Heat had teeth.

  I woke up. The room didn’t move, but my stomach did. The ceiling beams swam slow, greasy, almost painted on the inside of my eyelids. My mouth tasted of copper and old plastic. I swallowed anyway and regretted it instantly.

  The sun had shifted. Light came in at a different angle. It laid a white strip across the floorboards and turned the dust into glitter. I lay there, listening for things that weren’t there.

  No footsteps. No engine outside. No polite knock. No “hey choom, rent’s due.”

  Just flies. One of them kept bouncing against the window trying to brute-force the glass. I pushed myself up on one elbow and the hangover hit harder. The cheap shotgun was still where I’d left it, close enough to grab without thinking. My hand found it on reflex, and my fingers tightened. My head felt… less shitty. Not good. Not okay. Just less dead than yesterday. Like someone had eased off the boot a centimeter.

  My eyes tracked the room, slow. Door. Latch. Window. Corners. The dead generator hunched in the other room. My ribs ached when I breathed too deep, and my skin had that dirty-sticky feeling of sweat drying into glue. Then my vision hiccupped.

  Text. Like somebody had overlaid a terminal on my eyeballs and forgot to turn it off.

  sudo apt install syst

  Reading package lists... Done

  Building dependency tree... Done

  Reading state information... Done

  The following NEW packages will be installed:

  syst

  0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

  Preparing to unpack .../syst_0.1-1_amd64.deb ...

  Unpacking syst (0.1-1) ...

  Setting up syst (0.1-1) ...

  I froze so hard my shoulders cramped. I blinked. The lines stayed. I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand, and the grit under my nails reminded me I wasn’t dreaming.

  PROGNOSIS: POOR

  That one was familiar. Yesterday’s little mercy: a machine telling me I was garbage, but at least it was honest. The word flickered; it recompiled.

  PROGNOSIS: ACCEPTABLE

  “Acceptable,” I rasped. “Fuck you too.”

  Something in my peripheral vision sharpened. My hands stopped trembling for half a second. Not steady. Just… less drunk. The overlay kept going, indifferent to my panic.

  CLASS SEED ASSIGNED: IMPERSONATOR

  CONSENT: N/A

  I stared at that until my eyes watered. Impersonator. A laugh tried to crawl out of my throat and died halfway. The nausea took the space instead. The overlay shifted. The font stayed the same, plain, utilitarian, but the content changed. With more icons than words now, I saw three channels light up.

  PROGRESSION CHANNELS:

  SHINOBI [ONLINE]

  ENGINEER [ONLINE]

  SOLO [ONLINE]

  NETRUNNER [LOCKED]

  HEADHUNTER [LOCKED]

  STORED ENGRAMS (IMPORTED):

  [01] POLICEMAN

  [02] GARAGIST

  [03] EMPTY

  WARNING: DRIFT DETECTED

  Night City had been coughing up “engram” stories since before I arrived, always the same punchline: you weren’t the only one living behind your eyes. The Relic was the famous one, but the city had a thousand cheaper ways to get inside you. Street ripperware. Knockoff neural links. Shards with malware that didn’t care if you lived.

  I didn’t have a Relic. Fortunately. Also: I didn’t have money or a clinic with a contract. I had cheap second-hand chrome and a body that woke up after a long blackout with a terminal prompt floating in my sight.

  My jaw hurt. The tooth-grinding carried over. The warning stayed there, patient. Drift. I didn’t like the name. It sounded gentle. That was suspicious. This wasn’t gentle. This was a hand on the wheel that wasn’t mine.

  I looked down at my hands on the shotgun. Mine. Callused wrong. Nails bitten. Slight tremor. And yet something about the way I held the weapon felt… practiced in a way I hadn’t earned.

  I got up slow, testing my legs. Pins and needles flared in my calves, and the world tilted for a second. My stomach clenched, hot and sour. I needed water. I needed food. I needed power. I also needed a gun that wasn’t a long, loud prayer with zero shells.

  The generator sat there in the next room, still dead. I stared at it for a beat.

  “Alright,” I said to the air. “Alright. Okay.”

