TRIARIISYSTEMS
TRIARII SYSTEMS // HUMAN RESOURCES DIVISION
You will own nothing. You will be happy.
You will remain loyal forever.
Emet Graves used to hunt people for a living.
Now a stolen secret is hiding in his skull — and the corporation that built them both wants its property back.
The year is 2085. A single corporation — Triarii Systems — bought a country out of civil war and never gave it back. In Cascadia City, the last clean air belongs to the corporate green zone and their massive arcology HQ; everyone else breathes the poison air of the Sprawl. Nobody owns anything anymore. You lease your organs, your intelligence, your right to keep living — and if you default, Triarii Human Resources comes to collect.
Emet Graves was Triarii HR: a headhunter who extracted or zeroed the people who tried to escape. An OP gone wrong took his arm, his eyes, and his loyalty — and left him carrying something dangerous: a trillion-dollar Triarii secret that the corp would level cities to get back.
When a dead-drop letter exposes Triarii's endgame — an act of corporate aggression that makes the 2nd Civil War look like a schoolyard fight — one broken enforcer and the ghost in his machine have to break into the most secure building on Earth to stop it.
Society is violently fractured into two worlds, stacked on top of each other. Scroll down and descend from the pristine top of the Arcology into the ruins of the Sprawl.
A colossal, hermetically sealed city-state over downtown Seattle. Tens of thousands of cradle-to-grave corporate drones live and die inside without ever breathing real air — from the manicured Terrarium Ring down through the server-stacked Brutalist Base to the Encased Monolith, where the C-suite and the true AGI mainframes sit in perpetual artificial twilight.
A colossal fortified concrete barrier that severs the corporate Arcology from the favelas below — the hard line between those who own the world and those who merely survive in its shadow. Nothing crosses without Triarii's leave.
The hyper-dense slums built on the ruins of old Seattle, where law is written in blood and scrap.
The biomedical black market — stolen cybernetics, cut in by back-alley ChopDocs.
A vertical shanty town swarming the rusted ruins of the Space Needle.
Tech-rebels and deckers, running a mesh-network off the corporate grid.
Where the cartels bring hot silicon ashore by stealth submersible.
"The Broken Sword"
Former Triarii HR headhunter, now a favela mercenary rebuilt in whining industrial-grade cybernetics. Carries a massive corporate bounty — and a stolen secret in his skull that could rewrite the world.
Clearance Ω required — record sealed.
"The Head Chopper"
De facto mayor and chief surgeon of Chop Hill. A chain-smoking cynic born in the "Before." His clinic is Favela Switzerland — where violence means a permanent ban, or death by turret. Rebuilt Emet. Knows something is living in his head.
"The Oppenheimer of Triarii"
Head of Triarii's Black Labs, tasked with bleeding-edge frontier research. He has spent his life in the gilded cage of the Black Monolith, building the chains that bind the world — and he wants out.
The first transmission has been decrypted. New chapters of Human/Resources surface here as they're written — raw, straight from the Sprawl. Register below to be pinged the moment the next one drops.
Jerry Kansky writes cyberpunk out of Fairhaven, WA. He lives with his lovely wife, 4 cats and a dog. His hometown is Seattle — the city that, in his fiction, becomes the corporate dystopia known as Cascadia. Human/Resources is his in-progress debut novel about corporate feudalism, salvaged humanity, and the people the system decides it no longer needs.
Join the mesh. Get notified when the first chapter of Human/Resources goes live — no spam, no Triarii tracking.
HUMAN / RESOURCES · A CASCADIA CITY NOVEL · JERRY KANSKY
— END OF TRANSMISSION —
The rain hammering the rusted scrap-metal rooftops of the Needle Drop smelled like sulfur and rot. It had been coming down for hours — hard, relentless, the kind of fat soaking drops that wet your gear to the core in the time it took to sprint from the WarCat's armored rear door to the overhang of the nearest favela shack. One of a thousand identical shacks, stretching as far as Emet could see. Which, through the downpour, wasn't far at all.
"Button up," Emet said, slapping a glowing red icon on his forearm NetDeck. His helmet unfurled from the matte-black collar of his armor — nanites and their tiny matter-reassemblers rebuilding it over his graying stubble and battle-worn face for the thousandth time. The suit was a Triarii Corp Recovery Assistance Carapace, but only the tech geeks back at base called it that. Everyone else just called it the RAC.
"Roger that, sir. Sealin' up," said Agent Simms, waving for the rest of the team to follow suit. "Hat's on, kids. Boss is havin' one of his feelings again."
