“So, Badger, you want to take this job?”

I refocused my eyes, which had been staring blankly at the wall behind my Liaison. I sat up and took a sip of whiskey, the ice clinking around the glass as I set it down on the cold metal table. 

“All you want me to do is kill this guy Rodriguez? And you’ll pay me two thousand credits for it? What’s the catch?” I asked, confused as to why such a simple job would pay so well.

“No catch, this guy’s the scum of the earth, and my employer wants him dealt with as soon as possible.  Are you in?” She pushed.

“And what did he do to deserve that label?” I countered, still confused.

“Either take the damn job or don’t, since when do you hunters give a shit about what your target did?” She huffed, irritated with the game of 20 questions I’d been playing with her.

“Fine, yeah, I’ll take the job.  Send me the deets,” I said, gulping down the rest of the whiskey. 

The liaison pressed a button on the back of her hand which made an audible beep.  My eyes flashed, and I could see a holographic file: Paul Rodriguez, aged 37, Bounty: 2000 credits. Below the picture of a scruffy Hispanic guy with a bald head and a beard, more information appeared.  Body Tech: Infrared Scanners in Eyes, SpringJoints, BearArms, and likely more illegal tech. Last seen: Null Point, 1 AM this morning, left for The Wastes after speaking with a masked man about an identity eraser. Most likely location: The Pit.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “Leave it to a guy like this to be at the shittiest dive bar in all of the Wastes.”

“Good luck,” the Liaison said before rising from the table and sauntering off into the back of the bar, then disappearing behind a door marked “Employees Only” with flashing yellow holograms. 

I stood up from the booth and tapped a button on my wrist, which paid the Widow’s Den for the drink, then went up the stairs and out of the bar.  The city smelled like car exhaust and garbage, with the faint smell of blood as an accent.  I extracted a cigarette from the pouch in the breast pocket of my leather jacket, then lit it and exhaled.  The smoke danced upwards towards the skybridge, before dissipating into the air. A homeless man across the street looked at me and then approached.

“Spare cig?” he asked gruffly.

I looked him up and down, then took another smoke from the pack and gave it to him. He thanked me, then walked away back to his makeshift home in the alleyway. It’s a sad but unfortunately all too common sight.  Those who get knocked off their feet in this city rarely have a chance to get back up, so I try to show them kindness when I can. With that, I approached my bike, an old Kawasaki Ninja from before the war, and stuck the key in the ignition.  It roared to life, purring like a cat as I threw my leg over the side.  I hit the accelerator and began to race toward The Wastes.

On a motorbike is how Santa Luz is best enjoyed.  The holograms on the building glowed colourfully in the late afternoon.  The sun was starting to set, turning the sky a deep orange. My bike hummed beneath me as I sped west, got on the on-ramp, and circled it until I reached the skybridge.  Up here, you can see a lot of the city, though some of the buildings jut out beside the road obscuring the north and south sides. Flying down the skybridge, I tapped the side of my head, which began to play music directly into my brain.  I closed my eyes for a second, feeling the wind hit my face as I weaved between the cars and trucks, intent on getting to The Pit before sundown. 

As I approached the off-ramp, I steeled myself for the task ahead. The guy had a significant amount of body tech according to his file, and likely more that’s not even known about. Hand to hand, he’d kill me with one arm.

“Thankfully, I don’t generally do hand-to-hand,” I chuckled to myself. 

The pistol hanging from my hip, an Onyx Munitions Mk. VII, chambered in 11 millimeter, generally did the fighting for me when a job got difficult. 18-round magazine, burst fire switch, it has all of the bells and whistles that make it my favorite sidearm. It’d gotten me out of quite a few sticky situations over the past year or so. 

I turned off of the skybridge and circled down the off-ramp, then continued forth.  The Wastes circles Santa Luz and is the sixth and final zone in the sprawling metropolis. The Pit is on the west side of the Wastes, and I was only a few minutes away. I pulled the gun from my hip and made sure it was locked and loaded, then turned off the road and into a parking lot a few hundred feet from the bar. 

“Deep breath,” I said to myself as I hopped off the bike and pulled the key out of the ignition. 

“Now, let’s earn some credits.”