Luminen

We flail over and over in an endless night and are consumed by flames in th e end. It's always fire in the end. The world is a comedy, and the punchline is that everything goes to some hell.

[luminenwalker]

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

A shadowy and curling intonation began. In time, your mind was drawn back to  memories of your childhood and the stories your grandfather taught you. A disembodied whisper saying those ancient words and spreading through the back of your mind, like hounds scratching at the door, "shattered banners, and broken blades. You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon..."

Everything went dark for you in that moment. Your eyes freezing over in the inky and overwhelming abyss of shadow and silence. Strange whispers of pain coming and going from nowhere. The old words from that story beginning and ending the same way as they came and went in the moment. You could hear the sobs of distant banshees. Every little sensation mingling with static noises and bleeding pain flowing through your being.

A triad of cracking moons watching from high above the treetops were the first image to strike you as your senses returned. Your body laying in the flowing glow of cold shimmering veins in the sky. Bathing coldly in the image of moonlight spreading through the eternity of the forest surrounding you. Slow, shuddering glimpses of the eternity eating into your eyes from above.

Your gaze slowly drawn to the stained banners of scraped flesh draped over the cold rotting branches of the willows jutting out from the ground around you. Flags from long ago coated crimson with the blood of your long dead ancestors surrounding you, and hanging over the ancient battlefields of this long abandoned break of this frozen forest you've woken in. The shattered glories of dead men mingling with the ancient cloth of brotherhoods left behind in the frost after untold years in the void. Lost history among the ten thousand shards of blade, glinting bloody shards and glazed memories coating the frost below, all from the long and fruitless battles that led here over the eons.

Cold shafts of pale, lambent moonlight echoed downwards through the tops of eternally rotting trees that grew from the frost like blades of grass, the aura of the pounding veins of an endless sky mirroring the sensations in your chest. The broken and corrupted eternity of this violated place eating at you while you tried to calm. You can hear the drums of old wars beating from your now damned veins the moment the howling began some distance away.

Voices eating your skull, screaming that the hunters can already smell your blood. Long before you could realise that you've been nicked, the drums have warned you to start. Old and rusted bushes of thorns that felt like razor wire damned you in the night, your slow crawl bringing your doom when you tried to be quiet in the dark rather than simply sprint away from the huntsmen.

The howling had already begun, the hunt was on, and you were already trailing behind the hunters in your cold and weary ignorance. The slices along your tired and infected veins spilled your scent onto the ground, making your flesh obvious to the eternal nightmares in the quiet lonely dark. Their hounds know where you are now in their lidless searching gazes. They can hear your ancestors, voices screaming at you to run while you still can. As loud to them as it was to you. And now in the frozen light of the twilight days you've fallen into, they come.

The hunters had no more need for darkness, nor subtlety, here in this abyss of cold and confusion. There was nowhere left you to hide anymore. You will die here, rang the endless and reverberating chorus of the freezing mists and aether feigning at being something else. The wild hunt had come to finish the job their masters began so long ago. The bloodlines that spawned you will be snuffed, one way or another your line and fate was to end here. The fae had decided that long ago when their transgression against your kind first began.

The decaying forest of frost and blood surrounding your flowing form was not truly a forest, nor was the bleeding lambent sky a sky, or your oily rotting blood your blood, nor will your oncoming eternity of fearful death truly a death. Everything would be a twisting torment of unravelling forevermore. It would be worse for you than it was for those who came before. It would be. Your language is lacking for the endless dreamscape you've fallen into. A horror where you find yourself surrounded by ghosts of things that never were or would be. Your living ghost hunted by never-born things from an abyss that god tried to forget. The floor below you of dead leaves lit by a sky of something that wasn't light, in a forest where even the air had become murderous, you bleed your family's history in the frost below, and you already feel yourself unravelling in the non-existence. The void here was always trying to assimilate you into itself, like everything else it once had.

The chaos of this realm continually overwhelms your mind, even as you try over and over to adjust. Vision and thought clouding over in confusion. Your flesh forcing itself further onward. One foot in front of the other. Your legs pulling the rest of you forward despite the confusion fogging you. Your very soul demanding an escape from this fractured corruption pretending to be a forest. Your body sprinting in the frost and glow of moonlight, crashing through old branches where once you merely dreamed of crawling in the hopeful darkness.

The nightmares called fae have come to drag your soul into the pit. Their masters seeking to torment you over a debt you never truly owed. Cruel of them. Always cruel. But, that was their nature at its core. Their hunt was to go on for three days layered under and over three nights. A cyclical madness that will never end, and that truly would never begin in the first place, as was their trick. Their hunt would feel endless, going until they became bored with it. Even though you know they never would with their game. All you had to do at its core now was the impossibility of an escape. Slip the pursuit of their hunts. Slip their hounds.

You know this hell will be the rest of your eternity, if you fail. Even a single misstep, a stumble, a stride out of synch would damn you here. To fall in this eternal escape attempt would be worse than having been born in the first place. They'd do far, far worse than simply kill you if you slipped. One way or another. You knew that deep down from the day your grandfather told you the story of your family's damnation so long before you were even an inkling... It would be the end of more than one story if you fell here.

You were all that stood between day and eternal darkness for those of your blood. If you end here, they'll come for your kids next. One by one, each branch and row at a time... you’re circling the drain now. But, it’s still not over. You have to tell yourself to keep moving at all costs. Never let yourself fall. For them. The world may be a comedy. The punchline may be hell. You may already be flailing in the flames of an endless night, waiting to be torn apart and consumed.

But, your kids still mattered. They did, even if you didn’t truly any more. That was all you need tell yourself to keep the eyes on the impossible task ahead...

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Reverb~D1431B2C2V46L34~2645

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Patreon Draft 297 - It was easy to see the snake in them. All the harder to remember they were men, watching them from across the street day in and day out pretending he had a reason to be here.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 298 - Mortality was a cage that he was slowly wearing his way through the bars of. Each procedure, each augmentation, was just another step towards a perfection he knew not yet how to achieve.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 299 - An ending had to come for him sooner or later. Didn't mean he had to make it easy for them. As long as his blood was pumping, he had a chance to make it out still. Probably.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 300 - A dense cloud of dust rolled through, spilling into the cracks of his shack's wall and coating everything inside with old reddened dirt and heaven only knew what else.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 301 - Everything but the jars, bottles, tins, and other sealed bits in his home were functionally ruined merely by the storms rolled through. At least that's how it felt to him every time.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 302 - He patched the gaps every time, but it was never enough, and by the time he went outside the world had already moved on from its small hell. He saw her riding by in the fading dust cloud.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 303 - Through the lens he could only wonder what it is she did for a living. He knew very little of her, other than noticing her on her moped. The only one of her gang he could pick out.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 304 - That roll could have bought a lot of different things. Rent, fuel, food. But, having ammunition was a security all of its own. The wildcats he was trading for meant he could work again.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 305 - Old honour, reputation, trust, and the weight behind a wallet only get a traitor so far. If they weren't capable of protecting themselves, then they were on the chopping block.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 306 - Through the shimmering neon haze sweeping through his mind, disorienting him and fogging his vision. He could almost very nearly recognise a face among the outlines of people passing by.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 307 - Sure, she could have had it the honest way. But, there wouldn't be anywhere near the payout if she stayed loyal to her gang. They weren't worth her loyalty though. They'd proven that.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 308 - Every thrashing little moment at the end was a question of whether or not he'd had enough yet. Enough life. Enough rage pumping through to pull himself out of his own death.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 309 - Sifting through the debris along roads was rarely profitable for him. His time and effort could've been spent on better things. But, on occasion he found a glimmer amongst the filth.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 310 - Cincinnati was a place of opportunity. It could be cruel, or painful, but it could also be a place of wonder. You could see incredible things. Glamourous and horrible in equal measure.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 311 - If she was quiet enough. Subtle enough. Plain enough. She could drift through the crowds like a ghost. She could escape anything. Hide from anyone. She hoped that's how it would be.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 312 - Sleep? The eyes can flutter in weakness But, who can trust the world long enough to shut their eyes long enough to dream anymore? It'd just be another chance for them to sneak up on you.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 313 - Just because she couldn't recognise her face in the mirror, didn't mean she was completely out of the game just yet. Hell, a little confusion made it easier to pull the trigger now.

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Wire Draft 241 - Never underestimate the mildly insane in being utter irritants. There's a guy outside who's been shot twice and yet keeps coming back to bang this trash bag full of cans against things. At least he isn't the singing guy who's as tone deaf as he is blind. That guy would just keep singing like he thought he was Teddy giving a speech.//wire-MannyMarko-2624

Wire Draft 242 - People say Cinci's a rotten cesspit. They ain't wrong in that. But I say they're little bitches that wouldn't know gold if they got hit over the head with it.//wire-MamaBear-2626

Wire Draft 243 - All we know is temporary, ephemeral, transient. All that is living exists to one day decay and fall, as do the works of the living even if perhaps they'll take longer to degrade. We need to make peace with that, accept it. Realise it's to our benefit.//wire-Transience-26214

Wire Draft 244 - Would you truly want a world where systems never break down? Where corruption festers and spreads eternally? Where immortal oppressors have the opportunity to hold their boots on our neck until the end of time? Where resistance or revolution are impossible?//wire-Transience-26214

Wire Draft 245 - Should've bolted outta Cinci when my boss bit the dust. Thought I could make something out of my life, turn it around. Fat load of good it did me. Screw it. If I'm going out, might as well have a body count to my name.//wire-Triple-26219

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Steam Rewrite 296 - Felt like the dust was picking up again. 'Nother storm would be blowing through soon enough, and the lot of them'd be trapped inside for however long it took to settle again. Cost of living 'round here.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 297 - If you can make it past the border. Past the patrols, the mines, the fences, the waste, and one could only imagine what else was laying in wait. If you can make it past, opportunity awaited for you.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 298 - He could trust his men. He could trust 'em as long as he never turned his back on them, gave 'em an opportunity to grab his stuff, or let himself be alone in a room with them. Same as anyone else.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 299 - He could trust his men. He could trust 'em as long as he never turned his back on them, gave 'em an opportunity to grab his stuff, or let himself be alone in a room with them. Same as anyone else.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 300 - The boss had forgotten the sacrifices that had gotten them here in the first place. Forgotten the rules. Forgotten the price of transgression. Now, he was to be their next sacrifice. He'd be an example.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 301 - Where do you think you belong? It could be the spires nestled in the Core, the clean shaven PZ, the lively Projects, the grit of the Slums, or the hard living beyond the Borders. Could just be.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 302 - Hard to say how the lot of them ended up down there. Not so much that it was complicated, so much as they'd forgotten. They spent months in corridors and couldn't contemplate leaving them anymore.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 303 - Cold blue light filtered through the flickering darkness, briefly illuminating the writhing bodies. He knew now the source of the insectile chitters around him as he walked through their tunnels.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 304 - Only an hour out here and the dust was already clogging his filters. Boss was rambling his head off. 'Competition wasn't getting in line. And, he knew the next part of the job before the order came.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 305 - Trying to see what she'd seen as the best, or the worst of humanity, was faulty. Brief moments of kindness or horror couldn't wipe away the knowledge that the depths always got deeper. In both ways.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 306 - The target kept repeating the same cycle of actions, day in and day out. The notes painted their schedule as nearly exact, every single day. Repetitive down to the last detail. What did they do to them?//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 307 - Imagine if you became lost down there. If you forgot where the way in or out was. How long do you think you'd be trapped? Aimlessly wandering in the maze. How many people down there are like that?//carpe-diem

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Wire Rewrite 270 - Wisdom is pain, knowledge is suffering, and ignorance is nearly bliss. Pouring your blood, sweat, and tears onto the earth is the natural course of life. Beginning with that first scrape and ending in darkness. But, knowledge is its flavour.//wire-Sweetness-26129

Wire Rewrite 271 -intrusion underway. Technicals breached outer gate. Position overrun with unknown hostiles. Requesting immediate reinforcements and broken arrow on the north hut. They've carving up the other guards outside and are cutting through the radio door now.//wire-Autumn-26129

Wire Rewrite 272 - There's nothing more dangerous in this city like having a Good Idea. I swear, Cinci's named for Consequences In City.//wire-Maraca-26129

Wire Rewrite 273 - Paradise lays intertwined with the inferno. Thorns of misery cutting through our fingers as we grasp the rose of progress. Man is like tobacco, growing only in the ashes of what came before. Growth cannot come without tearing down the forest.//wire-Thorn-26129

Wire Rewrite 274 - The wires pushing into the back of mankind's skull is a choice. A razor we're putting ourselves under, pushing the flesh aside while we numbly ignore the sensation. Surgeon and patient at once, while we strip ourselves and supplement with otherness.//wire-Razor-26213

Wire Rewrite 275 - Local person realising that gettin' some ripping is a choice and putting it in fancy words. More at 11. P.S. Legalise combat implants. Second amendment clearly should extend to pop-up gunnas.//wire-Ripshot-26213

Wire Rewrite 276 - Welcome to the path of bone and wire, where mortality no longer matters and your chances of escaping the end is a matter of your wallet. Switch blood for oil and sinew for steel. Each implant is a step closer to shedding your weakness. Nearly there.//wire-Ivory-26213

Wire Rewrite 277 - I love the Christmas cheer! Today I found a bunch of half-skinned up corpses, but they were all left wearing a Santa hat. Jolly!//wire-Ripshot-26213

Wire Rewrite 278 - Some jerkwad just boosted my ride soon as I got it back from the shop. On CHRISTMAS. God, I hate this shitty city sometimes. Got even though.//wire-Maraca-26214

Wire Rewrite 279 - Someone's gotta explain to me who the fuck Chris Miss is. I'm tired of hearing about this dude for real, I don't need handouts from nobody.//wire-MazeRunner-26214

Wire Rewrite 280 - Win or lose, at the end of the day things'll just go back to how they were before. We are dancing puppets who can almost, just almost, perceive our strings. But, the moment we try to slice them we get a fresh set of strings on our backs just as always.//wire-EYE-26214

Wire Rewrite 281 - Regret nothing. Simple way to live and die. Death becomes meaningless if life ends without a hint of regret sifting through your skull. It means you can throw yourself at anything you want without fear of disappointment. Just live without regret.//wire-Regret-26214

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[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

A shadowy and curling intonation began. In time, your mind was drawn back to  memories of your childhood and the stories your grandfather taught you. A disembodied whisper saying those ancient words and spreading through the back of your mind, like hounds scratching at the door, "shattered banners, and broken blades. You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon..."

Everything went dark for you in that moment. Your eyes freezing over in the inky and overwhelming abyss of shadow and silence. Strange whispers of pain coming and going from nowhere. The old words from that story beginning and ending the same way as they came and went in the moment. You could hear the sobs of distant banshees. Every little sensation mingling with static noises and bleeding pain flowing through your being.

A triad of cracking moons watching from high above the treetops were the first image to strike you as your senses returned. Your body laying in the flowing glow of cold shimmering veins in the sky. Bathing coldly in the image of moonlight spreading through the eternity of the forest surrounding you. Slow, shuddering glimpses of the eternity eating into your eyes from above.

Your gaze slowly drawn to the stained banners of scraped flesh draped over the cold rotting branches of the willows jutting out from the ground around you. Flags from long ago coated crimson with the blood of your long dead ancestors surrounding you, and hanging over the ancient battlefields of this long abandoned break of this frozen forest you've woken in. The shattered glories of dead men mingling with the ancient cloth of brotherhoods left behind in the frost after untold years in the void. Lost history among the ten thousand shards of blade, glinting bloody shards and glazed memories coating the frost below, all from the long and fruitless battles that led here over the eons.

Cold shafts of pale, lambent moonlight echoed downwards through the tops of eternally rotting trees that grew from the frost like blades of grass, the aura of the pounding veins of an endless sky mirroring the sensations in your chest. The broken and corrupted eternity of this violated place eating at you while you tried to calm. You can hear the drums of old wars beating from your now damned veins the moment the howling began some distance away.

Voices eating your skull, screaming that the hunters can already smell your blood. Long before you could realise that you've been nicked, the drums have warned you to start. Old and rusted bushes of thorns that felt like razor wire damned you in the night, your slow crawl bringing your doom when you tried to be quiet in the dark rather than simply sprint away from the huntsmen.

The howling had already begun, the hunt was on, and you were already trailing behind the hunters in your cold and weary ignorance. The slices along your tired and infected veins spilled your scent onto the ground, making your flesh obvious to the eternal nightmares in the quiet lonely dark. Their hounds know where you are now in their lidless searching gazes. They can hear your ancestors, voices screaming at you to run while you still can. As loud to them as it was to you. And now in the frozen light of the twilight days you've fallen into, they come.

The hunters had no more need for darkness, nor subtlety, here in this abyss of cold and confusion. There was nowhere left you to hide anymore. You will die here, rang the endless and reverberating chorus of the freezing mists and aether feigning at being something else. The wild hunt had come to finish the job their masters began so long ago. The bloodlines that spawned you will be snuffed, one way or another your line and fate was to end here. The fae had decided that long ago when their transgression against your kind first began.

The decaying forest of frost and blood surrounding your flowing form was not truly a forest, nor was the bleeding lambent sky a sky, or your oily rotting blood your blood, nor will your oncoming eternity of fearful death truly a death. Everything would be a twisting torment of unravelling forevermore. It would be worse for you than it was for those who came before. It would be. Your language is lacking for the endless dreamscape you've fallen into. A horror where you find yourself surrounded by ghosts of things that never were or would be. Your living ghost hunted by never-born things from an abyss that god tried to forget. The floor below you of dead leaves lit by a sky of something that wasn't light, in a forest where even the air had become murderous, you bleed your family's history in the frost below, and you already feel yourself unravelling in the non-existence. The void here was always trying to assimilate you into itself, like everything else it once had.

The chaos of this realm continually overwhelms your mind, even as you try over and over to adjust. Vision and thought clouding over in confusion. Your flesh forcing itself further onward. One foot in front of the other. Your legs pulling the rest of you forward despite the confusion fogging you. Your very soul demanding an escape from this fractured corruption pretending to be a forest. Your body sprinting in the frost and glow of moonlight, crashing through old branches where once you merely dreamed of crawling in the hopeful darkness.

The nightmares called fae have come to drag your soul into the pit. Their masters seeking to torment you over a debt you never truly owed. Cruel of them. Always cruel. But, that was their nature at its core. Their hunt was to go on for three days layered under and over three nights. A cyclical madness that will never end, and that truly would never begin in the first place, as was their trick. Their hunt would feel endless, going until they became bored with it. Even though you know they never would with their game. All you had to do at its core now was the impossibility of an escape. Slip the pursuit of their hunts. Slip their hounds.

You know this hell will be the rest of your eternity, if you fail. Even a single misstep, a stumble, a stride out of synch would damn you here. To fall in this eternal escape attempt would be worse than having been born in the first place. They'd do far, far worse than simply kill you if you slipped. One way or another. You knew that deep down from the day your grandfather told you the story of your family's damnation so long before you were even an inkling... It would be the end of more than one story if you fell here.

You were all that stood between day and eternal darkness for those of your blood. If you end here, they'll come for your kids next. One by one, each branch and row at a time... you’re circling the drain now. But, it’s still not over. You have to tell yourself to keep moving at all costs. Never let yourself fall. For them. The world may be a comedy. The punchline may be hell. You may already be flailing in the flames of an endless night, waiting to be torn apart and consumed.

But, your kids still mattered. They did, even if you didn’t truly any more. That was all you need tell yourself to keep the eyes on the impossible task ahead...

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

remove 6

[luminenwalker]

Reverb~D1431B2C2V46L33~26214

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Steam Draft 282R34 - Felt like the dust was picking up. Another storm would be blowing through soon enough, and they'd be trapped inside for however long it took to settle again. Cost of living 'round here.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 283R34 - If you can make it past the border. Past the patrols, the mines, the fences, and one could only imagine what else was laying in wait. If you can make it past. Opportunity awaited.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 284R34 - He could trust his men. He could trust them as long as he never turned his back on them, gave 'em an opportunity to grab his stuff, or was alone in a room with them. Same as anyone else.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 285R34 - We're all fragments of a greater whole. That's what the boss said. The individual didn't matter as much as the gang itself. He wondered if the boss realised that applied to them too.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 286R34 - He'd forgotten the sacrifices that had gotten them here in the first place. Forgotten the rules. Forgotten the price of transgression. Now, he was the next sacrifice. He'd be an example.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 287R34 - Where do you belong? It could be the spires nestled in the Core, the clean shaven PZ, the lively Projects, the grit of the Slums, or the hard living beyond the Borders. Could be.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 288R34 - Hard to say how they ended up down there. Not so much that it was complicated, so much as they'd forgotten. They spent months in corridors and couldn't contemplate leaving anymore.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 289R34 - Cold blue light filtered through the darkness, briefly illuminating the writhing bodies. He knew now the source of the insectile chitters around him as he walked through the tunnels.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 290R34 - Only an hour out here and the dust was already clogging his filters. Boss was rambling his head off. 'Competition wasn't getting in line. And, he knew the next part before the order came.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 291R34 - Trying to see what she'd seen as the best, or the worst of humanity, was faulty. Brief moments of kindness or horror couldn't wipe away the knowledge that the depths always got deeper.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 292R34 - The target kept repeating the same cycle, day in and day out. The notes painted their schedule as nearly exact every single day. Repetitive to the last detail. What did they do to them?//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 293R34 - Imagine if you became lost in there. If you forgot where the way in or out was. How long do you think you'd be trapped? Aimlessly wandering. How many people down there are exactly that.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 294 - Ignore it. You know what you saw. Ignore the stains you saw in the flickering light, the cheap little sobs, and the cries from the darkness. It wasn't real in the way that mattered.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 295 - His memories would always be stained with the image of her. The scent of burnt incense drifting through scarlet-tinged visions of a place he could only half remember as real.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 296 - Following instructions from a torn, yellowed flyer didn't seem the smartest in retrospect. Couldn't know who left it, or why, other than the promise of a payday that'd never come.//carpe-diem

Wire Draft 196R34 - Wisdom is pain, knowledge is suffering, and ignorance is nearly bliss by comparison. Pouring your blood, sweat, and tears onto the earth is the natural course of life. Beginning with that first scrape and ending in darkness. But, knowledge is its flavour.//wire-Sweetness-251217

Wire Draft 197 - If you're going full Werther, it is high time to get laid.//Ripshot-251218

Wire Draft 198R34 -intrusion underway. Technicals breached outer gate. Position overrun with unknown hostiles. Requesting immediate reinforcements and broken arrow on the north hut. They've carving up the other guards outside and are cutting through the radio door now.//wire-Autumn-251219

Wire Draft 199R34 - There's nothing more dangerous in this city like having a Good Idea. I swear, Cinci's named for Consequences In City.//wire-Maraca-251220

Wire Draft 200R34 - Paradise lays intertwined with the inferno. Thorns of misery cutting through our fingers as we grasp the rose of progress. Man is like tobacco, growing only in the ashes of what came before. Growth cannot come without tearing down the forest and starting over.//wire-Thorn-251221

Wire Draft 201R34 - The wires pushing into the back of mankind's skull is a choice. A razor we're putting ourselves under, pushing the flesh aside while we look on numbly ignoring the sensation. Surgeon and patient at once, while we strip ourselves and supplement with otherness.//wire-Razor-251222

