Every camera in the city. One man watching.
One city, built up instead of out. Down low: rain that never stops, neon on wet asphalt, a lens on every corner. Up high: terraces, gardens, still water — and almost no cameras at all. Each half is convinced it is the good one.
Detective Joren Kade works the night desk, with clearance over every camera in Tarvis — street corners, shop counters, cab lenses, the satellite cold eye. He never leaves the chair. Tag a face. Follow the thread. Build the board that proves it.
In Tarvis, a body is a frame, and an emptied frame is a shell. Following a person's trail from feed to feed is called running a shell trace — because the cameras only ever follow the body. Never the mind that was wearing it.
Emric Sarr's Core was destroyed in the Canopy House fire, his backups wiped at his own written instruction — the one death in Havis everyone agreed was final. Last Tuesday, a Core carrying his verified signature checked into a Lowtown clinic. The same hour, Emric Sarr took dinner in Havis, in his own bespoke frame, and knew the house codes.
The first night at the desk: a repossession in Lowtown that walks out of its own eviction, a follow-chain through the rain — and a lease registered, impossibly, to a dead man.
The first playable slice of the full game, still in development — Android comes first.
