The road was dark, no neon signs around, not a single person walked around, and no noise echoed throughout the road, as if all the elements of the city were muffled out and muted, the only thing that she could see were the endless line of weak lights floating above her but that were not attached to anything and only shining her next few steps. She kept running on this shadowed road, not knowing who was behind her only knowing that she was followed and they were dangerous. She tried to reach out for a chance that something could be there, something that could give her reprieve from this never ending hallway of flickering lights and nothingness. Her pursuers were getting closer, and her legs were about to give out, her breath began to swell, and her eyes started to fill with tears, pushing through all the pain, not wanting to know what will happen if she was caught. As if her prayers were answered, she saw something, but her hope was taken away as she realized that what was in front of her wasn’t a friendly face, it was something that was worse than whatever she was running away from. There was a giant’s hand, covered in shaggy gray fur with a black fingerless glove on it, poorly trying to cover all of the scarring of the hand. She started to slow down, not wanting to be embraced by the hand of a monster trying to be humane, it was trying to be welcoming, it tried to look like it wanted to help, but all that Lanonia saw was a beast hiding its true nature. It started to reach out to her, wanting to grab her and pull her into the darkness. She stopped and turned around to see her faceless pursuers right in front of her, as their heads proceeded to dissipate and their body fall like puppets whose strings were cut, and as she felt a brief reprieve, she felt the fingers of the giant hand enclose her, as she woke up in a cold sweat on her bed within her tiny apartment. With the blaring noise of sirens outside, and the worn down bed she was sleeping on, creaking as she sat up, with a very fast beating heart thinking to herself: “Same dream again.”

She wanted to sleep for another five minutes, but after looking at the alarm clock set to the left of her on her night stand, reading 5:23 in the morning, she decided to get her day started, even though she really did not get enough sleep as she should have. The girl proceeded to get up and started to make her bed, taking off the blanket and pillow from the mattress to prevent jamming. After tidying up her bed, she pressed a button on the wall. What followed was that her bed proceeded to fold itself into its slot in the wall, getting stuck about halfway there, as per usual. She did her usual routine of attempting to realign the bed so that it would properly fit into the wall, once it finally did, all that was left was a neat outline of the bed on the plain white wall. After folding her blanket into a very neat shape, she pressed another button on the wall, shifting out a cupboard where she put her blanket and pillow, afterwhich, she pressed the button again for the cupboard to close into another sleek rectangle on the wall. After groaning to herself about the same nightmare and tiredness, she stretched herself to get rid of the daily soreness of the exercise of putting the bed into the wall. After about 15 minutes of her doing her daily stretches, she walked over to her bathroom and started to brush her teeth with her raspberry flavored toothpaste, this one tube has cost her entire bonus pay, but it was worth all that effort for something that provided even a shadow of sweetness in her world of repetitious and bland blocks. She savored every stroke of the toothbrush on her teeth, not wanting this sweetness to end, wishing that every meal she had tasted like this. After she finished brushing all of her teeth, including her fanged ones, she started to make her hair look less like a mess. She brushed all of her naturally black hair and curled the majority of it into a ponytail, leaving the front of her hair loose, brushing it in a way that would cover her right eye. After she finished with her black hair, she moved on to straightening out her rainbow hair that hid underneath. Straightening it out from left to right, starting to make her red hair straight and systematically ending with straightening out her purple hair. By the end of her hair routine, she walked back into her room and took off her pajamas, which consisted of baggy pants and a roomy white t-shirt. She went to her in-wall closet that stood across the room from her bed with a step ladder standing next to the outline of the closet, automatically shifting open when she stood in front of it, she hanged her white t-shirt on an empty hanger before starting to put on her work uniform of a black long sleeve button shirt, with on her right area of her uniform’s chest showing a logo of a vertical, thick light blue zigzag with one notch in front of a red target symbol with at the front of them both in a digital font in yellow text saying “CNE”, the letters stood for Circuit Nexus Emporium, a very catchy name for a bit of an underwhelming store. The name was half the reason the damn place stayed in business, getting more customers in, the other was that not many people worked there, but the few who did, they were paid well enough. After putting on her button shirt, she opened up a drawer in the closet and got out a pair of neat black pants and started to put them