Opposition

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

With the release of the big collab at Baolei Clinic, Futility Season 2 is entering its finale scene before we reboot for Season 3, (which may take a while). If anyone is interested in participating, we will have open slots throughout the coming scenes. Now is as good a time as any to join the cyberpunk crew and get involved.

As you can see, Futility has been a wild experiment in how to run collaborative writing exercises & campaigns. Recently, we've undertaken some enormous collabs which are just now being released and I want to thank all the writers that were involved in getting us this far. Futility has been a several year long Cyberpunk dream, and I'm eager to improve the experience for the people who have stuck with me.

With that said, I hope to continuously update the interactive style of the RP in unique ways for each writing to keep engagement high and keep the story interesting going forward. I owe it to the 10-12 folks that have made this RP something real in the long term. If there is any interest in joining, feel free to reach out. While I imagine these sorts of long term RPs can be intimidating to get involved with, I hope to make the user experience/onboarding process quite simple for those who are genuinely interested in contributing to a project like this. I'd be happy to answer any questions and customize the character process to your writing style. Reach out with questions or concerns.

And with all that said, here's a brief look at what's to come for the end of Futility Season 2:

• Finishing off the scene at Baolei will be a collab lead by SandyGunfox and I, which will mark the last collaborative scene that will take place before the final scene: "the Debate Scene"
• The Debate Scene, which was started off in the last post with Delilah and Lott, will cover the fate of the Reclaim at the end of the season, and link the cast together in a big way. Coming next will be a collab with our Pirate Party and Central Party crews backstage as the event starts.
• Following the backstage collab, which is already underway, will be a scene in the thick of the debate's crowd, where our remaining cast will collab while simultaneously working towards individual character plots/quests.

I hope this provides some insight for players and readers. Thanks again everyone for helping make Futility what it is!

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒t 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖

_{With @Opposition, @MagratheanWhale, @SandyGunfox, @Firecracker_, and [Withdrawn Player]}

Exit Baolei… With Haste

“I could never parse the monks' motivation. They seemed to mean well for the Reclaim, so I kept my campaign on friendly terms. That's it. Spend too long in that temple, or whatever it might be, and every seems to start feeling like they see something that others don't.”

—Dexter Campbell

𝔹𝕒𝕠𝕝𝕖𝕚 ℂ𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕔

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕄𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤 𝕋𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕊𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕜] ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘...

“Wake up ‘Angel’...”

The voice sounded almost malefic... Playful and familiar, but perhaps it was just a distortion—as though spoken through a haze of smoke. The smoke, though, gave way to the dull colors of the Medivan’s sterile walls. Two floating red globes stared back at him, and based on the visual trails still clearing from his eyes Gabe could see the thing had emerged from a little rectangular slot conveniently carved into the ambulance’s wall near the ceiling.

“Gabe.” The drone croaked through a blast of static before that black sliver of its body opened up beneath the rotors and lofted a small screen in front of Gabriel. The sinewy form of a familiar stick-like torso filled up the display. His pale torso was unmarked by metal or medicinal intervention, but his visage was covered by a mask with cylindrical red eyes above a protruding beak. Insect had the mask custom built to mimic some old medical motif, a symbol for doctors of that Insect would tell rich stories about to Gabe during their days together under lab lamplight. Even his drone looked a bit like the mask, with the screen pushed forth from within an avian beak. In the Reclaim, it was ubiquitous as a sign of the ripper doc’s reach, recognized only by those seeking his black clinic.

“Gabe,” he said, then paused for a long moment, staring through the blurry display at his friend. “You should take a day off...”

“I don’t have time, man...” Gabe muttered, barely conscious.

Insect waved a hand through the air to disregard the sentiment. He leaned forward, pressed his elbows hard against a reflective metal table. “Looked into the Dust you sent me. Compared it to some stuff on the street. Got it from a guy. Same sort of shit—told me it came from space or something. Void Dust” He stretched his limbs and contorted his torso like he was wringing a towel. With each offhanded flex, the muscles and tendons looked like steel cords beneath his skin, even despite his stick-like, gaunt build. “Thing is, Gabe,”

“The two samples are completely different. I mean, they’re the same thing at the core, but your plug’s is cut with something.” Another long pause. Insect stared directly into the Medivan, like he was there, just beyond Gabriel’s periphery. Like he could hear the uneven, labored breaths of the dosed doctor. “You alone?” Insect asked, but he already knew. Insect turned to his side, mask lit up by a display out of the drone’s view. Then he started to fade from the feed, and a video came to replace him.

The video showed an amalgamation of cybernetics and gelatinous molds that seemed to mimic flesh, nerves, and tissue around an old E-Brain implant. Gabriel could have sworn he’d caught a glimpse of it moving. Insect injected an IV into the crude simulacrum—Stella’s Dust—then zoomed the lens in on the video, focusing down on a specific cable jacked into the E-Brain that branched out into the mold. The cable shimmered, like rippling water more than metal alloy. The video cut off and Insect’s red eyes reappeared on the feed.

“And maybe it’s not showing up on a microscope slide.” He drummed his hands on the table, clattering a beat to occupy space while he thought, then deviously steepled his hands together. “You still got that blood filter? Can you simulate a circulatory—”

But he cut himself off, shook his head. He righted his crooked, hunched spine and it caused him to smack his head into a swaying lamp. “You know what? Keep cool around your spacemen friends, Gabe. Maybe you want to know what’s going on in their heads, but keep cool.”

Gabriel laid on the floor, wondering if the drone which had appeared before him was merely a hallucination caused by the synthetic drug, or a real corporeal thing. When he finally worked up the presence of mind to respond, he pushed himself up off the ground and said: “... Fuck, okay, so my sample was cut with something else? That explains why I was having a tough time with the formula. But I didn’t get this from a dealer, I got it from an addict looking for an alternative.” Gabriel stood up and began fiddling with the aforementioned blood filtering device. While its purpose was more diagnostic than anything, it could be used to analyze the contents of alien bloodborne substances, including drugs. Gabriel bent down, removed a vial of pre-filtered blood from his miniature fridge, and using his free hand added a very small pinch of the sample that Stella had given him. “Maybe something in the compound I dismissed as an ‘impurity’ is only active while bloodborne. I’ll see if the filter can detect it.” Using the touchscreen on the futuristic device, Gabriel began to isolate the antibodies and chemicals in the plasma, until he had a rough idea of the substances in question.

As soon as Gabriel deposited the dust sample into the vial, his eyes saw a shimmering of their own within the blood. It looked like a web of sparks, but so small; so fragmented, it could hardly be discerned from floaters in the eye of any onlooker. The sample was, at first, about as expected. The machine would return readouts corresponding with Gabriel’s selected blood type, though it detected no foreign substances aside from metal alloys, trace offworld rocks and minerals, and a laundry list of psychoactive compounds—most of which matched Gabriel’s homebrew. Nonetheless, the results were distorted. The expected antibodies were gone one second, replaced with newly synthesized blood proteins, then the sample read clean again. The process repeated, like the machine itself was reading more than one sample from the same vial.

“This shit is almost supernatural,” Gabe mused, “no wonder I can’t replicate it...”

Gabe’s focus on his work was snatched away by a cacophony from the drone’s speakers. It sounded like a vacuum or the drone’s rotors themselves amplified. On screen, Insect pressed a glass flask to the seal of his mask and the flask’s solution started to disappear into the beak. Insect cleared his throat beneath the metal visage. “But Gabriel… You ‘pilgrimaging’ with the monks tomorrow? The debate, or something… Dao definitely appreciates your help, so I figured he might want you around.”

“You know they’re bound to have that guy souped up with new wetware if any of the monks actually care about what he’ll say out there. You should try and get a scan on his augs. We can see what he’s got plugged in. Maybe even tune him up once we see what we’re working with. Of course, that’s up to you, as an official patron of the shrine, or what have you.”

Gabe nodded at this suggestion. “I know what he’s packing already, more-or-less. Some of the stuff in his arms I actually made myself. If he’s gotten more plugins lately, I’m not aware of it.” He paused. “Why do you care what implants the guy has? It doesn’t impact anyone else one way or another.”

“Don’t know why it’s on my mind,” Insect said through a brief, splintering static on the screen. “Dao’s a good guy. Was a good friend for a short stint. Maybe I just figured the dude’s got more impact in the Reclaim than people think. Running Baolei and other clinic operations… With no Black Clinic fees. You think he’s enlightened or there’s something more to it all?”

Gabriel thought amidst the silence. Insect had a point, and Gabriel had heard rumours of his connections to Gaea Naturae. If the mysterious biotech company were distributing anything particularly new and shiny, Dao would be among the first to get it.

Insect paused for too long, and Gabriel’s vision wavered again, like the static from Insect’s drone rippled out into the MediVan. The return of the Ripper Doc’s voice only seemed to amplify the distortion, if only for a moment: “Just might be something worth looking into. If he’s got new ice, maybe you’ll notice. Maybe there’s schematics around the place somewhere. Or maybe you could scan him yourself if you’re clever enough. You think he’d mind?”

“Oh, and I’ll keep in touch about your little addiction project as well. I’m sure I can dig something up, friend.” Insect’s face faded away, and the screen retracted back into the drone which promptly fell to the floor as its rotors followed suit. The thing scuttled like a spider across the van and scaled the wall until it popped back into the slot next to the ceiling. In an instant, it looked like it had vanished altogether, or become part of the van. Gabriel couldn’t quite be so sure. The ripples intensified, then he heard a pounding from the back of the van.

“Fucking hell,” Gabriel muttered. He hated the cryptic manner in which Insect spoke, but odd as he was, he was one of Gabe’s most useful informants. Gabriel would follow through with the scan, but there was no way in hell that he’d divulge the results to Insect without some sort of incentive. As the effects of the drug began to wear off, finally, Gabriel turned around to answer the knocking at the door. “Yeah... yeah I’ll be there in a sec. Fuck. Wow. Just... gimme a bit.”


“Of course. All are welcome to gaze upon the operation, take part in our practice, and lend aid to the destitute of the Reclaim Zone. Allow me to introduce you to someone who may be able to better direct your inquiries, miss…”

"S'venia," she started as she looked over the monk in front of her. Her eyes flashed over the robes, the metallics of his body, and his face. Scanning the machine's intricate nature, S'venia could only describe the monk's look in a singular word; creepy. She found it weird how no matter which monk she encountered, that word was the only one ready on the tip of her tongue. She was sure one of these days she would meet a normal monk like the old told stories. Dressed in black, with a weird white-collar, that liked to preach about a man in the sky. She would not feel safe next to that type of monk either, but at least they were more upfront with their affronts. "S'venia Skor, but you can call me S've-.."

“Welcome to Baolei Clinic, Reclaim outpost of the Mekanedo Monastic Order,” another monk interrupted. This monk looked more threatening than the last. More corporate even. "Oh no," S'venia thought as she looked over the woman as the new monk began to walk back through the doors, "monk human resources."

“You’re welcome to examine our operation yourself, and while the other monks may be busy taking care of those in need, I believe I could answer any questions you might have.” Dharma said.

"Thank you so much," S'venia responded as she flashed her smile. "I hope you don't mind," S'venia spoke as she tapped the control panel, turning her eye red. S'venia then unwrapped her computer and typed a quick command to her camera drone, sending it out to capture videos of those receiving care. She shifted her focus back to the human resource augmented monk and flashed another smile. "My name is S'venia, reporting for the South City Blues. This disaster that has befallen our city is unfortunate, regrettable, and devastating for those genuinely in need. I am not here to figure out what got us to this point," she paused as she flashed her arm across her body in an attempt to draw a line. "But I am here to show the people what good the Mekanedo Monastic Order is doing," S'venia paused as she did a quick spin around as she followed the monk further into the compound. "These people need help, and your order is providing it," S'venia started as she shifted her focus back to the monk. "I hope to help my viewers understand in simple terms what exactly your order does to help ease the pain of our fellow citizens," she paused as she smiled another 'genuine' smile.

Turning the drone's camera towards her face, S'venia paused it’s movement as she focused her attention on a figure in the background. With a twist of her wrist, the camera extended its neck out of its shell and focused. There was an individual here that she knew. How did she know this geriatric looking, clean clothes missing, old looking geezer and how was his face so remembered. And then it hit, it was Methuselah. It was the old man himself, S’vei long forgot his actual name and had since relied on that ‘old’ nickname she had created for her fellow believer in Dex. What was he doing here? She left that question lingering for a second as the drone camera lingered on the aged face before it hit her. He was augmented.

Through the change in his facial expression, she could see that he also saw her, but the look on his face was confusing. It was not the confused look that perplexed her, he was old, and his memory was probably fading. No, this look was much more concerning. It was like he saw a ghost.

“So,” S’venia started as she shifted the drone back towards the corporate monk, “can you tell me how your group has handled the influx of patients in such a short time?”

As the monk started to answer, their head would shift from side to side before turning its attention to one of the many instances of the ‘helping the people mantra’ they recently adopted. S’venia, noticed the lack of awareness, shifted her focus towards the relic and attempted to wave and send one of her trademark smiles. The sight of the monks’ head-turning their attention back around forced her back to her job.

“That seems like a challenge that you were not expecting. Have others offered their support to help?”

“The Mekanedo Monastic Order primarily works alone, but other HyperHuman Monks from around the coast help, as do the people of the Reclaim of course.”

As S’venia finished the statement, she tapped an icon on her screen, and her drone locked its focus on her old “compatriot”. The drone’s lens latched onto the face of the older man. “What has life brought on you,” she thought quietly to herself.

---

Darts missed the board left and right. Everytime Proctor reeled in the line, the hook was empty. His feet were locked in place, his mind being wrought in vain attempts to form some connection or fish some semblance of a memory out of the fog. The feeling of seeing a violet blur rush around the room, accompanied by her orbish camera imp, was so familiar it made him sick to his stomach. Between the two of them sat so many other empty husks of men and monks tending to them that to try and run across the room felt impossible, but the smile and wave told him he had been noticed too.

