Armoring Shadows

Prologue. Been Dreaming It Forever

I think I’m dreaming.

Dreams aren’t real so much as they are impossible things to experience now. You can’t dream when you go into Static to achieve Haze. The bots repair everything in place of your brain so you don’t sleep which means you don’t dream because the bots can’t dream. Rest now is like flipping a light switch on and off in your head.

I look up at trees I’ve only glanced at in educational vids, but I don’t know this place. These kinds of places don’t exist anymore outside of our metal walls. I’m standing in a clearing with a real blue sky above me, the likes of which I have never seen before in real life. I stand here, my feet sinking into soft, rich earth, and it’s impossible because the world doesn’t work like that anymore.

There is a girl sitting on a rock in this clearing. Barefoot, she’s dressed two hundred years too late in jeans and a black cotton tank top. It’s beyond vintage, practically archaic since natural cotton has been extinct now for almost two hundred year. She’s perfect, but in a fucked up way with long dark curly hair and soft green eyes the color of real jade. Her skin is inked with too many tattoos, her hair is too wild to be considered fashionable, and to make matters worse, I don’t know her. I’ve never seen her before in my life, and that should be yet another impossible thing.

She smiles at me, the expression soft and a little crooked, like she knows something I don’t. She tells me to wake up. You can’t wake up if you haven’t fallen asleep, and no one sleeps anymore.

“Kyle, you need to wake up.”

Chapter 1. It’s A Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood

In between the Sins and Virtues, it’s just another day in paradise.

I get brought out of Haze bright and early by Skinners, your neighborly, body part stealing ghouls, who’re rooting through the spaces where homeless people like me prefer to hide. I don’t even have to see them to know they’re there. The noises they make can’t be mistaken for anything else. It’s too wet in some places like organs never meant to meet, and too dry in others as tendons snap and their finer bones break. Their queen must be desperate if she’s scavenging for able bodies here. Here being the grey places between the kingdoms between the Sins and the Virtues were the common folk and the hired help scrape each other’s corners clean just to get by.

I’m forgetting something. Some thought is flitting in the back of my mind, trying to get my attention. I call my bots back to me as I try to remember. Large enough to be seen at first, but crumbling down to microscopic sizes soon enough, they come streaming in from all over, wiggling back in under my skin, hitting my bloodstream with a tingle of electricity. They are back home in my brain soon enough, uploading little tidbits of information to my care, random stuff that I might find important. You never know in the city below and the city above what people are willing to pay for.

It doesn’t matter. I can’t sleep anyway. No one can, and no one knows why.

I’m told that is wasn’t always like this. It sounds like a fairytale now, but I’m told that people used slept for hours. When the world was still whole, people slept through the night, slept like the dead, so still and prone it makes me twitch just thinking about it. I can’t stand the thought of being that vulnerable. Haze, the power down for the brain, never lets you fully go into that gentle night. It merely gives your body some reprieve while the bugs do their jobs, the tech doing all the cellular repair and damage control your brain used to while you slept. There was always a light at the end of this tunnel now, your consciousness the permanent nightlight and well aware of what is going on around you in any given moment.

Personally, I couldn’t imagine waking up without the Haze, the white noise that fills my eyes and ears when we all go Static, the modern version of slumber. It’s the closest thing to sleep that we got these dark days. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, people slept, the sky was blue, and the world wasn’t trying to die right out from under us. All that is left now is the cities, each unique and fragile as steel bound Fabergé eggs. Each city made as wonderful and complex as the people who resides within its protections.

There is no city like the Sins though, the city above. Seven little kingdoms locked together in hate and constant conflict, each with their own ruler, the lands of daylight, fake as it is. Between that is Purgatory where I and everyone else common lives, and the Virtues, the hidden city within the city. We even have our very own self-appointed tyrant who makes them all, Virtues and Sins alike, work for it every step of the way, despite all their petty differences. I fall far more humbly into the cracks along with everyone else in Purgatory, currently trying to move as quietly as possible as to not alert the ghouls sniffing around me.

I don’t mind though. I take things as they come, and I happen to like messes, very much so. I live for other people’s messes whether they be emotional, spiritual, or physical. People lose things in the fray and on the threadbare. They will pay a lot to get that precious little something back. Everyone has a story, and if you’re clever enough, you can sell off pieces of it to the highest bidder. Even this rude awakening is beneficial to me. Information is power and even more, it’s pricey. There are people willing to pay good credits to know where the Skinners are sniffing around, and how desperate the Queen is. She must be if she’s sending her dogs this far out of her borders.

