This is a story about meeting a woman. What else would it be? I met her in a bar on the side of the city where the scumsuckers duke it out for credits and blow, cliché right? These things usually are.It's 4am. I'm passing through the streets feeling like a drone hovering over a junkyard. I can't figure out what it is I'm looking for but I know that all it takes is a twitch of movement. Not that that ever happens, I just keep the tension so I'm ready for the one night I'll need it.

The roads mirror each other in every direction; a fractal of material progress. Each tower block is a monolith that exists as a testimony to our ability to produce and shape matter. The cold concrete is decorated with neon colours. These kaleidoscopic knives gut my senses and intensify the nausea I get when I realise I can still smell the street; a bitter excretion of copper and narcissism. Years have passed and I still haven't gotten used to it. Here I was thinking that us humans were adaptive. There are some that can cope with it. It's painted in their eyes, that small flicker of fluorescence strewn across the surface.  The ones who don't cope, look at the world like everyone around them is some scumbag wirehead tweaking for a fix. Hard to even get a chance to notice; people look away real quick. It's as if just looking at 'em is invading their space. Ain't like we have any space, not without a trademark and a forest worth of contracts.

So what am I doing? Curing my insomnia, that’s what. It’s become a nightly routine. I can’t lie still with my thoughts. I need to feel like I’m going somewhere, even if that somewhere is a shithole like Splicer street. In a place like this, I’ve got to keep a lookout for freaks with implants looking for an easy score. These types have been in and out the chop shops so much that they could pass in Shanghai for pig iron. I've seen augments of all kinds hanging from their shambling bodies.  All of it obtained completely legally, of course. These rats scatter when they see you carrying a piece. You'd think in all these back alleys they could scrape together a single pair of balls.

Another hour of sleepwalking and I'm in a bar. Can't remember the name, it was something like ‘The Tower’; I guess ambiguity is in vogue. Not many people about. The barman looked half dead, his hairline receded past his ears and his cheeks sagged like a bag full of medical waste. The place felt safe, but everywhere has a threat – a promise from those shadowy corners that you never quite manage to make eye contact with. The speakers played a thick synthesised drone muffling out the groans from the loners who washed up here.

Didn't take long before she came over. She was pretty, they all are until you look close. She had a tight leather jacket and a white crop top that showed the circuitry snaking about her midriff. Her hair was pink in a pixie cut and the marks around her eyes told me that she shared my sleepless nights. Of course, I knew what she was, the only time people pay attention is when they’re trying to sell me something and I’m fairly sure she wasn’t trying to pawn off health insurance. She sat down next to me.

“Not interested.”

“Sure about that?”

“Certain.”

She hesitates on her seat, looking over me.

“I don't see any mods on you, you're not some kind of religious nut are you?”

“They’re not worth the trouble, ain't a priest that taught me.”

“Everyone's got them now, there's nothing wrong with it.”

“I get enough metal in me when I drink tap water, no need for some cheap toy buzzing under my skin too.” I look down into my drink.

“Sooner or later you're going have to get something. Work dried up for me when the other girls got augmented.”

I look back at her eyes.

“You don't feel any of it any more, do you?”

“I stopped feeling it long before I got fixed up, sweetheart.”

“Don't you ever regret it?”

She laughs. “And risk dealing with Rot? Not a chance. It's all metal down there, no pain and certainly no kids. Not a chance I could feed another mouth.”

Rot was going round every nightclub back in my prime, chewing through any protection you put on, if you put it on. Once you got it, that was it, you were fucked. I'll spare you the details, just know there was nothing sexy about it. It was a virus that mutated, again and again, fuelled by the sheer weight of chemical degeneracy that bathed those tweaked up fuckers.

“You ever catch it?”

“No way man, I may be a whore, but I still get to tell the gross ones to fuck off.”

“I've not had the pleasure. When money gets tight my morals get loose.”

“What does that mean? “ 
“People come to me with problems, sometimes they just need to get a hold of something. Sometimes they need someone to stop messing.”

“I'm not stupid you know. You could just say you're in a gang. Think I haven't met your type before?”I let out an involuntary chuckle.“Gangsters work with people; I do my own thing. Like a contractor.”

