Chapter 16

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Victoria’s deep, modulated voice filled the Toyota Camry. She was covered, head to toe, in her new black armor, making her almost impossible to see. The blinking display on her dashboard read 10:84 pm…because part of it was broken. They had to wait until their dad was soundly asleep before they could creep out of the house.

At first, she didn’t want to let Amy or Tiff come along.

But Amy was adamant that Victoria wouldn’t understand all the key phrases and lingo to get them into the joint, even after she gave Victoria directions to the storefront. As for Tiff, she refused to let her sisters go alone on some insane tangent cooked up from Amy’s crazy brain. Somebody needed to be the voice of reason. And, technically…it was her Class they were shopping for.

So it was, then, that she found herself wrapped up in one of Victoria’s old jackets with the hood pulled up while Amy had a black handkerchief with a skull printed on it wrapped around the lower part of her face.

“I can’t believe you have a transformation sequence,” Amy pouted fiercely. She had watched Victoria put on her armor and nearly melted with jealousy. “I can’t believe you were keeping this from me! That’s so cool! You’re the worst sisters ever.”

“I could drop you off at home.”

“You misheard. You’re the best sister in the world, no question.”

Victoria drove them through several sketchy streets, following Amy’s less-than-optimal directions. They took a wrong turn once, and Amy almost had them going the wrong direction down a one-way road, but after 25 minutes, Victoria pulled into a large parking lot with a closed grocery store, a 24-hour urgent care with a line spilling out of the door, and a row of small businesses with heavy shutters pulled down to lock their doors. One of the closed businesses still had its lights on inside, though the windows were mostly obscured by posters of video games released months ago and a flashy promo for an SLR camera with a huge price tag that was dramatically slashed in half, boldly declaring it 50% off!

Somebody had graffitied several more zeroes over the ad, making it look like it was 50000% off, but instead of peeling off the sticker or chipping away the paint, another note was tacked on inside the window in handwritten font, declaring the offer invalid.

“This is the place?” Tiff asked.

The question was a little redundant, since Amy had just directed Victoria into a parking spot directly in front of the shop, and the flickering sign above the business read: Phish and hips.

“Okay, so it’s a little dodgy,” Amy admitted.

“Your face is a little dodgy,” Victoria mused.

“But it’s closed,” Tiff sighed, ignoring how Amy was attempting to pummel Victoria’s arm.

Like most of the other shops on the strip, there were heavy iron shutters drawn down over the storefront. The exception was a gap for the two front doors, which had an accordion-style lattice stretched across it. Amy, undeterred, unbuckled her belt and motioned forward.

“Don’t worry about it! Come on!”

“Wait,” Victoria sighed. She grabbed Amy’s shoulder and pushed her back down into the seat and got out herself. Victoria walked around the car, made a show of obviously looking left and right down the deserted parking lot, and motioned for Amy to step out.

“Do. Not. Move,” Victoria told Amy firmly, and thankfully, the girl obeyed. Victoria moved to the rear passenger door and opened it up for Tiff. She didn’t feel the need to warn Tiff about running away, but then again, Tiff wasn’t that impulsive. The silhouettes inside the store subtly shuffled as Victoria herded her sisters to the barred entrance, and by the time they reached the door, a figure was already standing behind it.

“Operating hours are 9 am to 7 pm,” a man’s voice said. It was somewhat muffled, but Tiff assumed that was because he was talking through a set of closed glass doors. But then again, something else could have been at play, because those glass doors weren’t frosted, and yet Tiff couldn’t make out a lot of the man’s features. It really was like he was a dark shadow hidden behind a screen.

“Technology doesn’t sleep!” Amy said brazenly, squatting down to yell through the mail slot. Victoria sighed and pulled Amy up, nearly yanking her off the floor, but the man didn’t seem perturbed at all. Instead, he nodded as if he’d just heard part of a passcode.

“Buy, sell, or trade?” He asked.

“We’re looking to buy,” Amy said. “We need some special goods.”