But what can I say? I like to stay a busy boy. It keeps me out of trouble, and deep in credits.

Who am I? I’m Ken Shade. In no particular order, I am a foxfire, a hacker, a businessman, the thief, and the guy moving very quietly as not to alert the Skinners to just how close they came to me. Hiding spots are great, but only work if they don’t find you in them. Like most important things in life, timing is everything.

I stick to the permanent shadows that I have memorized long ago, using the anti-grav tech in my boots and gauntlets to ease my way up and over and around the Skin Queen’s minions. They are just as ugly as I remember, and thankfully, as stupid too. Skinners look like reanimated patchwork corpses, parts cast off to be mixed back together on a body that doesn’t always fit them. The worse looking ones are someone’s attempt at being creative, mocking ancient deities by adding too many arms to a torso, or placing eyes in the back of heads, under a crown of ears. To my knowledge, which can be considerable, the Skinners act as both scavengers and storage for the current ruler of Pride, the Blood Countess whom the common folk like me call the Skin Queen. I’ve been told it’s easier to use something hot and fresh with someone’s blood still running through it instead of pulling something from deep freeze to thaw it out.

All I know for certain is that I stay the fuck out of Pride. I like my skin and everything else where it is. If you go there and got money, you’re fine, but people like me disappear in places like that.

Only when I’m up and away onto the upper levels, and out from under the street caverns do I start to breathe normally again. Nothing like a heaping helping of fear to shake the Haze out of your eyes.

Better than fucking coffee or stims in my opinion.

A morning full of Skinners aside, the Sins aren’t so bad once you get used to it, and memorize everyone’s rules. There are worse places to be. We could be outside these cities walls, getting proper fucked by weather.

When the earth started dying, she took a hell of lot with her. Misery loves company I guess, and she threw herself one hell of a goodbye party. Humans are clever little parasites though. She tried to give up the ghost, but we kept resurrecting her until all that was left was a skeleton’s shadow of what she had been.

Our host rotting out from under our feet took its toll. Many were lost. Many more were misplaced. Continents traded places or fell completely off the map into the ocean, most lost forever to rising storms that never ended, or fell into the ground splitting apart like cracked skin. The weather became weaponized, taking pot shots at us survivors, fighting us for whatever the salt water left behind.

Fatalities included countries and their imaginary borders too, which were hard things to maintain when under fire from the sky overhead or submerged beneath water below. A lot of them disappeared entirely, lost to history and fading print. Their people went right along with them in those mass graves.

What remained of the human race banded together in fortified cities with armored skies to keep out the hail, the lighting, and whatever else the sky felt like throwing at us. Cities became the new countries, islands of humanity, technologic wonders, and relative safety.

What used to be Europe was now just known as Dublin, Berlin, and Paris. No one knows exactly what happened to Russia. The current rumor is that the entire country went nuclear and became a no man’s land of radioactivity. The kicker is that it is the largest surviving land mass, and no one can set foot on it without their skin melting off.

China remains ever the immortal nation, what’s left of it anyway. Its pieces are held together by woven bamboo bridges, the countries using this renewable source to weave their lands back together. Their new bridges have already become the stuff of legends.

Speaking of things that may or may not be real, Japan hasn’t been seen in an age, but there are those who still swear it moves itself out of danger even now, protected and hidden by walls of tsunamis that never find landfall, circling the country of islands like strange dragons.

No one knows what happened to Australia, or the people who lived there. All their links are dead, and have remained so for years.

What remained of Africa and South America crashed into each other from a series of devastating, world breaking earthquakes. The resulting land mass is unified, its cities considered the strongest in the world.

Keep in mind, all this information is not avaible to the general public, strictly on a 'need to know' basis. If you’re not a hacker, or one of the free folk like me, communication is very limited to the people who don't make that list. The framework of what remains is heavily controlled and monitored by the powers that be, each new city state trying to keep to their own damn self. Anyone plugged into the Feed though knows some other American cities survived. We’ve heard them here and there while out in the Void.

