Not quite in stasis, not quite conscious, I, Evelyn, lie suspended upright, waiting to be found. Or at least it seems that way, as they always find me, regardless of how hard I try to evade their far-reaching grasp. No matter how far I slip away, no matter how far off the beaten path or desolate the world I end up choosing for my short stays. Never longer than a few months do I ever get to try to live a life not on the run. It used to bother me; I thought I was being deprived of life’s joys, having to constantly be on the move. Through the years though, my perspective has changed, I’ve gotten to experience more of the universe than most that I meet. Now, I view my continuous escape act as more of a journey of sorts. Thankfully, getting from place to place on that journey can be quick if I can manage to get on a slip space craft, but here recently I have been forced to rely on the slow method of linear space travel, which severely limits my range, and therefore, planet options.
It looks as if my stay is about to come to an end on this ocean planet of Huyto, as sensors just picked up a decently sized Sequel Corp slip craft which is almost certainly here looking for me. Once they start looking, it doesn’t take them long to find me. I have maybe a week to leave this world, a week to wrap up my affairs and find some way to travel as far away as possible.
I start mentally preparing for what I must do. I don’t have a whole lot of options for transport off-world, though I may find someone leaving soon in the ocean markets and restaurants. Huyto, being an ocean world is home to oceanic wildlife farming, which attracts two kinds of travelers: rich persons who can slip here for an on-planet luxury seafood dining and resort experience, and the poor souls that come for cheap and easy access to fishing on this government planet. Of those options, the rich resorts are just about as far from the wholesale fish markets and poor fishing societies as possible, and I happen to be hiding in one of the market communities, so the rich resorts option is out.
I signal for the suspension field to turn off and the sleeping pod to open. I slowly drift towards the floor of the pod and feel the weight of my body fall upon my feet, right as the door slides open. I step out into my room, my most prized possession, besides the body and mind I was given. My room is particularly large and is filled with trinkets and keepsakes from my travels around the known universe. Books in every language fill the library, while art and still pictures hang on the walls. A reasonably powerful computer occupies a space in my room, yet its capabilities fall significantly short of the one in my head. The previous occupant found it useful, and I haven't had the time to remove it. The full kitchen, lounge, and virtual connect rooms are generously outfitted and I use them often, though I have largely repurposed the virtual connect room to work more as an extension of my own systems.
My room was my first and most beneficial windfall, my creation excluded. I was able to insert myself inside it while it was actively occupied because the previous owner had unwisely opted to store access in a cheap substorage facility. I gave the previous occupant a merciful death as I needed his room out of necessity; I took that kind of thing much less seriously when I was young. I stripped the room of all digital signatures linking it to him, as a room of this size would be noticed if it was suddenly missing from a family charter, and since then it has been my home.
I get dressed to go out to the nightclub I’ve been frequenting, with any luck, someone will have come in recently with access to a slip craft for a quick getaway. The time is 22:40 standard time, so the club opened about 40 minutes ago. After getting ready, I walk downstairs and up to the room’s portal interface, and it pushes me up and out into the world. I am met with the wet, dingy smell of the substorage facility. I’ve grown used to the smell, as just about everywhere smells this way on Huyto. Even though we are suspended half a kilometer above the ocean surface, the humidity is still considerable. I am standing in a long dimly lit hallway with dark grey colored walls, substorage access points line both sides of the hall. I turn around and proceed to pay the weekly fee for renting a storage point here at this substandard substorage facility. I finish my business, take my room, and put it inside my pendant necklace, which slowly sinks back beneath my skin.
