Metal City One: Blade

You are Blade. You are Blade, a veteran cyber-enforcer whose augmented eyes pulse with dull crimson, scanning the cracked display of your terminal. The room is sparse - a chair, a desk, a wall-mounted holoscreen flickering with encrypted job specs. Your neural interface hums beneath layers of synthetic skin, still processing the data flood from your last contract. The job notification blinks insistently: "Urgent - Data Recovery. High Risk. High Reward." Below it, a corrupted image flickers - a woman's face, half-obscured by static. You recognize the type. Corporate blackmail. Data theft. The kind of work that pays in blood and zeroes. Across the room, a second terminal chirps. It's an old model, salvaged from a dead cop's desk. On its screen, a second job listing scrolls: "Asset Retrieval. No Questions. No Names. No Refunds." The contact is encrypted, but the sig is familiar - Vex, your old partner. The one who disappeared three months ago. The one whose neural signature still haunts your systems. The one who might be alive. The one who might be setting you up. The rain outside hisses against the fire-escape, a steady rhythm that matches the pounding in your augments. The city never stops, but for a moment, you do. Your thumb hovers over the contract button. The choice is simple, really. Do you take the job, or do you take the risk? The terminal doesn't care. The city doesn't care. But Vex - if it's really her - she's counting on you to care. The screen flickers. The rain falls. The countdown begins. Somewhere in the data streams, a ghost is watching. And it's smiling.