The smell of beer, blood, and incense almost knocks me over as I step inside. The throbbing bass pounds my entire body, booming dark trance coming from 20-foot tall speakers spaced strategically along all 4 walls of this open steel-walled room. On the wall across from me, a massive (at least 10ftx10ft) metal bleeding skull embedded about 30 feet high provides an ambient red glow from its eyes. Luminescent crimson lakes gush from its eye sockets and cascade down the wall into a gently-flowing blood moat surrounding the room on all sides. This entire red sea pulses bright red to the beat. Blacklights in each corner are the only additional “light” in this hell, illuminating the neon highlights on the punkish attire of the various cultists inhabiting the room-mostly leather jackets, sukajans, black boots, fingerless gloves, and the occasional black bikini top or speedo. The only thing in common besides their insane fashion senses are the identical masks they sport. “Arthur,” Araña says, “this is Charles Blake. I believe you have something for him?”
I turn to my left and recoil instinctively at the hulk of a man next to the door--he must be the bodyguard. Seven feet tall, almost as wide, built like a steel wall. “H-hi, A-arthur,” I say, waving nervously.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Charles,” he croons in a gentle, soft, deep voice that takes me even more off guard than his behemoth appearance. “I’ve heard much about you. Try to understand why I’m giving you this gift--it’s not merely a fashion rule. We’re all equals here. On the surface, even subconsciously, we’re always judging each other--we see someone with glowing red eyes and know immediately they’re an ART, and we let that define them to us, let it fill us with fear and awe, and we fail to connect on the level that is important--we’re all running the same code upstairs.” His massive, dark hands gently place a bleeding-eyes skull mask on my face (which, surprisingly, I can see through just fine despite the ambient glow of the RED LEDs around the ‘eye sockets’).
“Thanks, Arthur,” I say. He extends a friendly hand, and though I grimace in anticipation of accidentally crushed bones, he shows mercy with a gentle shake. He motions me towards the dance floor in the center and slips me a packet of Rapture Red: it would be rude to refuse, right? I wander awkwardly onto the edge of the dance floor, not because I’m nervous about dancing or about the company, but because I’m still not convinced this isn’t all some kind of trap. I warily and hungrily eye the packet of Rapture Red in my hand… Rapture #ff0000, to be exact, the purest shit, right from the source.
I look up at the legion of punks high as a kite on this stuff, making out and grinding up and down each other like a slide-whistle orgy, and you know, it actually looks kind of… fun. I haven’t let loose in so many years, haven’t been able to get over Cass enough to. Even alcohol was never quite enough to ease that pain, but fuck it, maybe this shit will. It’s a 50/50 shot I’m gonna get chainsawed in half asshole-first by Kilroy anyway tonight. I open the packet and pull out the green capsule, packed full of chemicals I definitely couldn’t pronounce and nanobots I know are going to to fuck with my neurons–you know, in my braiiiiin. I shudder a little. But don’t I owe it to myself as a self proclaimed cyberpunk action hero to go through with this?
I pop the capsule in my mouth and swallow.