Houston 7 // Nightlife

9:00 PM, Ward 22, Club Street, The Obsidian Club.

I step through the doors, having had to wait far too long to get in. Even outside you could feel it, but once you were into the club proper you could feel that bass in your bones, the beat hitting you like waves as the girls on stage and on the floor dance to it, twirling their hips and letting it consume them. This is the kind of scene that doesn't really do anything for me, though if I were a braver man I could find half a dozen girls here that'd be worth a drink and a pickup-line. That's not what I'm here for, small mercy that, no I was looking for someone specific, a man that had a price on his head.

I used to be a cop, once upon a time, now I'm just private security for a small-time corporation, and they want me to track down somebody they're caught committing industrial espionage. If I can find the guy, I just gotta cuff him and take him to HQ, then they can turn him over to the authorities and drag off to court where his suffering will really begin.

I trigger the visual overlay in my left eye, the one I lost in service to the city. It's a ball of high-tech hardware now, wired straight into my brain, meant to be an eyeball and then some. I watch a picture of my target appear in my periphery, if I look at it the image becomes clearer. The best part? Nobody else can see this, since it's feeding the information straight to my nerves. I scan the club looking for the guy, your typical corporate shill: clean cut, modestly attractive, with a shark's smile.

I catch sight of him at the bar, between two blondes. Good taste. I sit at the bar near him, and order a drink, straining to hear his conversation with the girls. As I nurse my drink, this guy tries to get the girls to go home with him. One girl's already been sold on the idea, hanging off his arm, clearly with one too many drinks in her, while the other girl's looking a little reluctant, but was coming around. Some guys have all the luck, and I was looking forward to turning it bad tonight.