//11-01-2099 - - 05:25//

  An itching, pulsing throb ran through the base of my skull, dragging me from my sleep. As ever, flickering in the corner of my eyes was the date. November 1st, 2099, 5:25 in the gods-damned morning. The next thing that assaulted me was the AR avatar of my AI swimming into view. "Good morning, Vidr! I did that diagnostics check you wanted me to overnight. Everything looked mostly okay, but you have some really weird things in your quarantine files in your cybermantle that I couldn't really make any sense of. The logs were all jumbled and kept mentioning a bunch of things I don't understand."

  I sighed, sitting up. "Just a bunch of Kraft muncher's hacks. Nothing important. Just holdovers from some clients I had at Charon's Gate," I insisted.

  "Okay, but they do look really dangerous, and you might want to get that cleared out," the little shark pushed back.

  "And it's locked behind corporate black IC." I rolled my eyes, waving my hand to override its thinking.

  "Understood! Your first shift starts at 0600 and lasts until 0600 tomorrow! Time to get ready for a long day!" With a yawn, I gave a long series of stretches. The throbbing in my side had died down to a slight stitch. Annoying. Present, but ignorable.

  "Alright, let's get to work," I sighed. It took no time at all to pull on some heavy cargo pants, a comfortable enough shirt, and tuck my pistol into its holster. I took my personal medical kit and headed out the door. Waiting in the parking garage downstairs was the boxy shape of the sports car that Bella's father had sold me.

  I landed in the driver's seat, engine turning over with a throaty purr. Backing out of the garage and onto the dimly lit early morning streets, I joined the endless lines of neon taillights. The car itself was older. Originally fully analog, with a third-party self-driving system installed. Heated seats. Everything I needed in a car, at least. It made the drive to the hospital easy.

  St. Luke's was a series of large buildings, interconnected above and below ground, reaching into the sky like a fistful of fingers. VTOLs buzzed to and from the rooftop landing pads. Ambulances screamed into the emergency room driveway. It felt like Charon's Gate for just a minute. Five minutes passed before I managed to get out of the car. The employee entrance consisted of two sets of opaque glass double doors. I squeezed the ID card in my pocket.

  I slapped it against the reader next to the door, and with a chime, it unlocked, swinging inwards for me. Half a dozen windows popped into my view with an itch burning in my eyes. Clock-in notifications. Work email log-in credentials. A glowing line leading to the supervisor's office. All at once. The only people in the room were other sleeping paramedics and EMTs.

  The dull hammering of rain echoed against the skylights above me. I followed the glowing mint green line as it jutted from the wall to my left. The sterile, chemical, painful scent of the hospital burned in my nose and along my forked secondary tongue as it flickered past my lips. With every step came the low clicks of my toe claws tapping the tile floor. Every closed door needed my keycard to open, chiming with the thunk of a lock undoing itself.

  The guideline in my HUD wound down the next corridor to my left, rows and rows of offices lining either side. Each one held a nameplate. The line terminated against the door of an office for an 'Imathmaa Mutau'. Before I could even knock, a low voice came from inside. "Come in!"

  I pushed the door open, revealing the plain-looking office. A desk, two chairs, and a bookshelf, all with a window looking at the parking lot. The man standing behind the desk, however, was not so plain. Tall, even for a drow, with dark skin and thick black hair. His lanky arms left his hands resting just below his knees, almost built like a monkey, yet they moved as smoothly as a machine, coming up to fold across his broad chest. "Take a seat, mister Vidr." He gestured at one chair, already pulled back away from the desk.

  I nodded, settling in the chair easily, dropping my large personal medical kit on the floor beside me. "Just Vidr will do fine, sir." I shot back, my cybernetic arm held out to shake. He took it firmly, intense eyes looking the arm over as he felt what was hidden beneath the holo-skin.

  "Still got the upgrades and everything. What a lucky man you are, Vidr," he hummed. "I will admit, the file given to me was sparse. But I don't care for the details. What have you been certified in?"

  "EMR through Paramedic, obviously. I also have Tactical, Critical Care, and Flight Paramedic certifications. All up to date. I can recertify as you need. Just never did Community Paramedic. Wasn't on the docket for Charon's Gate." I crossed my arms, leaning back in the chair. "Done work under all those titles as well."

  "Mm. Good. This city will not chew you up, then. The B-N Con-plex is a dangerous place. It looks nice on the surface. Compared to places like New York or Seattle? It is. But we have our own demons here. You'll do fine. What are you carrying?" Mutau asked.

  I blinked a few times, glancing down where my pistol was safely hidden in my pants. "Pardon?"

  "You walk confidently. You were Charon's Gate. I think I might be disappointed if you weren't, no?" He chuckled dryly. "Not that it matters. Carry it. Sometimes the Police are too slow. I don't care to lose my paramedics because they were unarmed."

  "Yes, sir," I sighed. "Praetorian heavy pistol."

  "Mm. Good man. You could stop even an orc or troll with that." He nodded sagely. "I have no more questions. Just wanted to look you in the eyes. You already passed your onboarding through, and I thought you would prefer getting straight to work, no?"

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "I would, sir. Just tell me where I'm needed." I stood, grabbing my bag.

  "Of course." His eyes flickered as another holographic line etched into the floor beneath me. "Locker 104. Has your new uniform in it already. Leave the more particular procedures to Dutch. He is your new driver. Watch and learn how we do intake from him. He will meet you in the garage downstairs. Good luck, Vidr." He waved me away.

  The guideline led me down the stairs at the end of the hall. The basement level opened up to another break room, one wall dominated by spare supplies for the ambulances. The other had couches, chairs, and a flickering TV projection against the wall. Though here the couches and chairs were empty. At the center of the room, the line took a sharp right, vanishing through a heavy door. I followed it lazily, stepping into a musty-smelling locker room.

