Cyberpunk: Night City Shop - Chapter 15: Shenna and Zhou (Patreon)

Until the girl arrived, the man at the grill had seemed barely alive. Now there was energy in his voice, though not the pleasant kind.

“Shenna! You've been running around with those two little punks again?”

He forgot all about the skewers, his face darkening as he shouted.

“How many times have I told you to stay away from them?”

The grin vanished from Shenna's face. She looked suddenly uncomfortable, but still tried to defend herself in a small voice.

“But we made a lot of money this time...”

“So what? You spend every day roaming the streets. You made money today, sure. Do you think that's going to happen every day?”

The vendor looked at her with the exasperation of someone who knew she could do better.

“Keep this up and sooner or later something terrible will happen. Some gang punk will cave your skull in, or the NCPD will arrest you. Either way, your whole future will be gone!”

As her older brother berated her, Shenna's face went red, then white. She bit down so hard that the gaps and yellowing in her teeth stood out. Finally, she couldn't take any more.

“Then what am I supposed to do? Tell me! Set up a stall like you, selling corporate garbage while those assholes bully me every day? Borrow money just to pay the rent? I made more today than you make in half a month!”

“And nobody looks down on me. Nobody dares! You've heard of the legends, haven't you? They can spend decades rotting in the cemetery and this city still remembers their names. I want to be someone people remember. Not some...”

Her voice caught for a moment.

“Not some junk seller who can't even afford a headstone!”

The vendor went quiet. John shifted awkwardly beside the stall. That last insult had come uncomfortably close to his own situation. He also thought the girl's ambitions were wildly unrealistic, but it wasn't his place to interfere in a family argument.

The silence stretched before her brother finally spoke.

“Shenna, you've been clever since you were little. Lessons that took other kids a month, you could finish in a week. That's why I've always expected so much of you.

“I'm not much of a success. This stall is all I can manage to keep us fed. But you're different. You've got the talent to get hired by a corporation and rise through the ranks.

“I don't want you wasting those gifts and all your time on street punks. That road goes nowhere. And those legends you keep talking about? Aren't they all lying in graves now?

“You know how this world works. The only real success is inside a corporation. Corporations are the only things that endure. You have what it takes to make a career there, so why throw it away? Why choose the same worthless life as people like me...?”

Shenna tightened her grip on the baseball bat until her knuckles strained. She stepped back, her eyes rimmed with tears, and screamed.

“Corporations! That's all you ever talk about! Why can't you understand? Those fucking corporations are the reason the whole world is like this! They're why you're stuck here selling slop even dogs won't eat, worrying every day about protection money! And now you want me to become some corpo lapdog? Not a chance in hell!”

She shouted as though she could force every scrap of bitterness out of her chest, then bolted out of the market in a frenzy. A moment later, she was gone.

John had no intention of deciding which sibling was right. He did agree with one thing, though. The man's skewers were so revolting a dog probably wouldn't eat them.

“Sorry you had to see that, customer. My name's Zhou, Darrell Zhou. That girl is my younger sister.”

The vendor let out a weary sigh. He didn't chase after Shenna. He simply turned back to the skewers on the grill.

“She wasn't always like this. She used to be a good kid who loved studying. Then our parents were killed after getting caught up in a corporate incident. Ever since, she's changed completely. Her hatred of corporations has eaten her alive.”

“Kids that age go through things like that.”

John remembered a phase of his own high school years so embarrassing that thinking about it in bed at night still made him want to slap himself.

“Still, she's not entirely wrong. Corporations have made this world a rotten place. And after what happened to your family, of course she hates them.”

“You think I don't know that? But what choice do people like us have?”

Zhou shook his head.

“People at the bottom of Night City are as numerous as the insects on a protein farm. Rich people crush a few of us just walking down the street. How are we supposed to fight the corporations? We're not soldiers. We're not warriors. All the money we save isn't enough for a decent gun, and any bullets we fired would barely scratch a corporate guard. What could we possibly fight with?

“The food we eat, the clothes on our backs, the roofs over our heads, all of it comes from corporations. Even the trash is theirs. They own the storefronts, the water pipes underground, and the very patch of ground my stall sits on. The NCPD works for them. So do Night City's government officials. Then there are the robots and drones. Tell me, how could people like us ever stand against that?”

His voice grew lower, his expression more defeated with every word.

“We were born in this city, and we can't leave it. My life is already ruined. I can't bear the thought of hers ending up the same way, and a corporate job is the only path I can see for her. Do you really think she's fighting the corporations? She's just running around with a couple of thugs, stealing chips from corporate employees on their way home from work. What future is there in petty theft like that?”

John had no answer. Darrell Zhou was right about one thing. For someone living at the very bottom of a world ruled by corporations, there was no genuine freedom to choose. Becoming a corporate servant might be the best future he could realistically imagine.

Even John himself had little choice at the moment. A megacorporation like Arasaka, Militech, or Biotechnica could erase him as effortlessly as someone crushing an ant beneath a shoe.

But that was only true for now.

John touched the phone in his pocket. Unlike Zhou, who also ran a tiny business, he had something that might genuinely let him change his fate.

“Sorry, customer. I've been unloading my troubles on you for ages.”

Zhou looked embarrassed.

“Tell you what. Don't worry about paying for those two skewers.”

John said nothing. He took a ten-eurodollar note from his pocket and laid it on the counter.

“Keep the change. And thanks for telling me your story. I'm John Lee, something of a Fixer. If you ever need help, you can find me on the fifth floor of Megabuilding H4.”