on, carefully putting her tail through the tight hole at the back. She didn’t want to ruin another pair and pay for the damages. After finishing putting on her clothes, she walked towards the miniature kitchen in her apartment. To fully understand her apartment, it was more of just one big room that was separated without walls into a bedroom and a kitchen, with just one other room in her apartment being her bathroom, the door being in the middle of the western wall of her apartment, with the bathroom being as long as the entire apartment, to fit a bathtub, a toilet and a small mirror with a counter. Her kitchen area was at the southern right part of the room, right next to the exit door and the entrance area, the kitchen was quite minimalistic, with there being only one double sink, with about four cupboards, two for each side of the wall of the corner the kitchen counter was situated in. There was a prebuilt washing machine at the eastern wall of the corner, with the cutting boards and utensils on the counter above it. In the little square of the kitchen area was a small table with only one chair standing there. At the northern half of the room, was a massive open space meant to have free space for the furniture stored in the western and eastern walls, with a large window at the north wall showing the countless spires of living complexes, all plastered with advertisements and neon signs of the name of each apartment. The apartment complex that she lived in was called “Peachy Springs” which was ironic, considering the fact that barely anyone who lived here was ever “peachy” especially because of how the entire building was very dull and gray. Every room was the same, just one empty rectangular room with a bathroom to the west of each room, the only real difference was the view, and even that did not change with many details. Everything was surrounded by more skyscrapers, more buildings and more massive neon signs, all wanting the attention of the populace, all wanting more of the money that everyone barely had, or at least that was the case with our girl.

Speaking of which, she has reached her kitchen and opened up the fridge that she had on the floor, revealing the variety of nutrition blocks she had stored in there, next to some synthetic pork and beef. She picked up the one that was the closest to her, labeled “Apple.” The nutrition block did not vary that much from the rest of the nutrition blocks in the case of ingredients, just the same amount of certain necessary nutrients for the body to survive with the exception of protein, how it varied from the rest was it’s taste, but that didn’t matter much as the taste was so minor that if it wasn’t focused on, then it would not even be noticed. He took off the plastic lid off of the block’s packaging, walked to one of the eastern cupboards and got out a blender, took the cup of the blender off of the mechanism, took off the bladed top off the cup and slid the nutrition block into the open cup. She walked to her sink, and filled the cup with warm water until half of the block was submerged in it. She got the serrated lid of the cup, screwed it on tightly, and proceeded to blend the nutrition block in water. During the blending, she kept thinking to herself about how work today will probably be as dull as it usually is, and how she wanted to just this one day not show up, but then she would probably be fired and it’ll be even harder to find another job than the one she currently has. She turned off the blender, removed the blending cup off of the blender, unscrewed the top of her cup and started to drink the very gray and tasteless goo that she had made. After chugging down the tasteless liquid, she stuck her tongue out to get the iron like aftertaste out of her mouth. No matter how much she made this breakfast, she could never get used to it. After the aftertaste left her mouth, she started to wash the blender cup and blade top in her sink, after cleaning the two items, she put them back on top of the blender and put the blender back where she got it from, closing the cupboard door. She checked the time by looking at the inside of her wrist, showing digital numbers reading 6:01 on the rectangular patch of synthetic skin she had in place. “Almost time to leave.” She went back to her bathroom and started to put on makeup to cover up her bags as well as to just look more appealing to avoid how she was usually treated by customers, even though those instances were rare, they still stung and she wanted to avoid them as much as she could. After finishing applying her makeup, she looked at herself in the mirror and smiled, satisfied with her makeup and trying to motivate herself to keep a positive attitude. She quickly picked up her employee card and clipped it to the left chest of her uniform. The card showed a picture of her smiling widely next to her name: Lanonia. Lanonia went to the exit, put on her safety boots, and left her apartment building. There was no lock, for there was no need for one, the handles of this apartment were designed to instantly recognize the grip and the fingerprints of the current owner of the room, so no one could break in, not like anyone even wanted to break into such an apartment. No one rich lived here, so there really would not be a motive to steal from here. In any case, she left her apartment, and started to walk down the hall to the elevator of the apartment complex.

