The mile-high super-towers and monolithic arcologies loomed overhead. The foot traffic might have thinned out a bit thanks to the late hour, but there were still plenty of levitating cars, trucks, and motorbikes passing along on the road. All of these electric vehicles made their own blend of synthetic engine noises for the sake of the sight-impaired, and those idiots who were paying more attention to their AR-feeds than what was going on in the world around them.

Blood dripped down a pale white fingertip and onto the dark gray glass-crete. A drop here, a drop there, and bit by bit, milliliter by milliliter, the young woman found herself fading. Emily Yang was a freelancer. A sometimes mercenary, a sometimes courier, and sometimes thief. If you didn’t work for the governments, or the corporations, one needed to be flexible about where one was getting one’s money from.

Simple courier work normally wasn’t particularly hazardous but Emily Yang strongly suspected that she’d been set up this time around. Her first hunch was the drop-off point being a little busier than the fixer had promised. The second hint was the folks from the Hundred Demons Collective, the Monkey’s Paw, and the local Decem City Police Department all showing up at the same bloody time, looking for the package she was carrying. Emily hadn’t even been carrying anything particularly questionable.

The packages she’d held were just some “party-favors” of dubious, but not necessarily actionable, legality, so Emily guessed she was being used as the cover and patsy for some other hinky shit.

Emily barely got out of there in one piece and right now, she needed somewhere to lay low, while the heat died down and she assessed exactly how fucked she was. Emily’s best guess was that she was a little more fucked then she’d been during a very steamy, very physical, but extremely short-lived thing she’d had going on with three particularly attractive members of the Broken Lamp Biker Club, that one time.

As things stood, if Emily wasn’t almost two-thirds chrome and software, like most of the folk wandering around Lux-Aqua-Tempestas, she probably would have died already. Other girls got impractical clothing, and bits of shiny stone when they were flush with cash. Emily, being of a more practical sort, preferred to treat herself with high-ended cybernetic augments and nanotech treatments, when she was going through a prosperous period.

Even then, she’d had to shut down her AR-Feed to keep her vision from being blocked out by warnings and emergency notifications, and the constant pings from her diagnostic software were like arrows striking the wrinkles of her brain. Emily wasn’t sure, but she was pretty certain the motors in her shoulder blade had just given up the ghost. Rather than saying Emily had managed to get away from the set up, it was better to say she’d barely managed to crawl away with her little life after being bushwhacked.

“Shit...Shit...I need somewhere to just...chill...for a bit,” muttered Emily. She had a tube of emergency repair-nanites that hopefully would be able to help her recover from most of the critical damage. However, she almost certainly would pass out before the repairs were done. Which meant she’d need to find somewhere safe to hide out in.

“Fuck, they found my apartment...Well, good thing I keep most of my shit in secured caches anyway,” grumbled Emily. As her in-home security suite sent her an update informing her of a violent break-in, and the few surviving cameras showed her some tatted up guys in suits turning all her things over.

Emily couldn’t help sighing. This confirmed that this was a set-up by her fixer, because only Sister Carla had enough intel on her to tell anyone where Emily lived. More importantly, it meant that Emily had an even greater need to find somewhere to hide out, because the people who were looking for her now actually knew who they were looking for. It was a small mercy that Emily had no close-friends, family, or significant others that they could squeeze and harass.

“Shit...Shit...It’s all over,” Emily couldn’t help feeling sorry for herself. She felt her movements growing increasingly clumsy and stiff, as the loss of all the blood she’d bled and mechanical-fluid she’d leaked, rapidly caught up to her. The adrenaline was wearing off, and she was succumbing to her injuries. The only thing that kept Emily going was the knowledge that if she collapsed in the street she’d probably not be waking up.

Then Emily saw a storefront. It was a weird place, with a definite retro vibe compared to the rest of the city. The establishment looked alien with its lack of neon, holographic advertisements, or even just simple graffiti. Emily also couldn’t help noticing a lack of visible cameras. Thus she decided to take a gamble.

