The year is 2777, under the blinding brightness of the neon ads a man walked crestfallen.

  "777... Still not my lucky year."

  As if hearing the statement, a dog on a hoverboard pissed on him from above. He didn't have the energy to complain anymore, not about the pompous owner that walked his dog on luxury transport, not about the homeless man that joyously walked the streets with his three nano-implants. He shook his head, even the homeless surrendered to Upgrade.

  It was something stupid, perhaps, to refuse being part machine. To form part of that emotionless monster, that wall of cogs, become functional, useful. Wasn't that their catchphrase? It seemed the ad bombardment worked even on him. But his stomach hurt, and ideals would not feed him.

  How would he come back home and tell his son that he couldn't go to school anymore? That today dad wasn't able to bring anything to eat? The hours of the night are long in their run-down shack, but they'd be even longer out in the cold streets. The walls that only held because the pollution had seeped so deep into the wood that the termites died off, at least provided some measure of security.

  That homeless man that he pointed at with a finger could be him in the next month, or worse, it could be someone just like him that would take whatever little they had once vulnerable.

  His mother had named him Leon Bernard, but the "Brave Lion" was now quivering in fear.

  Earlier today, he entered shop after shop, and every time he heard the same rejection.

  "We're looking for someone younger," "we need strong hands," but what they really meant was "you're not good enough, not even to park cars or take out the trash."

  He saw his reflection on the front glass of a store with products he couldn't afford. He scratched his overgrown beard, and tried combing his disheveled brown hair, but the haggard look didn't improve in the slightest. He was homeless in everything but name.

  A muscle came from inside the store to bounce him off, as he was "upsetting the customers." He bit his lip. He couldn't take it anymore, life had given him a hand too shitty.

  He dug in his pockets and found his very last credits, 277 in small change. The sarcastic smile of a plump toddler judged from the carved coins.

  Leon walked further to the outer rims of the city, but he wasn't ready to come back home. Instead, he took a turn in a shady alleyway, and knocked on a metal door.

  A man inspected him from behind the sliding peephole. "Sorry, pal, this isn't... Wait, Bernard? Is that you?"

  Leon nodded quickly, while looking to the sides afraid to have been followed. Truth was, no one cared where he went.

  "Sorry, B, but I have to ask... You brought any cash? You know I can't let you in if you don't."

  "I got 277 credits, Tom. Just let me in, I'll play a couple of hands and be off your hair."

  "Fine then, come inside."

  The door opened slowly due to its hefty weight, and a cloud of ash hit Leon in the face. Everyone playing at the illegal casino was either smoking or drinking, and he thought that at least the choco-mint electric cigarettes would mask his stench. Tom winced, being too close to Leon to benefit from such an effect.

  The receptionist, a neat young woman, discreetly took his dirty coins, and pretending not to be disgusted handed him three 100-credit chips.

  "Don't say I never treat you, B." She said softly. Leon pretended to smile, but he was a bad actor. Truth was that 100 was the minimum, and it was already considered a risible amount.

  He sat in front of the croupier, who greeted him warmly and began shuffling the cards. He had considered other chance games, but in honesty he felt more in control while playing blackjack, and if he was going to gamble his future, he might as well look for some degree of control. He placed two of his three chips, the croupier dealt.

  "7, Jack" a good hand. "I stand" he nodded to himself confidently.

  "Sorry, sir." The croupier flipped his own cards, "It's blackjack for me."

  "What!?" Leon felt himself aggravated, is the little rascal trying to fleece him? Tom stood up in the back and looked at him intently.

  "I'm good, I'm good..." He placed his last chip and gestured the youngster to deal him. A bit apprehensively, he dealt the next hand.

  "9, 6" Hideous. He hated that number. He looked at the revealed card on the dealer's side. "A five... Not blackjack again, eh? Guess it's my lucky day, come on, '777." He hit the table.

  The croupier fetched a card from the deck and slowly flipped it. A 7. Leon's face paled. Is it really going to be like this? Not even a single win, at least for thrill's sake?

  "I'm sorry, sir."

  Leon slowly got up from the table and headed to the door. That was his very last saving, it was over. At this point, he might as well walk down to the pier. He didn't have face to show back home. His face paled further imagining his son, barely a little kid, waiting by the door for his dad that would never return.

  "Hey, Bernard, listen..." Tom told him before he could cross the door. Leon turned slowly to face him, but had to lean on the wall. He felt about to faint. "Wow, man. You look like death, should I call someone to take you to the hospital?"

  "No, no. I'm good. Really."

  Tom sighed.

  "Listen, the boss has been asking about you. He wanted to see you, and told me to point you in his direction if you came by. I told him that you were broke, and that there was no way that'd happen, but he seemed pretty sure, and well, here you are. So, what do you say?"