  My voice sounded like I’d been yelling in a club all night. I moved to the kitchen sink. The water I’d hauled in yesterday was warm now, plastic-tasting, but it was water. I drank. Some of it stayed down. Some of it came back up in a gagging cough that left my eyes wet and my throat raw.

  I had a stupid thought, some part of my brain still living in office lighting and ticket queues. If this was real, there would be a way to uninstall it. Then I remembered the line: CONSENT: N/A, and the thought died.

  I went to the bedroom and knelt by the bed. The mattress had been a lumpy slab of foam that smelled like sunbaked sweat. It had pissed me off when I first lay down, something hard digging into my hip. I’d been too tired to investigate. Now I reached under, fingers scraping over dust and splinters. My hand hit a plastic corner.

  A shard case. Cheap. Scuffed. Under it, a credchip, thin, dirty, and warm from being pressed against the floorboards. My relief came sharp and immediate, and then the anger followed it. I’d slept on this. Literally.

  Either I’d missed it, or someone had put it there for me, counting on the mattress to make sure I found it. Both options tasted bad. I rolled the credchip between my fingers. It had that faint metallic sheen and a tiny etched serial on the edge; it wanted to look legit. It didn’t feel legit.

  CREDCHIP: DETECTED

  BALANCE: LOW

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Me too.”

  I pocketed it and then paused, thinking how I used to think at work when something didn’t add up: what’s the failure mode? If I walked out with the chip in my pocket and got jumped, I’d lose everything. If I hid it in the house and got pushed off the property, same result.

  I split it. Chip stayed on me. Shard case went into a cracked tin under the sink with some other junk, buried under a dirty rag. A tad less obvious. Then I looked at the overlay again.

  Policeman. Garagist.

  I didn’t enjoy either word living in my head. I liked “empty” more. But I needed one thing right now: I needed to stop being a helpless civilian holding a weapon. I needed to at least not shoot myself in the foot if something crawled out of the scrub. I stared at POLICEMAN until my eyes burned.

  Authority meant nothing out here. There wasn’t a badge on this side of the city that could stop hunger or a stray round. The only part of “policeman” that mattered was the part that knew how to carry a gun without flinching at the weight.

  If that knowledge was sitting in my skull pretending to be a shortcut, I wanted to rip it out and keep the useful bits. The overlay didn’t offer a button. It wasn’t a friendly app. Where were the accessibility settings?

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  So I did what I always did when a system didn’t give me a UI: I tried to talk to it. “Burn,” I said, low. “Consume. Install. Whatever the fuck you call it.” Nothing. I swallowed, dry throat scraping. “dpkg,” I tried, because my brain was an idiot and I’d been staring at the apt text like it meant something.

  The overlay flickered. A line appeared. Small. Like a prompt.

  ACTION: ENGRAM_RECONFIGURE (dpkg-reconfigure)

  TARGET: [01] POLICEMAN

  CONFIRM: Y/N

  “No fucking way”

  That was real enough. My mouth opened on its own. “Y.” The confirmation didn’t wait.

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure engram-policeman

  Configuring engram-policeman

  Remove imported profile? [yes/no]

  WARNING: IRREVERSIBLE

  Linking neural pathways... 3% ... 11% ... 27% ...

  Pain washed over me. Hard.

  I grabbed the edge of the bed so hard my knuckles went white. The room buckled. The strip of sunlight turned into a blade. My stomach heaved, and for a second I couldn’t tell if I was going to vomit or black out.

  My vision filled with flashes that weren’t mine—hands doing a weapon check, the click of a mag seating, the smell of cheap coffee and sweat under a vest, the weight of a sidearm at the hip like it belonged there. A radio hiss. A mouth saying words in a tone I’d never used.

  I tried to breathe. It came out in wet, ugly pulls.

  ... 62% ... 79% ... 93% ...

  Finalizing...

  Something snapped behind my ear. I gagged and vomited onto the floorboards. Bitter water and bile. My throat burned. My eyes watered until the room turned blurry. When it stopped, I stayed bent forward, sweat pouring down my spine.

  REMOVED: ENGRAM [01] POLICEMAN

  EXTRACTED: SKILL SEED (SHINOBI) [LOW]

  DRIFT: SPIKE

  PROGNOSIS: ACCEPTABLE

  I laughed once sharply, and it turned into a cough. My hands shook harder now, but there was a weird steadiness under it. Like my wrists remembered a posture. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and tasted salt and dust.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “It’ll do”

  The overlay updated itself again, a little more cyberpunk, a little less terminal now, tiny bars, tiny percentages; the city had infected my interface.