Emily stumbled inside the store, wanting to get off the streets asap because the sound of the sirens in the distance seemed to be drawing nearer. Wanting to avoid being seen from outside, Emily rushed deeper into the shop, not really looking where she was going. The next she knew, she ended up bouncing off one of the most outstanding pairs of breasts she’d ever laid eyes on...The force of the fall that followed knocking her out.

*************************************************************************************************************

Emily was both shocked and relieved to actually wake up. As her mind abruptly transitioned into darkness, she’d figured that was it for her. Emily had expected that the store owners would call the cops, and then the cops would call whatever gang or corp they ‘actually’ worked for, and Emily would be killed. Her second most likely guess was waking up in some dark back room, on a dirty operating table, her limbs disconnected, her network-link torn out.

Nowhere in Emily’s predictions had she forecasted herself waking up in a comfy bed, and fluffy, almost ludicrously soft, sheets. The walls were covered in a tasteful pastel-print wallpaper. The floor was covered in lush carpeting. This place she’d woken up in looked more like an ultra-expensive, but low-key luxurious, hotel rooms rather than some gangbanger’s torture-dungeon.

“Hold the fucking phone...Is that bedside drawer made of actual wood?” said Emily. Her gray eyes opened wide.

Last she checked, the last real trees had long ago gone extinct in “Lux-Aqua”, most of the expensive fruits on the market were cultivated from gene-modded bushes and ivies. There were also kelp-cultivars but those were usually used to grow synthetic meat. Emily was now completely sure that some far outside her, or her fixer’s, predictions had taken place. The kind of folk who could grow “trees” weren’t the kind of folk that idly got wrapped up in the schemes, and lives, of three-bit players like Emily and Carla.

The door opened and in walked a beautiful girl-next-door type. A blue-eyed blonde, whose spectacular bosom helped Emily immediately place her as the woman who’d knocked Emily’s lights out.

“Oh! Um, h-, hello, good to see you’re awake,” said the blonde. Looking oddly sheepish and genuinely concerned.

Behind the blonde woman, there was a figure, humanoid, scrawny, with no face. Wearing a jumpsuit, and wearing what was clearly some kind of store uniform on top of the jumpsuit. Emily quickly assumed that this second figure was some kind of android, or humanoid drone, and largely dismissed the creature from her thoughts, turning her attention to the woman. Only remembering to warily keep half an eye on the creature, in the way one would keep an eye open on a new knife, or gun, that had been introduced to a room.

“Uh, yeah...I’m awake. Thanks for that, I guess,” said Emily.

“Huh?” blinked the blonde looking a little puzzled.

“Um, I’m assuming you were the one who took care of me?” said Emily. Not wanting to say that she’d actually been thanking the woman for not turning her into the authorities, or throwing her out in the street, as many others would have. Lest she give her benefactors some unfortunate ideas.

“Oh...Actually, that wasn’t me...I know a fair amount of first-aid, but I’m no healer, that was my husband, Ellis,” said the woman. Smiling and shaking her head.

“Ah...Well, er, please convey my thanks,” said Emily, deciding that it’d probably be best for her to take this opportunity to vamoose. Pleasantly surprised to find that her diagnostic software was reporting that all her cybernetic and biological systems were functioning at a nominal state.

“Heh, no worries, you can thank him yourself. He was just about to come and check up on you,” said the blonde.

“Er...That’s okay. I was just about to get out of your...Fuck!,” said Emily. Trying to beg off, so she could hastily make her exit. Trailing off near the end as the door to the room opened.

“Eh?” said the blonde. Tilting her head to the side in mild puzzlement.

“Good morning,” said the mysterious “Doctor” Ellis.

“Er...Sorry, I guess I moved weird,” said Emily. Blushing. Refusing to admit that she’d been completely thrown when the newcomer came in, a man so jaw-droppingly, beautiful he looked like he was computer-generated. His spiraling, yellow, eyes seemed to simultaneously brighten and darken the room.

