to eat later, but we talk and listen to the radio while she eats and I smoke.
A new song by the US cracks plays on the radio, which I think is decent, even though I don't care so much about lazrpop.
"It's a cover," Mei says during a lull in the song, "that's why it's got so many words in it."
It's not so much a joke as much as an observation, but I laugh anyway, "Who's it-" A torrent of gunshots rings out from across the street.
All at once, the people in the entryway of H10 react with screaming and scrambling. In the second before I'm able to move, I can see cops and Tyger Claws in a growing firefight. In a slow motion millisecond, I leap to my feet just as the people below Mei and I start charging past us, and I turn heel towards the building and grab Mei's arm behind me, trying to pull her up as well.
When I look back to see if she's running, I can see a flash of a Tyger Claw dashing towards the steps and shooting at the cops, drawing fire towards the crowd, before falling forward with a resounding thud that I felt in my chest as well as my head.
The tyger claws take advantage of the crowd and run closer to the Megabuilding. Maybe they think it will make the police stop shooting. But I think cops just like a bigger target. The cops, kneeling behind cars and even the noodle stand, spray bullets in our direction. I can hear shots all around-- inside the crowd from tyger claws, across the street from cops, and loud booms from above.
Mei and I run up the stairs together, and I have to release my iron grip on her arm so we're better able to weave through the dense panic. Once I get up to the top of the stairs, I realize Mei isn't next to me anymore and my senses flare as I turn to see her prone on the steps, close to being trampled by the constantly dashing gangsters. A spurting wound in her thigh turns her apron and pants red and black. There's an older guy beside me cowering from the noise and I have to push him so hard he falls so I can get back to Mei. When I do, I pull her up and we hobble together into the building's entryway with her arm slung over my shoulder.
The elevators have an automatic lock during active codes, so we have to follow the crowd up the dark and cramped stairways.
The current of people keeps us moving, in addition to a little bit of elbowing to get enough space for Mei, but once we've gotten to the second floor landing, Mei demands I let her sit. When I look down at the blood still coming out of her like a fountain, I relent, and I push the door open with most of my body weight and help her sit down against a wall out of the way of foot traffic. If we're going to get up to either of our apartments, or those of anyone we know, we have to stop the bleeding.
Mei's face had turned a ghastly white and the left side of her pants were completely red. The blood in the stairwell had been so thick that both our shoes are caked in blood like we'd dredged through mud and only then do I realize other civilians must have been shot, and suddenly the screams and pattering of feet around us grows sharper in my head.
I didn't have any clothes sturdy enough to use as a tourniquet, they'd just snap and stretch and stop nothing. I get Mei to push as hard as she can on her thigh, and because there are market stalls on this floor, I stand up and start looking around for a med kit in one of them.
The junk reseller right in front of us has nothing of use, not even as a tourniquet, so I go to the next booth looking for something.
I look past the techie booth and see *her* again. V.
She's wearing different clothes now. A red and black bulletproof vest over a long sleeved camo shirt and shiny black skinny jeans. She kneels on one of the awkward little balconies turned away from me and in her hands is an enormous tech rifle that I thought only existed on the eastern front and action BDs.
She shoots another time, making me clasp my ears again, then turns back towards me to reload the gun behind cover and when she looks up from her gun we make terrible eye contact. It's too far to really see her eyes, but I feel the weight of their powers all the same.
"I didn't see you, I don't know your face," I say reflexively. I can't imagine a worse fate than being in her crosshairs but once I shut my mouth I wish I'd said nothing at all, that my acknowledgement of her was danger itself, I could have played dumb, pretending I didn't see what was going on and who she was.
V looks past me, through me like she'd done before, and looks at Mei, who's moaning with pain far behind me. She rests her rifle on its side and reaches for the massive green duffel bag beside her, finally produces a red med kit from inside and slides it towards me on the ground.
It stops a meter away from me and I step away from it, "No," I say, "I'm sorry, I can't- I- I'll find another one."
Mei groans loudly, and I look over to see she'd seen everything too. She calls out to me in Cantonese, "*It doesn't matter, just take it Lan.*"
I turn back to V and feel guilty as a child, "We won't say anything, we don't-"
"You're bleeding too, chica," V says coolly.
I am. I thought the blood on my sleeve was Mei but it's mine. The blood trickles down my arm like a mountain stream, and upon seeing it, either from the stillness of the moment or the act of noticing it, my arm starts to throb in pain.
I bend down to take the med kit then turn tail back to Mei to use it. It's new, still in it's clear plastic wrap, and when I open it and take the air hypos inside to use on the both of us, I notice the combat stimulants inside. She'd given us military surplus supplies off the black market.
My chest feels hot and my fingers start to tingle, so the air hypo is working. It's working on Mei too and she looks ready to get up any minute. I use my own knife to cut away Mei's pants leg, then gag and choke back tears at the sight of the wound.
As I pull the tourniquet up to around her thigh, Mei lowers her voice to a whisper (though with the tech on V, I'm sure she still hears.), "Do you know her?"