The man’s shadow shifted from Amy and it became clear he was focused on Victoria.

“Cowl or scowl?”

Tiff was confused at the question, but Victoria did not share the sentiment.

“Neither,” her modulated voice oozed confidence. “I’m a Merc. These are my employers.”

“Weapons?” The guy demanded.

“You’re looking at ‘em,” Victoria smirked, raising her arm and flexing a bicep. The shadow of the man stood still for several moments before he eventually nodded.

“Step back,” he said.

The girls all did so as he worked a lock on the other side. Tiff listened to a key turn, a bolt slide, and a chain jingle as it got unhooked. For a simple pair of doors, there was a lot of security. In fact, she didn’t understand why they had to undo so many catches when one of the doors wasn’t even usable. The left door, besides being covered completely in a window cling featuring an advertisement for a particular brand of graphics cards, had a large white printout taped to it that read: USE OTHER DOOR. It had a bold black arrow pointing to the right, where clearly customers were supposed to step through.

And yet, it was the theoretically broken side that opened up.

Tiff paused as it swung open, because none of the yellow light from inside the closed shop spilled out into the parking lot.

“Hurry up,” the man’s gruff voice grunted. “Time is money, don’t keep the boss waiting.”

Victoria grabbed each of her sisters and pulled them close behind her before fearlessly stepping into the darkness. Once all three were in, the door closed behind them with a snap and they found themselves standing in a small booth. A purple UV light flicked on and quickly scanned them from head to toe.

“What was that?” Amy asked, more intrigued than frightened.

“Security scan,” a new voice called out as the rear door to the booth opened. “While I’d love to take people at their word, this world isn’t so simple. You can’t fault a guy for being cautious.”

“So long as that’s all it is,” Victoria said, stepping in first. Tiff and Amy quickly followed suit, and she wasn’t too surprised to find a somewhat thin man wearing jeans and a collared shirt sitting on a stool next to a workbench. This part of the room wasn’t the same as the showroom floor they’d seen through the windows. She didn’t know how they did it, but they appeared to be in a workshop.

The man himself stood, walked up to them…and frowned. He wasn’t short by any means, but Tiff watched his chin continue to tilt as he stared up at Victoria. Tiff watched his eyes compulsively slide over to his two bodyguards, or at least that’s what Tiff thought of now that she got a better look at the two silhouettes she’d seen through the windows. They were big, beefy dudes, like linebackers on a football team. And yet, Victoria was a couple of inches taller than both of them, and her suit’s definition showed off every one of her muscles.

“Don’t start nothin’, won’t get nothin’,” Victoria said, likely knowing what he was thinking. She crossed her arms and nudged Amy forward with her hip. “It’s all you, Short Round.”

Amy bristled. She whirled around and hissed at her sister, but after puffing up and glaring for several seconds, she deflated.

“Whatever,” she swatted a tuft of red hair out of her face. “Mister, are you Haxus?” she asked.

“I am,” the dude in the collared shirt said with a raised brow. “Pleased to meet you…Short Round. And you are…?” He asked leadingly, glancing up at Victoria.

“Irrelevant,” Victoria scoffed.

“Charming,” he grimaced. “Business it is then. You say you’re buying. I’m selling. What do you need? We’ve got chips, we’ve got cards, we’ve got processors…accessories, you name it, I’ve got it. Want it? I can get it. So let’s find out what fits and make a deal.”

“We need computer parts,” Amy began, but before she could continue, Haxus slid back over to his stool and started typing away at a wireless keyboard. Tiff couldn’t see any computers around, so she wondered how he knew what he was doing…let alone what for.

“You’re in the right place,” Haxus smirked. A pair of small drones whirred to life from the workbench and zoomed across the room, hovering to match altitudes before locking themselves in place. Through technology Tiff could never understand, they projected a light screen, much like a System window, only without the System’s help. And where the System might display stats or quests, this display was chock-full of merchandise. The longer Tiff looked at it, the less it looked like a System window, and more like an eBay or Amazon page. The only problem was that she had very little experience with either of those, too.