”So she does remember something.”

Something resembling jubilation fluttered up from his stomach, as if a small lantern had finally been lit within the fog. Before he waved back, she turned back to the tour guide that led her across the room, but he kept his hand up, ready and eager to return the attention as soon as her gaze returned to him.

A deep whirring in his ears told him his heart was beginning to beat with a pace that it hadn’t matched in a long time, and the cyborg would’ve been woozy on his feet had he not learned to master his palpitations long ago. Still though, control had decayed over time, and his heart continued to whir something fierce. His stance widened to maintain balance, thanks to his knee finally listening to what his brain said after the repair. Surely to everyone around him he looked like a mad man, and few monks threw him glances that said as much. He hadn’t noticed, as his sights were still set on the violet blur across the room.

---

“A curious development,” S’venia thought to herself as she focused in on the corporate monk ahead of her. “If you can say, what are some of the biggest challenges that your order has overcome to this point?” S’venia finished and listened to the response. Once again, the monk started off their response and eventually pointed towards an area. Using the timing, S’venia turned her attention and locked her eyes with the older man. She flashed him a big smile and a short wave before she turned her attention back to the monk. “I thank you for answering my questions today,” S’venia started as she tapped a button on her computer, “if you don’t mind, I will take a look at your operations, take some stills and video, and I should be out of your hairs before long.” S’venia smiled and waved and turned her attention back around towards the lost soul.

Dharma’s smile seemed to grow even wider as S’venia’s questions came. She resided exactly where she’d prepared to be. Perhaps that was why Dao was so fond of her running front-end operations like this. She spoke:

“Back when America was a fledgling state, its people turned against one another formally—to fight en masse in order to settle disputes. Before bombs and bots and lasers and smart weapons and psyops, there was a man who volunteered in the field hospitals. Before medical science and biomedical technology were even named—he was The Wound Dresser. He wrote famous poems of what he saw, but dressing wounds was hardly enough. Most of his work, then, became not to dress wounds but to act as a chaplain—administer rites and offer comfort in the last moments to the mutilated, shellshocked, living dead.” Dharma paused and took a silent, breath, but S’venia nonetheless felt a sliver of cold air pass across her skin.

“What will you do when the Reclaim hemorrhages blood and severed limbs, crying for help and ridden with infection? What will we do?” Dharma’s eyes drifted, and dissociated into a distant nothingness.

The repeated acknowledgement drove Proctor forward, the restored mobility of his legs a welcome feeling. He began to weave his way across the room, not trying to draw too much attention as he made a bee line across the room.

“Is he,” S’venia thought to herself as she spotted the old man meandering his way across the room, “I think he is,” S’venia completed the thought. A large smile crossed her face, and she shot the man another wave.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Dharma said, and walked off. Despite the metallic sheen to her legs, she had no footsteps.

A few of the metal husks on mats began to protest as Proctor roughly strode past them, a few unintentional connections between his legs and their backs. Unwanted gazes began to scan the old man as he caused a sort of ruckus in an already chaotic room. He slowed his pace and with a sheepish grin motioned for the S’venia to come to his mat as he slowly retraced his steps back to his resting place. He sat crossing his legs as tightly as possible to leave room on his map for his old friend.

---

As S’venia squeezed in place to share his mat, Proctor scooted back bit by bit to give her as much room as they could get between the two suffering robots flanking them. He heaved an anxious sigh, and looked deep into S’venia’s eyes.

“Okay, so you’re S’venia. Could you, er, remind me who you are again, please?”

S’venia stared at the older man before her as a breath escaped her lips. He had forgotten who she was. While it was true that the two were never extremely close on the campaign trail, S’venia was still taken aback by how quickly he had forgotten her. For her, it wasn’t all that long ago. She thought of the many interactions they, as a team, had. She remembered back to the many nights they all stayed up trying to plan an election. The many days spent working together. It had not been long for her, but it may as well have been a lifetime for him. Her eyes shifted to the ground as she pondered the request. How can you help someone remember when they are gone? More so, how can you introduce yourself to an old friend when you don’t know who you are? S’venia’s eyes lingered on the mat for a brief moment before they slowly rose back up, locking in place with Proctors, and a small smile spread across her face.

“I am the journalist,” S’venia spoke as she shifted her focus down to her wrapped-up computer. Unfurling it in a quick motion, S’venia waited for it to power on as she kept Proctor in her peripheral vision. “There was a time when we worked together. We tried to elect a good man to be the mayor of this district, Dexter.” S’venia paused as she looked back at her companion. “Do you remember the campaign or Dexter,” she asked as she pressed a few buttons on her computer. Various pictures floated into view on the screen, and she shifted her position so that Proctor could look at it. She flicked through the photos at a pace that was almost impossible to track. Eventually, she pulled her hand off the screen and pointed down towards it.

“There you are,” S’venia smiled as she spoke. “You’re in the background in a lot of these photos,” S’venia continued as she swiped on the screen again. “Here you are with Dex,” S’venia paused as she let the image sit for a moment, “and here we all are in a group photo.” S’venia shifted her focus back to the elder beside her.

“Do you remember any of that?”

Proctor’s own eyes looked back at him from the screen down in S’venia’s lap, his own gaze as strange as the rest of the group. Some faces he recognized, yet couldn’t name or recall the stories of. It was reminiscent of all the times he had looked over embarrassing photos after a night of barcrawling. These memories were missed. He wanted them back like nothing else.

“Dexter Campbell.” His index finger hovered over the visage of the mayoral candidate, smiling amongst the colorful cast of outcasts and rejects that had been running his campaign. “I owe him. Just let me find the bastards that killed him so I can repay them in kind, and maybe then I can finally rest these weary old bones.”

Proctor’s eyes shifted over to the blue eyes to the left, S’venia standing prim and proper with a large, charismatic smile on her face. The version of her that sat in front of him looked hardly different. Perhaps a mite less energetic with slightly darker circles around her eyes. She still exuded a sunniness uncharacteristic to the Reclaim. It stirred something reminiscent of comfort in him, knowing that someone else that had shared the ill-fated campaign as him hadn’t allowed the relentless destruction surrounding them to drag her down to the depths of despair that Proctor had come to know all too well.

“Do you know anything? About what happened to Dexter, I mean.” His perplexed gaze returned to S’venia’s.

“I know more about what I don’t know,” S’venia started as she flicked through a few more photos on her computer. ‘Do I know anything,’ S’venia thought to herself as the smile began to fade. S’venia knew the monster that assaulted the debate was unlike anything else unleashed on the Reclaim. It was fast, adaptable, and it was a ghost. There were never any leads she could find, no sources to track down, and she was no further along locating it today than she was on the day of the attack. What would she do if she was able to find it? Would she confront it in a dark alleyway as it returned home from the bar? Would she send an anonymous tip to the Enforcers? No.

S’venia’s eyes drifted back down to the tablet below. She paused the swiping for a second, her hand hovering just an inch above the screen. S’venia knew if she found the one responsible for the attack on the debate stage, it would not be her actual target. The world saw the beast for what it was, S’venia wanted to find its Frankenstein.

“I tried to track down any information I could, Proc,” S’venia started as her smile returned faintly. “I checked under every nook and cranny, offered up a substantial reward for just the smallest crumb of information.” S’venia paused as she allowed her hand to return to the screen. In an instant a code was typed, prompting a hidden folder to open up. Proctor would see many thumbnails with many interesting names. In a fast tap, S’venia opened the one titled “The Truth About the Dark”, and a slideshow of pictures began to play. The subject would be a familiar, if not terrifying, look at the assassin.

“When the assassin was on the debate stage, I did what I could to stop it from killing anyone else,” she paused as she exhaled sharply, “all I got for it was these photos.” S’venia paused as she allowed her smile to return more to full. She knew she had gotten more than any other reporter there that day. As they all ran for cover, as they all hid from the fight developing around, S’venia managed to do something. She managed to save someone. At least that is what she told herself. Sure, it may have been the corrupt Gatch. Sure, that may have ended up causing more harm to the district than the good that she did.

“I’ll tell you what, if I ever locate whoever was behind that attack we can go after them together.” S’venia nudged the shoulder of Proctor with her own. With a few taps, she closed out of the slideshow and closed the folder it originated from. She swiped for a second, eventually resting on a group photo once again. “Maybe that righteous firefight is what your old bones need, Methuselah.”

Proctor attempted in vain to absorb all the various details of the assassin. The wall of fog in his brain would surely deny him any later recollection, despite his best effort. He finally broke his long glare at the screen to lock eyes with S’venia.

”You help me get ahold of a few doses of Neurosynth, you’ll have your own personal Watson. Without that, I’ll be just as useless in the gunfight as I am now.” His gaze returned to the screen as he continued to talk. “I mean, look at me. The time since the campaign has not been kind to me. Some days I can’t even remember my own name. The only thing I remembered about you was your name! It’s all so….far away from me. Like I have to grasp at straws to remember what city I’m even in. I’m in no shape for a fight” His eyes fell to the exposed piston which had been freshly installed in his leg.

“Say less, Methuselah.”

---

Perhaps it was a trick of his mind; perhaps remnants of a visit to Limbo were reflected in splotches and specks of color crossing Gabriel’s myopic gaze.

“Just bring the aug scanner with you, Angel. Just in case...” Insect’s voice echoed back. Gabriel couldn’t be sure it was in his head—fading away with the last remnants of visual trails as his eyes adjusted to the Reclaim streets—or if that spider-like drone still lurked somewhere nearby.

... but why does he need it? the doctor wondered. He tried to think of the reason for Insect’s insistence.

“Doctor Gabriel,” Dharma called him. She had a habit of doing that despite his rather unofficial post at the clinic. A lot of the monks had similarly obscure backgrounds—some schooling, some certifications, but mostly they knew their way around man and machine from tradework in the clinics. Dharma was like that too, or at least, that’s what most assumed when Gabriel asked around. Dao hired her on, welcomed her into the fold and she quickly integrated, but she had no other references.

She greeted him at the doorway and gestured within. Her movements were like waves. First the flow, then the crash. Graceful, then abrupt. “Lots of new patients—and visitors. Some of your type maybe. Grinders with heavy mods, but not monks; classic Reclaim types; even a reporter today, so maybe keep an eye out. Oh, and some girl off the wire came and crashed her way into the dojo downstairs, I think.” Dharma smiled, but her stonework gaze went past Gabriel. Her optics tremored like they were refocusing or pouring over an over-stimuli unseen outside of her AR.

Gabriel cracked his fingers and glanced around at the cavalcade of patients. “Alright, let’s cut into some people,” he joked, “what types of augs are they packing?” He pulled out his augmentation scanner.

A man stepped through the vagrants outside, scarcely acknowledging them. Combat boots too new for a run-of-the-mill Reclaimer, suspenders and a black polymer jacket to match, but it wasn’t rough-make recycled polymer. It was fresh, albeit scuffed up just enough to conceal a weave beneath. Off-duty kevlar.

“And he’s got a strap,” Dharma said under her breath, more to herself then to Gabriel, but she looked at the doc afterwards. “Anything specific on your agenda today? Just let me know if you need some help or need to find anything. Or you can always play my sidekick for the day.” She smiled at her own banter, perhaps to draw attention away from her continued scans.

“I’m nobody’s sidekick,” Gabriel retorted, a sly smirk spreading across his face, “though if I had to pick someone to play lackey for, it’d definitely be you.” Gabriel adjusted the Red Cross satchel on his hip and nodded. “Just the usual; give me whatever patient is worst-off and I’ll do my best. I’ve got enough spare parts in my van from last month to fix damn near anything.” It is unclear whether he was talking about mechanical or... organic parts.

The newcomer ran a hand along his jacket, to smooth out creases made by the bulk beneath. His eyes flashed past the monks and their charges like they were pipework in the background of the Reclaim streets, but as he passed Howland, almost bumping into the psychiatrist, he smiled and bowed his head. Perhaps it was because he recognized Howland, too, was observing. Howland, too, could see his friends—same style black jackets, freshly scuffed polymer, moving tightly together. A small team of them circled the clinic while another posted themselves near an alley access door.

“Smog’s got the sky darker, even in the evening, doesn’t it seem?” The lone jacket spoke to Howland, as though he thought he’d picked the right time, place, or target for small talk. He gave another friendly smile and started towards the doorway, but looked back. “Got business with the monks or just here for the spectacle?”

”Call it a professional interest,” Howland replied, without looking at the unwanted interrogator. He’d abandoned the electric-green Reclaim-punk disguise and approached the clinic from another angle; having rejected targeting the clinic directly, there was no need to hide any personal presence. Perhaps the monks would be less guarded towards a medical practitioner.

“Is that...?” Gabriel muttered to himself, squinting at a figure across the room, “Howland?” The doctor smiled, waving a hand to beckon the other doctor over. “Howland! What are you doing here?” He seemed genuinely happy to see the man, despite the direness of the circumstances and the mounting injuries which surrounded
them. Gabriel had seen too much blood in his life to be phased by it.

Howland turned at the more recognizable voice, bringing forward a disarming smile. “Gabriel!” The doctor provided a good excuse to put some distance between himself and the black jacket, so Howland walked towards him. ”I came to see if I could help - but with things turning violent, I thought it prudent to avoid getting myself hurt in the process.”

Gabriel nodded. “Not a bad move. I’m glad I picked a less violent lifestyle,” he continued, “Though I still spend a lot of time dealing with blood.”

”Can’t say I don’t miss my office right about now,” Howland said with a wry grin. But his expression didn’t last, and his tone turned serious. ”How can I help?”

Gabriel nodded. “How’re you with surgery? I’m sure lots of folks around here need it.”

Howland shook his head firmly. ”I can render first aid, but I’m not a surgeon. I’ll leave the cutting to you, but I’ll lend my support.”

