>>5831985>>5832025>>5832027>>5832057>>5832059>>5832073>>5832086>>5832092>>5832110>>5832188>>5832193“Last thing any of us need is the lieutenant’s son getting caught drone jacking.” Vicky continues, “Go on, delta. You’ll make it through this. You both will.”
You swallow hard, trying to believe her words but finding they just slide right off.
“Thanks, Vicky.” You manage to reply before hurrying off into the night, walking at first to avoid suspicion but gradually quickening, step by step, until you’re at nearly a dead sprint. Feet splashing through puddles, rain on your face, neon signs and fireworks overhead, drunken new years crowds out in defiance of the weather. It’s all a jumbled mess, you can’t see any of it well - your plastic coat’s hood does an awful job keeping the rain out of your eyes, cheap piece of trash.
You can’t run from what happened, but it’s easier than thinking about it. All too soon you arrive at your dirty old apartment building. It’s a bit of a dump on the outside, patchy blue walls having seen their best years a long, long time ago and dirty fenced in parking half filled with dumpsters and trash - there’s always some beat up van or truck taking up too much space. It’s not a total dump though, the rooms are actually pretty nice inside, but you know there’s at least a couple of gang members living in some of the other units. Plenty of graffiti inside and out to attest to that. Guardian gangs mostly, the kind that keep the really nasty gonks away, but still gangs. You don’t talk to them much, dad discouraged it. He only moved you both out here because he had to, you used to live downtown back when mom was pulling in those big checks, but you’ve been circling the drain for months now. Medical bills don’t ever get smaller.
…Maybe you’re all the way down the drain now.
Before you go inside, you stop to wipe your agent as best you can. If anyone is really determined to know what happened they can probably still snatch up the data somehow, you’ll need dad to make sure there’s nothing left… oh. God, this rain.
The front door to the building, or what passes for one, isn’t even closed - thumping music sounds from a few of the other units in the building as you ascend the dirty old stairs to the second level. How can people still be partying? Don’t they have any idea what’s happened? Keying into your apartment, you stumble in and collapse on the stained sofa.
