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You are lying in bed as consciousness returns to you. Before opening your eyes you are again assaulted by the strange variety of smells that the Sprawl offers. Sometimes you are so dizzied by all it’s colourful smells and sounds that you long back to the sterile environment that the lab you were born in provided. But those feelings always fade quickly enough as you rise from your bed, adjusted to the sensory assault.
You look around your small apartment, situated in the centre of Renton. Renton,...heh...you expected to have lived in a large secured apartment complex somewhere in Bellevue already. ‘If a man of your talents walked the streets…’ is what they used to say, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid. Life outside the laboratory is not what you expected it to be. But it still is more preferable than your old situation.
Your apartment is rather small. It is a simple three-room doss with a living room, kitchen and a bedroom with a small shower unit. Most of the floor is made of synthwooden panels, only the kitchen has tiles on the floor. You live above a two-bit pawnshop called ‘Tony’s Pawn-o-Matic’ run by a fat ork called Tony. You don’t bother him and he doesn’t bother you. Incidentally he is also your landlord. Tony is involved in some nickel-and-dime fencing and thinks of himself as a top dog when it comes to moving hot items. This is the reason he let you in without checking your SIN. He figured that if you gave him shit he would turn you in. But you know that such a game can be played both ways,…and you told him that right at the start.
You hear the low humming of Tony’s neon sign that hangs just outside your living room window. A bit annoyed at the sound you look at it and notice the telecom unit’s indicator light is blinking next to the unit’s display, which reads: ‘PacRimTelecom’.
You walk over and absently punching the replay button as you look out of the window seeing dark grey clouds forming like a vortex above the Seattle in the direction of the harbour. What you also see is the annoyingly vigilant watch of Burnout as he is standing against the wall between an alley entrance and Happy Noodle, a fast-food noodle shop.
You hear a voice that has become etched in your memory from the first time you heard it back in the elven run hotel in downtown. You instinctively look at the telecom screen. The PRT logo has been replaced by a pixelated image of a bloated, sickly looking, balding face clear and present against a black void.
"Adam,...soon it will be time for you to join me. I am so proud to see you as you stand their with an almost childlike look in your eyes,...ahhhhh so pretty."
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