"To Kill A Runner " Chapter Three "The Plan" (Cyberpunk Fiction)

The humid darkness caused sheen of the street lights to reflect off of the asphalt road. From street light to bug covered street light the two trudged through, keeping a quick pace until they both thought they where far enough from the burrow that they wouldn't be spotted by anyone that may be looking for them, slipping down an ally to find a vagrant camp they could occupy for the rest of the night. A highway underpass an access tunnel area Jarome didn't care as long as they where away from the Triads and Adam's bullshit.

"He was the worst fixer I ever worked for, you know? " Jarome scoffed at the thought passing his half smoked cigarette to Britney and then coughing hard. "I mean what kind of a fixer asks me for food... and sure he found me guns but never anything good. This glock has to be fifty years old or more. He never had anything new for sale, just these rusty old lone star piles. I want something with a little more speed and power. We could really start making moves against Kami and Zack."

"We will get our chance to bring those chip heads in, but what we should be asking ourselves is are we that noble ?"

Britney crouched by a pile of broken wet pallets and shut her Drone off.

"I don't know... I want to see peace but sometimes i wish someone should put a hole in there heads."

"Would you be the one to pull that trigger ?"

Jarome seemed to think about that question for a few moments. Trying to justify a homicide. "I don't know yet, If I thought about what I wanted, No ... but if I take in to account all those plugged in zombies with fried frontal lobes, well then yes ... I would kill them and never feel bad about it."

"You know that would not stop the BTLs, right ?" Britney dragged the cigarette into her lungs as she looked up and down the graffiti sprawled underpass slope for other people. "They have Better Than Life processing labs down in New York City. Someone pays the CEO to upload his consciousness to a computer, they extract the emotional, visual, and auditory parts of that memory and digitize it, and then copy it to a disk. That's how broke ass Adam finds himself as a the CEO banging all those Taiwanese prostitutes in his dreams."

Jarome laughs and rested his hands into his black hoodie pockets and concealed his fire arm belted in front of his pelvis. Far off sirens rang out in the city streets.

"I will start making phone calls for new jobs in the morning, but right now I think I should just jail break these phones you brought me," Britney pulled her laptop and started booting up again. "We will still go to Maj in the morning and sell the lot of them.. then maybe we can get you some cybernetic upgrades from a street doc i know. he has lots of different body ballistic plates for surgical implant. Then the bigger jobs will come in ... I promise."

Those are several thousand dollar operations Jarome thought to himself. She was right though no one wanted to hire a couple of pure organic runners. Humans where obsolete.

"Hey ... Jarome Lets go and get some soy coffee from one of those retro style diners, there is one right around that has a free old turn table jukebox. Those things are protozoic," she said cracking a smile, "We can just buy soy cafe and i can reboot all these phones in a dry place. We will loiter for hours in the booth like we did when we where kids," she said, abruptly shutting down her laptop again. "Come on, it will be fun"

"Alright sounds good to me as long as you got me, I'm down to no credit at all"

Britney pulled a universal funds card from her bag and then said with a smile "Don't thank me, thank Mr. Paul R. Strussburg, social security number 002-95-2571..."

"Alright, just keep the technicalities of those fraud credit cards to yourself." Jarome smirked again and began to lead. A short walk to the old metal chrome dinner with a florescent sign over head that read "Hunter's Old Fashioned Diner".