“Get over yourself, you hurt people for money. Everyone does it these days. No need to get all mysterious about it.”

She was right, and it felt strange. I'm pretty sure if I got one of those heart sensor overlays I'd see my BPM double.When I looked back, she was different. The dyed hair was less faded. The wear on her eyes pointed to two green singularities.

“You're staring.”

“'Better than my drink, right?”

“Wondering if you could afford me?” She giggles. 

“Ain't the credits keeping me.”

I wish I could tell you that my desire was as constrained as my words, but in that moment all I could feel was my gut telling me to pull her closer. It wasn’t just animal lust, there was something else, something unnameable.The low murmur of the bar’s rhythm creeps back into place. She's still looking at me like I'm a terminal she doesn't know the controls for.

“Everyone has a reason for drinking alone, what’s yours?”

“You don’t wanna hear it, I ramble a lot.”

“Yeah well, like you said, beats watching you stare into your drink.”

“I’m doing you a favour.”

“What you’re doing is boring me, don’t you know I usually get paid for my time?”

“Fine, but if you regret asking you owe me a cig.”

“Deal.”

“It’s this whole city. I step out onto the asphalt veins and all I feel is dread. Not like some tangible fear, it’s just that feeling resting on my shoulders. Pretty sure it’s built into the slabs by design, how else would they keep ‘em all so uniform. You wanna know how they make the concrete? They do it by pulverising aggregate into a fine powder and then cementing it back together. I don't even know what the fuck aggregate is. I don't think I care either.”A quick look back at her eyes and they haven’t glazed over, that’s a surprise.“You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this. Well, I'll spare you the bullshit about how life is meaningless and we should all top ourselves. It's not, we shouldn't and I’m sure you've heard that a million times.

I just… Can’t you feel it? When you listen close, like real close, do you hear the pulse? Far beneath the cracked pavement. Even further down than the sewer tunnels filled with rats, needles and the occasional dead junky. It’s like there’s something waking. This city hit its high a long time ago, and now the comedown is wearing off.”

Her eyes meet mine with a twinge of concern. I puff air from my nose and look back at my drink, it looks like motor oil. One bubble lays calmly on the surface of the dark liquid.

“You’re not getting that cig, but Jesus you could do with a hug.”

I laugh. “Yeah, and how much will that cost?”

“Nothing, you prick. Not everything I do is for money.”

“Could've fooled me.”

“A job's a job, but that isn’t all I am.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I mean it. You see yourself as more than just a thug right, why would I be any different?”

“I guess you got a point. Go on then, tell me what you really are.”

“Are you this smug to everyone? It’s not just you who’s been beaten down by this city. We both walk the same streets. Once you get to a place like this there’s no getting out. All we can really do is tread water. Maybe I can’t be a killer like you, but I still have to work, so what am I supposed to do? Everywhere I go there’s those same creeps you deal with leering at me, I can almost hear them salivating as I walk past. Shit, if it’s inevitable, I might as well make some money off it, that’s the closest thing to safety I’ll ever get.”

“I never really thought about that.”

“That's ‘cause you're an idiot.”

I laugh. “And I'm sure you understand exactly how I live, you know what the fuck I mean when I'm talking about aggregate, right?”

“No, but I know we can't be that different. Look, I'm not proud of what I have to do, but I am proud of surviving this long, so get off my case.”

There it is again. That incapacitating desire for something raw, something real. Layers of proxies peeling right before me. “A million girls like you have come over to me hounding for money, not one of them was a single thing like you. I wish you didn't have a price.”

“Everything has a price, it's not always money, sometimes it's connection.”

“So tell me, have I paid in full?”

She smirked and it felt like all my smugness had been matched in that one simple bend in her face. “I thought you said you weren’t interested, that you were ‘certain’.” The look in her eyes tightened like a vice. 
“You’re really gonna make me say it aren’t you?”

She giggled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The weight of her eyes fell on my body like the trigger finger of a crackhead in a shootout. The only wrong move is to hesitate.

“Fuck the streets, fuck the money and fuck being alone. You’re a total bitch and I want you. That what you wanted to hear?”

The words scattered from my mouth before my mind could catch up.

Then she slapped me.

And then we kissed.

I told you it was cliché.