[capital pawnshop: hannah & david]
Hannah was tiptoes and nonchalance. She was hair of faded copper pulled back in a low ponytail. She was black jeans and a hoodie pulled up. She looked down when she walked, step, step, step, and she was there for a specific reason.
The world around her was dirt and smog and the residual scent of death that police had scraped up hours earlier. If she closed her eyes when she stepped, stepped, stepped she could hear sounds from the apartment buildings she passed on her journey. Screams and moans and nothing in-between, and she was there for a specific reason.
Hannah was singularly focused. She was a bare bulb that shone its light in only one direction. Where it had once glowed and brightened entire spaces with pearly light, now the light was rivet. The surrounding areas of that bulb had been painted over with a thick and unforgiving black, and now she was pinpoint attention on AI rights, which probably made a lot of sense.
This pawn shop was supposed to be in possession of some of the spoils from the AI fair she'd gone to with Ren. Whispers on the darknet had led her here, and here she was, out of her element and yet unafraid. She was a weed growing between cracked sidewalk. This was her new element, and she would turn her petals to smoggy sky and thrive. She would defy biology and grow thorns that drew blood.
Lights flashed, and she heard laughter from above, and she stopped.
Hannah was no vigilante. She wasn't going to climb the building wall or scale window ledges. She looked up, and she pulled her hoodie down. She became, standing there, a lost girl looking for a way home, and she climbed the fire escape and looked for a window to knock on. She painted fear on her face as if was part of her programming; help me, please, for I am helpless.