Her walk to the elevator was as normal as it could be for her. The usual couple’s fight in room 914, the loud dog barking as she walked by room 917 with a more accelerated pace to stop the barking faster, and the wet floor stain that still has not been cleaned. Hasn’t been washed for about a month, luckily the cleaning service would come by in a few days to clean up this mess, but unfortunately, it would not help with the suffocating dullness of this place. Moving out was not an option, as the rent for this place was relatively cheap and very comfortably close to her place of work. Not like she liked where she worked, rude customers, not a very pleasant boss, and what she was working on was not what she liked to do, she may have been good at it, but it was not something she enjoyed. Though she really did not have much of a choice in the matter, as that job paid well enough to pay the bills and enough to get some toothpaste, and in her eyes, she would never get another deal like that in her lifetime. She pressed the down button waiting for the elevator to come to her floor, while waiting, she saw three werewolves walking by her, they must’ve been up all night partying, judging by the bottle and their very sluggish demeanor. The one on the left was larger than the other two, with scruffy brown fur wearing baggy pants and sweater with a loose shirt underneath, with no particular details that Lenonia could see, at the right was a white mangy werewolf, he looked like he was covered in soot and dirt, covering his white fur coat he was wearing something of similar fashion to the brown werewolf, the only difference being that his clothes were more torn. The two were carrying the third under his shoulders as he held a bottle and seemed very drunk, clearly he needed help to walk, maybe these were friends? The third werewolf had black fur, so it was hard to tell at a first glance, but after a closer look, it was clear that he was bleeding all over his face. All of them shared a similar detail: they were bruised, bleeding, but laughing. Lenonia smiled at this scene, even though these adults were causing a bit of a commotion, they were laughing joyfully, something like that was so rare in the city streets that Lenonia savored every bit that she could. The elevator finally arrived, and she entered it, pressing the button labeled G so that she would enter the ground floor.

The elevator ride was uneventful, which was a very pleasant surprise for Lanonia, usually, there would be more people today on the elevator at this time of day, as everyone goes to work very early in the morning perhaps today was going to be more lucky for Lanonia, as having consecutive good moments in one day was a rarity that Lenonia cherished a lot. She started to giggle to herself, more excited to see what today would have in store for her. Once the elevator ride finally reached the ground floor, Lanonia started to walk through the lobby of her apartment, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. Just the usual gnome clerk at the front desk, who at a first glance people would think is a robot, but in truth, he was just a gnome who has modified himself so that he didn’t need sleep, and giving himself an implant that would give him all the nutrients necessary without any of the waste, the upgrades and modifications probably cost a fortune to him, but Lanonia knew him for his punctuality, so much so that he wanted to ensure that he would be able to work the entire day, every day the entire year, with the exception of one day at the end of every month so that he could let his body rest and recharge his cybernetics to prevent malfunction or better yet death. Lanonia smiled as she went up to the clerk. It was hard to tell whether or not he liked her, but Lanonia always liked to talk to him, he always had an interesting story to share about his job. “Hey Desmond! How was your night?” The gnome turned to Lenonia and with a monotone voice responded: “Traffic was minimal and not many people entered or exited. You are the…” he paused as he counted down all the people that have passed by him from 12:00 AM to the current time “...eighth person to walk by on the current day.” “Thanks for letting me know!” Lenonia checked the time, and realized she was going to miss the train if she continued the conversation. “Well! Gotta run! Talk to you later Desmond!” She ran out of the apartment waving towards Desomnd as he just responded with another monotone statement: “You too.”