  CHANNEL STATUS:

  SHINOBI 04 (seed)

  ENGINEER 00

  SOLO 01

  ENGRAM CACHE:

  [02] GARAGIST (IMPORTED)

  [03] EMPTY

  LOCKS:

  NETRUNNER [LOCKED]

  HEADHUNTER [LOCKED]

  I stared at SHINOBI 04 and felt nothing triumphant. It didn’t make me a killer. It gave me a thin thread of competence.

  My stomach rolled again. My head pounded. The Drift warning didn’t go away. It sat there. I forced myself up and shuffled to the sink for more water. I rinsed my mouth, spat, and drank. The world stayed solid this time. Then I sat on the floor with my back against the wall and waited for my body to stop trying to eject my soul.

  Minutes passed. The heat crawled. Flies landed on my vomit and immediately regretted it when I slapped them out of reflex. When my hands steadied enough to pick up the shotgun without shaking, I moved. I didn’t have the luxury of resting all day. The longer I stayed here without ammo, the more this “house” turned into a coffin with a door. Sunset Motel was a name I’d heard even before I ended up out here. Badlands landmark. A place people used as a waypoint. Sleep, trade, disappear. A place you could buy a gun from a guy who didn’t care where you got your money, as long as it was real.

  I checked my pockets: credchip, shard (kept off me for now), a small knife, a rag, a half-empty bottle of warm water. I wrapped the shotgun in a torn sheet, so it looked less “easy loot” and more “trash I’m carrying because I’m broke.” It still looked like a gun. You couldn’t hide a prayer stick forever.

  I stepped outside and the heat hit me. The world out here was wide and cruel. Sun bleached everything until colors looked washed in sand. The air shimmered above the scrub, bending the horizon into a lie. The ground was cracked hard in places and soft in others, patches of dust that would swallow your foot with a quiet little laugh.

  I locked the door from the inside and then realized how stupid that was—if someone wanted in, a lock was a suggestion. I wedged a piece of wood behind the latch anyway. Ritual. Habit. The illusion of control. Then I started walking.

  The road was a ribbon of broken asphalt and patched dirt, bordered by rusted fence posts and dried weeds that scratched at my ankles. Somewhere far off, a vehicle moved. Every sound was a micro-nightmare out here. Wind. Insects. My own footsteps. Even my breathing felt loud.

  A crow watched me from a dead signpost. Its feathers were ragged, one wing missing a clean chunk. It cocked its head as I passed, black eye bright with judgment.

  I wanted to tell it to fuck off. I didn’t. I kept moving. The motel appeared slowly. First the sign—Sunset Motel—sun-faded letters, some missing; the frame twisted. Then the low line of buildings, bleached stucco, and broken windows. A cracked swimming pool out front filled with trash and windblown sand. But there were people.

  You could feel it before you saw it: the faint buzz of generators, the smell of cooked meat, cheap fuel, sweat. Voices carrying in short bursts. The sound of someone laughing because they didn’t expect to live long enough to regret it.

  Cars and bikes were parked in rough clusters, some clean, some held together by faith and zip ties. A couple of nomads leaned against a van, arms folded, watching everything.

  I walked in like I belonged, because “walking in like you belong” was how you survived nine out of ten doors in this city. The Drift tried to tug me. A word wanted to come out in a tone I didn’t own. I swallowed it. I found the weapon vendor by the smell first: gun oil, hot metal, cheap synthetic plastic baking in sun.

  He was set up out of a customized freight van, side door rolled up. Weapons hung on racks. A couple pistols in a case. Ammo boxes stacked under a tarp. A faded neon strip ran along the inside.

  The vendor himself looked like somebody had sanded down a human and left the edges sharp. Bald scalp, mirrored shades, a jawline that said he’d bitten through problems before. One arm was chrome from shoulder to fingertips. He looked at me and then looked at my wrapped shotgun.

  “New face,” he said, voice flat.