“There’s always someone looking for your assistance if it’s there. Are you a friend of Gabriel’s?” Dharma said to Howland as she approached the pair and tapped Gabriel on the shoulder. “And in terms of your work, it seems we’ve got a few candidates that need more than your spare parts. This could be a good place to start, your friend can join us.”

“The one with the reporter— She gestured towards Proctor. “Full set of deteriorated limbs. He’s some old merc type. APEX Furytech limbs and plenty of tin on the inside, too. Usually his type gets by, but it seems like Neurosynth deficiency.” Dharma paused and took a few steps towards Proctor and S’venia. She raised one of her prostheses to wave Proctor over. When her arm moved, it was like liquid in the air, then straight back to a solid foundation though still subtly swinging with the resonance of harp string. Proctor saw the flash of her matte-black industrial limbs in his peripheral—a single hypnotic pattern, just distinct enough to be recognized as something other than visual aberration.

“Symptomatic dementia from… deficiency. No Neurosynth.” She hesitated over mentioning the drug at all. “Got SPECS. At least I think so. Probably wouldn’t go so well if we really started opening him up Ship of Theseus style.”

The sound of a small blast came up from the tatami beneath them. Dharma smiled, though hardly acknowledged the sound as she approached Proctor and S’venia. The man in the black jacket had entered the temple once Dharma had left its entryway. He went straight through the crowded room of mats and descended a staircase in the back. A series of soft orange lights flickered around a ring that carried the sequence around the temple’s interior walls. Dharma eyed it as it passed.

“Good to see you’re already back on your feet. Did what I could with your Striders,” she said to Proctor. “How are the rest of your augs? How’s your head?” Dharma, like the rest of the monks, sometimes had the habit of being circuitous in their verbal diagnostics.

“... Good fucking Lord,” Gabriel mused. Both his eyes and his bio scanners told him that this individual’s body was dying already. “Alright, can we get this guy on a bed? I’m gonna need some... everything...” the doctor trailed off, muttering to himself as he began to gather his tools and augment parts from around the clinic. He came back with what looked like a bin of scrap metal, but upon closer examination contained various spare parts that Gabriel had salvaged from augs over the years, most of which had small modifications and modernizations made to them. Anyone wondering what the doctor was working on in his van for so many hours every day now had their answer. “Hey buddy,” Gabe addressed Proctor directly, “how many neural implants do you have?”

“I’ve got alternatives to Neurosynth we can use in an emergency, but all the knockoffs I’ve made are toxic in more than the lowest doses,” Gabriel admitted, “And this guy looks like he’d need a lot.”

A few moments elapsed. Proctor’s jaw sat slightly agape, eyes shifting back and forth from the various silhouettes that had approached him and S’venia and interrupted his visit to the past. Mouth shut and brows raised as he began to consider the litany of questions sent his way. He tried his best to ignore the shadows. Deep, pure black figures that stood amongst the crowd around them. They all stared at Proctor, even in spite of the absence of eyes. They hadn’t been there before. Their odious presence was all Proctor could focus on now. It took a moment, but his wandering gaze returned to Dharma standing in front of him.

”My head?” A chuckle, meek and unsure, escaped his lips. ”Foggy. Like usual. The legs feel much better, thanks for that, but… Not much to speak of when it comes to the head. Everything else feels alright, about as old and creaky as usual”

Another voice cut in after the monk’s but it wasn’t immediately audible. Proctor’s attention had again been pulled away from those who stood in front of him, and towards the others that had shifted forward. Dark shadows had closed ranks around him. Proctor knew there was no way they could be corporeal beings, but that didn’t stop an intense dread from crawling its way up and down his spine.

His eyes shot forward again.

”Neural implants?”His brow furrowed.”I’m… not really sure. I think this is the only one.”

He raised a hand which had begun to subtly shake, he hoped they wouldn’t notice, and tapped the large metal plate that encompassed most of the back and sides of his head.

”Certainly don’t do shit for memory, that’s definite.”

Proctor peered down at the box full of spare parts, raising an eyebrow.

”You a mechanic or something? You don’t exactly look like a monk.” His voice sounded more distrustful than curious.

“Better than a monk,” Gabriel replied cockily, “I’m a doctor. Got a medical license and everything.” The doctor began to dig around in his bin, pulling out what appeared to be a robotic elbow joint. “Alright, so in layperson’s terms, SPECS typically hits in cases where someone’s augments don’t line up with what the brain wants to happen. The brain is highly adaptable, but not so adaptable that it can deal with a bunch of contradictory signals at once.”

Gabriel continues: “Most of your augments, from a purely mechanical and practical perspective, are working just fine--although they could definitely use a tune-up. Much like a computer, an old aug can still perform its basic functions, even though it might slow down a bit with age. The issue is, the brain doesn’t change at the same rate as an old machine.”

“The issue here is that these old augs don’t do a particularly good job accounting for subtle, almost-imperceptible decreases in performance overtime. Both the brain and machines change with age. A car or a computer slowing down a bit is fine, but when working with the human brain, that shit has to be EXACT. When augs started coming out, we didn’t fully understand the effect these had on the brain. Newer augs have some of that buffer built into them, which is why I’m about to replace your shoulders and elbows with something a bit more responsive.”

Proctor’s face curled into something skepticism and confusion.

”Uhm. That sounds nice and all but what about some ‘synth? The hands and feet work fine, it’s just this…” A sharp, frustrated inhale ”...damn fog! One day I can’t remember where I live, others I can’t remember my own fucking name. The street shit only does so much.”

Proctor gestured towards the disembodied elbow.

”Maybe that’ll help the stiffness, but I need something more than just that.”

S’venia backed up slightly as the doctor started his assessment. She kept herself close to be a familiar face to Proctor, at least for the time being. Howland backed up and stood next to her. Visible only to Proctor, just for a moment amidst the incorporeal shades around them, Howland’s clinical, detached look held something else in it. Not quite sympathy. Pity. A moment later, Howland’s face was once more a mask of clinical concern. “This isn’t exactly a sterile operating theater,” he said to S’venia, under his breath.

The doctor frankly looked irritated. “First and foremost, my work isn’t ‘street shit’. I worked with Gaea Naturae on their biomechanical interfaces, and I’ve seen this EXACT problem about a hundred times. Secondly, Synth is a great short-term solution, and can be used to treat SPECS with a proper supply,” Gabriel replied matter-of-factly, “But the more dissonance you have between what your brain says and what your augs say back to them, the worse your SPECS is gonna get.” He sighed, trying his best to explain as best he could to the poor old man. “If we just give you ‘synth and send you on your way, that’ll only slow down the progression of SPECS in the short term. If you let me operate on you, I might be able to slow it down permanently. That shaking in your hands? That’s the sign of a battle going on between the parts of you that are flesh, and the parts that are mechanical. We need to make them get along.”

“I can’t operate without informed consent, though,” Gabriel adds, “And I can do way, way more for you if you let me open your neural implant so I can re-synchronize your augs. What do you say?” Despite his coldness, Gabriel was entirely sincere.

“That voice” S’venia thought as she froze in place. That voice was one she has heard before. It was familiar if a bit unknown. She fell into a memory pit as she thought over who it belonged to. Dashing between thoughts of the explosion at the square, and the moments prior, she came to the realization. ”The enigma, or the curiosity?” She paused the thought as her head slowly shifted to take in the frame of the man beside her. “Ahh,” S’venia whispered under her breath as she shifted her focus back towards Proctor. “Indeed, but given the circumstances I don’t imagine we could find much better for Methuselah right now.” S’venia paused as she unwrapped her computer again.

In a furious motion a command was entered and her drone turned its focus towards the pair. It hovered upwards a small distance before it settled in, and focused its lens on the pair. “I don’t think we have met Dr. Parker Howland.” S’venia slid her glasses over her face as she turned and faced him.

“I’m S’vei, reporting on this ongoing tragedy, pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she finished as she shot out one hand towards the doctor while she pointed with her other at her drone. He was a curiosity, an aberration even, and S’venia’s own curiosity outweighed her fear of discovery. As well, his presence alone would be worth a few thousand interactions alone on a story.

”Parker; it’s a pleasure as well, S’vei,” Howland replied. A smile flashed across his face just long enough to be polite before dropping; the circumstances hardly warranted an expression of happiness otherwise. ”Although the circumstances could be better. I came here to help, but emergency neurosurgery is a bit beyond my skillset I’m afraid.”

“I understand that,” S’venia paused. “I came here to show the good work that the clinic performs as the Reclaim sinks under her own weight, but all it takes is one look beyond the gates here to see that there isn’t enough room on this lifeboat to save all who drown.” S’venia typed a command to her drone, causing it to pan across the crowd. As it did, she spotted a fresh deviant in the form of a black jacket. Interesting. What would bring an undercover to these parts?

“I will do what I can,” S’venia continued as she turned towards Proctor. “While emergency neurosurgery is out of reach for the both of us, I am sure we both have skills that can help. Mine is to remind the people that there is still enough hope to cling onto to stay afloat for now,” she paused as she shifted her focus down towards Proctor, “or to help remind one person who they are.” As she finished speaking she watched the undercover man cross the clinic with a curious intent.

“You’re in good hands,” Dharma said to Proctor as her eyes followed the man in the black jacket disappear from view. Once he’d descended the stairwell, four others with unmarked gear entered the clinic and headed after him. Dharma started moving after them, hardly turning from the group of patrons as she did, though her eyes were tracer-like, honed on her mark. There were glowing crescents like waning moons, and the shapes rotated in her amber irises as she briefly locked eyes with S’venia, reacting to a stimulus or perhaps PROCing a scan based on some internal parameters. She disappeared down the stairwell.

An array of voices, whispers. Some real, some imagined. Proctor’s confusion was mounting. Between the barely audible murmurs between his old friend and a strange face that barely stood out from the shadows, or the jargon being flung his way by the doctor he was clearly annoying, his head was beginning to pound. The metallic angel spoke up, parting the avalanche for a moment.

Her reassurement settled him a bit, but the doctor’s words drew his attention back down to his hands, which continued with a slight tremor.

When did this shit start?

When his eyes met Gabriel’s again, there was little in the way of confidence to be seen. It was obvious he was frustrated and scared, almost in the same way a child in a strange place. What was there to be frightened of?

A strange place? Strange people?

There was no such thing as familiarity for Proctor anymore.

”Fine. Let’s do this ‘operation’ then. What have I got to lose?”

S’venia’s concentration on the undercover enforcer, and the others that followed, was soon broken by the stunning stare of Dharma. S’venia immediately shifted the focus of her drone on a random patient at the clinic. Was there more behind those curious crescents than what met her eyes? Or would this be just another example of how wondrous some augmentations were? S’venia pondered the thought until the Dharma was well down the stairs.

“Curious development. Enforcers at the clinic,” she spoke softly but audibly. “I wonder why they masked their presence from the crowds outside.” A curious development that churned the waters. The enforcers never appeared somewhere without cause, S’venia knew this all too well. Whether this cause was just or not was made more clear by their apparent desire to blend in. They had something to hide. And when enforcers had something to hide, they had a story to tell. And S’venia knew she wanted to be the one who spoke their Truth to the world.

With a quick wave, S’venia turned around and started to look for a way down that would not draw attention to herself.

---

𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕖 𝕨𝕙𝕠 𝕔𝕒𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖, she imagined.
𝕞𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕝𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕕 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤.
𝔻𝕚𝕤𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕟𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕.

𝕌𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕦𝕔𝕜

𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕚𝕞𝕖.

>>> 𝕊𝕠 𝕞𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕤 [𝕗𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕕] 𝕒𝕟𝕕 [𝕗𝕝𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕] 𝕡𝕒𝕤𝕥.
𝔸𝕝𝕞𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕤𝕠 𝕗𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕝𝕪 𝕔𝕒𝕥𝕔𝕙
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕨𝕙𝕠𝕞 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕞𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕤 𝕨𝕖𝕣𝕖 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝕚𝕟𝕛𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕.

>>> 𝕎𝕖𝕝𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝔽𝕝𝕦𝕩 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟!
>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘…
>>> 𝕀𝕟𝕛𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕊𝕚𝕥𝕖𝕤

>>> 𝔽𝕠𝕣 ℝ𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕

>>>𝕊𝕥𝕚𝕞𝕦𝕝𝕦𝕤 ℂ𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕤

>>> ...
>>> 𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝔻𝔼𝕃𝕀𝕃𝔸ℍ [𝕊ℍ]𝔸𝕄𝔸ℕ𝕆…
>>> 𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕗𝕦𝕔𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕪𝕠𝕘𝕒 𝕤𝕥𝕦𝕕𝕚𝕠 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕖...
>>> 𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦'𝕣𝕖 𝕝𝕠𝕠𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕒𝕟 𝕠𝕝𝕕 𝕞𝕒𝕥𝕖—𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕖—𝕨𝕙𝕠'𝕤 𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕚𝕟 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕨𝕒𝕪…

The reason’s faded, but she knows it will ℙℍ𝔸𝕊𝔼 back in. Everything does. Pushing through the cloaked baldies and their homies was experienced more in still frames patched together with searing glares from bright lights blurring her sight.

The next she remembered, the studio was 𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝔼𝕐𝔼𝕊, all around her. Delilah stood center stage and the human-machine ophanim half-surrounded ehr. In front of her was Shade. Through all the haze and hot, piping proselytism, she’d found him. Somehow. Like always. Because she was a fucking operator. Unconcerned. Unhinged. Periodically punctuating declarations with punches. Heart palpitations made her jump and jet torrents of flames and leaking coolant, spitting sparks from loose wires in the web of her AMALGA Deck and breathing in the fumes from its hot connection ports half-jammed with cement dust and particulate rubble.

