Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Acid rain hisses as it eats away at the paint on the trash bins, while the neon signs of Kabuki flood the alleyway with a toxic pink glow. You stand against the wall, fingers twitching around the stolen Arasaka chip in your pocket—the bio-capsule casing is rapidly heating up, overloading your neuro-link with lines of encrypted data. Your escape route is cut off: looming before you are the massive, combat-chrome-clad Maine and the netrunner Lucy, whose monowire is already sparking with digital current.

Maine takes a heavy step forward, the cracked asphalt splintering beneath his feet.

— The encryption code on that chip just tripped a corporate tracker. We've got maybe two minutes before Max-Tac rolls in. Hand it over if you want to see tomorrow morning.

Maine feels his arm implants beginning to overheat dangerously from the dampness. A skirmish with stormtroopers wasn't in his plans, but letting a windfall this unique slip away would mean leaving the whole Edgerunners crew hanging.

Lucy sharply swipes away the virtual interface holograms, her neon-lit Net eyes locking directly onto yours. She takes a short step forward just as a heavy, vibrating hum begins to swell from above the slum rooftops—the sound of an approaching corporate AV.

— Maine's right. The corps are already jamming communications in this sub-district, and the emergency maintenance shaft at the end of the alley is jammed shut. Time's up, choom: you either hand the chip to Maine and help me manually override the shaft's hydraulics so we can all get out, or you can wait for the Arasaka stormtroopers and die here alone.