A shadow fell over the table. It wasn't a hound, but something worse: a Collector. The man was draped in a coat of shimmering fiber-optics, his face a smooth mask of polished chrome.
Kael finally looked up. He smiled, a jagged thing in the dim light. "I've spent my whole life in the dark. What's a few more minutes?" download-im1-tenebrarum-2-ipa
Kael slammed his palm onto the 'Execute' command. He didn't wait to see the game launch. He didn't wait to see the Architect’s secrets. As the stall’s lights died and the Collector lunged forward, Kael felt the code bridge the gap between the deck and his neural jack. The world didn't go black. It went binary. A shadow fell over the table
The air grew cold. The Blue Pulse outside intensified, turning the rain into falling diamonds of neon light. Kael felt the heat radiating from his deck; the processor was screaming, struggling to wrap the alien architecture of the IPA into a readable format. Kael finally looked up
"That's a heavy file for such a light deck," the Collector said, his voice a melodic synth-chord. "The Church has burned city blocks for less than a kilobyte of that code."
"Give it to me," the Collector reached out, "and I’ll give you a head start. Five minutes before the hounds lock the sector."