A final board tilt in your favour.

One last roll.

The air in the tram is stifling, charged, near flammable.

Ahead of you, futures shear off each other.

You'll have to reclaim it if you choose that route.

REAPPROPRIATION OF IMPERIAL-CONTROLLED PROPERTY? NOT A PROBLEM.

THE IDEOLOGICALLY PURE WILL SURVIVE THE CONFLAGRATION.

You could probably jump out of the blast radius. Probably.

Trust the bomb. It has been waiting for this moment for three decades.

Ultimate solidarity with PSEUDOPOD. You can feel what he felt as the disc ripped his mind clean.

You have a screwdriver... Could always reset your hearing feature.

The woman behind you is wearing headphones. Maybe she'd let you 'borrow' them.

Deciding who to take out first.

Waiting for you to drop the flag.

Scared of a little blast radius, a light dusting of shrapnel? Coward.

The hand of the oscilloscope twitches in recognition, giddy for its chorus.

You have a minute, maybe less.

Blast radius indeterminable... Any attempt to leap clear will be a best guess.

Give away nothing. Wait until you see the first spark reflected in their eyes.

Ideally, anyway. Unless it's busted. But if not, it's going to be cinematic.

Goodbye, feet.

SALUTATIONS GLORY.

Feet are staying on. You're going to jump out of the way.

It will do more damage to you than to them. But there will be a concussive blast. And endless shrapnel.

Hold your position.

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The floor vibrates.

You are right in the kill zone.

The incantation... waking the bomb, breaking its seals...

Ramping up to the chorus...

The floor electric against your feet...

A strange click within the bomb's heart...

IT'S ALL SUPERBLOC, BABY.

His face contorted in fury, caught mid-scream, disintegrating in strips of light.

No more natural gravity to grip on to.

Is this... it?

Death wouldn't smell this bad. Burning hair, burning metal. Burning flesh.

Smoke chars your throat black.

He sounds weak, unnatural.

His voice was distant. Not beside you.

Sparks of electricity bleed from the tram's exposed arteries. She's dying.

Something very wrong with his head. Pink, wet brain at his hairline.

Dead, just hasn't noticed yet.

The man behind you lies dead, leg missing in action, a skew of jagged bone protruding from his thigh like a primal knife.

The body of a teen girl slumps against the window, kept upright by a huge piece of shrapnel wedged into her skull.

A hundred metres beneath you, an old fisherman raises his hand to his eyes. A strange shadow scares away the fish.

Kill shot. Finality.

'... assets left to fend for themselves.'

What's one more? We can take them.

A near-impossible Advanced Cognitive Manoeuvre -- the True Shadow. A psychic marionette between harmonised doubles... A long shot, but worth it in desperate straits.

Psychic hijacking! Infinity sync rate, open cockpit!

What's one more? We can take them.

You have Ramses' death whistle... it can mimic any scream. What noise of terror can rally your kin?

Anything vital and he'll be dead in minutes.

Anything vital and she'll be dead in minutes.

He's losing.

Time for last illusions.

Who means more to you?

Reach KALEIDOSCOPE.

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Mist hangs below the tram like gun smoke.

Save his life.

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The voice of the Opera's Head Traumatist barks in your mind: Push harder than you think you should. Force the clot.

The red hole hisses beneath your hands.

Blood seeps around the leather edges.

Into the breach now, operant. Steady hand.

Shards rain over you as bullets pierce the strengthened glass.

Reloading?

Trying to bait you out?

For us.

For you.

Maybe it's already happened.

He's crying, the massive perv, we know he is. Lucky for him he's also in death pain. Cloaking the tears.

So many bullets... so hard to think...

Bleeding internally, projectile lodged in the upper left thorax.

He's dying.

Leaving a smear of blood across the left ear seam.

His cheek is rough with stubble.

Sealed within the penthouse suite of a central hotel in Cicatriz Frontera, a girl looks up from her keyboard, caught unawares by a ripple of strange sadness.

Operant KALEIDSCOPE: LOST.

A stranger's death in a strange city. You were the final friend he had.

Into the breach now, operant. Steady hand.

Save her life.

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The voice of the Opera's Head Traumatist barks in your mind: Push harder than you think you should. Force the clot.

The red hole hisses beneath your hands.

The transluscent sticker fills with blood, but holds.

Into the breach now, operant. Steady hand.

Shards rain over you as bullets pierce the strengthened glass.

So many bullets... so hard to think...

Bleeding internally, projectile lodged in the upper left thorax.

She's dying.

Her Ultra Violeta pin badge is stained completely red.

Her cheek is soft against your fingers.

Not long left. A minute, maybe.

Shards rain over you as bullets pierce the strengthened glass.

Asset YO-YO: LOST.

Your dear friend Tempo, dead twice on your watch.

Into the breach now, operant. Steady hand.

Asset YOUNGBLOOD: LOST.

YO-YO. Should've been YO-YO.

Asset: LOST. Cryptonym yet to be assigned.

You barely feel it.

Keep going. KALEIDOSCOPE.

Keep going. Yana.

Reach Yana.

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Make PSEUDOPOD your shadow puppet.

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You have become Pseudo-PSEUDOPOD.

The beetle! The beetle!!

A tiny green figure dances somersaults around him, victorious against the blue sky.

Unmissable.

You don't mind.

Softer than you thought in there.

Your nail scrapes optic nerve.

This is strange, wrong. A mutation.

OUR BEETLE CHAMPION HAS OFFERED HIMSELF UP AS MIND-STEED.

The beetle! The cömrade beetle!!

PSEUDOPOD...

Engage primitive warfare. (Blow the death whistle.)

