Following my disoriented journey home, I finally crossed the threshold into my haven. My apartment lay in the Red Fusion district—a remarkably safer enclave within the sprawling urban chaos, where skeletal remains of buildings still defiantly stood against all odds. The district resided far from the city center, on the very fringes of what locals called the "Barrier." Stretching over ten kilometers, the Barrier was a wasteland, a graveyard of rusting metal and sanctuary for society's castaways—the junkies and undesirables. On the opposite side of this desolation, accessible only by suspended roads and train lines, lay the fabled Green Ring area, a stark contrast to the devastation. A semblance of civilization clung to life there, presenting a fa?ade of suburban tranquility, a world apart from the chaos that engulfed our crumbling city.

  Red Fusion, in its gritty splendor, served as the last bastion before what, for most, felt like a realm apart. My affection for this place, and its affinity for me, had grown over the years. Though rental prices remained low thanks to its somewhat isolated location, the district had morphed into a bustling community. Its labyrinthine alleys were adorned with food courts, local vendors, and the occasional NeuroDoc—specialized physicians for those who, like me, had surrendered parts of their bodies to technology. It was a dirty, malodorous haven that turned especially treacherous after nightfall. However, it was home, and it was affordable.

  My apartment, while diminutive, exuded a cozy charm. Within the confines of a single room, the kitchen, living area, and bedroom coexisted, spanning approximately six by six meters. A door discreetly concealed the bathroom, a compact space where the showerhead loomed over the toilet. Water flowed from one into the other, circulating through an ingenious system before being discharged. I twisted the shower knob, coaxing it to life. With a reluctant sputter, the fixture disgorged a sluggish, brownish stream that splattered upon the tiles. It coughed and wheezed, the muddy torrent reluctantly metamorphosing into a marginally clearer liquid. A digital timer materialized on the bathroom wall, serving as a stern sentinel of the precious 200 seconds allocated for this essential ritual—a stark necessity in a world where clean water had become a rare luxury.

  Peeling off my synthetic runner suit and sodden hoodie, I hung them to dry, their residual moisture seeping into the mildewed carpeting. I quickly opened the refrigerator and retrieved a low-grade beer. As the chilled liquid touched my lips, a sensation of relaxation washed over me, soothing the frayed edges of my mind, mercifully disconnecting me from the turmoil of my day.

  I abandoned the bottle on my cluttered kitchen counter and entered the bathroom, where the lukewarm water cascaded from the showerhead. The tepid liquid was a welcome embrace, though it fell short of hot—a luxury unheard of in the Red Fusion district. Nevertheless, it served its purpose, alleviating the persistent headache that had begun to torment me.

  As the timer hit zero, the water supply ceased, and I exited the bathroom, my soaked form cocooned in a clean towel I had grabbed on the way out. Moving back into the main room, I settled on the bed, reaching for the ice-cold beer I'd left on the kitchen counter. Recumbent and slowly air-drying, I turned my gaze toward the room's sole window.

  I watched as the rain resumed its downpour, serenading the city with a melancholic symphony. In the distance, as a perpetual reminder of the dystopia that encompassed us, the chorus of sirens and sporadic gunfire reverberated through the night—far more muted here than in the city center. The Red Fusion district, for all its flaws, offered a buffer from the constant chaos that plagued downtown. Here, violence was an echo rather than a constant presence.

  For a long span, I lay in contemplative solitude, my thoughts adrift in the ethereal dance of rain and darkness, savoring this rare moment of relative peace. The tranquility was abruptly ruptured by a thunderous explosion several streets away. The building quaked in response, and an inferno blazed to life, casting crimson shadows upon the dark sky.

  I sprang to my feet, turning on the dilapidated wall-mounted television that somehow defied obsolescence. Emptying my beer bottle, I tossed it into a half-filled garbage bin adjacent to my bed and approached the refrigerator once more, this time in search of sustenance.

  The freezer held an array of frozen, pre-packaged meals—economical, yet laden with preservatives and offering minimal nutrition. Still, it was enough to stave off hunger. I selected a package labeled "Kung Pao Chicken," suspecting that the contents bore little resemblance to actual poultry. I placed it in the microwave, programming the cooking time.

  As I waited, I directed my gaze to the flickering screen. An individual with cybernetic enhancements gracing their face—intricate designs that hinted at significant expense—solemnly narrated the news against the backdrop of a blazing farm:

  "Explosion in a Melrose Farm Center in the Yokhai District this evening that was wrongly being attributed to the Techno-Anarchists has been refuted by the police. After a thorough investigation, the cause was determined to be faulty wiring. Luckily, no human casualties—"

  Ding!

