"What happens out here can change what happens back inside, you know... Hell the maskies were pulling jacks long before any of this Intruder colony or BIP crap. Drop you over like a fallen tree. Carve you up like one, too." she grinned, blowing a ring of smoke into the air, as it hovered in through, lingering among the scattered smog and nanomachines still in the sky.
"I'm sure they did." he smiled in conjunction to downing a volume of liquid from within the frosted black glass sitting at the edge of his lips, on the corner of his mouth.
She dabbed some ashes from the dulled cigar onto the pitchy, rocky earth before continuing with a renewed, inflamatory tip and an arched eyebrow; "You don't believe me?".
Thinking for a moment. "Quite the opposite."
As the night grew...
(He knew it was night because the digital clock on his radio cell phone told him it was. Maybe, also because it was a lot more humid than during the day when it was ligh... when the Sun was ou... when it wasn't so much.)
... he pulled on a seemlessly stitched black camouflaged sweater.
Inhaling another breath from the hand rolled finery; "Kind of a contradiction isn't it? The Merv running operations outside the Simulation?"
"It is. But that's probably why we do." he smiled.
"It's funny though, we've all discovered so many new places but other than the location nothing much else seems to change."
He raised his right leg as the rubberised sole of his Special Operations issue combat boots gripped against the outer hull of the Hovercraft. Taking another drink, stretching, resting the back of his head on it, too. Looking up for a moment and where the stars would have been - probably. "Hm... well I think it can. I think it does. Just not as quickly as some would hope."
"Yeah..." The cigar was by this stage nothing more than a stalk but still quite delicious, it seemed because it wasn't yet put out.
"Well I'd better be off. Been fun to catch up."
"Indeed it has. Take care." he projected as she made her way back through the opened personnel door on the second Hovercraft, taking along the still lit brown leaf wrapped ashes.
"Heh. You too."; as she turned around, the door - over spotlight catching a glimpse of the side of her face, which was for the most part entrenched by long matte black, smoke - filled hair. It caught her eyes at such an angle, it produced a redness which would be expected only from a poorly lit photograph.
He made his way into the warmth of his own and watched from the comfortable pilot's chair as the other beast smoothly floated off and turned on its flood lights and tried to lose itself in the dark abyss.