  Leon nodded and allowed Tom to escort him upstairs, through the catwalk over the building and then a well-hidden nook.

  He entered the room and there he was, the boss. A man in his mid-twenties, smiling as if telling Leon "I was expecting you."

  "Hey, boss... Listen, I know I owe you a lot of cash, but you know how it is..."

  The boss raised his hand even before he started pouring out excuses, also expecting this. Leon had worked for his dad, a youthful error, and now the former boss had been executed publicly and he had to spend his parent's inheritance just to clear his name and stay low profile, all which added to his current situation. He, then, made yet another mistake and tried to make investments with borrowed money, some of which he loaned from the current boss.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Forget about it, Bernard. Consider it a favor, for the help you provided my dad." "Thanks, boss, thanks."

  "I didn't call you here to see you in this sorry position. I have a proposal for you."

  Leon's ears perked.

  "Our casino's revenue is coming a bit short, so we started dabbling in personal upgrade equipment, but as you know, that's Upgrade's territory and they're very much like a mob, even if they like to pretend they're not, so..."

  He opened a drawer and pulled out a cybernetic arm, a mechanical eye and something that looked like a pacemaker.

  "I'll loan you these custom-made cyber parts, and you take down Upgrade's head honcho. 2000 credits upfront, and 500,000 after the deed. What do you say?"

  Leon nodded emphatically.

  "I'll do whatever you say, boss." Leon could barely recognize himself. Was he groveling to his friend's son?

  "Great! I'll have you taken to the back, now." He gestured to Tom and returned to sifting over a stack of papers.

  Inside the gang's personal mortuary, the surgeon smoked profusely. He pointed to the thin metal sheet folding table, and put on his gloves, the cigarette still hanging from his lips.

  "I spent all day next to cadavers and you still managed to smell worse, friend." He addressed Tom. "The boss really expects me to operate like this? He's gonna get an infection, you know?"

  "The boss pays you to operate, doc. Not to ask questions."

  The doctor sighed and raised his hands in the air. Tom approached Leon and offered him a small pink pill.

  "Isn't this..?"

  "No other anesthetics, sorry B."

  Peryatine, a recently designed drug that simulated astral projection. Leon winced, he had promised himself to never use it after seeing the wreck its users became.

  The doctor pulled a bone saw and revved it.

  "Sorry friend, the, err, sophisticated extraction process is still beyond current tech." Leon snatched the pill and gulped it down.

  What came after was a blur of images, not the present nor the past. His mother caressed his hand while he lay on the bed, pretending to be sick to avoid attending school. The doctor, who also became his dad in the vision, callously sawed his arm off, splattering blood all over his precious toys. His mother turned away her head, offended that he had lied about his health, worrying her unnecessarily. He couldn't see her clearly anymore, because his eye had been gouged away by an ice cream scooper.

  "No, I don't want any ice cream..."

  He mumbled. The doctor laughed as he split his chest open with forceps.

  "Haha. What an honest kid, right, Tom? You could say he bares his heart for everyone to see!"

  Tom was just a teen, leaning with his arms crossed against the wall, pretending to be tougher than he was.

  "Don't worry, B. I'll get you something better than ice cream. Just hold on..."

  He fell asleep, or perhaps he passed out. The surgery was successful.

  He woke up with a stinging pain, so spread that he could swear that his entire body was an open wound. He felt empty inside, hollowed out of his organs, and his face was burning up against the plastic floor of some van's back. A bump in the road made him scream in pain.

  "Sorry, B. We're almost there."

  The car stopped and he walked out, shivering in cold. What's going on with his own body? Tom approached stealthily and handed him an earbud.

  "Here, the boss will instruct your next steps. Think about the money, B. Think of all the cool things you're gonna buy your kid. And after this? The boss will give you a more steady position. I'll make sure of it. Hang in there, buddy. We're almost there."

  Wobbling on his feet, Leon put on the earbud and walked to the building in front of him. How did he know it was the correct one? It's the only building without flashing advertisements. A young voice rang in his ears.

  "Testing, testing. Hey, Bernard. Can you hear me?"

  "Cough, cough. I'm here." Leon's voice was raspy, and he felt lightheaded. Barely going through the motions, it was a good thing that the boss would direct his steps.

  "Alright, big fella. This is the plan..."

  After hearing intently to the words of the boss, Leon walked to the front door and screamed to the receptionist:

  "These implants you sold me are garbage! I want a refund, give me back my arm!" The receptionist flinched, at the monstrous visage of the cyborg.

  "Sir, please wait, sir! That area is restricted!"