Helmets snapped into place as the team approached the target building's cracked and crumbling art deco facade. The large display windows had long ago been shattered, replaced by graffiti-covered plywood, which in turn had been covered in rusting, bullet-pocked scrap metal. All of it looked ancient and dead, like something dug up from beneath the surface of one of those 'earth-like planets' the Corporation's deep-space probes kept squawking about back at command. A massive, impossibly ornate awning hung over the entryway, the metal caked and stained green with age, mold, and over fifty years of near-constant rain. The rusted cables holding it to the building were frayed and sagging, like even the metal had given up on what was left of the Emerald City.
"Nah, no feelings," Emet replied. "It's just coming down harder than usual. Don't want to ride home smelling like a wet favela mutt. Smells bad enough in the WarCat when you fuckers are dry."
"Speak for yourself, boss," said Lockheart. "I smell like daisies and desire." Emet could hear it in her voice — could picture the crooked drag of one crimson-painted corner of her lips.
"Speaking of bullshit," Roadblock growled, his gravel-laced voice so deep Emet could feel it in his chest as his RAC amplified it over the constant din of rain on the rooftops. "What kind of bullshit we expecting here? Does the corp want cuffs or coffins for these fools?"
"Cuffs. Definitely cuffs." Emet checked the ammo counter on his compact assault rifle — Triarii-manufactured, just like his armor — tapping the selector until the loadout screen read Non-Lethal in tiny blue LCD characters. "Word from on high is this asshole not only defected from the highest levels of what-fucking-ever at Triarii labs, he walked off with some sensitive black-project shit too."
"And they don't want him dead for that?" Lockheart said, placing a tiny magcharge — small and perfect for breaching doors — at each of the barricaded entryway's four corners. "What's that about?"
"Oh, they want him dead," Emet replied. "It may be cuffs today, but coffins is most definitely in this motherfucker's future — home office probably just wants to scoop out whatever's in his head first. HR is fucking hardcore, never doubt it."
"I hear that," Roadblock growled. "Those fuckers even scare me… and I work for them." His chuckle was drowned out by the muffled thud of Lockheart's magcharges detonating. The entryway shattered inward, metal and plywood vanishing with a shriek, leaving a ragged black hole beneath a rusted MACY'S sign now visible on the original facade. The green awning creaked and groaned, one corner drooping toward the cracked and scorched sidewalk.
"Focus up, Reaper Team," Emet barked. "Time to earn our paychecks. Lights up, heads on swivels." He toggled the light on his rifle and moved into the ragged black opening, weapon ready. Reaper Team followed, all four dropping into tight formation as they swept the darkness with their flashlight beams.
Total black swallowed him, devouring his flashlight to an anemic thread, dust motes shimmering and gone as he swept the beam across the space. The room had once been the lobby of a large pre-war department store; he could still make out the checkout counters through years of accumulated rot and debris. From under the filth, a plastic, too-perfect smile peeked out of a faded, peeling advertisement — a ghost of what had once been called the United States, grinning up from her tomb.
"Letting Mabel off the leash," Lockheart's voice buzzed through the comms implant hardwired into his skull, conducted through the bones of his jaw. Behind Emet, the high-pitched whine of Mabel's micro-rotors spun up as Lockheart tossed the little drone overhead. Mabel sped upward, her bright white LED spotlights flaring to life, flooding the room with flat, clinical light.
The lobby was enormous. Pillars stretched toward the crumbling ceiling and marched off into the distance toward what had once been a bank of elevators. The floor between them was dark green marble, mostly cracked or broken after years of squatters and vandals claiming the space as their own. Remnants of long-abandoned huts and makeshift shelters clung to the mold-blackened walls like putrid, cancerous lumps.
The lobby was still. Silent. Dead.
"This place is a dry hole," Roadblock growled. "Scanners aren't picking up shit. Someone back at the nerd shack fucked up."
"Maybe," Emet said, switching on his own IR/thermal optics. His view snapped into stark white and black as the AI in his suit commandeered his visual layer, scanning for heat and motion. For life.
"Mabel struck out too," Lockheart said, watching the drone feed relayed to her visor. "Looks like Road might be right… for once."
"Funny," Roadblock said, his voice anything but amused.
"This place creeps me the hell out," Simms said, sweeping his rifle's flashlight across the rotten, sagging ceiling. "I mean, where is everyone? Intel said there should be over a hundred scavs living here, at least."
"Yeah, and we know intel never gets shit wrong," Roadblock said with a rumbling chuckle.
Emet didn't laugh. The feeling he'd shrugged off in the rain was back, sitting cold and certain behind his sternum — the one he'd just told the team was nothing. Nobody emptied a favela for no reason. Somebody had cleared these people out. Or something had.
On his optics, a black shape shimmered into existence near the far wall, then vanished. His onboard AI tagged it red and threw a glaring MOTION DETECTED warning around the space where it had been.
