[The City that Never Wakes] Wageslave

Ash shrugs. After the day she's had, Lisa's efforts to impugn her motives doesn't even get a rise out of her. "It's perfectly obvious that whatever you have against me goes deeper than a patriot's contempt for a mercenary. If and when you're ready to talk about that, I'll be there for you. But, as someone recently said to me, I'm not interested in just being a punching bag for whatever issues you're not ready to face. So until you're ready to talk to me like I'm a human being, I suggest we keep our relationship strictly professional." And with that, her humanoid persona dissolves into a swarm of bugs, which appear to claw their way out though first its orifices and then its skin.


"Oh, and one last thing." Ash's tenor is conversational, but her cadence is measured and precise. Ash has never before had occasion to place the full force of her personality behind a statement made in Lisa's presence, but she does now. And while the two women may be roughly the same age, Ash's voice carries the weight of eight months of command experience in an elite combat unit. "I have a thick skin. I can take a lot of bullshit. But tonight you saw fit to cast aspersions on the life I have waiting for me outside this arcology. Tonight will be the last time you do that."


"Good night, and thank you for taking the time to help me with my remedial assignments."


The swarm of bugs twists in on itself, then scatters as if caught by a sudden gust of wind. And then it is gone, leaving Lisa alone in her cloud-world.
 
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Hello! And welcome to NeoNET—the hub the world revolves around. Now, I understand you're from Renraku, the


foundation on which the world rests. A fine company that, but we do things very differently here. So please, listen closely during the orientation.

Too late now.

"-thought she was a flower child," Jingfei says, shaking her head. "But they were wrong. She cared deeply about the feelings of the people around her, but she never let them control her."

That makes one of you.

We're a community that cares. Where everybody knows your name and takes an interest in you.

Living by Committee. Remember that? Were you even listening?

The first bullet enters her spine, and in the time between its entry and exit, the camera records nearly a dozen images, perfectly capturing the fan-like spray of blood that emerges from her gut.

Beautiful footage.

This is a place of trust. Where nobody locks their doors and the walls are made of glass. You have nothing to fear here.

No Privacy (Physical). You searched your bathroom for cameras before you stripped, but you missed one. Node #44938-BN.

Her stumble isn’t even complete before the second shot impacts. This one hits her in the shoulderblade, twisting her around as she falls. She lands face up, eyes towards the sky.

The stars are beautiful tonight.

All your neighbors will be skilled programmers and security experts, making it easy to bond over common interests.

No Privacy (Matrix). They were all watching.

Though her spine has been severed and her heart has stopped, cessation of brain function is not instantaneous, and so for the moment she is aware of her environment. The third bullet passes through her head, and fixes that.

You have to respect a through professional.

I also see that you don't have skillwires. That's another no-fly I'm afraid. Now the company only requires you to have them at Rating 1, but I strongly encourage you to go higher. We have the facilities right here, and they're just a fantastic piece of technology.

Gain Skill Wires (Rating 1). Was it good for you?


Hey, Ash.


Bang.



​



Ash shoots up in bed, screaming as the bullet strikes her square in the forehead. Instinctive terror grips her, fear and adrenaline running in waves as images of her shattered skull flash through her. Pain floods through her, and she tries to grab the wound. Tries to stop the bleeding. Tries to hold herself together but she can't. Her attacker is on top of her, so much stronger, pinning her down as he presses the barrel to her head. His hands are cutting into her, smeared with blood from his first shot. She can feel it there! Feel the gun. Feel the bullet and the chamber and the—


"Ash!" a voice cuts through her panic. Right in her ear. A familiar voice. "Ash, calm down! You're okay. You were having a nightmare. Ash, calm down!"


She... no. She was shot in the head. She was. She felt the bullet. It splattered her skull over the floor. She felt it.


But that... doesn't make sense. Does it?


Slowly, Ash opens her eyes. She's in her room, tangled up in her bedsheets. Her forehead is throbbing with pain. Mark is kneeling beside her, and she can feel his grip on both her arms. Holding her down.


He looks worried.
 
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Ash instinctively reaches around the back of her head to jack out, only for her hand to grasp empty air, then runs her hand over her scalp - pockmarked from where her trode net has worn grooves into it, but at the moment pristine save for her tattoos.


Blearily, she looks up at the orc holding her. "No. I wasn't," she says, her voice distant and rote, her hindbrain correcting a trivial matter of fact, but her attention clearly elsewhere.


"Did you jack me out? I sometimes go in sim to sleep. If it's noisy, or I have trouble falling asleep." Her eyes become more focused as she speaks and looks around her, but her voice no less brittle. "Some asshole must have slotted me a beetle at some point. Fucking rootkit. Fucking compound. Can't even trust my own goddamn sensor logs."
 
When Ash tries to reach back to jack out, she finds that she can't. Mark is still holding her down, and all her struggling amounts to nothing. The more she panics, the more he holds her down, and for a moment, she almost sinks back into animal terror. But, she's able to force herself to calm, and when her movements slow, he releases her.


At once, her hands fly back to her head. But there are no wires there.


