Sin was a runaway who lived in a squat in midtown. She had a bad stutter and her squat-mates gave her a hard time because of it. Her squat mates never cleaned up after themselves because they knew that if the squat got messy enough Sin would clean it up and she would never call them on it.
One day rumor went around that Habey Cox, leader of the Freaks, was throwing a huge party and that everyone in midtown was invited. Sin really wanted to go but her squat-mates mocked her, pretending they were her trying to talk to someone at the party.
On the evening of the party her squat-mates put on their most revealing outfits and left for the party. After they left, Sin snuck out and went to a payphone. She called the pager-address someone had given her for a Good. When she got called back it took her quite a while just to say "I w-w-want to g-g-g-go to a pa-par-party?" but the Good just said, "Tell me where you're at and I'll be right over."
The Good was a pretty black girl in a dark-purple velvet suit and a glowing happy-face tie. She sold Sin four glass ampoules. "Take one every hour," she said, "just break them under your nose and inhale deeply. Each vial should last you about one hour. I'm not going to sell you any more than four because if you take more than four in a row there's a good chance you'll have a stroke. And I've got to warn you: after the last one wears off you're going to come down hard and fast. You'd better be somewhere safe and quiet, okay?"
So Sin went to the party, which was in an old abandoned opera-house. Right before she went in she opened up one of the ampoules and inhaled it. Suddenly her heart was racing and all her fears were obliterated. The words wanted to come out of her mouth so badly that she didn't have time to think about them and so she didn't have time to stutter.
She had a great time talking, dancing and flirting. Her squat-mates noticed her and were shocked but she ignored them. She met Habey Cox and thought he was really cute and smart and funny. She spent most of the evening talking and flirting with him. Whenever she felt the fear coming back and the stuttering start to return she excused herself to the bathroom where she popped and inhaled another ampoule.
Habey invited her back to his place where they had fantastic sex. They lay awake in bed afterwards talking. Then Sin could feel the stuttering start to come back and she realized with horror that she had no more of the drug left. She jumped out of bed and struggled to put on her clothes while saying "I'm s-sorry, I have to g-go."
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The next day Habey Cox woke up with a bad hangover. His memory from the last night was very fuzzy but he did remember a pretty, funny nice gutterpunk girl he had really enjoyed spending time with. He couldn't remember her name or whether she had told him where she lived. He was upset to think that he might never see the girl again. He searched his bedroom hoping that she had left some note or something, but all he could find was a broken ampoule.
Habey thought about walking around the streets looking for the girl but he had a show to prepare for. Instead, he gave the ampoule to his buddy Cheater and asked him to try to find her.
Cheater went to all the places in midtown where he knew gutterpunks hung out. A lot of girls (and a fair number of boys dressed up as girls) claimed to be the one who had slept with Habey, yet when he tested them they knew nothing about the ampoule.
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In the early evening a man came to Sin's squat. He had on a brown trenchcoat and a brown fedora and every inch of his skin was tattooed with a pattern that looked like an old-style circuit board. He asked Sin's squat-mates if they were the ones who had slept with Habey. Sin wanted to say it was her but she was so nervous she knew she wouldn't be able to get the words out. Her squat-mates both claimed they were the ones. "Well then," said the man, "perhaps you can describe the glass object you may have left behind." The two squat-mates were dumbfounded. Sin reached into a pocket and brought out an empty glass ampoule, which she showed to the man in the fedora. He brought out its exact twin from his pocket. A smile spread across his face, showing gold-colored fangs. "My lady," he said, bowing slightly, "Mr. Cox would like to invite you out for a date."