The rain smelled of salt and something else—rotting kelp, maybe, clinging to the stone walls. Twilight bled across Haven’s harbor, a bruised purple and grey where the jagged cliffs met the restless sea. It wasn’t a pretty harbor, not anymore.…
The alley smelled of static and overripe fruit. Clementine didn’t bother flinching. She hadn’t in years. Rain, or what passed for it—a chemical mist Arcadia Corp seeded to “regulate atmosphere”—slicked the corrugated metal walls. Above, the ruined skyscrapers clawed at…
The rain tasted like static. Old Man Tiber, they called him, though nobody knew if he *was* an old man anymore, or just a construct wearing the skin of one. His shop, a cubbyhole wedged between a noodle stall and…
The neon smeared across the slick pavement, fractured by the downpour. Rain tasted like ozone and regret. Kai traced the glyphs blossoming on the wall – not spray paint, but *rain graffiti*, ephemeral code blooming in the moisture. It pulsed,…
The chrome of Neo-Kyoto slicked with perpetual drizzle. Rain wasn’t water anymore—nano-bots, designed to cleanse the air, but leaving a greasy film on everything. I navigated the market, dodging projections shimmering from every storefront. Old Christmases, graduations, first kisses—memories for…