"No... Ash," Mark says after a moment. He seems like he's about to say something else, but restrains himself. "I think you were just having a nightmare. But, here. Sit up. Let me check your commlink and datajack. It's okay. Take a breath. Nora, get me an ice pack, would you?"


Ash's forehead is still throbbing, and she feels something she suspects is blood trickling down her face. She doesn't see Nora—or anyone else—but it's only a moment before a helpful drone scuttles into the room, the first aid kit held in one of its grabbers.
 
Ash shakes her head, instantly regretting it. "I feel like I've just dumpshocked out of sim, and I'm positive that I did not have a nightmare. Nightmares don't come with tactile feedback. At least mine never do, and believe me when I say that I have had enough to see the pattern," she says, fumbling for her earbuds, AR gloves and glasses with slightly shaking hands. "It has to have been simsense," she continues as she goes through the rote motions of putting on her peripherals. "But I don't understand how. I'm not wearing trodes, and there's no chip slot in my impl..." she trails off, and her body suddenly grows rigid. "Son of a bitch," she hisses through clenched teeth.


Ash takes a deep breath, and when she speaks again it is louder, and in a carefully controlled voice. "Medical non-emergency in sector Bingo-Lima-Zero-Two-Niner. Please advise nearest available medical station."
 
"Ash, you didn't get tactile feedback. You shot up in bed and cracked your forehead on the overhang. See?" he reaches up to the canopy overlaying the pod-style bed and runs his fingers across it. The lights come up as he does, and as Ash squints into the sudden glare, she can see red on Mark's fingers, and feel it trailing down her face. "I was watching the whole time."


The bridge of her AR glasses interrupts a trail of blood as she slides them on, and through the washed out interface, she can vaguely see the ghostly outlines of the others. Mark is quick to take the first aid kit though, and when he pulls a patch of gauze from it, he reaches out to lift Ash's glasses to clean the blood away. At once, the virtual world becomes invisible to her again.


"Attention, Mark Ashe, Employee #—" the overhead speaker starts to crackle, assisted by the augmented reality alert, but Mark waves it away.


"Medical report:" he says, rigidly. "Ash Peterson, Employee #3983563-A experienced a vivid nightmare. Employee believes they have been subject to sim and dumpshock against their will. I am running skillsoft First Responder and the situation is not urgent." He pauses, and looks Ash in the eye for a moment. "Please refer suspected incident to security for investigation."


Gently, he removes Ash's glasses the rest of the way, reaching up to tape a section of gauze over her forehead and then holding up the ice pack. "Here. Hold this, okay?"
 
"Like Hell it's not urgent!" Ash hisses, batting at the ice pack and trying to get out of her bed. "Mark, you will unhand me this very instant," she growls, before going back to her measured first-response cadence. "I repeat this is a medical non-emergency in sector Bingo-Lima-Zero-Two-Niner. Please advise nearest available medical station."
 
"Attention, Mark Ashe, Employee #445—" the overhead speaker repeats, before Mark waves it away. The world spins around Ash as she tries to stand, and her hand reflexively lashes out to grab the side of the bed for support.


"Ash. Ash, please?" Mark asks, supporting her with one hand across the back, his other ready and tense to catch her if she falls. "Ash, I'm unhanding you. Okay? Please, relax. For non-emergencies, the closest person running First Responder is the nearest medical station. You can say it's a medical emergency if you want and someone will get up here with a stretcher, but I don't think that's necessary."
 
Ash takes several deep breaths, then speaks in a carefully measured voice. "Of course I don't need a stretcher. It's just a gash. I've had worse; I'll walk it off. But I need to speak with a real doctor, not a first-responder skillchip. No offense intended, but what I need to ask about is outside its parameters."
 
"Try me," Mark replies, and it's with a firmer tone that he adds: "And hold this ice-pack to your forehead while you're doing it."
 
Ash's hand is shaking as she takes the ice pack and presses it against her face. "I need every single scrap of data on that thing the Company's pet Mengele shoved into my head when I came here." She may have begun the sentence in a measured cadence, but by the time she's halfway through, she growls. "I want the full side effect profile, the epidemiological data, from before the Company's tobacco scientists and number torturers got their paws on it. All the studies that have been done on it. Everything."
 
"Pet Mengele," the speakers ding, in the same voice they usually use over her AR feed. "+5 Aggro. Pejorative Language."


"Tobacco Scientists," they ding again. "+20 Aggro. Pejorative Language (Repeat Offense)."


"Number Torturers," they ding for the third time. "+50—"


Mark waves a hand, and and the speakers click silent. Then, "Ash is Having A Really Bad Day, -75 Aggro. Sorry."


Then the screen over her bed displays a little, purple. " :/ " face.


"Alright," Mark says after a moment. "Alright, Ash. Please listen. I promise I will help you get that. I'll get you every official record, and if it comes to that, I'll run a MAD scanner over you myself to check. Okay? I want to help you." He makes eye contact with her, holding it for a second. "But right now, you're angry. And if you go storming into someone's office spitting fire at 3 in the morning, all you're going to do is get yourself in trouble. Please... sit down. And let me check your commlink and datajack."
 
