Zane's vision was obscured with a pinprick of grey, oily light.
The girl's voice sounded distant, like it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel. "...you get me the f**k out of this sewer..."
He was blacking out. The agony of the withdrawal was a physical thing, a black hole imploding in his gut that threatened to swallow him whole.
His UI, burned into the back of his vision, was a screaming, flashing red.
STATUS: WITHDRAWAL (CRITICAL) ESSENCE: 0.05% ...System failure imminent...
"Deal," he rasped. He didn't particularly have a way, but he judged that he had to try something.
And then the world was gone.
He was falling, tumbling into the cold, wet darkness while his heart stuttered like a panicked bird in a cage.
This was it. He'd died of an aneurysm in a cubicle, and now h
