Pirska-2, Chapter 1: The Bottom

Usually I only post the subscription things here, because otherwise you all know where to find the free stuff, but I will post this and ask a question along with it.
There are 2 more solid chapters and 1 iffy one of this already written, but I must do images.
Are you interested in seeing the chapters in their late draft stage without images, or would you rather wait?

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Under the soft illumination of the lamp, Hana could now see that she had been wildly mistaken.
There was no canopy, no tent, no net. A middle-aged woman's head was visible at the top of what was evidently a bed.
Meaning, that was all her? Hana gasped despite herself.
It's a woman under a blanket…

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Chapter 1

The fragrant mix of cheap perfume and industrial chemicals filled her nostrils as he cracked open the door.

Of course a strip club has a back room like this, shady dealings have to happen somewhere.

She was nervous. But whatever this stuff even was, if it was something new, then she needed it.
She’d scratch and claw her way out of this building if that's what it took.
If this stuff was the silver bullet, the one to dull the paralysing itch, to stop the crumbling fissures…

“Why couldn’t we do this outside? What's the problem? I’ve got the money, I only want one,” Hana said, stopping a few paces short, her eyes darting down the corridor at what she knew had to be an exit to the street.

Sure it was cold out there, it was always cold in Vladik.
But the whole group she’d found waiting for her in the alleyway were kitted out for it.
She could make out their heating coils, spots where the frost wouldn’t form, around their necks, a few arms.
Standard stuff, even nanotech can freeze up here.

Not the cold, don't be stupid. No one here is cold except me.

She would go in, she’d do it. But if something behind that door tore the fissure open any wider, then all bets were off.
At least the heavies with heat sources up their sleeves were gone.
Hana had the impression that were she to spiral in front of that group, she’d not wake from it.
And lately, a spiral was a serious possibility at all times.

“Relax darling, I’m your friend, I’ll even let you try before you buy. But… this is not something for a dark alleyway. We just had to feel you out, that was no place to do business” said the man, the harsh neon light reflecting off his shaved head and dark sunken eyes, lending little support to his claims of friendship.
With his cold gear off, Hana could see that while well out of his physical prime, the obligatory nanotechnology and even some muscle were on display.

Hana clenched her teeth. Old her, 2071 her, would have been too smart to come here.
She’d have used a proxy, or a dead drop, degrees of separation.
Anything but walk through the nondescript door of The Bottom.
But she couldn’t afford to remember any of that, not when one wrong thought would cascade into an avalanche of them.

—


The room was dimly lit save for a large monitor screen sat flush with the wall, the bright flashes of a music video exposing the room at 172 beats per minute.

“Over there is Candy, don’t worry about her, she probably can’t even hear you” said the man, as he gestured to a corner containing what *seemed* to be a bed with a canopy over it, or a mosquito net?
In the dim light, she’d not have guessed anyone was in there. The large indistinct form had struck her more as some manufacturing element that she didn’t want to know about.

Not paranoid. Not careful enough. There’s someone in there? Get this over with.

The man took one of the cheap plastic seats sitting around a card table and gestured that she do the same.
“Now, Pirska-2, I’m going to assume you’ve never had it? Since I don’t know you” he said, his cold stare boring right through the front of her skull, like it could see through to the damage inside.

Hana tried to calm herself down, breathe slowly, to not look like what she really was.
“I only just heard about it. Which surprised me, but here we are” she said shortly, cards remaining close to her chest.

“I don’t advertise, if that's what you're asking. It’s not for everybody. Alpha’s cheaper, people like it. Less work” said the man, matter of factly, as he slowly withdrew a cassette of vials from his pocket.

“I.. I don’t. Alpha doesn’t work for me” she said slowly, her strained mind more focused on observing every minute movement of the man's hand, if it went for another pocket she’d bolt.
Alpha made her worse, but that was likely already evident.

“You can relax. Here. Try one, if you like it, buy the other one. These things don’t matter to me, I’ve only got them because Candy needs it” he said, withdrawing one vial and placing it down on the table.

She looked at the vial, seeing a problem and kicking herself for not bringing the solution.

“Do you have a vape..” she said quietly. The words coming out of her mouth before she could muster the power to think about them.

“You don’t have a socket darling?” chuckled the man condescendingly.
“Someone like you. I’d never have believed it”.

Hana didn’t like the look in his eye. He had just won and she HAD just lost, though what they were playing for wasn’t clear.
That was more than she wanted to share, much more.
But the free trial was at arms length, fuck the risks. Double or nothing.

After wiping off a questionable looking vaporiser, she banged the whole vial without pause.

“Now, be patient, 10 minutes. Let’s go see Candy while we wait” said the man, his tone lightened, the indistinct haze of menace that surrounded him seemingly lifted, slightly.

Hana felt nothing yet. Her thoughts spun in a busy loop of checking the exit, watching the man and pushing any other thoughts back down.
Whatever this stuff was, it hadn’t dulled the buzzsaw in her mind yet.

“Candy” said the man softly, pushing the holobutton of a lamp which stood in the corner.

Hana’s busy loop of thoughts stopped in its tracks.

THAT was Candy?