Much like a leaking balloon, Ash almost visibly deflates as she slumps down a corner of her room, hugging her knees to her chest.


"I can't take this, Mark," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "Not this as well, not on top of everything else. I'll go insane. I'll go insane, and the last thing I'll see before I bleed out in a shower stall is a sad little red frowny-face informing me that I've accrued negative points for getting my blood all over the towels." She barks a small laugh, but there is no emotion left in her voice.
 
Mark takes a breath. After a moment, he sits down beside her, and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Ash," he says calmly. "Nobody here wants that to happen. I don't want that to happen. I don't know if staying here is a good idea, or if maybe you should drop out, but I want you to be okay most of all. Do you understand?"


After a moment, he adds: "Ash, I promise. It'll be okay."
 
"Don't," she whispers, shying away from the hand on her shoulder. In another tone, or with another posture, it could have been a dismissal. But right here and now it's a hopeless, frightened gesture. "Don't make promises you can't keep."
 
He freezes when she pulls away, uncertain for a moment how to respond. After a moment, he moves his hand from her shoulder to her back, resting it there in a supportive position. "It's just a job, Ash," he says. "At the end of the day, that's all it is. It's nothing worth doing this to yourself over. It'll..." He pauses again. "It'll all be over when you want it to be."


"Please, don't be scared."
 
Ash winces at the touch, but doesn't retreat further. "That's what Lisa said too," she says, voice hollow. "I'm free to go if I don't like it here. I always was. I'll just be fifty grand in the hole, and a chronic neurological condition up."


"I must actually like it here, right?" Another small, mirthless laugh. "That's why I let them do this, isn't it? I mean, I could've screamed and kicked all the way to the theater, but I just walked there like a fucking zombie."
 
"Lisa says she's sorry, Ash. And I think she means it. Really means it. We all saw you fight." He pauses, obviously searching for the words. "You know, I have a cyberarm because I got into street brawling? And not all real orcs take well to rich-kid posers. Apparently there's a level where your bones are broken in so many places it's easier to just take the arm off. That wasn't ah... that wasn't fun."


He leans around her, trying to catch her eyes. "People make mistakes, Ash. It's not the end of the world. It doesn't ruin you as a person."
 
Ash turns away for a moment, but when she speaks again her voice, though still brittle, has regained a little of the power it usually has. "Et tu, Mark? Someone straps me to a table and shoves unwanted objects into my body against my will, and I'm the one who made a mistake? I could have just walked away? Really?"
 
Mark pauses. His faces goes through a few expressions—he frowns, pauses, and then tries to catch her eyes. On some level, Ash can't help but wonder if he's thinking, or if he's consulting the peanut gallery for advice through his datajack. It's probably both, of course.


"You have the power to walk away, yes," he says, plainly, but gently. "And maybe you'd be happier if you'd walked away sooner. But I'm not judging you for that Ash. I... I'm not trying to blame you for what happened. I'm just saying you have options now. That... things can get better."
 
Ash hugs her knees tighter at that. "Yeah, no. I know a sunk cost fallacy when I see one. And right now I have a big motherfucker of a sunk cost sitting somewhere between my amygdala and my frontal lobes. And the Company doesn't even owe me an apology." Ash makes a face. "Employee agrees to be subject to mind-altering chemical compounds without prior consent," she recites, in the distinctive sing-song cadence of someone reciting from well-ingrained memory. "Employee can be compelled to receive cybernetic implants or other body modifications. Lethal force authorized in event of attempted defection." She pauses. "It's all right there in the contract, even though the actual document wraps it in a lot more unnecessary prose."
 
Ash shrugs. "All that shit was in my contract with Renraku as well. Ninety-nine per cent of those clauses are ass-covering that will never actually be invoked, or chaff to baffle the ones that will be."


"Besides, by the time it became obvious just how much the recruiter had lied about what I was signing up for, Renraku would have already realized I had bailed and gotten busy revoking my SIN." She looks Mark straight in the eyes, her own eyes bloodshot. "I lived as a SINless sprawler on the edge of the barrens for eight years, Mark. And I was a really fucking privileged sprawler, as such things go."


"And there's still no way I'm ever going back to that."
 
Mark again pauses, but this time, the fact that it's a pause to think is more obvious. He reaches out to her, putting his free hand on her shoulder while the other stays on her back, though he doesn't quite seem sure what to do, save to reassure her with his presence. It takes him a moment to go beyond that, and when he does, it's at first with only a single word. "Okay."


He nods, and it's clear that his plans beyond that are still forming. "Okay, Ash. I'll be... honest. I don't understand what you're going through. I... I don't. I'm sorry. I never had that life and I don't understand why you're in pain. But you are, and... we can all see that. And I want to help. So... please. Let me help you?"
 
Ash looks down for a moment, torn by indecision. Then she hugs the orc in front of her. Fiercely.


"You are helping. Don't ever doubt that you're helping. Just by being there, even though I've been nothing but a brutal bitch to you." She pauses for one heartbeat, then another. "Don't ever doubt it."
 
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