Cyberpunk: Night City Shop - Chapter 14: The Market (Patreon)

After a day of running around, John returned to Arroyo, the industrial fumes of Santo Domingo hanging heavy in the air. Before going back to Megabuilding H4, however, he made a detour to a nearby street market.

These markets were nothing like the corporation-owned towers downtown or the established shops that could afford premises on a busy commercial street. They were where merchants without the money for a proper storefront gathered to sell their goods. A market might occupy the ground floor of an abandoned construction project, a patch of dirt beside a shipping-container warehouse, or a vacant lot that no developer had bothered to touch.

The land usually belonged to a gang on paper, or to a corporation whose property had ended up under the control of some individual. Whoever held it had neither a plan for the space nor the connections to bring in investors. Renting cheap patches of it to small-time vendors was the only use they could find.

Calling it a market was generous. The owners supplied absolutely nothing beyond the ground itself. Stallholders even had to arrange their own water and electricity. That was also why the rent could be so low, sometimes only four or five hundred eurodollars per stall per month.

Naturally, the merchandise was as cheap as it came. Scavengers fought over dumpsters in wealthy neighborhoods and resold what they found. Others brought scrap from the enormous garbage mountains outside the city. If an object still had even a scrap of value left, someone here was willing to put it on a table and ask for money.

The crowds also concealed petty criminals and gang muscle. They could collect protection fees from merchants, then look for some well-heeled visitor foolish enough to wander into the wrong place and shake that person down for a quick payday.

Nobody was particularly interested in enforcing the law there, which made the markets ideal places for secrets and illegal trades. Little black markets appeared inside the larger ones. A black braindance might get its owner beaten with a police baton, while dealing in something like Glitter could earn a life sentence. But with enough cash, just about anything was for sale.

John had dressed for the occasion. His dark jacket was as plain as he could find, worn over drab gray work pants. The ballistic suit he'd bought from Vik was concealed beneath his clothes. To anyone passing by, he looked like another broke resident not worth robbing.

Before stepping out of his car, he'd tucked the Unity pistol El Capitan had given him into the back of his waistband. He could barely shoot straight, but having a gun gave him some reassurance if things went wrong.

He hadn't eaten for most of the day, so the food stall near the entrance caught his eye immediately. He walked over to the vendor.

“Hey, boss. How much for the skewers?”

“One eurodollar each. Meat and vegetables are the same price.”

The vendor kept working as he spoke, repeating his sales pitch without the slightest change in his expression.

“Eating here, or taking it with you?”

“Same price for everything? Then I'll take one of those grilled chicken meatball skewers and a skewer of beef strips.”

The price was low and the smell was close enough to real barbecue. Still, John ordered only two to test the taste and see what the local food market was like. The instant he finished ordering, something occurred to him.

“Hang on. Chicken meatballs? I thought selling poultry was banned in Night City. Are these things even legal?”

The vendor looked up and gave him a meaningful stare. Without answering, he returned to the grill, selected a meatball skewer and a beef skewer that had been heated just right, and set them in a foam tray.

John raised an eyebrow at the suspicious-looking food but didn't push the question. He picked up a meatball and took a bite.

“Urgh.”

After several days of eating instant synthetic meals, he'd thought his stomach had finally adapted to Night City's food. The alleged chicken meatball proved otherwise. He'd badly underestimated what the people of this city could endure. No wonder they ate the same packaged synthetic meals year after year. Apparently, the alternative from a street stall could taste even worse.

It made no sense to him. How could something freshly grilled and still hot be less appetizing than food straight out of a packet? Yet Night City had managed to overturn even that basic rule of cooking.

“Boss, do me a favor and tell me the truth...”

He lowered his voice.

“Are these so-called chicken meatballs made of bugs?”

The vendor lifted his head from the grill. Disbelief flickered in his eyes.

“Bug meat? For one eurodollar a skewer? You think you're getting something that good at this price? It's ordinary imitation meat. Soybeans.”

John had apparently been giving the meatballs too much credit. Personally, he found soy-based food far less disturbing than eating insects.

He finally understood the look he'd received when asking about real chicken. Even without the Avian Extermination Act, actual chicken would never be sold from a roadside stall like this, much less for a single eurodollar.

“Yeah, okay. Stupid question.”

He muttered to himself and abandoned the meatballs, which looked like damp lumps of rag scooped from a slop bucket. Maybe the beef would be better. He bit into a strip.

“What the fuck? It's the exact same thing!”

It really was. One skewer was shaped into chicken meatballs and the other into strips of beef, but they tasted identical. Their appearance was the only difference.

“Come on, boss. That's false advertising.”

John dropped the half-eaten beef onto the tray and pushed it away.

“If they're both made of soy, couldn't you at least give them different seasonings?”

“I don't season anything. They come that way from the supplier.”

The vendor didn't even bother to look at him this time.

“I take them out of the package and put them on the grill. That's my whole job.”

John had no answer to that. After a long pause, all he could manage was an incredulous remark.

“Well, you've got to admire the honesty...”

At that moment, a girl rushed into the market from outside. She looked about fifteen or sixteen, wore an oversized cyberpunk-style jacket, and had her blue hair tied into two pigtails. A baseball bat swung from one hand. She hurried to the food stall and gave the vendor a resounding slap on the back.

“Bro! You won't believe it. We made a killing today!”