There is another neighborhood nearby which people do talk about, but not in glowing terms. Alan stood on his usual street corner, waiting for customers to come along. Novacoke, bliss, cram, marijuana- his partner Danny had them all down the street. Customers would give Alan the money, then head down the street to collect their purchase from the big orc. Today Alan was agitated- his sister's illness was flaring up again, and money was tight. He needed business to be good this week.
Alan tried to focus on his work, casually asking passerby if they were looking for any "stuff," but a weird feeling started growing in his head. It was a feeling of intrusion, as if some foreign presence were in his mind with him. The feeling grew until it completely preoccupied him, and Alan began pawing at his head and looking around for the source if his discomfort. Then, even more suddenly than it had come on, the feeling passed.
His commlink beeped with a message from Danny down the street. You okay man? You seem agitated.
I'm fine, thanks for the concern. Alan replied. He was feeling better. Time to make some money for Jessica....
Neither Alan, Danny nor anyone else on the street noticed Siegfried standing on the roof of a dilapidated building across the street. Of course, that wasn't surprising, since Siegfried was invisible. Robbing drug dealers was lucrative business for a vigilante- at least, lucrative by the standards of someone like Siegfried, who found himself squatting more often than renting. But the mind probe had shown Alan to be a decent man who was dealing drugs for the noblest of reasons, and that meant he wouldn't be Siegfried's next target.
Siegfried paced to the other side of the building and settled in to watch a different street. A good target would reveal himself. It was the barrens- bad people weren't hard to find.
