The opening scene of Neuromancer in the style of... who?
The flickering neon signs of Chiba City bled into the rain-streaked windows of the bar, each letter a distorted glyph in some alien language. Case nursed his drink, a synthetic concoction that tasted vaguely of regret and stale electricity. The sky outside wasn't a sky at all, just a dead channel, a static hum of nothingness that mirrored the emptiness in his gut. He felt eyes on him, not the usual predatory gazes of the Sprawl, but something colder, more calculating. Were they real, or just echoes of his own fractured psyche? He blinked, and the bartender's face seemed to shift, the familiar features replaced by something subtly inhuman. "You looking for something, cowboy?" the voice rasped, a digitized whisper that seemed to crawl directly into his brain. Case swallowed hard, the synthetic liquor burning a trail down his throat. "Just a way out," he muttered, knowing even as he said it that there was no escape, not in this city, not in this life. The matrix shimmered at the edge of his vision, a promise and a threat, a world where reality itself was a negotiable commodity. And somewhere, in the tangled web of data and delusion, he knew they were waiting.