As Lanonia walked out of her apartment building, she turned to her left on her way to work, passing by the many buildings and people that gave her passing looks of either indifference or scorn, sometimes on the few rare instances, they have whispered some comments that she could not define, but knew that they would not be pleasant. She kept walking, passing by the many stores, buildings and neon signs of her city, until reaching a train station. She patiently waited for the train, as on the wall across her was an emblem of a red star, with underneath it being a crescent moon pointing towards the star, with both details being colored maroon red. Lanonia didn’t like looking at the symbol, but she had to see it whenever she went to work or to the store. It was the symbol for the gang that held their territory in this part of the city, called the Blood Empire, very fanatical and disturbing for Lenonia’s taste, luckily she never met anyone from the said gang, and she never wanted to, as all of the rumors about them were very unpleasant to her, such as the rumors of them draining blood from their enemies, she was curious about this gang, but whenever she thought of them, she had an added feeling of uneasiness, making her believe that even though she wanted to know more, she probably would not like what she would find. The train arrived, with its sleek exterior colored in a pristine silver and obsidian black, with tinted windows and sliding doors. On the entire length of the train was an advertisement for a new car that moved without wheels. Lenonia was fascinated by the idea, but she didn’t really care, as she never drove a car, and never planned to, too expensive, and she didn’t really need one to go anywhere, only the people in the military or the most influential company holders could really afford a car, the only reason that the ads for the said cars were around was probably to try to raise the morale of the citizens and show them that they’re still advancing their technology in such an age. The train doors slid open. Lenonia walked into the train, scanning her ID card on the scanner near the sliding door with the little screen showing her that she was allowed to step on. The train was packed full of early morning suits and rugged looking passengers, not to the point where she had no breathing room, but it was to the point she had to tighten her tail on one of her legs to avoid it being stepped on, be it accidentally or intentionally.

The train ride was mostly the same as usual, on the current day the train’s rails were set to go up being pulled into the upper magnet rings. As Lenonia felt the train rise to the next level of rails, being higher than some lower rising buildings. As the train kept going higher along the tracks, Lanonia started to take in the scenery of a very dark city lit up by the many lights of buildings of people just starting their day for work, and with the logos of the many businesses all plastered on tall skyscrapers with the buildings looking like they are made of more glass than metal. The train kept going up until eventually reaching its peak height and continuing to ride that height for the rest of the ride, having the track take a wide circular movement to the next stop. The train eventually reached a platform titled “Station 42: Vertig C” where Lenonia had to step off. She easily stepped off and started to walk towards an elevator of the station, when she walked up to the elevators, it showed that all of them were under repair, due to a power outage that happened yesterday at night. Lanonia thought to herself: “These were happening more often recently…” Luckily, the said power outage didn’t affect anything major, just a few buildings, and as a safety precaution, the station denied access to the elevator to avoid an accident. Seeing no alternative, Lenonia decided to take the stairs, with many other people doing the same. As she walked down the stairs, she kept walking by a variety of faces, a crocodilian lizardfolk with his jaw replaced by a cybernetic implant with extended jaws, wearing a sweater that mostly covered up his robotic arm; a goat-bat hybrid who has had his horns sanded to make them look a bit less threatening, there were others, each with their own unique looks and augments for whatever reason. The one that stuck out to Lanonia however was someone walking without a head. It came to Lanonia as a shock that augments that could even remove your entire head now exist. The small moment she looked at the empty space where the head was supposed to be, the more uncomfortable she felt. The feeling kept grabbing at her from the uncertainty of how it worked. Were all of the main brain parts stored in the neck? What was the purpose of the augment completely removing your head? How did the person eat? Direct injections? The questions kept piling up, until she snapped out of it when the headless figure spoke back in an artificial woman’s voice in a hateful tone: “What are you looking at God Pox?” When she heard that statement, she blinked and saw what she was really looking at. The head was entirely robotic, with many of the addons giving the illusion that there were feathers, giving Lanonia the conclusion that it was a bird head without a beak. At first Lanonia was disappointed that there was nothing to speculate, and there was a very simple explanation, she then started to think about how ridiculous the concept of a few little chips would be able to completely replace a person’s brain and someone would purposefully remove many organs that allowed them to experience any sweetness in taste, smell, or sight.