  Rows of metal lockers filled the room, a bathroom and shower area set up at the far end. 104 was directly to my left in the first aisle. With a flick of my new keycard, it unlocked and popped open, clanging against the locker next to it. The only thing inside was a high-visibility jacket. Yellow around the chest and down the arms. Black everywhere else, banded with reflective strips. My name was embroidered on the chest and back, along with the hospital's logo.

  I slipped the yellow jacket off the hanger, replacing it with my civilian one. Then I slung it around my shoulders and slapped the locker shut. Its surprising weight almost dragged it from my hand, heavy ceramic plates hidden within its fabric. "Easy days ahead," I sighed hopefully. The guideline had updated as soon as I had reached the locker, cutting out of the locker room. I followed it across the break room and into a large garage. Cold, wet air pumped from the ceiling vents. A handful of mechanics worked on ambulances lifted on jacks. Some EMTs and Paramedics sat against their vehicles, waiting for a call.

  As I clanged down the metal stairs, one waved at me with a broad hand. He was stout and stocky, his dwarven beard long enough that he could tuck it into his belt. I strode along the cold concrete, looking over the vehicle. The ambulance's designation, CCT012, was stamped in various places on its hull. The dwarf followed my gaze. "This will be our ride today. Call me Dutch." He held out his almost oversized hand, giving a firm squeeze as we shook.

  "Vidr. Where's my radio?" I asked.

  "Radio is sitting in the passenger seat. Liberated it from your locker for ya," he rumbled, his voice like rocks grinding against one another. Grunting, I pulled the door open and leaned in. In the seat was a box with a belt clip, a long coiled cable connecting it to a radio microphone. Grabbing the receiver box and mic, I fixed it to my belt. A second cable ran up the center of the curly microphone cord, splitting off up near my shoulder, ending in a universal data jack connector.

  Plugging it into a port just behind my ear sent a jittering itch through my neck and ears, burning for a long moment before voices resolved in the static. Dispatch, other ambulance units, and even the occasional police officer or firefighter filtered directly into my ears. I dropped my medical bag through the door to the patient area of the rig behind our seats and plopped into the passenger seat. Dutch clambered up and leaned back in the driver's seat. "So you're a Charon's Gate flunky?" he said, drumming a hand against the steering wheel as dwarven music began to hammer from the stereo.

  "Not a flunky. Just wanted to ditch the corpo life," I sighed.

  "You can't take the corp outta the rat," Dutch chuckled.

  I hummed noncommittally. "Something like that." The dwarven man laughed at that, the sound rumbling from his chest as he leaned back into his seat.

  "You handle the radio. I'm still working on the code book. Thing's a mile long," I sighed.

  "Just listen close and learn. All I ask," he agreed. The engine turned over with a rumbling purr, the rig bouncing smoothly over a speed bump at the base of the ramp. Rain hammered the windshield, the wipers screeching with each futile attempt to scrape away each sheet of rain as it fell.

  VTOL craft buzzed overhead. The whisper of corporate helicopters drumming underneath the roar of a giant freight flyer's engines, a brilliant yellow triangle flickering along its flanks above a bold 'Axiom Dynamics: Engineering the Apex'. As its boxy frame droned overhead, the rain stopped in its shadow.

  The leviathan's shape drifted between the city's spires almost aimlessly, its blunt bow aimed for the Sawtooth mountain range, its snow-capped peaks untouched by the city, vanishing into the clouds.

  The skyscrapers themselves towered a hundred stories high, their incandescent lights blooming against the rain overhead. At their bases, rented out shops advertised with blaring neon signs, AR billboards, message bot adverts, and the rare sign spinner on the street corner.

  Bored day shift workers and exhausted night shift wage slaves flowed in opposite directions on the sidewalks. Some with umbrellas blocking the rain. Others dejectedly soaked to the bone. Some waved as we went by. Some shouted angrily, flipping me off, slurs on their lips. I blinked languidly at them all the same, forked tongue flitting out. The rig itself smelled of engine oil, isopropyl alcohol, and stale chips.

  Dutch hadn't said a word for half an hour, eyes glued to the road, head bobbing to the drumming dwarf rock that echoed from the radio. Heat burned along the base of my neck, a warning window expanding from a caution sigil that had flashed in my view all week.

  =//Warning: Random Access Memory Critically low!//=

  =//Cybermantle System temperature at critical levels! [95 Celsius]//=

  =//MEM_LEAK DETECTED: ATTEMPTING CACHE_DUMP//=

  =//... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...//=

  =//CACHE_DUMP FAILED//=

  =//USER = OVERRIDDEN//=

  =//HARD REBOOT…//=

  The world jittered and shook. My entire body froze as the cybermantle implant shut down, stopping all flow of nervous system impulses from reaching below my neck. For a sickening sixty seconds, I stared at the dulling world outside. Every beat of my heart hammered in my ears, blood rushing loudly. Each beat unsteady, made only by an emergency electric corrector. Shadows ate away at the edges of my vision, closing to a single point of neon light. Then it all flooded back with a gasp of air, the vibrant neon signs flickering in the rain.

  The sound was drowned under dwarven drums and throat singing, my left hand clutching at my shirt as I took heavy breaths. Systems flickered back to life in my view. AR billboards popped back into view. I leaned forward, head in my hands, as I breathed. I shoved a hand into the medical kit at my feet, pulling out a bottle of water. Dutch only looked over as the cap cracked. Then his eyes were back on the road.

  The burning in my lungs faded slowly. Each long draught of water eased the twisting in my stomach. Suddenly, it felt as though sand was pouring up the cable connected to the side of my neck, filling my ears until it formed sounds.

  fiiineeee.

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