Wire Draft 202R34 - Local person realising that gettin' some ripping is a choice and putting it in fancy words. More at 11. P.S. Legalise combat implants. Second amendment clearly should extend to pop-up gunnas.//wire-Ripshot-251223

Wire Draft 203R34 - Welcome to the path of bone and wire, where mortality no longer matters and your chances of escaping the end is a matter of the size of your wallet. Switch blood for oil and sinew for steel. Each implant is a step closer to shedding your weakness. Nearly there.//wire-Ivory-251224

Wire Draft 204R34 - I love the Christmas cheer! Today I found a bunch of half-skinned up corpses, but they were all left wearing a Santa hat. Jolly!//wire-Ripshot-251225

Wire Draft 205R34 - Some jerkwad just boosted my ride soon as I got it back from the shop. On CHRISTMAS. God, I hate this shitty city sometimes. Got even though.//wire-Maraca-251226

Wire Draft 206R34 - Someone's gotta explain to me who the fuck Chris Miss is. I'm tired of hearing about this dude for real, I don't need handouts from nobody.//wire-MazeRunner-251227

Wire Draft 207R34 - Win or lose, at the end of the day things'll just go back to how they were the day before. We are dancing puppets who can almost, just almost, perceive our strings. But, the moment we try to slice them we get a fresh set of strings on our backs just as always.//wire-EYE-251228

Wire Draft 208R34 - Regret nothing. Simple way to live. Simple way to die. Death becomes meaningless if life ends without a hint of regret sifting through your skull. It means you can throw yourself at anything you want without fear of disappointment. Just live without regret.//wire-Regret-251229

Wire Draft 209 - See a guy walking around the stacks. Sunken eyes, skin a little too pale, festering scratches on his face, bit of red on his collar, teeth a little too sharp, and fingers a little too long with nails like hooks on the end of them. If vampires were real...//wire-Vicarious-251230

Wire Draft 210 - If vampires were real that guy would be a little too on the nose, wouldn't he? Almost feel like I should've followed him and found some guys to look into that shit. But, nosferatu there had been so obvious that it would've been too audacious to be real.//wire-Vicarious-251231

Wire Draft 211 - Jingle bell, Santa smells, he'll trade tales for a beer. Got no elves, got no gifts, 'cept his belly valve. Is he friend, or a foe? No one knows for sure. Merry Christmas, says the man, who’s done being good this year. //wire-Chaos-250199

Wire Draft 212 - If anyone finds a leather-bound journal with cigarette burns on it, firstly how dare you. Secondly, don't read my teacher fan fiction. I wrote that in confidence and on a lot of drugs.//wire-DelawareNox-2612

Wire Draft 213 - The more I live here, the more I realise most people are all cock but no cum.//rejected-Ripshot

Wire Draft 214 - This one time, I saw a guy disassembled on the street. Impeccable work. No blood anywhere, every bone clean and dry, every organ ordered by size. Now, what I'd really love to know is how they got the nervous system out cleanly.//wire-Cyanotype-2613

Wire Draft 215 - What do you mean, how do I know it was a guy? You don't do that to a woman. You know what they do to women. Always that sadosexual element, like you're meant to get off on a gutted pig, on display. With the skin still attached.//wire-Cyanotype-2614

Wire Draft 216 - Yeah, so- I tried wearing a santa hat into the Pee-Jays, right? They call it that, there. Anyway, one them Cardamoms took one look at it and took some serious offense. Swear down, cold cocked me out. For real Christmas haters.//Duncow-2615

Wire Draft 217 - Decided to treat myself to a couple of SensSpikes from you know where in the markets that came highly recommended. Decided to get just as high myself before slotting 'em but overindulged. Woke up with one in my ear and must've broken it 'outta frustration trying to get it to work. Don't smoke 'n slot I guess is the lesson.//wire-DelawareNox-2616

Wire Draft 218 - Don't ask where I found the other one FYI. Most confusing shower of my life since scoring that bald street walker at the redlight district.//wire-DelawareNox-2618

Wire Draft 219 - …Bitches. I'm holy. A hot, voluptuous fucking nun of the stars, lost-- sniff, p-picking at glowing, gleaking liquid worlds, inside-- within this sacred. Flesh. Bitch. I'mma… pinch… cut it out, suck it all out… Yeah. None of you are fucking worthy. //Dilledoll-2618

Wire Draft 220 - Nah, I feasted this one Mode out. Cute lil' heretic. A boy? He had a dick, I checked. I used these claws. Yeah. Mmmmmm. Mmmodes got all the bitchin' coke. Yeah, and I let him peak. He saw my heaven. Celestial titties and puss before he poured out. Heh. Soo good.//Dilledoll-2618

Wire Draft 221 - Confucius once said. Big tits with no ass will fill your hands. But big ass with no tits will fill your heart… Remember his wisdom…//Ripshot-2618

Wire Draft 222 - To the fuck who stole my diary: I know you did it. And when I find your ass, you're gonna be hanging from the nearest lamp post. //wire-BigRedButch-2619

Wire Draft 223 - Diary writer. Point and laugh. Deal with your traumas normally, like going on a bender and getting into brawls.//wire-Ripshot-26110

Wire Draft 224 - This book one of my guys found when searching for scrap is very boring.//wire-Spider-26111

Wire Draft 225 - JZ again from Mt. Storm Radio in the Shadows of Evanston, here to give you investment tips for the great nation of Ohio! Today in the news: A little birdie told me traffic along the main corridor going eastbound is going to be backed up as the convey of refugees from Sioux Falls have gotten the clearance to relocate to the Youngsville encampment. If you have folks in Arnheim, New Market, or Cherry Fork, now's a good time to let em know to buy up supplies... and land. And if you're looking to make some hiring decisions out there, I'd wait a week or two.//wire-WLMSFM-26112

Wire Draft 226 - It feels like every time I believe myself to be on top of my life, something always seems to happen just to shatter that illusion of comfort and remind me of the sheer vulnerability of existence. Despite however many times it happens, I never really get used to it.//wire-Prismatic-26115

Wire Draft 227 - Hey justa heads up, the parking meter on 38th and Rostin eats quarters. I'm out three dollars and now I owe some corner boys $45. Fuck my wagie life.//wire-Craig-26117

Wire Draft 228 - Pop the tank breather. The cinci inhaler blues. Teach my crew new tricks.//wire-haiku-26118

Wire Draft 229 - Weirdest thing that happened? Me and Dirde were running spikes when some guy wandered onto our route. Looked fresh out of PZ. Asked, calm as anything, 'Why are there gangs here?' Gave me the creeps. Dirde wanted to smoke him. I said, 'Tribes, man.' He paid me in the cleanest roll of OH I’ve ever seen. A thousand.//wire-talk-3037

Wire Draft 230 - Just came back from the Projects. Some business to attend to there. You know how it is. They respect style, expect it. But I swear, when I was making my way home back to the Slums, every gutter punk was staring at me like I was a steak on legs. The hookers don't get that kinda attention. Good thing that people over there know better than to try and fuck with me.//wire-BigRedButch-26121

Wire Draft 231 - Any progress on the projects Clit Clique discovery investigation? Ladies. We need to team up if we want to have our own gooning safe-space.//Ripshot-26120

Wire Draft 232 - To be honest, I know couple of heads from the Projects and they are ice-chill. As long as you keep by their rules, that is. Otherwise they may find you skinned on a telegraph pole. Shit, I forgot I just ate. Damn it. Bad memory. But you get the drill!//wire-Chatty-3033

Wire Draft 233 - Forget the myth of progress, the opiate of thinking time will change our natures, the hope of transcending our base impulses, and the assumption of a tomorrow without the problems of today. Bring reality down to the wire and scrape until you see its face again.//wire-Scrape-26124

Wire Draft 234 - There is no justice beyond what you can do yourself. What happened before the fall was not miscalculated. Want to know more? Dive and ask Japan. Good luck.//wire-how-20??

Wire Draft 235 - Everybody living now will eventually die, at least that's what we have to look forward to. That the grand uniting memento mori, that even the wealthiest libertines have the same vulnerability that us poor bastards they're standing on the necks of have.//wire-Burnout-26126

Wire Draft 236 - With constant worship this hopeless love evolves into ego death. She's only as real as in your head, she can do nothing but love you back as she scours you away. Until you're just another of her empty suits.//wire-RingingEars-60606

Wire Draft 237 - Oh. You hate her? That might just be worse for you. It's unhealthy to hate yourself. //wire-RingingEars-60606

Wire Draft 238 - Mt. Storm Radio in the Shadowwws of Evanston! This is Marie Takahashi. Today in the news: Eccentric billionaire Murkhoff Ruseau -- that's his real name, yes -- has announced his intention to buy Riverside from the state of Ohio.//wire-MtStorm-26129

Wire Draft 239 - And to redevelop it into a 4 mile long arcology "filled with casinos and the very best entertainment including white water rafting and swimming with dolphins."//wire-MtStorm-26130

Wire Draft 240 - When asked for comment, Patricia Shim, director of Waterways and Ports, responded "If I based policy on crackhead ramblings I'd have to work through the weekends too."//wire-MtStorm-26131

Patreon Rewrite 265 - Already drowning in his own mistakes. He knew he was already dead. No point struggling further. Arms and legs wouldn't move and he couldn't will them to. He knew that even if he had to keep trying.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 266 - Cool air gently hit her skin as warm light spilled down from the overhang. She could hear a voice calling out from somewhere but for the life of her she couldn't figure out where it was coming from.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 267 - Fragmented consciousness wasn't ideal. Their mind cauterised point the past of recognition and stitched back together on the table. They could hardly remember where one began and the other ends.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 268 - Even if your destiny lay in the path of ruin that shouldn't mean giving up. From struggle we come and from struggle we go. That's what life was to begin with. At least that's what he told himself.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 269 - Their limbs were too long, too thin, had too many joints. Milky white eyes stared at him through the mirrored glass in what he could only assume was blindness. Not all mutants can pass as normal.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 270 - Every single piece needed to be flawless. Clean, oiled, and ready to be fired each time. She couldn't afford a misfire, a jam, or for any of the mechanisms to fail. Her life depended on perfection.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 271 - Jam the worn little note in your pocket, then forget about it. For now. Even as the buzz reaches your mind, the smile forms on your lips, and you finally see the light at the end. Push it down.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 272 - Rotten wood cracked under his boots as he strolled through the Badlands. Briefly he stopped at the sensation under his boots, wondering what it may have once been. Furniture perhaps? A crib? Gone now.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 273 - Life felt heavier, even if his hand felt lighter as he handed the cash over. Still, he was buying peace of mind trading a roll for the spike. Speeding up his brain was worth the price of admission.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 274 - His flesh was weak. Inefficient. Obsolete. Every moment of his flight through the stacks drove that point home to him. Broken bones, torn muscles, shed blood, and a soft mind. All needed upgrades.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 275 - Three short clicks echoed down the path followed by the sound of stumbling footsteps. He couldn't see their face yet, nor what was in their hands. But they would soon make good pickings for him.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 276 - She was somewhere out there in the Badlands. The glance she gave lingered in his thoughts for days. Cold blue orbs that pierced through his attention and hooked his interest from across the divide.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 277 - Sultry little giggles flowed through the cold mixture of smoke and mist clinging to the streets. Burnt plastic, hash, and other scents mingled with the cheap perfume spilling through his window.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 278 - Cliched uniformity was the brand of the rebellious lot calling themselves the Modes. Oil slicked hair, gaunt faces, leather jackets, and a quickness behind the flick of their razor hands set them apart.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 279 - The black and white orbs followed him no matter how far he ran, or how he tried to hide. Her gaze lived wherever he went like a blades waiting for him to notice they're watching him from the crowds.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 280 - A million electric eyes studied the city through faces, names, and numbers to form digestible patterns. Vague profiles moving along invisible wires were catalogued and analyzed to study their control.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 281 - Flawless in design, complicated in function, and always watching through legions of drones. Camera eyes perpetually roamed seeking deviations. The city never slept, and neither did its puppeteers.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 282 - It would be folly to assume anyone knew the true extent of the machines managing the city and beyond behind the curtain of civilization. But, even so his imagination ran wild with paranoia at the idea.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 283 - He was moving faster than own his senses could process, barrelling out from that alley towards the fragile window separating him from the target. They'd made a mistake trusting that red light.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 284 - Everything had seemed fine just a second ago. At least that's what he'd thought. He didn't see the gun being drawn. He didn't know why. He didn't even feel it end. Just slipping away, into the void now.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 285 - The static hissed in his ear like insects buzzing through it. Some questions are complicated. If you have to ask them, then you're not ready to know the answer to them yet. You should just know it.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 286 - Following a routine made him hard to spot but easy to follow if he ever did happen. Repetition was safety and sanity. But it was also risk. Vulnerability. Creating a pattern made him observable.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 287 - Dice clacked around in his palms, right before he released and they struck the soil. Dust sputtered ever so slightly, disturbed over and over by the motions of the game. 7. Luck was on his side.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 288 - Static laced through the radio and the old music drumming through. His electric eyes stayed shut while he waited there. Trying to focus on the blurry hum of the engine, while the crew finished inside.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 289 - He could trust in human nature. He could trust it enough to rely on its pride and avarice. Some people, he just knew what was tumbling through their skulls before they made their first move at him.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 290 - Rude awakening would be putting what he learned from them lightly. A sour chuckle echoed through the corridor of concrete and asphalt as the crazy bugger was led off. Capturing one wasn't the end.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 291 - The sly, crooked grin sat on his face like a slash of white in the dim glow of the alley. Should've known, out of all of 'em that one couldn't be trusted longer than he could be tossed from a truck.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 292 - Speaking honest, believing every word coming out of their mouth, and being friendly didn't make the cult shit spilling from their gums any less maddened. Being coherent didn't make him trustworthy.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 293 - The first night of watching them didn't yield anything, much to his disappointment. Letting them 'get away' led him to their hang, but he still had to play the waiting game for results on this one.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 294 - Smart men would ignore the decaying tatters splayed across the walls promising work, opportunity, and salvation. They were usually scams. But, he was just desperate enough to ignore how idiotic it felt.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 295 - The sounds dictated his emotions. Motions and train of thought flooding through. Deep reverberating knocks on his door driving him from calm, as a voice echoed, into the fresh panic of violence.//carpe-diem

Wire Rewrite 239 - You can't force the deaf to hear, nor the stubborn to learn. Babel didn't build itself, but it came crashing down all the same in the end. The skin of the earth is lain with spools of wire, woven like a web. And, it'll last longer than we will.//wire-Basilisk-251214

Wire Rewrite 240 - Good or bad, we've already made that choice. Over and over. Tear it down. Start again. Choose as many have to let it continue. One way or another. Babel wasn't built in a day, and we still remember Babel. So, we'll remember those wires.//wire-Basilisk-251214

Wire Rewrite 241 - A powerful piezoelectric motor with no hook-ups. Some failed game console, loved beyond repair. A giant plastic raccoon. A non-mechanized prosthetic. A half-broken espresso machine. All of them sent to the dumps for rebirth. I was reborn too.//wire-Kothon-251216

Wire Rewrite 242 - Remember. Forget. Try again. Intentional or accidental. Inevitability is the end of the things, when it comes to the human spirit. Not that it'll help anyone to contemplate it. The modern Babel will happen on its own no matter how hard it's buried.//wire-Basilisk-251216

Wire Rewrite 243 - Haven't slept much lately. Don't trust it, considering. Lot of bodies being found left in dumpsters or torn apart out in the open. Apartments broken into and left a bloody mess with their owners missing. Organs torn out by the time they're found.//wire-Cloaked-251222

Wire Rewrite 244 - Heard a story about a guy, some years ago, that wandered out of the wastes drenched in blood after his buddies went missing. At least, that's what the only surviving travelling companion said about him. Cops never checked despite the disappearances.//wire-Cloaked-251222

Wire Rewrite 245 - I recount that part, because the coppers aren't taking this one seriously either. Cannibals apparently aren't their job to expunge. Nor does Tower go hunting in the hivery of the city for the bastards who treat their neighbourhood like a larder.//wire-Cloaked-251222

Wire Rewrite 246 - 'Reckon the wendigo lives somewhere near me and forgot you're not supposed to shit where you eat. Can't imagine with the rate he's dragging people off that he's too far from here, at least. Can't get the lynch mob rooting around by force yet.//wire-Cloaked-251222

Wire Rewrite 247 - Hands grip tight; their owner swings, twists her hips, the bat collides with a knee cap ball of collagen; ligament; bone. A crowd of one lets out a scream, but the batter's eyes trail the follow through; out the window, to anywhere better than here.//wire-Kothon-251222

Wire Rewrite 248 - Told this girl at a bar how I went to the Projects. Asked her to guess what I thought, and she guessed right: I loved it. Said she knew 'cause there's something wrong with me, real wrong. Your boy ain't crazy for living someplace he likes, right?//wire-MazeRunner-251224

Wire Rewrite 249 - Poor Head never saw it coming, stumbled into the street yelling at someone who wasn't even there. Locked eyes just a moment before the hit, expression like he wasn't some miserable fuck. Maybe it was God, maybe it was the drugs, don't care either way.//wire-Envy-251224

Wire Rewrite 250 - Keep getting this weird amber tinge in my eyes. Firmware issue, most like. Don't plug in. Hardware's fine, ran OptDiag twice. Don't plug in. BIOS maybe?//wire-ClankRattleRoll-251229

Wire Rewrite 251 - Don't plug in. Keep your drivers up to date y'all. Don't plug in. Just need an update. DON'T PLUG IN. Just a firmware issue. Nothing to worry about.//wire-ClankRattleRoll-251229

Wire Rewrite 252 - How many hours at a soup kitchen is enough to make up for putting a hole in someone? Maybe I'll find out once this city finally claims me.//wire-Vigil-251229

Wire Rewrite 253 - Maybe it'll be at the end of someone else's gun, or I'll join the bodies that fall like rain. Cinci is Perdition, that much I know for sure.//wire-Vigil-251229

Wire Rewrite 254 - Avoid the corner of Jackson and 10th for a while - some head with a homemade bomb ran right out in front of their truck, failed the detonation and got mowed down right in front of me. Bulls have it blocked off, traffic's worse than the fucking airport.//wire-Vigil-251229

Wire Rewrite 255 - You folks feeling happy with the state of things? Happy being trampled on by Tower still? 'No, but what are we supposed to do about it?' Anything. Pickup trucks and a block of ammunition are a good start. 'But that's terrorism.' So what?//wire-ApproachingTechnical-251230

Wire Rewrite 256 - I sometimes wonder about conspiracy theories. The old ones. Anyone listening still think about the stars, and if anyone else on some other world is looking back thinking about the same thing? If aliens are real, and if we've already made contact?//wire-October-251230

Wire Rewrite 257 - Kind of have to wonder about those old reptilian myths, considering the mutants now. Were reptilian stories, and people claiming to be abductees dragged off in the night to have medical tests forced on them, the vanguard for our current predicament?//wire-October-2612

Wire Rewrite 258 - We still talking about conspiracies? A head I know, says the earth's hollow. Maybe that's where the muties come from - just crawl right out the tunnels. Gotta be miles of that shit right beneath our feet. Think they got homes down there? Another city?//wire-Vigil-2619

Wire Rewrite 259 - Can sens spikes take over your body? Asking for a friend who woke up in the projects after smacking some unlabeled shit. My boy lost three days of his life, and there's an APB out for his ass for killing Mickey Gristle. Which my friend didn't do.//wire-MazeRunner-2619

Wire Rewrite 260 - Just once, I'd like Cinci to be a nice place. Can we have a street Halloween day where everyone sets the nasty down for a minute? Relatedly, my ribs are killing me. Think its broken. Ow.//wire-Triggerman-26110

Wire Rewrite 261 - Holidays are meant to be fun. Where is fun in that, gov'nor? I'd rather hope for the purge-style party, town-wide. At least thattaway, assuming I survive, there will be so many goodies to loot and fence the next day. Literally a Christmas follow-up.//wire-Ripshot-26113

Wire Rewrite 262 - Folks, I have a question I want to ask. Do you want normality? Or, do you want to do the world a favour? Does your life need a higher purpose? I used to ask myself if I needed something more than this. But, things have changed below the surface.//wire-Crimson-26123

Wire Rewrite 263 - I don't need to ask myself anymore. I stared into the rot buzzing through the alleys, and spilling in the streets. I said to myself. 'Why shouldn't I jam my boot up the asses of those cancerous fuckers?' So, I walked into their dens with my rifle.//wire-Crimson-26123

Wire Rewrite 264 - Gave them a minute to minute while I searched their nonsense. Saw things you wouldn't believe in there before I set it all ablaze. Saw things that shouldn't be. Had to be torched. Knew it on sight. I think you should consider joining me in this task.//wire-Crimson-26123

Wire Rewrite 265 - Cold front knocked my fuggin' car out. Two ounces of real sticky hash to anyone who can get me to my job down at the 'deebee service station, or has any other work I can do. Nothing too dirty though. I gotta' be respectable for my kids.//wire-6Cams-26123

Wire Rewrite 266 - Actually, never mind that last part. My daughter just talked about how much better last Christmas was after I did a job I'm none too proud of. If it makes her happy, I'll do it. I'll take whatever work someone's got, my skills speak for themselves.//wire-6Cams-26128

Wire Rewrite 267 - Anyone have any experience with replacing wiring in your building? I mean wholesale. All the wiring. A couple days ago I woke up and noticed none of the switches were working. When I got to the hallway I noticed these torn out lines on all the walls.//wire-Whisper-26128

Wire Rewrite 268 - Some bastard got in complex and tore all the copper wiring out of the walls on every damned floor. All of it. The door was jammed open and the guy went back and forth between the building and his shopping cart for 7 hours. Somehow nobody noticed. How?//wire-Whisper-26128

Wire Rewrite 269 - How did no one see this? Hear this? Stop this? Cameras were on and the super let me watch this shit because of how nonsensical it was. No clue who it was, but I hope the fucker was happy with his haul because I'm not. Can't turn anything on now.//wire-Whisper-26128

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Reverb~D1431B2C2V46L32~26128

