January 20, 3058

      The woman got up from where she was seated. The room was dark, but she didn't seem to mind. She walked out, into the sunlight. Two things stood out about her. First, she wore a trenchcoat, second, she had a blindfold on. She had chains hanging from her belt, long, heavy, steel chains. They did not glimmer, and they made no noise as she walked.

      Though she was merely walking, her mind was racing, recalling the events, which, a few short weeks ago, had made her lose her vision. She was doing a run against Ares Macrotechnologies with a couple of her runner friends. You see, owning NASA, Ares had some spaceflight information that her Johnson wanted. Prototypes for a new flier. However, now she didn't care. She failed her mission.

     Things were going as quietly as any megacorporation run can. No alarms, no guards, the patterns their Johnson gave her were good. What she didn't know, however, is that the retinal scan contacts he gave her were defective to the slightest. The Johnson probably didn't know either. It was probably an error in the manufacturer's equipment. As she placed her eyes in front of the scanner, she saw a red light. It was supposed to be green.

     Lasers shot out of the scanner into her eyes. She fell backwards, blind. She never recovered. She heard her companions shouting "Sam!", and when she had come to her senses and began to astrally view the situation, she saw her other companion planting the charge to blast open the door. Should've just used it in the first place. She got up. Security was everywhere. She pushed the pain from her eyes out of her mind. There were drones. She could hear them. Everywhere.

     Sam turned to her friends and shouted "Run! It's a trap!", and they took off. However, though Sam was much quicker than the security, their ork rigger got shot in the calf. She picked him up, and ran. The nice thing about being a phys-ad. You can carry most anything. Then Sam blacked out. She wasn't sure what hit her, it might have been a train. When she woke up, one of her buds was carrying her down an alley, away from Ares' office, towards a small bar with a neon light overhead. He let her down when he was sure she could stand, and then was hit by a storm of bullets. Oracle ducked back, seeing an Ares strike team magically.

     As the strike team approached the end of the alley, she drew her chains. Her favorite type of lethal weapon, chains were cheap, effective, and everywhere. And she was a phys-ad. When the first Ares goon stepped out of the alley, he was caught hard in the chest by a full-power blow to the neck. He flipped backwards with the force, and fell to the ground, probably dead, in a cloud of flying blood. He wasn't gonna get up. She ran.

     The Ares strike team was too frightened by the loss of their leader (and so violently, at that) to pursue, so Sam ran until she couldn't, and stumbled into a building. There she put on a pair of sunglasses, paid the clerk, and left for home. She stopped. She was too far from home to walk, especially in this neighborhood, and she didn't have enough nuyen on her for a taxi ride all the way home. Drek. She went into a shop. If this didn't work, she would be in trouble, but she bought a bicycle. Funny thing, when you see a blind person driving, it's strange, but it's stranger to be wearing a trenchcoat and biking. Even stranger to be wearing form-fitting body armor. But she had to go.

     She had not anticipated being stopped by the Star. Darn mercenaries meet policemen as they were, they made her stop and show her the receipt for the bike, then asked why she didn't have a helmet. They levied a large fine upon her, and, had she had a SIN on her person, would have left her in peace. However, because fines upon a SINless person were worthless, they demanded that she pay right then. A short confrontation resulted in her lying on the ground as the Star officers cuffed her and took her down to the station. Fortunately, her SIN was simply just not on her person (she hated credsticks, and left hers at home as often as she could, not anticipating that her SIN on it would ever be necessary. Indeed, a runner's worst nightmare was having their SIN given out freely), and after fingerprinting she was let go.

        Glossary:

        SIN- System Identification Number