I make a stern face, but the combination of the stress and airhypo makes it feel more obstinate, "I served her a tequila sunrise," I lie, "hardly constitutes an acquaintance."
Mei breathes in sharply as I tighten the strap around her thigh. She lets out a shaky exhale as I turn the stick and lock it in place. The small holo-screen on the tourniquet flashes the time -- 11:56 -- and the bleeding stops. The bullet is still in her leg, there is no exit wound, but there's nothing we can do except keep her from bleeding out on the disgusting concrete floor and becoming just another layer of grime. I use a long strip of gauze to wrap up her wound, and as I secure the velcro end to itself, Mei reaches over and pulls another long bandage to wrap up my arm.
The air hypos push our pain down to a dull ache in our stomachs, fingers, and toes. Mei still needs both my support and that of the wall to stand up, but we manage. The gunshots outside are still rattling away, so we still can't use elevators to get to the parking garage or leave through the pedestrian entrance. We’ve stood up without a plan, and as the pressure on her leg becomes too much, Mei drags us to a nearby chair to rest.
I leave Mei to rest again for a moment and look back at V. there's something terrifying about even looking in her direction, but it feels safer to look at her when she's not looking back, even if it's because she's looking down her sights to squish gangoons and pigs like ants.
I step closer to V, still at least ten paces away, "Please don't kill Vino." I say, not even trying to keep the fear from lacing my voice.
V turns back towards me, and reloads her gun. As she does, she looks right at me, "Sorry Lan, I don't have the scratch to make a promise like that, you know that."
Sure, I guess I do.
---
There's still no reason to go to our actual apartments, not still injured, not with a bullet in Mei's thigh. We have an uncle on the fourth floor who gives us beers on his couch and promises to drive us to the Med Center once the smoke clears. Like Mei, I'm not sure if/how he's related to us. but he'd known my mother and best of all he had no qualms buying cigarettes for his nieces and nephews.
I'm already smoking another cigarette and this time wondering if V would be okay. What was she doing shooting cops on the same day she'd been collecting a gambler's debt? Was it connected? Or maybe Vino is already dead and she was already on the clock for a new client. I turn on the TV, I don't want to think about it.
Our uncle gets a holo an hour and a half later that it's safe to leave. We take the elevator to the parking garage and squeeze into his orange Makigai MaiMai P126. It's tight, but he'd removed the seats long ago to make space for passengers.
The Med center ER is , unsurprisingly, populated with other residents of the H10 tower. Mei and I wait in the crowded and poorly lit waiting room together for about thirty minutes before a nurse comes by with a wheelchair to take Mei into surgery. I smoke my fourth cigarette of the day once she's gone.
By the time we're all back in H10, it's almost 5am. I have a pocket full of painkillers and I needed to get back to my apartment to shower and change to get back to work on time. When I finally get upstairs, my roommate is in the shower, so I buy a burrito to eat while I wait and the scop meat and beans inside turn my stomach into knots.
I take a cold shower as soon as my roommate clears out, then get dressed. The rest of the morning is a blur, and when I find myself standing in front of the locked door of Hometown Deli, I realize I'm nearly an hour early.
Yoshikazu, the chef, is there early as well, evidentally, and he lets me inside and tells me to sleep on the couch until it's time for me to clock in, "You look half dead," he tells me in his rhythmic japanese accent.
When I wake up to the alarm I set on my holo, my manager is standing over me with a concerned look on her face.
"Go home Laura, I'll find you a cover."
I wander into the park to find a bench out of the way, without someone sleeping on it. It isn't that I don't want to go home, I'm just not ready to brave the sidewalks and trains and crosswalks. There is an anachronistic peacefulness to reconciliation park and I try to let it wash over me.
I can't find an empty bench, so I sit on a wall in a dark corner of the park and watch a rat eat scop. It uses its little paws to scoop the mush out of the crumbled bag and nibble on it. I wonder if the rats know it's not proper food, if they know even the garbage is worse than it used to be.
And then I find a reason to turn around, but I don't remember what it is once I've done it. A hot pink sleeve peeks out from behind the bush. I step up to the raised mulch platform to see what it is, even though I don't want to know.
It's Vino. He's posed behind the tree here like he'd been hiding. His friend with the pointing chin and ugly jeans is here too, except his jaw has been ripped clean off. They'd been dead for hours, at least. The smell is something sweet and nauseating and it makes my eyes water. I stumble back to catch my breath, almost falling off the wall, and swallow my vomit before any of it contaminates the crime scene.
I call the emergency line, tell them I've found a body, yes I know one of them, no, I don't have an idea of who did it. They tell me to wait there, that I might need to give a statement on the record, that I should do an official identification of the bodies.
I sit down on the wall opposite their bodies and light up another one of Vino's morleys. It would take some time for the cops to arrive. As I take another drag, letting the burn cover up all the numbness from my stress, sleep deprivation, and pills, I mentally compare their bodies to those I'd seen online, to the kills that I'd seen all over TVs and holotexts.
They died around midnight.