Friday evening had a smell: burnt coffee, overheated plastic, and the faint despair of a ticket queue that never died.

  The PC in front of me used to run Windows 10. It was a bit old, slow, and predictable. Then somebody in management decided “security posture” meant forcing 11 onto everything with a power button.

  Same garbage hardware. New OS. Now it booted like it was dragging a corpse up stairs. I hate those NUCs.

  The user hovered two feet behind me, breathing into my neck.

  “It was fine yesterday.”

  “Yesterday it still had an fucking OS that was no bloat-ridden,” I muttered, too low for them to hear. The machine spun its little circle, fans whining like an animal that wanted mercy. Windows 11 loved to do that on old boxes: take a simple reboot and turn it into a ritual.

  The Start menu came up late. The search box lagged. The whole thing felt… offended to be awake.

  I clicked Outlook. It froze. I clicked again. It woke up with that blank white window meaning "stop bullying me and let me eat my drool in peace".

  In my head, I said a prayer anyway.

  *Machine-spirit of this corporate relic, I offer you caffeine fumes and unpaid patience. Accept this reboot. Bless these drivers. Spare me another Teams notification. If you must fail, fail fast.*

  HR had dragged me twice this week because “space optimization.” First move, “team cohesion.” Second move, “noise management.” I ended up in a corner that used to store printer paper, with a chair that leaned like it had opinions.

  The overtime rate on Fridays was a joke too. Technically paid. Practically insult. A few euros more to spend my evening babysitting a computer that should’ve been e-waste five years ago.

  Outlook finally loaded. The user exhaled like I’d performed surgery.

  “See? Easy.”

  I packed my laptop and walked away before my mouth got me fired.

  Outside, the parking lot was wet and gray. Thin rain. The kind that soaked your jacket without the decency of drama and that pissed me off by getting on my glasses. I sat in my car with the engine off, forehead against the steering wheel, and listened to my heart.

  It had been doing weird things lately. Small skips. A pressure behind the sternum that came and went. I blamed the coffee. The stress. The fact I ate like a criminal and slept like a hostage.

  I drove home on autopilot.

  My apartment smelled like unfinished chores and stale air. I didn’t eat. I drank water straight from the tap and stood there swallowing like it was medicine. Then I fell into bed fully clothed, too tired to care.

  Sometime later, my chest tightened again.

  Harder.

  The heartbeat stuttered. A long pause, then a heavy thump that felt misplaced. My mouth went dry so fast my tongue stuck to my teeth. I reached for my phone and my arm moved like it had to push through mud.

  I missed the phone by a centimeter.

  I inhaled. Air came in. It felt pointless.

  My vision pulled away from the room. Everything stretched, as if the world was receding and I was the only thing staying still. A thin sound left my throat—half a word, half a plea.

  Then the system that ran me cut power.

  Lights out.

  —

  Warm darkness.

  Something breathed inside it. Slow. Patient. Like a big animal curled around my thoughts.

  A voice drifted up through the black.

  *Harry…*

  Another whisper.

  *Harry…*

  It wasn’t comforting. It was familiar in the wrong way—like a line from a game you never finished, spoken back to you by something that lived behind your eyes.

  My brain tried to answer and came up empty.

  Harry? Wrong guy.

  The darkness rolled. The animal inside it shifted. Another voice, closer, almost amused.

  *Get up.*

  I wanted to refuse. The refusal didn’t matter.

  Smell hit first.

  Rot. Hot plastic. Wet fabric. Old piss cooked into cardboard. A chemical sweetness that made my throat want to close, like candy melted onto gasoline.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  I gagged. Spit came up thick with grit. My lips were split. I swallowed and tasted copper.

  I opened my eyes.

  Gray daylight filtered through layers of trash. Torn packaging. Stained cloth. Shredded foam. A sky the color of dirty dishwater. Far away, black towers cut the horizon like teeth.

  I blinked hard.

  I could see.

  I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I hadn’t seen this clearly past arm’s length in years. The sharpness was wrong—too clean, too precise. Like somebody had swapped my eyes for tools.

  “What the—” I tried.

  The sound that came out wasn’t my voice.

  Rougher. Lower. Dry like sand.

  My heart jumped. Pain snapped across my ribs as I tried to sit up. Bruised deep. Left shoulder felt wrong, like it had been yanked too many times. My right hand trembled in ugly pulses—fast, hungry tremors that had nothing to do with fear.

  That one scared me.

  Withdrawal. My body knew the word before my mind caught up.

  I rolled onto my back, panting, and looked down.

  The clothes weren’t mine. Threadbare hoodie stiff with dried stains. Jeans ripped at the knee. One old sneaker. One boot that didn’t fit right, slapping my heel when I moved.

  My hands weren’t mine either.

  Different shape. Longer fingers. Dirt packed under the nails like it lived there. Scar tissue across knuckles. A cheap chrome cap on my left thumb, scratched dull like it had spent its life hitting metal.

  On my right forearm, just under the sleeve line, a small port sat embedded in the skin. Not clinic-perfect. The flesh around it was irritated, grayish, like the body rejected it and never had the money to fix it.

  I grabbed a jagged piece of mirrored plastic out of the trash and held it up.

  The face staring back wasn’t mine.

  Sharp, but not knife-angular. The kind of sharp you get from hunger and bad sleep, not genetics. Long hair fell around my cheeks in filthy strands, sticking to dried blood at the corner of my mouth.

  And the eyes—

  Green.