The Overground, my favorite little night club these past few months. The only reason anyone goes is that there’s not a whole lot else to do on Huyto other than drink and dance if you’re not trying to make a living. As I walk down the streets of Gestoue, the fishing city I ended up in on Huyto, I look around. Blue-green skies and faded grey clouds frame the smooth faceless buildings, all towering over the wet and dreary streets. I wonder what my next destination will look like. It’s nighttime now, but the sky is still dimly lit, not the blinding light of daytime but still enough to see the colors in the sky. The multiple stars in this system mean that it never truly gets dark on Huyto. There’s a good bit of traffic in the streets; people going about their nighttime business, going out with friends, coming home from work, and the ones carefully sidestepped by the rest, who have no place to go. Everyone here is human, most with no major modifications. There are no other intelligent species here on this government owned planet, save the ones artificially spread and farmed in what is essentially a plant sized aquarium.
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Arriving at the back entrance to the club, I walk in and am greeted by Charlie and Gusto, regulars of Overground, just like me. They’ve probably been here since the place opened about an hour ago and are looking quite comfortable with some girl they’re sharing tonight it seems. I connect to comms and let Sean know I’m coming up, and he sends back some exasperated thought about how I’m later than usual. Sean is the proprietor of Overground, and I established a favorable rapport with him a few months back. I synthesize him a drug that he slips his customers at the club, and in return he does me favors, such as giving me information on the people who come in. I wave back to Charlie and Gusto and head up the stairs to the left to meet with Sean. I want to see what he got off some of the newcomers tonight when they scanned in to pay. I walk down the hall, glancing through the one-way glass on the right to see all the people on the floor, lounge, and bar. When I open the door to Sean’s office at the end of the hall, he’s sitting at his desk. He’s looking at a variably translucent monitor that curves around the entirety of his desk. Playing on the monitor is footage from the club and other places around Gestoue. The security and operations data of the club runs on a closed loop system, the only output being here in his office, a precaution that has caused me a great deal of annoyance.
“Hey, how's it going? Do you have something for me?” Sean asks, as he clears the screen and then his throat.
“Well actually, I’m hoping that you have something for me. I need you to send me the info for all the new patrons tonight,” I reply, hoping he won’t try to drag this out. I just need to get the information and go.
“I’m more than happy to send you whatever you want but I need to discuss the formula that you’re using for the socializer. Doesn’t feel right taking advantage of you. I’m sure the ingredients aren’t exactly free,” Sean says. Although he’s posing it as if he’s looking out for my wellbeing, it almost certainly has more to do with the fact that he wants to send off the formula to a chemist to have more of my drug on hand. I only give him his so-called socializer in limited quantities, and he’s been itching for more for a while now. Little does Sean know that he would actually need a biochemist, as the drug I’ve been synthesizing for him is not a compound so much as it is an enzyme that I’m able to harvest from a group of cells I grew in my own body.
“Sean, you know good and well that I only give you small amounts for good reason. If someone found out that you were dosing your patrons, you would either get this whole place shut down, put yourself under investigation, or both. Just send me that info and be grateful for what I do give you.” As I’m saying this, Sean’s face slowly transitions from happy to see me to grave and serious.
“Fine, keep stringing me along, but I eventually need that formula for my own sanity. Here's the info you asked for, if I know you, the second guy’s the one you’re looking for. His profile seems fabricated. Whoever made it did well—I wouldn't have noticed, except he paid for his last drink with an unsigned corp contractor card with nearly no limit.”
“Thanks Sean, I’ll see you,” I say curtly, trying to bring this encounter to a quick close, as what Sean just described sounds exactly like what I need as luck would have it. I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to deal with evading stasis procedures on a linear space vessel. My systems have their own stasis capabilities and replacing all my bodily fluids for a standard stasis experience comes with some extremely unpleasant repercussions.
I turn around and briskly walk out of Sean’s office and down the hall. Gabriel Morones was the name on file for the man who paid with the corp contractor card. Dark hair, well-muscled and of average height with an olive complexion. Seems that he’s here on an unlogged and unscheduled visit, the only way I even know that is because the security cameras at the depot are not on a closed system like Sean’s are, probably so that they can be monitored by management remotely. Plainly visible on the front port side of vessel they arrived in reads Star Fury; how tasteful… I make a beeline for Gabriel; he’s sitting hunched over at the counter.