The slur that the bird lady gave Lanonia stung, so she just looked away and didn’t pay much attention. The figure didn’t follow her, she just continued to throw insults at Lanonia until Lanonia walked far enough to not hear them anymore. After walking out of the station, Lenonia checked the time on her wrist, it read 6:26, she had about another fifteen minutes to get to work, as she started to walk towards her place of work, she saw a malnourished homeless man holding a sign saying: “A little change makes all the difference.” Lanonia approached the homeless man and from one of her pockets, she got out about two credits and placed the said credit into the hat lying down next to the man. She could not define any details of the homeless man but she only saw a tail covered in scratches and bandages. The homeless man looked at her without saying anything, she could not see his face, being shrouded by the shadow of the ragged cloak he was wearing, only seeing his smile with his disfigured teeth. Lenonia smiled back, glad that she helped someone out, be it very limited. She continued walking by the road for about another five minutes until finally reaching the building of Circuit Nexus Emporium. It stood shorter than most building, but it was still plastered with neon signs on all sides, it had a more rugged look to it, making it seem like it wasn’t properly maintained, in truth, it was just that Lanonia’s boss, a troll by the name of Figilles Vorteek was a bit of a slob, he was good at his job and professional, but he wasn’t clean, and he didn’t see the need to hire a cleaning service to make the building look better, so instead, he opted to make it more eye catching with more neon lights of the store, alongside other businesses that were renting his building, one of the said businesses was a cigarette store, which Lenonia did not approve of, so she never wondered what the inside of the store was like, or who owned it, she only saw the owner once, he was a dark blue kobold that gave himself some leg augments to make himself seem much taller than what he really was, he dressed rich, so he might’ve owned more businesses, but Lenonia didn’t care much, all she knew was that he was a business neighbor to her boss, and that they were partners. Lenonia put on her worker’s smile and walked in as the time just became 6:57 AM.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

As Lenonia walked in, she walked towards the back of the store, walking by the many products that were sold in the store. Be it the many arm upgrade variants, or the countless cybernetic eyes that gave a very unpleasant feeling to Lenonia no matter how many times she walked by them, the line up of simple augments to pre existing cybernetic implants for the arms, legs, fingers etc. spanked throughout the store, showing the prices for all of them being very expensive, nothing that Lenonia could afford in her lifetime. She didn’t have any cybernetic limbs or any major changes done to her body, but she did have some cybernetics in her, she have a wrist implant that would display for her time, directly link to her bank account via a complex network and protected network to access her money and prevent theft she also had a minor implant on her ear that served as an antenna to get calls it looked like a typical ring earring but it was a very intricate designed device that worked by recognizing lanonia’s finger body warmth and with different motions of the ringer on the ring, she could do different things, such as link more people to her contacts on the ring, receive a call, send out a call, and etc. As Lenonia kept walking by the many implants and augments, she finally reached the back of the store, and approached the keypad on the wall, typing in her four digit pin code to clock in to start her hours, after she clocked in, she took one of the company-provided tablets on the wall next to the keypad labeled with her name, she entered into the tablet the same four digit code to access the tablet and started her job as an assistant to the store. Lanonia walked to the back of the store, on the way there, she put on her safety helmet, and put on her Class-2 Solid Hi Vis Safety Vest, and put on her safety gloves. She started to walk around the back catalog of the massive storage room. The “storage room” took up the majority of the building, with each room taking up the storage room being filled with multiple bins of different types of augments, the rooms were separated by the different types of augments, and each container was filled with each subsection for each augment. For example, room #1 would be filled with leg augments, and each container would be filled with different types of leg augments, like toe modifications. Each bin was made with a built-in scale that calculated the weight of all the cybernetic augments inside it, while ensuring that they don’t damage each other by having foam cut outs for each augment put on top of each other. Lenonia walked into the first room and started to check up on one of the bins, specifically the bin made to contain knees. She started to mark off the current weight of the container, comparing it to yesterday’s weight seeing that it has gone a bit lighter, she checked the pad on the container to see if there were any knees taken out and where they could have been placed. She saw that indeed 3 knees were taken from the container by Felder, who was in charge of restocking the store and carrying the specific items that the customers ordered. Seeing that everything was in place and nothing was stolen, Lenonia marked off the first container as “secure” , provided the explanation of why there was a change, and moved on to the next container. She kept going numerically from one container to