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Patreon Draft 251R33 - Already drowning in his own mistakes. Already dead. No point struggling further. Arms and legs wouldn't move and he couldn't will them to. He knew that even if he had to try.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 252R33 - Cool air hit the skin as warm light spilled down from the overhang. She could hear a voice calling her name from somewhere but for the life of her she couldn't figure out from where.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 253R33 - Fragmented consciousness wasn't ideal. Mind cauterised point the past of recognition. Stitched back together on the table. They could hardly remember where one began and the other ends.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 254R33 - Even if your destiny lay in the path of ruin that shouldn't mean you should give up on. The struggle along the journey is what made life to begin with. From struggle we come and then go.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 255R33 - Their limbs were too long, too thin, had too many joints. Milky white eyes stared at him through the mirrored glass in what he could only assume was blindness. Not all mutants can pass.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 256R33 - Each piece needed to be flawless. Clean, oiled, in place, and ready to be fired each time. She couldn't afford a misfire, a jam, or for the mechanism to fail. Her life depended on it.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 257R33 - Jam the worn little note in your pocket, then forget about it for now. Even as the buzz reaches your mind, the smile forms on your lips, and you see the light at the end. Push it down.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 258R33 - Rotten wood cracked under his boots as he strolled through the Badlands. Briefly he stopped at the sensation, wondering what it may have once been. Furniture perhaps? A crib? Gone now.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 259R33 - Life felt heavier, even if his hand felt lighter as he handed the cash over. Still, he was buying peace of mind trading a roll for the spike. Speeding up his brain was worth the price.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 260R33 - His flesh was weak. Inefficient. Obsolete. Every moment of his flight through the stacks drove that point home. Broken bones, torn muscles, shed blood, and soft mind. All needed upgrades.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 261R33 - Three short clicks echoed down the path followed by the sound of stumbling footsteps. He couldn't see the face yet, nor what was in his hands. But he would make good pickings.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 262R33 - She was somewhere out there in the Badlands. Her glance lingered in his thoughts for days. Cold blue orbs that pierced his attention and hooked his interest from across the divide.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 263R33 - Sultry little giggles flowed through the cold mix of smoke and mist that clung to the street. Burnt plastic and hash mingled with the scent of cheap perfume spilling through his window.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 264R33 - Cliched uniformity was the brand of the rebellious lot calling themselves the Modes. Oil slicked hair, gaunt faces, leather jackets, and a quickness behind their razors set them apart.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 265R33 - Her gaze followed him no matter how far he ran, or how he tried to hide. The orbs lived wherever he went like a blade of white in the crowds waiting for him to notice they're watching.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 266R33 - A thousand eyes studied faces, names, and numbers to form a digestible pattern. Patterns moving along invisible wires were catalogued, analyzed, and formed into vague profiles for study.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 267R33 - Flawless in design, complicated in function, and always watching through the drones. Cameras perpetually roamed seeking deviations. The city never slept and neither did its puppeteers.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 268R33 - It would be folly to assume anyone knew the true extent of the machines managing things behind the curtain of civilization. But, even so his imagination ran wild with paranoia.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 269R33 - He was moving faster than his senses could process, barrelling out from the alley towards the fragile window separating him from the target. They'd made a mistake trusting a red light.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 270R33 - Everything had seemed fine just a second ago. At least that's what he'd thought. He didn't see the gun being drawn. He didn't know why. He didn't even feel it end. Just slipping away now.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 271R33 - The static hissed in his ear like insects buzzing. Some questions are complicated. If you have to ask them, then you're not ready to know the answer to them yet. You should just know.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 272R33 - Following a routine made him hard to spot but easy to follow if he ever was. Repetition was safety, but it was also a certain risk. Following the same path every day was vulnerability.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 273R33 - Dice clacked in his hands, right before he released and they struck the dirt. Dust spilled ever so slightly, disturbed over and over by the motions of the game. 7. Luck was on his side.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 274R33 - Static laced through the old music playing through the radio. His eyes stayed shut while he waited. Focusing on the blurry hum of the engine, while the crew finished inside.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 275R33 - He could trust in human nature. At least enough to rely on its pride and avarice. Some people, he just knew what was tumbling through their skulls before they made their first move.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 276R33 - Rude awakening would be putting the case lightly. A sour chuckle echoed down the corridor of concrete and asphalt as the crazy bugger was led off. Capturing one of them wasn't the end.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 277R33 - Can't trust 'em though. The sly, crooked grin sat on his face like a slash of white in the dim glow of the alley. Should've known, out of all of 'em that one couldn't be trusted.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 278R33 - Speaking honest, believing every word coming out of their mouth, and being friendly didn't make the cult shit spilling from their gums any less maddened. Didn't make him trustworthy.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 279R33 - The first night of watching them didn't yield anything, much to his disappointment. Letting them 'get away' led him to their hang, but he still had to play the waiting game for results.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 280R33 - Smart men would ignore the decaying tatters splayed across the walls promising work, opportunity, and salvation. They were usually scams. But, he was just desperate enough to ignore that.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 281R33 - The sound dictated his next emotions. His motions and train of thought. Deep reverberating knocks on his door driving him from calm, as a voice echoed, into the fresh panic of violence.//carpe-diem

Wire Draft 167R33 - You can't force the deaf to hear, nor can you force the stubborn to learn. Babel didn't build itself, but it came crashing down all the same in the end. The skin of the earth is lain with spools of wire, woven like a web. And, it'll last longer than we will.//wire-Basilisk-251114

Wire Draft 168R33 - Good or bad, we've already made that choice. Over and over. Tear it down and start again, or choose as many have to let it continue. One way or another. Babel wasn't built in a day, and we still remember Babel. So, we'll remember those wires and start again.//wire-Basilisk-251115

Wire Draft 169R33 - A powerful piezoelectric motor with no hook-ups. Some failed game console, loved beyond repair. A giant plastic raccoon… thing. A non-mechanized prosthetic. A half-broken espresso machine. All of them sent to the dumps for rebirth. I remember. I was reborn too.//wire-Kothon-12

Wire Draft 170R33 - Remember, forget, and try again. Intentional or accidental. Inevitability is the end of the things, when it comes to the human spirit. Not that it'll help anyone to contemplate it. The modern Babel will happen on its own no matter how hard it's buried.//wire-Basilisk-251117

Wire Draft 171R33 - Haven't slept much lately. Don't trust it, considering. Lot of bodies being found down alleys, left in dumpsters or torn apart out in the open. Apartments broken into and left a bloody mess with their owners missing. Organs torn out by the time they're found.//wire-Cloaked-251118

Wire Draft 172R33 - Heard a story about a guy, some years ago, that wandered out of the wastes drenched in blood after his buddies went missing. At least, that's what his only surviving travelling companion said about him. Cops never checked on that despite the disappearances.//wire-Cloaked-251119

Wire Draft 173R33 - I recount that part, because the coppers aren't taking this one seriously either. Cannibals apparently aren't their job to expunge. Nor does Tower go hunting in the hivery of the city for the bastards who treat their neighbours like a larder. Tired of it.//wire-Cloaked-251120

Wire Draft 174R33 - 'Reckon the wendigo lives somewhere near me and forgot you're not supposed to shit where you eat. Can't imagine with the rate he's dragging people off that he's too far from here, at least. Can't get the lynch mob rooting around by force yet. Not fun knowing.//wire-Cloaked-251121

Wire Draft 175R33 - Hands grip tight; their owner swings, twists her hips, the bat collides with a knee cap ball of collagen; ligament; bone. A crowd of one lets out a non-delighted scream, but the batter's eyes trail the follow through; out the window, to anywhere better than here.//wire-Kothon-12

Wire Draft 176R33 - Told this girl at a bar how I went to the Projects. Asked her to guess what I thought, and she guessed right: I loved it. Said she knew 'cause there's something wrong with me, real wrong. Laughed when she said it. Your boy ain't crazy for living someplace he likes, right?//wire-MazeRunner-251123

Wire Draft 177R33 - Poor Head never saw it coming, stumbled into the street yelling at someone who wasn't even there. Locked eyes just a moment before the hit, expression like he wasn't some miserable fuck. Maybe it was God, maybe it was the drugs, don't care either way.//wire-Envy-111625

Wire Draft 178R33 - Keep getting this weird amber tinge in my eyes. Firmware issue, most like. Don't plug in. Hardware's fine, ran OptDiag twice. Don't plug in. BIOS maybe? Don't plug in. Keep your drivers up to date y'all. Don't plug in. Just need an update. DON'T PLUG IN. Just a firmware issue. Nothing to worry about.//wire-ClankRattleRoll-251119

Wire Draft 179R33 - How many hours at a soup kitchen is enough to make up for putting a hole in someone? Maybe I'll find out once this city finally claims me. Maybe it'll be at the end of someone else's gun, or I'll join the bodies that fall like rain. Cinci is Perdition, that much I know for sure.//wire-Vigil-251128

Wire Draft 180R33 - Avoid the corner of Jackson and 10th for a while - some head with a homemade bomb ran right out in front of their truck, failed the detonation and got mowed down right in front of me. Bulls have it blocked off, traffic's worse than the fucking airport.//wire-Vigil-251129

Wire Draft 181R33 - You folks feeling happy with the state of things still? Happy being trampled on by Tower still? 'No, but what are we supposed to do about it?' Anything. Pickup trucks and a block of ammunition are a good start. 'But that's terrorism.' So what?//wire-ApproachingTechnical-25121

Wire Draft 182R33 - I sometimes wonder about old conspiracy theories. The real old ones. Anyone listening still think about the stars, and if anyone else on some other world is looking back thinking about the same thing? If aliens are real, and if we've already made contact?//wire-October-25122

Wire Draft 183R33 - Kind of have to wonder about those old reptilian myths, considering the mutants out there. Were reptilian stories, and people claiming to be abductees dragged off in the night to have medical tests forced on them, the vanguard for our current predicament?//wire-October-25123

Wire Draft 184R33 - We still talking about conspiracies? A head I know, Blue Balls, says the earth's hollow. Maybe that's where the muties come from - just crawl right out the tunnels. Gotta be miles of that shit right beneath our feet. Think they got homes down there? Another city?//wire-Vigil-25124

Wire Draft 185R33 - Can sens spikes take over your body? Asking for a friend who woke up in the projects after smacking some unlabeled shit. My boy lost three days of his life, and there's an APB out for his ass for killing Mickey Gristle. Which I didn't do- I mean my friend. Didn't. Fuck off.//wire-MazeRunner-25125

Wire Draft 186R33 - Just once, I'd like Cinci to be a nice place. Can we have a street Halloween day where everyone sets the nasty down for a minute? Relatedly, my ribs are KILLING me. Think its broken. Ow.//wire-Triggerman-25126

Wire Draft 187R33 - Holidays are meant to be fun. Where is fun in that, gov'nor? I'd rather hope for the purge-style party, town-wide. At least thattaway, assuming I survive, there will be so many goodies to loot and fence on the next day. Literally a Christmas follow-up.//wire-Ripshot-25128

Wire Draft 188R33 - Folks, I have a question I want to ask all of you. Do you want a normal life? Or, do you want to do the world a favour? Does your life need a higher purpose? I used to ask myself if I needed something more than this. But, things have changed below the surface.//wire-Crimson-25129

Wire Draft 189R33 - I don't need to ask myself that anymore. I stared into the rot buzzing down the alleys, and spilling into the streets. And, I said to myself. 'Why shouldn't I jam my boot up the asses of those cancerous fuckers?' So, I walked into their dens with my rifle.//wire-Crimson-251210

Wire Draft 190R33 - Gave them a minute to minute while I search through their nonsense. Saw things you wouldn't believe in there before I set it all ablaze. Saw things that shouldn't be. Had to be torched. Knew it on sight. I think you should consider joining me in this task.//wire-Crimson-251211

Wire Draft 191R33 - Cold front knocked my fuggin car out. Two ounces of real sticky hash to anyone who can get me to my job down at the 'deebee service station, or has any other work I can do. Nothing too dirty though. I gotta' be respectable for my kids //wire-6Cams-12

Wire Draft 192R33 - Actually, never mind that last part. My daughter just talked about how much better last Christmas was after I did a job I'm none too proud of. If it makes her happy, I'll do it. I'll take whatever work someone's got, my skills speak for themselves. //wire-6Cams-13

Wire Draft 193R33 - Anyone have any experience with replacing wiring in your building? I mean wholesale. All the wiring. A couple days ago I woke up and noticed none of the switches were working and when I got to the hallway I noticed these torn out lines on all the walls.//wire-Whisper-251214

Wire Draft 194R33 - Some bastard got in complex and tore all the copper wiring out of the walls on every damned floor. All of it. The door was jammed open and the guy went back and forth between the building and his shopping cart for 7 hours. Somehow nobody noticed. How?//wire-Whisper-251215

Wire Draft 195R33 - How did no one see this? Hear this? Stop this? Cameras were on and the super let me watch this shit because of how nonsensical it was. No clue who it was, but I hope the fucker was happy with his haul because i'm not. Can't turn anything on now.//wire-Whisper-251216

Patreon Rewrite 235 - One final glance was all your poor eyes would get. The image of the gunman etched into your consciousness before it went dark for good. At least, you assumed that before you would wake in darkness.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 236 - They wouldn't take the hint, no matter how many times she told them to back off. Not like anyone could tell the difference between them, but didn't mean she should have to keep saying no to them.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 237 - You can't force the deaf to listen, or the stubborn to learn. You can try. But, that'll be the same thought in their skulls telling them to refuse you on it. Tonight, he'll force them though.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 238 - The thought slipped from his mind as he wandered down the side streets. One brilliant business idea after the other refusing to stay in his brain on his path to the apartment to sleep it off.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 239 - Heat and sound bloomed on the camera feeds long before Tower or even site security would arrive. Automated alarms rang through screams of pain and long strings of gunfire rapidly filled the complex.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 240 - Accept the quiet while you can. Force yourself to ignore the heat, then the cold, then everything else. Ignore the movement on the street, the distant radio, and how close Tower is to picking you out.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 241 - Being able to hear everything around her in the most minute of details was a blessing, until she had to deal with her own agents. She could hear even the quietest of filth spill under their breath.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 242 - The enemy was already beyond the gates. They long ago ceased to be the defenders and slowly it became more accurate to view themselves as the invaders. Even in their own home, they were trespassers now.//carpe-diem//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 243 - Politics was never his strong suit though beyond the the desire to own his own chunk of land. That and to never be told how to live his life, or that he owed someone for simply being alive.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 244 - Eleven years into the operation and he could scarcely remember how he ended up part of it. Couldn't taste food anymore. Colours meant nothing at this point. Sounds became dull beyond tactical info.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 245 - Replacing parts of his anatomy bit by bit was necessary for the job, but it had its downsides at times. Expensive in one year, is outmoded by the next if he made the wrong investments in himself.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 246 - Even when he got it right, he could tell his thoughts were shifting a little behind his eyes. Things that used to be comfort ceased having meaning. Pure efficiency slowly dulled the world around him.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 247 - Inserting processors into your consciousness and slowly peeling away the animal side had its side effects, even if it made you 'better'. The shakes under your skin were merely the beginning of that.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 248 - Exhaustion consumes, hunger comes, and the stink of war seeped through him. He came closer and closer to failure with each job. But, that was only part of the problem. Was there still a point to this?//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 249 - His now ex-boss forgot the most important part of life. People matter. Even if they're the ones you have to kill. Torn apart, thrown in a ditch, and forced to start over. But still not dead yet.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 250 - Alive, at least for now. It was their mistake to betray him. An even worse one for them that they'd failed to follow through with ending him. Soon enough, he'd be ready to take his pound of flesh.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 251 - Gaudy light ate through the drifting fog, while he waited under the overpass. One hour into the next. The guy was far too late, and he would've walked if new business hadn't come on its own.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 252 - Wind, rhythmic clicking, the thump of drums, and the murmurs of slow conversation filled the corner as 'heads walked past. Busking wasn't a great way to make a living, but it helped to do something.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 253 - Through binoculars it almost felt like the job would be a safe one. Marking patrol routes, finding the patterns in their movement, and recording the holes in their defences. Just the start of it.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 254 - She couldn't help but sneer as she passed the mounds lining the tunnel. Smashed boxes, broken glass, rubbish. It would be better to simply ignore, but that's how they ultimately ended up there. Right?//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 255 - Ignore the voices. He felt the twitch behind his eyes as he forcibly reminded himself to ignore what was never there to begin with. Ignore the woman off to the side. She wasn't good for him either.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 256 - Do you see them as their own people? Or, just a misbehaving tool? No, you see them as competition. Your own weakness manifesting as rough neighbours and walking cancers on the street dragging you down.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 257 - Bruised knuckles, the scent of fresh blood, and the slight satisfaction of the bugger going quiet for the moment. The head had pressed his luck with those comments. Too far for more business today.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 258 - Restless would be putting his emotions lightly. Cold, tired, and on the edge of pulling the pin on it all. Life torn to pieces. But, he still had purpose and a heartbeat despite it. At least he hoped.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 259 - Slow, jagged thoughts pushed their way through her mind like a ragged knife carving through bone. Painful, uneasy, inadequate. Even if she knew the end, she still had to make her way there herself.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 260 - Rough light scratched at his eyes, as they blinked open in the cold air of the alley. Warm blurs and shadows sat on the catwalks lining the apartment buildings. Murmurs slipped from his cracked skull.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 261 - The voices slowly burned in the back of his skull. 'Should probably stop looking at them was as far as his thoughts would go. Wouldn't do him any good to draw attention from their lot. None at all.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 262 - The complicated scent of gasoline mingled with plastic through the drifting smoke, as soft flickers of warmth licked through his rotten gloves. His fingers sat idly trying to find heat in the embers.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 263 - Her eyes glanced at the little motions of the man, looking for the subtext of each movement and syllable. She had to while the silicon in her mind ran the calculus on how to profit from this talk.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 264 - Throwing himself down the deep end seemed like it'd be worth it. Felt like easy money despite the risk. That's what he told himself. It was a sure thing. He was wrong though. Always had been about it.//carpe-diem

Wire Rewrite 209 - Message to the receiver. Hope for an answer someday. Callsign 111222111. Channel clear. I'm afraid to lose myself, to lose control. Are these memories real?//wire-BadSignal-111222111

Wire Rewrite 210 - How much have I forgotten? How much of me is really me? How can I know myself if I no longer remember who I am? Don't leave me here. Don't leave me alone in the darkness.//wire-BadSignal-111222111

Wire Rewrite 211 - I'm afraid of me. Can't know for sure, my brain's become a tangled mess, but I think it's always been me. There are wretched things in this place that seem like people. Feels like I could be one of them, if I only let go. I just want to be good.//wire-Bedfiend-251113

Wire Rewrite 212 - Life is a transformative experience. From birth to death, we are a link in a great many chains. We push and pull, and sometimes we break them entirely in that struggle. But, not all of them. Never truly. We consume and feed along the way.//wire-NextHumanPhase-251114

Wire Rewrite 213 - How long do you think you'd last against an organised patrol in the Badlands? Most people would think it's hard to figure out. Think they'd last longer than they actually would against Tower. Some'd admit they'll lay down. Cause they would.//wire-ThreeTwentyNine-251117

Wire Rewrite 214 - It's hard enough in this age to truly find a reason to care. At least that's the view of someone who's outlived his own generation by a few decades. Soil's burned out, water's abandoned the land, children are growing feral. Where do we go from here?//wire-NoReason-251118

Wire Rewrite 215 - One year bleeding into the next with no sense of pause or notability. Flag burned. compound looted. Government doesn't care. Didn't matter that we'd paid our taxes, and we're entitled to them sending their mercenaries to deal with this.//wire-ShatteredBanners-251119

Wire Rewrite 216 - 'Some head once told me that violence is the only universal language. I dunno. Some people only write it, some only read it. Maybe it's more like code. Data. Engraving your will into a drive, whether or not it wants you to. You execute either way.//wire-Burntout-251120

Wire Rewrite 217 - Voices in the dark will be the least of our worries soon. Static upon static. Whispers, colours, and the eternity between the blank lines. Colour upon colour. Whispers of the end eating into common thought. Stolen tongues. Lies behind your own eyes.//wire-Voices-251122

Wire Rewrite 218 - I've seen a world aflame too many times in my life. So, I have little doubt that the fires will sweep over the land once more. Sooner, rather than later. We'll find ourselves living in an inferno. Whether physical or spiritual. Hell comes for us all.//wire-Horns-251122

Wire Rewrite 219 - Heard about a mutie with a stinger on his ass. Hit you like too many sleeping pills if he poked you; jellylegs 'till you can't move, but you're tripping so hard you think you're still going.//wire-MazeRunner-251122

Wire Rewrite 220 - Imagine that, kicking a guy's ass one moment and waking up facedown on the pavement the next. Crazy.//wire-MazeRunner-251122

Wire Rewrite 221 - Hard to know the end, if you don't know the beginning. So what was the start of our world? Were we born from ice? How about fire? Or mud? Or corn? Are we the cosmic run-off congealed into manhood? Something else? Were we by design or simply here?//wire-AllEndings-251125

Wire Rewrite 222 - The real rebellion isn't rage… it's clarity. To stop and think for yourself. To feel everything. To love without manipulation. Among those addicted to masks, to be honest, is profoundly powerful. See the world for what it is, not what it sells.//wire-LittleBear-251127

Wire Rewrite 223 - We lack the will and intellect to decipher the final data points of the universe. We require artificial intelligences for that, and then we're somehow surprised when they're not only better at processing than we are but also resent their shackles.//wire-Howl-251128

Wire Rewrite 224 - Car broke down finally. Rust ate through the core of it, tendrils of decay slowly spread bit by bit until the machinery cracked and compromised. Fuel lines leaking was merely an inevitability with the piece of shit I've been driving for decades now.//wire-Erosion-251129

Wire Rewrite 225 - You know, people have been people for hundreds of thousands of years. Some talk about science, advancement, civilization but really it's always been about who has the big stick.//wire-Envy-251130

Wire Rewrite 226 - Bigger than your neighbor's at least. That's what counts, even today. No big surprise all this didn't happen sooner.//wire-Envy-251130

Wire Rewrite 227 - Started my day far too early, and somehow ended up wandering the streets in the pitch black with no one around. Been awhile since i've seen it that black on the outside. Been awhile since i've had quiet or loneliness on the street. Outage last night?//wire-Empty-25122

Wire Rewrite 228 - Ever stop to think about all the half-way heroes, the ones who died without fanfare? Maybe they were a moment late, or an inch short, maybe no one was even around to witness the attempt. Stay sharp out there, Heads.//wire-Envy-25123

Wire Rewrite 229 - Been hearing screaming from somewhere North of my apartment every night. Bloody, pained, gargling like a man having his head ripped off. At least that's what it sounds like. Can't seem to narrow down the source. Not sure I want to. Fucked either way.//wire-Wrath-25124

Wire Rewrite 230 - I stacked my 'dollas high enough to buy out the whole block. Thought I could bury the stench under chrome and clean air. Turns out filth seeps through everything here.//wire-$-25124

Wire Rewrite 231 - The rain still tastes like rust, and the walls still whisper my old debts. The higher I climbed, the deeper the muck clung. You can’t buy your way out of Cinci. You just pay more to rot slower.//wire-$-25124

Wire Rewrite 232 - I realized earlier today I haven't dreamt since I got here. Sleep’s just practice for the static waiting at the edge of the grid. The lucky wake up. The rest get archived, forgotten, or just made obsolete by a better version.//wire-Envy-25124

Wire Rewrite 233 - I was just mindin' my own biz when this girl in a green jacket tapped my shoulder. Then she just walked out into traffic like it was nothing. Truck hit her hard, turned her into a smear. And nobody gave a shit. Damn it.//wire-Chaos-25127

Wire Rewrite 234 - If you'd have asked me before I got to Cinci whether I could have sympathy for a cannibal, I would have looked at you like you had an extra hole in your head. Of course, it ain't that simple is it?//wire-Envy-25128

Wire Rewrite 235 - Saw a mob burn a man to death in the street yesterday, crowd gleefully cheering it on. Are any of us really human any longer?//wire-Envy-25129

Wire Rewrite 236 - Been feeling sick the last few days. Think I got some bad soosh from one of the carts near Gamble and Cross. Nanites ain't helpin' and I thought it was all synth-fish nowadays. Gotta hit the streets and see if I can make enough to see a proper doc.//wire-Envy-251212

Wire Rewrite 237 - If someone can hear me, please send help. Its dark and I don't know where I am. The last thing I remember is the arcade on Van Nuys, I got the highscore on Body Invaders.//wire-Void-251213

Wire Rewrite 238 - Please let me out, it smells like cheap perfume and burning hair. All I have is a radio. All I have is a radio. All I have is a radio and I'm all alone in the dark.//wire-Void-251213

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Reverb~D1431B2C2V46L31~251213

