Neon Requiem (2023)

Another Day In Night City

The weekend rolled around like a tumbleweed in a ghost town, bringing with it my least favorite kind of assignment: playing bodyguard to the corp elite. My destination? The luxurious sky-high apartment of my esteemed boss, ready to escort his trophy wife, Sharon, to some high-society circle jerk.

I'd crossed paths with Sharon before – a woman young enough to be my boss's daughter, always decked out in dresses so fluorescent they'd make a corpo ad look subtle. As I stepped into their apartment, the stench of overpriced perfume assaulted my enhanced senses, while some soulless jazz crooned in the background. It was like walking into a parody of wealth, all shine and no substance.

Sharon greeted me with a smile that wouldn't fool a blind man. "V, thank you for coming," she said, her voice as artificial as her perfect skin.

"Just doing my job, ma'am," I replied, my tone flatter than week-old soda. My optics did a quick scan – elevated heart rate, dilated pupils, micro-expressions of stress. Seemed like trouble in paradise, but then again, when wasn't there?

The ride was as tense as a Mexican standoff. Sharon sat across from me, her eyes darting between her baby and the cityscape outside. My biomonitor was going haywire, picking up all sorts of stress signals from her.

"You okay, Sharon?" I asked, injecting as much synthetic concern into my voice as I could muster. "You seem about as relaxed as a Maelstrom at a corpo party."

She looked at me like I'd grown a second head. Guess she wasn't used to her hired guns showing an interest. "I'm fine, V. Thank you," she said, flashing a smile that was about as genuine as a Jinguji knockoff.

We touched down at a mansion that looked like it had been ripped straight out of a corp propaganda vid. All glass and steel, it reflected the Night City skyline like a funhouse mirror, distorting the neon glow into something almost beautiful. Almost.

The place was crawling with security – I counted at least 25 other high-level corpo guards, their chrome glinting in the afternoon sun. Overkill? Maybe. But in Night City, paranoia was just good business sense.

As we stepped inside, I was hit by a wave of perfume, booze, and desperation. This wasn't a party – it was a support group for trophy wives with too much time and money on their hands. They flitted about like chrome butterflies, their laughter as hollow as their souls.

"Welcome to the dollhouse," I muttered under my breath, earning a sharp look from Sharon

The party was a nauseating display of wealth that made me want to gag. Tables groaned under the weight of fine china and silverware that probably cost more than most people's yearly salary. Hors d'oeuvres that looked more like art installations than food were passed around by expressionless servers, their eyes as dead as the overpriced seafood on their trays.

Sharon, ever the dutiful mother, left little Hilbert in a room with the other trust fund babies-to-be or the soon-to-be overlords of Night City, watched over by an army of nannies who probably had more affection for their charges than the actual parents. Then, like a chameleon changing colors, she slipped into party mode.

I followed her out to the pool area, where she shed her designer dress to reveal a bikini so red it made my optics glitch. Her body showed no sign of ever pushing out a kid – thank the wonders of corpo med-tech for that. As she sashayed off to mingle with her fellow corporate peacocks, I hung back, playing the part of the dutiful watchdog.

Standing off to the side, I spotted something that even in Night City was a rare sight – a full-blown borg. These walking chrome jobs were once people, but they'd stuffed so much tech into their bodies that humanity became an optional extra. This one looked like he'd stepped out of a high-end tech catalog, all sleek lines and polished metal.