Just Business

The Sprawl - Lincoln

Lincoln Bayer was down on his luck.

Scratch that.

Lincoln Bayer had been down on his luck for the twenty-seventh year in a row as he hit his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d been born a child of a now-defunct factory in the Iron Reach and orphaned by the time he was two. Since then, he’d come of age under the harsh lights and hard hands of the pauper houses that littered the Sprawl, taking in its endless wave of abandoned children. He’d learned early how to scrape by–selling scrap, picking pockets, and dodging corpos in the deadly streets of Vargos, yet no amount of windfall ever seemed to be enough.

Lincoln woke up on his birthday with a goal: this year was going to be different. And for once, there was reason to believe that was possible. The night before, while celebrating with a cup of Taste-E Noodles and watching a personalized VR cast on his BRZY account, he’d come up with an idea. He knew his friend, Tina Bravyslav, had recently found a discarded box of cybereyes bound for a downtown office, now rotting to shit under one of the highways cutting through the Sprawl.

She’d told Lincoln he could have ten of the eyes to sell in exchange for most of the credits he’d saved on his personal chit–a deal he happily made. One of the eyes alone could fetch double what he paid her if he could clean it up and convince a buyer it wasn’t rotting from the inside out after weeks sitting in a gutter.

He made his way to the Skyrail Corpse open-air market, the commercial heart of the Sprawl, built within the wreckage of a once-proud rail network. He fiddled with the two cybereyes he’d brought, their cool surfaces clicking lightly in his pocket. Even after sitting outside cold storage for so long, they still felt chilled, an unsettling reminder of their uncertain quality.

He meandered through the thousands of stalls set up for the morning rush and found a small stoop of an abandoned building he could sell from. Using an old piece of cardboard, he wrote out his sign: “Cybereyes, 2 for 10cc.” This was a good deal, maybe not enough to get a sale right off the bat but easily enough to attract wandering eyes from desperate residents in search of affordable cyberware.

Hours passed. A few potential buyers stopped by, but Lincoln quickly realized his cleaning job hadn’t been enough. The telltale signs of augment rot were creeping outward from the irises. Spitting on one and rubbing it against his sleeve, he took a closer look, spying black decay that oozed from within. He knew it would send error messages screaming into someone’s vision the second they installed it, but that wasn’t going to be his problem. By the time it malfunctioned, he’d be long gone.

Two Vargos cops wandered by and took a look at the eyes, chuckling to each other before one spat on him and tossed the eyes into a shallow puddle near where he’d set up. They muttered something to him about street trash selling street trash before walking away but Lincoln hardly heard what they’d said. He was too focused on fishing the eyes out of the puddle and cleaning them off. He knew they were dirty enough as it was and grime from the street wasn’t likely to help much.

The next customer stopped by his sign and took a fleeting look at the eyes. The older woman held one in her hands before making an offer.

“I’ll take both for four.” Lincoln turned red with rage. He wasn’t going to be low-balled by a Sprawl dweller like himself.

“My ass four! Ten or nothing!” He insisted, snatching the eye from her hand. She snorted and kicked his sign over.

“Good luck then. Dumb boy, you’ll be lucky if anyone else even walks by.” She snorted as she walked away. Lincoln grumbled and wiped the eye off. She wasn’t wrong, he was already ice skating uphill trying to make a sale with the cybereyes, but he’d be damned if he sold them for barely enough to get some food in his stomach. He wasn’t sure the next time he’d have anything to sell other than scrap, so come what may he wasn’t leaving until he got some credits for the busted cyberware.

Two armed men made their way past him with one of the frightening looking strangers slowing their roll as they spied his sign. He stopped and made his way to Lincoln, tapping their friend on the chest and pointing towards Lincoln. They approached and took a close look at the eyes, whispering to one another as Lincoln watched them closely. This was the closest he’d come to making a sale so far, it was time to pounce.

“Two for ten guys, and judging by those guns I’m guessing some cybereye aim assist couldn’t hurt, huh? Tell you what, I’ll let them both for for eight if you buy right now. Normally I’d stay firm on the price but something tells me you guys deserve a bargain today.” The men looked at each other then nodded, turning to face him and giving him a clear look at their faces. Lincoln’s blood ran cold.

They were covered in tattoos depicting crudely drawn shrieking faces, bloody daggers, and prayers written in Latin in such quantity their facial features were crowded out by the endless ink. These weren’t just any buyers. These were Carrion Choir boys.