Under the soft illumination of the lamp, Hana could now see that she had been wildly mistaken.
There was no canopy, no tent, no net. A middle-aged woman's head was visible at the top of what was evidently a bed.
Meaning, that was all her? Hana gasped despite herself.
It's a woman under a blanket…

2072, you think you’ve seen it all. But she’d never seen this.

Candy’s huge spherical breasts stood proud, protruding what must nearly be an arms length, straight up into the air.
They seemed to almost be immune to the effects of gravity, an illusion betrayed only by the deep indentations on the surface of the bed. Far from immunity, it seemed that Candy’s body experienced gravity in a very significant way.

An askew corner of the blanket revealed all, overstressed pale skin littered with a spiderweb of blue veins and stretch marks.
This was undoubtedly biological, not nanotech.

Candy stirred, struggling to open her eyes.
When she finally succeeded and tilted her head to face the source of the voices, one giant breast popped out from behind the blanket, locking its distorted, off-centre eye right with Hana’s.

“Hel…o” Candy croaked.
“Whatcha… more?” she continued slowly, looking at the unfamiliar face questioningly.
“Church day? Need … my coat”

This ‘Candy’ was off her rocker. Hana had lived poorly of late and knew what withdrawals looked like, though withdrawals from what, she wasn’t so sure.
Hana didn’t know what to think. She’d heard about what used to pass for ‘implants’ before the nanotech arrived and changed the world.
But those tits, christ. She’d met countless cashed up lowlives with enough hard and software crammed in their body to run a spaceport.
But she’d never seen tits like that. What were they for? Where does someone even buy them? Which corp makes something so pointless?
Hana spun through these questions, but couldn’t see how this woman fit into the world she knew, at all.

“Sorry Candy, our new friend here just wanted to meet you, you can go back to sleep if you want” said the man, turning the lamp back off.

As they returned to the card table, Hana’s mind expanded its frantic loop ever so slightly.
She considered the exit to the street, monitored the man for unexpected movements, tried to reason out what Candy was for, but most importantly she polled the time, counting down the remaining minutes until her ‘Pirska’ would lift off.
—



“Don’t ask, turned up that way. Wanted a job but she didn’t sell for shit” said the man jovially as he poured himself spirit from an unmarked bottle, like it was the most normal thing in the world. Perhaps exploitation of the desperate WAS normal for him.

“No socket either. Not a nano in her entire body as far as I can tell. Though you can’t get much out of her most days. Pff, church! When was the last time you saw a church open”.

“But she’s quite an anomaly. Her body obviously, blown up like a weather balloon, she can hardly walk. Not afraid of the surgery table that one” he chuckled, the menacing aura floating up behind him in a thick fog, illuminated at the same 172 beats per minute cadence.

“But then no socket? Very strange”.
“They were *giving* the sockets away for decades. Free nanotech. The wretches who camp in the market have sockets! Even the ones without shoes!” the man said, waving his glass vigorously.

“Now you turn up and ask for a vaporiser as well…” he said, the tone clearly suggesting it was time for her to explain.

I can't… answer that. Can’t think about it, Hana thought, holding the floodgate closed with every fibre of her strength.
She tightened her loop; watch the man, reach the exit. Now.

But the buzzsaw in the base of her brain had accelerated, her ears were ringing and her death grip on the table was all that kept her upright.
She was no longer in the sleazy back room of a strip club in Vladik.
She was in a void containing nothing but static, noise and pain.
But she’d been here before. Have to ride it out.

The void didn’t contain a card table, but she was seated.
It did contain the bottle, which she drank to the last drop.
She sprung up, wheeled around and faced the dark shape that should have been the man.

“I do have one!” she shouted.
“But it’s fucked. BECAUSE I’M FUCKED”.

Her hands closed around something solid. All she saw was static, but it was there. She swung it wildly at what used to be a wall, with all her malnourished might.

Brandishing a smaller piece of the static, Hana traced a slow semi circle, but she couldn’t see the dark shape any longer.

“Stay the FUCK away from me” she said.

Over soon.

In truth, it should have been over already.
The fissure inside her brain where her past had been burned out would never let her stay too long. Never long enough to get a grasp of it.
Something would push her in, some trigger. She’d get lost in here, any attempt to figure it out would lead only to more pain and more static, then she’d pass out.

It really should have ended by now though.
But I can still think? It hurts, who cares.

Discarding her appendage, Hana pulled her hair aside and put her finger to the scarred inoperational socket hidden beneath, feeling its outline, trying to remember what happened, fighting the crescendo of searing pain trying to put the inside of her brain on the outside.

Trying to remember why she was in the frozen shithole of Vladivostok, why she was an empty husk with a hole in her brain where her nanotech used to be.

The room was coming back into focus. The flashing light emanated from the TV, the smashed plastic chair with a leg embedded into the cheaply constructed interior wall.

This is new.. I’m awake. I remember holding the chair
Pirska… 

Hana felt her mind begin to slow back down to a pace she could control. She began to think, instead of just reacting.
There was no man, but there was the exit, ajar, unlocked. She could simply leave.

“Jesus, it actually works…” she said out loud, her eyes scanning the room with an understanding and clarity that had been absent for as long as she could remember.

Patting her pocket, she found her money was still there, though the second vial it was intended for was nowhere to be seen.

She heard a small rustle of fabric from the corner of the room, such a minute detail would never have penetrated her manic loop in normal circumstances.

Candy…