A Valencroft Cyberpunk: 2077 AU
Jacqueline Natla, a well-connected corpo in Night City, has hired Lara Croft, a skilled merc, to obtain a BD containing sensitive corporate secrets. When Lara learns she has gotten into more than she bargained for, her price has gone up. Will she be able to work with the intermediary--a former NCPD badge named Jill Valentine--to come to an understanding?
Lara strutted into the club, making a straight path for the bar. On any other day, she might take a turn about the room, checking out the patrons and flashing smiles. Tonight, she was all business.
The job had been hazardous, moreso than usually expected in her line of work. Lara was exceptionally adept in the art of recovery—in…liberating curators of burdensome property. Sometimes that property was held on a more metaphysical level.
The client had been after a braindance—a recorded memory.
Sometimes these were heavily edited memories, sometimes they were propaganda, sometimes they were sensory experiences, and sometimes, like the chip Lara had squirreled away somewhere safe: they were recorded conversations about state secrets.
The corpo woman who hired her would be getting an earful, but it was unlikely the woman would come meet on neutral ground again — Lara was sure her employer would send a middleman. Some lackey.
No room to sit at the bar, Lara took to leaning, waiting for the bartender to return to his post so she could—politely—grill him for Jacqueline Natla's whereabouts.
A woman seated at the bar was watching Lara over the rim of her glass. Her asymmetrical bob fell across her face, obscuring one of two pale blue eyes that were boring into Lara's. The patron smiled lightly, then looked away, as if caught.
Lara smiled despite herself.
Maybe, depending on how this night went, it didn't have to be just business.
Lara waited patiently, then impatiently, and just when she was about to break into the back office or ask the woman at the other end of bar for her number, the bartender finally materialized.
"Marcus, finally," Lara groaned, "I need to see Natla. Is she in?"
Marcus let out a huffy sigh, viewing Lara from the end of his nose, "No. She's not in. But she said you would be. She has someone here to see you."
"No doubt," Lara snorted, "Alright, point me in the direction of the muscle."
The patron next to Lara got up and left, but before Lara could steal the seat, the woman making eyes at her slid into it. Attractive and enticing as the woman was, Lara was now in focus mode, and would have to implore the woman to try again later. Before she could say as much, the woman spoke.
"I'm Jill. Natla told me you'd be coming."