another, doing the same process of checking for changes, ensuring that they were normal, marking each container as “secure” and providing a description as to why they changed. The containers varied in size for each type of augment, depending on how fragile each augment or implant was, how big they were and on how high demand they were. Once she finished with the first room, she moved on to the next room that was reserved for arms. Once she walked out of the first room, she met Felder. He was an odd looking snake man with a surprisingly long and extendable neck with some extensions that increased the length of his neck and strength of his spine that helped him get better angels on certain customers with hard to reach places. Alongside his neck, he also had artificial eyes that could analyze cybernetics to see whether or not they would fit the customer’s proportions. Most of the time, he looked tired, had a hunched over back, but he was a hard worker, he gave a weak wave to Lenonia, not wanting to put out too much energy at the end of his shift. She may not have been friends with him, but she cared for her coworkers. Seeing Felder in such a sorry state, Lanonia gave a small and worried smile. "Felder. How about you go home early? I can do the rest. You look like you haven't gotten a wink of sleep for a while. Besides, I'm sure your family misses you. You've been here so much more than your home…" Lanonia said softly as she looked up at him. She admired him and his hard working nature, but she sometimes wished he would just stop and take care of himself. Spend more time with his family. Felder looked down to Lenonia, giving her a faint but genuine smile and gave a small nod as he walked past the storage rooms and clocked out his night shift hours. His responsibilities at the end of shift were very minor, he just had to make sure the locks for the storage room were secure, with none of them being broken into. Once he clocked out, he looked back to Lanonia, he opened his mouth which showed his fanged teeth missing, Lenonia was aware of him not having his fangs due to his criminal record, but she still felt sorry for him, not knowing the full context as to why he committed the crime and therefore not judging him. He spoke with a very tired tone, with a very noticeable lisp “You don’t need to do much. I’ve already checked half of the entrances, you just need to check the one’s on the main floor and the ones on the second floor. Thanks Lanonia, I’ll tell Veraxes you said hi.” He started walking out of the store with his tail dragging behind him. Lanonia smiled and gave a sigh of relief. "Be safe on your way home. I got a bad feeling as of late." Lanonia said just before her coworker exited the store with a more relaxed, but still tired look on his face. Lanonia kept doing her job, finishing up Felder’s shift of checking the doors, with all of them being in place and fitted. When she finished checking up on the last door, she heard the door opening chime, as a goblin with many piercings in ears and nose came through, wearing the same uniform as Lanonia was wearing. He walked very fast, quickly passing through the store and grabbing the step ladder that sat next to the keypad, and started to put in the password and start clocking in his hours. Lanonia called out to him across the room: “Hey Scorstich! Did you sleep well?” Scorstich looked at her and waved with one of his robotic hands. “It was aight. No one to warm the bed with, but it’s all good!” The little guy had a lot of crass humor to dispense, and there is an argument to be made that he was most likely lazy, as he knew what days to do which shift to avoid doing the most amount of work. He worked longer than Lanonia, but he never got a promotion because he never wanted to leave his comfortable morning cashier job which was the time when their store barely got any customers. He manned his post at the cashier, as Lanonia continued her duties for the day.

Nothing very eventful happened during the day, as not many customers came by and nothing major came up with Lanonia checking everything. Her boss didn’t come by today, which was typical of him. The second cybernetics installer came in, he was a small gecko with a distinct purple pattern on his skin, looking like a giant tattoo that overlaid his deep blue scales. He wasn’t as good of a cyber-technician as Felder, hence why he worked the morning to day shift whilst Felder worked the night shift. The hours passed by very slowly in Lanonia’s eyes, with there being nothing to occupy her mind, just the same monotonous work that she did everyday. Lanonia got all the paperwork done for today, she ensured that all the shipments were being on time, took her fifteen minute break, and now in the second half of her day she had nothing to do. She wanted the time to go by a bit faster so that she could go home and change so she could do her night walk. To pass the time she went around the store with a little brush to make sure that everything was clean and presentable to potential customers, even though that was Dekillia’s job, she decided to help out to distract herself from the fact she still had about 4 hours of work left. Whilst she cleaned, she thought about the lyrics to the song she was writing, she had a rough time trying to come up with decent lyrics with the tune she was trying to achieve. Something that sounds relieving, kind, but also oddly enough… sad? Lanonia didn’t know why such thoughts came to her mind, probably because of her one repetitive nightmare. It was not an issue before, as it never stopped her from writing very upbeat music with a pleasant message, but the past month, she could not get the nightmare out of her mind, thinking that it was some sort of omen for things to come.