"Tighten up," Emet snapped. "Movement front, near the elevators."
The team reacted with practiced precision, spreading into defensive formation and moving quickly toward the back of the lobby, weapons trained on the spot Emet's AI had marked on each of their interlinked HUDs. Targeting lasers winked to life, perfectly straight red lines cutting the dusty air, converging and bobbing as the team closed in.
"This is a Triarii HR action," Emet's amplified voice boomed from his suit speakers as they closed on the back wall. "Present yourself, hands raised and empty, or lethal force will be used." His voice echoed off the crumbling walls of the once-opulent space. Small cascades of dust and debris drifted down from the square light fixtures hanging precariously from the ceiling on fraying cables.
"Come out, dumbass. This only goes one way if you make us work for it," Roadblock bellowed, his deep voice thundering from his speakers like the voice of an angry god.
They were met with silence — the empty stillness only dead places make. The only sound was the rhythmic rasp of Emet's own breathing in his helmet as he waited, heart hammering, for what he knew came next. They never made it easy. And they almost never got taken alive.
The drone's flat white light washed the lobby in the unfeeling glare of an operating room, deepening the surreal stillness. Emet felt like he stood in some ancient tomb — one built for the retail gods and goddesses who'd ruled the US-that-was, in the years before the second civil war tore it all down. Before Triarii had set the world right again.
A flash of movement to his right. Emet barely registered the blurred shape of someone sprinting for an open doorway across the lobby, something cylindrical and black clutched in one hand. His visor stuttered — losing the figure and snatching it back several times a second, strobing the man's dash into juddering stop-motion toward the sagging doorway beside the massive bank of dead elevators.
Emet slapped the controls on his arm and his helmet slithered back into the nanite banks on his armored spine. Dust stung his bare eyes; he squinted against the drone's strobing spotlights as they snapped on and off the runner — a man, he could see now, in a filthy lab coat and a worn shirt and tie. Emet raised his rifle and pinned him in the beam.
"Last warning, asshole. Cease all resistance or we burn you down on the spot," Emet yelled, his voice suddenly small without the amplification of his RAC.
The man in the lab coat froze in the harsh light of Reaper Team's beams, face gaunt and terrified. Skeletal fingers gripped a cylindrical black object against his chest — tiny green LEDs racing along its hypnotic dark skin — while his other hand drifted slowly behind his back.
"Don't do it, buddy," Lockheart purred, her voice somehow threatening and suggestive at once. "Whatever you stole, it's not worth getting zeroed over."
The fugitive smiled — a smile that reminded Emet of the bleached skulls he'd seen in the aftermath of the Battle of Los Angeles, littering the scorched streets of what had once been the city of angels. It had been silent there too. A place of radiation, stillness, and death.
"You're wrong about that, officer," the man croaked, his voice shaky and reeking of dehydration and terror. "If they get their hands on it, we're all zeroed. All of us." His hand kept drifting toward his back. "Do you even know what you've been sent to retrieve? Can you possibly understand the importance of this moment?"
"We were sent to retrieve you, dumbass," Roadblock said, taking a threatening step forward, leveling his rifle at the man's still-grinning face. "And if you don't stop moving that hand right now, we're gonna retrieve your dead ass outta here in a body bag."
The man's hand froze, the smile sliding off his drawn face. A bead of sweat ran down from his thinning hair, cutting a track through the grime on his cheek. His chest rose and fell as he panted for breath. His bloodshot eyes darted from Emet to the rest of Reaper Team, still faceless behind their reflective black nano-helmets.
"Now — put down the device and raise both hands," Emet said calmly, lowering his rifle a fraction, hoping to talk the man down enough to get him into restraints while he was still breathing. "This doesn't have to go the hard way. We can all walk outta here together. No need for anyone to die today."
"I don't want to die here, officer," the man said softly, his voice steady and calm with a sureness that made Emet's stomach drop — the sound of a decision already made. "But I'd sure as hell rather go out now than spend the next thousand simulated years in a Triarii interrogation sim. I'm sorry."
His hand darted behind his back, eyes screwing shut. He spun, wrapping his body around the device — and for a brief second Emet saw the detonator clutched in his other hand.
Time ground to a crawl. Events came in flashes and juddering bursts. A pale thumb pressing down on a worn red detonator switch. Muzzle flash as his own weapon bucked against his shoulder. Non-lethal, the selector had read. At this range, there was no such thing. More blinding flashes and deafening noise as his team opened fire around him. Blood and gore hung suspended in the air as the rounds struck home, jerking the man like a rag doll. Then blinding light, and pain, and a sound like the end of the world on fast-forward.
Blackness.
