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Derrick checked the time. Nathan was a good thirty minutes later than the agreed upon time, which had already been changed to an hour later than it originally was. Nathan wasn’t a punctual man, but he was wasn’t usually this late. Derrick had stressed before that he would rather not be standing around alone in an alleyway for that long, where a passing drone might spot him. Passing cloud coverage dimmed the sunlight, making it pretty dark outside even though the sun had yet to set.

Would it be better to just leave and wait for Nathan to contact him? Derrick paced around some more, before Nathan showed up at the end of the alley.

“Next time you’re gonna be thirty minutes late, let me know, OK? That way I can go wait somewhere else so I don’t look so out of place in this alleyway.”

“Yeahhh—sure I guess. Sorry I’m late.” Nathan slung his backpack off his shoulder and took the carrying case out, inside of which were the sterilized cochlear implant receivers. “Careful with the bag, now. After I was taking these out of the sterilizer the first time, I found out that the bag was ripped, so I had to run it through another cycle. Maybe I fuckin’ ripped the thing when I was pulling it out—I dunno. It seems fine now.”

Derrick placed the carrying case on the ground and eased it open, taking the sterilizer bags out and holding them up to the light. The crinkled sterilizer bags were paper on one side, and plastic on the other. They had no rips or tears, and the implants inside were all intact, as far as he could see through the reflective plastic surface. The ripped bags Nathan had taken out after the first sterilizer cycle would have been utterly useless, as the microbes in the air could enter and contaminate the implant’s surfaces. Sticking that in someone’s body was obviously a no-go due to risk of infection, so Derrick would have had to find another sterilizer in a hurry. It was a pleasant surprise that Nathan had noticed in the first place, if the bag had had only a small rip. I guess he actually does do his job, huh.

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Post-chapter author notes:

Hey guys, short chapter this week due to falling sick >.< Hopefully I’ll have a longer one for you all next week!