WIP Wednesday

Finally! Another WIP Wednesday post. Today, another -- and bigger! -- bite of A Chip In His Shoulder, a vampire/cyberpunk WIP (which is now finished, so technically not a WIP, but whatever):

Streetlights glowed halfheartedly along the boulevard, yellow clouds of mist swarming around each burning bulb. The headlamps on passing cars sliced hazy bands of orange, brown, and yellow into the fog, the color depending on how much life the driver had tried to squeeze out of that particular set of bulbs. Even with the horrendous visibility down here, only so much of a man’s pittance of a salary could be spent on anything that couldn’t be eaten.

There was a time when the artificial lights, even in this foggy darkness, would have necessitated a pair of sunglasses to keep from burning my photosensitive eyes. These days, the caustic air stung, but my most recent optical mod included a tint that changed with the light, keeping out even the most brutal fluorescents and mercury vapors. Now if the cybernetic companies could just do something about my skin, I’d be happy. Maybe if they spent less time creating super soldiers and sex goddesses, they could outfit the city’s vampires with a mod to keep us from bursting into flames on contact with the daylight.

“Soon, Liam,” Richard Harding, the owner of Cybernetix, had said when we spoke the other night. “We’re working on a mod that will do just that. It’s still in the experimental phase.”

I’d scowled—he couldn’t see me, as I never communicated via telescreen—and muttered, “Still? Hasn’t this been in development for years?”

“It’s not an easy modification,” he said. “Very delicate. Difficult to make. It’s getting close, though. But that’s not why we’re talking. Let’s discuss our…arrangement.”

We’d discussed our arrangement. We’d made the deal. And now here I was.

Stay tuned for more!