Shadowrun:  A Night To Never Remember - 1

I woke up to the smell of a burning car.

It's a smell you never forget.  A lot of people say that it's cooking metahuman flesh that they never forget, but that always smelled like Pork to me.  The smell of burning gasoline, lubricants, leather, paint, and metal stayed with me.  I remembered it in my sleep at night.

The pain came next.  It was then that I knew I wasn't dreaming.  It was a different pain.  In my sleep, the pain is a burning death the creeps along my back and legs.  The fire that had required my muscles being replaced by vat-grown synthetics, allowing me to walk again, drive again.  But, in doing so, had removed the reason for doing so.  This pain was mostly hunger, as well as stiffness all over my body.  A dull ache was over my torso and left shoulder.

Eyes open, and light intrudes, stabbing deep into the brain.  The world was a blur of bright and dark, much like my mind.  I can see human-like shapes near a bit patch of bright, they're shouting, and are angry.  One moves an arm at me.

My body reacts before I can think, which is good because I'm barely able to.  My arm shoots out like a dirt bike at the starting gate and a trigger is pulled.  I barely realize that I have a gun in my hand when a whole patch of bright appears, slamming further agony into my brain.  The noise comes scarcely afterwards, a percussion blast of drums after the light show.  My vision reappears, improved, I can see some details now.  Like punks running away from a burning...

“Drek.”  I breathe, from a burning Mitsuhama Tengu sports car.  My Mitsuhama Tengu sports car as a matter of fact.  My pride and joy, now burning in the streets...

And I have no idea how I got here.  Which was probably typical, feeling as I do.  Like I'd been shot and been in a car accident.

Taking in the street scenes, I could see that I was in a bad neighbourhood.  Which was good, really, as it meant I was close to the apartment that I called home.  It was bad because the street monsters around here would smell my blood and come after me for whatever they could get.  My boots alone would fetch them a month of brain burners to distract them from their worthless lives.

Groaning with effort, I pull myself to my feet, and start to shuffle as quickly as possible, absently checking the gun in my hand, finding that it is my own revolver.  Flipping the cylinder out and seeing that only two shots were left, the rest had their caps busted.  Digging in the pockets of my armoured leather jacket only turned up a sharp needle that pricked my finger.  My coat usually held thirty bullets in it, which meant I had just shot my way through Hell, apparently.  Must have been fun, wish I could remember it...

Exhaustion hit me after I had gotten only two blocks, the hunger within me like a ravenous beast.  A bit of bioware gave me the gift of going faster and harder than ever before, but also gave me an appetite like a starving Ork.  “Damnit, Nas, move your fairy, Elven, lighter than thistledown feet.”  I muttered to myself, and shuffled forward with renewed energy from the self-recrimination.

Next thing I knew, I was stumbling in my front door, the trip home as big a blur and haze as everything else at the moment.  I considered getting something to eat, but my body had other ideas, and I collapsed on the couch, my arm flinging over, thudding the pistol in my hand on the coffee table, within easy reach.  The last concious thing I did was listen to the lock click shut, allowing me to drift peacefully into the oblivion of sleep.

Short lived though that sleep was, for I doubt even an hour had gone by when someone picked my lock with a shotgun blast.