This calls for deep urban forensics.

Expired coffee, greasy condiment residue. Typewriter ink. Chemically processed wood pulp.

The bitter scent of rotting vegetable matter fills your nasal cavities. Saliva pools in the corners of your mouth.

Leaving one possibility, too serious to ignore.

Piles of sickening flesh washing into each other. The ultimate gäng merge.

You must not show fear. Any sign of it and they will swamp you with their diseased mass.

Typically used by enforcers as an easy way to physically restrain threats or detainees.

Meaning they may not be for legal use. Criminal or at least non-ethical force may be behind these.

These stools are on the bigger side -- either they come from a large dog breed, or they're human.

Why are we in here? The gäng doesn't huddle in dungeons. The gäng doesn't fuck with dark fantasy.

The sanitation crews are running behind schedule.

The giftwrapped box Kurt was talking about -- she sent it to cubby hole D6 in the upstairs office.

High pitched squeaks and the scrabbling of claws from within the tubes, it is a rat maze.

Please don't imagine that. Definitely don't be tempted to drink it, either.

His jowels flap like a dog shaking off spittle.

Judging by the state of his body, those 'things' don't require him to move much, if at all.

Don't be fooled. He's making a mockery of you.

Buffing himself like a castrated cockerel in attempt to masculate himself.

There's nothing in the operant playbook that matches these coded motions. He must be using highly advanced kinesics.

It wasn't us. We plead not guilty, officer.

The big man was dozing off. Now he's trying to cover it up with a vulgar display of authority.

All traces of fear, gone.

The boy who shouldn't be, looking at the girl you sold.

Does he remind you of her? Another victim of techno-fascist wizardry, not here of his own volition.

He wants mömmy too?

His voice breaks. The audible beat of a shattered heart.

Which the Operant Bureau will definitely not approve as a professional expense.

A new belonging.

Expression unreadable, as if you've caught her on the fringes of a dream.

This isn't working. Try using that console.

This isn't working. You need to work out what the machinery is doing.

Wrong. Mad. Evil.

You watched her over the university courtyard, waited until she parted from a group of friends. You recognised her from the dossier -- the daughter of Dr Abe, head of the sleep study.

Ignore the weird aesthetic stuff -- she's cracked everything open and put it back together. It's all heavily modified!

Try the console on the other side.

Not a chance that this is just bootlegging equipment. Look at all this power, this sheer monstrous energy! It's cooking something awesome.

Hidden in the shade of Saint Erentudris' Basilica, three streets away and five years early to your appointment with a bullet.

A snorkel to messier, louder, brighter worlds. Maybe you'd have never left Mircea without them.

As the minutes pass, you catch yourself scanning the surroundings. Lamp posts, trash cans, flower planters...

You miss them all terribly, for a moment. Or maybe you miss being lost among them.

EIGHTY-TWO OUT OF EIGHTY-THREE NEIGHBOURHOOD COUNCILS VOTED IN FAVOUR OF CITY-WIDE SECURITY MEASURES. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE MERELY APPROVED.

The interconnected parts of you loosen, melting into the bench, until every sensation tells you that you have become one creature with the wood.

People float by in the distance, trams rattle overhead, but all you care about is how your spine seems to be rippling with ease.

Marks to be revered from seating many people over the years.

Hush as it falls.

Inevitable yet strangely crushing.

The bomb vibrates happily in your hands.

The bomb sure does.

Your lips move, muscle memory. You know this song. You know the next line...

You feel chalk dust settle over you.

Checks