  Not neon nor weird rave glow. Just an unnatural catch to the color, like the iris held light half a beat longer than it should.

  I stared until the mirror shook in my hand.

  Then I lowered it and looked at the skyline again.

  That silhouette. That arrogance.

  Arasaka.

  The word landed fully formed in my head, like a memory I’d carried for years.

  Night City.

  The trash stretched into low hills. Rusted machine frames stuck out like ribs. Makeshift shacks of tarp and corrugated metal clustered where the wind didn’t hit as hard. Smoke rose from a burn pile that smelled like melted electronics. Big birds circled overhead, patient.

  A figure shuffled between heaps dragging a sack. Another sat on a mound watching me, eyes flat, like I was entertainment.

  I forced myself upright. The boot slipped. My hand sank into something soft and I yanked it out fast, wiping it on my hoodie without looking.

  A goblin like laugh came from nearby.

  “Look at him,” someone said. “Gonk's back.”

  Two men stood on a mound of compacted waste.

  One wore a jacket with a ripped corporate patch, faded logo of a life that used to be stable. The other had a shaved head and a cheap pistol shoved into his waistband like it belonged there.

  They watched me with calm hunger.

  “Thought you were flatlined,” Shaved Head said. “Saw you last night. Face down. Quiet.”

  The tremor in my right hand sharpened, as if the mention of last night woke the parasite up.

  Shaved Head noticed and smiled. “Dry, huh?”

  Jacket stepped closer, boots sliding on wet plastic. “Where’s the stash?”

  “I don’t—” I started.

  Pain lanced through my arm as Shaved Head grabbed my wrist and twisted. The port on my forearm burned like somebody had poured salt into the nerve endings.

  A sound tore out of me. Raw. Humiliating.

  At the edge of my vision, text flickered.

  Far cry from expensive full interface. Of course zero damn tutorial. Just a thin line, like a glitch in reality.

  VITALS: CRITICAL

  STATUS: WITHDRAWAL

  FRAMEWORK: DETECTED

  My breath caught.

  Jacket saw the change in my face. His eyes narrowed, interested.

  “Oh?” he said.

  Another flicker.

  STABILITY: LOW

  RECCURENCE:TRUE

  Great. My life had an OS, and it already hated me. Im sure its arch based.

  “I can get you money,” I rasped. “I can get you something worth more than whatever you think I’m holding.”

  Shaved Head laughed. “He always says that.”

  My gaze snapped to his waistband.

  The pistol sat half-exposed.

  I moved.

  No plan. No thought. My hand went straight for the grip like it belonged there. Like it had done this before.

  My fingers closed. I yanked.

  Shaved Head cursed and grabbed my wrist. We went down into the trash together, rolling through wet plastic and broken glass. My ribs screamed. My shoulder flared white-hot. The world narrowed to the gun and the next breath.

  I pulled anyway.

  It came free.

  I shoved the barrel into his gut and squeezed.

  The sound punched the air. Shaved Head jerked like a puppet cut loose. Blood soaked his shirt and vanished into filth like the landfill was thirsty.

  Jacket froze for a breath.

  Then he moved.

  Fast.

  I fired again. Wide shot. Debris kicked up. Jacket slammed into me and drove me down. The gun skittered out of my grip and disappeared into trash like it had never existed.

  He pinned me. Knees on my arms. His fist smashed my face. Light burst behind my eyes. My mouth filled with blood.

  Text flickered again.

  CONDITION: IMMINENT

  CLASS SEED: (UNBOUND)

  PROGNOSIS:POOR

  "Fuck you i'll install gentoo on your ass later"

  Jacket’s hand went to his belt. A serrated knife appeared. Cheap. Made to tear.

  He leaned in, calm as paperwork.

  “You had one chance to be useful,” he said. “You didn’t take it.”

  Fear stayed. It just stopped being the only thing driving the body.

  My leg hooked his ankle. My hips twisted. The slick trash helped. His weight shifted wrong for a breath.

  I rolled hard and dragged him off-balance. The knife flashed past my throat and tore fabric instead. We hit the ground again. My elbow drove into the side of his head.

  He grunted, surprised.

  I grabbed his knife wrist and slamed it into the ground until his fingers loosened. I tore the blade free and shoved it into his shoulder, shallow but vicious, enough to make the pain speak loud.

  He screamed.

  I got up shaking and ran.

  A ragged limp through trash hills and smoke.

  I dropped behind a rusted machine frame and slid down, back against cold metal. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I stared at the blood on the blade, at my scraped knuckles, at the port on my forearm still burning.

  My breathing came in wet bursts. My heartbeat hammered, uneven.

  A date tag flickered in the corner of my vision—some broadcast metadata caught by whatever eyes I was wearing now.

  2074.

  It vanished when I tried to focus.

  3 Years.

  The number rose up from memory like a bruise you press by accident. 3 Years until the city’s script got rewritten in blood.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and checked my pockets with shaking fingers.

  Nothing useful. A torn cloth. A bent shard case with no shard inside. A cheap little tag with letters scratched half-off.

  No name I could trust.

  That meant I needed one fast.

  And I needed leverage before the city noticed I’d stopped being quiet.

  I looked east, away from the towers, toward the dust line where the land flattened into heat haze.

  The Badlands.

  There were places out there I remembered too well. Things hidden for players. Things that might still be waiting, if my timing wasn’t already fucked.

  I got to my feet, knife still in my hand, and started walking.

  Away from the skyline.