SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-five ━ point of no return

This is it, Mia thought to herself, bracing herself against the rain while staring up at the massive freighter they were approaching. Not too far from them, the lights of the CyberLife docks mocked the darkness in which this side of the industrial zone had to operate. Perhaps it was for the better that the yellowed neons didn't do much in lighting the loading area for the Euryalus.

"Where do you think you're going?" The worker standing by the passenger bridge and thus acting as its guard stepped in front of Connor, who had made sure to be a step ahead of her just in time. "We ain't no fancy vacation ship. You ain't crew, you ain't coming on."

Mia could smell the stench of alcohol even through the brisk wall of rain separating her from the working. Not even a wash from the Heaven's couldn't erase this man's sin, and she wondered if, without scent, Connor could still identify the man was drunk using only his scanners.

"We're here from the Silver Spoon," Connor responded to the brutish approach of the man with bluntness. If he had noticed he was drunk, he wasn't showing it any way, not even through a miniature change on his expression.

The man, on the other hand, changed his demeanor instantly, and visibly too. His mockery turned to seriousness right before their eyes, measuring the both of them from top to bottom. Mia blamed the unpredictability of the setting for the way Connor seemed to want to step full in front of her.

"Let me see it," the man demanded before she could think more about his behavior. His voice was now quiet enough that she had to struggle to hear him over the rain.

Connor set down the one bags he was carrying in hand, then removed the one he was wearing on his back, holding it out and unzipping it ever so slightly without breaking eye contact with the man. It was the latter who was forced to look down first. He took out a knife, at which point Mia was fortunately the only one to notice Connor's hand tightening their grip on the backpack, and stabbed the first Fed Ice pack to get a better look past all the packaging at the merchandise. His wide eyes and flared nostrils were telling, even to someone without optical scanners fine tuned for analysis at their disposal, but no matter the knot made of her stomach, the man blocking their way turned around, gestured for them to wait in the rain and made his way across the short bridge, opening the narrow entrance and fishing a wired phone from inside.

Zipping up the backpack again and picking up their supply bags, Connor murmured for only Mia to hear while he was eavesdropping on the conversation. "He bought our cover," he informed her immediately, fact her heart's palpitations very much appreciated. "He's talking to the captain." Just as those last words rolled off his tongue, the man gestured them to approach. "Stay close to me, alright?" Connor made sure to have Mia right behind him before stepping on the connecting bridge and surely, she thoughy, he must be joking to assume she'd want any bit of space between them given their current entourage, far from her usual picture.

As soon as they were inside and out of the rain, the guard stepped back outside. Even Connor seemed a little confused that they were being left unsupervised already, but his disbelief had been dissolved into thin air as soon as the heavy steps of a much older and wider man came down the narrow steps to their right.

"My special passengers for the ride," the man Mia could only assume was the captain of Euryalus greeted them with a toothy grin, should seven out of ten black teeth count for such a thing. "Two," he noted. "Hope our friends at the Silver Spoon are aware this is gonna cost them extra on the next shipment, yes?"