-Three years later-
Sweat dripped down her cheeks, gathering at the bow of her upper lips. Quinn swiped at the offending salty droplets with the back of her sleeve, ass propped against the hover bike that hummed under her skin. It rocked quite heavily as she bounced on the seat to the beat of an old song, narrowly avoiding the sharp rocks under its massive frame.
It wouldn't hit anything that it detected as a surface; she was damn sure of that. She'd tested its floating capabilities, perched on its body with a vibrating rabbit and a rubber dildo. Mayhap a cruel method of choice for the experiment, but it seemed perfect for someone as deranged and lonely as she was.
Even that mind-blowing orgasm hadn't left a scratch on the beautiful metal piece—proof of its perfection.
The skyscrapers that towered over her—once gigantic blocks of sunshine reflecting glass, pigeon shit and industry, were now corroded and browned from the soot and dust of eroding soil and the ashes from a bombed city. Pipes and scaffolding were left exposed from the explosion, and where bits of leftover toxic water dripped, mould and algae bloomed with a high degree of radioactivity.
The stereotypical definition of a post-apocalyptic city.
Sure, some of the machines still worked and she'd hear the occasional blare of a radio warning of an incoming terrorist attack, or the seductive drone of a robot promising hot young Omega cock three blocks down. But the city rumbled and groaned each time a particularly strong gust of wind blew through rattling windows. It led to crumbs and pieces of brick and cement falling from the cracks in its walls; its hull giving way steadily with each terrible storm.
Quinn would give it a couple more months before the entire structure would collapse from decay.
She would have been more concerned, would probably have gotten a concussion if not for Float. The system appeared above her like a halo above her head, hissing out a low dull electric moan. Its power was apparent as the fragments fell upon the disks of sharp visible light, sizzling the bits into mere dust that feathered upon her hair giving her bad case of fake dandruff.
Optimized for combat, Float was now more than just a simple panel that only she could see. But of course, her magical affinity with the technology helped a great deal in its improvement. She tapped at the lobes of her ears, changing the phantom music that only she could hear. Float transcended the laws of physics and science, torpedoing into a realm that even Quinn didn't understand despite the three years she'd spent studying its abilities.
There was no motherboard, no processor, no memory space, or storage drive. Euodia didn't have the technology as contacts implanted in her eyes, nor did she have data chips running in her head. The technology, ladies and gentlemen, was now purely created from her hyperactive mind. Everything that was formed, weaved into solid, atom filled existence, was a product of her sheer willpower and understanding of life.
It was magic.
But Quinn wasn't here to boast about her new abilities. Nor was she here in this dilapidated city scrolling through an online store that existed far before the apocalypse just to window shop. Quinn paused, fingers hovering over a luxury bag, and she leaned forward squinting at the screen.
It was hot pink, had studded giraffes with massive pricks that would swing every second because of the magical enchantment. But fuck that, who needs a pretty little bag in this hell hole? She swiped next for the cheeseburger, already drooling for the oily, fatty juices, and the patty sizzled to perfection. Then cursed because it would cost her a week's worth of credit—its biggest flaw was the expense.
But she had to admit it was nice being the only customer of a magical store that could produce almost anything she wanted in a matter of seconds. It was a cheat code, a God-like skill only found in overpowered webtoons and reincarnation fiction. It was one that she used quite frequently to fulfil the black-market requests that popped up in the guild of No-Man's town.
A tiny village of a hundred Alphas, perched between the forests and the sandy cities of the old. The population consisted of rogue bloodsuckers, plenty of fairy scammers, shifter maniacs, and the occasional powerless, human-like Beta that had pissed off the elite. It was a pretty damn shitty place, placed on stilts to avoid the monsters, and always wearing down from the fucked-up climate.
But it was her home, and it had a great economy.
No one really knew how the black market wormed its way into the land of exiles and criminals, a place where people were thrown out to be eaten alive and killed. She reckoned it was a rich bastard that wanted items from the outside and had probably tossed out a couple of his staff just to get an illegal transportation port running.
But it was good work, and a solid business that kept them alive on the goods that they could exchange with the inside. Things like life-saving potions, tampons and suppressants.
A win-win situation.
Requests from the New World were usually about the stupid shit that they could find in the rubble. They wanted items like technology and vintage clothing. Wild plants and animals for the fairies; canned food and weapons for the shifters; or medical equipment and old blood to satisfy the kinks of vampires.
Then there were the ones that wanted the out phased drugs, body parts of the Lonely, and things like old piss from a toilet bowl or used panties.
Idiots.
Hence, Quinn's job as a scavenger.
While Quinn did have a fantastic surveying system, including an automatic drone that could obtain and carry the loot. It was just so much easier for her to manifest the item and hand it straight to the client. Time was money, and speed too could be charged.
Occasionally (for the high payer of course) she would just buy whatever the fuck they wanted online and sell it to them in its amazing pristine quality—with a dab or two of sand and a quick fry of the edges for the aging quality. She'd price it a hundred times above market rate and claim that she'd found it vacuum sealed, in an anti-radioactive box and buried underneath a thousand of mating Lonelys.
Lies.
It did raise a few brows, once she did it too often and without fail. And she would always draw the attention of her hormone filled Alpha colleagues, who would size her up and stare her down breathing heavily like she could give a shit.
But there was no point in them trying to will her into the submission of not-finding-amazing-loot-and-stealing-all-of-the-clients. She'd do anything to keep her virtual wallet heavy with credit and her belly filled with greasy food; would even blast them apart with Float if they ever tried to touch her.
But the online shop had its quirks.
"Fuck," she hissed, jamming a finger at the screen, "Price of newt's eyes are on the rise. The fairies are going to hate this, did promise them a truckload of this shit," she swore, squinting at the panel. "Even goddamn vegetables are expensive as hell. A whole silver dollar for lettuce. Wish I could figure out the timeline for this stupid app. Why the fuck is it experiencing an inflation?"
She slammed a fist against the metal of her bike, and it spluttered in warning. She nervously brought her hand down, smoothing the frame.
"Are you done Soot?" she muttered, flicking through the apps for her radar. It glowed a boring infamous green, displaying a 3d construction of the area. A soft beep and her eyes were directed to the drone heaping tugging at the debris and heaping boxes of something into its carrier. "The hell is that?"
She didn't bother waiting for a reply. While she did talk to her drones and name her machines, they weren't programmed to speak back to her for the sake of her sanity. She wasn't going to undermine her chance of making better friends with real people, so she'd decided that keeping them quiet had been a good move for her love life. Not that it helped of course because first and foremost she didn't swing that way.
And there were only females in town.
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