A▹ FIREWORKS
(fireworks crack like a discharging rifle in his ear. multiple rounds, one burst. they pop and shower the city with spectacular displays, fill the air with smoke from their leavings, block the stars overhead.

but hei’s paying them no attention, save for the occasional tensing. it’s visible, running from one shoulder to the next, showing in a slight duck of the head. he’s got plans for the stock the city has set up behind one of the grandiose chinese displays that ironically make him feel right at home in this foreign land he’s been trafficked to — laughable, really, if the man knew how to take a joke. instead, he takes armfuls of the gunpowder filled mini-bombs, attempting to jerry-rig himself something lethal.

there aren’t any weapons on the streets save for a knife he picked up from one of the food trucks.

that’s why making himself up an ied or two won’t go amiss. under the light of walkway paint behind a large riverside building less populated with people, hei makes cherry bombs. quick to light, easy to deploy, stings the eyes, and confuses attackers. might not want to sneak up on him, lest one snap in your face, but a fellow scrub-wearer might be introduced to something safer than the “safehouse” he keeps hearing about.

no thanks.)

B▹ DESSERTS
(‘yeah yeah, eat up, you look unhealthy. jesus, what an animal.’

hei’s just following directions.

called in from off the street by a man luring him in with sweets and a commanding ‘get over here and try my award-winning dragon pops — ten creds for the whole batch!’ well. there’s really nothing he could’ve done about that one, now jamming stick after stick of chinese-inspired treats down his throat, stomach giving him hell when the sugar starts conflicting with whatever angry drug making him everyone on the street’s marionette.

help a bastard pay his bills or join him in a dine-and-dash, because either way he's got no id. which means no currency.)

(hair short, well above the brow in a bedhead sprawl over the crown of his head, there’s nothing shielding dark eyes mottled by abuse, medicated sleep, and the courses of drugs in his system. they’re haunting, threatening, unhinged — he’s dangerous and broad shoulders curve in to demonstrate it, like an animal hunching before a strike… but someone’s foggy on body language. someone can’t take the hint.

hei faces a larger man, heavy-set, at least seventy pounds thicker, who slaps at chest tattoos like an ape, who bellows his outrage at the vibrant vomit that’s covered his street art. ‘hey, wait just a second. you got nothin’ to say to me? you think fuckin’ with our art’s funny?’

fuck, what the fuck is going on? every light’s too bright, every building’s too tall. he’s been shucked out of a truck into an alley of modified freaks with no inch of unmarked skin and all he can do is stare unevenly through the cracks his fingers make when they spread down the length of a drained face. the action drags sweat from his forehead into brows that crease with frustration. it’s hot, he’s suffocating, drowning. feels so sick, he swallows around the excess bile slicking his throat from the last minute he spent upheaving dessert onto ultraviolet paint-covered asphalt.

‘can’t say i care for that asshole look you’re givin’ us. tell ya what, you wanna start somethin’ then you take the first shot, huh?’

a first shot that may be the guy’s last mistake. because that order’s like a kick to the back of the knees and it sends hei forward like a point-blank bullet from the chamber of a very unforgiving gun. the artist may be bigger, but there’s no way the beating — within an inch of his life or narrower — he’ll receive is what he expected from the plain-faced chinese man staggering like a drunk through the streets of new amsterdam.)

Hey, (it comes from the opposite cot, hei flagging with bloody fingers,) pass me that.

(it’s a coat hanger. it looks rusted. he nods to it like his pointing wasn’t good enough, when the obvious problem may be the fact that handing someone a tool to try stabbing the implant out of the back of their neck isn’t the best idea in the world.)

No advice, just hand it over.