Wolf Tales-Prelude

Wolf Tales-Prelude
 
Bullets sliced through the air as Synthia made a rather acrobatic dive and took cover in the T-shaped hallway across from me. I shot a couple of rounds to cover her as she recovered and reloaded. I glanced over at her, she had not gotten a scratch as usual. She was a very good solo. Her pink glowing hair was turned down and her trademark Fashion Chic K-pop style clothes clashed with the drab, mildew-stained walls and muted grey light coming in from the broken overhead roof panels.
“Well, did they follow our advise and vamooshed. Or at least started.” She said over comms.
I touched the floor and extended my senses to the inside of the rooms down the hallway. I sensed the three gangers down at the end, moving around out of sight, and just at the limit of my perception I felt the jack-booted thumps of our employers boots. They had taken cover in a room, but where decidedly not retreaing.
“Nope, they have begun a “fighting retreat” and seem to be exchanging unpleasantries and ammo at the intruding go-gangers.” I replied. She clicked her tongue. “Idiots.” She said as she rolled her constantly color-shifting eyes.
The run had gone bad early. Our employers, a soon to be defunct gang of up-and-not coming gangers, decided to shoot up a rival’s bike as we were making our way to the derelict factory where they had discovered a batch of high quality spare parts, unfortunately locked away behind security they could not breach themselves, and in the middle of another gang’s claimed, but not occupied territory. Long story short, a three way battle that soon devolved into utter chaos developed before we could extract half of the supplies.
Syn and I had been smart enough to high tail it back towards our getaway truck, but our employers, who seeming suffer from an abundance of testosterone poisoning and lack of intelligence or street smarts decided to fight it out.
“I posted that Syn and I were headed to out with what supplies we could and that we would wait for the rest of the gang there.” A quick chorus of “Yeah” “Cool man” “Whoo hoo, score, bang that one…” broken out.
Syn looked at me and flicked her comm off broadcast. “Are we really waiting for them?” I shot her a sly smile and replied “Like they will ever know.”
She chuckled and brought up the schematics for our way out. ”By the way, what is with, ah, your new look.” Last week you wore overalls, had short hair, grease stains and looked, well, banal, no one ever really noticed you, you just blended into the background of the rubbish and tech-grim of the city. Now you, are well, different, haunting cybergoth Slavic punk, pretty cool actually.” She winced a bit as she said it, but before she might apologize I responded. “You were right.” “About what?” She shot me the shortest extraction route over a private channel and we headed out. “My look. No one ever noticed me before, I have worked in D-Town for years and no one ever saw me. Even Shi Gao, when he burned my shop down did not know whose it was. Because it was not important. One tech among countless soulless drones.” She nodded in understanding as we exited the building. “And then there was the wolf.” “What wolf?” She asked. “Tell you when we get out of here and can get a drink.
We got into the stolen pickup and headed out. I could not even remember who had hired us. Like my old self, it did not matter. They were nobodies.