The Gathering Shadows, Chapter 1, Part 1.
Premise: A young man is thrust without warning into the dark world of Shadowrun.


After a five-year coma, Tz’alin Rhom finally ‘awoke.’ He slowly became aware of the sensation of existing and his mind stirred from its healing slumber. Only… when his eyes opened, his first sight was an aged, more mature version of his own face. He recognized his own wispy blond hair and gaunt cheeks, and had his eyelids been open he would have known the bright green eyes.

His disembodied consciousness inhabited the hospital room where his body laid resting, and he could see it through the mechanical ‘eyes’ of the medical monitoring equipment. A sense of fear rushed over him as he struggled to comprehend what was happening. Am I dead? Considering the alien sensations and environment, Tz’alin thought the prospect likely. Seconds passed by and nothing changed. Data hummed busily around his mind, traveling at virtual speeds. If this was death, then death is boring.

A claustrophobic sense of being trapped took hold of Tz’alin and he struggled in his digital prison. He thrashed about in search for a way to end what he began to think could only be a bizarre nightmare. The futility of his erratic spasms became clear as he felt mental exhaustion slow his efforts, his situation no better off for the outburst. With forced self-control he calmed the chaos in his mind and took a closer look at his surroundings.

He could see each item, or rather the software suite that ran each item, in the medical equipment node. When he accessed those drivers he could feel the location of his awareness physically shift. The heart beat monitor spread him out across the sensor pads attached to the chest of his real body. The breathing regulator shunted him down into the air valve at the end of the tube leading to the oxygen mask over his body’s mouth. The medicine release controls bottled him up in the IV drip hooked up to his blood stream.

Much less frantic than before, Tz’alin practiced navigating this new world. Patience and perseverance paid off as he became more accustomed to it, capable of accessing multiple nodes at once and generally thinking and reacting faster than he ever had before. There was a certain degree of thrill to traveling about the highways of code and, had the circumstances been different, Tz’alin felt he would have enjoyed it. At the moment the thought of escape pressed heavily on his mind though, and he pushed aside the distractions so he could focus. He turned his attention to the central data pipeline that bundled all of the individual byte streams into one channel. The information flow cut off sharply at a point where the device’s virtual realm faded to black. Tz’alin eyed this threshold suspiciously as he drew near to it. A metal ring around the cutoff seemed to radiate energy and every bit of data that passed through it glowed momentarily before shooting away into the darkness beyond. It looked dangerous, but Tz’alin managed to convince himself the risk was worth it; any result was better than the frustration of not knowing what waited for him on the other side.

The step forward through the ring could be likened to walking off a cliff. The comforting ‘floor’ and ‘walls’ he had grown accustomed to disappeared as he passed through the wireless router. Tz’alin’s mind transferred out of the confines of the medical equipment and into the full-blown, omnipresent Matrix, and a whole new world exploded into existence around him. This mode of being was unlike anything Tz’alin had ever known. The rush of information blinded and confused him; he couldn’t make sense of anything as the sheer density of data overrode his mind.

But in his despair something, or someone, reached out to help him. It felt like a friendly pair of hands lifting his chin and guiding his own hands. Then they both cut a swath through the data together. It showed him how to order the swirling chaos and understand the virtual environment. Encouraged by this support, Tz’alin saw the flood of information as shifting with opportunities rather than an overwhelming jumble. He turned to thank his anonymous benefactor but its reassuring presence had already faded away. He began to wonder if it had really been there in the first place or if had merely been his mind’s way of coping.

Either way, Tz’alin adapted to this new way of experiencing the world over the course of the day. He reached out and traveled the nodes in the hospital until it became second nature. Every node, every device he could find offered an uncharted realm to investigate. The immense curiosity that led him to examine and explore the hospital’s network, however, meant that he was certain to run into trouble eventually, and his naiveté certainly helped speed up the process. The financial systems of the hospital had anti-hacker security in place and, without meaning to, Tz’alin tripped several alarms. He turned to see the icon of an Intrusion-Countermeasure response darting towards him. It resembled a heavily armored police officer wearing a kevlar vest and a helmet that kept its face hidden behind an impenetrable reflecting visor.

