She knew she was being followed, but her implant told her it was safer to pretend she didn’t notice. For three blocks she was alerted to the presence of an overly large man in a black hooded trench coat looking as out of place as a tree in the city. She didn’t know him, or at least she didn’t think she did. He wasn’t one of the twenty scum bags who asked her for a fuck in the bathroom at the bar she hung out in, nor did he seem to be one of her creepy coworkers who acted too familiar for her liking. She had read recently that certain implants were having security issues, and she wondered if this was some kind of stalker or hacker who had infiltrated her system.

She tried to maintain good digital hygiene, but its not exactly a skill they teach in school. Before her implant, she’d use her devices anywhere there was an open wifi signal. She’d use NFC to pass information between her devices and her friends and sometimes strangers she had just met, to exchange numbers or social media. When she had gotten her implant, she remembered the doctor giving a big spiel about not connecting to unknown networks, only ever using a proxy machine to interface between implant and internet and a bunch of the other barely intelligible warnings that doctors give patients, and patients ignore. She had really tried, but she was too sloppy. Whoever this person was following them, they must’ve had access to something. How else would they be able to follow her so closely, without her seeing them more than once or twice on her half hour walk home?

It was stupid to leave the bar by herself, and stupider still to walk home alone. She had a gun, of course, and that was her main source of solace, but she was still nervous. Guns only worked when your target was mostly flesh. Most augmented people really only added a few bells and whistles to the biology that they were born with, and amongst those very few of those augmentations are particularly useful for defense. Most weapons-grade augmentations were either black market or for people too rich to be spending their time in this neighborhood. Still, though. This man was too big, too bulky. People usually didn’t wear layers anymore—why bother when implants will keep your temperature stable? What was he hiding under his clothes?

Was he an Ogre?

She’d heard about Ogres, but had never met one. No one she knew had met one either. They were the kinds of stories you tell to each other in high school, to scare each other and get a laugh at the weird things the world created. She didn’t know much about them, only that they were heavily augmented and dangerous. There was something about interfacing between neural implants and a surgically attached exosuit, she half remembered, but wasn’t sure how much of that was real and how much of it was just rumor.

She turned around and saw the man at the other end of the block, turning a corner, eyes invisible in the darkness of his hood. She had tried to keep her fight-or-flight under control, but the implant’s mood stabilizers had worn off and she couldn’t take it anymore. She reached into her pocket and gripped the handle of her old fashioned snub nosed pistol—it was practically ancient, but it was also unregistered, unlicensed and, most importantly, it had no onboard AI. Some things were just better before the shift.

She turned the corner, walked a few strides and stopped. She turned around, readied her pistol and waited for the man to turn the corner.

“Excuse me, miss?” Came a voice from behind her.

A gunshot pierced the stillness, and sent all of the adrenaline that was building up in the girl’s system to her brain and her heart. Her pulse increased, her respiration approached dangerous levels and when she turned around, it was with her gun drawn and her finger ready to pull the trigger again.

Instead of the huge man following her, she found herself face to face with…a pop star?

“Mythick Idol?!” She said, confusion mixing with the fear and adrenaline.

“That’s me!” the pop star said with a wink. “Is everything alright? I saw you turn the corner and take out a gun?” Then they began to whisper: “Are you in trouble?”

The girl began to cry, dropping her gun and taking some shaky steps towards the pop star. “Please, yes, there’s a man following me. I think he might be an Ogre.”

“An Ogre?” Mythick said, surprised. “That’s really scary. Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.” The girl walked towards Mythick, standing with open arms, ready to accept the terrified girl. She fell into the pop star’s arms, Mythick wrapped them around the girl’s shoulders.

“You’re safe now.” Mythick lied, then stuck their finger into the girl’s ear and they went limp. The Ogre rounded the corner and helped Mythick drag the unconscious girl into an adjacent alleyway.

“What did you do?”

“Audio exploit. Uses subaudible morse code to prompt-inject commands. This one creates a fully immersive dream that lasts indefinitely, until I turn it off.”

“What kind of dream?” The Ogre asked.

“Usually something spicy. If I’m going to kill someone, I at least want them to go out getting railed.” The Ogre didn’t respond.

There was once a time in Mythick’s life where they might’ve been disgusted with themselves for what they just did. Not anymore though. The world was too fucked for morals and too far gone for redemption. All that mattered anymore was survival, and this was war after all. They let a small smile play at their lips, each muscle perfectly shaping that familiar smirk that marked billboards, album covers and social media posts. Mythick looked over their rose colored sunglasses at their beloved Ogre standing over the broken form of a small woman writhing in what was likely equal parts ecstasy and agony, though its always hard to tell with augies.