I awoke to the unpleasant sight of ASCorp’s logo flashing in my eye for a brief moment. The pristine shield of Aetherium shone with a splendor that the North Arkhanika hadn’t shown in years. The logo faded as the previous message returned.

「Connect to the Net

* 3 Traits」

I looked around the place as I heard voices. Near the entrance, Nael was talking along with two other guys. One looked ‘borged out and the other was pure muscle. The borg had more metal than skin and looked like a rip-off robot masquerading as a human. From the look of things, it wasn’t even high-end chrome. Looked like maybe a bunch of scavenged junk.

The muscle guy didn’t have nearly as much chrome. An almost boyish charm surrounded him, brightening the room better than any neon. His green eyes, chrome of course, somehow seemed to twinkle with mischief even though they were metal. “...after the explosion?”

Nael had the same light crease to his lips that I always saw as he spoke with the man. “Where?”

“Everywhere!” The cheerful one laughed uproariously at his joke. It was the kind of laughter that made me want to join in even though I only heard the tail end of the joke.

Nael glanced over, his crinkled eyes meeting mine. “Ah! You’re awake, Shiro.” He turned to the two guys. “If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll be right with you.”

“No problem, choom.” The muscle guy’s smile remained as he settled up against the wall alongside his companion. His cybernetic eyes turned black, a sign of being ‘logged out’ and looking at something else on his HUD.

Nael walked back over to me, a smile still present. “Well, I fixed your wrist. Just lay off it for the next week or so and it’ll be fine. Still having that eye bug?”

I looked down to see the handiwork. It didn’t hurt too bad, but I now had a line of stitches down the length of my wrist. “Uh yeah. Something about connecting to the Net?” And something about Traits. Weird.

“Well, we could always see if it's plugged in.” He chuckled.

“I can still see with it-” I started.

He sighed and waved off my words. “Just a joke. Really making me feel old here, Shiro.”

Ah, must’ve been some of those old-world jokes he liked to share. Most of them flew under the radar, but I tried to get them on occasion. “Come on, you ain’t that old yet.”

“Right, right… whatever you say, kid. As far as my scans could tell, you’re not infected with a virus or anything. Pass me your jack and I’ll connect you.”

“Right.” I twisted my wrist, the non-broken one, and pulled out a small cord from a hidden slot. The Interface Plugs and Neural Link were the most expensive piece of chrome in my possession, and they were damn nice to have for situations like this. The only downside was how overwhelming being jacked into anything felt. It's like seeing in five dimensions instead of three. That, and the Neural Link cost more than I probably did.

He plugged it in. “Did that do anything?”

「Processing…

Successful…」

A sense of nausea raced along my bones, but nothing changed? What was this about success if nothing happened? Maybe it was a driver update or something? Weird… I was looking to get a better optic anyway, maybe this was a sign to go ahead? Hmm… maybe if I had a few hundred more Rayn…

“It says it’s done. Nothing changed though.” I told Nael.

He frowned. “Weird. Tell you what, why don’t you go a couple days and see if it pops up again? I’ll look into it a bit more. That model is ancient, so I’m sure there's a bug or two with it.”

“How much do I owe you?” I pulled out my phone. It was several dozen generations behind the one I pulled from the briefcase, but it worked for my purposes. Texting, calling, and accessing my FIBB account was really all I used it for. Oh, and the Mapp™.

Nael waved me off. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Your treatment technically isn’t done with that eye of yours. Just pay me later.” He shifted attention before I could protest. “Alright, Nabal, Silas, I’m ready for you.”

“Bout time.” The borg spoke in a voice barely recognizable as a human. Damn, he seemed like the type of guy to die alone, eh? Hmm… can he even clean himself? Isn’t that like a toaster bath if you’re a ‘borg?

I barely spotted the disappointed look the cheerful guy shot at the other. “All good, choom. Uranau brief you on what we need?”

“Of course…”

I left the clinic in a slight huff. Nael always found some way for me not to have to pay him. Probably why I thought he was as good as he is… It pissed me off. I had Rayn. I could pay. Not having to pay back when I was younger had been a blessing, but now? Now I was ready to pay off my debt, even if he likely wouldn’t ever collect it. Unfortunately, my debt was higher than my savings. Once I got a bit more Rayn, I’d pay him back.