Fear pulsed through Tz’alin as the security officer trained a pistol on him. The hostile program unleashed an array of damaging code-based algorithms at him, and in the sculpted virtual reality Tz’alin watched in panic as the agent’s gun went off. Fire ripped from the barrel and the bullet scored a direct hit. The Matrix attack sent Tz’alin reeling with something he hadn’t felt in years: physical pain. In a heartbeat, fear turned to rage and he glared malignantly at his assailant. As he did, he couldn’t help but notice several small points on the IC program that stood out. There were weak interactions between lines of programming, mistakes in variable storage and retrieval, compatibility flaws in the hardware/software feedback, and more. They might as well have been painted red for how obvious they were, and Tz’alin didn’t take the time to figure out how it was he could recognize such things. The streaming lines of data around him bulged and wavered as his anger built up to the point of boiling over. Then Tz’alin directed his fury outward toward his virtual foe. The packet of destructive energy rushed through the financial records, ripping some files to shreds and embedding bugs in others as it went. The IC program failed to avoid being hit and the attack broke through the weak points in its defenses. The program shuddered visibly as it lost processes to data corruption, faults appearing throughout its programming. Tz’alin smirked as the security agent dropped to a knee, deep gashes torn through its bulletproof vest. Finally it collapsed to the floor, dead: a useless heap of code.

The experience, satisfying though it was, burned into Tz’alin’s memory, and he raced back to his own room. His mind floated a few inches from his body, his thoughts reaching out to his sleeping form. With all the effort he could muster, he pushed downward, through the sensor pads, through the oxygen mask, through the IV drip. Then he closed his eyes, and when he opened them the next second he was looking back at the cold stainless steel of the medical instruments. Immediately his muscles twitched and he moved to get off the bed, yanking the oxygen mask away from his face and carefully sliding the IV needle out of his arm. The IV tugged at his skin, pale from lack of sunlight, but halfway through its extrication Tz'alin froze. Something caught his attention. It wasn’t really a noise or sight, but more of a feeling. It felt wrong, or was about to be. Instinctively, he reached out with his mind and clamped down on a single transmission, cutting it off before he knew what he was doing. He wondered what had led him to react in such a forceful way without provocation. It was like his subconscious was acting without his permission. That thought frightened him.

The transmission floated silently in his mental clutches until he realized it was still there. He carefully pulled back layers of code to examine what he had caught until he reached the message at its center; it was a distress signal sent by his life support equipment. Only his quick action had prevented the entire hospital from knowing he was awake. Tz’alin felt dumbfounded by the event, unsure whether to be thankful or disturbed.

Fortunately other things quickly distracted him. The second his feet touched the white tiles of the hospital floor, Tz’alin cringed in pain. So cold! The chilled sensation alone was enough to make shockwaves crest over his thoughts and he shuddered uncontrollably. Five years under a blanket had not prepared him for this.

The next diversion came as even more of an unpleasant surprise when Tz’alin slid to the edge of the bed and tried to stand up. His attempt to shift his weight off of the bed went just fine, but the part where it should have transferred to his legs did not. The steady supply of nutritional supplements and weekly electronic muscle stimulation sessions could only do so much to ready his body for the sudden shock of movement.

Tz’alin just barely stifled a yelp as his knees refused to lock. He collapsed to the floor, which was more than happy to accept him. The drop dazed him momentarily, but before long he was already poking his legs and knees to make sure they were still there. They were.

As he stretched his sleepy limbs, grimacing occasionally from the pain, his mind reached out to the hallway. He found the camera in the hall, and with great care he removed it from the circuit, linking it to himself instead.

With a slow hiss of pain, Tz’alin stood and half-walked, half-limped over to the room’s single door. He tried to review what he planned to do in his head, but the reality of his situation caught up with him. His mind drew blank after blank as he realized he had no idea how to escape the hospital once he left the relative safety of his room. A profound sense of hopelessness settled on him. He leaned against the bright wall and cried for the first time in over five years. For some reason, he knew turning himself in to the hospital staff was not an option. He knew he couldn’t trust them, even if he didn’t know why. But it wasn’t fair! How could he be expected to get out of this? His body had grown older and larger, but he still felt like the eleven-year-old he had been five years ago, before the coma.

