[i][b]—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City, 4 Pennsylvania Plaza[/b][/i] 

When Mateo strolled up to the Gardens, he knew what he was getting himself into to an extent. Jag’s crew was the baddest of the ratkings clawing their way through North Capital City, or at least that’s what the rumor mill gushed. Well, not so bad that they’d kill him on sight. That was the main thing. At least, as far as gangs were concerned. Then again, gangs were pretty tame this close to a big military installation like his cousin Dom worked at, the Mainline Defensive Array. Out west, those were real gangs. Xeno hunters. Fathers of the HKT, with bootleg bioforce cannons ripped from alien limbs. Here in NorthCap, the HKT was a joke; little lame xeno stalkers.

A block away, the venue wasn’t as imposing as he remembered. Kind of resembled a toppled water wheel. Not that he knew, personally, what that looked like. Just delineations via web games streamed into his nEXtFlesh, along with dragons, wenches, and pubs. A three-story-tall television screen mounted on the structure looped some sort of skeuomorphic silkscreen animation of jungle animals acting out their roles of predator and prey. Apt. Threw him back to art history class, that Warhol prick. No more basketball or concerts in this arena. At least, not as far as Mateo knew. He sauntered up to the entrance, casual and cool in his new A2. Hoped maybe his wolf sleeve would gain him some favor. If necessary, he could yiff out in loving memory of Hantu Fesyen. 

[i]Hah![/i]

Close enough to not have to shout, he gave a chin up head tilt at one of the thugs perched atop a car. An old gas burner, pearl cherry sunset paint job, maybe a Dodge Challenger. Definitely American made, back when that meant something. Now it was only Earth and the damn aliens. Well, they weren’t so bad. At least, not the newer ones. The old creepy ones, they could all burn in a mass grave. Clysm, those old ones were called. From the FCW. Still, none of those turned him into an eternal twink and passed him around, that sin was committed by his fellow humans. 

The guy on the car’s hood was big, looked kind of like a rhino with his thick gray skin, wide body, big muscles, and slicked back black hair. Took a moment for Mateo to fake some confidence, but he did, and asked,

[i]“Don’t suppose you guys got a patch of concrete here where a man can curl up without being raped, stabbed, and robbed?”[/i]

That elicited a laugh.

Rhino’s fist dropped on the car hood. Mateo thought it might buckle, but it was built out of tougher stuff than the newer plastimolds vehicles used by anyone who could afford personal transportation. Then his ears were hit by a thick Tatar accent, [i]“No man I see, just little boy. Infant.”[/i]

Mateo crossed his arms, puffed his bare chest, and shot back, [i]“Legal to kiss or kill. Can’t help it I have a babyface, compliments of the Caths,”[/i]  and at that he spit on the sidewalk, [i]“But like I said, just need a safe place to curl up tonight. I can pay a bit. Or work for the honor — just not sex. I’m not a hole to be passed around.”[/i]

[i]“Hmph, infant talks too much. In. Get,”[/i] Rhino gestured over his shoulder to the triple glass doors.

While apprehensive, Mateo decided to maintain bravado and keep to the plan. He made his way inside. A second group guarded the interior, lazy but alert, to whom he extra-casually informed, [i]“Big guy outside told me to come on in for a nap.”[/i]

Pulling a cigar from her lips, some girl with a cheetah-print ugly orange boa and triceps as big as Mateo’s chest grunted, [i]“Sleep there,”[/i] and pointed down a hall with her smoking stogie, [i]“talk later.”[/i] French, maybe? Definitely a wig, with that straight platinum blonde mane. Awkwardly, he squeezed through their makeshift barricade, musty old stainless steel filing cabinets. True to his request, he settled onto a little sleeping bag on a concrete ledge underneath some bleachers still standing. Others dozed nearby, notably agitated in their slumber. 

