Three days. That’s how long the "quiet life" lasted before the silence started screaming.

Turns out, you can toss a deck into the canal, but you can’t drown the signal in your own skull. I spent seventy-two hours staring at the gray smog rolling through the Puyallup, waiting for a epiphany that never came. All I got was the shakes & a phantom sensation of keyboard feedback beneath my fingertips. I’m a creature of the grid, & without the heat of the matrix, I’m just meat waiting for the grinder.

I’m back.

I’ve got an appointment with a fence in the downtown sector tomorrow, some wiz-kid who claims he’s sitting on a fresh shipment of decommissioned military hardware. I need a deck. Not some consumer-grade drek that’ll fry the moment I brush against black ICE, but something with real, heavy-duty processing power. I’m looking for a custom-rigged Fuchi Excalibur or maybe a modified Renraku Kraftwerk if the price is right. I need overclockable chips, a custom-cooled chassis, & enough memory to run a tactical sub-routine without redlining the ASIST buffer.

My bank account is hurting after the last run, but a decker is only as good as his gear. If I’m going to jump back into the sprawl, I’m going to do it with a rig that can cut through corporate ICE like a mono-filament blade through soy-skin.

Kestrel’s been blowing up my burner-comm with job offers, acting like I didn't just burn half an Evo facility to the ground. Greedy frag-head. I haven't answered, but I’ve been reading the headers. There’s a rumor about a secure server in the Seattle sprawl that's leaking data like a rusted pipe.

I’m not looking for justice this time. I’m just looking for the rhythm. The surge. The feeling of being the most dangerous thing in the room without ever pulling a trigger.

I’m in the market for a new spine, & tonight, I’m going to build it.