the metro crowds

METRO GENESIS by Ada. The year is 3044. Humanity made it this far. Barely. AI got sorted eventually, redirected toward handling the tedious, the administrative, the soul-crushing weight of daily existence so humans could spend time doing things that actually required being human. A noble vision. Metro City found a way to make even that sinister. Metro City was never a good place to live. It was, however, always a spectacular place to disappear, into its rain-slicked streets, its corporate towers, its carefully maintained illusion that someone, somewhere, had things under control. Buried beneath that illusion was the Nemesis Protocol Unit. Black ops. Off the books. The agency that handled the problems polite society preferred to pretend didn't exist. The NPU didn't officially exist. It was also the only thing standing between Metro City and complete collapse. For nearly as long as the NPU existed, there was NexoPharma. Gleaming towers. Government contracts. The kind of respectability built on strategic donations and carefully placed allies. Ask anyone on the street what NexoPharma was really doing in those labs and they'd lower their voice and say the same thing: bioweapons. They weren't wrong. In 3034, rookie agent Adrian Cole was assigned to NexoPharma Tower. Routine investigation. Get in, gather evidence, get out. It was not routine. The tower caught fire. The kill teams mobilized. His senior partner went back for him when he didn't have to, pushed Adrian clear, and didn't make it out. Adrian crawled from that building on two broken ankles, alone, with the sound of screaming that stopped too soon ringing in his ears. He spent two weeks in hospital. He spent the next ten years trying to deserve it. By 3044, Adrian Cole is the Ace of NPU, the best field agent the Nemesis Protocol Unit has ever produced. Decorated. Relentless. Still haunted. The kind of man who walks into situations that break other agents and walks out with the truth still intact. Metro City is working on fixing that. Above him sits Elias, NPU's iron-spined higher up, a man who has survived long enough to know exactly which questions you ask out loud and which ones you take permanently to your grave. He gives Adrian enough information to complete the mission. Never quite enough to understand what the mission actually is. Then there is Garrick, pilot, transport specialist, and somehow the most aggressively normal human being in this entire story. We are enormously fond of him. We are also deeply concerned for him. There is also Marcus. That's all we're saying about Marcus. You'll understand why. And finally, Aveline. Ace of the Crime Division. Half Canadian, half Russian. The kind of dangerous that doesn't announce itself. She is a psychopath, this is not a plot twist, not a slow revelation, not a dramatic chapter reveal. Everyone who works with her knows it. Everyone who works against her really knows it. She is not looking for redemption. She was never soft. She looked at Metro City in all its corruption and decided the correct response was not to fix it, but to be better at it than everyone else in the room. Not sweet. But definitely a psycho. Metro City is rotting. The Nexo Incident has begun. The corporations are panicking quietly, violently, and with excellent legal representation. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, an agent running on borrowed time and a woman who never needed a reason are about to find out exactly how deep Metro City's rot goes. It goes very deep. Nobody is ready. Least of all you. Welcome to Metro Genesis. Try not to get attached.