  “Yeah,” I said. My throat still tasted like bile. “Need a sidearm and a little feed.”

  He made a small noise that might’ve been a laugh.

  “Everybody needs a sidearm.”

  He didn’t ask my name. That was the first good sign.

  I stepped closer and kept my hands visible. My eyes flicked over the pistols. Some were clean, too clean, probably hot. Some were cheap polymer with scratched serial plates. I pointed at a battered budget piece in the case. “That one. How bad is it?”

  He popped the case with a thumbprint scanner that looked like it had been ripped out of a corporate bathroom. He handed the pistol to me with the slide locked back. It was lighter than I expected. Cheap. Reliable enough if you treated it right. The grip was worn smooth where hands had held it in panic.

  I held it the way my body wanted to hold it. And that was the first time the burn scared me. My wrists aligned without thought. My fingers found the balance. The muzzle dipped and rose in a tiny arc.

  The vendor watched. His head tilted a fraction.

  “You shoot?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I said. Honest.

  He snorted. “That how you all say it.”

  I set the pistol back down, slow.

  “How much?” I asked.

  He told me a number I didn’t trust. I slid the credchip across the edge of the van, keeping my eyes on his hands. He tapped it, then frowned at the readout. He wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.

  “Low,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  He studied me for a second. The kind of look that wasn’t about my face. About my posture. About what I’d carried in with me and what I hadn’t.

  “You got shells?” he asked, nodding at the wrapped shotgun.

  “Three,” I lied, because lying was free.

  He smiled without warmth.

  “Mm.”

  I felt the Impersonator seed in my skull. A suggestion: angle the conversation, change your tone, make him see what you want him to see. I didn’t lean into it. Not yet. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust what it would take from me.

  “I’ll take the pistol,” I said. “Two mags. Whatever you can spare on ammo. Couple shells if you got them.”

  He made a show of thinking, doing math, not deciding if I was worth robbing. Then he reached under the tarp and pulled out a small box of handgun rounds and a smaller sleeve of shells. He didn’t give me much. He gave me enough to think I had a chance.

  “Keep it clean,” he said, handing me a rag that smelled like solvent. “It jams; that’s your problem.”

  He slid the ammo over, then paused with the shells in his hand.

  “You’re walking back out there with that?” he asked.

  “That’s the plan.”

  He leaned in slightly. Close enough that I caught the faint chemical stink of cheap anti-odor spray trying to hide sweat.

  “Badlands eats plans,” he said.

  “I’m aware,” I said.

  He stared at me for one more beat, then shoved the shells across the counter.

  “Don’t die,” he said, I imagine it would inconvenience him if I did.

  I took everything, packed it tight. Pistol went into my waistband under my shirt, rough against my skin. Mags in my pockets. Ammo split between pockets and a small cloth bag I’d found in the house. Shells wrapped and tucked deep.

  As I stepped back, the overlay flickered again.

  ENGINEER CHANNEL: LINKED (ENGRAM [02] GARAGIST)

  STATUS: ACTIVE

  My fingers tingled. My stomach tightened. Drift. I forced myself to breathe slow and kept walking. Leaving the motel felt worse than arriving. Inside, there were eyes and noise and the thin safety of people being too busy to murder you for sport. Outside, it was just heat and distance. I walked fast until the motel shrank behind me.

  Halfway back, the sun turned savage. My shirt stuck to my skin. The pistol rubbed a raw line into my waist. Sweat ran down my spine. I stopped once under the shadow of a dead billboard and drank the last of my warm water. It tasted like plastic and desperation. I hated how good it felt.

  The overlay pulsed again, subtle.

  DRIFT: PRESENT

  PROGNOSIS: ACCEPTABLE

  The house came into view as the light started to tilt toward late afternoon, the sun getting lower but no kinder. The building looked smaller now.

  As I got closer, my pace slowed without me deciding. My eyes narrowed. The door. It was shut. It was supposed to be shut. But it would not hurt to check. The wooden piece I slipped in the door before leaving was still there.

  Doing the inventory of what I got was two to three months' worth of shit tasting canned food. Chemical-induced water. Worn-out Lexington with two mags. Carnage with 12 rounds. A bit of fuel for the generator and a garbage knife.

  Yeah, I can make that work.