Chapter 1542: The Drug
Ning stood up and turned around to leave, but as he did, he ended up hitting someone who was coming his way. His tea spilled all over the other person’s pants, dirtying his clothes.
“What the fuck!” the man cried out. “You ba—”
“I’m so sorry,” Ning said quickly, bringing out a handkerchief from his pockets to dab around the man’s legs where he had spilled the tea.
“Are you alright? You aren’t burned, are you?” Ning asked the man.
The man in front of Ning was someone in his early 30s, with a rough cut bear and slightly long hair that came to his earlobes. His face was slightly long with a three-spot birthmark near his left eye.
He wore decent clothes, making him appear better than the average person who walked these streets.
The man looked at Ning, his eyes carefully checking for his badge before speaking. He had already seen the uniform, which had caused him to stop speaking, but now he needed to know what rank Ning was.
Ning slowly leaned upward, revealing the cadet badge on the front of his shirt.
“I’m not hurt, but you need to watch where you are going,” the man said, feeling a little confident after seeing Ning’s badge. “And you are buying me another cup of tea.”
“Of course,” Ning said. “I would have done it without you asking.”
He turned around and quickly called one of the cafe’s staff to prepare another cup of tea for the man.
“I’m sorry about this again. I don’t know where my head has been lately,” Ning said with a deep sigh. “Why is everything going badly with me?”
He made sure the last comment was low enough that it sounded like he was talking to himself but was loud enough that the other man could hear it.
He finally looked up at the man and gave a small smile.
“You can’t lose your head just because you’re sad,” the man said. “Don’t get lost in your own thoughts next time.”
“Yes, of course,” Ning said.
The man nodded and left with the staff to get him another cup of coffee. Ning looked back at the man and smiled.
The first contact with the gang had been established.
Ning left the place as it was close to evening time now and made his way to his house. It was close by and he arrived soon enough.
Having eaten for the day, he rested as he thought of his next move.
Ning hadn’t been given a lot of information before he left. There had only been information about two people that they had assumed to be members of the gang, one of which was the person Ning had met just today.
Aside from that, he didn’t even know what the drug was exactly, except that it was a drug.
Ning had to first make sure what the drug was.
Early morning, he left his house to go grab some tea. He arrived at the same cafe as yesterday and drank his tea while listening to everyone and everything around him.
Early morning was the best time in his opinion to find people who would be looking for their next hit. And the reason Ning was at the cafe was because he hoped those people would come looking for the man from yesterday for their hit.
It wasn’t long before he found a young woman with a desperate look on her face. She walked past the cafe, but she took a considerable amount of time looking through the cafe, as though searching for someone.
‘Welp, there’s one,’ Ning thought and finally stood up.
The girl was gone far ahead, but Ning could perfectly follow her from far behind. He didn’t even look like he was following her at all.
It would be much simpler if he used his powers, but this way was fine as well.
The girl rounded some corners and arrived at the side of the city, in an alleyway that was surrounded by some tall buildings. There wasn’t much light in this place even though the ceiling was alight with the crystals that were embedded in it.
Ning remained afar and watched her meet up with two relatively young men. They looked to be in their late teens or early 20s at best.
They were thin, with sharply raised hair, and carried around with their knives on their belts. It wasn’t every day one got to see people with weapons in this day and place.
Ning waited and listened to the girl negotiate.
“I want it. Another vial, please,” she asked.
“3000 Jiubels,” the young man said. “You have it?”
“3000?” the girl asked. “It… it was just 2000 jiubels 3 days ago.”
“Price has changed. The military is getting stricter. The stuff is harder to make now. You want or not?” the boy asked.
The girl grumbled to herself, but she couldn’t help it. “Yes, I want it,” she said with a look of grief on her face.
The boys smiled and brought out a small DODS plate from behind them.
Ning was surprised to see them carry around a DODS plate like this. It wasn’t as though DODS weren’t portable at all, but one usually saw it being in one place.
The girl brought out her Data Core quickly put it into the DODS and paid the price. Once the boys confirmed that the money had gone through, they brought out a small vial from behind them.
Ning looked at the white, seeing some sort of white powder inside of it. At first, he had thought it was just Spark, but the color was much lighter than Spark. It was something else certainly.
‘What is it?’ he wondered.
He needed to get his hands on it.
“Now go,” the boys said and let the girl go out from one side, while they skipped out the other side.
‘They don’t stay in one place a lot,’ Ning thought. He walked toward the alleyway to follow the two boys, but he stopped.
He decided to follow the girl instead.
It made a lot more sense to follow the two boys, but the girl was also a good choice to follow. Now that he had seen where the drug came from, he wanted to see what the drug did.
He silently followed the girl through the entire city, all the way back to her house. She quickly closed the door and went in, but Ning slipped through while invisible.
Inside, he looked around at the room. It was in a bit of a disorder, with clothes thrown everywhere. The girl didn’t live with anyone important it seemed. She didn’t have any family.
There were no pets obviously as there we no pets in this place.
She was all alone. Was that why she had gotten into drugs?
As he glanced around, he saw something buried under a pile of other clothes that were thrown around the room. He was only moving closer to see what it was when he saw the girl bring out the drug from the corner of his eyes.
He immediately stopped and looked at the girl.
Now that he was closer, he could see the drug much better. It was a creamy white powder, but not entirely pure. There were some specks of tiny color inside that Ning couldn’t make out why they were there. Impurities maybe?
‘So that’s the drug,’ Ning thought. It didn’t look much different than the drug he had known about back on earth when he was still a human.
The girl uncapped the small vial and laid down a small bit of the drug inside a glass full of water. She dropped a little more and put the vial down.
The vial was now missing about a fifth of the total drug she had bought today. Nearly 600 Jiubels worth of drugs.
The girl then took the glass of water and looked into it. The water looked somewhat murky after the drug was put into it. There were some specks on the inside that moved around on their own, completely insoluble.
The girl kept staring at the water for a while as her hand holding the glass began shaking. She grabbed the wrist with her other hand, but the hand wouldn’t stop shaking at all.
Tears fell down her cheeks silently, and she began sniffing. “Why am I so weak?” she asked softly, starting to cry. Her head turned toward the side, staring at something that was there.
Ning didn’t notice what she was staring at, but she looked at it quite intently for a while before looking back.
“No!” she shouted. “No, Katie. No!”
She slammed the glass back down.
Ning was a little surprised. ‘Oh, she’s refusing to drink it?’ he thought. That was a good sign. As much as he wanted to see the girl take the drug and what effects it had on her, what he really wanted was to stop everyone from taking drugs and destroying their lives.
He smiled. His trip to this place had been a waste, but it was a good waste.
He turned to leave the place, but just as he did, he saw the girl move.
The girl grabbed onto the small vial next to her and in one single motion dumped the entire content of the vial into her glass.
Ning’s eyes widened seeing her put so much drug into the glass at once. Then without hesitation, she drank the entire glass of water and slumped on her back, letting the glass fall to the side.
Now, she waited for the drug to take effect.
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