Fallen Angels

Chapter Six

The four of them made their way towards the area where the stores were all located, which happened to be only a few blocks away. Katie took the time to explain that each of them had fifty dollars to begin with that could be spent by scanning their communicators, which they had decided to just call phones, at the store they were buying something from. They also had access to any outside bank accounts they had, presuming they had a card linked to the account or some other way of retrieving or transferring money from it. She also explained how the stores were organized in grids similar to the housing units.

They spent the next few hours wandering through the stores, going into several. The girls lead the way, looking at clothes and occasionally buying things. Between the three of them they had purchased a couple of shirts, one dress, two pairs of earrings, and a necklace. Luckily, there was no need for them to carry what they bought, as it would all be delivered to their house. They had just walked out of a coffee shop after getting something to drink when Katie smacked her forehead,
"Crap!"  she said.
"What is it?" asked Olivia, looking at her with concern.
"I just remembered that we meant to buy a coffee maker! And now we've all spent our money, so we'll have to wait until next month to buy one!" Katie said, despair evident in her voice.
"Okay, there's no way I can go a month without coffee, so we either need to find a really cheap one or we need to steal one." Olivia put her hands on her hips, daring someone to argue with her. All three girls jumped when Jason spoke up, having completely forgotten he was there.
"Or I could buy one." he said.

Katie frowned, and she shook her head as she spoke,
"No, I saw earlier that all the coffee makers are at least a hundred dollars, and even with you we only have seventy or eighty bucks between us."
Jason dipped his hand into a pocket and pulled out a wallet full of cards. He took one of the cards and handed it to Katie.
"Here, I already spent most of what was on here, but there should still be five or six hundred left."

Katie's eyes widened,
"You're buying us a coffee maker? By yourself?"
"Actually, no." Jason shook his head, "I have somewhere I need to be, so I'm putting up the money so you can buy us a coffee maker. Consider it an investment in our team, because I get the feeling we'll get along quite a bit better if we're not all grumpy and tired in the mornings."
Olivia nodded emphatically at the last part,
"It's true, I'm a real bear in the morning if I don't have my coffee."
"We noticed." Linda said, smirking slightly.

Ignoring her, Olivia cocked her head to the side,
"Wait a minute, where do you have to be?"
"Before we left, I read about a," he paused, searching for the right term, "business opportunity of sorts. I'm going to go check it out and see if I can maybe get a bit of a head start on things here."
Katie nodded,
"Alright, just let us know when you're done and we can figure out a place to meet up."
"Sounds good."

Jason started walking away, but turned back,
"Go ahead and spend all of what's on the card, I don't want it back."
He disappeared into the crowd before they could protest, heading towards the general area where he knew the meeting place would be.

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After checking the map he found, he confirmed the courtyard he saw was where he needed to be and settled into the corner of the roof of the tallest building that bordered the courtyard. He had shown up over an hour before he was supposed to, but considering what he knew about this meeting, he wanted to scope out the people who showed up. While he waited, he reviewed what he knew.

While he was going through the articles on the real game, he had come across one that was different from the rest. It had spoken of two things that hadn't been mentioned in any of the other articles. The first was the idea of guilds, which were groups that would compete to try and control territory, which would give them certain rewards and bonuses. Jason thought the term 'gang' was more appropriate to describe the idea, but considering that most of the people there were gamers, 'guild' might go over better with them. The second new thing was a black market for weapons and gear.