[center][b]! New Delivery Request ![/b][/center]

Calypso squashed the cartoon goat that was cheerfully dancing around on her phone screen and locked the device, cautiously setting the dinosaur piece of technology screen-side down below the counter. Frugality and sensibility demanded that she buy a smartphone instead of some fancy newfangled implant that let someone slide a SIM card into their neck and give the phone company permission to view their memories and stream relevant ads directly to their subconscious. Yet even though the device was outdated, she treated it with the certain care of  someone handling another person’s newborn; every minor scratch nearly causing a major heart attack. 

At the moment she couldn’t even dream of affording a new one, and that was what was making the ability to swipe away a new gig from Capri more and more difficult—even after it had made her, or at least the hat and coat she had burnt in a dumpster, the latest public enemy for about fifteen whole minutes. She heard her phone vibrate and didn’t dare to look, instead sliding herself down the bar and turning the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbpsfTnZAdg]music[/url] up a few more notches to “What? What?” levels, forcing the young couple at the far table to begin chugging their beers so that they could leave. 

Calypso leaned back against the wall, finding a comfortable spot between the cheap liquor and the bottles of wine that had been there since open, and let out a frustrated sigh of boredom as she lazily watched over the barren landscape. The Black Hole wasn’t really a special bar in any sort of way. It was dark, damp, and smelled of desperation. There was a stage for bands that never saw any use, a projector that had never worked, and two pool tables for games that never ended in anything but violence. The walls were covered in neon adverts for beers and liquors and tasteful drawings from the patrons of phalluses and the contact information of a scorned lover. The floor was sticky with what Calypso hoped was beer, and the bathrooms were considered a biohazard. The only windows were high up off of the ground, and there was only the front door and the fire exit near the office. For safety, there was a gun stashed under the bar and the quiet bouncer, Maxi, who stood by the door, although he only hurt people if they threatened the staff; drunks were free game. 

Also, there was generally a crowd of scumbags from the Black Brethren getting drunk and wild and giving Calypso something to do and someone to talk with—Maxi wasn’t one for words. They had invaded the Black Hole, located in what Calypso’s absentee boss called “the nice part” of Ghajotia, although technically in was in the neighboring district of Bandi, which was only slightly less of a flaming junkhole and the area Calypso was born and raised. Calypso remembered the day the Black Brethren had moved into the area and claimed the Black Hole as their own, back when it was called Bar 451 and occupied by junkies and wannabe gangsters that called, laughably,  themselves “the Bandi Banditos”. Things didn’t go well for the Banditos that didn’t quickly change loyalties. She had stepped over the corpses of more than a few of her regulars when walking home after close. The way the Black Brethren had handled things had always made her kind of hate them…

...although not as much as she hated them now for not even showing up to the bar they had made their own. She was bored, bored, bored. Calypso slumped forward onto the counter, the brim of her hat pushing up as she let out another, louder sigh of frustration that was drowned out by the blaring music. There was no way of actually knowing, but she wasn’t certain that her phone had just vibrated again. She pushed herself up and began to look around for the device just in time to see all six foot eight inches and however many hundred pounds plus chrome add-ons of Maxi stand up from his stool and slowly lumber towards the door. Calypso shouted something at him, scrambled over to turn the music all the way down, and then shouted at him more loudly than she had intended to over the sudden silence:  “Where are you going?”

The big bouncer stopped, but he didn’t say anything or even turn around to acknowledge her, prompting Calypso to continue. Her voice was steadier now, calm and reasonable as she slipped out from behind the counter and started to approach him, “I know we’re dead right now, but we still gotta stay open for at least a few more hours before calling it quits. You know the boss hates it when we close up early.”

Nothing. 

Calypso furrowed her brow and stepped in front of him, “C’mon, man. You can’t leave me here by myself. What gives?”

“Work.”

“Work?” she repeated. Calypso knew Maxi wasn’t the brightest—cheap cybernetics and painkillers would make anyone half brain dead—but he wasn’t delusional either. “You got a new job?”

“No,” he said. “I quit.”

And then he left. There was really nothing Calypso could do to stop the man. Unbeknownst to Calypso, in an hour or two Maxi would be suiting up in a jet-black suit and helping his queen seize control of a certain disk. Later, once the information leaked, she would be able to put together that he hadn’t been hired on until after the Black Brethren had taken over the neighborhood, and that he wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t have a new job. He had an old job, and it was one he could never leave, even if it meant no longer being able to watch his fellow gang members beat the snot out of drunk idiots who wandered into their bar. Later, as someone with a double life herself, Calypso would find something to almost admire in someone who was able to keep their shadiness so well hidden, but in the moment she was dumbfounded. 

The bartender walked back behind her bar. She didn’t even think to turn on the music as her hand rested next to the gun underneath the counter. In the silence, it was impossible to drown out the fears that crept into her mind of what could potentially happen to a lone woman in an empty bar. It was the same fear that made her keep her phone pressed to her ear, pretending to have a conversation with someone, and her other hand wrapped around her static pick when she had to walk home alone at night. Her hand shook as she reached for a glass and poured in a bit of whisky to calm her nerves, her eyes never leaving the front door. In such a packed city, it was strange to be alone—and then, as if to counter that point, her phone vibrated. She didn’t even bother looking. She knew what it said.

[center][b]! New Delivery Request !

[sup]! New Delivery Request ![/sup]

[sup][sup]! New Delivery Request ![/sup][/sup][/b][/center]