[open] A LITTLE GLASS VIAL

[proton]

It's a typical day in this city, dirty and dark and disgusting. He had a name once; now it's just Grave Robber, or Proton if they want to get technical. Like most of them, he's not quite clean, and it's easiest to keep his face covered. Some do it with make-up. Others with masks. Proton chose a Plague Doctor mask, keeping his identity far away from the public.

Beneath the wide hat and the mask, it's almost impossible to tell who he'd be if you saw him on the street. His long coat mocks a Lux Corp Gentern, with lines of zydrate vials lining the inside. He glances around the dirty little hole-in-the-wall, right outside the graveyard. It's a usual haunt for addicts and robbers alike.

Of course they put their dirty little decorations everywhere. It's a dance hall, or a parody of one. Most people are too strung out to do much, but some dealers preferred to get up close and personal. Sometimes Proton did as well. So long as the beaked mask stayed on, so long as he remained anonymous, and could keep his life somewhat normal, he wouldn't care.

It's how he fed himself. And his job wasn't too bad.

Quick.
Clean.
Pure.
The zydrate dealer code.

[lamarck]

The tacky décor makes the place look like a dance hall, but Devin walks past it with purpose. She’s here for a different sort of dance. The coke was finished three day ago after her shoot, the x during the after party. She’s not sure if she’s still drunk, or if she’s hung over, or some ungodly combination. Even alcohol has taken a backseat, dim and distant compared to the overwhelming, full-body sensation of Zydrate. She’s gone only 6 hours without it, so there’s no sweating, no shakes, but the craving never goes away.

And she has money. The shoot left her with a small pile of cash, which has been burning a hole through her pocket. Rent’s paid up through the end of next month- never let it be said a junkie can’t plan ahead- and food….

Her stomach’s growling, and it’s not too late to turn back. There’s a 7-11 right down the street, a McDewgong’s two doors past it, a nice thai place across the street. There’s an all night supermarket, where she could go pick up a few cartons of ice cream, a bag of chips, a few liters of soda….

She runs a hand across the neat little line of pinpricks, needlesticks, along her arm and down her side. So easily covered in photoshop, so inconsequential, but they feel- when she touches them, the rough texture is far more jarring than such tiny specks have the right to be.

And there he is, the man with her next high. She walks straight over to him, without a single wobble despite the height of her platform heels. Usually she’s taken to wearing kitten heels- easier to stagger home in- but today she’s coming straight from a go-see, an attempt to get her next gig. The shirt-dress she’s clothed in is colored in golds and yellows that are surreal, glittering and shiny and just loose enough to flow nicely over the plain black leggings she threw on. There’s a few dealers she buys from regularly, a few dealers lurking around this little shithole, but she prefers to buy from the green haired man, despite the creepy mask. He doesn’t ogle. The others do. And it’s like a reminder, a reminder that one day the messy crumpled lumps of cash she pulls from her pocket or her wristlet will no longer be enough. It’s as inevitable in the drug trade as it is in the model business that you will one day be met with a situation that money can’t fix, but she doesn’t appreciate the reminder, the foreshadowing.

She never talks first. She just hauls herself in front of him and waits.