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It is singing the song of Ramses' own death.

THE PEOPLE'S WINGS WILL CARRY HIM HOME.

Ramses...

The sombre one lives.

His future just fell away from him. He's lost in time.

The Hundred-Eyed Golem has retained no face, just a gaping red hole full of quivering viscera.

THE PEOPLE ROAR YOUR NAME.

You lean against the tram's movement, managing to maintain your balance.

Another volley like that and one of you is going down.

ROBUST PUBLIC OUTFITTINGS. THEY WILL PRESERVE YOU.

Have to be extremely fast though.

You were ready for this -- he wasn't. You'll win.

Your friends are fighting for their lives.

Trust them to the angels for now.

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The chair thuds into you with each impact.

His eyes meet yours as he crumples to the floor.

Your insides smell like tram.

You're struggling too. The floor is warped and shifting, your movement clumsy.

Holes punctured in the tram's body, daylight stars.

Her voice was distant. Not beside you.

She sounds hurt.

One of Tesoro's cards.

LUMINESCENCE.

The world is not where you left it.

Realisation incoming.

If he moves, might not be a clean kill...

Vibrations... Giving you away...

Too soon.

The incantation... waking the bomb, breaking its seals...

Chorus incoming...

Calculate the kill radius.

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The floor hums beneath your feet.

On the brink of realisation...

Here it comes.

You can feel it in the floor.

You hear her stare too: So do I just fucking stand here like a Collateral Cunt or...?

KALEIDOSCOPE's lip curls, fighting the urge to argue.

But alert to you. Waiting for your signal.

There is nothing in your future besides ritual humiliation and torture -- so take heart. You have nothing to lose and everything to overthrow.

You never liked the odds in your favour anyway.

Take them with you. Take the city with you. Anything but cowed retreat. Not this time.

Recover it or die trying.

And then when you do get it back from him -- will you shoot him or take an opportunity to hit the Golem?

One gun against three is certain death, two against three is a fighting chance. You need your gun.

Too late to worry whether we'll live or die. Don't go out alone, go out with our friends.

CHANGE OF REGIME. (Shoot Tesoro Buendia.)

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Karolina's techno-curse.

Terror behind them.

The handle is warm and slick with his blood.

Close quarters working against him -- no space to line up a proper shot...

Right in the photographs he keeps beside his heart.

Who cares! Two down! Shoulder to wheel, gäng!

It's the blood, too much lube, clean it off!

GUN IS TRAITOR, BLACK ELEMENT!

A surprisingly fluid, graceful movement.

Pain like searing light.

You remember this. The first bullet. Landau. Friends counting on you then too.

Nothing vital. You'll live. Keep going.

Stalling. Kill.

Your friends are fighting for their lives.

Trust them to the angels for now.

The photograph of you and your Crew flashes against your mind.

"This is for the Crew."

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A single tear of blood as the metal ricochets around his skull.

He falls like he's praying.

No, he didn't.

A single tear of blood as the metal ricochets around his skull.

He falls like he's praying.

Your shitty homemade gun jammed!

Itchy.

Synchronise with your partner, kill the goons as one.

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Karolina's curse.

You're seconds away from getting shot.

Right in the photographs he keeps beside his heart.

Itchy.

You feel all her focus on you, the point of a knife.

He means this as a compliment.

GOOD MUNICIPAL BEATS.

Darkness, thunder crack, torchlight illuminating his face.

Of course there are. Show the machines and their OSTs some respect.

Blood Golem are before her time. But not Tempo's.

Blue heat, shaking in the boundless dark. The edges turn purple, widen. A moment of shivering anticipation before the soundless boom. Another dead star.

Your muscles slacken, weighed down by a mounting force.

Eyes closed, chin raised. Head tilted towards the jukebox. Waiting for her voice.

His glasses slip down his nose. He's trying to fight it. He can't.

You have a screwdriver. Hack and customise your hearing feature.

The girl by the window is wearing headphones. You could swipe them from her.

Or listen with him. You'll die, but you will know.

Emptiness in stereo.

And never will again.

What would they notice? Another unremarkable tram, making its daily commute? Or might they sense, on some cardinal level, the contamination you've untethered, the frightful hazard more primitive nations would have marked with rings of salt and paper seals?

It makes you homesick.

For a place you'll never know.

He's singing along, even though he's never heard it before.

You lose something, too.

Where are we off to?

Crushed between two walls, even in her last moments.

Your heart cracks. For your new friend and the old one within her.

His muffled voice is light, higher than such a large man should be able to produce.

Gears and wheels. Tiny atomic cogs. You're going to slip between them.

A loose bolt whines on the hull of a submarine, L-45 Class. Bioluminescent monsters swarm toward the sound, a flashing stream of wet greed.

You tell her... all will be forgiven!

Just might hurt a little.

Steal headphones from a passenger.

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Her eyes are a deep, layered brown.

Like she's waiting for you to ask a favour.

Consumer earpiece quality. Suboptimal, though it'll still work. Probably. Might goo you up a bit.

This is enough. We can tank the rest.

A baby's handprint, sticky and clear over a thatch of dirt.

Her mother kept pointing to the birds which circled below, then the valley beneath the cloud. But the little girl was only interested in looking up.

"You are a void... At least in my own darkness I can dream..."

You lose something, too.

Hack your eardrums.

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Snug fit.

Doesn't hurt enough yet. Deeper.

The sound of Ultra Violeta's voice lessens the pain.

Knuckles on soft wood.

This is enough. We can tank the rest.

Contaminated. Soul death.

Yes. Hard reset for the whole tram.

Everyone will die. Including you, if you don't protect yourself somehow.

Own goal in the dying minutes.