# Hyper-Reality - Session 008

### South Chatham, Chicago; 01:30 AM

Amber wandered through the neon night. The scent of ramen and cheap booze stuck to her coat, save the occasional wisp of wind through the leaves. It'd been getting colder, the days shorter. And Amber's eyes, viewed in the mirror of shop windows, seeming emptier than ever before.

*'How did it turn out like this?'* she wondered, sheltering outside a konbini. Having rid herself of the Mafiya's tacit blessing, she'd suddenly found her very existence an affront to society. Old contacts refused to see her, and when tonight she'd tried seeing them in person, all she got was a tasty bruise, and her face against the asphalt.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking fair. In a world where corpo bigwigs fab'd whole-ass faces on the reg, who cared if she had a drop of ursidae? Turns out, everyone and their grandma. Worse, *especially* their grandma. The next time some old crone called her a 'xeno', she'd ventilate their brainpan.

If only jail wasn't worse.

As she began to light a hard-earned cig, her ursine ears perked at something above the thunder of foundries.

> [!FAIL] Amber Lu

> **Hearing:** 13 - *Failure*

The sickening impact of flesh against stone, followed by a massive blade slicing through air. She glanced in konbini to find the cashier asleep, then scurried sideways as if she'd seen a rat. No bueno either way. The noise only grew nearer, now mixed with a hoarse sorta mewling one *felt* rather than heard.

Then she glanced up, and saw cyan neon plummeting for the street.

> [!FAIL] Amber Lu

> **Fright Check:** 13 - *Failure*

Amber hid her eyes. Good call, as shards of windowpane and bottles swirled about her. When she looked up anew, she felt her every muscle in her body tense at once.

Sat within a shallow crater was a shifting, pulsing mound of flesh. Eight spindly legs radiated from an amorphous center, squeezing black eyes and wheezing mouths. It had the color of rotten meat, and a scent to match. Tan in some spots, pink in others, iridescent where wet. A few large swathes had been gashed open, leaking a pool of blood as it picked itself up.

Time to get the fuck outta here. She lunged for her motorbike, but caught her foot on a bumpy sidewalk.

> [!FAIL] Amber Lu

> **Fast-Draw:** 15 - *Failure*

Landing hard against cracked asphalt, she fumbled in her trenchcoat for her ten-mill. Her sweaty hands struggled in the dark, all whilst the creature stared at her and roared. An icy shock ran through her veins when it near.

"No! God, fuck! Not here!" she screamed, just before an explosion of blood took out one bank of eyes.

Black greaves landed on the asphalt before her, inlaid neon shining through a drizzle. Its wearer was short, shaped like a femme, and covered head-to-toe in some kind of graphene composite. Deep cuts and corrosion told the tale of a protracted battle.

> [!check] Amber Lu

> **Perception:** 8 - *Success*

The moment the figure glanced back at her, Amber snapped a photo through her optic nerve. She watched it deploy a thick fog of nanites, assembling a sharp and fearsome scythe.

The ensuing minutes arrived as a blur. When figure dashed, Amber let off three rounds from the ten-mill. Her impromptu ally made good on the creature's pain, streaking neon as its blade ripped through flesh. By time it'd circled for its next pass, Amber was loading another mag, and the creature wailed at her feet.

---

Amber approached the twitching mass once it'd finally fallen silent. The smell alone made her retch, but at least it had the veneer of familiarity. On the contrary, she'd never seen such a hodgepodge of flesh, viscera, and splintered bone. Its dark growths and rocky nodules reminded her of monsters from her parents' stories.

She resolved to get answers. Taking it by the elbow, she tore the figure off its radio, shouting, "You got five seconds to explain what the hell that was, or I swear to god, I..."

Fuck. What *was* she gonna do? Snap a photo, share it planetwide? Like they'd trust some gutter-rat from the streets 'a Chicago. Even Amber couldn't always tell fact from fiction.

As if sensing indecision, the figure flicked a tiny datagram into Amber's head. In moments, her world faded to darkness, indescribably comfortable. When she came to, she found herself handcuffed in the back of a police wagon, riding at gunpoint beside a phial of Red Sand.

Unopened.