The tranq had barely glowed red when it was jostled out of his hand by a clueless businessman too engrossed by his metafeed to even look up and apologize. Spider swallowed a particularly obscene oath and muttered the Clan credo under his breath as he blended into the crowd.
"Stealth above all. Stealth above all," he chanted, trying to keep his target in sight and still fumble in his coat for a replacement tranq.
The mark wasn't making it easy. It was almost as if he knew Spider was on his tail and was making every effort to shake him. That, or he was high on stims, if his ped patterns were any indication. For the sixteenth time in half as many hours, Spider cursed Greebo and his kin for setting him up on such a shank assignment. He chose to ignore his snide conscience who piped up just as frequently to remind him that he needn't have accepted the job in the first place.
"Hey, sweetness. What's the rush?"
Spider's head jerked up, jarred and immediately suspicious. No one addressed anyone so informally anymore, and especially not on a ped-way where any pause or deviation from the norm would get you excised. He kept walking but the woman refused to be ignored. She fell into step with him and her confident stride easily kept time with his, even though Spider topped her by a good foot and a half in height.
She seemed content to simply walk by him so, still keeping his peripherals on the mark, he took the opportunity to study this new variable.
She looked to be of indeterminate age but her hands couldn't lie and the freshness of her tattoo allowed Spider to hazard her to be at least twenty, give or take a couple years. Her skin was the color of dark cocoa and her hair was knotted into a severe bun at the...
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