the thief and the ark

this is me writing something right now, other chapters will be added which have been written previously.

User stood in the pexi-glass sphere, his long coat on over his blue sweat shirt, the night was as cold as the days were hot, and the grey clouds that clung to the sides of the building like a cancer seemed to swell with a low rumbling of rain and thunder.

The readout that hung in the air a few feet from his chest showed the map of the floor he was descending to and the various functions of the businesses contained therein.
Up-link cafes and holo-bars, the pleasure booths and the implant stands. Everything was controlled even the vice if you wanted to peddle your wares and be lower than the common man it was going to cost you a cut. The spires and the controlling security A.I.s watched every person and recorded every face.
Electronic pimps ready to punish anyone trying to work outside the program.

 The Sphere came to a stop and swung horizontally into the building, he looked below him at the expanse that stretched in front of him, a maze of building and shacks, huts that leaned against each other for support. The walls had been torn out of the floor long ago, a consequence of so many people shooting holes in the walls, so now the floor was a hole and the people that lived here liked it that way.

The bubble fell to the ground and opened like a shattered egg, shards of the clear plexi-glass slid against eaach other and seemed to crawl back up the pole that suspended it outside.

Spices and human sweat, a guitar and drum played a tune not too far off and the glow of a bonfire threw strange shadows against the grafitti on the indestructable pillars that reached through the ground and into the ceiling a hundred feet above.
A jack in booth stood in a line of others, bright red and yellow spray paint making the booths into obscene artwork. Users neck itched but he couldn't do it yet. He had to finish this job, make sure the creds were legit and find a way to convert his cred number, an arbritray concept that existed only inside the city into something much more useful.

The man he needed to see ran a fencing business that could move anything or anyone through the system with minimal trace.
Nothing was invisible in the city.

User felt strange, like he was on a drug, a speeder that messed with his head. It must have been a consequence of the last jack-in, the virus must have scrambled something, it was strange but he could handle it.

SOmebody screamed from the shop to his left a metal shack witha  single window on the second floor, the scream was high and long it made Use take a step back and shake his head. He remembered the virus that had nearly torn a whole through cyber-space, the angelic awfullness, cherubic faces stretching the flesh of the beast. Screams that sounded like a song and the way the air turned to light behind it.
Parlor tricks, just one more way the programmers deceive the men of the city.
The screams ended and User moved quickly on.

He could see shadows through the huts he passed, sillhouettes embraced in lust or violence, smoke and screams. Pain and pleasure all for a price.
It made him sick but then again thats why he was leaving. Someone was watching him from behind a flaming barrel, a bum tall too fit to be a bum, clothes too small and probably stolen a few minutes before.

Paranoia or instict made User drop his step and put his back against a sheet of corragated steel, trying to hear for any pursuit through howls and laughter.
The lights of the sentries flashed across the ceiling like constellations,
the reds and blues flickered behind his eyelids for a  few seconds after they passed.