>>> 𝕊𝕙𝕖'𝕤 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕤𝕥𝕦𝕟𝕟𝕖𝕕…
>>> 𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕪'𝕣𝕖 𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝔼𝕐𝔼𝕊...
>>> 𝔹𝕦𝕥 𝕒 𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕟 𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕤𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕡𝕒𝕔𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕤…
>>> 𝔸 𝕤𝕪𝕞𝕡𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕥𝕚𝕔 𝕟𝕖𝕣𝕧𝕠𝕦𝕤 𝕤𝕪𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕞 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕗𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕕…

The shaman, for a second, was forced to tear its gaze away from the Shade and, for a moment, remembered a connection to someone named Delilah. When she looked back, she saw Dao. His name conjured faith from a memory of fragmentation at Central Square. He spoke:

“Where does your anger come from?”

He—Delilah thought, she was too dazed to speak—was haloed by white light trailing off in Mandelbrot tendrils, like the ghosts of firing neurons branching past his skull. Or was it just another malfunction, twisting the Prophet Array. She tried to think of Shade and recall what happened. What had he taken? Money or information? Shade stepped into the center of the mat. She was moving before she realized, breaking from Dao’s gentle caress, taking hasty, heavy steps until she met him at the center and pumped back her arm; threw it forward like the machine it was. Her fist met Shade’s face and blasted a cone of sparks like tracers in a shotgun thick enough that she feared it would ignite the tatami beneath them. The watching wall of spectators’ eyes lurched back and that pleased the Shaman.

“Delilah, wait—”

She heard Shade’s words after the act, like her senses had lagged several seconds. His voice reverberated and the lights seemed to shift with it. More radiant flashbangs, triggering slowly in time dilation. She heard the overclocked fans of the AMALGA Deck struggling to keep up and spewing hot air against her skin. Then, Dao again:

“Your whole setup’s shredded, Delilah.”
“Your whole setup’s shredded, Delilah.”

“From mistreatment. From mismatched, incompatible cybernetics strung together. A cloud with no centrality.”

She tried to ignore him and stepped to Shade again. He flinched back, still crumpled down to two-thirds his height on a leg prosthesis with broken servos. She remembered.

“You’ve got my datastore. Footage of the [[[𝔸 𝕊ℙ𝕃𝕀𝕋]]] in Central Square, scripts from the Knights Enterprises Heistm and more… You think you can just avoid me, hold that shit over me, you—”

She couldn’t tell if she or Shade had lunged first this time, but he caught her hand in his grip and bent it at the wrist. For the first time in years, the joint felt filled to the brim with frayed nerve endings and atrophying muscle that convulsed in his wristlock. Delilah fell to a knee and almost threw up. More sparks sprayed from her hand; tendrils of smoke almost imperceptibly slipped from the ports of her AMALGA Deck.

“You know I’m a data archivist. I got that shit locked away, and it stays there.” Delilah lurched and her wrist twisted in Shade’s grip—like muscle and clogged arteries morphed their way back into the chromium limb. “I had to go dark too.” He glanced at Dao, with each word bubbling in his throat like he was choking on them. “You knew. Security,” Shade said, “over paranoia,” as though it were a rehearsed mantra.

Delilah tried to parse his words, figuring there might be some sort of epiphany within them. There usually was, she thought, if you dug deep enough at any mundanity or absurdity. Then Shade had a baseball bat—she wasn’t sure where it came from—and he cracked through her jaw before she could wrench her hand free. She collapsed.

“What happens to people like you, try to play pawn of chaos?”
“What happens to people like you, try to play pawn of chaos?”

The Shaman growled something feral as a beast but unfeeling as a machine. She moved harmoniously, despite her wristed still pinned against her chest, sweeping Shade’s legs and pouncing on top of him. She hoisted the bulk of the AMALGA Deck constricting her with its cords and slammed its pointed corner towards Shade’s eye socket until the light in his optic went dark.

“They become Lernaen.”
“They become Lernaen.”

“We were partners,” Shade said, “We—”

“𝕣𝕒𝕟 𝕥𝕠𝕘𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣…” Blood dripped from her chin onto the mats. Delilah only heard the sputtering fans—the Deck’s omnipresent thrum of internal mechanical energy. It strained—the way it did when she ran the Prophet Array projectors too long,

>>>𝔸ℕ𝔻 ℙ𝕆𝕎𝔼ℝ𝔼𝔻 𝔻𝕆𝕎ℕ…

The blood evaporated. Delilah was still kneeling, but the muscular agony was gone. Her wrist was ensnared in the cords of her deck. Shade was kneeling too, ten meters across the room. She looked back at Dao, who stood just beyond her.

But Dao had already turned away, leaving the murmuring monks to melt from their tight circle and talk in loose groups. Some of them conversed with Shade while others seemed keen on enlightening Delilah or discussing what had happened. Perhaps she should have stopped and took stock, to understand, but it didn’t quite cross the surface of her mind; whenever it did, she pushed it aside.

Dendrites of disconnected white wires still stood, though ethereal like floaters in her eyes. They receded, following Dao’s crown as he rounded a corner. She followed too, though tired, still carrying enough strength—or at least enough deadbeat determination—to bruise through any monks and denizens accosting her with curiosity like some treasured or pathetic oddity.

ℕ𝕠𝕥 𝕢𝕦𝕚𝕥𝕖. ℕ𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘. 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕔 𝔻𝕖𝕒𝕕 𝔼𝕟𝕖𝕣𝕘𝕪.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘.

Dharma nearly ran into Delilah as she stumbled through the halls, almost automatically calling out a warning—You’re not supposed to be down—but she stopped herself, and recentered, looking for Dao. Delilah could have sworn she’d seen those crescent eyes before—the way they glinted and spun in reaction to any new visage.

The basement walls—though looking like they were made of layered paper backlit by orange light—seemed to absorb sound. At times, Delilah followed only the remnants of the dendrites firing.

A dead end, and within, a storeroom.

Shelves of steel decorated with leftover medicine, old machine parts, and general maintenance supplies lined the walls. It was all sparse, the last bottles and buckets of the Reclaim, save for the black steel payload in the cleared away center of the room. It was like a trapezoidal prism, and nondistinct with its side clean of any labels. Whatever it was, the crate must have held a majority of the supplies, lest the monks were far deeper entrenched in the poverty of the Reclaim then they let on.

Delilah—and so Dharma stopped in the corridor just outside the storeroom to listen in, but caught only the tail end of some negotiation and subsequent orders issued. There was no door, so they saw clearly within. Other corridors split off throughout the Temple Underground, and one even led up a ramp towards a steel cellar door to the alleyway.

The man in the black jacket—who Delilah, for some reason, recognized only by the name ‘Tim Smith’—had met up with his four identically-strapped companions. The goons raised the payload up with a lifting frame.

Dharma was a ghost—no footsteps, dancing the distance between her and Tim Smith and seizing his shoulder before he knew she was coming. She pinned his elbow to his ribs and cranked his hand at the wrist. Delilah felt ghost ligaments of her own snapping like rubber bands stretched too thin as she stood stuck, struck by spectacle and lost in paracosm. Smith drew on Dharma as he dropped to his knees, but Dharma’s cyber arms struck like pit vipers even outside of her peripheral vision. She elbowed the pistol into the floor and Smith’s first round went into the tatami.

“Wait,” Tim Smith choked out before another of the monk’s strikes connected. He dropped his gun, and gestured back towards the payload. Two of the Enforcers had drawn sidearms as well, still struggling to hold two of the corners of the payload.

“You’ll destroy it,” Dharma said. Her breath and her pulse sat at an unwavering baseline. Somewhere in her head, the altercation had never happened, or it wasn’t her skirmishing and she was still back topside tending wounds. “—if you drop it.”

Despite her words, the Enforcers held steady their aim, though they exchanged concerned gazes with Tim Smith. If she engaged them, they’d have to set it down first, or risk leaving the clinic empty-handed.

“Whatever you think you can do with that,” Dharma started, “Know from whose hands you pry it.” She gestured towards the ceiling, concealing her own concerned scan for Dao. “And what resistance you might meet.”

“If they knew what you had—what you withhold—maybe you’d be surprised by how quickly your allies become your opposition when you fail to deliver.” Tim Smith had retrieved his weapon and leveled it on Dharma. “And maybe your master—and your mojo—aren’t all that you thought they were…”

“Should you try to leave with our supply— Dharma took a deep breath. “You can keep ignoring our patrons, and trust in my deliverance.”

---

---

---

“Wait, Dharma; please…”

“Trust my words.”

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒t 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖

A Finale Wherein They Head Back to the Beginning

_{With @Atrophy & @Opposition}

“The Reclaim is dying ground.” The Artist knew. If anyone knew, it was her. She’d seen it before, but hadn’t quite seen the Reclaim’s descent—not the whole of it. Her friend, the former street samurai, had though.

“Why does a human so easily stake claim to it, then? For everything you have—for everything you could have—you’d give up everything for Scorched Earth.”

The Artist took a step closer to the street samurai, and sat next to her on the edge of a high rise. Two blocks away they saw the block of old factories turned to campaign suites and government offices around Central Square. It buzzed with lights and sounds. Every time the samurai let her gaze rest upon it too long, she became disoriented and started to shake, like her whole body was full of haywire cybernetics. It wasn’t. That was just how she was.

“This is your home, isn’t it?”

“Ash and Toxin.”

The Artist crossed her legs as she sat. The fiber of her cloth mask crumpled as she chuckled silently. “But it’s just the concoction your people want. You say you want what they want, right? You say you see its end…

“In cacophonous motion. In its tremors… It rings,” she paused and leaned forward so her torso was mostly over the open air, “like an Anvil against my eyes, my eardrums, my skin, my teeth…”

“Like a—”

“Death knell...”

“But you think it—”

“Entombed. Flesh beneath barbed alloys, steels, syncretes, plastics. The City’s a Golem overtop of it all. Even beyond its end, the Reclaim breathes in its tremor. And I can’t yet be sure if its artifice was the cause of it all.”

The Artist laughed again, lofting her gaze to the dancing sigils and designs that plastered across her AR glasses. The street samurai, so often described as irrevocably detached, played the Artist’s game of metaphors perfectly. “For someone so perceptive, you seem to forget a lot. What’s in front of you, you know… The steel skeleton of the reclaim is covered in a layer of its own biotic concoction. Really, your people are biohazardous… and whatever’s left of the dead, when they reach their end, will saturate your entombed city with the seeds for its new mutant iterations.”

“Sublime… Everything you say.”

The Artist would have said it the same. “But you see it—the city and what’s to come… or something.”

“You see it too, don’t you? Your art, your words… Doomsayers silk, spun from a weaver that sees fate all the same.”

The Artist stood and swiped a hand through the air, accessing an interface unseen. The samurai, she figured, saw it though. She saw—or rather felt—it all. “Maybe I see beyond this little ledge, but nothing quite like you, Cas. I speak the City into existence, mutant iterations of my own malformed imagination, but you hear it in the tremors and speak back. I manipulate with paint and mandibles, but you are just—”

“A watcher.”

“A watcher.”

“Or so it seems that way...”

The Artist’s eyes traced a street bike as it raced through the Reclaim maze-like streets without a rider. It skidded to a halt 34 storeys beneath the two of them. They shared a final glance, or rather, the Artist looked towards her friend. The samurai’s gaze hardly changed no matter the circumstances. So distant, but omnipresent.

[ℂ𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕝 𝕊𝕢𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕖]

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟛𝕣𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝟚𝟘:𝟘𝟘, 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖'𝕤 𝔽𝕚𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝔻𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝔻𝔼𝔸𝔻 ℙℍ𝕆𝔼ℕ𝕀ℂ𝕀𝔸]

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖

---

---

>>> …
“Hart Media’s continued coverage of the Reclaim Zone brings us to Central Square for the final debate of the Twin City Sprawl Council seat election. With the Reclaim as the last zone to be polled and counted, the election’s results are scheduled to be announced before midnight.

“Anticipation for the event is palpable in the air. Central Square and Swathe Street have been overtaken completely by foot traffic. It’s as though the zone’s whole population is here, but people from all over the Sprawl are in attendance to promote and show support for a variety of causes.

“It’s hard to keep track of him, but incumbent Joshua Gatch and his team have been dug in for days in the Central Square’s attached block of old industrial warehouses turned campaign suites. In a statement to Hart Media correspondents, a publicist for the Gatch campaign cites fears of increased danger in manufacturing facilities for an increased number of APEX contractors on site.”

[[The broadcast cut to a skeletal woman in a dark suit sitting rigidly on a stool, neon jewelry interfering with the glow from the key lights to make her skin glow a troubling nuclear waste green. A graphic over the lower third incorrectly identified the woman as “Lotte Ramona , Central Party Rep”. Dead eyes reflected the dead air, the broadcast entering into a standoff before the off-screen interviewer breaks the silence to repeat their question. The privacy curtain for the interview wasn’t quite pulled shut all of the way. Behind the woman an out-of-focus brigade of private contractors readied themselves to protect democracy while polishing their heavy artillery. Somewhere a producer was yelling at someone.

“In light of recent events, the Mayor has seen fit to increase the level of security for tonight’s debate to assist the Enforcers and ensure that there are no unwanted interruptions to the democratic process. Knight Enterprise, a subsidiary of APEX Industries, as well as other APEX peace contractors will be present to see that this evening runs smoothly.” Raised voices could be heard coming from behind the curtain as the interviewer prompted the rep. “Is that true?” Behind her the crowd of goons seemed to thrum and vibrate with anticipation for violence. The rep turned to look over her shoulder at the action. Perhaps she’s looking for an escape. The interviewer prompted her again. The rep’s almost able to wipe the look of panic off of her face by the time she turned back around.

“Sorry, what was the question?” asked the rep before the question was repeated for the third time. “The presence of APEX’s Bomb Squad is news to me, but rest assured the safest place you can be is here at tonight’s debate.” Another question, muffled by the sound of large vehicles. “No, there isn’t a bomb.” Another question, this one drowned out by the sound of a helicopter flying overhead . “Probably in case there is one. I can’t say why they’re here.” Another question, silenced by a rallying warcry. The rep’s eyes were darting back and forth, her hand fumbling with her wristwatch.