Worming my way back through the alleys, I returned to my bike and began the trek back home. I would rest for today, doc’s orders, but tomorrow I would have to get active again. Life in the city didn’t come cheap, and I was running low on Rayn as is. Silage for dinner then. Joy.

I just finished eating when the box popped up in my vision.

「3 Traits Received」

「Pick 3:

Drug Dependency

Drug Resistance

Quick Healing

Bruiser

Gun Expert

Language Extraordinaire

Melee Expert

Martial Artist

Quick-witted

Built to Destroy

Gun-fu

Savant

Born Driver

Beloved by Beasts

Green Thumb

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Bear’s Cave

Improved Metabolism

Trigger Finger

Small Frame

Wild

Natural Speaker

Genius Technician

Fox’s Grace

Medic

Programmer

Netrunner

Kinetic

Adept

Chipped

Next Page >」

Now what in the hell was all of this? I spent the next thirty minutes trying to figure it out. Oddly enough, simply by intending to go to the next page, the list changed to a whole new set of thirty ‘traits’. Odd because I didn’t even have an eye capable of a HUD, and yet it was running exactly like I did. I could even focus on one of these ‘traits’ and a full description lit up in front of my eyes. And yet no matter how hard I tried to close it, it sat open in my view. Tauntingly.

An hour past roller coaster emotions. Was I going crazy? Surely not, then I must be high on something. There was an awful amount of Tosta smoke these days. Maybe- maybe I should just accept it as some strange event. Strange things were common in this wacky city, especially with the likes of Magus, Adepts, and Kinetics going about.

My head hurt just from not being able to make the list go away. Even with my eyes closed I could see it, which shut off any attempt at sleeping through it. Maybe it was just some kind of trick on my psyche? Gah, fine! I would just have to pick three damn Traits.

Three hours. Three damn hours I went through that list. I highly doubted anything would happen, but that delusional ‘what if’ factor made me take a serious look. If I was going to pick three, I was going to pick the best three. It took three hours, but I finally narrowed down my choices from the hundreds on the list.

Some choices were easy to weed out, at least at first glance. All offered some kind of benefit that would help immensely. Take for instance Drug Dependency. At first glance, it was terrible, right? Wrong. Sure there were cons, such as easily becoming addicted to any drug I took, but then there were also the benefits: quintupled positive effects of every drug.

Then it became easy to eliminate Traits again once I really thought about it. Exhibit A: Drug Dependency. Designer Drugs would be the only way of truly getting an effect out of it, but they were damn expensive. That, doubled with how often I was exposed to ambient drugs from smoke alone made me skip it. Seriously, it would suck if I happened to become dependent on Tosta after inhaling a breath of it on the streets.

That being said, some were immediately eliminated. For instance, Green Thumb, which would make me better with plants. It was useless considering one of the few plants I had seen was outside Absolom Clinic. Beloved by Beasts was eliminated for similar reasons. Simply put, there were hardly enough beasts for it to have an effect. Except rats, but eww.

Things like Chipped were also knocked out pretty quick. Chipped dealt with cybernetics, but I would have to have cybernetics for it to have much of an effect. Some were even too crazy to get. For instance, Lost Your Head on page three would decapitate me… yep. I would somehow still be alive according to the description, but…

Some I didn’t even look at. Kinetic and Adept on the front page were examples. The horror stories of Kinetics and Adepts were surprisingly widespread for how few of them there were. I didn't need to be losing my mind or body to some eldritch monstrosity, if they were even a thing.

My three picks were:

「Quick Healing - Restore wounds while resting. Fatal injuries will take longer.」

「Insight - Gain a sixth sense.」

「Fox’s Grace - Gain the blessing of Fox, known for having a sneaky nature.」

Quick Healing, assuming all this Trait stuff was real for the sake of arguing, would be incredibly nice. Not only would it heal my wrist, but any future injuries. And trust me, injuries were far too common in Aythryn City. This place was practically vampiric after all. I had heard of so many legendary figures, whether they be Mercs or Edgerunners, falling due to accumulated injuries.

Insight sounded impressive. It was a gamble, of which there was no doubt in my mind. Just having a sixth sense alone would be nice though. A bit of warning before danger strikes never hurts, and could potentially save my life.

Staying alive was difficult in Aythryn City. So far I had succeeded, and intended to keep it that way. Stealth has been a large part of my life so far. My job, if you could call it that, relied heavily upon being a little rat, and Fox’s Grace was the main one throughout the exhaustive Trait list that could help.