When Tz’alin’s tears finally ran dry, he opened his eyes to look at his hands. They were still blurry. Slowly his fingers curled into a fist and his eyes burned fierce. He felt ashamed for crying, even if no one was there to see. Tz’alin knew he was on his own now; nobody was going to whisper the answers into his ear.

The boy fell silent and suddenly the whispering data humming through the air around him came into focus. Tz’alin nodded as he began to realize he wasn’t entirely correct. The Matrix was his friend now and, if listened to it, it would give him the answers he needed. A sense of calm fell over him as his mind reached out to it, and it reached back to accept him.


Only the fear of being caught kept Tz’alin from breaking into as fast a run as he could manage to reach freedom. The pants he wore kept slipping down and he had to keep a hand in his pocket to hold them up. Tz’alin had realized that the hospital garb would have been too suspicious once he got outside, so he had ‘liberated’ some real clothes from another patient. A teenage boy on the same floor matched Tz’alin’s height of 5’6”, but the fact that Tz’alin only weighed 130 pounds meant the borrowed clothes were extremely loose. At least getting the new outfit had been rather easy. Just a simple hack into the boy’s medicine delivery system to increase the pain medicine he was receiving for his broken arm and the teenager nodded off to sleep. Getting him undressed had been the most difficult part of the operation.

After that it was merely a matter of taking over the camera system of the entire hospital and using it to cover his escape. Aside from double-checking the map he had found in the hospital’s public help files, Tz’alin kept a virtual eye out for any hospital staff patrolling the halls. The entire floor was fairly busy, but whenever a doctor or security guard drew near Tz’alin made sure to turn and pretend to examine the medical education posters and bulletin boards that decorated the well-lit walls. At the same time he sent the camera feeds into a continuous loop as he passed underneath each one to avoid detection. Tz’alin carried out the plan without mistake, and he walked through the front doors triumphant.

The world outside was far from welcoming, though. The grim tones of the dim world were a jolt after the harsh white of the hospital, but Tz’alin quickly realized this darkness was good. Everyone was focused inward, and it would help him. He had to get away, far away from this place. But where would he go? Where could he stay? What would he eat? He desperately needed answers and he tried to think of a way to get them as he trudged through the streets aimlessly. The constant buzz of data drifting through his mind made it hard to concentrate, but then he remembered that he could use his abilities to help him. His eyes stayed glued to the ground in front of him and while he walked he reached out with his mind to the Matrix.

He didn’t get very far. With his attention divided he failed to notice the very large and very grumpy troll plodding right towards him. Tz’alin ran right into him and the collision knocked him off his feet. “S-sorry! I’m- I didn’t see… I’m so sorry,” he stuttered, scooting backwards surreptitiously.

The troll’s sinister expression made it clear he was glad to have an excuse to bloody someone’s face. “You’re not sorry yet,” he informed Tz’alin in a low, ominous voice. He leaned down and a gigantic hand grabbed Tz’alin’s shirt by the neckband. He was quickly lifted to his feet, and then off of them. Tz’alin’s eyes grew wide, his breath coming in short bursts, and he lowered his gaze to avoid the troll’s stare. “But you will be when I’m through with you.”

That was all Tz’alin needed and even as the troll lifted a threatening fist, the young human wrenched his body with all his might. The shirt tore noisily and a roughly circular patch of fabric stayed in the large hand. As soon as his feet hit the ground he took off running into a back alley. That led to another street, which led to another, until Tz’alin spotted an entrance to the underground tunnels behind a warehouse. He scrambled down the stairs and rubble, jumped over the archaic turnstile and bolted through the closing doors of the nearest subway at the last minute possible. The doorman noticed his entrance but only smirked with amusement. What was one more desolate individual on a train transporting hopeless people? Tz’alin dropped into the nearest empty seat and curled up, letting the rocking of the train and the movement of his burning lungs lull him into peacefulness. He buried his head between his knees and tried to block out the flood of emotions that threatened to wash him away.