A Bright Future. Together.
- Eddies
- 370
Arasaka Tower
Corporate Plaza, City Center, Night City
February 7th, 2081
Deep beneath Arasaka Tower, past layers of steel-reinforced security gates and biometric checkpoints, the air was sterile, humming with the lifeblood of the corporation's most classified operations. Servers, housed in climate controlled vaults, pulsed with a quiet, insidious rhythm, each beat a fragment of data passing through their grasp. In a chamber at the heart of it all was a temple of CONTROL, a cold, metallic cathedral of artificial intelligence and human will entwined. Six netrunners lay motionless in specialized recliners, their bodies locked in the fragile stasis between the physical world and the vast, unknowable depths of cyberspace.
Two of them were corporate, clad in Arasaka's standard neural rigs, their vitals monitored in real-time through floating holographic displays. They were the sanctioned minds, the trusted instruments of the megacorporation's will. @Xasha Callisto, the outsider, had earned her way after helping to point out "volunteers" for the project. For now, she was protected as a independent contractor, brought in to make further use of her expertise. The others: @Ryu 'Kaida' Nakamura, @Omega, and one other, were something else entirely. Shackled in place by sleek metal restraints, their consciousnesses forcibly jacked in through invasive neural ports. They had been brought here against their will, their fates decided long before they even entered this room. The fortress surrounding them knew the difference. It bristled against them like a living organism rejecting foreign cells.
The final checks were completed. An Arasaka technician, unseen behind tinted glass, gave the silent order.
The tree came to life.
Thick cables ran from the ceiling like the roots of some ancient, digital god, feeding directly into the skulls of the six netrunners. The moment their minds connected, reality slipped away.
A new world swallowed them whole.
Your bodies are gone. The room, the chairs, the cold sterility of metal and machine, it all dissolves into darkness. But this is not an empty void. No, this is something vast, a space humming with unseen energy. You feel it in your bones, though you no longer have bones. It whispers, it watches. And then..
It builds itself around you.
The walls rise first, impossibly high towers of code and steel, shifting geometry that flickers between the tangible and the abstract. The Arasaka Data Fortress takes form, a shimmering stronghold carved from pure information. The insignia of the corporation gleams in the distance, kanji traced in electric light, its meaning undeniable. This is their domain. Their rules.
Predators lurk in the periphery: ICE constructs, translucent and angular, moving with mechanical precision. Daemons coil in the shadows, their shapes indistinct, eyes burning with malevolent hunger. They are bound for now, leashed by their masters, but the captives can feel them, watching, waiting.
Then, movement. The data fortress does not dissolve so much as collapse around them, folding inward at impossible speed. The world distorts, bending reality like a slingshot, hurling them forward from the VPN stronghold of Arasaka.
You do not move. And yet, you are moving.
Faster than thought, faster than time. Cyber-structures blur past, encrypted nodes and data streams flickering like dying stars in the abyss. Every passing fragment is a fortress of its own, entire corporate empires encoded into neon-lit palaces, untouched by all but the most elite. The air, if such a thing exists, would grow heavy. A pressure building upon the characters, thick and oppressive. And then, they would see it, stretching into infinity, rising beyond sight, sinking below comprehension.
A wall.
The Blackwall.
Lines of red light pulse against its surface like veins beneath cracked skin, jagged and raw. They stretch upward, piercing the sky like digital arteries pumping something unknowable into the vastness above. The face of the Blackwall shifts, a pulsating mass of fragmented code, both liquid and solid in the same breath. It seethes. It waits. The closer they get, the more they feel it.
It is not just a firewall—it is aware. A low hum vibrates through the construct, deeper than sound, older than anything they have ever touched in cyberspace. This is not a simple barrier. It is so much more, and beyond it?
The Unknown.
