'Smoke and Mirrors' Pt.1

Hi, this is the story I am currently working on, by which I mean a combination of slowly learning how to write, conducting research and trawling through old notes and resources I have gathered.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

'Smoke and Mirrors' Pt.1

Frantic cuts of old animé strobed on the walls of the club, each giant mecha or doe-eyed schoolgirl moving to match the syncopated rhythms thrumming through the mix the methed-out DJ was spinning.

The two Thai girls flanking the gun seller were cheap rentals from an agency and made no secret of the .22 pistols strapped to their thighs beneath their slinky Saigon cheongsams.

Domino ignored their glares and checked herself in the reflection from the gun seller's shades. She was the very picture of bedroom hacker chic, which was everything she wasn't; blue-green hair in a razored frenzy round her face, circuit board and component jewellery, mesh vest showing a purple bra under a dark blue leather duster with hot-pants and biker boots to match.

She stood motionless as one of the Thai twins passed a hand held scanner over her, searching for weapons. She could sense their eagerness, see in their eyes how badly they wanted her to be trouble. Both girls were still in their teens but had already developed the shakes symptomatic of bad nerve amping; they would move fast but without any real degree of control. Neither would even come close to posing a problem for her should the meeting turn sour.

The gun seller frowned momentarily as the girl with the scanner whispered something in his ear. Domino watched his fingers toy with a retrofit Samsung notebook nervously as he digested whatever information he had just received.

He gestured for Domino to sit down opposite him and produced a slim cigar from his jacket pocket. As Thai twin number two lit it for him, his eyes narrowed in almost theatrical suspicion.

“You surprise me,”

His speech carried a heavy east European accent which placed him as a post-Balkan Meltdown refugee.

“Do I?”

“Few people attend a meeting of this kind without... some protection,”

“If I was carrying that sort of protection, I probably wouldn't need to talk to you,”

“Indeed,”

His thin lipped smile told her he was satisfied with her answer. She sat perfectly still in her chair and watched the twins squirm from behind her shades. Both were clearly unhappy with her presence at their employer's table and were glaring at her with undisguised contempt.

“You have worked for the Enclave, no?”

His question was meant to throw her off balance. She knew enough about the hacker scene for it not to.

She shrugged nonchalantly and slid a Mild 7 from its pack.

“Maybe, maybe not. What's it say in there?”

She tapped his Samsung with a holo-lacquered nail. The gun seller fixed her with a stare as she lit her cigarette and then nodded, as if to say, okay, let's get on with it, lady...

“So... what can I do for you, my Japanese lovely?”

“Don't call me that, for a start.”

“Ah, but what should I call you?”

“Miko.”

He exhaled deeply, laboriously, twin curlicues of smoke forming and twisting there between them.

“Tell me what you need, Miko,”

“I need two small calibre pistols, a molyknife and a sawn-off twelve,”

She had tacked the sawn-off onto the order because it was a low rent, amateur hour sort of weapon. He took the bait and, taking her for small fry, quoted her double the current rate.

“Two hours, Miko. In two hours, meet me behind the Thirty-Seven Lotus Massage Parlour. Bring twelve hundred Nu-yen, cash, and make sure you come alone.”

He leant forward then, a shark-grin forming around the cigar.

“Appreciate it if you'd leave now; more business waiting for me, I'm told.”

She inclined her head in a sort of half-bow and stood up to leave.

“I'll be seeing you,” this aimed as much to the Thai twins as it was to their boss.

Leaving the club, rain slicking down her coat and the night crowd jostling around her, she stopped under a canopy lit with banks of fluorescents and a green neon dragon sign. There she spoke with an old Chinese woman wearing 77 Red Phoenix Tong colours and bought some of her bootlegged software sticks and a French knock-off circuit splicer. Keep the bedroom hacker alias running... She pocketed her purchases and fed herself into the flow of pedestrian traffic. She didn't need to check behind her to know that one of the doormen had followed her from the club.

Copyright © A. Flood 2010