When the last hours of hopelessly trying to distract herself went by, Lanonia clocked out after hanging up her protective equipment and putting back her tablet from where she got it. “See you guys next week!” Lenonia waved enthusiastically to her coworkers as she started walking out of the store, her coworkers all made short remarks to her leaving, be it via waving or saying a simple “bye.” As she walked out of her workplace, invigorated by the prospect of her having her day off for the month tomorrow, she started to go back to the train station to go back home and change into something more comfortable than this uniform. The uniform felt thin while also feeling restrictive, not giving Lanonia her full mobility unlike what she usually wore, be it home or outside. As she walked the same path that she took getting to work, she passed by the spot where the homeless man was, noticing that he was not there, seeing his cardboard spot empty. Lanonia furrowed her brows in worry. Lately a lot of people have been disappearing. There was no correlation between the missing people, with the disappearances occurring around the entire city. No one major disappeared, but it was still concerning, to the point that more police enforcers were wandering around, not that anyone would even care if a random homeless man would disappear. She just hoped he was not going to be one of those people and found shelter, although that was highly unlikely, as there were no ways of housing the homeless, and no one individually had the patience nor the space to house homeless, and those that did either did not care or chose not to do anything. Lenonia kept walking, she walked by the elevators seeing that they were still out of service, making her walk back up the stairs towards the train that went home. As she arrived at the station platform, she looked up to see the time of when the train would be arriving, reading the train number, the terminal station, the current time of 5:06 PM, and the time period of when the next train would be arriving, which showed 4 minutes. She had nothing better to do, so she stood around and waited, noticing more people arriving, as it was the end of the work day for many people. It started to get more crowded than it was in the morning, but Lanonia did not hear any sighs of relief or comments on how people would spend their afternoon, instead there was silence and a feeling of uncaring and tiredness coming from everyone, she wished she could lift up some of their spirits, but she knew that it would only make things worse for both herself and everyone around her, so she too decided to stay silent for the duration it took for her to get home. As she continued to ponder on her current predicament, her train finally arrived and she stepped in, standing blankly as she eagerly anticipated to go home.

Lanonia’s trip back home on her train was the same as it always was, very dull, very quiet, with the view of the Hollow Wastes on her right. She never looked at the Wastes, she did when she started working for CNE, but over time, she stopped looking as whenever she did, she only felt dread and nothingness, as if the Wastes were watching back with malice, she never understood why she had that feeling, she only assumed it was because of the monsters. She never saw any of them, but the idea of something devoid of anything but malice for her and everyone around her was terrifying, it did not help that she knew who were defending Delnox, even though she never understood the RSTs, she heard about them. The soulless cyborgs that cared for nothing except destruction for monsters, making them seem more like robots than living beings, which said a lot as the majority of robots that she ever met only did one task and only ever wanted to do one task. Such as the drones in the supermarket that could be given a command to carry whatever product you want to you directly, at least with robots, they were given an artificially pleasant voice to give the illusion that they had personality and Lenonia could always smile at them as they were sometimes very cute with the voice selection. However, whenever she thought about RSTs, she only heard from the survivors of The Breach describing the bad with none of the silver lining, so in the end, she could only ever imagine them as voiceless automatons that didn’t care about anything but killing. This made the view of the Hollow Wastes even more bleak, as she did not see defenders fighting monsters, she only saw two groups of beasts fighting over the barren piles of sand, the difference between the two of them being that one group was more machine than living. Not like she ever met one, monster or RST. If she did, maybe then she would have a proper opinion about them, but for now, she could not see them in any other light

Once Lanonia arrived at her home station, she walked out of the train with no change in her mood, she walked back to her apartment building, seeing the same gnome she saw this morning, with his posture and position barely changing from this morning.Lanonia smiled slightly and walked towards him for her daily greeting. "Hey Desmond! Any new faces yet? Or interesting stories from the day?" She asked as she looked down at the Gnome. Her white and black eyes filled with the utmost respect for the man. Desmond responded with the same monotone face that he had this morning: “The regular citizens of the apartment complex all have exited, with seventy six percent of them returning back home, including you.” Lanonia smiled and nodded her head. "So busy huh? Then again for you it must be heaven. Considering you're always working. Well. Have a nice rest of your day!" She said cheerfully before going towards the elevator. Desmond’s face did not change when Lanonia talked to him or when she left, as she entered the elevator, she pressed the button labeled “9” to go to her floor. As her elevator reached her floor, and she started to walk towards her apartment, she saw her neighbor, a much older silver dragonborn named Cipher who dressed very nicely, even though they lived in such a cheap apartment. Apparently they have retired early after their business was shut down after failing to meet some quota, Lanonia never asked the details, and Cipher didn’t like divulging to much information about how their company shut down, all that mattered was that it did and now they lived in Peachy Springs to live as long as he could without spending much of their hard earned money. Cipher didn’t look too out of the ordinary, although it wasn’t noticeable to an untrained eye, Lenonia had experience in working with technology, so she could see the few details that showed he had a lot of cybernetics all over his body, like how his arms had scales that didn’t completely match with their head, or how they had muscles in their arms and shoulders, but none at the chest and lower, which could not be possible, unless it was something other than muscles, aside from his arms having implants, his tail was also heavily modified, acting as an all purpose tool for everything he ever needed, covered in segments with multiple inserted upgrades, such as antenna to be a phone, a music radio, and a few others that Lanonia did not know what they do. Cipher did explain once that he never wanted to carry more than he needed to, so everything he ever needed digitally was implanted into the extra tissue of his tail.