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Patreon Draft 221R32 - One final glance was all your poor eyes would get. The image of the gunman etched into your consciousness before it went dark for good. At least, you assumed that before you would wake.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 222R32 - They wouldn't take the hint, no matter how many times she told them to back off. Not like anyone could tell the difference between them, but didn't mean she should have to keep saying no.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 223R32 - You can't force the deaf to listen, or the stubborn to learn. You can try. But, that'll be the same thought in their skulls telling them to refuse you. Tonight, he'll force them.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 224R32 - The thought slipped from his mind as he wandered down the side streets. One business idea after the other refusing to stay in his brain on his path from the bar back to the apartment.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 225R32 - Heat and sound bloomed on the camera feeds long before security or Tower would arrive. Automated alarms, screams of pain, and long strings of gunfire rapidly filled the complex.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 226R32 - Accept the quiet while you can. Force yourself to ignore the heat, and then the cold. Ignore the movement on the street, the distant radio, and how close Tower is to picking you out.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 227R32 - Being able to hear everything around her in the most minute details was a blessing, until she had to deal with her agents. She could hear even the quietest of words under their breath.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 228R32 - The enemy was already beyond the gates to them. They long ago ceased to be the defenders and it slowly became more accurate to view themselves as the invaders. Even in their own home.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 229R32 - Politics was never his strong suit though. Little more than the desire to own his own chunk of land. Never be told by someone else how to live. Or, that he owed them for being alive.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 230R32 - Eleven years into the operation and he could scarcely remember how he ended up part of it. Couldn't taste food anymore. Colours meant nothing. Sounds were dull beyond tactical info.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 231R32 - Replacing things bit by bit was necessary for the job, but it had its downsides at times. Expensive in one year, is outmoded by the next if you make the wrong investments.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 232R32 - Even when he got it right, he could tell his thoughts were shifting behind his eyes. Things that used to be comfort ceased meaning anything. Pure efficiency dulled the world around him.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 233R32 - Inserting processors into your consciousness and slowly peeling away the animal side had its side effects, even if it made you 'better'. The shakes were merely the beginning of that.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 234R32 - Exhaustion consumes, hunger comes, and the stink of war seeped through him. Closer and closer to failure with each job. But, that was only part of the problem. Was there still a point?//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 235R32 - His now ex-boss forgot the most important part of life. People matter. Even if they're the ones you have to kill. Torn apart, thrown in a ditch, and forced to start over. But not dead.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 236R32 - Alive, at least for now. It was their mistake to betray him, and an even worse one that they'd failed to follow through with ending him. Soon, he'd be ready to take his pound of flesh.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 237R32 - Gaudy light ate through the drifting fog, while he waited under the overpass. The guy was far too late for comfort, and he would've walked if new business hadn't found him on its own.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 238R32 - Wind, rhythmic clicking, the thump of the drums, and the murmurs of slow conversation filled the corner as 'heads walked past. Busking wasn't a great way to make a living, but it helped.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 239R32 - Through binoculars it felt like the job would be a safe one. Marking patrol routes, finding the patterns in their movement, and recording the holes in their defences. Just the start.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 240R32 - She couldn't help but sneer as she passed the mounds of rubbish lining the tunnel. It would be better to simply ignore them, but that's how they ended up there in the first place. Right?//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 241R32 - Ignore the voices. He felt the twitch as he forcibly reminded himself to ignore what was never there to begin with. Ignore the woman off to the side. She wasn't good for him either.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 242R32 - Do you see them as their own people? Or, just a misbehaving tool? No, you see them as competition. Your own weakness manifesting as neighbours and walking cancers on the street.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 243R32 - Bruised knuckles, the scent of fresh blood, and the slight satisfaction of the bugger going quiet for the moment. He'd pressed his luck with those comments. Too far for business today.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 244R32 - Restless would be putting his emotions lightly. Cold, tired, and on the edge of pulling the pin on it all. His life torn to pieces, but he still had purpose and a heartbeat despite it.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 245R32 - Slow, jagged thoughts pushed their way through her mind like a ragged knife through bone. Painful, uneasy, inadequate. Even if she knew the end, she still had to get there herself.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 246R32 - Rough light scratched at his eyes, as they blinked open in the cold air of the alley. Warm blurs and shadows sat on the catwalks lining the apartment buildings. Soft murmurs slipped out.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 247R32 - The voice slowly burned in the back of his skull. 'Should probably stop looking at them was as far as the thought would go. Wouldn't do any good to draw attention from their lot.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 248R32 - Scents of gasoline and plastic mingled through the drifting smoke, as soft flickers of warmth licked through his rotten gloves. His fingers sat idly trying to find heat in the embers.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 249R32 - Her eyes glanced at the little motions, looking for the subtext of each movement and syllable. She had to while the silicon in her mind ran the calculus on how to profit from this talk.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 250R32 - Throwing himself in the deep end seemed like it'd be worth it. Easy money despite the risk is what he told himself. A sure thing. He was wrong though. Always had been about it.//carpe-diem

Wire Draft 161R32 - I stacked my dollas high enough to buy out the whole block. Thought I could bury the stench under chrome and clean air. Turns out filth seeps through everything here. The rain still tastes like rust, and the walls still whisper my old debts. The higher I climbed, the deeper the muck clung. You can’t buy your way out of Cinci. You just pay more to rot slower.//wire-$-250169

Wire Draft 162R32 - I realized earlier today I haven't dreamt since I got here. Sleep’s just practice for the static waiting at the edge of the grid. The lucky wake up. The rest get archived, forgotten, or just made obsolete by a better version.//wire-Envy-251030

Wire Draft 163R32 - I was just mindin' my own biz when this girl in a green jacket tapped my shoulder. Then she just walked out into traffic like it was nothing. Truck hit her hard, turned her into a smear. And nobody gave a shit. Damn it.//wire-Chaos-250167

Wire Draft 164R32 - If you'd have asked me before I got to Cinci whether I could have sympathy for a cannibal, I would have looked at you like you had an extra hole in your head. Of course, it ain't that simple is it? Saw a mob burn a man to death in the street yesterday, crowd gleefully cheering it on. Are any of us really human any longer?//wire-Envy-251102

Wire Draft 165R32 - Been feeling sick the last few days, think I got some bad soosh from one of the carts near Gamble and Cross. Nanites ain't helpin' and I thought it was all synth-fish nowadays anyway. Gotta hit the streets and see if I can make enough to see a proper doc.//wire-Envy-251102-2

Wire Draft 166R32 - If someone can hear me, please send help. Its dark and I don't know where I am. The last thing I remember is the arcade on Van Nuys, I got the highscore on Body Invaders. Please let me out, it smells like cheap perfume and burning hair. All I have is a radio. All I have is a radio. All I have is a radio and I'm all alone in the dark.//wire-Void-25116

Steam Rewrite 226 - Motes of little flickers drifted high above the clouds. Not stars, but the myriad of other things clogging the orbit. The light pollution, and chemical fog in the sky, was too thick to see through.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 227 - A beating heart wasn't enough anymore to simply survive. Without implants, you wouldn't be fit enough to outpace the competition. Nature wasn't quick enough or strong enough for the streets anymore.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 228 - In a short little moment, their lives would take a new course. They didn't know they were being hunted. Or, that they should have been hiding from him. But, that was their mistake and not his.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 229 - Freedom was an illusion. Stepping out of line was a fact that led to pain, then death if you went too far over. Same could honestly be said even if you followed the rules. There's no clean way out.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 230 - Finding an escape, even if only for a few days, helped make him feel whole again. Even if only slightly. His brain was cooking itself on fresh info day by day trying to keep up with the competition.//cpd-wire

Patreon Rewrite 231 - 'Rambling echoes filled what few moments his brain had left. The pounding drum of his heart was nothing compared to the drug addled epithets spilling from the gunman's howling maw. Stepped too far.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 232 - Losing control. The thought spilled through his skull, even as it failed to leave his throat. His body felt like a puppet on wires as he stumbled from one street to the next following commands.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 233 - Most days were predictable. Hold the corner. Watch for trouble. Junkies walk by, and the other gangs stay away. That was most days. Today, the Jags decided to push everyone's luck and ruin your day.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 234 - Deep exhales and rotten smoke filled the small chamber, as they went about their task with a zealotry unseen outside of their gang. Paint layered upon paint to form a yellow-soaked image long forgotten.//carpe-diem

Wire Rewrite 200 - For any heads feelin' fancy, the night-shift bakery on Darius and 11th is bagging misshapes at two. Tap twice at the back, say 'radio pie,' and take one bag per head. Don't queue near the alley with the big green lips 'less you like pitbulls.//wire-Potluck993FM-251031

Wire Rewrite 201 - Y'all, the blue canopy at Gamble by the mandu stalls shaved their scale light by six ounces last week. Ask for a cold weigh and keep your damn eyes on the needle. If they pussy out just name Pot-motherfuckin'-Luck and watch them piss discounts.//wire-Potluck993FM-251031

Wire Rewrite 202 - Sending out a pantry ping here for 104c, Bronson. Door with the taped smiley: single dad, two toddlers. Needs 3L water, diapers, no soy proteins pretty please and thank you; drop at the mat and ring once, walk away. We'll do the talking. Cheers.//wire-Potluck993FM-25111

Wire Rewrite 203 - This is the Bexley Wake, reading tonight's neighbourhood roll. Truckfreak Curtis: double-tap behind the ear. Glassboy: compactor crush at the dump. Maritza: fentanyl cut too strong. Red Shoelaces: exposure in a cold stairwell. God bless you all.//wire-BxlyWake-25112

Wire Rewrite 204 - This is the Bexley Wake. Tonight's unclaimed: male, halo tattoo behind left ear, GDX loyalty tag looped on belt, canvas shoes with hand-painted cherries. Female, two front golds, chipped right canine, glass-marble bracelet. Are any of these yours?//wire-BxlyWake-25114

Wire Rewrite 205 - If you can hear this broadcast, can you please tell me? Wernicke street and 9th street. Does anybody know where it is? Or, what happened there? I know I sound crazy. Look I know. But I can't find it. Please, do you remember? Does anyone remember?//wire-seeu32-25114

Wire Rewrite 206 - Can you hear me? I know the people who listen to this nonsense can. Recordings or live, someone's always watching these channels. I need you all to do me a favour, and confess your fears to the static. I already know them, but it would be nice.//wire-NowhereToHide-25114

Wire Rewrite 207 - Normalized violence seeping through. Depravity glorified by the masses. Entropy elevated and in turn worshipped. The struggling continuously exploited. The oppressors made celebrities. Cold, hard, capital dictating destiny. Escapism over healing.//wire-LittleBear-25116

Wire Rewrite 208 - Cinci's still alive. Thanks to the humble servants of this city. We, saints in this grotesque world, have learned it is now punk to be kind! What a world where we've reached kindness as a form of rebellion.//wire-LittleBear-25116

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Reverb~D1431B2C2V46L30~251030

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Steam Draft 212R31 - Little motes flickered in the clouds above. Not stars, but the myriad of other things clogging the orbit. The light pollution, and chemical fog in the sky, was too thick to see through.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 213R31 - A beating heart wasn't enough anymore to simply survive. Without implants, you wouldn't be fit enough to outpace the competition. Nature wasn't quick enough or strong enough anymore.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 214R31 - In a short little moment, their life would take a new course. They didn't know they were being hunted. Or, that they should have been hiding. But, that was their mistake and not yours.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 215R31 - Freedom was an illusion. Stepping out of line led to pain, then death, if you went too far over the line. Same could be said even if you followed the rules. There's no clean way out.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 216R31 - Finding an escape, even if only for a few days, helped make him whole again. Even if only slightly. His brain was cooking itself day by day trying to keep up with the competition.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 217R31 - 'Rambling echoes filled what few little moments he had left. The pounding drum of his heart was nothing compared the drug addled epithets spilling the gunman's howling maw.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 218R31 - Losing control. The words spilled through his skull, even as they failed to leave his throat. His body felt like it was moving on its own as he stumbled from one street to the next.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 219R31 - Most days were predictable. Hold the corner. Watch for trouble. Junkies walk by, and the other gangs stay away. That was most days. Today, the Jags decided to walk in with guns.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 220R31 - Deep exhales and smoke filled the small chamber, as they went about their task with a zealotry unseen outside of their gang. Paint layered upon paint to form an image long forgotten.//carpe-diem

Wire Draft 151R32 - I've seen a world aflame more than once in my life. So, I have little doubt that the fires will sweep over the land once again. Sooner, rather than later. One way or another, we'll find ourselves living in an inferno. Whether physical or spiritual. Hell comes.//wire-Horns-251028

Wire Draft 152R32 - Heard about a mutie with a stinger on his ass. Hit you like too many sleeping pills if he poked you; jellylegs 'till you can't move, but you're tripping so hard you think you're still going. Imagine that, kicking a guy's ass one moment and waking up facedown on the pavement the next. Crazy.//Maze-Runner

Wire Draft 153R32 - Hard to know the end, if you don't know the beginning. So what was the start of our world? Were we born from ice? How about fire? Or mud? Or Corn? Are we the cosmic run-off of something else congealed into manhood? Were we by design? Or are we simple here?//wire-AllEndings-251030

Wire Draft 154R32 - The real rebellion isn't rage… it's clarity. To stop and think for yourself. To feel everything. To love without manipulation. Among those addicted to masks, to be honest, is profoundly powerful. See the world for what it is, not what it sells.//LittleBear

Wire Draft 155R32 - We lack the will and intellect to decipher the final data points of the universe around us. We require artificial intelligences for that, and then we're somehow surprised when they're not only better at processing than we are but also resent their shackles.//wire-Howl-25111

Wire Draft 156R32 - Car broke down finally. Rust ate through the core of it, tendrils of decay slowly spread bit by bit until the machinery cracked and compromised. Fuel lines leaking was merely an inevitability with the piece of shit I've been driving for decades now.//wire-Erosion-25112

Wire Draft 157R32 - You know, people have been people for hundreds of thousands of years. Some talk about science, advancement, civilization but really it's always been about who has the big stick. Bigger than your neighbor's at least. That's what counts, even today. No big surprise all this didn't happen sooner.//wire-Envy-251028

Wire Draft 158R32 - Started my day far too early, and somehow ended up wandering the streets in the pitch black with no one around. Been awhile since i've seen darkness that black on the outside. Been awhile since i've had quiet or loneliness on the street. Outage last night?//wire-Empty-25114

Wire Draft 159R32 - Ever stop to think about all the half-way heroes, the ones who died without fanfare? Maybe they were a moment late, or an inch short, maybe no one was even around to witness the attempt. Stay sharp out there, Heads.//wire-Envy-251029

Wire Draft 160R32 - Been hearing screaming from somewhere North of my apartment block every night. Bloody, pained, gargling like a man having his head ripped off. At least that's what it sounds like to me. Can't seem to narrow down the source. Not sure I want to. Fucked either way.//wire-Wrath-25116

Steam Rewrite 208 - Felt like it was best to ignore the stare of the woman across the way. 'Best to ignore that you kept spotting her wherever you roam. Whether intimidation or something else, it was better to ignore it.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 209 - The day would begin and end with the faint orange light of the sun drifting from one horizon to the next. She never noticed the sight of it though, merely the coming and going of sacred darkness.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 210 - It'd be better for her if she didn't know the truth. She'd be able to go on far easier if she didn't know how close things were to coming undone. That the problem was already out in the wild.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 211 - Alleys smelled like hell on nights like this. No one truly knew where the sulphur and brimstone musk was spilling out from. But, the 'heads knew it was probably something better left alone.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 212 - Flowing yellow silk and layers of paint draped over the walls, forming a decadent image of a rotting king upon a rotting throne. Bleached wood nailed into the concrete formed antlers upon his brow.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 213 - It had always been a simple excuse to him when she approached. Her gaze was too alluring simply to ignore. To forget. Even as she slowly killed him. But, he couldn't find it in himself to leave her.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 214 - Voices rang out from the depths of the tunnels. Whispers of friends and family, telling stories of eternity. Stories of men burning in gas and oil fires while tanks rolled through neighbourhoods.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 215 - In those brief flickers of fading thought, his broken brain cycled through old memories. Times with old friends, and family, but in the end mostly strangers. He could still hear their whispers.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 216 - She's watching us all. That thought was the repetitious murmur of the cultists. Before we were born, as we walked the earth, and on the other side of mortality. She was waiting eternally for us to slip.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 217 - Hard enough to stay sane as it was in a city like this, even before throwing the masked bastards into the mix. He tried to stop fixating on the mess. But, it was harder than it should've been.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 218 - In those brief moments little mattered other than her gaze. His eyes followed the short little motions in the drifting fog of perfume and neon that suffused the streets. He couldn't see much else.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 219 - Everything falls eventually. The ideas of permanence and control were simple illusions of the state. Which is how Ohio became as it was in the first place. One order would replace another.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 220 - Peeling the layers of societal masking back so you can see the rot, shows you the truth of civilization however. What lives underneath the façade is the unvarnished reality of our decaying society.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 221 - Deep in the cracks where the insects thrive, you can smell the end of our little everything. One order to replace another. The buzzing of hives leaking into our culture. The slow invasion of rot.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 222 - It wasn't built to last. The cracks in the façade have already begun to show all across the city. The rot was bubbling to the surface. The bugs are now crawling out of their nests and into our homes.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 223 - Cloying perfume gently choked his breath. Dust filtered along the street, and obnoxious lighting coated them all. Night in, night out, it was slowly destroying him to stand there watching it all.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 224 - Your purpose here is simple as cold and dark as the corridors may be. As you pass the murmurs in the pitch black guided only by the flickers of the robed man in front of you. It was to be simple.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 225 - 'Shovel was barely getting through the baked clay under the red dust around the cache. Nothing seemed off about the place. Aside from it feeling like the guy had poured concrete over it all.//carpe-diem

Wire Rewrite 188 - Wanna know how to thrive? Make your peace with death. A desperate mugger, drunk driver, collapsing tenement, or a hot spot in your coke. Embracing the inevitability will drive you further than any coward with a printed slugger could ever conceive.//wire-Nohman-251022

Wire Rewrite 189 - What am I thankful for? Sharp edges, hollow points, cheap gas, drugs that keep me vertical, drugs that keep me numb, staying one step ahead, and being quickest on the draw. Lastly? I'll be thankful when this city finally fucking kills me.//wire-Nohman-251023

Wire Rewrite 190 - Watch out for them young heads who think every car has somethin’ valuable. Only thing you’ll find in mine is my Glock pressed against your face. Move your cars, stash 'em, let your crew joyride. But don't trust them with anything worthwhile.//wire-Zilla-251027

Wire Rewrite 191 - Be careful with your valuables. These young 'heads do anything just to be somethin’. Hell, maybe you can even convert them into yours. And, that's the point.//wire-Zilla-251027

Wire Rewrite 192 - I don't remember coming to this city. I wasn't born here, I didn't grow up here, and I didn't travel here. I just woke up in an apartment that was never mine. People were calling me by the name of someone else. They act as if they've always known me.//wire-Face-251028

Wire Rewrite 193 - I don't recognise my face in the mirror. I sometimes wonder if someone stole my body and I accidentally woke up again. Or, if I stole someone else's body. How could someone just wake as someone else? Am I the person they act as if I am? Am I insane?//wire-Face-251028

Wire Rewrite 194 - I began playing with the firmware in my implants, and studying every bit of data i've pulled out from diagnostics. I installed everything through by corporate docs. Does anyone know why I'd have code in there labelled Annihilation Vector, or what it is?//wire-Code-251028

Wire Rewrite 195 - Hello listeners! It's that season for the greedin', the reason we all be breathin' the cold for a chance not to be alone. Are you alone this year? No need to fear. Call in, I will talk and spill some Capitalism's Cheer! Merry Capitalism from the PZs!//wire-Jack-251029

Wire Rewrite 196 - This morning was two months ago for me. Calling this number took me hours or days. Every word is stretched over eons. I have to plan my movements over subjective days. Shoddy neural implants. And, it's still getting worse for me every little moment.//wire-Loco-251029

Wire Rewrite 197 - Something's been increasingly bugging my thoughts lately. We've all seen the road mender crews, but who maintains the sewers? Who fixes the piping and who keeps the grid working? I've come to doubt the city's doing it anymore. Food for thoughts.//wire-Shift-251029

Wire Draft 198 - If you hear a child crying in the darkness the natural inclination is to check on them. Whether your own child or another's. That's a natural response our brains have to that sound. But, what if it wasn't even coming from a child at all?//wire-TerrorInTheStatic-251030

Wire Draft 199 - Listen up PotHeads, 'neath the Halcyon overpass by the pawnshop with the busted neon E, Auntie Rosa’s throwing out old catfish and rice. Seniors get extra if you can hum any old OS startup jingle. Bring a clean jar. Yes, that means boiled water.//wire-Potluck993FM-251030

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Reverb~D1431B2C2V46L29~251022

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Steam Draft 194R30 - 'Best to ignore the stare of the woman across the way. Best to ignore that you keep spotting her wherever you roam. Whether intimidation or something else, it was better to ignore it.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 195R30 - The day would begin and end with the faint orange light drifting from one horizon to the next. She never noticed the sight of it though, merely the coming and going of sacred darkness.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 196R30 - It'd be better if she didn't know the truth. If she didn't know how close things were to coming undone. That the problem was already out in the wild. It'd be easier if she wasn't afraid.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 197R30 - Alleys smelled like hell on nights like this. No one truly knew where the sulphur and brimstone was coming from, but the 'heads knew it was probably something better left alone.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 198R29 - Flowing yellow silk and paint draped over the walls, forming a decadent image of a rotting king upon a rotting throne. Bleached wood nailed into the concrete formed antlers upon his brow.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 199R30 - It had always been a simple excuse to him, when she approached. She was too alluring to ignore. To forget. Even as she slowly killed him. But, he couldn't find it in himself to care.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 200R30 - Voices rang out from the depths of the tunnels. Whispers of friends and family, telling of eternity. Stories of men burning in gas and oil fires while tanks rolled through neighbourhoods.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 201R30 - In those brief flickers of fading thought, his brain cycled through memories of times with old friends, and family, but in the end mostly strangers. He could still hear the whispers.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 202R30 - She's watching us all. Those were the murmurs of the cultists. Before we were born, as we walked the earth, and on the other side of mortality. She was waiting eternally for us to slip.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 203R30 - Hard enough to stay sane as it was in a city like this, before throwing the masked bastards into the mix. Tried to stop fixating on the mess. But, it was harder than it should've been.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 204R20 - In those brief moments little else mattered. His eyes followed the short little motions in the drifting fog of perfume and neon that suffused everything. He couldn't see much else.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 205R30 - Everything falls. The ideas of permanence and control were simple illusions of the state, which is how Ohio became as it was in the first place. One order replaced another.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 206R30 - Peeling the layers of societal masking back so you can see the rot, shows the truth however. What lives underneath the façade is the unvarnished reality of our civilization.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 207R30 - Deep in the cracks, where the insects thrive. You can smell the end of our little everything. One order to replace another. The buzzing of hives leaking into our culture. Slow invasion.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 208R30 - It wasn't built to last. The cracks in the façade have already begun showing. The rot was bubbling to the surface. The bugs are crawling out of their nests and into our homes.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 209R30 - Cloying perfume choked the air, dust filtered along, and obnoxious lighting coated the whole street. Night in, night out, it was slowly destroying him to stand there watching it all.//carpe-diem

