[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/NISMglX.png[/img][/center][center][h2][color=#b9dde9]Laurey Karlin[/color][/h2][/center]The music shop had been a total bust. To sample the tracks the dude actually had to insert a disc - a physical disc! - into the player. How did people decide what to buy, without wasting hours? The art and track names were only vaguely related to the sound that came out, and to each other. The real deal breaker though, was that the music was just so… static, it didn’t seem to go anywhere, to change with her mood in the way a generated piece altered and journeyed with her. What else could she have expected from recorded sound? 

Taste the waste, man. 

Leaving the store, Laurey remembered. 

Then she was falling forwards. The blow that came rocked her skull. White and black danced in dangerous pulses.

“You okay, ma’am?”

She pushed herself up, and felt dread drain down through her body. She was at a bar, a concerned man with too many creases in his face was creasing his face further at her.

“Uhm, yes?”

He did not seem convinced, but went to another customer, leaving Laurey watching her hands tremble. For all her neural augmentations, she could not remember how she got here. Perhaps it was precisely because of them that a period of time seemed to simply have vanished, cut neatly from her continuum. There was no way of knowing what she’d done in that black out. Or what had been done to her. 

Then there came a thunderoll. At first Laurey assumed a vehicle had flown too close to the building. If only.

A sensation, like that feeling of being watched but condensed into a single snap in your adrenals, drew Laurey’s attention from one problem to another. She knew what that feeling meant. Maria had slipped in through a mental backdoor, and sure enough, her message, her emergency broadcast, filled Laurey’s mind. Laurey chewed it over, numb from the bombardment of shit and fans. Was Maria always plugged into their thoughts, a leech sucking at their dream juices, reading them like books? How many keys did she have, and how many doors creaked politely to announce her arrival?

Regardless, Laurey pushed herself onto legs that were apparently made of rubber and wobbled out of the bar. She could not have told you before leaving that a neon banana sign was plastered on the store front, nor did it hold the slightest bit of familiarity. 

Shit.

In the distance she saw the pillar of fire, roaring up into the sky. What the fuck could she do about that? Everyone in the bazaar would know about it, and half could probably see it. Nothing, that’s what she could do. Jack all. She was not reinforcements. Best just go back to the ship, prepare to get the hell out of dodge. Before more of memory simply ceased to be.