“Hm...Curious. You should already be in a peak physical state, but just in case, let’s just give you a touch-up, shall we?” said the handsome healer.

“Oh, no that’s okay, it was probably just a...Oh, okay...Wow,” said Emily. Her repudiations of the man’s offered help, quickly subsided as a pale-green light flowed from his hand and her entire body seemed to swell and stretch in a way that felt almost orgasmically good.

“Woah...What did you just do, doc?”

“It was nothing much, just a little restoration spell…” said the man.

“...Spell?” said Emily. Not so blissed out, that she’d failed to notice the weird terminology that the man had used.

“In any case, you seem to be in a hurry to leave our shop, but by all means feel free to peruse our shelves and aisles before you leave,” said the man. Nodding slightly, giving Emily a small, but endlessly charming, smile that almost made her shriek aloud like a die-hard fan at a pop concert, leaving the room. Making Emily feel that it was regretful that the man was gone already.

“Oh, in that case, I should probably bring you your clothes then!” said the blonde, who Emily would shortly after learn was named Josephine. Running out of the room and bringing a set of clothes that were freshly laundered and apparently expertly-repaired considering the lack of obvious stitches, patches, or bullet holes that should have needed stitches and patches if one was covering them up.

A little later, Emily found her way downstairs, after reluctantly leaving the extremely comfortable bed that she’d been lying in, taking a shower, and dressing. Emily saw the handsome keeper and was a little dissatisfied to find that he was markedly less handsome downstairs than he’d been upstairs.

She wasn’t usually the shallow type, but it was almost a little upsetting how jarring the difference was. This went far beyond a woman going a little crazy with a too-stuffed push-up bra, or the man who decides to wear a toupee, girder and fake muscles. Instead, it was like taking someone home to have them scatter into several raccoons when the night was about to reach the good part.

At least in the more normal examples, one could understand the what, why, and how of the deception. Similar to the more extreme case, with the raccoons, Emily couldn’t figure out the reason for the big difference in appearance, it was almost like this version of the man and the man she’d seen upstairs were two separate people. This guy wasn’t ugly exactly, he was just so positively, and oppressively, average, that Emily didn’t know what to say.

The shopkeeper chuckled at some point, which drew Emily’s attention. Then for a brief second the earlier handsomeness shined through, before the average-ness slammed back into place like a wall. Emily found herself even more puzzled because now she was almost sure that she was seeing some kind of AR-filter. She didn’t much like her perceptions being messed with and she wasn’t certain which had been the trick, the handsome stranger, or the average one.

“It’s better this way,” said the man. Seeming to sense the direction her thoughts were flowing.

“Huh?! Er, I mean...What’s better?” said Emily. Playing dumb.

“Isn’t it easier for you to think and control the flow of your thoughts now?” said Ellis.

Emily blinked and then she blushed.

“I...I guess so,” said Emily.

“I’m a merchant...I’m just a guy. I’m not a spectacle. I’m not someone trying to get attention, thus, it’s best for everyone for me to look normal. Don’t you think?” said Ellis. One brow raised.

“Er, yeah...Or like it’s whatever floats your boat. No judgement” said Emily. Blushing again, this time from embarrassment. Realizing that she’d probably been being a little rude with all the staring, and not-so-furtive glances.

“Thanks...I’m glad you understand. We all have our burdens to bear...Speaking of burdens to bear...If you walk a little further, I think you’ll see we carry a product that might interest you…” said Ellis. Nodding towards a certain direction in the store.

“Sure…Wait, is this for real?” said Emily. Snapping out of her awkward mood as she took a few steps and saw the product the man had been talking about.

“Indeed it is,” said Ellis.

“New-Identity-In-A-Box, how the hell does ‘this’ work?! How’s something like that even possible?” said Emily. Staring at the plastic-wrapped package with a look of amusement and extreme skepticism. Yet, somehow sensing that this wasn’t just some dumb gag.

“I think you’ll find it works surprisingly well,” said the shop-owner. Smiling gently.