Agent J-57 (or simply "The Wolf" as many around his sectors know him) is chugging down syrupy coffee in a back alley
filled with half-torn debris. He's just gotten back from a run at the marketplace bordering the local underworld cave entrance. A few shady agents seemed to be lurking around the perimeters but he had no trouble picking up some peculiar specimens and knick-knacks on this latest outing: space centipede extracts, land-squid glands, a slew of odd microchips, resistors and holographic light generators. There's an air of nervous about him, one could write it off as coffee-fueled madness but this may overlook the abnormality to the tension he's carrying. Nearby some kids run and scream down dusty stone streets overgrown with wild brush. Their playing is shrill but resonant, like fingers on a chalkboard played through a plate reverb of enormous size. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted those Space-drugs OSK shipped down the pipelines last week..." he thinks half-remorseful for this uneasy state of crunktitude he's data-running this mission on.
His newly acquired squid glands are suspended in a vicious, semi-transparent jelly with a tinge of purple and seem to throb erratically as far as he can tell, but now the landscape seems shifty too. Dark shadows crawl and bend the spacetime around him. He takes this as his cue to get on the move quick, make it to the rendezvous point before the drugs takeover and he'll have access to sanitary lab conditions where he can wire up these parts into his latest efforts at creation: a monster printing machine. To be honest, this has always been a long time desire of his - seeing his visions made flesh and animate. It always seemed out of reach but one day a strange, mysterious Doctor decided to play angel and fund his peculiar experiments after contacting him through an IX-encrypted triple ICE shade-line. He had little choice but to seize the opportunity to realize his dreams.
He ditches the empty cup of coffee, heart pounding fluids through his veins at what feels like 500RPMs, he foots it down the alley in a frenzy... "Only a few more blocks" he thinks reassuringly "Only a few more blocks..." The wind is intimidating like a Lion's roar - a piercing obstacle. Who knows though... with such a badass monster-generating machine like the one he has planned, they might even give him his own office up in the skylabs. Ahh, escape off this cesspool world of garbage - into the sky and beyond. He does have reservations about wearing the protocol time suits they require up there, but after all he's been through getting over such concerns should be a cinch.
He takes a deep breath, steps wavering due to the mysterious celestial consumables he's ingested. He draws a sigil with his mental stylus and as he passes through the hyper-seal his intoxication takes on a new skewed clarity. Angles shift and the light sings along its pathways, he's phasing through the pulses of entangled quanta, network mesh singularity fragments expressed in particle glyphs dancing to the tune of time. He's making great time on his was back to his secluded labs... and then the footsteps behind him come into focus once more, a slow dragging sound accompanies the multi-footed pitter patter stalking him through the corridors of the urban sprawl - there's a weird rhythmic harmony about them suggesting the unison movement of a swarm of ant legs but much, much heavier. Alas though he can't seem to pinpoint any source of the strange sounds and his HUD doesn't register any immediate lifeforms - aetherical or otherwise. Is it the drugs? What sort of job did really he take here...? All questions on my mind but they are overshadowed by his dreams of this monster design gig and the possible payoff.