A harsh rain pounded the streets of Mega-City Decem. One of the pedestrians that were out and about that evening, glowered at the dark gray sky, before mentally interfacing with their electro-static umbrella to increase its strength and breadth.

As the rain fell harder, the weak shielding dome that was keeping her dry became more visible. Glowing a crackling blue-white against the gloom. Increasing the strength and range of the shield would of course increase the battery draw, but she had almost reached her destination and the use of an ambient charger anyway. So using a little of her umbrella’s battery charge was fine. Especially, if it saved her the cost of having to go back to the hair salon.

As she approached a crosswalk, she waved her hand across the sensor. When the stoplight turned red, the walk signal turned green. The woman crossed without incident. Then traffic resumed without incident. The woman walked an additional street length before turning right and entering a nondescript building that still had fliers hanging from it from back when it was a laundromat.

The headlights of one of the many self-driving cars, parked along the sidewalk, lit up as the vehicle unparked itself. The car drove past where the woman had entered. Then drove for a distance gently increasing its pace. Then it turned it right back and continued to move faster and faster.

Tires squealed leaving black markers on the pavement as the car turned sharply and flipped itself onto the sidewalk, and into the side of the nondescript building that the woman had entered. The car’s batteries overcharged themselves to the point of critical failure, and the capacitors failed to mitigate the failure resulting in the catastrophic release of all the energy contained within. Whether by some dark kismet, or the planning of some very insidious minds, the part of the building that car had crashed into, was filled with chemical fumes from a drug operation that was taking place in the building’s basement.

The whole building went up like a firework. Releasing colorful fire and steam, as the windows, doors, and weaker walls were blown out by the volatile explosion that was started by the “malfunctioning” self-driven vehicle. Several people managed to escape the building with their lives and only a few minor burns and smoke-inhalation-based ailments. The woman was not one of them. Nor were the five other souls that she’d arrived for the purpose of meeting and discussing business with.

Ultimately, this was all just another tragic and troublesome event that was taking place within the city. And though it would make it onto the local evening news, it would only be mentioned in passing. Which much of the world only distantly being aware of the event, as the reason they had to go the long way around why driving to and from that direction that day. Only the movers and operators of the city, the high and low-level folks that worked in shadows, would know exactly what had gone down.

A few weeks later, a small and silent, four-propeller drone, would descend from the sky. Hovering within, or rather slightly above, the open-air shrine for a certain temple. This wasn’t the only drone visiting the shrine telecast funeral processions and funeral attendance was quite popular nowadays. What stood out was the projection that was emitted from a three-projector camera at the bottom of a drone.

The projection was of a figure that hadn’t been seen in Decem in decades. Few would remember her now, but once upon a time she was quite the wanted woman, and there was still a fair sum on her head. Tall and slender with a dancer’s physique. Straight, black, knee-length hair. A wide face, with a large nose, clear bright-gray eyes, and full lips that were normally pulled upwards in a fox-like smile. It was the mercenary, courier, and sometimes thief, Emily Yang.

She approached the shrine, or rather the drone projecting her image made it seem like she did, while the drone moved forwards to properly settle in front of its intended destination. Emily found the picture that marked the part of the shrine where the ashes of the person she’d come to see had been interred. She found a picture of a woman of average height, a frail build, and tan red skin.

The woman had a square face, a round chin, a stubby nose, puffy cheeks, and large lips. Her blue eyes were close-set and her dark eyebrows were thick. This was a picture where she lacked the wide-metal spacers that she used to place in her ears, or the piercings and tattoos that used to cover her skin. This was a picture where she still wore the cowl and habit that the woman had worn back when she was a sister of this temple.

“Oh…Carla…You stupid, stupid, bitch…See you in hell. Okay, hon? Or like maybe not…Since I’m immortal now…Bye, I guess,” sighed Emily. Looking at the face of the foe that she’d never quite been able to make the time to get even with.

“Welp, time for sad dancing…I’m really sorry, I don’t even hate you enough to really feel like doing this, but I made a promise to myself and unlike you, I keep my promises,” said Emily. Slowly and somberly beginning to shake her money-maker before the grave of her enemy with a remix of certain show tunes as background music. Then Emily quickly left, so as to avoid disturbing the other mourners who’d come to visit the remains of others who were interred at the shrine.

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Life came and went at a speed and seeming randomness that made it hard to properly respond to things. It felt like it was only yesterday that Emily had still had Carla Coleman, the Monkey’s Paw, and the Dark Fire Corporation, earmarked as enemies that she’d have to take down one day to get her life back.

Then Emily found the store, and the NIIABs(New-Identity-In-A-Box), and her life took such a turn for the weird, but better, that Emily had all but forgotten about Carla and her rotten bosses, until she heard about Darkfire Corp stepping afoul of some of the true heavy hitters in the city, and getting themselves and all their allies and cohorts scrubbed from not only Decem, but from the rest of Lux-Aqua-Tempestas as well.

Emily found herself feeling downcast for much of the next few weeks. To tell the truth, it wasn’t actually Carla’s death that did it. After all, she’d hated Carla. The woman had been an unpleasant cheat, and terrible fixer, even before the double-cross. Also, Emily had kind of thought Carla had died years ago, so it had actually been something of a surprise to hear that the woman was dead again. This time for real.

Carla’s death had driven home that Mega-City Decem and Lux-Aqua had greatly changed. Once upon a time the Monkey’s Paws and the Darkfire Corp would have been fairly unfuckwithable. Now, mid-tier news, and social media advertising, corporations could turn to their big brothers and get the two groups wiped out, over basically nothing. It felt like the end of an age. So many of Emily’s former-peers, and contemporaries were either dropping out of the game, or getting “dropped”.

Even Emily herself had changed a lot. She had once been nothing but a low-level merc. Mostly human, and poor in rep, cash, and tech. Now, Emily was a hyper-advance, super-sapient, living machine. She had magically, and technologically linked, dyson-megastructures installed in multiple star-systems in multiple servers, throughout Horologia. She was now capable of running multiple copies of herself at one time, and was taking full advantage of that.

Now there were at least a three dozen versions of her, all running multiple identities as “they”, the Emily-Network, called the shots, and ran the jobs in Decem, and many other mega-cities within Lux-Aqua and a few other servers that she’d gradually begun to build footholds in thanks to her friends in the Holst Store. She had not only reached Carla’s position, she’d thoroughly surpassed it, becoming someone that others needed to impress if they wanted her to work with and/or for them.

The gray and black industries weren’t even the only game Emily was running. She had instances of herself operating identities in the corporate world, in politics, in the media. The Emily-Network was everywhere sticking its fingers in all sorts of pies, and in moments like this, it felt overwhelming.

Then Emily got a notification from an instance of herself that she had tasked with playing secretary and scheduler, and she was informed that her friend, and adopted niece, little Katie Ingram had come to visit. That was the point that Emily remembered that maybe all this change wasn’t a bad thing. She hadn’t really had any family, or friends worth calling friends, before.