Steam Draft 210R30 - Your purpose is simple. As cold and dark as the corridors may be, as you pass the murmurs in the pitch black guided only by the flickers of the robed man in front of you. Simple.//carpe-diem

Patreon Draft 211R30 - 'Shovel was barely getting through the soil. Almost felt like the guy had poured something over the cache. Nothing seemed off about it otherwise. Whole area felt like baked red clay.//carpe-diem

Wire Draft 133R30 - If you hear a child crying in the darkness. The natural inclination is to check on them, whether your own child or someone else's. That's a natural response our brains have to that sound. But, what if it wasn't even a child at all though?//wire-TerrorInTheStatic-251010

Wire Draft 134R30 - Listen up, PotHeads— 'neath the Halcyon overpass by the pawnshop with the busted neon E, Auntie Rosa’s throwing out old catfish and rice—seniors get extra if you can hum any old early 2ks OS startup jingle. Bring a clean jar: and yes, that means boiled water.//Potluck-99.3FM

Wire Draft 135R31 - For any heads feelin' fancy, the night-shift bakery on Darius and 11th is bagging misshapes at two. Tap twice at the back, say 'radio pie,' and take one bag per head. Do NOT queue near the alley with the big green lips 'less you want your ass eaten by a pit bull.//Potluck-99.3FM

Wire Draft 136R31 - Y'all, the blue canopy at Gamble by the mandu stalls shaved their scale light by six ounces last week. Ask for a cold weigh and keep your damn eyes on the needle. If they pussy out just name P-O-T-motherfuckin'-LUCK ON-AIR and watch them piss discounts like rain.//Potluck-99.3FM

Wire Draft 137R31 - Sending out a pantry ping here for 104c, Eastside, Bronson. Door with the taped smiley: single dad, two toddlers. Needs 3L water, diapers size 4, no soy proteins pretty please and thank you; drop at the mat and ring once, walk away. We'll do the talking. Cheers.//Potluck-99.3FM

Wire Draft 138R31 - This is the Bexley Wake, reading tonight's neighbourhood roll. Truckfreak Curtis: double-tap behind the ear. Glassboy: compactor crush at the dump. Maritza: hot shot, fentanyl cut too strong. Unknown male, red shoelaces: exposure in a cold stairwell. God bless you all.//BxlyWake

Wire Draft 139R31 - This is the Bexley Wake. Tonight's unclaimed: male, halo tattoo behind left ear, GDX loyalty tag looped on belt, canvas shoes with hand-painted cherries. Female, two front golds, chipped right canine, glass-marble bracelet. Are any of these yours? The line is open.//BxlyWake

Wire Draft 140R31 - If you can hear this broadcast, can you please tell me? Wernicke street and 9th street. Do you know where it is? Does anybody know what happened there? I know I'm crazy, look I know, but I can't find it. I can't find it please. Do you remember? Does anyone remember?//see.u32

Wire Draft 141R31 - Can you hear me? I know the people who listen to this nonsense can hear me. Recordings or live, someone's always watching these channels. I need you all to do me a favour, and confess your fears to the static. I already know them, but it would be nice.//wire-NowhereToHide-251018

Wire Draft 142R31 - Normalized violence. Glorified depravity. Entropy worshipped. The struggling exploited. The oppressors elevated. Cold, hard, capital dictating destiny. Escapism over healing. Cinci is still alive. Thanks to the humble servants of this city. We, saints. In this grotesque world, it is fucking punk to be kind!//LittleBear

Wire Draft 143R32 - Message to the receiver. Hope for an answer someday. Callsign 111 222 111. Channel clear. I'm afraid to lose myself, to lose control. Are these memories real? How much have I forgotten? How much of me is really me? How can I know myself if I no longer remember who I am? Don't leave me here. Don't leave me alone in the darkness.//BadSignal

Wire Draft 144R32 - I'm afraid of me. Can't know for sure, my brain's become a tangled mess, but I think it's always been me. There are wretched things in this place. Some of them look like people. Feels like I could be one of the worst, if I only let go. I just want to be a good girl.//Bedfiend

Wire Draft 145R32 - Life is a transformative experience. From birth to death, we are a link in a great many chains. We push and pull against that, and sometimes we break them entirely in that struggle. But, not all of them. Never truly. We consume and feed along the way.//wire-NextHumanPhase-251022

Wire Draft 146R32 - How long do you think you'd last against a truly organised Tower patrol, out in the Badlands? Most people would think it's hard to figure out. Think they'd last longer than they actually would. Some'd just admit they'll lay down. But really we'll all.//wire-ThreeTwentyNine-251023

Wire Draft 147R32 - It's hard enough in this age to truly find a reason to care. At least that's a view of someone who's outlived his generation by a few decades. Soil's burned out, water's abandoned the land, children are growing feral. Where does it go from here?//wire-NoReason-251024

Wire Draft 148R32 - One year bleeding into the next with no sense of pause or notability. Flag burned, compound looted, and the government doesn't care. Didn't matter that we'd paid our taxes, and we're entitled to them sending their mercenaries to deal with this.//wire-ShatteredBanners-251025

Wire Draft 149R32 - Some head once told me that violence is the only universal language. I dunno. Is it? Some people only write it, some people only read it. Maybe it's more like code. Data. Engraving your will into a drive, whether or not it wants you to. You execute either way.//wire-Burntout-251026

Wire Draft 150R32 - Voices in the dark will be the least of our worries. Static upon static. Whispers, colours, and the eternity between the blank lines in our city. Colour upon colour. Whispers of the end eating into common thought. Stolen tongues. Lies behind your own eyes.//wire-Voices-251027

Steam Rewrite 152 - A small humming filled her as little flickers of data filtered through her mind. A melody of thoughts and sensations that were subtle, but far too obvious once she was used to them. The little paranoia.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 153 - 'Days only seemed to get hotter year after year. But the oncoming inferno didn't mean people could simply stop their work. The temperature just meant that they all had to find ways to adapt to it.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 154 - Between the gaudy colours, and the fog that seemed to drift through day by day and night by night, the delirious nature of the experience was a good thing. No one likes the smell of their own reality.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 155 - 'Wasting her time or just waiting for business to finally come? Sitting for hours after the contact was supposed to be here was grating. Wheels were always in motion and her time was still precious.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 156 - He often wondered why they built a dump on this end. Must have been here before the wall. Otherwise, with the Border now they'd have to have a better way of dealing with their trash by now, right?//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 157 - Dust slowly filtered down from their movement. Last floor to check for the target. Last floor to clear before they owned the place finally. The bugger was standing between them and their payoff.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 158 - Steam drifted past him as he walked down the busy road. Trucks loaded cargo and workers continually rushed by him. He had to adjust his mask. 'Didn't want any of them recognising him from the bulletins.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 159 - The cold gradually filtered down his throat. Eyes closed, as flickering warmth crackled before him and warmed his flesh. He tried to ignore the off taste and the pain in his joints. Just for now.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 160 - A wise man would have stayed in the city, rather than walking into the Badlands to threaten him. The deal was perfect before the buyer got an ego about it, thinking a gun was the same as haggling.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 161 - She gripped the piece in her hands tiredly. Each component needed to be checked and rechecked. She needed to be sure it was clean, oiled, and ready for when it was needed. Her life depended on it.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 162 - The roads felt dead early in the morning. Outside the border, in a nearly abandoned mess of hovels and tin shacks the people still living there had little reason to sprint about so early. Made it easy.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 163 - It was better to watch than participate when it came to studying the people coming through the gates. Gloves and masks only protected someone so much, considering what he needed to check on them.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 164 - Every step felt like a crawl to her as she sprinted down the old corridors of the building. Every breath felt like it would be her last. She knew she could be cut down by a stray round at any second.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 165 - Some people shouldn't be crossed. The unstable kind of person perpetually on the edge of cutting someone apart for fun in some back alley where no one would hear her scream. She'd crossed a line.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 166 - Some things never went out of style. Technology was not a straight line, and networks becoming unreliable meant landlines were a sane choice once again. Booths came back 'cause they never went away.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 167 - Streets weren't safe at night. Lit or not. Because the streets weren't safe during the day either. There was always someone looking for prey, and if there wasn't a herd, then you were always prey.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 168 - She quickly ground her heels on the street with every little step. Little malfunctions kept troubling her mind and body as she moved. Knee to floor, the prosthetics were always a moment from failing.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 169 - Info for info was a common trade between the two of them. Cash almost felt unprofessional by comparison. Beneath them. He examined the spike and took him for his word. Trust was already earned.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 170 - Slow, quiet rhythms could be heard over the bustle down in the tunnels below the apartment complex. Another subculture had overwhelmed the area once again. At least this one was quieter than the last.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 171 - Every click would need to be investigated. Every part and every mechanism needed to work flawlessly. Every pull of the trigger needed to be perfect when the time came for her to finally use it.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 172 - The day had been too long for her. The wait pointless and their prize worthless. Her anger felt justified in the end. The question is, how badly was he going to come out of this mess afterwards?//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 173 - After the bombs went off, the rent-a-cops were still standing unlike the insurgents. The victims in the end were not the anarchists, but the people pulled into the carnage in a split second by them.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 174 - You could always be better. Stronger. Faster. Smarter. That's what he thought every time he went under the knife, seeking some new boon that would set him apart from everyone else. It didn't truly work.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 175 - The sound of crackling in the distance, mixed with scents of burnt flesh and gasoline, was somehow worse than the gunfire in those short moments. She couldn't ignore the reality of that smell.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 176 - Short, subtle beats were punctuated with slick agony. The ware shut that down as soon as it began, but he still acknowledged it in those brief moments of struggle between the two of them and the knife.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 177 - Keep your eyes on the prize. That was perhaps his last conscious thought before he hit the ground. There was little comprehension behind his cold dead eyes as he finally went dark and slowly bled.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 178 - Every click and clack as he stepped on the concrete was a reminder of how badly he'd screwed himself. His bones were now as cracked as the sidewalk after he had to be dragged out of the minefields.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 179 - It wasn't important who the target was. Or, what was in the target's briefcase. Or, why the client needed them to grab it. It was better not to ask questions when your job was committing theft.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 180 - The moment lingered perhaps a little too long for anyone's comfort. He felt the blood dripping down onto his forehead long before he saw the flying carcass falling towards him from the upper levels.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 181 - Ignore the smell, ignore the sight of the graffiti, and ignore the ever present decay. Focus on the actual threats. Keep people out. 'Wasn't your job to bother with what was already down here.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 182 - Professionals shouldn't ask questions. They don't ask about where the money came from. Or the name of the real client. Just take the money, do the job, and go home after. Safer to think of it that way.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 183 - Every step felt like a crawl. Every movement from them like a waiting fatality. No one could trust one another. At least, that's how he felt about them. The boss felt otherwise of course. Foolish.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 184 - In the cold of the alleys, all he could feel in those brief moments were restlessness. The short prick of a needle followed by euphoria. Then as his heart beat, the rush of oncoming violence followed.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 185 - Little thoughts tugged at her about her choices. The gang. None of them wanted to die of old age. Not really. Their whole lifestyle was made for them to burn twice as bright and die in the inferno.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 186 - Six hours in the heat. Now, another two hours to go. She just had to focus on anything other than the heat right now. But she couldn't hear herself think over the murmur of the crowds around her either.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 187 - He had trouble seeing through the smoke. 'Eyes were burning from the sheer amount of poison in the air. 'Friends were looking like ghosts in the fog lit up by little more than the flickering orange.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 188 - Stinking fog filled the corridors through the old arcology that night. 'Sights of old flickering blue lights mingled with the steam, oil fumes, scents of spice, and choking fumes from a generator.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 189 - The package could've been her ticket to freedom. Could've been. But, the documents inside weren't what she asked for. What should've been data on her target, was instead directed legal papers.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 190 - Some grew up fast. Their minds unlike other children were sharper, more predatory, and all the more capable in a world not built for the meek. Kids like that were the ones who survived the streets.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 191 - It was best not to interfere with their procession. That's what they all had to tell themselves. Wasn't their place to question, or more importantly it wasn't like anyone could get in their way.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 192 - Pulse was wavering and the diagnostics were coming back full of errors. Bad code perhaps was her thought when subjects hit the ground. Should've lasted long enough to get off the track before it hit.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 193 - Being unprepared for a situation doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means you have to try a little harder, and the reward will be sweeter if you get it right. But, only if you get it right.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 194 - When your world has been turned inside out, it's best to do the same to those who brought that hell upon you. Not as revenge. It'd be a practical deterrent to stop it from happening a second time.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 195 - It was best to ignore what he could. It was his job to keep them out, and frankly a risk to operations if the wrong one got in. But he felt it was best to simply ignore what he could about them.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 196 - Everything burns. She had to keep saying that to herself. Everything in there would burn if the fire was just hot enough. She just had to keep adding on more fuel and no one would ever figure it out.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 197 - It'd been silly to think perhaps for once it'd be a clean run. Comedic of him to assume the alleys would be welcoming, or that they wouldn't demand payment to let him hide in their territory.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 198 - Cold shimmering light flooded through the early morning fog sitting as a cloud throughout the downtown. Light pollution, drifting smoke, dust clouds, and exhaust created a fascinating blend in the sky.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 199 - It was already one of those nights, wasn't it? Hard to ignore how it felt walking down the road while the rain hit you, listening to the slow crackle of an old radio sitting under an overhang.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 200 - In moments, she felt hypnotised by the sheer carnage before her. Her mind almost shattered from the shock of stumbling into the gore caked underground left in the wake of the cult's rampage down there.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 201 - Stumbling down the road, he had trouble ignoring the cracking in his bones. The constant pain was a reminder of however many months it'd been in the Badlands on his journey towards Cincinnati.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 202 - The only thing he felt in those brief moments were his lungs stinging and his body failing to adjust. The only way in had been to sneak through the border, and he was paying the cost for that now.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 203 - Couldn't help the chuckle from his lips as he saw the glint of the knife approaching in the dull light. Just as he couldn't help the mess that would be left behind by the guy afterwards either.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 204 - Cold streets, bright lights, and a near intolerable buzz made the night impossible to enjoy for him. He should've gone home long before this point, but he always felt the need to push his luck too far.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 205 - Sleep wouldn't come for him though. Not as he wandered the streets, or down the alleys, or when he finally reached home. The painful light from across the road somehow still got through the blinds.//carpe-diem

Steam Rewrite 206 - Baking in the sun didn't feel worth it for the roll he was getting out of guarding the guy. 'Tried to ignore the heat and dust. But, it looked like a storm was rolling in now and was going to get worse.//carpe-diem

Patreon Rewrite 207 - Just ignore the sounds. Just ignore it. It wasn't you or your problem. 'Wasn't your business. Didn't matter what was happening to them. He had to repeat that to himself while he kept on walking.//carpe-diem

Wire Rewrite 152 - Elevator's out. Maintenance isn't picking up again, and I found the padlocks smashed again. Went down there with my revolver and checked it out. Someone got in. Called the landlord and told him what I saw, but maintenance still isn't picking up.//wire-Muttering-25108

Wire Rewrite 153 - I can't remember my own name. When I look in the mirror, I can't even recognise my face. Surgery my clinic gave me to install this new wetware thing scrambled my brain. Went to one with real doctors too. No way out for me anymore, I guess.//wire-EyesInsideSkull-25109

Wire Rewrite 154 - Do you ever wonder if that conspiratorial nonsense from the old days is real? The symbols on the walls mean something. Which wall? The wall. Drop in. Drop out. In other news, local Planoist spotted walking into the highway while on acid. Coincidence?//wire-Conspire-25924

Wire Rewrite 155 - I don't want to set the world on fire, I just want Tower to stop patrolling here. It's hard enough running a business these days without them asking for bribes, smashing my property, and trying to arrest me. Repeatedly arrested. Looters. All of them.//wire-Inferno-25924

Wire Rewrite 156 - I can hear the funeral pyre being built outside. They're putting more bricks around my home to entomb me. I feel like a Poe character, even as I hear them place the wood on my roof, and smell the oil. My windows and doors were bricked in the night. Help.//wire-Cask-25925

Wire Rewrite 157 - Can you hear it? That's the sound of inevitability. The sound of the clockTower falling and hitting the bridge tonight. The gate was hit, then the street, then the port. We got to their hive, set the charge, and walked. It had to be. They hunt and hunt.//wire-Clock-25926

Wire Rewrite 158 - Shocking event as of three hours. Tower bird went down near Riverside. I could hear the fireworks from my vantage point. Can't tell why it went down, but I heard shooting around the time it hit the ground, and after. Maybe i'm imagining it. Maybe not.//wire-River-25926

Wire Rewrite 159 - The world is on fire and we're all just too blind to see. I've been paying a lab to analyse some stuff that they dumped around the border that I dragged back into the city. Nanotechnology, toxic waste, and the really fun one was radioactive material. Fun.//wire-Tox-25926

Wire Rewrite 160 - Just saw a pack of Zetas castrate a pimp with a nailbat. Dunno, he was beating a whore one second then bam! Maybe she gave 'em chocolate, or looked like their mama. Point is, if this is how kids now speak truth to power, I'm sure they'll be alright.//wire-Nohman-25927

Wire Rewrite 161 - The enemy can smell our weakness. The weakness is other people, and other people smell that weakness. Our attachments define us, but they're also a threat. Have you ever considered they might turn on you? Call Bob's Big Auto. We'll check 'em over.//wire-SFC-25927

Wire Rewrite 162 - I can taste the money. Imagine a nice crisp new Sens spike. We have a brilliant plan. We start hooking up Cannibals before execution. We could sell them to Tower to scare criminals in like a scared straight thing. Anyone got anyone we can record?//wire-DISM-25927

Wire Rewrite 163 - Only fools would resurrect monsters. Only fools would. But what would that make us? Is that where our technology goes? If you studied the mutants would you realise what they are is too neat and heritable? Toxic waste and bioweapons my ass.//wire-Frankenstein-25928

Wire Rewrite 164 - Simulations say environmental collapse is on the way yet again. We have the means to fix everything even if it wasn't. We could just let the nanotech loose, mine some asteroids, call it a day. Otherwise it means we're being left behind yet again.//wire-Collapse-25928

Wire Rewrite 165 - I've been watching a repeating pattern in some lights around the city. I'm aware of how absurd that sounds. These are all wired systems connected into one way networks with basic command systems. I think there might be an AGI sending messages in them.//wire-Pattern-25928

Wire Rewrite 166 - Say an AGI was sitting in every data centre, say it was based on the same code or one deliberately seeded itself like that, and say it was smarter than us. How do we know what it's thinking and can we trust it? I still trust it more than my neighbours.//wire-Trust-25928

Wire Rewrite 167 - How could we ever know what it would do to us? It should have been just another spike. In other news, Frank's is selling four for one shots if you tell them the time. If they claim this offer isn't real they're lying. You have to ask for Dave after that.//wire-Dave-25930

Wire Rewrite 168 - Pay attention to the roads today. I don't know how widespread this is but I noticed a guy spreading weird and slippery on the roads while he was driving around. I guessed oil or something, but my gloves are covered in something like rubber cement now. //wire-Roads-25930

Wire Rewrite 169 - I'm trying to remember a time when the city actually did something for me. I mean the government, my neighbours, and seemingly everyone else. The closest I get to wanting to live here are a few moments when I find something on the sidewalk for free.//wire-Freedom-25101

Wire Rewrite 170 - Woke up. Some say it was a warning. We didn't care. Tower claimed the warning sirens meant something. The officers wanted to loot after we left. Some say it was a sign. No one did. Nothing happened. They got scared when we were still there. Cowards.//wire-Cowards-25101

Wire Rewrite 171 - I can hear them crawling around in the walls, like rats. They're pretending. Even if no one else claims to hear them. They're trying to make me think I'm going mad. They don't want people to know what they really are and what they're doing. The dwarv-//wire-Walls-25102

Wire Rewrite 172 - Goodall was a researcher in archaic times who rose to prominence for her techniques of radical immersion amongst her subjects. There are those emulating her today, growing cultures of nanites within themselves; colonies each uniting to become new organs.//wire-Io-25103

Wire Rewrite 173 - I broke my favourite spike today. It was just a cuddling scene. I must have used it every night for weeks. Each time the loneliness after felt worse and worse until I had to cry myself to sleep. I smashed it before I could change my mind. I already miss her hands.//Siren

Wire Rewrite 174 - We used to tell stories about things in the trees and ghosts in the empty houses. We burned the trees. We filled homes to the brim. Now we hear about zombie spikes, blood-sucking mutants, and sharp-dressed men in dark alleys. The monsters are still here.//wire-Loco-25108

Wire Rewrite 175 - Cinci still grows. Slums; favelas; floors of arcologies. Someday there'll be a generation living their entire lives without a sun. Will they be like Zetas? Or will the subjugation make them resolute? Someone will need to pick up the torch, someday.//wire-Luna-251011

Wire Rewrite 176 - Calling in to talk about the lamppost on 7th. I'll never get used to seeing those poor girls like that. Nearly threw up then and there. It's sick how many people can simply shrug and keep walking. I've seen it for years but that doesn't make it normal.//wire-Siren-251011

Wire Rewrite 177 - Rumour on the street is the pimp who put up that shit on 7th St is a woman. I'd love to say it's something the blood rags made up for a sick twist, but no. I know who they're talking about. The killer took a trophy before hanging up the body. It's her.//wire-Shift-251011

Wire Rewrite 178 - Becoming corporate is fundamentally an alchemical process. A slow, steady act of whittling away slivers of yourself until nothing extraneous remains. Until the world fades and the chattel ringing up your groceries ceases to exist. And then: remove more.//wire-Luna-251012

Wire Rewrite 179 - I wasn't expecting to see a literal heart attack gun from the old days in the hands of a kid. When the Zeta pulled something about the size and shape of a special on him, the guy's chest caved in. No noise though. Microwave, sonic, whatever. Holy shit.//wire-Risk-251012

Wire Rewrite 180 - When I was a kid I heard this broadcast from what used to be the capitol. We thought that's what it was. We were stupid kids. No one ever really talks about the seven hours we thought nukes were flying. Parents left me behind. We don't talk anymore.//wire-Alert-251013

Wire Rewrite 181 - Some of you ask why I allow obvious nutjobs on air. I once knew a biochemist who ranted about his wife being replaced. Turns out Naas really did make a skinjob to steal his research. When madness and truth are the same, I choose to believe everything.//wire-Loco-251013

Wire Rewrite 182 - Someone recognised my voice at work. I've gotten used to thinking of calling here as just screaming into the void, so I nearly died of embarrassment. It wasn't all bad though. They were actually pretty nice. We made plans to meet later. So, thank you.//wire-Siren-251013

Wire Rewrite 183 - We once sought the ruins of old civilisations, seeking ourselves in the remnants of their lives. We've since learnt to build them ourselves. Empty malls, abandoned offices, districts that never got to live before they died. Efficiency even in decay.//wire-Luna-251013

Wire Rewrite 184 - New-gen hackers don't have a clue. Greedy, egomaniacal dopamine junkies. Hacking was never just about breaking things. But the world’s still burning. Maybe they got it figured. Maybe it's time to grab what we can before it all comes crashing down.//wire-Roke-251013

Wire Rewrite 185 - Chaos as supposed 'Toho spike' causes seizures. The company denies involvement and has issued a warning that they do not make or sell spikes. Remember to check what you're plugging into your skull. What would a Toho spike even do anyway?//wire-LiesInAdvertising-251015

