He was leaning against the ledge on the flat rooftop, watching security footage through the interface in his eye as he waited for best-laid plans to inevitably go to shit by the current batch of idiots. The way it always did when someone thought they knew better than Shroud. Well, they’d figure it out…one way or another. Probably the hard way, though.
Pressure hit his head and chest, and his knees would’ve completely buckled if his augments didn’t keep him somewhat upright. What the fuck? The HUD confirmed a spike in positive g-force as his vision blurred, and he took a labored breath against the sudden increase in gravity. A sharp pitch rang in his ears, and, with a thought, he turned down the auditory cortex of his brain to concentrate.
He glanced around to find the source: the rooftop was clear. He strained to grab the ledge, using more effort than normal to pull himself up, and peered down toward the ground. The computer in his head began to glitch as it read out arbitrary values and tried to quantify what exactly he was looking at in the alley below. Shit, that was new. On both counts.
It looked as if a blade had sliced through paper, edges curling out. Only this wasn’t arts and crafts. This had been cut into pure nothingness, into thin air, as if God himself was using the world as a canvas—if you believed in such a thing.
But as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished, stitching itself back together with no scar to prove it ever happened. If he didn’t have photographic evidence, he might’ve thought he lost it entirely. He took a deep, lightweight breath as gravity corrected itself and he tried to steady himself against the increased blood flow.
But while the tear in reality had disappeared, it had left a man in its place.
He slowly turned his hearing back up, taking the time it took to acclimate to surveil what the fuck was going on. He wouldn’t have believed what he was seeing, if not for the said giant tear in reality, or, you know, the computer clearly identifying him as…him. Again, what the fuck? Best case: some kind of fucked up shapeshifter; at worst…well, out of every scenario he ran through his head, he couldn’t decide what was worse. His eye zoomed in on the corporate uniform. No augments, either. How-? Why would he-I-? Fuck.
The timing was shit (as always) but no, fuck, he couldn’t let this wait. He pulled his black hood over his head shading his eyes from view and felt the half-mask extend, covering his nose and mouth. Better to bury the lede on this one.
He placed a hand on the ledge, hopping over in one fell swoop and dropped the three-or-so stories, landing on his feet and blocking the other-him from exiting the alley to the street. He grabbed the holstered gun at his side, but he kept his finger off the trigger and kept it lowered, pointed at the ground in front of the other rather than at him. The last thing he should ever do is underestimate himself.
“Hey,” his voice echoed with the slight reverb from the mask, and kept a healthy distance between them, “where the fuck did you come from?”