“Graphics cards? RAM? Motherboards? Processors? Cooling? You want cooling? My man, it’s September in Los Angeles, and it isn’t getting any colder. You want AIO cooling to chill your rig? We’ve got a new Free-zor 4500 with a 360mm radiator and a triple-fan array. You got a Core i9? This baby will keep it chilled at a smooth 600rpm….”

Tiff was lost. More lost than when Victoria drove her to the Adventurers’ Union, taking the screwiest path possible…because she was standing in the same room that she entered before the man started talking and she hadn’t moved!

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Amy, on the other hand, was slowly raising her hands in a “gimme” motion and might have started drooling.

“Shorty,” Victoria grumbled, drawing Amy back to reality.

“Not interested in cooling?” The man quickly shifted tracks. “How ‘bout cards? You do any mining? There’s a new ‘coin’ cropping up every week these days; you want to get ahead, I’ve got access to cards that haven’t even hit the market yet. Making investments? You got a line tapped into the Market? We can help you become discreet. We’ve got promotions on deflection too. Judging from your…colorful attire, I take it you aren’t looking to draw attention.”

Haxus talked a mile a minute, offering more promotions than a mobile app gatcha game. Amy vouched for this guy, saying she’d read his blog, but Tiff was starting to question her sister’s taste in literature. Tiff had no problem imagining this guy writing up tech articles…every 5 minutes of the day, by the sounds of things. Tiff had no idea whether he knew his stuff or not, because she was so tech-illiterate. After hearing about system specifications and product numbers that kept adding more and more zeroes, she was getting annoyed. Truly not knowing any better, she wondered if this guy was one of those fabled door-to-door salesmen people used to talk about back in the day. After catching a promo that promised financing and low monthly payments, she had enough.

​

“Is he trying to swindle me?” Tiff muttered to herself.

​

Though she didn’t mean those words for anybody else, the entire room froze. Haxus, the two bodyguards, Amy and Victoria…they all stopped immediately. Whatever they were doing- hand motions, scratching an itch, subtly shifting their weight around to inch toward a concealed weapon…none of it mattered. It wasn’t that they were completely unable to move a muscle, but they were immobilized by fear.

The room didn’t actually freeze, but chills ran up everybody’s spine, even Victoria in her armored suit, and the room felt like it had been plunged into ice. Every head slowly turned toward her, chests rising heavily through labored breath. Tiff tilted her head curiously, unsure of why everyone had reacted and why they were all staring at her. Fortunately, Victoria was an exceptionally quick thinker.

“Don’t worry, boss, I’m on it,” she said, raising her hand to her neck and cracking it dramatically. She turned toward Haxus, flexing her fingers and popping them slowly, one by one as she made a fist.

“Mr. Haxus,” she began, her deep voice coming out grating and threatening. “As you can see, my employer is generous, but her patience is not unending. I suggest you do not waste her time.”

“Ah nah,” one of the bodyguards said, throwing up his hands. “I ain’t playin’ with no cape. Hax, we should bounce. Hit the button and get out while we still got an out.”

“What…was that?” Haxorus muttered.

“You ever felt aura before, Hax?” The other guard asked grimly. While before he was posturing and trying to look threatening without actually doing anything, now he quickly slipped his hands into his pockets and brought them back out, fitted with brass knuckles.

“You like having hands, son?” Victoria leaned forward. She didn’t even take a step, but all three of the men trembled. “Then I’d suggest putting those away.”

The man could have been anywhere in his 30s or 40s. Tiff wasn’t the greatest estimate of age. But he was big, buff, and had a tattoo on his shoulder that suggested he’d been in the military. And yet, he cowered under Victoria’s presence. Props to him; he didn’t back down, even if he did grow a shade or two paler. Several tense moments passed…before Haxus gulped nervously and nodded to his men.

“Look, ah, lady. Lady? You’re a lady, right?” He asked Victoria nervously, who only barked out a single, harsh laugh.