Prologue: A Nightless City
"According to online searches and websites, Iremia was just like any other big city. It had various attractions, numerous skyscrapers, and a plethora of culture that seemed both exciting and mundane at the same time. At night, it was a beacon of light, visible from miles away.
But anyone who's ever gone to the city and walked those sleepless streets knows that whatever rosy-painted notion people had of Iremia....
Was utterly false.
Crime littered the alleyways. Newspaper stands, mailboxes, and donation boxes hid illegal drugs. Most cars, new or used, had secret compartments that held under-the-table items. It was more common to see someone carrying a gun around their waist than to see someone without one. Iremia was far from the ordinary port city websites made it out to be. The residents knew. The city council knew(albeit they didn't care). But what could anyone do? Iremia had turned into this mash pit of illegal acts and corruption because of the amount of crime syndicates who had branches here. Gangs, mafias, cartels, triads, yakuzas, all of them had at least some form of control over a portion of the city. And while the groups weren't always on friendly terms, they did at least band together to drag every righteous political person(be it governor or police officer) onto the path of corruption. As such, anything that happened here, stayed here.
The residents, then, had three options.
Option one, join an organization. In the meantime, you would be gambling away some portion of your life on money you may or may not make through illegal operations. Either you go all in and leave any hope of living a normal life behind or you try to balance a half and half existence.
Option two, stay neutral and stay down. Turn a blind eye to everyone and everything. Don't be curious. Don't trust. Don't meddle.
Option three, leave. Go somewhere far, far away from the city and never come back. It'll be expensive to get a ticket on a train or a plane. It'll be dangerous to try to drive out too because organization members may think you're someone else and blow you up. Literally.
So, for someone like me who holds a mediocre job with a mediocre wage living a mediocre life, option two is my best bet."
That was what ran through Selene's head again as she stared out a window on the 12th floor of a skyscraper. She had decided to take a break after her manager dumped yet another project onto the team even though they had just finished the previous project mere hours ago. It was workloads like this that made her want to quit. Not that she could. She had no other legal way to make money and she sure as hell wasn't going to start something shady.
Before taking her break, she had scanned the information on the project. Based on her knowledge of how things worked in the company she worked for and what was vaguely implied by the information, the project was commissioned by some small-time gang that needed programmers to help them with something.
She didn't really care what it was. Or what it was even for. That was rule number one for her: don't inquire about commissions or try to find out what the commissioned code was for.
Selene huffed, watching as the cigarette smoke left her mouth and crawled towards the vent.
Bzzt.
Her watch buzzed for a second before Selene's right hand automatically moved to dismiss the alarm.
Time's up. Back to work.