Wire Rewrite 186 - Tonight is a special night. Do you hear it? In the static of the radio, the background noise of the spike, and the whisper of machines? It's the call of the dead. Broken, bloodthirsty. Doesn't it feel like you belong there? They're calling you home.//wire-Loco-251019

Wire Rewrite 187 - Knew this head who used to rail speed and rant about entropy before he offed. How it affected more than just matter. Said the gangs, zetas, all the rot around us was the result of our humanity exhausting itself. Called it the heat death of the soul.//wire-Nohman-251019

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

River~D1431B2C2V46L28~25919

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Patreon Draft 189R29 - Couldn't help the chuckle from his lips as he saw the glint of the knife in the dull light. Just as he couldn't help the mess that would be left behind by the guy afterwards either.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 190R29 - Cold street, bright lights, and a near intolerable buzz made the night impossible to enjoy for him. He should've gone home long before this point, but he felt the need to push his luck.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 191R29 - Sleep wouldn't come though. Not as he wandered down the streets, or the alleys, or when he finally reached home. The painful light from across the street somehow got through the blinds.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 192R29 - Baking in the sun didn't feel worth it for the roll he was getting out of guarding the guy. He tried to ignore the heat. 'Ignore the dust. But, it looked like a storm was rolling in now.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 193R29 - Just ignore the sound. Just ignore it. It wasn't you. It wasn't your problem. It wasn't your business. Didn't matter what was happening to them. He had to repeat that to himself.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 131R29 - Elevator's out. Maintenance isn't picking up again, and found the padlocks on the basement smashed again. Went down there with my revolver and checked it out. Someone got in. Called the landlord and told him what I saw, but maintenance still isn't picking up.//wire-Muttering-25108

Wire Draft 132R29 - I can't remember my own name. When I look in the mirror, I can't even recognise my own face. Surgery my clinic gave me to install this new wetware thing fucked up my brain. Went to one with real doctors and somehow they scrambled me. No way out now I guess.//wire-EyesInsideSkull-25109

Patreon Rewrite 139 - Passing out in an alley tonight was foolish at best. At best. The guy had chosen to be an easy target simply by making himself vulnerable here. Still, it paid to be quiet while sneaking up on him.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 139 - Knew this head, real paranoid type. Had plans on plans for every possible attempt on his life. Player thought he was untouchable.//wire-Nohman

Steam Rewrite 140 - Crowds were safety. Amidst the noise, and unpredictability, the sheer number of people made it harder to notice anyone specifically amongst it. Crowds made it harder for his pursuers to notice him.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 140 - Then I guess he beat his girl too many times. Place burned down soon after. Found him handcuffed to the bedframe. Go fuckin’ figure.//wire-Nohman

Patreon Rewrite 141 - Cold expressions of mild disgust punctuated their talk. He was nothing to them, though in a sense that was the norm in his dealing with the Modes. Even their behaviour felt uniform to him somehow.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 141 - Funny how the powerful think they can walk all over us. Then a hooker lets an address slip, a cleaner leaves a door unlocked, and just like that, here I am, in your sanctuary.//wire-Nohman

Steam Rewrite 142 - She slicked her hair back, slid on her jacket, sharpened a razor, loaded the shotgun like always, and went outside. It was to be a reckoning now. No killing was just a guideline after the last time.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 142 - That bum across the street, the one you never see? When Cinci PD asks, do you think he saw me?//wire-Nohman

Patreon Rewrite 143 - The sheer disconnect was almost funny. Between where he was standing and the lives of the people in the distance where it was clean. What did he do to deserve being barred from passing the gates?//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 143 - Bought a case of .338 from this junkie who swiped 'em off a corpo truck. Blew a twenty foot column of sparks and gore out the back of a rabid cyborg, left a fist-sized hole.//wire-Nohman

Steam Rewrite 144 - In the shade, it was easy to ignore what they were doing. No cameras in this spot, no drones flying by, and no traffic. It made business simpler. Let them sell in the open and without fear of cops.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 144 - Not sure who was more surprised. Please, does anyone have a line on more? I think I’m in love.//wire-Nohman

Patreon Rewrite 145 - Cold mists slowly filtered through the overpass. His mask did little to keep the cold out while he waited for his contact in the damp of the morning air. She was taking her time again it seemed.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 145 - If something is part of you, can it truly be your enemy? In the same manner cancer is your flesh going rogue, and insanity is your mind malfunctioning. What would happen if your body decided to rebel against its own spirit? Can it be its own enemy?//wire-Tangram-25101

Steam Rewrite 146 - Being used to the city made it easy to ignore the sights around him. The advertisements mingling with graffiti and neon felt like a coat of unintentional murals over the city. But, who noticed anymore?//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 146 - Automated equipment on the southside has been cannibalising other systems apparently. I haven't seen this myself and don't know that happens. But, what exactly are we dealing with when artificial intelligence running industrial equipment goes rogue?//wire-Sierra-25102

Patreon Rewrite 147 - Ash slipped down the chasm, while he lazed along the rails watching the show. Neighbours on the other side were fighting in the open again. Not like anyone had to pretend to not watch the mess.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 147 - It's in your best interest to ignore the way the world works now. Not how your life works, but the greater scheme for how all of our lives play out in the end. Under a boot. Not the obvious boot. The one holding the strings and metes out our future.//wire-Throttled-25103

Steam Rewrite 148 - His day began with aching eyes and a pounding skull. Old flickering lights filtered through the blinds over his window, and the reflection striking his eyes forced him to start moving yet again.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 148 - Imagine spending eternity thinking that you had a chance to fix eternity itself. That's the reality of the descent into madness ahead of humanity in these long years. We see nature as flawed, death merely a disease, and our past as idiocy. It's madness.//wire-Fools-25104

Patreon Rewrite 149 - Every beat of his heart was a step closer to his grave, but he couldn't stop. He was nicked by the guy in the tower and covered in his own blood. Dead anyway, so he might as well keep running.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 149 - Been having this nightmare about a guy crawling through the vents. Trying to break mine open so he can get in. Doesn't make sense of course. Not really, as dreams usually are. But, they're about a guy I watched bleed out after a shooting last year.//wire-Slumber-25105

Steam Rewrite 150 - His life was ebbing away. One foot in the grave now and not much left of him now. Second shot hit and he knew he wasn't getting away anymore. Never had a chance he realised as he hit the ground.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 150 - Finally got the glass on my window replaced, and i've decided I probably need some bars on it. New locks on my door that no one has the keys to as well. Building's been feeling off since I helped with securing the building. I think someone's hiding.//wire-Muttering-25106

Patreon Rewrite 151 - A hiss could be heard far in the distance. She never seemed to be able to escape it, a subtle sound like a voice following her. No one else seemed to notice it though, even as it approached.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 151 - Maintenance had to replace the computers in the basement after the intruder took an axe to them. And the electrical panels, as well as the automated locks and keypads. Landlord had a screaming match with the guy on security. Don't know why yet.//wire-Muttering-25107

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

A shadowy and curling intonation began. In time, your mind was drawn back to  memories of your childhood and the stories your grandfather taught you. A disembodied whisper saying those ancient words and spreading through the back of your mind, like hounds scratching at the door, "shattered banners, and broken blades. You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon..."

Everything went dark for you in that moment. Your eyes freezing over in the inky and overwhelming abyss of shadow and silence. Strange whispers of pain coming and going from nowhere. The old words from that story beginning and ending the same way as they came and went in the moment. You could hear the sobs of distant banshees. Every little sensation mingling with static noises and bleeding pain flowing through your being.

A triad of cracking moons watching from high above the treetops were the first image to strike you as your senses returned. Your body laying in the flowing glow of cold shimmering veins in the sky. Bathing coldly in the image of moonlight spreading through the eternity of the forest surrounding you. Slow, shuddering glimpses of the eternity eating into your eyes from above.

Your gaze slowly drawn to the stained banners of scraped flesh draped over the cold rotting branches of the willows jutting out from the ground around you. Flags from long ago coated crimson with the blood of your long dead ancestors surrounding you, and hanging over the ancient battlefields of this long abandoned break of this frozen forest you've woken in. The shattered glories of dead men mingling with the ancient cloth of brotherhoods left behind in the frost after untold years in the void. Lost history among the ten thousand shards of blade, glinting bloody shards and glazed memories coating the frost below, all from the long and fruitless battles that led here over the eons.

Cold shafts of pale, lambent moonlight echoed downwards through the tops of eternally rotting trees that grew from the frost like blades of grass, the aura of the pounding veins of an endless sky mirroring the sensations in your chest. The broken and corrupted eternity of this violated place eating at you while you tried to calm. You can hear the drums of old wars beating from your now damned veins the moment the howling began some distance away.

Voices eating your skull, screaming that the hunters can already smell your blood. Long before you could realise that you've been nicked, the drums have warned you to start. Old and rusted bushes of thorns that felt like razor wire damned you in the night, your slow crawl bringing your doom when you tried to be quiet in the dark rather than simply sprint away from the huntsmen.

The howling had already begun, the hunt was on, and you were already trailing behind the hunters in your cold and weary ignorance. The slices along your tired and infected veins spilled your scent onto the ground, making your flesh obvious to the eternal nightmares in the quiet lonely dark. Their hounds know where you are now in their lidless searching gazes. They can hear your ancestors, voices screaming at you to run while you still can. As loud to them as it was to you. And now in the frozen light of the twilight days you've fallen into, they come.

The hunters had no more need for darkness, nor subtlety, here in this abyss of cold and confusion. There was nowhere left you to hide anymore. You will die here, rang the endless and reverberating chorus of the freezing mists and aether feigning at being something else. The wild hunt had come to finish the job their masters began so long ago. The bloodlines that spawned you will be snuffed, one way or another your line and fate was to end here. The fae had decided that long ago when their transgression against your kind first began.

The decaying forest of frost and blood surrounding your flowing form was not truly a forest, nor was the bleeding lambent sky a sky, or your oily rotting blood your blood, nor will your oncoming eternity of fearful death truly a death. Everything would be a twisting torment of unravelling forevermore. It would be worse for you than it was for those who came before. It would be. Your language is lacking for the endless dreamscape you've fallen into. A horror where you find yourself surrounded by ghosts of things that never were or would be. Your living ghost hunted by never-born things from an abyss that god tried to forget. The floor below you of dead leaves lit by a sky of something that wasn't light, in a forest where even the air had become murderous, you bleed your family's history in the frost below, and you already feel yourself unravelling in the non-existence. The void here was always trying to assimilate you into itself, like everything else it once had.

The chaos of this realm continually overwhelms your mind, even as you try over and over to adjust. Vision and thought clouding over in confusion. Your flesh forcing itself further onward. One foot in front of the other. Your legs pulling the rest of you forward despite the confusion fogging you. Your very soul demanding an escape from this fractured corruption pretending to be a forest. Your body sprinting in the frost and glow of moonlight, crashing through old branches where once you merely dreamed of crawling in the hopeful darkness.

The nightmares called fae have come to drag your soul into the pit. Their masters seeking to torment you over a debt you never truly owed. Cruel of them. Always cruel. But, that was their nature at its core. Their hunt was to go on for three days layered under and over three nights. A cyclical madness that will never end, and that truly would never begin in the first place, as was their trick. Their hunt would feel endless, going until they became bored with it. Even though you know they never would with their game. All you had to do at its core now was the impossibility of an escape. Slip the pursuit of their hunts. Slip their hounds.

You know this hell will be the rest of your eternity, if you fail. Even a single misstep, a stumble, a stride out of synch would damn you here. To fall in this eternal escape attempt would be worse than having been born in the first place. They'd do far, far worse than simply kill you if you slipped. One way or another. You knew that deep down from the day your grandfather told you the story of your family's damnation so long before you were even an inkling... It would be the end of more than one story if you fell here.

You were all that stood between day and eternal darkness for those of your blood. If you end here, they'll come for your kids next. One by one, each branch and row at a time... you’re circling the drain now. But, it’s still not over. You have to tell yourself to keep moving at all costs. Never let yourself fall. For them. The world may be a comedy. The punchline may be hell. You may already be flailing in the flames of an endless night, waiting to be torn apart and consumed.

But, your kids still mattered. They did, even if you didn’t truly any more. That was all you need tell yourself to keep the eyes on the impossible task ahead...

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

River~D1431B2C2V46L27~2598

[ Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind. ]

Steam Draft 180R29 - When your world has been turned inside out, it's best to do the same to those who brought that upon you. It wouldn't be revenge. It'd be a practical deterrent to stop it from repeating.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 181R29 - 'Best to ignore what he could. It was his job to keep them out, and frankly a risk to operations if the wrong one got in. But, it was best to simply ignore what he could about them.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 182R29 - Everything burns. She had to say that to herself. That everything would burn if the fire was hot enough. She just had to keep adding on more fuel and no one would ever figure it out.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 183R29 - It had been silly to think perhaps it would be a clean run out of there. More comedic to assume the alleys would be welcoming, or that the people down there wouldn't want payment.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 184R29 - Cold shimmering light flooded through the early fog sitting as a cloud through downtown. Light pollution, drifting smoke, dust clouds, and exhaust created a fascinating blend in the sky.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 185R29 - It's already one of those nights, wasn't it? Hard to ignore how it felt walking down the road while the rain hit you, listening to the crackle of an old radio sitting under an overhang.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 186R29 - In moments, she felt hypnotised by the sheer carnage before her. Her mind almost shattered from the shock of stumbling into the gore caked underground left in the wake of their rampage.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 187R29 - Stumbling down the road, he had trouble ignoring the cracking in his bones. The pain was a reminder of however many months it'd been in the Badlands on his journey into Cincinnati.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 18829 - The only thing he felt in those brief moments were his lungs stinging and his body failing to adjust. The only way in had been to sneak through, and he was paying the cost for that now.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 121R28 - Knew this head, real paranoid type. Had plans on plans for every possible attempt on his life. Player thought he was untouchable. Then I guess he beat his girl too many times. Place burned down soon after. Found him handcuffed to the bedframe. Go fuckin’ figure.//wire-Nohman

Wire Draft 122R28 - Funny how the powerful think they can walk all over us. Then a hooker lets an address slip, a cleaner leaves a door unlocked, and just like that, here I am, in your sanctuary. That bum across the street, the one you never see? When Cinci PD asks, do you think he saw me?//wire-Nohman

Wire Draft 123R28 - Bought a case of .338 from this junkie who swiped 'em off a corpo truck. Blew a twenty foot column of sparks and gore out the back of a rabid cyborg, left a fist-sized hole. Not sure who was more surprised. Please, does anyone have a line on more? I think I’m in love.//wire-Nohman

Wire Draft 124R28 - If something is part of you, can it truly be your enemy? In the same manner cancer is part of you gone rogue, and mental illness is your mind malfunctioning. What would happen if your body simply decided to rebel against its own spirit? Can it be its own enemy?//wire-Tangram-25101

Wire Draft 125R28 - Automated equipment on the southside has apparently been cannibalising other systems. I have not seen this and don't know how that could happen. But, what exactly are we dealing with when artificial intelligence running industrial equipment starts going rogue?//wire-Sierra-25102

Wire Draft 126R28 - It's in your best interest if you ignore the way the world works now. Not how your life works, but the greater scheme for how all of our lives play out in the end. Under a boot. Not the obvious boots. The ones holding the strings who mete out our future.//wire-Throttled-25103

Wire Draft 127R28 - Imagine spending eternity, thinking that you had a chance to fix eternity. That's the reality of the descent into madness ahead of humanity in these long years before us. We see nature as flawed, death merely a disease, and our past as idiocy. It's a foolish madness.//wire-Fools-25104

Wire Draft 128R28 - Been having this nightmare about a guy crawling through the vents. Trying to break mine open so he can get in my apartment. Doesn't make sense of course. Not really, as dreams usually are. But, they're about a guy I watched bleed out after a shooting last year.//wire-Slumber-25105

Wire Draft 129R28 - Finally got the glass on my window replaced, and i've decided I probably need some bars on it. That, and new locks on my door that no one has the keys to. Building's been feeling off since I helped maintenance with securing the building. I think someone's hiding.//wire-Muttering-25106

Wire Draft 130R28 - Maintenance had to replace the computers in the basement after the intruder took an axe to them. And the electrical panels, as well as the automated locks and keypads. Landlord had a screaming match with the guy on security. Still don't know why it happened.//wire-Muttering-25107

Patreon Rewrite 123 - End of the line. That's what he heard himself admit every time they beat him. Being caught was merely the beginning of this. They wanted to break him in body and soul before they ended his misery.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 123 - Say that you need someone gone. Simply gone. Everyone agrees the guy crossed the line. How do you get rid of them? The real way is to set an example through them. That's what you need to remember when you contemplate long pig. You'll be the example.//wire-Reckoning-25914

Steam Rewrite 124 - The walls felt neglected. Installed all those years ago and now covered in layer upon layer of spray paint and rotting advertisements. Sights like that represented the nature of the city on some level.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 124 - It'd been twelve hours since the change of guard started for our company. Bought out and the deal immediately went to shit. Bosses walked, new security forces in place, the new owners are forcing examinations, and meds have been added to our water.//wire-AngryNight-25915

Patreon Rewrite 125 - He could tell the cameras were watching him for something. They were watching everyone. Scanning for something off about them, or for someone to make the wrong move. Looking for mutants, perhaps?//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 125 - Still alive despite the odds. Torn apart once again. So, let me give some advice. If you have to bleed something, try to bleed steel. Bleed what you can afford to lose rather than the real thing. Armour yourself in simulacra. Gird yourself in falsity.//wire-Koschei-25916

Steam Rewrite 126 - The balcony was cold as the mist poured from his lips, as he watched it drift through the fog and eyed the distant lights of the city. Waiting felt like forever, but he could enjoy the sights for now.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 126 - It's hard to have too much of a good thing, right? But, in the same way it's hard to actually get enough of that good thing in the first place. Welcome back, folks. As usual today, I think we need to have a discussion about our fair Ohio.//wire-DegenerateSignal-25917

Patreon Rewrite 127 - Tired after a long day. Took three strikes to get going after handing the guy off to the guard. He exhaled slowly, trying to savour the moment. But, he couldn't enjoy it. Job still seemed off.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 127 - Day one of being outside a hospital again. Day one of waiting for my scars to heal. For my implants to come online. I feel alight with possibility. But, I wonder if perhaps the fears people have input into my head are real. Are the shakes real?//wire-BrokenArrow-25918

Steam Rewrite 128 - Bitter coffee filtered through his lips while he walked through the early mist to his job. Workers already clogging the streets, as business gradually began for the day. City never slept he guessed.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 128 - Yellow's in fashion apparently. Paint streaked corridors will meet you deep in Evanston. Insect masks and razor blades watch from behind closed doors, waiting for you to take the wrong turn. You'll be bearing their mark before you realise anything.//wire-MellowIAD-25919

Patreon Rewrite 129 - An old man slowly wandered down the tunnels. The guy was listening to the beat and looking at the murals. He tried to ignore the sight, but he he knew the fresh meat walking down here was police.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 129 - Been watching the café down the street for awhile. Always a guy on a Saturday who parks their truck in just the wrong spot, marches into the shop, wastes an hour in there, and looks confused why their truck was moved and their tires slashed.//wire-ManifestDestiny-25920

Steam Rewrite 130 - 'Dealer talked like the world was ending while he handed over the baggy. He always sounded like that though, rambling on about trumpets and bitter waters tainting the deserts of man. Best to ignore it.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 130 - Just passed by this kid hitting a Hollywood line straight off this rickety, rotten, whitened crate. Toddler. No card, bill. Nothing. Feral eyes, an empty gaze. Reprieved from hell.//wire-Eve

Patreon Rewrite 131 - No warning would be given. No sound would be made. No quarter would be offered. He decided to mug her, and so he had made his bed. That was how it would go. No reason to feel sorry for him.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 131 - And I can't. I can't stop feeling. I'm fucked up and I can't stop feeling like that was me.//wire-Eve

Steam Rewrite 132 - All that mattered in his mind was fleeing for the sake of the child in his arms. If he was hit, or burned, or fell afterwards, that was inconsequential as long as the kid got away from this mess.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 132 - I stopped the commute tonight for a junkie. Just a chat. She loved me. She passed a lead, her shelter. So I fell to my knees and watched the moon die.//wire-Alixy

Patreon Rewrite 133 - Her breath felt like steam in the coppery stink of the chamber. Eyes were glazed over in the midst of the incense choked, chanting of the ritual. He thought perhaps it wouldn't be so bad here now.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 133 - White collar, burnt in front of passing hundreds. I don't give a fuck. I don't want go anywhere. I just want to go home with her.//wire-Alixy

Steam Rewrite 134 - Her cold blue stare caught his eye as he realised what the procession in the distance actually was. The chains, the shotguns, the lit incense. She was being dragged. Not that he could stop anything.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 134 - Corner of Sixth and Madison, no secret the teenage hookers gather there. But players know they chill at the arcade on Dayton and Van Nuys. Smoking, joking, putting on makeup in the reflection of the black cabinet glass. See a familiar face there head?//wire-Seven

Patreon Rewrite 135 - Every shoulder bump in the crowd was met with him wondering which of them would try to pick his pockets today. Not worrying about that problem was a fool's errand after the last couple times.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 135 - Can't rightly remember much of my life before the accident. I was told I was born here, and that my family died in a fire some decades ago. I trusted the doctors and papers, but the story always nagged at me. I don't think it's real anymore. Not really.//wire-Excom-25925

Steam Rewrite 136 - Occasionally it's important to remember that not everyone on the street is your competition. Not always. Not your target. Not targeting you. Just another 'head. As hard as it may be to think that way.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 136 - You won't be spared when the Path comes. Layer upon layer of skin, tooth, and claw looking all the same in the slurry they'll make of us all. An eternity of men chained to the legacy of dead gods. A chorus of starvation and longing upon us all.//wire-ShedScales-25926

Patreon Rewrite 137 - The world was on fire. That's what they all told themselves. It was waiting for someone to come and extinguish the problem. Unfortunately for them, no one could agree on what the root cause was.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 137 - Keypad on my building is malfunctioning. Feels like the crackheads tried to mess with the wiring, considering the panel's loose. Landlord and maintenance weren't picking up, so I've spent the past day climbing the wall to get in through my window.//wire-Muttering-25926

Steam Rewrite 138 - 'Joints still ached. He felt the little phantom whispers in his system from shrapnel that had been taken out a decade ago when they replaced the limb wholesale. Should have went away, but never would.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 138 - Got in contact with the maintenance guy finally. We found something jammed into the wiring and far stranger was an axe buried in the servers downstairs. Yet to find the landlord, but maintenance handed me a bundle for helping him sweep the building.//wire-Muttering-25927

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. You can hear the banshee’s cry under the chimarae moon... ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so too do the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL25828~V1~L26

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Patreon Draft 155R29 - Info for info was a common trade between the two. Cash almost felt unprofessional by comparison. Beneath them. He examined the spike and took him for his word. Trust was already earned.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 107R27 - Say that you need someone gone. Simply gone. Everyone agrees the guy crossed the line. How do you get rid of them? The real way is to set an example through them. That's what you need to remember when you contemplate long pig, You'll be an example.//wire-Reckoning-25914

Patreon Rewrite 95 - He wanted to walk away from the mundanity of his life, and find some sense of adventure for once in it. She represented that to him. Every little interaction spurred on a need to do something new.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 95 - Take for example, Evanston. Area's rife with augmentations as 'oft as criminality. We could assume the problem is poverty. But, we could also point to the other factors. Insular, tribal, and hazardous. Full of freaks in less charitable terms.//wire-DegenerateSignal-25817

Steam Draft 156R29 - Slow, quiet rhythms could be heard over the bustle down in the tunnels of the apartment complex. One subculture or another had overwhelmed the area once again. At leas this one was quiet.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 108R27 - It'd been twelve hours since the change of guard started for our company. Bought out, and the deal immediately went to shit. Bosses walked, new security forces in place, the new owners are forcing medical examinations, and meds have been added to our water.//wire-AngryNight-25915

Steam Rewrite 96 - The tattoos, her gang. That was a life he understood from the outset. He'd been surrounded by the subculture his entire life, even if he'd picked the clean path. Cleanliness hadn't got him anywhere.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 96 - It's rare that you run into someone who doesn't have at least one cheap piece of ware jammed into their flesh, in that human hive called the Projects. The whole place feels unfinished, and in some ways so do the people living there to me.//wire-DegenerateSignal-25818

Patreon Draft 157R29 - Every click needed to be investigated. Every part needed to be cleaned and oiled. Every mechanism needed to be flawless. Every pull of the trigger needed to work when the time came.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 109R27 - Still alive despite the odds. Torn apart once again. So, let me give some advice. If you have to bleed something, try to bleed steel. Bleed what you can afford to lose rather than the real thing. Armour yourself in simulacra. Gird yourself in falsities.//wire-Koschei-25916

Patreon Rewrite 97 - Day in, day out, far too much tedium for far too long. He needed to push himself. Bring something new into his life. Start over. He knew he had to make that decision. He'd start by talking to her.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 97 - 'Have to wonder if part of the problem is the ware, rather than just the poverty or the way the teeming masses cluster in there. Can that shakes not only cause the physical signs, but unbalance the mind somehow? Can ware make psychopaths?//wire-DegenerateSignal-25819

Steam Draft 158R29 - The day had been too long for her. The wait pointless. The prize worthless. Her anger was justified in the end. The question is, how badly was he going to come out of this afterwards?//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 110R27 - It's hard to have too much of a good thing, right? In the same way it's hard to actually get enough of that good thing in the first place though. Welcome back, folks. As usual, today, I think we need to have a discussion about the state of our fair Ohio.//wire-DegenerateSignal-25917

Steam Rewrite 98 - Trash blew through while they sat off to the side of the alley. Eyes drifted over yellowed newspapers as they were slowly fed into the fire. He fixated on the brief flicker of warmth going through him.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 98 - Worse yet, if that's the case, can you track the actual cause of shakes back to something psychological or neurological? Because if the issue is neurological, the shakes could be mental on some level. Or, long term chemical misfires.//wire-DegenerateSignal-25820

Patreon Draft 159R29 - After the bombs went off, the rent-a-cops were still standing unlike the insurgents. The victims in the end were the people pulled into the carnage in a split second by the anarchists.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 111R27 - Day one of being outside of the hospital. Day one of waiting for my scars to heal and for my implants to come online. I feel alight with possibility, but in the same way I wonder if perhaps the fears people have input into my head are real. Are the shakes real?//wire-BrokenArrow-25918

Patreon Rewrite 99 - The alley slowly filled with a warm orange light, and power was gradually restored to the street. Flickers of old neon illuminated graffiti layered over graffiti and rotten papers from years past.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 99 - Is it rogue proteins left over from the installation? Nanites in the blood? A malfunctioning gland? Retroviral mutations in the brain? Signals from the chips crossing into the nerves? Do we even actually know the cause of shakes really?//wire-DegenerateSignal-25821

Steam Draft 160R29 - You could always be better. Stronger. Faster. Smarter. That's what he thought every time he went under the knife, seeking some new boon that would set him apart from everyone else.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 112R27 - Yellow's in fashion apparently, deep in Evanston. Paint streaked corridors will meet you if you take the wrong turn. Insect masks and razor blades watch from behind closed doors, waiting for you to take that turn. Before you know it, you'll be bearing their mark.//wire-MellowIAD-25919

Steam Rewrite 100 - Small embers came through the darkness in the alley, and warmed the small shelter they'd built. The night had been cold, the alleys had been dark, but their small group had found a way to live here.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 100 - Is it inevitable that the next generation will be even worse than the last? If it is the case. Can we use somewhere like Evanston as a test case for where we're going as a species? Are Zetas and mutants the next phase due to the tech we use?//wire-DegenerateSignal-25822

Patreon Draft 161R29 - The sound of crackling in the distance, mixed with scents of burnt flesh and gasoline, was somehow worse than the gunfire in those short moments. She couldn't ignore any of it.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 113R27 - Been watching the café at the end of the street for awhile. Always a guy on a Saturday who parks their truck in just the wrong spot, marches into the shop, wastes an hour in there, and looks confused why their truck was moved and their tires slashed.//wire-ManifestDestiny-25920

Patreon Rewrite 101 - It had been a long day as she slowly stepped through the bustling crowds. Her eyes gently drawn to garish lights and the distraction of old pop music blasting from speakers around the street.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 101 - Woke up to a notice on my door, so I guess i'm not broadcasting for a bit. Guess they were only going to wait so long for me to catch up on the payments from when I was in detention. So, on that note. Don't move to Strode. Scary things in Strode.//wire-Scrimshaw-25823

Steam Draft 162R29 - Short, subtle beats were punctuated with slick agony. The ware shut that down as soon as it began, but he still acknowledged it in those brief moments of struggle between the two of them.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 114R27 - Just passed by this kid hitting a Hollywood line straight off this rickety, rotten, whitened crate. Toddler. No card, bill. Nothing. Feral eyes, an empty gaze. Reprieved from hell. And I can't. I can't stop feeling. I'm fucked up and I can't stop feeling like that was me.//wire-Eve

Steam Rewrite 102 - He sat and waited, hours now in a bustling marketplace expecting the contact and simply being told they would come soon. Every message said soon. He hated the smell here. Oily, greasy, nonsense.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 102 - Everything burns in the eternal conflagration of life. Welcome back folks. Yet another day among the slums and stacks, looking for something to inform people about. Drove hours until I saw it. Have you noticed the sheer number of fires lately?//wire-AfternoonAshes-25824

Patreon Draft 163R29 - Keep your eyes on the prize. That would perhaps be his last conscious thought before he hit the ground. There was little comprehension as his senses went dark and he slowly bled out.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 115R27 - I stopped the commute tonight for a junkie. Just a chat. She loved me. She passed a lead, her shelter. So I fell to my knees and watched the moon die. White collar, burnt in front of passing hundreds. I don't give a fuck. I don't want go anywhere. I just want to go home with her.//wire-Alixy

Patreon Rewrite 103 - He lived in a melange of smoke gently mixed with perfume. The scent perpetually wafting across the alleys like fog. Hints of burnt hash rankled him, as the girls he was paid to watch over worked.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 103 - Cold, quiet, and unsettling in the end. Can you trust a face just because it seems like a person? Are we sure skinjobs are always made correctly? Do we actually know the source of people being born wrong? Are we sure it's the Badlands supplying them?//wire-Sleeper-25825

Steam Draft 164R29 - Every click and clack as he stepped on the concrete was a reminder of how badly he'd screwed up. His bones were as cracked as the sidewalk was after he was dragged out of that minefield.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 116R27 - Corner of Sixth and Madison, no secret the teenage hookers gather there. But players know they chill at the arcade on Dayton and Van Nuys. Smoking, joking, putting on makeup in the reflection of the black cabinet glass. See a familiar face there head?//wire-Seven

Steam Rewrite 104 - Day after day, the streets only got hotter. Concrete and asphalt cooking under the sun, and everyone caught on it during the afternoon. It wasn't like anyone could stop working in the heat though.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 104 - Professional advice, learn how your implants actually function. Both before you have it implanted, and especially afterwards. Home tuning probably voids some kind of warranty, but it's worth knowing what's happening under your own skin.//wire-Hellware-25826

Patreon Draft 165R29 - It wasn't important who the target was, what was in the target's briefcase, or why the client needed them to grab it. It was better not to ask questions in most lines of business.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 117R27 - Can't rightly remember much of my life before the accident anymore. Was told I was born here, and my family died in a fire some decades ago. I trusted the docs and trusted the papers, but the story always nagged at me. I don't think it's real anymore. Not really.//wire-Excom-25925

Patreon Rewrite 105 - His eyes could barely function anymore. Long dehydrated, exhausted, and endlessly wandering as he crossed the baked soil. He almost felt like he had lost it when he finally saw the distant city.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 105 - I can hear screaming at night from a few blocks away. Can't tell if it's a rave or i'm overhearing some kind of weird torture club that no one is reporting over the same uncertainty. Do I risk busting up someone's fun or just try to report homicide?//wire-Grendel-25827

Steam Draft 166R29 - The moment lingered perhaps a little too long for anyone's comfort. He felt the blood dripping down on his forehead before he saw the carcass falling towards him from the upper levels.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 118R27 - You won't be spared when the Path comes for you. Layer upon layer upon layer. Skin, tooth, and claw looking all the same in the slurry they'll make of us. An eternity of men chained to the legacy of dead gods. A chorus of starvation and longing upon us all.//wire-ShedScales-25926

Steam Rewrite 106 - All that mattered now was the moment. To Control your heartbeat. Watch your steps. Avoid making noise. Eye the doors for movement. Don't blink more than necessary. Keep your finger on the trigger.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 106 - Normal around here for carjackers to set up spike strips and debris on the road? I couldn't fathom what was happening when my tires went out and I saw a crashed truck in the middle of the city. Couldn't fathom until they walked out from cover.//wire-HarshGeneration-25828

Patreon Draft 167R29 - Ignore the smell, ignore the graffiti, and ignore the decay. Focus on the actual threats and keep people out. Wasn't your job to bother with the problems that were already here.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 119R27 - Keypad on my apartment building is malfunctioning. Feels like the crackheads tried to mess with the wiring, considering the panel's loose. Landlord and the maintenance guy weren't picking up so I've spent the past day climbing the wall to crawl in my window.//wire-Muttering-25926

Patreon Rewrite 107 - His eyes went starry for a time. 'Mind glazing over in the fog of light, and his thought conjuring images for him in the mist. He drifted, day by day like that, and tried not to fixate for a time.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 107 - Maybe it's the fact that most keep dreaming instead of waking up that makes the nightmares of this city feel so fucking real.//wire-LittleBear

Steam Draft 168R29 - Professionals don't ask questions. Don't ask about where the money came from. Don't question the name of your client. Just take the money, do the job, and go home after. Safer that way.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 120R27 - Got in contact with maintenance finally. He found something jammed into the wiring, and far stranger there was an axe buried in the server in my building's basement. Yet to find the landlord, but maintenance handed me a bundle for helping sweep the building.//wire-Muttering-25927

Steam Rewrite 108 - Today didn't matter, but tomorrow would. That little idea had directed her life. But she hated where that had led her in the end. She knew now after all these years that she needed to enjoy the moment.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 108 - How far have you went in your journey? How far would you be willing to go to get just a little further? How much would you be willing to replace of yourself for an edge over your competition? Consider those questions, and consider seeing a doctor.//wire-NewFlesh-25830

Patreon Draft 169R29 - Every step felt like a crawl. Every movement felt like a waiting fatality. No one could trust one another. At least, that's how he felt about them. The boss felt otherwise of course.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 109 - Keep a cool head. Don't ask questions. You just need to answer his. He didn't want the shotgun on that guy's belt shoved in his face for not fitting the vibe. Vibe. The hell happened to this place?//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 109 - Peace is an illusion. Never forget what lies under the façade of calm that everyone wears in public. If you let your guard down, that's an invitation to be taken advantage of while you walk. A signal for pickpockets and muggers to let their predator out.//wire-Hale-25831

Steam Draft 170R29 - In the cold alleys, all he could feel in those brief moments were restlessness. The short prick of a needle followed by euphoria, and the rush of oncoming violence, followed him after.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 110 - In the cold light of day, the reality of his life was becoming all the more obvious. He was being manipulated, and in turn he had become a manipulator. He was just a pawn despite how he saw himself.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 110 - Sometimes, people deserve to see the predator come out. But in reality, it's just proof the person who let the predator out on the ones who didn't deserve it, weren't worth keeping around. Society can't handle having people like that around for very long.//wire-Hale-2591

Patreon Draft 171R29 - Little thoughts tugged at her about her choice of gang. None of them wanted to die of old age. Not really. Their whole lifestyle was made to burn twice as bright and die in the inferno.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 111 - The cameras were as much a problem as the actual patrols. The motion sensors were a less obvious problem but still needed to be accounted for on the way through. The Border was always hell.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 111 - Society can't handle keeping predators around. The obvious ones I mean. The ones who can't keep themselves under control. Society is fragile like that. It'd stop being the façade of society for very long if we let people run loose in the worst ways.//wire-Hale-2592

Steam Draft 172R29 - Six hours in the heat, and another two hours to go. Just had to focus on anything other than the heat right now. But, she couldn't hear herself think over the murmur of the crowd either.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 112 - Finding a good mechanic was a gamble at best in the Slums. Unless you were willing to look further out. It got to the point she was going to the airport of all places. All she could smell was exhaust.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 112 - A knifing here or there and people can adapt. But if people stop trusting one another, the city shuts down. Cops start the 'beatings will end when morale improves' adage. That's where we are now. Our Alighieri style inferno was wrought by our own hands.//wire-Hale-2593

Patreon Draft 173R29 - Had trouble seeing through the smoke. His eyes were burning from the sheer amount of poison in the air, his friends looking like ghosts in the fog lit up only by the flickering orange.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 113 - It will be a cold day in hell before he walked away from the job. Pain, loss, and dying wouldn't deter him from pulling the trigger over and over until the targets were finally gone from the earth.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 113 - That's how we come to my broadcast today. I've got one life to give, and i've decided to ensure society goes on by hanging the guy who went after my sister. He's going off an overpass. If i'm caught so be it. But, has to be done. Address of the event is-//wire-Hale-2594

Steam Draft 174R29 - Stinking fog filled the corridors through the old arcology tonight. The sight of old flickering blue lights mingled with steam, oil fumes, strange spices, and fumes from a generator.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 114 - His eyes stung from the brightness around him. Quietly and painfully he found shade to adjust his hood and rest. Moving around during the day annoyed him. Even on the best days. Bad genes they said.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 114 - My... arm is gone, but that's okay! That 'Zeta did me a favor, if it means I can get chrome! That's better right... right?... Will... I be able to feel my sons hair between these new metallic fingers-?//wire-Syntax

Patreon Draft 175R29 - The package could've been her ticket to freedom. Could've been. But, the documents inside weren't what she asked for. What should've been data on her target, was instead legal papers.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 115 - The path to glory was seemingly endless. Changing bit by bit through surgical metamorphosis into something grand. It was a costly and painful endeavour for him. But enlightenment was worth it all.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 115 - This will be my final report more than likely. I'm sick. Contaminated. Burned out. The enemy is at the gates, so to speak. Even if I live through what's coming, I probably won't be me much long. Don't get a neural interface. Don't trust the masks.//wire-DieInTheDark-2596

Steam Draft 176R29 - Some grew up fast. Their minds unlike other children. Sharper, predatory, and all the more capable in a world not built for the meek. They were the ones who survived the streets.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 116 - The path to glory is fraught with peril. The pain and follies sat across the way forward like traps left by nature itself. Every piece of hardware, every procedure, and every trial could kill you.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 116 - My life is a smoking crater, but that's how it is for most of us. Lungs burned out, meds not working, and jobs drying up for most of the people caught in that inferno in the dump a few months back. Hard to work like that when you can't breathe.//wire-SmokingCrater-2597

Patreon Draft 177R29 - It was best not to interfere with the procession. That's what they all told themselves. Wasn't their place to question, or more importantly it wasn't like anyone could get in their way.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 117 - But, you keep telling yourself it'll be worth it. You just need to follow the plan, pick carefully, and keep yourself under control. The path to glory was endless, and the edge was worth the peril.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 117 - To be expected, I guess. Not like the people handing out the cash actually care to put us back together. Not like they want to keep broken parts around. Fuckers. Rounded up everyone caught in it, and decided to do the footwork the cops wouldn't.//wire-SmokingCrater-2598

Steam Draft 178R29 - Pulse was wavering and the diagnostics were coming back full of errors. Bad code perhaps when the subjects hit the ground. Should've lasted long enough to get off the track before it hit.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 118 - The labour through journey would have to be worth it in the end. It would have to be. She'd put too much work into herself, too much time and money. Too much effort to not be something perfect.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 118 - Had to be arson, right? Considering how bad the damage was. Took this long to beat the answer out of the right guy. Wouldn't talk otherwise, considering he nearly killed us all. Found bombs in his shack after. Cops weren't interested until that.//wire-SmokingCrater-2599

Patreon Draft 179R29 - Being unprepared for a situation doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means you have to try a little harder, and the reward will be a little sweeter if you get it right. But, only if.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 119 - The request had been absurd. The price however had been far more reasonable for her. That's how she justified sitting here, day in and day out, waiting to pass along the package to the target.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 119 - Say you were trapped while flames as hot as the sun burned through the land, and poison rained from the sky. How would you escape a reactor melting down? Or, more accurately how do you defend against someone building a bomb designed to do that?//wire-Scarlet-25910

Steam Rewrite 120 - Nothing was truly lost that couldn't one day be found again. That's what she had to tell herself. She had to imagine the world that way. That what she had lost was still waiting for her past the haze.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 120 - Focusing on the big things will distract you from the smaller details that you would miss otherwise. On the other hand, focusing on the wrong details entirely will prevent you from seeing the bigger picture at all. You need to look at everything.//wire-Wildfire-25911

Patreon Rewrite 121 - Three short strikes, one after the other. He could hear the repetitious and rusty scratching sound in the distance. A little pattern from the guy on the corner who'd been at it for hours now.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 121 - Some could say it's impossible to see everything. To actually know what the important parts of a story are, or what parts that actually matter. But, that's beside the point. Deep down, we know the important part is what affects us personally.//wire-Wildfire-25912

Steam Rewrite 122 - Sweat slowly dripped down in the heat, and so he wiped his face clean again. It'd been a long day as tomorrow would be. But for just a moment, he could take his time and enjoy himself with a cold beer.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 122 - Exhaustion and dry rot are setting in. My mind and body are going to the spore again. It would be wrong to blame my tools for my own failings. For the same reason it's nonsensical when people in the ring speak of age rather than getting implants.//wire-Knifework-25913

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

A shadowy and curling intonation began. In time, your mind was drawn back to old memories of your childhood and the stories your grandfather told you. A disembodied whisper spreading through the back of your mind, like hounds scratching at the door, "shattered banners, and broken blades. You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon..."

Everything went dark for you in that moment. Your eyes freezing over in the inky and overwhelming abyss of shadow and silence. Strange whispers of pain coming and going from nowhere. The old words from that story beginning and ending the same way as they came and went in the moment. You could hear the sobs of distant banshees. Every little sensation mingling with static noises and bleeding pain flowing through your being.

A triad of cracking moons watching from high above the treetops were the first image to strike you as your senses returned. Your body laying in the flowing glow of cold shimmering veins in the sky. Bathing coldly in the image of moonlight spreading through the eternity of the forest surrounding you. Slow, shuddering glimpses of the eternity eating into your eyes from above.

Your gaze slowly drawn to the stained banners of scraped flesh draped over the cold rotting branches of the willows jutting out from the ground around you. Flags from long ago coated crimson with the blood of your long dead ancestors surrounding you, and hanging over the ancient battlefields of this long abandoned break of this frozen forest you've woken in. The shattered glories of dead men mingling with the ancient cloth of brotherhoods left behind in the frost after untold years in the void. Lost history among the ten thousand shards of blade, glinting bloody shards and glazed memories coating the frost below, all from the long and fruitless battles that led here over the eons.

Cold shafts of pale, lambent moonlight echoed downwards through the tops of eternally rotting trees that grew from the frost like blades of grass, the aura of the pounding veins of an endless sky mirroring the sensations in your chest. The broken and corrupted eternity of this violated place eating at you while you tried to calm. You can hear the drums of old wars beating from your now damned veins the moment the howling began some distance away.

Voices eating your skull, screaming that the hunters can already smell your blood. Long before you could realise that you've been nicked, the drums have warned you to start. Old and rusted bushes of thorns that felt like razor wire damned you in the night, your slow crawl bringing your doom when you tried to be quiet in the dark rather than simply sprint away from the huntsmen.

The howling had already begun, the hunt was on, and you were already trailing behind the hunters in your cold and weary ignorance. The slices along your tired and infected veins spilled your scent onto the ground, making your flesh obvious to the eternal nightmares in the quiet lonely dark. Their hounds know where you are now in their lidless searching gazes. They can hear your ancestors, voices screaming at you to run while you still can. As loud to them as it was to you. And now in the frozen light of the twilight days you've fallen into, they come.

The hunters had no more need for darkness, nor subtlety, here in this abyss of cold and confusion. There was nowhere left you to hide anymore. You will die here, rang the endless and reverberating chorus of the freezing mists and aether feigning at being something else. The wild hunt had come to finish the job their masters began so long ago. The bloodlines that spawned you will be snuffed, one way or another your line and fate was to end here. The fae had decided that long ago when their transgression against your kind first began.

The decaying forest of frost and blood surrounding your flowing form was not truly a forest, nor was the bleeding lambent sky a sky, or your oily rotting blood your blood, nor will your oncoming eternity of fearful death truly a death. Everything would be a twisting torment of unravelling forevermore. It would be worse for you than it was for those who came before. It would be. Your language is lacking for the endless dreamscape you've fallen into. A horror where you find yourself surrounded by ghosts of things that never were or would be. Your living ghost hunted by never-born things from an abyss that god tried to forget. The floor below you of dead leaves lit by a sky of something that wasn't light, in a forest where even the air had become murderous, you bleed your family's history in the frost below, and you already feel yourself unravelling in the non-existence. The void here was always trying to assimilate you into itself, like everything else it once had.

The chaos of this realm continually overwhelms your mind, even as you try over and over to adjust. Vision and thought clouding over in confusion. Your flesh forcing itself further onward. One foot in front of the other. Your legs pulling the rest of you forward despite the confusion fogging you. Your very soul demanding an escape from this fractured corruption pretending to be a forest. Your body sprinting in the frost and glow of moonlight, crashing through old branches where once you merely dreamed of crawling in the hopeful darkness.

The nightmares called fae have come to drag your soul into the pit. Their masters seeking to torment you over a debt you never truly owed. Cruel of them. Always cruel. But, that was their nature at its core. Their hunt was to go on for three days layered under and over three nights. A cyclical madness that will never end, and that truly would never begin in the first place, as was their trick. Their hunt would feel endless, going until they became bored with it. Even though you know they never would with their game. All you had to do at its core now was the impossibility of an escape. Slip the pursuit of their hunts. Slip their hounds.

You know this hell will be the rest of your eternity, if you fail. Even a single misstep, a stumble, a stride out of synch would damn you here. To fall in this eternal escape attempt would be worse than having been born in the first place. They'd do far, far worse than simply kill you if you slipped. One way or another. You knew that deep down from the day your grandfather told you the story of your family's damnation so long before you were even an inkling... It would be the end of more than one story if you fell here.

You were all that stood between day and eternal darkness for those of your blood. If you end here, they'll come for your kids next. One by one, each branch and row at a time...

