Neona's mirrored Porsche shades turn the black of night into twilight, but that's all. There's no lights, no jazz in the sockets. She finds a bank of public telecoms on one dusty, graffiti-layered wall, but the vidscreens are dead and the datajacks are red and brown with corrosion.She nearly shrieks when she sees a cockroach almost half the size of her foot crawling onto her sneak. But instead she merely jumps half a meter into the air, trips, falls, then goes scrambling, gasping, fighting the fear, back the way she came.She's safe here. Safe as it gets. The corridors are strewn with every kind of litter and devil rats rustle everywhere—but there's no people! No cutters, no freaks. No jackboys or razor-punks to give her a hassle. No slags trying to shag her and no trogs wanting to tweak her condition a little nearer slab city.She finds a stairway of steel rising to an elevated gangway. The rusted steel creaks and sings with every step, but the gangway holds. Both sides of the gangway are lined by narrow doors like locker doors, and abruptly she realizes where she is: a coffin hotel.
