Thank you SO MUCH for this cool prompt. I love a good AU. This is basically a beginning of a story and it didn't turn out delightful, more like sinister... but I hope you like it anyway.
This is just a pickup — get in and out quick, keep her head down. Isabela’s done a thousand just like it, and yet she’s nervous.
[A series of break-in’s in the upper city have been linked to… ]
[The i-85 is congested after a three-car accident. Police are responding… ]
[…brand new implants from only 12,500.99…]
She hits the radio to turn it off and listens to the sound of the rain, falling in sheets. She grips the steering wheel with her left hand — its silver metal glints in the streetlamp and she moves to cover it with her sleeve. Even after all these years, her upgrades don’t feel like her. She shakes her head, takes a breath. They weren’t her choice; none of this was.
She moves quickly through the alley to the back entrance of the club: The Hanged Man, they called it. A quick glance up at its neon sign confirms she’s in the right place, even if the H is blinking strangely and the last N is busted.
“Hey, you can’t come in this way.” A huge man with a cybernetic eye puts his similarly enhanced arm in her way, as she tries to cross the threshold. The rain drips into her eyes as she inclines her head to look up at him, and she tries to blink it away.
“I’m here to see somebody,” she says quietly.
“Goes by the name of Fenris,” she says, leaning in. “I’m here to pick up a package.”
The man cocks his head to the side, and his eye focuses loudly, spinning in its raw metal socket.
Isabela feels the tension in the moment and wills herself not to speak. She clicks her left thumb and forefinger together, feeling the metal ping.
“Fine. But you speak to no one else,” he says, “You got it, courrier?”
She nods and steps in past him.
The inside is full of smoke and sweat. The smell immediately stings her nose, but she likes it. It reminds her of a place she used to visit, before all this — before everyone lived in the cities… when it was still possible to get to the ocean. Without thinking, she looks back over her shoulder at the rain outside; it’s the closest she ever gets to the water these days.
All the usual suspects are there: a drunk at the bar is singing, while the bartender pours him another, A sad-looking man stares into his empty glass… A few women in the corner leer at her as she passes, eyes lingering over the place where her metal arm joins with her clavicle. It has never healed right, and it itches, but she won’t touch it now — not while they’re looking at her with such depraved fascination.
It’s not as if these kinds of implants are rare — you’d see them all the time in the upper city — but down here in Lowtown… that’s another story… one that might get her dismembered… or killed… depending on the day.
She shrugs further into her coat and scans the room with her neurals. Several people who match the description come up red, and then — there he is: in the back corner, holding an absurdly full glass of red synth-wine.
He seems to recognize her at the same moment and he nods in her direction so she’ll approach.
“Have you got it?” she says, quickly, once she’s within three feet of where he’s sitting.
“Sit,” he says, and gestures to the dark velvet chair on his left.
She doesn’t want to sit; she wants to be back in her car, driving down the i-85 — even considering the multi-car pile-up.
“How’d you get in here?” asks Fenris.
“I walked — what kind of a question is that?” Isabela snaps.
Fenris ignores her. “Do you know what you’re carrying?”
She narrows her eyes and says nothing.
“No, and I like it that way,” says Isabela.
Fenris laughs, then — loud and sinister. “You’d better come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Isabela says, beginning to stand.
Fenris grabs her arm. Realization dawns as his fingers clasp around the smooth metal of her forearm and he stands to look at her eye-to-eye. “You’re not from here…”
She clenches her jaw, refusing to answer.
“Neither am I,” says Fenris, more quietly, this time, and winks, as the white tattoos on his neck faintly start to glow.
Isabela’s eyes widen. “Neural bioluminescence?”
“That’s a neat trick,” she breathes. “Where’d you get that done?”
“Like I said, you better come with me.”
It feels dangerous. Isabela hesitates. There’s a question that she’s had since she walked in, since she got this assignment… hell, since she arrived in this maker-forsaken city… but—
Then Fenris interrupts her train of thought, “There’s more to this than you know…”
She regards him skeptically, but in her mind she knows he’s right; she’s always known.
“...I’m not supposed to say until we’re alone,” he whispers, leaning in impossibly close. “...but… Hawke sent me.”
Isabela suppresses a gasp.
“...he’s been watching you since you came to Lowtown… and… he’s ready to meet you,” says Fenris. “So… are you ready, too?”
Isabela thinks of the rain outside, the smallness of this city, the way she has never fit on its dry land… the questions she holds inside and the way she ignores the gnawing in her gut… and just like that, she decides:
