If there was a god out there, like the old Terran legends liked to claim, then he was a sadist who hated my guts. There was no other way to explain the nonsense I’d been through! I mean, who survives the clash of two inhuman murder machines and pulls off an amazing robbery, just to get nearly shanked in his own apartment building’s stairwell?

  Goddamn building and its goddamn malfunctioning elevator. If I could have used it, the creeper wouldn’t have been able to follow me, and I’d have gotten off scot-free.

  Why was I on a fresh spree of complaints? Well, it was kind of hard to keep them in by the time I made it to Catill’s rundown little shop. My entire being was on fire from the sheer effort of remaining in motion.

  It didn’t help that he looked wholly unimpressed to see me upon my glorious entrance. And no, I did not almost trip over my own feet and faceplant.

  If Catill says otherwise, he’s a dirty lying liar who lies.

  “Wa happened to you?” my employer immediately asked, face scrunching up in distaste as he took in my bruises. The expression did not do good things for his features. “I swear your kind’s not supposed to change color like that.”

  “Decided to redecorate a little. You know, a little extra color never hurt anyone.”

  “Answer my question or walk, human.”

  I sighed, but I knew he was serious. Catill wasn’t one to budge when pressed, so I could choose between justifying myself and losing my job.

  “Listen, it wasn’t my fault. I was tired and just trying to get home, okay? How was I supposed to know some random druggie was scoping out the area for victims? He almost killed me meters from my front door. If a couple kind souls didn’t happen along, you’d be down an employee right now. Still left me with plenty to remember him by, though.”

  Catill squinted at me. His eyes were dark yellow, a shade that could charitably be compared to amber. When I wasn’t feeling so kind, like right in that moment, I called them piss-colored.

  A few seconds later, he nodded. “You can get to work now.”

  Technically, I had around twenty minutes before my shift started. I also knew I had a snowflake’s chance in hell of extracting more money from my boss for the additional labor, but…

  I just sighed again and did as I was told. He had literally saved my life when he hired me. If he wanted to take a little advantage of me, then let him.

  As always, I started my day at work in the most exciting way possible: going over the previous day’s books and making sure everything was properly squared away. Few people were as anal about taxes as various merchant emporiums, and Catill wasn’t exactly a whizz with the numbers.

  To be honest, neither was I. But I didn’t have a rage boner against all things technological like Catill did, which meant I could check my work over using my scroll. My employer always scowled at this, but since he insisted on keeping actual log books in an age of space travel (restricted though it may be), he had only himself to blame.

  The entire store was a testament to Catill’s oddity. The space bristled with shelves containing every imaginable knickknack that had nothing to do with technology. We sold paperweights, artwork, baubles of every shape and size, lots of tools, and other oddments. There was also an assortment of knives that could be passed off as something meant for a kitchen, but would most likely see use in dark street corners.

  Catill’s Shop of Curiosities lived up to its title. Still, nothing was more curious than the fact that the place was still up and running, despite the fact that I had seen a customer enter the premises exactly five times in recent recorded history. I’d also witnessed only one successful sale.

  After this mysterious staying power, the store’s other chief curiosity was Mr. Catill himself. The man, and I was fairly sure he was a man, wasn’t human. He was from some fringe alien race I didn’t know the name of. No amount of searching the net had yielded the answer, and I’d have more luck trying to pull it out of thin air than I would asking him about it upfront.

  He was extremely cagey about everything. One time, he utterly refused to share with me what he brought along for lunch. Even later, when I saw him slurp down the disgusting slop some vending machines called ‘Highly nutritious paste! One tube will keep you fed for a full day!’, he stayed tightlipped.

  His coloring was best described as puke green. I’ve already waxed eloquent about his lovely eyes. His entire body was folds and folds of leathery skin that fell over each other. His face was humanoid but rather unique, with his squished nose and wide, bulbous lips that parted to reveal needlepoint teeth.

  Overall, Mr. Catill was a real beaut, on top of being a little looney.

  Really, he went to insane lengths to avoid using advanced tech. Even our cash register was subjected to hours of glaring when I finally talked him into getting one. Maybe he was doing some major money laundering for every gang in the city and needed to keep off the grid, but I tended to think he was just plain crazy.

  Yet, in spite of all his flaws, I would willingly take a bullet for the man. A small caliber bullet, and only to one of my limbs, but still. That was rare loyalty right there.

  One of his tamer quirks was an obsession with optimizing the layout of his store. So, once I finished the books (which took way less time with eyes that could track and autocorrect everything for me), I got to turn my brain off and just shuffle things around for hours at his exacting orders.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Was it fun, with the condition my body was in? Nope. But at least it wasn’t too physically demanding, and I wasn’t a joytoy like most of my peers in the slums assumed I was.

  Besides, now that I had my new eyes, I got to cheat. Catill didn’t like it when I spent too much time on my scroll, even during my breaks, but what was he going to do about the feed I had built directly into my head now?

  I got to watch several inane shows, browse some semi-reliable news portals for things to look out for on the way back home, and even listened to music for a while. It was still tripping me up that the eyes somehow let me hear things, but I was just glad they worked.

  I was also thankful they had an automatic noise calibration system for when someone tried to talk to you while you were blasting music. That saved my bacon once or twice.

  The longer the day stretched on, and the longer I worked in relative calm and quiet, the better I felt. It wasn’t just physically that I was improving, either. Sure, my muscles apparently enjoyed the chance to limber up and engage in some honest work, but what I valued more was my peace of mind.

  Cloistered inside my apartment, all alone with the stolen goods, it was easy for the demons in my head to convince me people were about to bust down my door, snatch me up, and then inflict horrible suffering on me until I screamed for death.

  At my workplace, though? In the company of Catill’s regular surly self? Whatever part of me had clenched up and stayed that way ever since the shooting started was slowly relaxing. In that dusty little shop with my nagging boss, the notion of people hunting me down seemed ridiculous.

  How could they possibly manage such a feat, anyway? I was a street kid. I hadn’t checked in with a proper health provider in over a decade. I didn’t have any friends or acquaintances who knew what I’d been up to. In fact, I was a stranger to just about every inhabitant of the slums.

  There wasn’t even a way for anyone to track the cyberware I’d stolen. Unless the pieces magically activated themselves and released some kind of a tracking beacon, no one would find them behind that dumpster.

  If someone, somehow, did do that, then good for them! The cyberware became their problem to deal with, and I could happily wash my hands of the whole mess. I didn’t worry about the eyes so much. Glim had declared them free of most obvious issues, and I believed him at least capable of detecting trackers. He wouldn’t have lasted so long as a scav scam of a ripper otherwise.

  No, the longer I spent working through a well-established routine in a familiar environment, the easier it got to talk myself into believing I was safe.

  And with that revelation, I felt like the world opened up before me. It bore mentioning again, but I had a brand new set of eyes and more money than I ever thought I’d lay my hands on. A very limited piece of the world was my oyster!

  The first thing I did on my break was slot that credit chip I’d brought along into my brand new wetware neuroport. Then I logged onto the most lauded and supposedly safest app store I could find. Navigating to the Reality Enhancement software tab was a matter of moments, and I was soon browsing the many, many options for sale. RE software wasn’t exactly new, but its high degree of reliability and immersion was a relatively recent development made possible by wetware advancements.

  Now, in just a few mental clicks, people with the right hardware could download an app that meticulously tracked all their physical characteristics. The app could even present those characteristics in the form of stats and a neat HUD that gave advice concerning health, workout regimes, improved diet, and so much more.

  I downloaded a few partial sample apps, including one that showed me my current muscle mass and recommended fixes for any deficiencies, but I quickly cringed away. I could recognize a shill when I saw one, and this app had blatant product promotion all over it. Really, was it the best solution for all my problems to just shove a bunch of branded chemicals down my throat?

  Huffily navigating menus in search of the app so I could delete it did yield one useful discovery, though. Tucked away in a corner of my main ‘eye settings’ menu, I found a tab inconspicuously named ‘color settings’.

  I accessed it on a whim, then had to choke down an excited whoop when it brought up a 3D visual of my new eyes. All the bits whose color I could change were clearly highlighted and separated by different tabs.

  A silly part of me that never had quite died in spite of my circumstances wanted to make my eyes a solid pink. Sclera, iris, pupil, and all. It would probably freak people out something fierce.

  Another part of me leaned towards finding a green as close to my natural eye color as possible. It would have been kind of nice to claw a piece of normality back from the chaos of all that had happened. Yet… that kind of felt like it would have been cheating, or perhaps denying a newfound part of me.

  In the end, I declined the offer to save my new color settings and closed out of the tab. I would keep my creepy red vampire eyes, at least for the time being.

  Navigating back to the app store, I eventually found an app that seemed to offer solid functionality for a reasonable price. I finalized my purchase immediately. It cost me twenty credits to get the damn thing, a ridiculous amount of money to spend on what some might see as frivolity, but I was determined.

  I could only really start to fix myself if I knew how to approach the subject. The app promised to keep track of my nutrition, help formulate a good workout plan, and even monitor a bunch of other useful health data that would alert me the second I got sick or something else went wrong.

  More to the point, it had a nice little stat point system that would track every bit of progress I made so I could stay motivated. I’d never gotten to play full VR immersion games before, but I hoped the app would let me get a taste of that experience.

  Who knew? Now that I had the money, maybe I’d buy a gaming set at some point. A cheap and old one, because you can never have anything nice in the slums, but… I’d take it.

  The app downloaded quickly, then asked for some time to collect and calibrate my data so it could generate the stats. I happily let it do its thing. There was an unpleasant tingle that passed through my eyes when the process kicked off, and my sight frazzled for just a second. But the weirdness didn’t last long and didn’t return, so I just went back to work.

  Ten minutes later, the app did a happy little jingle to announce it was ready. I dove straight in and started hunting for my stat window.

  When I finally spotted it, I froze.

  Now, my stats were depressing for sure, but I kind of expected that from the start. That wasn’t what threw me for a loop. No, what got me was the fact that none of the stats after ‘Stamina’ were supposed to be a thing.

  They were not covered in the app’s promo. No one had tried to upsell me on them. Unlike the first half of entries, they came with absolutely no explanations attached.

  Okay, so… what the hell are you?