Someone had once described cyberspace as a consensual hallucination, and as the persona of a fairly young elf floated amid the black void it was hard not to agree. He watched the variety of other personas below going about their business in the impossible world, only to be interrupted by a sharp, computerized voice. An icon of a small bird appeared on the back of his virtual hand, Shrike holding it up as it spoke in chirps. “A new message has arrived. Unknown sender. Shall I play it?”
“Go ahead, Sentry, then resume your monitoring,” Shrike said. “This must be the guy Zack mentioned.”
“Acknowledged.” The bird leaped off Shrike's hand with a flap of its wings, flying outwards in circles around Shrike as a flat, floating icon appeared in front of him. He narrowed his eyes, it was the silhouette of a jester, radiating neon blue light. Just as soon as it appeared the icon dissolved into particles of light, reassembling into a computer generated image of a harlequin as the color shifting to red.
The elf gave a smirk and a shake of his head at the absurdity of it all as the dancing harlequin began its speech. As it settled down, Shrike reaches a hand out and grabs the icon, clenching his fist closed and watching as the message disappeared. When he opened his palm the blue icon of a jester floated above it, disappearing as he saved it to his cyberdeck's memory.
“250, huh...? Could use that. Sentry!” he called out, waiting for the small bird to return to him.
“Yes master?” it tweeted as it settled down on his wrist.
“We need to do some digging and get ready, tell Ruby we'll have to reschedule. A job lead's come up.”
“Acknowledged. I'll send a message at once and resume monitoring.” The agent program gave an odd bow for a bird and vanished, zooming off in whatever direction Ruby was in. Meanwhile, Shrike himself shot off to find some information on this club. He found a public database shaped like a library and plucked a file off a shelf, reading it quickly. “Sounds like my kind of place,” he noted to himself; a club full of deckers, apparently, and they played his favorite music. No doubt quite the show. He made a copy of the file before putting it back in place, flying off to find more information.
About an hour before the meeting time Shrike walked out the door of his apartment. His real world self looked much like his normal persona in the Matrix: a tall elf with long blond hair. The main differences were the triangle of datajacks on the back of his neck and the metallic silver of his artificial hands. The long, lined trench coat he wore obscured it but the metal continued up his right arm to his elbow, hiding compartments that held a light pistol and spare magazine. Also obscured by the coat was the rest of his gear: his cyberdeck in a large pocket, a taser in a concealed holster at the small of his back, an Ares Predator heavy pistol in a quick draw holster, and pouches on his belt containing all sorts of smaller items. Two extra magazines each for the light and heavy pistol, four spare loose taser darts, a small medkit, and a pair of trauma patcha. He hoped he wouldn’t get into a fight, but if everything he hoped for came through he wouldn’t be in this situation.
On his way to the cab stop he made the final change, switching the SIN loaded on his deck over to his alternate. He preferred not to have his activities in the shadows, even just going to a meeting, traced back to his “real” identity. As real as a fake can get, at least.
“Welcome, Rayth Ranthos,” the automated cab said as he sat down in the back seat. He gave a smirk at the sound of his alternate SIN’s fake name. “Please state your destination.”
“Syberspace, Downtown,” Shrike said, settling in and bringing up his deck’s AR interface on his DNI. He idly browsed around the Matrix, relieved the cab was an automatic one; he didn’t much like the chatter real cab drivers tended to make. He had a feeling his life was about to get a whole lot more interesting...