“My NDA with APEX has nothing to do with this, I work for the Mayor. No, I’m not avoiding the question, I’m saying I cannot answer the question. Please, just stop asking me questions and listen: there’s no place s-safer tonight than the debate, I can assure you. Please, if you’re out there, ple—”

The image cut away from the representative, who was on the verge of tears, back to the smiling, plastic-faced interviewer as they thanked Ms. Ramona and informed her that they were unfortunately out of time. ]]

“Serena Petrukov arrived first thereafter with a small entourage—what she called an ‘envoy’ of the Pirate Party. Candidate Walter Faren, representing the NLP has not yet arrived and hasn’t been located for further inquiry by Hart Media Enterprises for several days. While plenty self-identified HyperHuman Monks and their supporters have shown up to the event for Chen Dao’s campaign, but Hart correspondents have confirmed that Dao himself is still at the Baolei Clinic, a few blocks away from Central Square.

“NTP candidate Samsara Washington has been caught in brief—er—interviews, he has been constantly on the move throughout the Central Suites facility, coordinating the arrival of a group of supply trucks that have flanked the facility’s nearest lots and garages with deliveries.”

[[ “Mr. Washington, do you have any statements on your debate plans today?”

“Do you have an official statement on the rumors of Amalgamation Corp.’s involvement with the NTP?”

“Where’s the rest of your campaign team? And what are you transporting in all the trucks?”

“Samsara, is that your girlfriend that keeps following you around or just a stalker?”

Samsara stood flustered and out of breath before the camera. He and Delilah hurried to unload crates and boxes from one of the NTP supply trucks like goons in a crime drama.

“Amalga—... shit. The NTP will make all of its announcements during the debate. This is a restricted area for the remainder of the debate to protect suite staff, so please—” Samsara could hardly get a sentence out before the questions came again. He was pushing a wheeled cart up towards the derelict back garage entrance to the Central Suites compound. As far as any of the Reclaimers or reporters knew, the complex wasn’t connected to the garage for security reasons. Nonetheless, Samsara seemed to be pushing two hefty boxes on the cart, which bowed in the middle from the weight of the boxes. He struggled to get it up a concrete ramp that led to a security door. “Come on, Del! I need some help!”

Delilah looked half-hunched with her skin a mixture of sickly pale splotched with overheated red. Despite her demeanor, she was unloading faster than Samsara, though she only carried degrading cardboard boxes filled with what could have been mistaken for scrap electronics. She was without the AMALGA Rig wrapped around her, wearing a thick jacket to keep the cold out in lieu of the weave of tangled cords. Delilah could have sworn she remembered being lighter on her feet without the heavy cyberdeck, but each step without it still made her shin bones creak and grind. She turned to the reporters and the cameraman flinched back, as though he thought it wasn’t human for a brief moment.

“Stay back, you pawns of Private Surveillance Equity! I’m his hit-woman!” Delilah’s migraine was getting worse. A voice, which she thought was her own spoke:

𝔻𝕣𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕞,

, but she had

𝕟𝕠 𝕕𝕖𝕔𝕜.

She felt powerless. Minute muscle fibers alternated, contracting and extending, as Delilah’s gaze flicked constantly between the doors and the reporters. She carelessly flailed her hand in the box and spilled a handful of microsofts from her box. The cameraman stepped forward and her sympathetic nervous system overloaded. It felt like she sprained her ankle when she jumped and backed up towards Samsara.

“Please ignore my assistant. No time for questions,” Samsara said as Delilah gave his cart the last push he needed to breach the door and duck from view.

Some of the reporters scrambled to grab at the microsofts, though each hesitated before one brave Hart Media rep. stuck the thing in the microsoft jacks along his neck. The broadcast went dead.

---

“Sometimes—the shit you say in front of the press makes me wonder why you haven’t blown your little alter ego’s cover by now. But I suppose you got that typical Reclaimer look,” Samsara said to his companion. Delilah couldn’t help but wonder what he meant by that.

But he was right. Sweat beading over heat rash; still shivering despite being wrapped up in his trench jacket. She didn’t say anything.

“It’s fine when you’re going around playing hacker, but this is business. You can’t keep doing it when I’m around—when Amalgamation is watching. And not in public. This campaign isn’t one of your RPGs. Makes me wonder why you still get a check from us while you spit in the face of NTP public relations… And my public relations for that matter. And you tank—” He wanted to say more—wanted to get personal—but at a time like this, he knew better. Samsara gritted his teeth, twisted away from the little quarrel and pushed one of the overweight carts towards the stage. Delilah followed him, but stayed a few paces back. He interfaced with the metal crates on a tablet and they lit up at the edges as the contents booted up. Delilah heard the things inside skitter to life.

“Makes me wonder why you do keep me around. Is it just getting lonely around here? Or are NTP and the Amalga goons stonewalling you? I can’t help but notice we ain’t got no security personnel except for your personal detail from Extropy. Where the hell is Amalgamation? Where the hell are the NTP?" Her questions came one after another, tongue flicking like a snake’s between her teeth, but she could hardly control where she started and stopped. Somehow her mouth felt numb, yet filled with sharp pangs of pain at the same time. “You need me just as much, especially now. Even with all your little droids and your tech company blood diamonds, you’re like a little cybersecurity baby.” She raised her firsts and shook them above her head. “In fact, I’m digitally beating the shit out of you in the Labyrinth right now!”

“What’d you take, Delilah?” Samsara was only half-paying attention. He answered a comms call from one of their security personnel, who was guiding another truckload of goods from Amalgamation into the suite’s derelict bay.

“Not much. Not yet.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re irritable.” Samsara stepped closer, and Delilah realized how tense she was, ever since they arrived at Central Square. She softened her shoulders. “I do need your help, especially now.”

“You didn’t answer me. Where are your corp. shill handlers? They really trust you and your droids to hand them the election with no help? You’ll get dropped as fast as Campbell, and Amalgamation won’t risk it.”

“Maybe you misjudge their reach.” Samsara ran a finger along the metal crates. “And maybe you misjudge what they’re trying to protect… The election. This event. Its outcome. Not me. And for all that, they’ve done their due diligence.”

“I need the position, for my sake, for Extropy Inc., Delilah, and they know that. It’s just orders from here. And you know that.”

The voice of Samsara’s miniscule security detail came over the tablet intercom: “Another two trucks are here. Same cargo. Finished unloading, now we’ll send ‘em back.”

“No,” Samsara cut in. “Leave one truck in the lot. I’ll take care of it.”

“All this shadowy bullshit. What sort of stage exhibition needs four dozen of these things? And where are all the trucks going? Don’t you need to cart them all back afterwards?”

“We will.” He cut her off quick this time, sighed, and repeated his words: “We will… Just get them synced up, and make sure feeds are cut off from Labyrinth countermeasures, until—... If this goes wrong, Delilah, it goes real wrong. I gotta find Gatch before he goes on.” He was already headed backstage. “And if something goes wrong, Delilah—” Samsara took one last look back, a soft gaze upon her erratic eyes before his mirrorshades went opaque. It was time for Business. “Find me. We stick together. For real. I’ll keep you alive in meatspace… So long as you don’t drop yourself first.”

---

𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕔. 𝕒𝕟𝕕...

They called it MINDSLICER™ on the streets,

—and even the dealer spoke to her in ALL CAPS from the moment they met.

She could feel it. Even now, the autoinjector in her hand vibrated with [𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕟𝕥] [𝕓𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘][𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕞𝕖𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝] [𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕖]; a mind of its own. Or maybe Delilah was just trembling too much to tell the difference. Most people steered clear unless they needed it. Most netrunners who used it forgot why exactly they ever needed it. Delilah knew she needed it—now more than ever. The thought of [𝔽 ℝ 𝔸 𝔾 𝕄 𝔼 ℕ 𝕋 𝔸 𝕋 𝕀 𝕆 ℕ]—the horror it brought with it—was battled back by a feeling that hadn’t come around in a while.

[DUTY?] [WITHDRAWAL?]

On Samsara’s security feeds, she watched his detail step away from the last shipment of drones.

No waiting. No games. An ally’s fate—or legacy— could fizzle in absence or stand to remain. Delilah imagined another hacker turning a cheap pistol upon their own face, leaving quiet comms and no trace.

[NO] [NOT CITIZEN K]

She yanked the cables jacked into her neck taut and stabbed the autoinjector through a spot along the cable patched with electrical tape. It’s payload melted on contact with the wires and followed the electrical current up to where her Electronic-Brain components met flesh. It bound to neuroreceptors and boiled or bubbled like that GREEN brand rock candy that leaves your mouth microbiome feeling like a pit of acid. Or maybe she just imagined it.

She didn’t feel sad, but she felt [BLUE].

Not angry, but the [RED] seeped back in.

Like she was still wearing the glasses, but in a brief and swiftly forgotten fit of convulsions, the glasses had fallen off when the first wave hit.

>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...
>>> 𝕎𝕖𝕝𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝔽𝕝𝕦ü̶̡͎̟̬̤͔͕̙̔̆x̶̧͍̹̜̹͍͆͝ͅ ̸̞͇̫̭̝̫͚͑̉̄̾͑̑̿̒̚Ş̷̬̗̲͔̠͕͍̲̉͌̄̂̆̇̉̽̃͜͝\Ⱨ₳…!

>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕗𝕒𝕚𝕝𝕖𝕕. ℝ𝕖𝕥𝕣𝕪𝕚𝕟𝕘…

>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...
>>> 𝕎𝕖𝕝𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 [𝕃𝕐𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝔼𝔽𝔽𝕀𝔾𝕐]...

[𝕊𝕃𝕀ℂ𝔼ℝ]

>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕗𝕒𝕚𝕝𝕖𝕕. ℝ𝕖𝕥𝕣𝕪𝕚𝕟𝕘…

The AMALGA Rig was whirring and she was in the Labyrinth, but she still saw the crooked table with uneven legs, half-strewn with trash in the derelict suite that Gatch gave to the NTP. Still in multicolor. Pupils still dilated. With heart still racing from all the calories she still burned while just sitting up.

Samsara’s security feed of the trucks in [BLUE]. A trembling hand clawed towards the screen.

The inside of the trucks through the [RED] lens. The autonomous droids were unpacked and waiting, but all their sharp spindly winds collapsed in on their bodies, like they were crushed into coffins too small.

And in Labyrinth, too. There, it seemed like she could see herself, but she wasn’t sure how. There were no cameras in the suites, especially in the derelict ones. No cameras faced the little crooked table, crumbling in real time. Not red or blue but ALL WHITE LIGHT. Like someone was watching her moves in cyberspace— someone there with her. At first, she thought it was the droids or Citizen K. But she was alone.

Then just the same way all her seizures started, there was a CLICK and her neck collapsed back. Dead weight, but the droids felt it too, and to them it was a spark of life.

>>>[𝕄𝕀ℕ𝔻] 𝕊𝕃𝕀ℂ𝔼𝔻 𝕊𝔼𝕍𝔼ℝ𝔼𝔻 ℂ𝕆ℕℕ𝔼ℂ𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ 𝔼𝕋. ℂ𝔼𝕋𝔼ℝ𝔸.

𝕀𝕋 𝔽𝔼𝕃𝕋 𝕀ℕℂℝ𝔼𝔻𝕀𝔹𝕃𝔼
𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕠𝕟𝕖…

>>>𝔽ℝ𝔸ℂ𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼𝔻 ℙ𝔼ℝℂ𝔼ℙ𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ 𝕎𝕀𝕋ℍ 𝔼𝕏𝕋ℝ𝔸 𝔽ℝ𝔸𝕄𝔼𝕊 𝕆𝔽 ℝ𝔼𝔽𝔼ℝ𝔼ℕℂ𝔼

Delilah’s effigy in the white light had long since vanished. But somewhere else, the AMALGA Rig still whirred, and the Prophet Array clicked on its projectors.

>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...
>>> 𝕎𝕖𝕝𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕫𝕖𝕟 𝕂…

---

---

Ring of Fire - A Pacific Rim Mecha RP

I've been waiting for a good mecha RP run that I can get in on.

I'll write for anything you put together anyways, so long as my occasionally slower contribution pace doesn't disrupt the experience.

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒t 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖

Signs of a Puppeteer's White Gloves on All Fronts

_{With @Squad 404}

“If you look deep enough into a mechanism, grinding its cogs to sparks, spiralling, shredding any foreign component that interrupts the inner workings of a great machine; it seems so vile, but then you start to understand why it exists. Because the decision is all yours—let the gears click on in lockstep or stick your hand in between their serrated saw blades and feel the metal edges. Feel them twist deeper towards bone. You’ll feel finality in agency.”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ>>.,𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠?<<>..𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨??>>.. ℂ𝕚{{>>... > <??𝕝
>>> …
“I called the station. We can’t cut the feed. Both vest cams still recording.”

“Does Valentine know what’s going on?”

“And we gotta find something.”

---

---

𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 “ℕ𝟘 𝕄𝔸ℕ'𝕊 𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻”

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕤] ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘...

“Right,” Salt said. “Outpost Two, I’m coming in hot.” The message reached Glory’s radio only moments before the sound of the grappling hook smashing into the side of the unfinished structure’s concrete walls. Further below, Salt was already in the air, sailing—or rather falling—after the hook on its overextended rope. The grappling rope went slack when he crashed into the side of the building. He wheezed for air over the radio waves.

“Reeling in. I’ll be right there.” Salt triggered the industrial winch in his grappling gun, and sailed skyward, watching the edge of the building for Glory’s outline.

Together, the commander figured, they could at least look like they emerged straight out of some buddy cop movie if they were going to get beatdown in the crowd below. He stuck a hand up blindly as he gasped for breath. Footsteps and shouts from below echoed through the unfinished stairwells below Glory’s recon position, but their voices were distorted. The swell of sound could only mean that a rush of people from the crowd had entered the lower floors.