The CCC weren’t known for good-faith negotiations. They were violent, easily agitated, and notoriously cannibalistic. A worst-case scenario. But Lincoln wasn’t in a position to turn down customers. He needed to make the sale happen.

One of the two men picked up one of the eyes and looked it over closely. He let out a sigh and in a metallic raspy voice began grilling Lincoln.

“How old?” he rasped, his voice tinny and ragged.

“Maybe two generations. They’re GMH brand though so even two generations old is still better than whatever hazard ware is out right now.” He was trying to keep the nervousness from his voice. He felt like he was negotiating with a hungry lion.

“Where you cop GMH cybereyes?”

“A friend nicked a shipment cutting through the area, she gets these all the time. I can get more if you need.” He was taking a risk here, letting CCC boys know you had extra body parts lying around was never a smart move, no matter how good the sale was. To his credit though, Lincoln knew the CCC didn’t have their pick of body dealers either. Their reputation made it hard for them to get cyberware from anywhere except the bodies of their victims, and more often than not those pieces had firewalls built in. Uninstalled pieces like this were hard to come by for them.

“You give us for eight? We take for eight, no more.” Lincoln couldn’t believe his ears. He was going to make a sale.

“Deal.”

“Good. You come with us, bring to cooler in car down road.” Of course. Lincoln should have known. They were leading him to another location. Rule number one in Vargos: never go to a second location with CCC boys.

“Nah, I’m happy making the sale right here guys.”

“Then no deal. You are scav, these are trash–rotting from inside. But we buy and sell to new recruits for double. You no like? We walk.” They’d called his bluff quick.

It was now or never for the sale. If he stood firm he’d probably keep the feet he was standing firm on. But if he let them walk away his birthday would likely end with empty pockets and they’d take the eyes from him anyway. They were armed cannibals, he wasn’t going to be able to stop them from robbing him right here if they wanted.

“Fine, where’s your car?” He said, unable to hide his fear as he choked the words out.

“Alley down way. You follow.” That’s what he was afraid of. They’d parked somewhere well out of sight, that is, if they even were walking him to a car at all. He nodded and tucked the eyes back into his pocket and picked up his sign. One of them stepped forward and lightly knocked the cardboard sign from his hands with the barrel of their rifle and gave him a smile punctuated by loose teeth and rotten black gums.

“No need for sign, sale is made.” They led him away from the bustling rows of stalls in the Skyrail Corpse and walked for blocks toward the underbelly of the Sprawl.

They wandered through crowds for some time before bystanders became a rare sight, the blight of Vargos’ underbelly becoming the only visible sign in any direction as they approached an old sedan parked in an alley jutting off from another alley.

The men gestured towards the car and wandered over, popping the back door open and pulling a small cooler out. Lincoln carefully pulled the eyes out and set them into the cooler, misty trails of coolant leaking from its top in wisps reminiscent of a cold morning’s breath. The one holding the cooler snapped it closed, sending Lincoln’s hand recoiling back as it almost clipped his fingertips off. He nodded at his partner as he set the cooler inside and stepped back from the car.

Lincoln sighed in relief, he was so close. The other CCC boy reached into the back seat and wrestled something heavy from it, yanking until a stranger came tumbling out onto the wet pavement, their voice muffled by duct tape slapped over their mouth and their hands and feet bound by old computer wire. Lincoln recognized the person right away.

Tina.

He felt bile rising up and couldn’t keep it down. He retched and vomited outward, eliciting chuckles from the Carrion Choir soldiers as they yanked a personal chit from Tina’s pocket. They tossed it his way, Lincoln barely catching it as he looked on in horror as they lifted her thrashing body up and stuffed her back into the car.

“You no worry about her, she unlucky saleswoman. You lucky salesman. Deal is done. You walk back way you came.” They wandered towards the front seat and driver's seat, piling in as Lincoln stepped back.

He saw terror encompass every inch of Tina’s eyes as she stared at Lincoln, pleading in grunts and moans from beneath the duct tape as the car started. Before he could react the car started and zipped away in a burst of exhaust and the roar of an old engine.

Lincoln stood in the alley, playing with the personal chit in his pocket and staring in the direction the car had gone. Poor Tina. He couldn’t believe how unlucky she’d been. Lincoln felt guilt as a smile crept over his face.

Maybe his luck was finally turning around, even if that meant Tina’s luck had to go down.