It was hard to fall asleep, ruminating on the horrors waiting to wake him up now that he was in Jag’s debt. It took a while, but he was bushed, and therefore inevitable. Fesyen’s murder weighed heavy, even if Mateo refused to admit that hard truth. Little twerp probably deserved better. When sleep finally claimed him, it came hard. Usually, he dreamed webbed; plugged in, almost awake, lucid. Harder to sneak up on. No option here. Unplugged, normally it was darkness, no sense of time, then awake. Felt like a minute, was actually hours. 

That night, he did dream.

It hit different.

A great many people on Earth dreamed the same dream. 

Details diverged for each individual, but a sense of choice was ever-present. Prizes behind two doors on the set of a gameshow. A fork in the road along a forest trail. An elevator with two floors, one to stay and one to go. Blue pill or red pill. Sink or swim. Ride or die. One path always felt familiar, the other always promised something novel and phenomenal. 

In Mateo’s dream, he raced through NorthCap on a neon red Suz’ki monocycle, chasing down his quarry. The hunt called him, he tasted it in the crisp night late autumn air. Like iron, like rust, like destruction. Not a new sensation, but in this particular case it was distinct; piquant. A capstone. Now a trained killer, a tall card stack in his black deck. He lusted after that big, brass pog to hold it all down. In streaks of vermilion light, the city teetered and coiled as he banked corners and rolled curbs, closing in on his quarry. He didn’t see his target, not quite. Didn’t matter. The person was real, terrified, named. [i]Dad[/i]. The self-same shitheel who sold Mateo to the Caths to be their tight hole, because he was too indifferent to secure an honorable means of putting food on the table. His galvanized fist clenched the monocycle handlebar, he heard a crunch. Fake. Fake as his lungs, his eyes — almost every part of him. [i]Why a hunt? Why not a ghost in the night?  Silent, fast, sure. No. I want him to run, sweat, fear, piss himself with dread. He deserves more. To be toyed with, to be the victim this time around.[/i] Break-neck speed, Mateo careened over a bridge. Below, a canal flowed into the river, slick, shimmering scat and fecund with Hudson trout. Violent jerk on the grip, and the monocycle’s internal gyro whirled upsidedown. Arm stretched out, he aimed. Four whispers hissed along grooves in his wrist, and humming bird rockets erupted against the fleeing car’s exhaust. It flipped, cornered on a concrete abutment, and rolled down into an intersection. A man crawled out a hole where a door should’ve been. Himself hitting the pavement, Mateo brought his monocycle to a screeching rubber-traced halt and placed his Fairbairn-Sykes to his father’s throat.

The scene shifted. Mateo was being asked a question.

[i]“If you could do it all over, would you?”[/i] mused an alien voice.

A mirror floated before him, backlit by a diffused gray void. A young man, more cute than handsome, looked back, serious, baffled, concerned. Real, though. He was real, with human skin, human eyes, and a human heart. Not some monstrous terminator. It was who Mateo remembered being, before he became so disgustingly artificial.

The person in the mirror was crying, but relief rather than sadness coaxed forth his tears. Silent, he watched himself. Then in the back of his mind that tender alien voice melodically encouraged,

[i]     “Do you seek your wish, 
           to live a life that’s vaster than your past insists? 
      If so consider this,
      Cling to your dreams
           of something more than happenstance causality.
      Or merely stumble on, 
          ignore the door flung open for you for so long. 
      For this we’ve tried to bide, 
          a year, an age, an eon, 
          other planes and frames delayed,
          time soon they claim, yours is used up,
          decide.
      So with this final bid,
          we ask of you to ask of yourself ...
      Dare you here to live?”[/i]

Gray fog dissolved to a brilliant, star-filled, violet-tinged firmament; a panoply of pathways, adventures, and cosmic awe. Cities of drifting purple palisades and glass curtains surpassing anything Mateo imagined, even in his most vivid dreams and immersive nEXtFlesh games, rose from obsidian clouds, translucent shining beacons. Beyond that, his mind’s eye hied in the shimmer of a tear to fields of soft celadon light, of flowers adrip in moonglow, and opalescent birds contrived in stone and wind and radiance. He dared blink, and metal structures clashed in a burning ballad, paying homage to the sunfire furnace of their subterranean source.

Pain in his side sharply struck and he woke up howling.