As Salt reached blindly up towards the edge of the roof he would find it answered with a comfortable and firm grip followed by words of assurance. ”I got you. C’mon.” Hauling Salt up over the edge of the roof, Glory gave him a smile before giving him a reassuring clap on the back and cracking a joke in order to try and diffuse some of the stress of what they were about to have to do. ”Well. At least you got to use it. Fun as you expected?” With her brief joke out of the way, Glory resumed taking the situation seriously. “Got a plan for trying to extract or are we going to just dip into the usual playbook for something?”

Now that Salt was secure, Glory turned her attention to the roof in general. In particular she focused on the door that she’d forced open to get up here. Being the only access point to the roof it made for a double edged sword: It was the only way up, but it was also the only way down. Unless they wanted to try roping down to another floor, that staircase needed to be clear.

Gripping her gun firmly, Glory pulled it free of it’s holster and checked the chamber before nodding to herself and flicking the safety off. If Salt was watching closely he would see Glory’s contacts flash briefly as the smartlink systems switched into their active state and synced with the weapon. It was ready whenever she needed it. Hopefully she didn’t, but being caught unprepared in this kind of a situation was a death sentence.

---

It meant something special to interface in the midst of shockwaves. There will always be those amongst us that just operate, and when cocktails start flying from both sides, it helps to keep one eye on the patrons and the other awaiting some

next formula.
A new idea.
A way to ease and erase
chaos, as easy as they do order.

Perhaps that’s just formulaic hope. Praying for
Some ditch effort conceptualization that sometimes never comes.

Stella’s optics lit up with transparent readouts as a shockwave of displaced air shot past her. The bullet hit the brick six feet and seven inches away from the B - A - R. The measurement overlay melted away. At the origin, remnants of Turkish’s Bomb Squad cleared swathes through the crowd with the vehicle’s mounted turret. Those that remained outside the factory complex with the vehicles were already scrambling for seats, but their barrels remained focused on an enraged mass—like a growth of shadows. Remnant products of forces absent. Grounds run red.

The glow of her optic implants flashed orange on the glass of her respirator. The flickers almost blotted out the scene. Hyperactive motion receptors, flicking towards each disturbance in a radius around the B - A - R. There were a lot of them. Heart rate too high; still climbing. Skin too cold for the surrounding temperature and nearby blazing puddles. These sensations—they weren’t alien. They had their place but not here, in this chaos. Stella lived chaos, was its conduit in Limbo. It played out before her eyes, then replayed and replayed and replayed across the cart’s three monitor screens.

The indicator given to her by the goons came alive in vibrations. Its red indicator light flashed at her. It was a simple piece of tech on the outside at least. That was all the communication that was needed—one signal to take the next step. Another of the B - A - R’s locked compartments unsealed and inside she could see another bottle. Optic readouts identified liquid benzene. Small thermite charges lined the compartment’s interior.

A single instruction, “Bartender”…
Burn and turn...

A man stumbled into Stella’s cart on a slow retreat. His trembling palm covered a gouged eye—not well enough. Stella flinched, and groaned as she threw her weight into the B - A - R away from three enshrouded members of the crowd that pulsed out from the central shrinking mass. She backed away until she felt brick against her back. They were coming closer. Another stray shot ricocheted off the derelict factory and left a bottle of gin in a puddle of shards. Stella ducked low behind the cart.

Unsustainable Heart Rate. Clouding Judgement.

Stella gritted her teeth. This Reclaim—the surface—was chaos of a different sort. There were too many factors flashing past. Too many to react. More than any one Mixologist could ever quite micromanage.

“But, Solomon, the Limbo is a closed system; the Mixologist its membrane—not a barrier, but fielding every intricate factor, letting the alien pass within and beyond. So you, membrane, disperse. Become its equilibrium.”

Neon haze and star-filled views from the void erased the danger…

“What do I—” Stella said, but she was alone.

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕃𝕚𝕞𝕓𝕠 ℂ𝕝𝕦𝕓

ℍ𝕚𝕘𝕙 𝕆𝕣𝕓𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝔸𝕝𝕖𝕩𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕣𝕚𝕒
∞∞∞

“I’d say it happens to the best of us, but...”

“But it doesn’t. The young Mixologist, perhaps, becomes enamored, lost in new experience, and wavers in the most important moments. The young Mixologist fears lack of preparation… For the Alexandria’s finest are themselves infohazardous. They change the concept of economy, of life, of freedom. You can’t prepare for that.”

“What? What do we actually do?”
Stella realized she was pressing herself too hard into the metal counter of the Limbo Club’s preparation station.

Just beyond the partition was a party of engineers who walked right past all of the club’s defense systems. The turrets, the lasers sparked and fizzled as they entered. They were an envoy or something—the detail had already vanished in her fog. Her BPM monitor went critical, and glinted against her iris. But it started to slow to the steady rhythm of the club as he spoke to Stella. He had the effect, not just on clients.

“Don’t tell me you’re worried. Is it because of the weapons? Believe me, sweetie, even worse folks have passed beyond our domain without you even recognizing the firepower. And remember… They are the patrons, but it's the Mixologist who’s truly in control.”

“Oswald lets in a lot of—” She was cut off by the gunshot. He held up a pristine steel tray and Stella caught just a glimpse of the reflection. One of her clients was somehow crisp, still burning, but melting into the Limbo’s red carpet. Her throat closed up, but somehow she still choked forward another quip. “Sometimes you can just taste when a drink is tainted...”

He placed another glass on the counter. Its contents shimmered in the low light. He put on a smile, and stepped out onto the floor. “Calm down, Stell… Remember whose domain this really is. And remember that doses flow both ways.”

---

---

𝕍𝔸𝕃𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔼…
ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕖𝕚>>.,𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘?<<>..... {{>>... > <??𝕋𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕤𝕞𝕚𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕠𝕟
>>> …

“To what extent is it right to do bad things for good reasons? And how may we identify those who do good things for bad reasons?” A shaky hand held a crystalline martini glass. It wore a silken white glove that ran past a suit sleeve. Despite the tremor, two fingers curled back to smooth his cuff without losing a drop from the drink.

“Advise,” he said, and the dim lights came alive around him. “Construct 3-2.”

“Yes, Valentine?”

“When must you knowingly stop mass harm?.” His gloved hand flicked high and slashed the air. The three drone monitors hovering in front of him revolved, their positions taken by a new set of three with multiple media sources of the crowds outside the APEX foundry. “How many of those who know but don’t act push their deeds into unconsciousness?”

“Should I run this question against a database of recent associates, Valentine?”

His hand strangled the neck of the glass. He feared it would break. “No. 3-2, get me on the bartender’s feed. Two-way. The stage is already set. And open the remote controlled interface.”

“You’re sure you want to risk being seen connected to the Limbo Servant?”

“With haste, 3-2.”

“Yes, Valentine.” The lights around him dimmed until only a stark spotlight remained. He adjusted his lapel. The camera drones in front of him twisted in on themselves and opened up with watching scanners.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter whether they’re conscious or not. It only matters that they exist, but so do I, and perhaps that’s enough this time.”

---

---

𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 “ℕ𝟘 𝕄𝔸ℕ'𝕊 𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻”

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕤] ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘...

Salt staggered when his feet found the coarse sediment of the rooftop. Glory couldn’t see his eyes, but she could tell something was off by the way he swayed. His hand gently pressed the side of his head, where a trail of blood dripped down from the side of his cracked visor. He took in a sharp breath and settled himself facing Glory.

“Thanks. I, uhh— wasn’t expecting my descent to involve so much downward momentum. More testing to be done before field operation next time.” Salt made sure he was far enough from the edge to prevent his subtle swaying from sending him back down towards the crowd. “Let me think,” he said and dropped to one knee. “Extraction… Yeah, we can go down through the stairwells, but we’ll run into the crowd on the way. They’re probably taking refuge from the APEX goons, or each other, or something.”

Salt paused for a long moment, though not just to steady himself this time. He fiddled with the side interface of his visor, fighting its glitched state until his gaze was honed in and following something through the building below. “I got something.”

“Three other Reavers spotted by the reconnaissance teams before they pulled out. It appears like they’re chasing someone. Maybe the killer? If we—” Salt paused, and turned to Glory. “Well, you’re in a better state. I’ll follow your lead. Can guide you to their infrared signatures from the rear, but we gotta move to make it.”

Glory gave a few nods to Salt’s observations before taking a moment to close her eyes and think. Three Reavers that were in pursuit of an unknown party. No information about how they might be armed, and no information on any potential augmentations they had. With the violence and chaos that had taken hold they were likely running entirely on survival instinct, and so anyone who wasn’t one of their own would likely be seen as a threat. Intercepting them and bringing them in would look good, but survival was first and foremost on Glory’s mind at the moment.

Wading into a situation like that wasn’t Glory’s idea of a good time, but if they didn’t get moving they ran a real risk of being abandoned among the storm. Unfortunately, Salt had taken a nasty ding. Glory would have to cover him while they moved. A simple enough task in most cases, but due to the rapid and unpredictable movements of the crowds there were enough unknown factors to make her head spin.

The two paths that Glory could see laying before them were wading into the unknown or sitting around waiting to see if the next person to show up would be help or harm. Neither scenario was optimal, but a choice had to be made. Opening her eyes, Glory placed an assuring hand on Salt’s shoulder before speaking with what little confidence she could put together. ”Alright. We’ve got to move and try to get out of here. Keep your visor working as best as you can. Bounding Overwatch maneuvers. I’ll lead. Ready?”

Regardless of his answer, Glory began to tug Salt towards the stairway down in order to begin making their way out of the building.

---

No stranger to the haze and trance states.
It was like—
a welcome awakening.

Another locked compartment of the B - A - R opened, but Stella hadn’t noticed. A savage Reclaim denizen with a broken arm swung a half-shattered glass bottle for his opponent’s neck. Stella’s Clairvoyance Optics honed in, analyzed trajectories and patterns of blood splatter both from where the man’s hand gripped tight against the glass shards and where they connected against his opponent’s flesh. The uniforms of whatever warring factions may have come to dance had been rendered useless, dull and ashen in the smoke, so she had no idea as to what conflict existed between the two.

Perhaps that was what was missing amongst the terrans. The closed system of Alexandria extended to its nets of information. Everything coming in and out, analyzed and predictable. Earth blurred its factions amongst the meridian lines. They pervaded into one another, spilling and exchanging resources, bacteria, ideas.

“You’re a Mixologist...”

It was hard to focus—dissociating behind the optic feed, letting her vision go blurry—but the voice brought her back. Stella’s eyes locked onto the B - A - R cart’s displays. The feed showed… another television, an old CRT, encased with platinum, embossed with designs. It spoke through the static, faceless.

“Progeny of chemists, biologists, ancient alchemists, bards, bartenders, and charlatans. So follow your path. Seek recombinance, reorganize, reshuffle your factors.”

Stella blinked, and tried to focus her gaze clearly. But something—some shadow—hemorrhaged in her head and all her clarity turned to dust.

“You have everything you need—chance would have it—to avert unfamiliarity, return to Limbo. Or find a path.”

One of the silhouettes from the crowd had reached her—bashed his knee into the cart and tumbled into it. Stella stepped back, her. focus ever-distracted by shimmering analysis of the cart’s velocity across the asphalt and where it would return to stillness. The man clutched at his eye. His palm pressed against the socket couldn’t hide the web of blood across his face. He was hardly aware she was there.

some shadowJust another silhouette, herself.dust

“But by all means, ‘Mary’... Don’t let any one passing goal distract you from your art.”

Stella looked back at the CRT on the feed, and could have sworn it regarded her back. The simplest tilt backwards in recognition of her gaze—it was a cue she recognized in the rhythms of rhetoric in Limbo.

As though catching just a glimpse of a scanner gazing back.
Clearly.

In the new compartment, chilled bottles of thick glass and steel alloy. Her optics bore into the new stimuli for microseconds, then action in the artisan arms.

Matching a shadow to the manufactory.
Weaving from within.
Creating a closed system.
Intent not to mend permeable membrane.

𝔻𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕕 ℍ_𝟚𝕆

ℙ𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝔼𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕠𝕝

ℍ𝕪𝕕𝕣𝕠𝕘𝕖𝕟 ℙ𝕖𝕣𝕠𝕩𝕚𝕕𝕖

For rending biotic connection was always the quickest way to purge a vessel of contaminants.

Seared by disinfectant or drowned in antiseptic.

Stella pried open the industrial capsules and jammed each against slots in the bar. Her formulas intermixed, repressurized, and ran through a tap back into the final capsule. Screwed on top was the same sort of spray nozzle she’d handed off to the Man in Rags. This one was heavy duty. She adjusted her respirator, ensured its seal.

---

The Reclaim’s 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 “ℕ𝟘 𝕄𝔸ℕ'𝕊 𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻” was bisected at irregular intervals with corridors of perpendicularly intersecting highways where 10 storey skyscrapers once held capsule hotels for the factory workers. The capsule fad never quite took off in South City, so the blocks laid empty. The highways were perfect for the dispersion of an autonomous crowd—paths for conflicts to break and seek equilibrium. Some were quick to use the route as the fires spit more smoke into the street before the APEX complex. Others lingered, still sought conflict. Others made it as far as they could.

The highways led out of the GCZ. Its borders were distinct because the surrounding industrial zone had been excavated at least two or three storeys from the street level of the rest of the Reclaim. Salt grabbed Glory’s shoulder and pulled her to a halt when they neared one of the ramps that led back towards the city.

“Three signatures,” Salt said. “They’re slowing down. On the ramp.” He directed a hand towards three silhouettes, ascending the ramp, but congregated before their quarry. The ghostly figure met a fourth Reaver, shredded his jacket open with the same serrated ripper and tossed the man aside as his pursuers closed in. Watching the ghost’s movements felt like a paradox. So slow and methodical, but executed with razor instinct at the exact, decisive moment to drop the Reaver to his knees.

