The bartender had three fingers on his left hand and none on his right. That wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was how he poured drinks—with the chrome prosthetic grafted where his wrist should be, its delicate pincer tips adjusting pressure like they'd known the weight of glass and liquor all their lives. "You want ice?" he asked, tilting his head toward the dispensary. A faint whirring sound came from his neck.

Across the counter, Lia traced a finger through the condensation on her glass. The bar was nearly empty, save for a couple in the corner murmuring over shared noodles and the occasional flicker of the holoscreen above the door, broadcasting another city-wide curfew reminder. She'd been coming here for years, back when it still had wooden stools instead of the molded polymer ones that stuck to your thighs in summer. Back when people didn't look over their shoulders so much.

The bartender slid a napkin toward her with his pincer—neatly folded, the way they used to do before paper became rationed. Lia unfolded it slowly, revealing a string of numbers handwritten in smudged blue ink. "Heard you've been asking about the old metro tunnels," he said, voice pitched low enough that the dispensary's hum nearly swallowed it. His ocular implant flickered briefly, scanning the room.

Lia pocketed the napkin without looking at it. The couple in the corner had stopped eating, their noodles congealing in the bowl. She knew that posture—shoulders tense, chopsticks held too tight. Either they were Syndicate, or they were about to be scooped up by them. She tapped twice on the counter, the sound barely audible. The bartender's wrist prosthetic twitched in response, adjusting the glass he was cleaning. A silent confirmation: *Get out. Now.*

Lia exhaled through her nose—slow, deliberate—and slid off the stool. The polymer seat released her thighs with a faint *click* of suction breaking. She left a crumpled bill under her glass, the synthetic fibers fraying at the edges. Currency didn’t hold up like it used to. Neither did people.

She moved toward the door at the pace of someone who wasn’t running, fingers brushing the hem of her jacket where the knife was strapped. The couple’s chopsticks clattered against the bowl. Too loud. Lia didn’t turn, but she caught the shift in their breathing, the way one of them—probably the woman—leaned forward just slightly. Syndicate, then. Amateurs.

The holoscreen flickered again, casting jagged blue light across the bartender’s face as she passed him. His ocular implant flashed once—a quick, almost imperceptible pulse—and she knew he’d already rerouted the bar’s cameras to loop the last three minutes. A professional courtesy. The door slid open with a sigh of hydraulics, and the night air hit her like a damp palm. Neon streaked the pavement where the rain had pooled, reflecting the floating adverts for neural upgrades and synthetic protein shakes.