Tanarielis City, 2347 When a man in a service uniform is running through the glass back of a house worth more than everything I had ever earned, lost, and still owed put together, there are only two important questions. The first is how and why he ended up here. The second is whether I’ll reach…
The Name | Parallel World: Darknet 2336 New here? Start with Part 1 [here] or continue with Part 2 [here]. I don’t like watching someone freeze up. Panic, rage, hysteria, even some stupid verbal outburst—you can work with those. They move all of us, make us screw up, talk more than we should, sometimes even…
Old Cargo Corridor 9 | Darknet Parallel World, 2336 New here? Read Part 1 [here]. I’ve never liked sunrises in Darknet. In Tanarielis, sunrise at least pretends to mean something—a new day, a new chance, or at least a new lie in prettier wrapping. In Darknet, light just makes it easier to see exactly what…
In the Line of Duty | Parallel World: Darknet 2336 The first shot wasn’t aimed at me. That was the most annoying part of the whole thing. Not in the sense that I’ve got some fragile ego and need bullets to show me personal respect. It’s just that when the shot isn’t meant for you,…
Tanarielis City, 2347 New here? Start with Part 1 [here] or continue with Part 2 [here]. The front lock clicked. Then a second time. And the third sound was no longer a lock. It was a cutting tool biting into the metal doorframe, leaving behind the smell of heated alloy and very bad intentions. Aris…
Tanarielis City, 2347 New here? Read Part 1 [here]. Gunfire erupted below us. Not warning fire. Not hesitant. Real. The first volley came from the people who had come for the cube. The second—from the police. Nobody needed to explain the difference to me. You could hear it. The police were shooting like they wanted…
Tanarielis City, 2347 I was lying flat on my stomach on the cold grate of a service crawlway above the auditing sector of the Central Judicial Archive, trying not to think too hard about how illegal all of this was. Two floors below us, the white lines of the security grid glowed in the dark….