I dislodge myself from various chunks of rubble and take notice of my surroundings as I heave myself onto my feet. Moments later, dusting off my carbon nanotech combat armor, revealing its ebony-colored outer shell from the quickly dissipating cloud of dust. I crane my head left to right, squinting into the dust filled room, I barely could make out the outline of bar stools and dry rotted wooden tables. Engaging night vision, my mask’s eyes start glowing, tinting everything in my sight in a green hue. Revealing all that the shadows hid behind them, including a moss-covered sign : ‘PUB’ being the only legible word among the worn red script. Making my way through the decrepit maze of chairs and up-turned tables slowly advancing toward the shattered glass window just next to the storefront door.

  What I saw through those jagged panes of glass nearly caused me to choke on my own spit. With a creek of the rusted door (and a bit of physical persuasion) I managed to pry the door open only to be parylized by the vast expanse of greenery and crumbling ruins that lay before me. What was once office buildings, apartments and places of commerce: Neo-salutis city. The very definition of a concrete jungle is now more ‘jungle’ than ‘concrete’. Signs of nature reclaiming all in its wake with roots seemingly to sew themselves into the once populous cityscape. Hell, quite a few of those roots seem to be the only thing keeping some of the dilapidated buildings in one piece. The corp complexes were spared from mother nature's wrath however, damn thing is still one part of the skyline that remains familiar. Now time to ask myself the 2 million dollar question made by all historians: “....what the fuck happened here?” 

Of course, from what I can recollect, I am not a historian. I am...er..was an employee for the corp, for its engineering division at least, though I still got to ask that particular question sometimes followed by a “what do you mean reactor 12 is acting ‘funny’?”, “How, in the everloving hell does security keep managing to jam their energy rifles like this?”, and “ how are we supposed to get this done by tomorrow?!?!”. Thinking  back on it, gramps was right when he said that a corp job was no place for his grand-daughter, maybe I should have kept that secretary job, even if the director of human resources forced certain bio-mods on me. Ah no, bad Samantha! Gotta stay focused! More recent…. more recent…. I... went out to celebrate my last year of mandatory service with the company...then there was a giant explosion, I distinctly remember there being an intense heat so unbearable that...ah….well that sucks. I mean isn’t there supposed to be a kill streak first before people start nuking each other? At least that's how it went in my gramp’s vintage video game collection. AHHHH! God damned omnicorp-backed politicians!!!

 I wont get anywhere just sitting here just thinking about the past, hell I haven’t even taken a single step outside the door! Just as I stepped through the boundaries of the doorway, ‘is it me or did it get brighter? Is kinda hard to tell with NVGs..’. Disabling my night vision I squinted at the dystopian skyline. To my surprise, it in fact was brighter, a dull blue seemed to illuminate the sky above. With the help of the zoom function of my mask, I was able to quickly determine that the source wasn’t the sun nor the moon, heck it wasn’t even an open sky! Crystals that covered what I determined to be the ceiling of an underground cavern so immense that it encapsulated the entirety of neo-salutis.The ceiling wasn’t the only origin of the blue hued light, once the ceiling was finished setting ablaze it was the turn of what was below to do the same as what was above, clusters of illuminant stones popped up everywhere, houses, run down cars, underneath vines, almost like the city was alive once more. The glow increased in intensity to a neon blue light, casting shadows from the terrain wherever those gems jutted out. That's when I noticed my own stretched out in front of me. Turning away from the heavily elongated representation of my five foot frame, my eyes once again remained wide and my jaw slackened at what I was witnessing: the stones, the ones I dug myself out from, were glowing.

Huh, I was wondering how I was still alive, I mean the company did essentially make it’s workers immortal by implanting all that lizard and jellyfish DNA into them at the expense of the employee. Being indebted would give the company a reason to skirt pay and not pay medical insurance: ‘arm got lobbed off? It'll grow back in a few days, get back to work!’. Thanks to the bastard in charge of HR: my hair color changed from brown to the brightest neon red I’ve ever seen, ‘to make faculty be able to spot you quicker in the crowded work environment.’ and the other...lets say I won't be gaining anything on my waistline ever again but would get heavy in...other areas. Ten months of pay for a cybernetic spine and leg implants was a necessary quality of life investment! With all this modification it still doesn't eliminate the need for food and water. If the crystal truly acted like some sort of stasis pod,  then I’m going to have to find food, drinking water, and probably something better than my 5.7mm corp pistol preferably something more energy based. Regrettably I know just the place, the 35th floor of the corp building: my boss’s office. The guy had everything in there, a fully automated garden, an entire armory room where he placed his personal collection of  21st century to early 22nd century firearms and early laz guns. The snob had me and a few others from the engineering department take every single one of those beauties out from storage, perform basic maintenance on them, restore parts, and slather all of them in cosmoline! Course I’ll go check the other armory on my way up, see if any of those meatheads in the security division took my advice (oil, Mother fucker, use it!!!) and actually cleaned their guns, could always use the ammo if all the guns are rusted through, drop by engineering, collect a few tools, and make a visit to hydroponics. Of course, I need to actually get there first and I'm pretty sure the tram isn't in the best of condition… I guess I'm walking.