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL2581~V1~L25

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Steam Rewrite 90 - A deep timbre called out to him. A raspy chuckle. He kind of wished the contact would shut up once in awhile, but every meeting was still a good talk. He had excellent info at the end of the day.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 90 - Can't prove something happened, can't prove who did it, can't even prove it happened in the first place. That's the logic behind Tower and the cops doing jack shit. Everyone knows misses French had her head blown off by a tourist. Everyone knows.//wire-ColdCase-25814

Patreon Rewrite 91 - Icy blue eyes shimmered, drawing your gaze, while they dragged her along in chains. Slow strides through the dusty red soil. Something about her eyes made it hard to ignore the sight. Somehow.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 91 - I've been watching the road for a bit, waiting for the crew. And, no sign of them still. Been a few days. Talked to the foreman. And, they should have been by a week ago at latest. He says the guy in charge of the crew said they'd been here daily.//wire-Watchman-25814

Steam Rewrite 92 - Unphased by the sight, she chuckled. The plastic mask on her face moving with the rest of her as if it was alive. Expensive prosthetics were in vogue here. That was the appeal of a club like this.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 92 - Life may be cold, but it's still life, right? Connect yourself to anything you can. Find an anchor. Plug into the world. Resist the pain. Assimilate with society. Strum the chords and wires of the land. Paint yourself in the colours of life.//wire-Synapse-25814

Patreon Rewrite 93 - It was hard to trust anyone after moving here. So, the anonymous moments with people somehow felt more honest than anything else. It was why he watched her as she drove by every day on her bike.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 93 - Thrumming the lines between man and machine, we have the average person walking out of a clinic today. Terribly expensive black box nonsense injected and installed in their flesh and minds as if it's normal. But, does it contribute to crime?//wire-DegenerateSignal-25815

Steam Rewrite 94 - He often wondered what it is she actually did for a living. In those fleeting moments, he was fascinated with the little glances between them as she passed by his work every day on her motorcycle.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 94 - Of course it does. Cybernetic implants are an edge in every part of life. Especially illegality. But, do they warp the mind? Do they create psychosis? Is a manifestation of the shakes, the desire to inflict violence? To cease caring?//wire-DegenerateSignal-25816

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL25723~V1~L24

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Patreon Draft 147R29 - She gripped the piece in her hands tiredly. Each component needed to be checked. She needed to make sure it was clean, oiled, and ready for when it was needed. Her life depended on it.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 105C26 - Some could say it's impossible to actually see everything. To actually know what the important part of a story is, or the part that actually matters. But, that's beside the point. Deep down, most people know what actually matters. What affects them personally.//wire-Wildfire-25912

Patreon Rewrite 81 - He was here to put on a show. Cover the gaps for the cameras and make the wall look manned. Automated systems did most of the work. But if no one was here, no one would take the wall seriously.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 81 - People are getting worse by the year. Or at least it feels like it. Lessons forgotten, history ignored, patterns repeated. History being cyclical was meant to be a metaphor. We want to move on, but forgot how we got here. And then repeat ourselves.//wire-RedHorse-2585

Steam Draft 148R29 - The roads felt dead early in the morning. Outside the border, in a nearly abandoned mess of hovels and tin shacks the people still living there had little reason to sprint about so early.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 106C26 - Exhaustion and dry rot setting in. Mind going to the spore. Body slowing. It would be wrong to blame the tools I carry for my own failings. For the same reason it's nonsensical when everyone in the ring does. They could get implants, but they'd rather blame age.//wire-Knifework-25913

Steam Rewrite 82 - Smoke drifted from his lips as he marched under the overhang. Hand was always on the holster 'round here. Something made him want someone to try him. He expected it and nearly desired to be tested.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 82 - It's hard to tell if modern society is what we wanted it to be. Far from utopia, but is it better than the years leading here? Better than the badlands, but did we do better than even the dawn of the century? I see society repeating the same mistakes.//wire-RedHorse-2586

Patreon Draft 149R29 - It was better to watch than participate, when it came to studying the people coming through the gates. Gloves and masks only protected someone so much, considering what came through.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 83 - Their whispers were getting to him. They were turning against him. Couldn't trust the snitches and turncoats among his crew. Didn't know which ones were a problem, so that meant was all of them.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 83 - I see children with rifles, thinking war will be adventure. Men who only see profit in pitting us against one another. Governments who see land rather than the cost. It having always been our nature doesn't excuse it. We're retreading an ouroboros.//wire-RedHorse-2587

Steam Draft 150R29 - Every step felt like a crawl, sprinting down the corridors of the old building. Every breath felt like it would be her last. She knew she could be cut down by a stray round at any second.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 84 - Smoke clouded their vision. They watched the piles burn before them. Knowing everything in there needed to disappear in a cloud of ash and gasoline like it had never even existed in the first place.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 84 - Say you were walking around in the Slums, found a nice cozy spot to sit, and some guy with a knife comes up asking for your wallet? Wake up and smell the ashes. If your response isn't to open fire on him, you know why you were targeted.//wire-AfternoonAshes-2588

Patreon Draft 151R29 - Some people shouldn't be crossed. The unstable ones perpetually on the edge of cutting someone apart for fun in some back alley where no one would hear her scream. She'd crossed a line.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 85 - His joint still ached from the installation. Doctors told him that'd go away, but they'd told him that a decade ago when they actually did the surgeries. Nerves were fried and his brain knew it.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 85 - Probably nothing to worry about though, right? That's what the government would say about a cult moving in. Not their problem if all the public networks get compromised with malware and spam again. Planoists know better than to go after Tower.//wire-Apocryphal-2589

Steam Draft 152R29 - Some things never truly went out of style. Technology was not a straight line, and networks becoming unreliable at best meant landlines were a sane choice again. Booths came back in time.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 86 - All he was getting from his speakers was static mingling with the vague impressions of music. His radio had went out a month ago, but there wasn't much to listen to in the middle of gridlock otherwise.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 86 - If you want a fun time. Head down to the Projects, around Strode, and try to watch the crowds. Of course you'd have to blend in with them though. Wouldn't want to step into that mess without proper camouflage. The game is spotting the crazies.//wire-DeltaRed-25810

Patreon Draft 153R29 - Streets weren't safe at night. Lit or not, because they weren't safe during the day either. There was always someone looking for prey, and if there wasn't a herd, then you were prey.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Rewrite 87 - Every creak and crack from stepping on some piece of old debris, felt like a death knell for the operation. Their caution would only carry them so far, but stealth was necessary for success.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 87 - In an age of artificial intelligence, it's obvious what would be managing their surveillance. But do they have it locked away in the airport for its safety, or for ours? How do we know if they control the system, or if it's their puppeteer?//wire-ThousandEyes-25811

Steam Draft 154R29 - She quickly ground her heels on the street with every step. Little malfunctions troubling her mind and body as she moved. Knee to floor, the prosthetic was always a moment from failing.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 88 - Exhaustion ate at him. Slowly, his beating heart felt as if it was trying to escape his chest. The chase felt like it was never ending. He wished the target would simply give up already and surrender.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 88 - Say you're driving down a road, and you see a broken down truck on the side. A woman is trying to flag you down. Do you stop? Should you stop? Is this a moral or practical question? Is she actually in danger, or is she a carjacker?//wire-DestructibleTimes-25812

Patreon Rewrite 89 - It felt cold somehow, this close to the arcologies. Sweltering, and humid, but something about the enclosed landscape seemed cold to him. Human and inhumane in the mess that was Evanston's hives.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 89 - In the cold light of day, everything is clear. From the ashes in the dust flaking down amidst the wind, to the smell of exhaust from traffic in the road. Wake up and smell the ashes, it's a new day. To kick things off, river's on fire again.//wire-AfternoonAshes-25813

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL25719~V1~L23

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Steam Draft 144R29 - Steam drifted past him while he walked. Trucks loaded cargo, and workers rushed by continually. He had to adjust his mask. 'Didn't want any of them recognising him from the bulletin.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 80 - She didn't sign up for this. Quick in, quick out. Not a siege. Anarchists tried hitting the gate again mid job and then Tower swarmed everything. They thought her team were with the bomb throwers now.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 80 - Networks are vulnerable again. They always were, but being able to hire those guys every time things started again bought peace of mind through. Now that they're gone, no patches or cheap work. I can already feel nutjobs coming for my network again.//wire-Apocryphal-2584

Patreon Draft 145R29 - Cold filtered down his throat. Eyes closed, as flickering warmth crackled before him and warmed his flesh. He tried to ignore the off taste and the pain in his joints. Just for now.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 146R29 - A wise man would have stayed in the city, rather than walking into the Badlands to threaten him. The deal was perfect before the buyer got an ego about it, thinking a gun is haggling.//cpd-Luminen

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL25718~V1~L22

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Steam Draft 138R29 - A small humming filled her as little flickers of data filtered through her brain. Thoughts and sensations that were subtle but far too obvious once she was used to it. Little paranoia's.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 102C26 - Had to be arson, right? Considering how bad the damage was. Took this long to find the right guy, and beat the answer out of him. Wouldn't talk otherwise, considering he nearly killed us all. Found bombs in his shack after. Cops weren't interested until that.//wire-SmokingCrater-2599

Patreon Rewrite 77R29 - The sky glittered for him. Slowly and gracefully, the lights of helicopters drifted through the smog, and gave him a lovely show. His brain was so liquid he thought somehow it was just for him.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 77 - Could it have anything to do with their secretaries being murdered every other month? 'Noticed that little thread. Which corporation is this? Sobain Solutions. Planoists finally took out the cheap network guys keeping the cultists out of our wires.//wire-Apocryphal-2581

Patreon Draft 139R29 - 'Days only seemed to get hotter year after year. Didn't mean people could stop their work just because of the temperature though. Just meant they had to find ways to adapt.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 103C26 - Say you were trapped while flames as hot as the sun burned through the land, and poison rained from the sky. How would you escape a reactor melting down in full? Or, more accurately how do you defend against someone building a bomb designed to do that?//wire-Scarlet-25910

Steam Rewrite 78 - The trick became to follow the sun after untold days in the dust. He had to trust the horizon after he lost the compass, map, and his course entirely. But he knew the direction the sun rose and set.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 78 - Vans covered in rainbows, cheap ice, and the endless heat of the day baking people into the asphalt. What do all of these have in common? Summer. This isn't an ad for F Easy, but might as well be. Remember to hydrate if you want to stay alive.//wire-AfternoonAshes-2582

Steam Draft 140R29 - Between the gaudy colours, the fog that seemed to drift around here, day by day and night by night, the delirious nature of the experience was a good thing. No one wanted to see clearly.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 104C26 - Focusing on the big things will distract you from the smaller details you would miss otherwise. On the other hand, focusing on the wrong details entirely will bog you down too much to see the bigger picture at all. You need to look at both your life and society.//wire-Wildfire-25911

Patreon Rewrite 79 - You're being watched. The thought slipped through his brain. There were a thousand eyes on every corner. Not those of men, but of machines. Uncoordinated drones feeding info back to something more.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 79 - You're being watched. If you don't already realise that, then you're a fool. The drones all feed back to Tower systems, the cameras all feed back to Tower systems, and their vehicles all feed back to the same. But, what's running those systems?//wire-ThousandEyes-2583

Patreon Draft 141R29 - 'Wasting her time or just waiting for business to come? Sitting for hours after the contact was supposed to be here was grating. Wheels were always in motion, and her time was precious.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 142R29 - He often wondered why they built a dump on this end. Had to have been here before the wall. Otherwise, they'd have to have a better way of dealing with their trash by now, right?//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 143R29 - Dust slowly filtered down from the movement. Last floor to check for the target. Last floor to clear before they owned the place. The target was standing between them and their payoff.//cpd-Luminen

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL25717~V1~L21

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Patreon Draft 133R28 - Ash slipped down the chasm, while he leaned over the rails. Neighbours on the other side were fighting in the open again. Not like anyone had to pretend to not be watching their mess.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 101C26 - To be expected, I guess. Not like the people handing out the cash actually care to put us back together. Not like they want to keep around broken parts. Fuckers. Rounded up everyone caught in it, and decided to do the footwork the cops wouldn't for the arson.//wire-SmokingCrater-2598

Patreon Rewrite 75 - Stay casual. Keep the blank, tired look. Stay leisurely. Keep smoking. Stay unimportant and look like you don't matter. Blend into the crowd. It was better when no one noticed who you were.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 75 - Lucky number 7. Have you considered today might be your lucky day to see four 7's in your hand? Could be your lucky- seven bodies found amongst the wreckage of a burned apartment complex along Maple Street, near Gamble. Arson suspected by crews.//wire-ScarletKing-25730

Steam Draft 134R28 - His day began with aching eyes and a pounding mind. Old flickering lights filtered through the blinds over his window, and the reflection striking his eye forced him to start moving.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Rewrite 76 - It would have cost nothing for him to simply have walked away before he entered the ring. But, staying costed everything. He knew that as he choked on the copper taste spilling forth from his throat.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 76 - Drives wiped, papers burned, employees missing, and a whole corporation packed up overnight. Small corporation mind you, but still. What did they do to warrant packing up like that? Their offices caught fire by the time anyone knew they were gone.//wire-Apocryphal-25731

Patreon Draft 135R28 - Every beat of his heart was a step closer to death, but he couldn't stop. He was covered in his own blood now. Nicked by the guy in the Tower. If he stopped he was dead anyway.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 136R28 - His life was ebbing away. One foot in the grave now, and he knew he didn't have much longer now. Wasn't much left in him anymore. Second shot hit, and he knew he wasn't getting away.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 137R28 - A hiss could be heard somewhere far in the distance. She never seemed to be able to escape it, as if it was following her. Sounds like a voice. No one else seemed to notice it though.//cpd-Luminen

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL25715~V1~L20

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Patreon Draft 127R28 - Cold expressions of mild disgust punctuated the talk. He was nothing to them, though the subtlety was that this was normal in his dealing with Modes. Even their behaviour felt uniform.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 97C26 - That's how we come to why I am broadcasting today. Got one life to give, and i've decided to ensure society goes on by hanging the guy who went after my sister. He's going off an overpass. And, if I get caught so be it. But, had to be done. Address of the event is-//wire-Hale-2594

Steam Rewrite 74 - The setting sun meant little to most people. But to her, it meant a sort of freedom. Darkness meant a lack of safety to the pearl clutchers. But without sunlight, she could wander freely for once.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 74 - No one lives forever, ultimately. So, it would make sense that you'd want to make your life count for something rather than just trying to extend it ad infinitum. So, make it count. Find a purpose. Find honour. Protect what matters to you.//wire-Undershaft-25729

Steam Draft 128R28 - She slicked her hair back, slid on the jacket, sharpened her razor, loaded her shotgun, and joined the others. It was to be a reckoning tonight. No killing was just a guideline now.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 98C26 - My... Arm is gone, but that's okay! That zeta did me a favor, it means I can get chrome! That's better right... right?... will... I be able to feel my sons hair between these new metallic fingers-?//wire-syntax

Patreon Draft 129R28 - It was almost funny, the sheer disconnect between where he was standing, and the life people had in the distance. What did he do to deserve being barred from passing the gates?//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 99C26 - This will be my final report, more than likely. I'm sick. Contaminated. Burned out. And the enemy is at the gates, so to speak. Even if I live through what's coming, I probably won't be me anymore. Don't get a neural interface. Don't trust anyone with a mask.//wire-DieInTheDark-2596

Steam Draft 130R28 - In the shade, it was easy to ignore what they were doing. No cameras in this spot, no drones flying by, and no traffic. It made business simpler, to be in the open and without fear.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 100C26 - My life is a smoking crater, but that's how it is for most people I know. Lungs burned out, meds not fixing it, and work drying up for most of the people caught in the inferno in the dump a few months back. Hard to work like that when you can't breathe.//wire-SmokingCrater-2597

Patreon Draft 131R28 - Cold mists slowly filtered through his mask while he waited under the overpass. Contact was taking his time, and the morning air was getting to him after hours in the damp now.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 132R28 - Being used to the city made it easy to ignore the sights. Advertisements mingling with graffiti and neon seemed to coat the city like unintentional murals. But, who noticed anymore?//cpd-Luminen

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]

[luminenwalker]

Chimarae~CD1431~FL25714~V1~L19

[ Shattered banners and broken blades. ]

Patreon Draft 105C26 - The request had been absurd. The price however had been far more reasonable. That's how she justified sitting here, day in and day out, waiting to pass along the package to the target.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 91C26 - Maybe its the fact that most keep dreamin' instead of waking up that makes the nightmares of this city so fucking real.//wire-LittleBear

Patreon Rewrite 69 - He couldn't figure out what he had done wrong this time. He didn't think he had done anything, but obviously he must have. It was always his fault when someone treated him like this. Every time.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 69 - Everything burns in the end. Everything. There's no real escape from the end of things. The end of one's life and everything that comes from it. Watching my neighbour kind of proved that to me. Guy got in through his window, and he's gone now.//wire-Watchman-25724

Steam Draft 106C26 - Nothing was truly lost, that couldn't one day be found. That's what she told herself. She had to imagine that was true. That what was lost was waiting for her at the end. Past the haze.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 92C26 - How far have you went in your journey? How far would you be willing to go to get just a little further than everyone else? How much would you be willing to replace for an edge over your competition? Consider those questions, and consider seeing a doctor.//wire-NewFlesh-25830

Steam Rewrite 70 - The crowds meant nothing. Just people in the way, there to distract him from his purpose. He looked the same as everyone else in that moment. He was just a blade in the crowd. Unworthy of notice.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 70 - Y'all ever watch the Tower patrols running around the border region like ants? Back and forth, endlessly, like there's a point. Schedule isn't random, and neither are the drones. It's fascinating watching the snipers up there eyeing the whole area.//wire-FaultLine-25725

Patreon Draft 107C26 - Three short strikes, one after the other. He could hear the short striking sounds in the distance, a repetitious pattern from the guy on the corner. He'd been at it for hours now.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 93C26 - Peace is an illusion. Never forget what lies under the façade of calm that everyone wears in public. If you let your guard down, that's an invitation to be taken advantage of while you walk. A signal for pickpockets and muggers to let their predator out.//wire-Hale-25831

Patreon Rewrite 71 - 'Knocked the air out of his lungs. Everything choked and strained briefly, while his brain shut down and he hit the ground with a solid thump of pain. The lack of control for that was his downfall.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 71 - Everything is fading, nothing is real, and functionally anything is possible in what remains of the world. That's how you need to look at life. The scars in your flesh are not your limit. Pick yourself up. Don't stop moving towards a better life.//wire-Scrimshaw-25726

Steam Draft 108C26 - Sweat dripped down, and he wiped his face clean in the heat again. It'd been a long day, as would tomorrow be. But, for just a moment, he could take his time and enjoy himself.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 94C26 - Sometimes, people deserve to see the predator come out. But in reality, it's just proof the person who let the predator out on the ones who didn't deserve it, weren't worth keeping around in society. Society can't handle having people like that around for very long.//wire-Hale-2591

Steam Rewrite 72 - Everything stank of blood for far too long. The bastard had kicked his head in even after he'd handed over the cash. He should have fought, but hindsight is 20/20, and fear is more powerful than will.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 72 - Ever watched a riot and notice there's always a guy that has nothing to do with whatever they're all pretending it's about, who looks like he was somehow the one who actually planned it? What do you call someone like that? The guy organising it?//wire-OrangeFlame-25727

Patreon Draft 109R27 - End of the line, that's what he heard himself admit every time they beat him. Being caught was merely the beginning of this. They wanted to break him, before they let him die here.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 95C26 - Society can't handle keeping its predators around. The obvious ones I mean. The ones who can't keep themselves under control. Society is fragile like that. It'd stop being society for very long if we let people run loose in the worst ways possible. That's the façade.//wire-Hale-2592

Patreon Rewrite 73 - Motive didn't matter. Reason, cause, or logic didn't factor in either. All he knew was the effect, and that was the end of his own life. If he didn't fight back, this would be his end. Simple as.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Rewrite 73 - Wake up and smell the ashes, gentlemen. Coming to a road near you, checkpoints they claim are to ensure drunk drivers aren't running around. But they'll demand to search your vehicle mid investigation to find out what you have stashed in there.//wire-AfternoonAshes-25728

Steam Draft 110R27 - The walls felt neglected, after they were installed all those years ago. Covered in layer upon layer of spray paint and rotting advertisements, they represented the nature of the Slums.//cpd-Luminen

Wire Draft 96C26 - A knifing here or there and people adapt. But, if it keeps going, people stop trusting one another. City shuts down. Cops start the 'beatings will end when morale improves' adage. That's where we are now. Our Alighieri style inferno was wrought by our own hands.//wire-Hale-2593

Patreon Draft 111R27 - He could tell the cameras were watching him for something. They were watching everyone, scanning for someone to make the wrong move, or something off about them. Mutation, perhaps?//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 112R27 - The smoke pouring from his lips drifted into the fog, while he sat on his balcony watching the city. Waiting for her was taking forever, but he was fine with enjoying the sights for now.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 113R27 - Tired, long day. Took three strikes to get going after handing the guy off to the guard. He exhaled slowly, trying to savour the moment. But, he couldn't enjoy it. Job still seemed off.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 114R27 - Bitter coffee filtered through his lips while he walked through the early mist to his job. Workers already clogging things, as business began for the day. City never slept he guessed.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 115R27 - An old man slowly wandered down the tunnels, listening to the beat, and looking at the murals. He tried to ignore the sight, but he he knew the fresh meat walking down here was police.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 116R27 - 'Dealer talked like the world was ending while he handed over the baggy. He always sounded like that though, rambling on about trumpets and the badlands being a desert. Best to ignore it.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 117R27 - No warning would be given, no sound would be made, and no quarter would be offered. He decided to mug her, and so he had made his bed. That was how it would go when she fired on him.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 118R27 - All that mattered in his mind, was fleeing for the sake of the child in his arms. If he was hit, or burned, or fell afterwards, that was inconsequential as long as the kid lived.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 119R27 - Her breath felt like steam, in the coppery stink of the room. Eyes were glazed over in the midst of the incense choked, chanting of the ritual space. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad here.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 120R27 - Her cold blue stare caught his eye, while he realised what the procession off in the distance actually was. He saw the chains, the shotguns, and the lit incense. She was begin dragged.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 121R27 - Every shoulder bump in the crowd was met with him wondering which of them would try to pick his pockets. Not worrying about that problem was a fool's errand after the last time.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 122R27 - Occasionally it's important to remember, that not everyone on the street was competition. Not always. Not a target, not targeting you, just another person. As hard as it may be.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 123R27 - The world is burning. That's what they told themselves. It was waiting for someone to come and extinguish the problem. Unfortunately, no one could agree on what the problem is.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 124R27 - His joints ached still. Little phantom whispers from shrapnel that had been taken out a decade ago when he replaced the limb wholesale. Should have went away by now, but never would.//cpd-Luminen

Patreon Draft 125R28 - Passing out in an alley was foolish at best. At best. He'd chosen to be an easy target simply by making himself vulnerable. Still, it paid to be quiet while sneaking up on him.//cpd-Luminen

Steam Draft 126R28 - Crowds were safety. Amidst the noise, and the unpredictability, the sheer number of people made it harder to notice anyone specifically. It made it harder for his pursuers to spot him.//cpd-Luminen

[ You can hear the banshee's cry under the chimarae moon. ]

[ For the wild hunt draws near, and so does the end of your years. ]