  "No, it's not for me! One million credits is what these cost me, I'll go wherever I want!"

  The receptionist dialed security on her phone, Leon was against the clock. Thanks to the information that Boss had secured, he was able to zigzag out of the camera's sight and lose the security tail. Taking the emergency elevator, he placed his palm over the identity verificator, his prosthetic emulating the signal from another worker at Upgrade.

  The elevator shook, and Leon ascended all the way to the top floor, but when the elevator door opened yet another layer of security awaited. Retina scan and password. He allowed the machine to scan his mechanical eye, and punched in the password Boss had told him.

  The door slid open, and with his arms behind his back the CEO of Upgrade observed the city.

  "Quite a sight, isn't it? You can see from the richest towers all the way to the poor districts, and in one glance I encompass both the merry families and the Peryatine addicts, lying on the floor next to a burning barrel. Isn't it marvelous?"

  Leon didn't come here for a chat. He prepared his metal fist and readied to bludgeon the CEO to death before security arrived.

  "Don't be so stiff, Leon. I've called off security, so there's no need to hurry. There are things in play, things you can't even imagine. My death was already foreseen, a move in someone else's chess play."

  "What are you talking about? How do you even know my name?" He wondered that aloud, but he was almost sure that Boss had betrayed him, that treacherous bastard.

  "Implants, Leon. Like the ones you have now, aren't just power for you, are they?" He turned around, a perfectly pure human. In his brown eyes, he saw no strange contraption, his lean body had no enhancement, no Upgrade.

  "Control, Leon. Control over people. Why do you think we pushed all those ads? Why we made people think that without enhancements, they were worthless?"

  "What, you have a doomsday button to turn people into slaves?"

  He shrugged. "We don't have to. I thought of doing that, but we stand nothing to gain. You know how many branches Upgrade has, regionally?"

  "Should I?"

  "Fifty million. Some are large, like this one, some are condensed cells, underground labs... Everyone wants to be upgraded and work for Upgrade. You've made slaves of yourselves."

  "Then, why are you about to die, eh, smart guy?" Leon scoffed.

  "Your gang is the next key for dominion. Upgrade has provided the person you call 'Boss' with numerous experimental prototypes, all illegal due to current senate circumstances. Unfortunately, my image has become tainted by this deed, and now you, my brave lion, will cleanse this stain for me. Come on, do it."

  "What did you just call me, you bastard?"

  Leon ran towards the CEO and tackled him, the force of charge empowered by the prosthetics threw the man across the room, breaking the window. Leon held his head while the man fell to the streets below, the splattering noise and screams of the crowd below making his ears ring. He felt used, manipulated. They grabbed him in his weakest moment and turned him into an inhuman killer. He shut his brain.

  "Think of your son, Leon. Think of him," he told himself.

  The escape was smooth, as everything was planned from the inside. He wondered if Tom knew, or if he was just another puppet like him. Perhaps even the Boss was a puppet, and didn't know that Upgrade had set the whole thing up. He didn't care anymore, he felt antsy, and depressed, worse still; that feeling of emptiness grew larger by the hour, along with the pains, and the fever. He was in so much pain...

  Tom greeted him farewell as he entered his home, 502,000 credits richer than the day before.

  His son walked to the door to welcome him, and Leon's mind spun thinking of how to tell him the good news. He wouldn't have to worry about that bully in school anymore, because he'd be attending a better one, he would get all the seconds he wanted at dinner, of whatever food he liked. They could even get a dog, walk him on a hoverboard and have him piss over some poor devil, but as he opened his mouth to speak...

  "Who are you?"

  Leon was stunned. His dumb smile slowly turned into a frown as his son coiled before his image.

  "It's daddy, Damian. It's me, I'm back."

  "No! You're not my daddy!"

  Leon tried to close in and hug him but Damian kicked him and ran out of the house screaming, "Help! Help!"

  Leon couldn't even process what was happening right now. His mind was slow, tired. All his prior conditions mounted and he couldn't run after his son. He slowly dragged himself into the house, not bothering to close the door. He jumped startled at a figure staring at him from the end of the hallway, but then he remembered that's where the mirror was. He stopped before it, and behind the glass a monster cocked his head and looked at him quizzically. His red eyes whirred scanning, and the connection to his body for his metal arm oozed yellow pus. His head had been shaved, and the red scars bled from the overexertion. His skin had turned yellow too, as his body was rejecting the implants. The doctor forgot to prescribe him anti-rejection medicine, as he wasn't paid to do that.

  Almost without noticing, his hand had moved to his pocket and now held before his mouth a small pink pill. He snatched it and swallowed, fleeing scared from the monster that invaded his home.