The megacorporations control everything – industry, the media, even murder for hire. But there’s a living to be made in freelance work, if you don’t mind getting shot at too much. Plenty of dying to go around.

I’m in abandoned factory, apartments for the dispossessed. I got an old machine shop. The doors are heavy bar-locked steel from a rusted-out sub. Everything wires into a monitor the size of your head. Ancient model: green on green, rolling black lines. Solid.

He’s got black leather and hair all in spikes, a bar through his nose that looks like it came from a mechanical pen. A red tie around his neck. Gotta love a sense of humor.

He looks dazed, hot air in his face. I keep lots of old tech running on the tables, bolted to the walls, on the floor. Confuses netrunners. Plays havoc with imaging.

“They took my sister, man. Plugged her head into a damn computer. Running one of their big servers through her brain.”

I give him a yellow eyed look. Expensive, but you gotta have style. “I don’t come cheap.”