Chapter 1: Death is Inevitable
The rain fell in slow, heavy drops. A woman ignores the irritation of her clothes sticking to her skin, too deep in more troubling thoughts and feelings to spare the relatively minor discomfort any concern. She kept her head down, her boots slapping against the wet pavement as she walked. The convenience store was two blocks away. A cheap microwave dinner. A six-pack of cheap beer. Maybe a bag of chips if she felt like indulging.
She didn’t.
The neon sign of the store flickered in the distance, casting odd reflections in the puddle-filled potholes of the pavement. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, she thought about her last mission. The one that had ended her career. The one that had left her with nothing but a dead-end job and a life that felt robotic and hollow.
The mission was a setup from the start. She didn't know who or why, but she wasbset up to fail. She had bad intel that seemed tailor made to screw her. Of course, when things got messy she had no backup, and a chain of command that had abandoned her, claiming she had gone off mission. She had survived, but her career was over and her team... best not to think about things she can't change... Yet there she was, thinking about them, all the same... Again.
As she crossed the street, lost in thought, she hardly registered the sound of the the truck's engine. The headlights were too bright, the horn too late and her will to survive almost nonexistent.
Her last thought was, "Well, it had to end some time. Guess this is as good a way to go as any other."
The impact was a white-hot explosion of pain, then nothing. She felt... nothing. Not apathetic, like there were no emotions where emotions should be, but empty of emotions, both positive and negative. The word zen came to mind. A soothing calm, devoid of worry, pain or desire.
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Then her perception was filled with white. She blinked, or tried to, but nothing happened. She had no eyelids, or eyes, for that matter. The world remained white, featureless. No walls, floors or windows. No sense of up or down. Just a single screen floating in front of her, in an endless expanse of white.
**Character Selection.**
She scoffed. "You've got to be kidding me." She considered that she was dreaming or having some comma-fueled delusions. But with the feeling of zen came the certainty that she was very much dead and a surprising lack of concern for this fact.
The more text appeared on the screen showing a lost of archetypes with the text "Choose your class:" There were all the MMO classics—warrior, mage, rogue, healer, etc.—each with their own set of abilities, weaknesses, and even backstories. Odd detail, that. Perhaps this was like the original Diablo where the character class had a lore associated with it. She wasn't a big fan but the game was alright.
How to select her class, though... She had no body. No limbs. No way to reach out and touch the screen.
Annoyance perturbed her zen. "What kind of bullshit is this?" she muttered, voice echoing in the void. She ignored the question of what it could be echoing off of. This place already made her head hurt. No need to peer deeper into the abyss.
She thought back to the times she'd played games. MMOs were not her thing. Cyberpunk table top was her thing. Robots, gun fights and car chases. Planning a heist and dealing with the fallout when it inevitably goes sideways. Those times were the closest she'd felt to being truly alive, since her discharge. "I don’t want to be a damn fantasy hero. I want cybernetics. I want a world where I can rebuild myself better than I was."
The screen flickered, the options shifting as if in response. A new category appeared at the bottom—**Anachronistic Technology**—its glow faint but distinct. Valeria narrowed her eyes. "What the hell?" She scanned the description, her suspicion warring with her curiosity.
*"Nanaite Swarm: A self-replicating nanite colony capable of rapid cellular repair. At higher levels, it can unlock adaptive camouflage, limited energy manipulation... She quickly scand the text... Requires a biological host."* "Sounds close to cyberpunk.", she supposed. "A mix of synthetic and organic, at the very least." She could work with this but she wanted real cyber limbs.
Valeria scrolled past the class descriptions, her curiosity mounting. A Cybernetics Genius Skill was also added the the perks section, but the point cost was astronomical. She couldn’t afford both without taking a drawback. But she wanted both. She needed both.
She tried to clench her jaw, but realized she didn't have one. "Fine. What can we do to min/max this build?"
A list of possible penalties appeared:
- **Missing Limb** (-20 points)
- **Memory Fragmentation** (-15 points)
- **Chronic Pain** (-10 points)
- **Social Disparity** (-5 points)
She scoffed. "Missing limb it is pretty bad. Its randomized, so I don't get to choose... I shouldbe able to build something to replace it, eventually."
The screen blinked. **Confirmation: One limb removed in exchange for 20 bonus character points.**
Valeria hesitated. She had lost enough in her last life. But this was different. This was a choice. It was going to suck for a while but it would be a small price to pay to live out her dream.
"Confirm," she said.
Her vision darkened and pain flooded her awareness.