Salt hesitated, instead letting his visor’s display linger on a small ray heat signature hidden in the smoke rising along the ramp. “And we’re not the only ones watching the show.” Salt flicked his infrared goggles up and zoomed in with telescopic lenses on the small heat signature. The ray emerged just below the brim of a trilby hat. Salt shook his head as his eyes momentarily fogged up. It was vertigo, but with no queue. “Nevermind. Take point. I’ll back you up.”

As Glory moved to intercept, Salt caught his balance and gazed back towards the obscuring smoke.

---

He leveled the black box with his eye in a shaking hand bereft of its own strength and strained to raise his eyes to meet it. “Pretend…” he said to himself between heaved and rasping breaths. “It’s your old standard issue…” He gripped the thing awkwardly, like he was mimicking a revolver grip. With a click, the rectangular box erupted with an infrared beam, siphoning measurements across the ramp to his target—a ghoul and the Reavers that pursued him. As the data reached him, he felt the searing sensation building up again.

The Reavers didn’t wait after their next man fell to the Ghoul. The source of the smog on the ramp rising into the Reclaim became clear when two of the Reavers withdrew clay devices and launched them towards the Ghoul. On impact, boiling tar rode a brief concussive shockwave and released noxious black smoke into the air. The Ghoul’s torso was half-covered, but the ever-present grimace on his face didn’t waver.

---

I pose a question.
What’s more evasive—
A Justice or the origin of Rage once we escape it?

Stella once again found her steady step, rhythmically pressing through the crowd the way a mixologist stabilizes their breath when treading with tray high past the weight of a dozen watching eyes. She held her formula high and sprayed it in a massive cloud as she walked. Those who inhaled the thick mist continued to cough through the smoke, but felt adrenaline fade and fatigue set in. Rage, as though artificially placed, began to evaporate. She caught as many as she could, and those who still sought martyrdom in APEX’s bowels began to break rank. Frenzy gave way to fleeing.

She turned back to capture a last glance of the B - A - R cart. Its surface was a sea of blue flames licking up the last bits of volatile ethanol before it dripped down towards the charges within the open drawers. Then, the inferno became a storm. The B - A - R cart vanished in flares, and the crowd could not remain.

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

Are y'all still admitting new players? :)

@Lightning Fast

Yes. We'll be prepared for more character introductions after the current scenes are finished. You're welcome to make a character now. I am @Opposition#4407 on Discord. You can add me and join the group for more information about character creation and lore.

There are plans to admit 2-3 more players for the final scene of this season, which will follow an election event in the Reclaim Zone. If anyone else is interested in developing a character for Futility, feel free to message me.

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒t 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖

Deciding the Fate of Entombed Cattle is Just Part of the Game

With @Atrophy

“If you look deep enough into a mechanism, grinding its cogs to sparks, spiralling, shredding any foreign component that interrupts the inner workings of a great machine; it seems so vile, but then you start to understand why it exists. Because the decision is all yours—let the gears click on in lockstep or stick your hand in between their serrated edges and feel the metal edges. Feel them twist deeper towards bone. You’ll feel finality in agency.”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“I called the station. We can’t cut the feed. Both vest cams still recording.”

“Does Valentine know what’s going on?”

“You think he’ll be paying attention? Of course he’s not going to do anything...”

“But this is the job.”

“And we gotta find something.”

---

---

𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 “ℕ𝟘 𝕄𝔸ℕ'𝕊 𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻”

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕤] ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘...

The corridors of the factory level’s interior were tight enough to provide the space a unique dynamic in close quarters confrontations. The Bomb Squad was already sweeping the space in between the walls of heavy machinery and snapping shots of their points of interest. Turkish, however, knew to leave his squad to their prep. He had other plans—walked straight past as they deployed laser measurements, kicked the loose layer of rust up along the floor with thick boots that sounded like concrete against the steel walkway.

An engineer approached the lift shaft, where her foreman paced with stiff limbs. “That Irish guy is back.”

“You mean Turkish?”

“But his accent’s—”

“I tried calling “Management” but the lift’s in use. Looks like someone’s coming down.”

“You think they’ll let us out of here?” The engineer felt the defeat in her voice before she heard any answer. A calm set of hands smeared grease along her lab coat. His stomping had become almost as loud as the old world lift shaft creaking to life.

Turkish peered down the hallway. He had a console probing the space with green and red light as it scanned its surroundings. “The security ‘round ‘ere?”

Meanwhile, Lott stared unblinking as the red LED number above the door of the elevator changed as she went down and down. There were no blackouts to speed up the process or a kind, armed man to keep her from feeling the passage of time. It didn’t help the woman that time had slowed to a crawl for her, an odd side effect likely brought on by mixing Dr. Howland’s miraculous meds with two Manhattans that were so strong the fumes alone made the eyes water. Perhaps living life in bullet time would be nice if she were to face off against the violent mob, allowing her to fully articulate the illegality of their actions and how their right to assemble was negated the moment they stepped onto private property, but alas Gatch had handed her a different destiny.

He just hadn’t mentioned the destiny would involve her being trapped in an elevator for what felt like months. If he had, she would’ve swiped the whole bottle instead of just bringing herself a third Manhattan that was dangerously close to being little more than a whiskey soaked cherry. She should’ve spent her exile coming up with a plan of attack for how she would ingratiate Turkish so she could use him as a stepstool to boost herself up to new heights under Gatch.

Instead, she found herself entranced by her own appearance in the reflective surface of the elevator door. She was a mess, but she was standing taller—if only to make sure she didn’t spill the overfilled drink she had made for Turkish. The doors slid open with a ding followed by the scraping noise of a rusted lattice gate used to seal off the lift from allowing undesirables access to the nicer parts of the corporate world. Lott stepped out of the elevator, her suit a rare sight amongst the lab coats and jumpsuits, as the gate screeched shut behind her. Her dead eyes swept her surrounding, settling momentarily on the foreman and the engineer. The auditor in her flared up as her eyes captured images of the employees who should have been working instead of socializing. Just because there was potential that they would all get hammered and sickled to death by a violent mob of rabble rousers did not mean that productivity should be threatened.

“Shouldn’t you be working? And shouldn’t you be making her work?” asked Lott, addressing the engineer and the foreman. There was no malice in her voice because it wasn’t needed, the thread count of her suit was proper intimidation enough. Any protest against her was clear career suicide. She didn’t necessarily enjoy telling them off. She was just playing her part in the great corporate machine, a small cog pushing around smaller cogs to keep things moving.

Lott turned and eyed the man she recognized as Turkish, even though she couldn’t recall a single time they had ever actually spoken. Had they met before? She tried running a quick scan of his face through her archives, but nothing was flagged. She realized that it looked like she might be ogling him, and then she realized that she had been. Lott cleared her throat, looked down at the nearly full tumbler of whiskey in her hand, and held it out for Turkish.

“It’s good to see you again, Turkish,” said Lott, still unsure if they had ever met. “The Mayor has sent me in his stead to catch you up on a current situation, should you need it, and to assist you with...”

Nothing. Lott’s mind went blank. Why was she here? Had she been sent to only give the man a drink? Had Gatch just been trying to push her away instead of bring her into the fold? No, no, no, that wasn’t possible. Her heart rate quickened and her watched beep, a slight sedative administering herself into her system to keep her barely above comatose. Mimicking Gatch’s nonchalant movement from earlier, she shrugged her shoulders as if she wasn’t fencing with a panic attack and said, “You know.”

Both workers seemed averse to Lott’s gaze. The moment their eyes connected, the foreman’s attention suddenly slipped away. He turned back to a series of cabinets and a desk, a little space he’d created trying hard to pretend it was an office. Another burst of laser radiation emerged from the device in Turkish’s palm, marking the low edge of the corridor’s corner with a pulse of unseen heat. He turned to Lott at the mention of his name—stared her down with perplexed brows that looked bent into a caricature’s pose for a few seconds. Good to see you again, she’d said. Turkish searched his memories, but his static gaze fell to her offering before anything came.

He took the drink in one hand, continued to direct the laser with his positioning beam in the other. His eyes didn’t stop scanning the corridor as he spoke. “I’m looking for the security room. Some console or office where there’s gotta be a detailed map of the place or something. That’s what they’ll be after.” Turkish pressed a button down on his belt’s communicator and its brief feedback came from further beyond. Another one of the exosuited squad members jogged down the hall, kneeling in front of the infrared marker and bolting a device to the wall.

“The team’s setting up the defensive perimeter—workin’ their way in, but it’d be best if we could set up ‘round the payload.” Turkish moved over to the foreman’s desk, as though cursorily interested in the sheafs of paper and which ones needed signatures or stamps. The foreman couldn’t even pretend to work—just sat and watched, wondering.

“He told me that the blueprints were the target,” Turkish made a face alongside the vague pronoun. Perplexion? Respect? A knowing hesitation. “You get the blueprints to a few sections a’ APEX prefabs and you know all sorts of secrets about the fuckin’ diameter a’ their screws or something.”

Turkish’s inspection of the foreman’s administrative space grew more in depth, intense. Before long he had looked over a nearby table, opened up a cabinet by the fluorescent water cooler, and glanced inside some drawers. Inside was one of those new 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ High Density Brain Bars. They were all over the holograph NET ads these days. Turkish unwrapped and chomped it. That look in his eyes hadn’t changed since Lott had seen him. Massive pupils. Artificial Lawn Green. The color you’d see only fake yards meant to mimic some trad primitivist fad in The Bay’s upper tiers.

“Whatever they’re after, they may already be slinkin’ ‘round the halls. Seen any?” he asked the foreman before continuing. “We figure they’re got someone out there rilin’ up the crowd. Have ‘em charge the doors and eat up all the C4. while they dash their sneaky lads to the security room.” The 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ bar was gone in an instant, and Turkish kept glancing back towards the desks in the foreman’s “office”.

“We should have that covered now, though. Should be easy to deal with the targets. Maybe the Reclaim folk’ll get in by some fluke.” He tapped a finger to his cranium, then gestured to the shaped charge now mounted on the wall. It’s technician stepped back and the charge spit out laser sensor, which soon faded beyond the spectrum of visible light. “Clean their mess up for us. Maybe we scrap a bit with whoever makes it past. Clean fun.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” said Lott, hungry for the violence, in what she had intended to be an internal thought. She’d been lingering next to Turkish as he ran his scans, shifted through papers, and ate someone else’s depressing excuse for a lunch. The way he scoped out the room wasn’t too distant to how she used to run her audits inside of APEX Clinics, although those days the only thing potentially exploding were the nervous, red-faced employees frightened by her very being. Lott moved to take a drink upon realization that she had actually spoken out loud to buy time to think of some excuse for what she had said, hitting the empty glass hard against her teeth as the lights burned her eyes.

Lott blinked. She had a full glass before; where had it gone? She noticed the drink in Turkish’s hand, felt betrayal, knew that now there was no point in asking him to get drinks if he already had one, and then realized she had been the one to give it to him. Lott rolled her neck and felt her mind sink into her stomach as a cool sweat formed on the back of her neck. Had she missed a dosage? She checked her watch and the tiny pin needles pricked her skin just in case. She didn’t level out, but she felt like she had leveled up. Realized she didn’t need an excuse. It was the truth. She wanted to watch them grease a few lowlifes.

“In case there is an incident tomorrow. We need to make certain that your team's methods are media approved. Don’t worry,” said the meds, using Lott as their mouthpiece and lifting her hand to pause Turkish. “I’m not asking you to shift tactics, or to curb your curses, or to kibosh the cute accent. It’s just to alert the board so they can sell their shares now and repurchase them back once the price dips.”

“Anyway, you mentioned tomorrow,” continued the diazepam, failing to recall that Lott had actually mentioned it. “I am concerned about our contract with Knight Enterprise. They failed to protect the personal property of the Mayor’s Right Hand the other day.” She felt the phantom vibrations of her phone, a text reminder about the explosion that had also happened failing to come through. If they can’t even do that, how can they hope to protect the Mayor’s actual right hand?”

Lott sniffed, looked through Turkish, and corrected herself, “My right hand side’s right hand.” She felt something was wrong and leaned against a cabinet to steady herself. “What I’m saying is we need a hand. Will you be there to oversee security? How much do you trust the Knights?”

Turkish left the 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ bar wrapper on the “office” floor. The condensed nutritional supplement had visibly energized him even more, in a strange sort of wired way that had him walking robotic and far too present in physical space. When the first tremor came, it barely shook him. It emanated through the resonant maze of corridors from a source that could only be determined via the amplified vibrations coming from the front of the complex.

---

The guard out front and his partner had both been civilians not too far back. Corporate guns, corporate greed—they had a way of changing people. That machine sought their sort and showered them with gifts of what had been missing, their conditions manufactured by the machine itself through crushing competition. None of it really mattered anymore. Now, he was an APEX Bastion, but their feeble barrier was set to break, and after the ‘support’ that had arrived casually strolled inside, he knew it was meant to be that way. He knew he couldn’t go back.

When the last firebomb pressed him back against the brick, he couldn’t do anything to prevent the swelling crowd from pushing the doors. Some came forth with tools to battle the steel doors while others just seemed to be fleeing the terror from within the mass. A crowd that size is more a fluid hive than a rational group. Most of them hardly noticed him. They had their own worries as the fluid mass forced everyone forward, crushing against the brick. He jammed his arm forward, and released the deployable riot shield strapped to his arm which shot out to wedge itself in a corner of two meeting walls. He could feel it pressing down against his chest, but could no longer see the crowd beyond the shield. The job, the guns, the money, it all didn’t matter now. What mattered was nothing at all, or maybe just a hope that the crowd would be focused on the doors, that he would be overlooked as they crunched their way forward, that his shield could stand the weight of the pressing crowd and his ribs wouldn’t be crushed. His job was over, and so he sat waiting.

