Story Seed - Out for Blood

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I stepped out of the cab and tossed a cred chip to the driver. "Keep it," I told him, the thing was almost empty anyway, no point in carrying around an empty. As the vehicle moved off I stood and hunched my shoulders, tucking my hands into my pockets and trying to look small and unassuming; it was always best to avoid undue attention here. I took a deep breath, catching the smells of people, trash, pungent spices, and a hard to define mixture of cooking meats and seafoods. My gut gurgled, but I ignored it. I wasn't here to eat.

I started walking, my feet splashing through a thin slime of polluted runoff. I was glad again for the thick rubberized boots. I looked up in time to see a policeman, armor clad, with red-lit optics, at the corner. I took a sudden right, and jaywalked through the human traffic, narrowly dodging a rickshaw. Grimly I wondered just how many other officers were down here this evening.

I didn't have my badge, or my service weapon, and the short barreled, large caliber weapon in my pocket was more than a little illegal. I'd taken it off a small time Spin pusher I'd rolled; considering how much I hated Spin, he'd gotten off easy with a beatdown and having his cash and weapon taken, and his stash dumped into the gutter. The thin synthflesh gloves I had on would cover my prints, and they were almost impossible to detect to boot. Those were a lot illegal, but if they kept my actions anonymous so much the better; it's only a problem if you get caught, right?

I pushed onward through the crowd, just another piece of human flotsam in a sea of the downtrodden.