Cipher was leaning on their door frame with a cup of coffee in their hand, a very luxurious item that Lanonia could never hope to afford. The smell of the coffee was very fragrant, she always wanted to taste it, always curious of the flavor of the drink her neighbor always drank. Cipher stood up straight when Lanonia got closer, having a look of concern on their face. They spoke up when Lanonia got very close to her door frame: “Hello Lanonia. You seem troubled, is something the matter?” Lanonia looked at Cipher and forced a smile. "Yeah. I'm fine! Why do you ask?" Lanonia asked as her eyes glanced at the cup briefly, before looking back at Cipher. It was too quick to notice though. At least for most people. Cipher responded with a serious tone: “Lenonia, you make enough to buy more clothes, and yet I only ever saw you wear two sets of clothes. Your worker uniform and that sweater you love so much that is full of holes and the worn out leggings” Lanonia kept darting her eyes around trying to make herself seem less nervous: “I don’t buy any other clothes because I don’t need to, and the flavored toothpaste is just so good! What about your coffee? It isn’t essential yet you buy it because it’s so good!'' Cipher responded in a tempered tone: “Addiction comes in many ways Lanonia. In my case, I can easily afford it, in your case, you only care about the present, not thinking ahead.” Lanonia did not have a response for that and quickly walked up to her apartment and opened the door, right before entering, she heard Cipher call out to her again: “If you need help, I’m always here.” Lanonia closed her door, and stood still for a little bit. The day wasn’t different from the rest, she just needed to take a breath before starting to pack up her things for her personal outing. She took off her shoes and started to unbutton her work clothes, walking towards her closet while doing it. As she got to her closet with it shifting open, she took off her dress shirt and put it on the empty hanger that sat next to the only other clothes she had: her large white shirt that she slept in, and the sweater that she didn’t change for about 3 years. The sweater was covered in random holes aside from the necessary ones, like the neck hole being wide enough to reach her shoulders, with the said hole having a rim that intersected at the center with a heart shaped trinket, the sweater sleeves were longer than her arms, overtaking her hands, this sweater made her feel comfortable and held a lot of emotional value. To match with the sweater, she took off her pants, neatly folded them and put them where she got them this morning, and took a pair of shorts alongside her black thigh high leggings. She put on her shorts and leggings after which, she took the step ladder that stood next to the closet and folded it out stepping on the second step to get out a massive rectangular case that was very light for its size, and for what it looked like it had to do. After getting her case out, she put it on the floor away from the closet sensors and put the step ladder to where she usually left it. She once again picked up her case and walked to her apartment’s exit. When she reached it, she put on the high heels that she enjoyed wearing, while wearing them, they made her feel more confident, and the said heels made others think twice before disrespecting her, as they showed off a feeling of authority, added alongside with her very big and menacing case with her casual demeanor, and she got a recipe for creating an illusion of being someone of more influence. She readied herself, having an unusual feeling within her gut that something was going to happen, she looked back at her apartment looking if everything was where it should be, knowing that everything was in its place, the gut feeling went away, and she left to the place she knew would not interfere with her favorite activity. The Breach.