Chapter One: Sorry for the Mess
Toronto. Hog City. Maybe wherever you're from, they didn't talk about the Mega-Queen much: she was just another dot on the map, a far-flung center of civilization that had nothing to do with you or your existence. Maybe you knew the fun facts, the touristy bits of false knowledge. "Did you know this is the cleanest, safest city in the UCAS?" You might even own a postcard with the CN Tower on it's front, a heartwarming message scrawled on the back.
Unfortunately, as you likely realized within minutes of touching down at Toronto Pearson International or stepped onto shore from Toronto Harbour, the thin veil of normalcy, of peace and prosperity, was easily lifted and discarded. For many, it was the smell: the long-polluted Lake Ontario giving off an odor unlike any other, the results of corporate abuse decades in the making. No matter how hard the wageslaves scrubbed and cleaned, they couldn't get the smell out. No amount of white paneling could hide the stink.
Once you broke through the surface, Toronto was just like any other North American sprawl: the center of the city was a castle of glass and steel, from which the rich and powerful pitied and spat on those who lived outside. Emanating from this beating corporate heart was the infection it caused: miles and miles of urban jungle in any direction, with the waters of Lake Ontario being the edge of the world to the city-dwellers. Toronto hides its true face, the faces of the millions living in squalor, beneath a few statistics - lowest murder rate, least robberies, et cetera - statistics that remain true only through the brutality of the megacorps that run the city.
Home to one of the world's largest stock exchanges, Toronto is a major city for international trade in the northern UCAS, the last major link between the majority of the country and their northern neighbors, the Native American Nations and Quebec, as well as for continental flights and lake commerce. This coupled with the relatively smaller size of the city compared to it's larger counterparts has made the megacorps especially bold, rooting out crime themselves through claims of extraterritoriality and the rule of "law."
But shadows exist even in the smallest of cracks, and the runner community thrives despite the best efforts of Toronto's ruling elite. Perhaps they were easier to find in other cities: the runner hubs in Seattle and Hong Kong were well known, whereas runners in Hog City had to stay on the move, never keeping one den for too long. This practice made it difficult to find your target when you got to the city. All you had going for you was the name of a downtown club, Fly3, it's vague location at an intersection no longer on the maps, and the promise that your contact would meet you there.
Fly3 was a popular little hangout, so the street whispers said, for all walks of life that felt the need to hide from Toronto's public: sexual deviants, the Goblinized masses, and of course your fellow runners all made this place their home during Toronto's lonely nights. Entering, you are assaulted by a different sort of stench than the one that besieges the city proper. Rather than a rancid odor, it is a stench of activity and illicitness, of dancing and drugs and drink. Music thumps through the air, vibrating everything within the confines of it's sound-proof walls. You must wade through a sea of dancers and party-goers to find the bar, a long stretch of counter taking up the smaller left wall.
The bartender, a homely troll with massive, arm-length horns and a pair of tusks to match, directs you to a side door just beyond the bar's far end. It is marked as the "Party Room," with the word "PRIVATE" written in bold handwriting on a piece of paper taped beneath the sign. The door is locked, and only after a small camera above the door quietly zooms in on your face do you hear the click of the lock opening.
Pushing the door open, you are greeted by a familiar face. An orkish woman sits quietly in a horseshoe booth at the end of the room, one of a dozen that line the walls, a clean white dance floor filling the space in between. She is wearing a three-piece suit, dark gray in color, just a few shades darker than her own gray-yellow skin. Her hair is tied back into a ponytail, her dreads melding into a rope and then spewing out the back of her head like lasers. A tattoo is visible on her neck, an exploding star in watercolor style. She is holding a cigarette in her chromed left hand, and her smile reaches from ear to ear, revealing every tooth and tusk that filled her Goblinized mouth.
A small Renraku deck lay on the table in front of her, beside an expensive looking bottle of liquor, seven cups and a plate of crackers and cheese. She hadn't noticed the door open, instead fully focused on the screen in front of her, her eyes narrow and angry. It was only the sound of the door closing behind you that she snapped the screen shut, turning her attention to you.
"Ho ho ho, if it isn't my new best fuckin' friend!" She stood up quickly, nearly spilling her own glass of murky-brown liquid in the process, clearing the floor in a few large steps. You could faintly hear the thumping of the music outside, but it almost sounded as if her footfalls were heavier, nearly shattering tiles beneath them. "Well, one o' ya at least." She waved her glass around from the center of the room, saying as she turned, "Like my digs? Finest fixer's office this side a the States, omae. Take a load off and sit a while, we'll be here a bit waitin' for the rest of you'se to show up."
She flashed a smile as she turned back towards the table, glass in hand. "When they show up, then we can talk business. For now, drinks're on me, boss!" With that, she tosses you the bottle and a glass, laughing as she sat back down to wait for the team to arrive.