  The microwave's bell chimed, signaling the meal's readiness. I retrieved the piping hot food and, using a pair of disposable chopsticks, positioned myself on the bed while flicking through the television channels, shifting from the news to the monotonous spectacle of a vapid reality television show—a renowned competition where twenty participants engaged in various physical trials for the coveted prize of a Tier 1 subscription to MainFrame.

  The contest was absurd but served as the perfect escape, a ticket to momentary respite from the grim reality outside.

  As I concluded my meal, I surrendered to the banality of the television show. Enveloped by its mindless entertainment, I gradually inched toward slumber. But before I could succumb to the embrace of sleep, I reached for a Beta-Blocker, recognizing that the headache that inevitably followed a Soul deposit would persist for hours. With the small pill nestled on my tongue, I settled into bed, allowing the dark veil of rest to claim me.

  Lulled by the inanity of the reality show, I closed my eyes and surrendered to the warm embrace of slumber.

  Morning had arrived. After a restless night's sleep, I pulled myself out of bed and ventured into the maze-like streets of Red Fusion, hunting for breakfast while keeping my neural interface open for job alerts. My routine was simple—linger in Red Fusion during the early hours, grab a meal, hope for an early client, then migrate toward the more dangerous but lucrative city center.

  Dawn brought a strange quality to our world. The perpetual haze and looming spacecraft remained, but fleeting sunlight and locals spilling onto the streets created an almost convincing illusion that life here wasn't completely hopeless.

  I stopped at a small vendor's stall selling Congee, an ancient Chinese breakfast dish that had somehow survived through generations of chaos. I ordered one with "pork" sausage, fully aware the meat was more likely rat than pig. Such was everyday reality in this broken corner of the world.

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  Officially, we lived in Synas City, supposedly named after its first mayor or some legendary benefactor—the details had blurred with time, becoming as mythical as everything else predating our current reality. Locals had long ago rechristened it ToxCity, a name earned through decades of suffering and despair. Beyond our borders, outsiders sometimes called us the Junkie Kingdom—a reputation as the last refuge for society's desperate and damaged.

  In this era, the concept of countries had dissolved into oblivion. Wars, the mass exodus of the Elite, and countless other calamities had scrambled humanity's narrative. The cataclysmic conflict that scarred the planet was now ancient history, its details lost to time.

  Traditional nation-states had collapsed, replaced by city-states whose mayors functioned as modern monarchs—either wielding immense power themselves or serving as puppets for unseen forces.

  As far as my increasingly unreliable memories stretched, this corrupt metropolis had always been my home. The city was built in concentric rings around the center, which housed MainFrame's imposing headquarters like a dark heart. The sprawling Melrose Farms dominated the southern edge, while Neo Future's factories claimed the northern perimeter, producing everything from disposable chopsticks to the most sophisticated cybernetic augmentations available to common citizens.

  Beyond our city's borders stretched a vast wasteland, irradiated and perilous. The closest semblance of civilization was a distant city called Nuno, but reaching it meant risking one's life in the treacherous expanse between. A handful of nomadic vendors occasionally braved the journey, while others relied on travel companies charging exorbitant fees for safe passage—an unimaginable sum for most citizens. The bravest souls attempted the crossing alone, despite persistent rumors of grotesque beasts, radiation-mutated creatures, and savage gangs lurking in the wastelands. I'd never witnessed these horrors firsthand, having wisely avoided unnecessary journeys into that bleak unknown.

  Most residents never ventured beyond the city's rings, content to live and die within ToxCity's boundaries. Occasionally tales reached us of intrepid travelers from smaller, independent settlements, but such encounters had grown increasingly rare over my lifetime. The world outside seemed to be shrinking, while our city remained a final bastion of what passed for civilization.

  In ToxCity, life, work, and eventual death unfolded within the inexorable grip of four corporate giants: Neo Future (manufacturing), Melrose (agriculture), MainFrame (entertainment and digital afterlife), and Energy Bank (financial transactions). No one seemed to know who truly owned these corporations or how they came into existence—for all I could remember, they had always been there, timeless monoliths that predated everyone alive today. Smaller enterprises existed, but they were mere shadows compared to these behemoths that controlled every aspect of our existence.

  While the division between privileged and destitute was stark, the social structure was more nuanced than a simple binary opposition. But across this spectrum, ToxCity's inhabitants fell roughly into four distinct classes, each inhabiting different regions of our concentric city.

