Something needed to change.
Eshara slinked along the edges of the streets, walking the city from shadow to shadow, seeing it and its people as only a Surinja could. She looked for the opportunities others would miss. A weakness caught in her flickering, incisive silver eyes, upon which she could descend like a raptor.
She had been born a thief, consigned to a brief existence stealing the life of others in order to survive. A beautiful and saavy Surinja in the cosmopolitan city of Tistan might be an almost welcome curiosity; maybe even a minor celebrity if she played her cards right, in the way that a whore could be a celebrity - celebrated by some, but never truly accepted. The point is, one could live in a place like that exclusively on willing blood. But this wasn’t Tistan. This was Stygiapolis. Here in Nightcyde, the ratio of predator to prey was very much different. Eshara never seemed to find enough willing blood, so she stole what she needed to survive.
Her skills, hard won through bitter darwinian selection, got her noticed. She knew when to run, when to hide, and when to fight, and was good at all three. So when she picked the wrong mark one night, and found herself staring down several gun barrels, they made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. She became a professional thief, instead of just a congenital one.
Her life turned around. She wasn’t just a scavenger chewing on the edges of the fabric of society. She lived it up. Until the war. You’d think with hundreds of thousands dead, there’d be more food to go around; fewer mouths to feed. But the corps had carefully crafted their involvement in the conflict, gaining control of the vital algae farming market. Food prices went up. People began to starve. Got to where she needed two of the scrawny fuckers a night just to get by. Didn’t matter how much money she had. The problem, as had been the problem for all Surinja, was the blood.
So something needed to change.
She eyed the run down dive diner near the edge of the chasm, door festooned with condemnation, health department, and foreclosure notices. Then she saw the sign for the auction. She grinned slightly, and pulled out her comm pad. She tapped the screen a few times, and held the device to her ear. “Uncle Mike. Eshara. Hey look, I think we got an opportunity down here in Stygiapolis down by the chasm. Might solve our problems if we play our cards right….”