I personally know for a fact that Chicago still stands though it’s nearly impossible to get to, the city permanently placed in the eye of a tornado. Something to do with their wind turbine technology.

One of my payments for a job was the rare yet unproveable knowledge that Denver had become an island of sorts. It mostly hangs over what used to be the Grand Canyon. That greedy hole in the ground consumed most of the Rockies in its gaping maw, and anything else in its way. Held in place by cables, the city stands aloft on a single pillar of stone with miles upon miles of open air around it, the space between the city and the wayward earth looking much like some strange ocean of clouds. It is only accessible by a webbing of bridges, great long strands of them hanging over void for miles on end. It is whispered that nomads wander and live their entire lives on these sky roads, creating nests in them.

There are rumors that Detroit is still around, though no one can confirm it. It’s a little hard to find a city that moves around. This is all speculation, but it is said that the Iron City looks much like a giant metal hermit crab now with the heart of the city sitting on its back like some strange shell from behind a glass dome. If the stories are true, it scuttles around the Great Lakes Ocean and into the jagged rements of Canada.

The only other city that survived that I know about is the one that I am currently standing in, in what used to be Las Vegas. It’s known only as the Sins now. The world ending and all, everyone got kind of really biblical, but the apocalypse will do that. True to form, Las Vegas embraced the idea fully by throwing a bucket of glitter and sequins at it, and made it into a show so that they could start charging anyone who was stupid enough to wander in.

But that's showbiz, baby.

Chapter 2. What Happens Here, Stays Here

Most people live in the cities, but there are still the wild ones, the free folks, those tough souls who chose to live without walls. There are whole tribes of nomads who traverse what is left of the land, roaming from city to city while trying to stay ahead or behind any storm that could potentially wipe them all out. They can be a strange people, but they are useful as guides should one chose to leave the safety of their city for another. Well, if they want to live free, or die trying, more power to them.

They all still come, despite the danger, despite everything. The world might be dying, but it’s still spinning, and people still come to this place, this wonderful yet terrible place. The City of Lights is divided now though into seven sections with an artificial sky that shines down to keep us relatively sane, the new kingdoms of the Sins and their self-crowned rulers. The city below, the one that lives in the dark, is the Virtues. While it’s all flash and fun up top, the Virtues is was keeps everything running behind the scenes.

Lust is where all the Daughters of Twilight and fuckboys go to live and serve. If you are looking to slap, tickle, and press flesh, this is where you go, but buyer beware. Those who can’t pay their tab become the new meat on the market. The pimp of this place wears a mask, and no one knows what the queen or king of prostitution looks like. A voice of the Panderer comes from the depths of the dark, in a whisper and a sigh to tell you just how fucked you are, and how much it’s going to cost you.

All the fights are held in the arenas of Wrath. The rings are ran by Rick Stone, a big man in body and temper with cauliflower ears and a nose that’s been broken too many times to hold its original shape anymore. It’s rumored he first fought for his freedom, but after he climbed to the top over a hill of corpses, Stone decided to claim the belt and the title as his own. You can go into this kingdom freely. It’s the getting out in one piece that is the tricky part.

Greed is all about the money, who’s got it, who’s getting it, and who’s losing it. Casinos are the castles here, and all the coins of this kingdom are under the control of the Dragon. The less said about him, the better. Though the Dragon nothing much to look at, this tiny Asian man with the metal teeth ,and the fine suit is tapped into the Sin’s monetary vein, hoarding and hiding it.

If you need to stay in the city, Sloth is the only place to go. The drugs offered by the hotels there will make you think you slept for eight whole hours or at the very least, keep you safe while you are comatose. Whatever happens first for you. All who slumber here are under the protection of the Sandman, a person with skin black as nightmares and a grin sweet as dreams.

The skin labs are all cloistered in Pride. If you need a new face, boobs, second dick or other accessories, or anything else you don’t like yourself replaced, they have a doctor and procedure for that. The Skin Queen makes full use of them. No one knows how old she is, but it’s rumored than she bathes the blood of the broke to keep her seemingly flawless, ageless skin intact. I’ve come to doubt that any inch of it is really hers anymore. No one is left alive who can remember what she originally looked like. She keeps changing faces and races when the mood strikes her, depending on what or whose look is in at the moment

If you need to buy anything, Envy has everything you need, and more to make other people want to have what you own. It’s a maze of interconnecting stores, flea markets, malls, and the random stalls. Anyone and everyone living here is selling something. Whether you really need it or not is another matter entirely. The old lady who runs this bazaar is cunning so don’t let her age fool you. Known only as the Cupie Doll, you’ll leave her presence thinking you got the better of her until you count what is left of your fingers and toes.

