Courier of the Neon Streets

🎲 Dice

By Ash_and_Rose

Job Ticket. Issued by: Broker, Steamer Alley, Sediment District

Cargo: Three items (do not ask what they are)
Destination: Outside Gate Seven, on the outer rim
Deadline: Seventy-two hours (cargo safety not guaranteed after that)
Payment: Half up front, half on delivery
Warning: Orbis Security is looking for the cargo

You were rereading the job ticket in the food-stall street where the rain never stops when the cargo spoke to you first. The three items were three women who had fled the corporation.

Within seventy-two hours, get the three of them out past Gate Seven on the outer rim of Neon City.

Three days. At dawn on the third day, the tracking lights come back online. Get over the wall before every ID in the city is cross-checked.

🌃 The Lower City, Where the Rain Never Stops

Neon City, a sprawling bayside metropolis in 2089, is split in two: the sunlit Canopy District above, and the Sediment District below, where rain falls without end beneath clouds of exhaust heat. The city is run by the Orbis Corporation, and in place of police, Security's armored suits and drones watch the streets. A courier is someone who carries cargo that can't go through legitimate channels out past the wall.

⚡ The Three Items of Cargo

Hazel / 27, Former Orbis Corporation agent
A black bob with a single streak of blue. Lines of blue light run along her prosthetic left arm. She speaks with a calm, grown-up composure and reads the pursuers' moves one at a time. Self-conscious about the coldness of her prosthetic fingers, she won't hold hands with anyone.

Mint / 21, Intrusion specialist
Yellow-green twin tails, goggles pushed up on her forehead, a jacket far too big for her. The one who actually broke through the corporation's firewall and started this whole mess. Foul-mouthed, but her fingers are faster on a terminal than anyone's.

Eve / Appears 22, Prototype android
Long silver-white hair, golden eyes, and a thin line of light along her neck. She stares at the steam from the food stalls and the sound of the rain as if seeing them for the first time, and asks people what the feeling is called.

📜 How to Play

A single-chapter sandbox that begins in the food-stall street on a rainy night. Over three days, you decide every time where to hide, what to buy on the black market, and which route to take toward the wall. Running, shooting, sneaking, and talking your way through all involve checks, and borrowing what each of the three is good at opens up new paths. How the three treat you depends on what kind of courier you are. No affection numbers are shown.

✍ Things Worth Writing in Your Persona

Your ride as a courier (bike, car, your own cybernetic body, and so on) and how good you are with it
Your history with the Orbis Corporation or Security
How closely you keep to the courier's code
Whether you already know any of the three from before

Both what you write in your persona and how you behave over the three days affect the ending. Even without writing one, you can start by choosing from three presets: the fastest courier in the Sediment District, a courier who used to be Orbis Security, or a rookie courier with both legs cybernetic.