That, and the blessing of Fox was promising. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but if it meant what I thought it did… simply being in touch with an eidolon could change the entire course of my life, let alone being blessed by one. But the chances of it actually being an eidolon were close to negative. And, assuming it was, did I even really want such a thing?

As soon as I chose my three, I received a new message.

「Choices Locked」

「Rest to Reboot」

I didn’t need to be told twice. I had been wanting to sleep the past couple of hours, which was the main reason I even gave in to the delusions. As soon as I shut my eyes I was out like a light.

I awoke bright and early, feeling oddly refreshed for such a shit night. I ate silage for breakfast, the bland stuff making my tongue hurt. I popped my bones, feeling a bit of relief as I caught a whiff of myself. I reeked something fierce. And I could still feel sand in places it should never be. Yep, definitely time for a shower.

I had wanted to take a shower last night even, but showering at night was… well, part of the issue with cargo container living was the lack of a personal shower and bathroom. Everything here was communal. To that end, I had long learned it was best to wait for the morning when the ladies of the night would be washing up. Strength in numbers and all that.

The only issue with such a thing was, well, it was quite draining. They tended to be very social, especially today for some reason. I returned to my abode, clean yes, but entirely drained of my will to do anything.

I collapsed onto my bed, after carefully removing any traces of sand I found, and stared up at my left wrist. I had noticed it earlier; my shattered wrist didn’t feel the least bit of pain. Heck, even the scar from where he cut me open was gone. Nael was good, the best even, but this good? He had said a week, yet it had barely been a day for it to fully heal. Either he used some seriously expensive medicines, or- or maybe last night wasn’t a hallucination.

Fear. Fear was what held me back from admitting such a thing. I knew- I knew that power had to be earned or gained in some fashion. It didn’t just appear out of thin air. Even Magus had to fulfill their contracts. There was no such thing as a free ride. My radiant fear came in two points; what would be the cost and where did it come from?

There was only one place that logically made sense. It only popped up after I encountered the drop-pod in the Outskirts. What could’ve- maybe when that guy grabbed me? That slow electrical jolt had been weird. Electricity doesn’t go slow. At least not like that. What if in his final moments, he transferred some kind of disease or something to me?

Dammit, Shiro! You shoulda shot the bastard when you had the chance, even if your peashooter likely wouldn’t have pierced his borged-out body. Now you were stuck with this weird bug in your system.

As if sensing my attention, the damned screen popped into my vision once more.

「Name: Shiro Tsukuyomi

Traits: Fox’s Grace, Quick Healing, Insight

INVALID DATA」

Damnit! If this shit is stuck in my vision again- oh, it went away… I thought about it, and the screen came back. Then it disappeared when I wanted it to. At least it went away now… Another problem arose as I messed around with it; I could see it with my right eye. My flesh eye.

It took me a bit to calm down and start thinking rationally again. From what it looked like, the thing almost seemed like a game status page. I had never played those kinds of games myself, but I knew about them from talking to others my age. Heck, my best choom was practically addicted to them when she was younger.

No matter how much I wanted to deny its existence, Quick Healing had taken effect last night. That meant it was real, for better or worse. I tried to manipulate the interface, and it changed how it looked, but didn’t show me anything new. The INVALID DATA message stuck around, so I decided to just ignore it for the time being till I figured out how to fix the error. Or it fixed itself.

I felt something, almost like a buzz in the back of my brain. A second later my phone started to vibrate. Ishimaru, my ‘employer’, was calling. I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Chiwa Shiro! If it ain’t my favorite shtreetrat!” His voice, as it usually did, sounded as if he had quite a few intoxicants. Still, it failed to hide the steel only those who had put their life on the line countless times had.

He was always like this. It was sickening, I guess? It should be the other way around, at least from what I’ve heard. Flattery was the job of the employee, not the employer. But hey, at least he was an equal opportunist and treated everyone else this way too. “Do you need something?”

“Yosh yosh, mikata. Lishten, I got thish uh, thish thing.” His voice lowered, and I could almost see him speaking out of the side of his mouth like he was sharing some kind of secret. “Private earsh only, if you catch my drift. Why don’ you come down and ’ll tell you all about it? Heavy Rayn ish in the forecasht!”

Then he hung up without waiting for my reply. Not that I blamed him, I always accepted the ‘jobs’ he offered. I was too poor not to. I wonder what it was this time?