When one gets hungry in the Sins, Gluttony is the only way to go. Restaurants of any and every description line the streets, their front doors left wide open to waft the scent out to perspective patrons. Running it all with an iron will, Chef is a very skinny, very angry man who never stops yelling at people. All in all, he’s not a bad guy, just a perfectionist and permanently stressed out. He’s feeding a city, and that’s not an easy task. The most reasonable out of all the rulers, he’s not one to piss off, especially if you feel like eating anytime soon.

The King, who is ever so humbly known as Perdition, lives in Hoover Dam, controlling the power and all our survival. He holds the keys to open the sky and allow it fall upon us. As far as governments goes, he’s

pretty non-intrusive. He lets all the other little rulers have their way as long as there is a maintained peace and an unspoken understanding for everyone to keep to their corners. How does one man rule them all?

The answer is to that is by having two of the best foxfire assassins in and out of the Sins by your side to do your bidding.

Chapter 3. Been Counting Sheep

As previously stated, I am a foxfire as well, but nowhere near that kind of caliber that Perdition's assassins are at. Foxfires are people whose biotech has gone so very bad. Anyone who lives in a city has some sort of tech implanted in them now, whether they want it or not. It’s what keeps us all somewhat sane and relatively healthy.

When insomnia became an epidemic, all bets were off when it came down to a cure. The closest we ever came to finding one was the nano-bots, teeny tiny little machines that nesting our brains, allowing us to cope with being awake since insomnia and insanity are kissing cousins. The bots allow us to go ‘static’, the state of which basically take our brains offline, and repairs the damage that being ever waking causes. Most of the time when someone is static, they stop moving, coming to a complete standstill. Most choose to go lie down, pretending they're asleep, like anyone knows what that looks like anymore outside of documentary vids and old movies.

Others prefer to ‘ghost’. Ghosting is you when go through the motions of life without you realizing it. Some people like to checkout when they are doing something especially tedious, like folding laundry or washing dishes. Obviously so laws had to be put in places, when jackasses started doing it at work, proving why we can’t have nice things.

Nanotech can go bad though, and when it does, you get a foxfire or a fox for short. Viruses can corrupt the bots, making them go all wonky and unpredictable. The scary part is no one knows really why either. When that happens, those little bots that were rebuilding your cells will suddenly decide to start dragging in non-organic material instead of using your own natural building blocks.

A Sparkie is a Foxfire on their way out whose skin and organs have begun to turn into something different, and usually quite dead. It’s called Corruption when it starts showing through the skin. Bioluminescence is a common side effect, typically appearing like glowing veins under your skin. In the worse cases, the Corruption becomes metallic, replacing cells with materials that the body can’t cope with. It’s an ugly, painful way to die, your body turning against you like that. I’ve seen people take some extreme measures to make sure it doesn’t spread further, even going so far as to chop off afflicted body parts. It doesn't help, or slow it down.

It all begins and end with your Core, the housing and programing center for the bugs that’s tucked away into the base of your brain. So it doesn’t matter how many toes and fingers you chop off, but people keep trying to put off the inevitable anyway.

I don’t plan to go that way. So far, so good. Wanna know a secret? It's a good one. I’m managing my corruption by redirecting it. When I woke up one morning glowing like a jellyfish, I decided to make those wonky little bastards work for me instead of against. I stave off further corruption by pointing the bots in other directions, like hacking into the Void for info and surveillance. Most of the time it works. Believe me, I know when it doesn’t, but it makes me the best in the business.

I've rambled on long enough. This isn’t my singular story. I’m just a witness, someone who happened to be there at the time. This isn’t the Sins’ story either, more of a jumping off point for events much, much bigger than me, than foxfire and corruption, or even the kingdoms above and below. The Sins and Virtues just happened to be the ‘there’ to when this all went down. Whose story is this then? Sit down, strap in, and shut up. I’m about to tell you about Apathy and Empathy.

I am going to tell you how two assassins, a dead woman, and a thief saved the world and the entire human race along with it.