  The lowest tier consisted of people like me—each nursing private dreams of escape, investing meager earnings toward either fleeing the city entirely or securing a Tier 1 Subscription to MainFrame Heaven. Within this class existed various levels—from the Dream-addicted junkies and criminals at the bottom to factory workers in the middle, and specialists like Couriers and NeuroSlicers slightly above. While these distinctions mattered in daily life, from the perspective of the higher classes, we were all essentially the same: expendable assets struggling for survival in the city center and surrounding neighborhoods.

  Above us existed the middle class—MainFrame's baseline workforce, government employees (police, bureaucrats, healthcare providers), Energy Bank staff, and supervisors from Melrose and Neo Future. This segment represented a dynamic, if precarious, middle stratum. Many eventually secured Tier 1 Subscriptions, with a fortunate few reaching Tier 2. They primarily inhabited the outer neighborhoods, including parts of Red Fusion, and ventured into the more dangerous inner city only when necessary.

  The third tier comprised the true upper class—corporate supervisors and chief engineers who inhabited a sphere far removed from the grinding existence that defined most lives. They appeared rarely in the city proper, their presence veiled in relative luxury and mystery. I occasionally encountered these individuals during deposit assignments.

  These privileged few typically resided in Green Ring, the outermost circle of our city, accessible only by suspended roads and train lines. To reach this sanctuary, one had to cross the dangerous Barrier zone—a ten-kilometer ring of lawless decay populated by the city's most desperate: violent gangs, Dream junkies lost to reality, and those who had fallen so far they couldn't even qualify as part of society anymore. This wasteland of rusted metal and collapsed infrastructure formed a natural moat between the relatively civilized neighborhoods and the pristine Green Ring beyond.

  This geographic separation mirrored the social divide. The Green Ring residents rarely descended into the city proper, accessing it only for work when absolutely necessary or, more commonly, choosing to operate remotely through proxies and digital interfaces. The specifics of their daily existence remained an enigma to those of us who would never cross that physical or social barrier, their lives bearing little resemblance to average ToxCity reality.

  Finally, the fourth class, the New Elite, ruled from the shadows. These high-ranking executives wielded true power from within Sapphire Summit's fortress-like confines. Located on the western edge of the city, this walled enclave remained almost as mythical as the Elite Freighters hovering above—though it's important to note they weren't the same. The New Elite were merely the highest echelon of Earth-bound power, wannabe successors to those who had truly escaped our dying world. They remained almost mythical figures, the true architects of our collective fate. Despite my occasional ventures into Green Ring's relative comfort, Sapphire Summit's imposing gates remained an impenetrable barrier, a realm beyond reach for someone like me.

  It's worth noting that our current Mayor, James Lyra, curiously did not reside in Sapphire Summit despite his position—a detail that fueled endless conspiracy theories among the lower classes. Some believed he was merely a puppet for the corporate powers, while others thought this demonstrated his commitment to the common citizens. I had no opinion on the matter; political intrigue yielded no credits.

  When I first began working as a Courier, I had naively believed Green Ring residents would provide my path to the credits needed for a Gold Tier Subscription. Reality quickly shattered that illusion—sudden, unpredictable death was rare in such protected environments. Privileged residents seldom appeared on my client roster; they sought treatment in well-equipped hospitals where a Courier's services were unnecessary. When death came for them, it was typically orderly and anticipated.

  The city center, by contrast, teemed with Tier 1 hopefuls and proved a goldmine for Couriers like me. The brutality of daily existence extracted a grim toll, providing a steady stream of departing Souls ready for harvest.

  Most of my clients came from a specific slice of ToxCity society—skilled specialists like NeuroSlicers who earned enough through their dangerous work to afford basic subscriptions, or lower-tier MainFrame employees like Harvey Whitaker from yesterday's job. Occasionally, I'd get a call for an exceptional case—an ordinary worker who, against all odds, had managed to secure a Tier 1 subscription by working themselves to near extinction, sacrificing everything else in life for that digital afterlife.

  My clients occupied that precarious middle ground—spanning the upper edges of the lowest class and the lower portions of the middle class. They weren't the countless factory workers who might save for decades and still fall short, nor the privileged Green Ring inhabitants who rarely needed Couriers at all. They were comfortable enough to afford the subscription fees but still exposed to the daily hazards of life in the central districts. Close enough to their goal to taste it, yet never quite secure enough to stop worrying about losing everything.

  I finished my breakfast with a nod to the cook, wirelessly transferring payment from my dwindling account. My wristwatch displayed 8:12. Time to head toward the city center, where opportunity awaited with each passing moment. One more soul, one step closer to my own salvation.