---

The doors had given way to pry bars and IED charges by the time Turkish and Lott got to the security room. There was no one inside. Any overseer had either abandoned their post or didn’t feel the need to show up most days anyways. Bad timing. A bank of camera screens flickered to portray the building’s corridors across all the lower levels. Swathes of people charged down halls with will and intent perhaps only known to them. They followed signs for the factory floor, but there were others.

“That’s them.” Turkish pointed out a series of heat signatures that crossed the path of a jammed camera. “Close.” He turned, found the rather obvious lockbox in the floor of the security office and let a tube extend from his palm. He motioned for Lott to step back, a gentleman’s courtesy before a spray of thermite flames hissed against the lockbox door. Those green pupils didn’t shrink in the slightest against the blinding light. He just smiled, took it all in.

There were voices from beyond. Hard to hear over the sizzling steel, but still carrying down the corridors. A resolute man came upon the adjacent hall, seen through a distorted camera lens picking up static from a jammer. He called to a few comrades beyond view, then stared down the hall with a set of infrared goggles. With a gulp of air, and a final double-take bearing a resemblance to what the non-devoted might call regret, doubt, or apprehension, he dashed towards Turkish’s charge. The following flash of light covered the spray of his blood, but when the puff of smoke dispersed, his leg was missing from the knee down. He called out:

“It’s clear. The run to the exit is clear from here,” he said, in a choked voice. “But I— I can’t walk. I can’t—” He struggled for words, because he knew they couldn’t change his fate. His stifled weeping was as resonant against the metallic walls as the coming footsteps. The Man in Rags stopped before his fallen disciple, and dropped a stim syringe to clot the wound. The megaphone from before had been replaced by some spray bottle in his hand, tinged with slight bioluminescence—life beyond the machine. Integral to the 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖.

“Thank you for your service,” he said. “But APEX’s Bomb Squad’s in the building. Make it out if you can.” The Man in Rags turned, stared down the corridor at the security room’s door, stared at a watching shill, nameless, and as meaningless to him as the rest of them. As pointless a role in the grander game in his mind as the fallen pawn. Then, he walked on, and an entourage followed.

Turkish walked out of the office with a black box that looked more like a magic wand than a blueprint, but when he held it up to the light and activated it, a three-dimensional schematic constructed itself, reflecting off of the sulfurous smoke the lingered from within the security office. The pawn made an attempt to crawl towards his salvation, but could hardly stand the pain, and could hardly meet the eyes of Lott and Turkish.

“Squad’s checkin’ in and says most of the folks are inside or runnin’ away. We’re ready to cave to the exits. Tomb ‘em up. Seems like most of ‘em took their pitchforks to yer manufactory and are having the time o’ their lives. Won’t make it out if we can help it. Just keep ‘em until someone official comes to clean Gatch’s problems.” He clicked the projection off and pocketed it. Then turned his gaze towards the fallen pawn.

“I’ll take this back to Brandon. No orders for a capture mission, so these ones’re all yours.”

Straits of Steel (A South East Asian Cyberpunk Thriller)

Xiaolan Dagon

“Zen as fuck.”

“Tells you something about Buddha-nature. Vodka, bloodstains, burning headache. My gun is gone, and it took the stim-high with it… Life—as he once said—is suffering, but we must fight on, or something like that.”

Xiaolan blinked her eyes like she was trying to get rid of some filter pulled over them. It didn’t go away. Later, she’d realize she may have just gotten too used to seeing life through the filtered AR of her pair of Hearts Up! sunglasses. She was staring at her reflection, who was also prostrated on the dark floor of the hotel room, full-lotus with red-stained hands immersed in two glasses splashing vodka over their rims. It’d get the bloodstains out, she thought, but at what cost? Xiaolan could have sworn she’d seen this image before, digitally alight on the wall of some great pagoda somewhere lost to time. Or maybe she simply foresaw her own fate—some great, graceful, Bodhisattva of death or something like that.

Spilling half a glass of tainted vodka in the process, she pressed down the dictaphone's button once again with her elbow. “Bodhisattva of death… I’ll use that somewhere. It’s like zen, but with more aesthetic. Zen as fuck.”

Who was to say, really, what happened? Could it have been an impulse surgery? They couldn’t be the stains of her own exsanguinations. Xiaolan knew this because she was too powerful, perhaps even immortal. The very thought conjured images of her squaring up hand-to-hand with Raijin. Maybe it was the thundering in her skull. She removed her hands from either pint glass, flicking them around until the sterile smell misted her accidentally. It was only then that she realized, through the mental haze and visual fog, it was going to be another day of suffering. No moisturizer.

Xiaolan’s war purse was lighter upon leaving that morning. A rather off putting interrogation of the morning staff in the fine establishment below her hotel offered few answers. ‘The Big Shooter’ was gone, which would mean she would be stylistically limited until her reunion with her custom boomstick. As she left the bar, she plucked a dying bougainvillea from a growbox out front, knowing she'd need it later. There, walking through the damp streets of New Malacca, Xiaolan was hardly present in reality, searching instead through a dark void wherein she hoped to find memories of a night gone wrong but found only blackness. It did cross her mind that today was a day of more than just derelict wandering, awaiting the return of someone with a vessel to go raiding, or wasting away confined in bars she couldn’t afford following cons she could never quite keep up with herself.

It was late enough that Xiaolan already couldn’t keep track of the sun. Perhaps she’d slept through the day on purpose, because of her imminent meeting. It was a sort of fate that always befell her. Rest never came easy, appearing as a haphazard burnout of the lights, only to leave the Artist of War to awaken in another instance of reality altogether. Always, it seemed, moments before she had to be up and going somewhere else with great urgency. Flowing like water over the steel plates patching streets that wouldn’t be paved for generations.

The Whip’s pink plated was more dented than it had been the night prior. When Xiaolan felt herself take its handlebars in her grip—feel the slight skew off their axes—she couldn’t help but manifest the half-mil asyuan. Coin, as she called it sometimes, was abject. It was a horrid necessity—one of the Tools of War. She pondered life as a footpad, a footsoldier, or just one shield in a phalanx. The infantrymen rarely pondered their coin. The general, however, played abstract games to determine the fate of nations. Warfare, as it had modernized, had become less its romantic predecessor and more a game of shifting coin, economy variables, petty intrigue that nonetheless changed fate like no honorable battle ever could. It was through the half-mil that she could once again place herself among the generals, and with the coin there was so much to be done. Enemies could be ended, alliances reestablished, capital collected, and even—perhaps—dormant relations kindled.

The Whip fishtailed into a drifting stop at speeds cruel enough to leave slashes of blackened rubber burnt into the already dark pavement. Dancing figures, flashing through forms and kata ran through sequences of precision techniques across her mirrorshades. Xiaolan had the habit of leaving files packed with information splayed across her vision—like she was unconsciously sapping their secrets into her brain in the day-to-day. She grinned when she saw the two men standing as Yin and Yang before the door to Suraiboshen. Catching glimpses of their own optics, the Hearts Up frames upon Xiaolan’s face flickered red, as if greeting them. She smirked.

The establishment, the Artist presumed, might have just the sort of chemically-addled compounds laced into their confections to erase the overwhelming sense of DOOM that coursed in her veins. Every day, in fact, she hoped she’d find the right chef, or sensei, or guru, or enemy that might help her escape the forsaken state of constantly falling and falling towards something dark and unwelcoming. But then, where was the fun in running away from the battle?

“Your general’s come.”
“You’ll find nothing of interest.”
“I am the weapon.”

She paused, letting the perfect structure of her rhetoric linger. Xiaolan was a strange one to frisk, especially with the Big Shooter still absent without official leave, but it was her presence that manifested an edge. The colleagues within must have taken notice. Xiaolan was quick to make herself known.

“Do my screens deceive me or do I stand witness to a fine section of warriors?” She stepped down the hall, swiveling her head just enough to allow her glasses to devour the schematics of the establishment as well as the profiles of the group she’d been directed to join without making her gesture’s intent clear. Upon first observation, the rogue detected no immediate enemies or hazards.

But so began the game,
And the Artist of War, prepared to follow the Way,
Readied her reclamation of a throne on D8.

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒t 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖

The Steady Beat of a Machine Turned Lo-Fidelity

“We all want to walk the wire.”
“Play both sides...”
“Like every major issue is resolved simply by…”
“Just crossing the line.”
“Choose a camp, and only then will you often find that evil resides in enemy and ally alike.”
“We try to walk the tightrope.”
“But it’s up there that no one sees you.”
“And rarely are you ever seen again…”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“Tensions continue to mount on the contested Northwestern border of Portland and Seattle. Many believe the Lords of War skirmishers to now be trapped inside the hijacked Cipher Tower taken control of only days ago. Hart media is live on the border as siege seems to be laid outside the tower by a force of ——…?—>>>--??>>>”

---

---

𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖"𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕪𝕘𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕕"

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝟜𝔻 ℂℍ𝔼𝕊𝕊] 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...

She never knew what it meant for a weapon to backfire. Hadn’t used them enough. That would change.

“Fan out. Encircle.” Such was the way of the Lords of War.

“B-Team keep the Ciphers clear. C-Team withdraw. Relay a report to Knox as fast as possible. A-Team with me… And let the hunt begin...”

Herald couldn’t help but smile as the Scrap God shielded Petrukov from a final fate. It really was that easy sometimes. One could presume he wasn’t the quickest covered head-to-toe in his worn exosuit, but it certainly served its purpose. As the Jury-Rigg drifted through the wall and splattered its surroundings with small shards of concrete, Herald’s helmet only emitted a hardy chuckle, haunting with its mechanical amplifiers echoing in the old warehouse. A length of bent rebar smashed into his leg chassis, but he hadn’t noticed.

Per𝕙𝔸ℙ𝕊 they’d all forgotten her. Perhaps she di𝕕 𝕗𝕒𝕕𝕖 𝕒𝕨𝕒𝕪 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖𝕚𝕘𝕟 𝕄𝕒𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕩. At first it was the subtle burst of interference—reminiscent of televisions screens poorly tuned and all that—that jolted the Jury-Rigg. Kay first caught sight of 𝕙𝕖𝕣 on a busted camera lens that must have been placed recently overlooking the warehouse’s exterior. Then, the hacker faded back to the base white Labyrinth, and there she was standing r𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕚𝕟 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕙𝕖𝕣…

Tucked behind a low pylon to ensure her safety and proximity to outlets, Kay was a shadow in the firefight. So no one saw her seize.

Just as quickly as the Drift Demon’s vehicle exploded into view, a solace for his fleeing comrades, they faded from the warehouse-turned-battlefield, leaving only the driver in the dust among the Lords. The moment Petrukov slipped through the garage gateway into the building’s connector room, its garage doors began to collapse in all directions, sealing the driver off and sealing the candidate and her lawyer within. It seemed ‘their choice’ was clear.

As was the decision of the Lords. Their Herald braced his shinplate against a low pylon bursted to rubble and the hulk of metal held from a handle atop and a trigger below aimed at the driver that dared to create an escape route. There was a window of perhaps two seconds where the entire warehouse room could hear that strange pulsing charge as CO2 built up. Then, it all burst out with a puff of ignition fire. The first bang was the 40mm shell firing forth from the barrel of his grenade launcher. The second, almost imperceptibly present in the echo of the first, occurred when the slug slammed into the rear bumper of the Jury-Rigg, nearly taking it off as the car was jolted forward far enough to bend the recently closed garage door in a few inches.

“Aim for the wheels and we’ll drag ‘im out of the wreck,” boomed from the amplifier.

They were like spiders—silent as them at least, save for the sizzling of the laser burns the Ciphers left in their wake. One of the purple-clad men jumped from the catwalk, harnessed in a thick cable, but the sound of its winch was inaudible over engine revs. He fell in perfect position to grab one of the Lords by the helmet, rip off the visor, and jab the lit flare in his hand down into the face that lay beneath. The winch began to retract.

---

The corridor’s connector was blackened as the garage doors shut. Two green globes, offset just a bit as though whatever eyes or goggles—it was indistinguishable which they were— were malformed. They illuminated a mouth of titanium incisors twisted in a smile. Inheritor had that habit. His mouth was always half smirking, more slack than would make those around him comfortable.

“Encirclement is dangerous, Petrukov. The Lords are trying to encircle you… All the while sending back their weakest rank to alert Portland. Imagine what would happen if the High Warlord knew you’d double-dipped and dealt with the Ciphers...” His ‘S’ trailed off, all snake-like.

“You’ll be under siege. So close to your election.” Inheritor could see it, almost as if through his optics. A detachment of the Lords dashed back through the opposite end of the warehouse, with aims to reach the GCZ’s back alleys and escape into the shadows, crawling their way back to Portland. Some Ciphers would give chase, but neither of the squads realized what watchers might lie in their way.

Serena stared down her adversary. Her animated sunglasses showed their best approximation of an emoticon glare in pixelated nodes of red light. “What’s the plan Inheritor?”

That slack smile return, accompanied by a automatonic cackle. All of the barriers rose, and the doors were opened.

---

A steady beating bounced off the warehouse walls, metallic, lo-fi. Something within the stereo had busted upon his impact against the concrete pylon. The Bannerlord hugged tight the mighty boombox to his bulging chest, arm veins popped with adrenaline. The archaic machine sprayed flecks of his own blood back onto him with every pulsation. He looked down to his arm, torn open by shrapnel, but he could hardly feel it. The black flag strapped to his back was a dead giveaway for where he was ducking low. It was peppered with the high-caliber ballistics of the Lords of War, even had a long scorch mark that sheared off the top of the flag from a reflected ray of the Cipher’s guns.

He was pinned down, but so long as he remained, the boombox still played.

Straits of Steel (A South East Asian Cyberpunk Thriller)

[edit] My mistake. Coming soon.