Everybody stares at Rachel, or so it feels as she fumbles to cover the white plastic band on her neck with a scarf. The pink, flowery fabric is this season’s style, It is a cheap one, bought from the brand Eli orders stuff. Rachel avoids drawing attention to herself, keeping her life and looks as seemingly normal and boring as possible.

  The past is still a secret, Rachel repeats to herself. Today’s encounter was just a random computer mistake, a bug in the system: it is something she can get right. She needs just to follow up the complaint procedure and ask for compensation like any law-abiding citizen would do.

  The fake identification still holds, Rachel tells herself. The corporate police can’t connect her to Irene Lechler, who sold the data about black operations and initiated a flash war that doomed Schuwalden Inc. No one knows that Rachel is Irene. All the evidence was carefully burned, and the ashes buried six feet under and a decade in the past.

  Breathing hard, Rachel arrives at the metro station. People avoid her, and it takes a moment to understand that her public identification presented in the shared augmented reality carries the criminal markings. Many shops, services, hotels, and restaurants screen their customers at doors, and criminal record is a widely accepted reason to deny entry. The other one is credit class, as the expensive places prefer clientele with top-level credit cards.

  Rachel stops by the wall, staring at the metal gates. She paid for her monthly transportation fee earlier this month, but she doesn’t know if she is allowed in the metro anymore.

  She sits down and tries to gather the facts about her new situation. The corporate police collared her for the city’s program for crime rate control, which everyone calls Narcodome. The program is run by DF Communication Services, a broadcasting company that treats the criminals like expendable reality show participants.

  Narcodome was created to give the community a feeling of justice. The law-abiding citizens can pool money on petty criminals’ heads, and when the sum exceeds a set limit, the criminal participates in a vote where the audience chooses the next participants.

  Narcodome makes money out of the broken people. The participants are low-threat criminals; New Amsterdam won’t allow Narcodome to create entertainment of crazed war veterans with their military cyberware shooting big-caliber weapons inside the malls.

  Rachel has not been following the broadcasts, but the debate and the most memeable showdowns have caught her eye. PCRC is dubbed as Narcodome, for its meat and bones are the petty criminals killing each other. Two men enter, one man leaves, just like the Thunderdome in the ancient movie. It’s about show and survival, and Rachel remembers the media coverage of the last season, where people were fighting with knives in a metro.

  Those hobos could get on the public transportation. Rachel sighs in relief; she can enter, too. Getting stopped at the gates would be too embarrassing.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Many people use criminal detection in their personal AR system, and Rachel gets veiled looks as she joins the crowd moving to the metro. She doesn’t look the part her ID suggests: Rachel Greene is an ordinary woman of medium height and 44 years, wearing clean, but unremarkable clothes. Her only sport is a light workout thrice a week to prevent her shoulders from aching.

  She has gathered some softness on her belly and gets out of breath on longer stairs, but Rachel doesn’t care about her body. Her life and ambitions are in the simulations and keeping her past locked away. Simulations are her hiding place. With Whyte, she doesn’t encounter the unwanted memories.

  Rachel used to look different in her Schuwalden days. The transformation from Irene to Rachel started in a Croatian clinic, where her features were reforged. It continued in Turkey, where she got wavy dark brown hair to replace the straight blonde she was born with.

  The retinal implants fitting the new identity Rachel bought from a shady laboratory, and they were installed in the clinic onboard a ship sailing the African coast. At the same time, Rachel got new fingerprints and new serial numbers for her teeth implants. It all cost a fortune, but she had been committed and had pulled it through. Installation of the simulation cyberware came later, and none of her surgeries were registered in the public databases.

  Usually, Rachel shares the metro ride with Whyte. He used to appear in her personal augmented reality; his speech and touch transferred to Rachel’s nerves by the cybernetic simulation interference. Without Whyte, or any of the virtual companions Rachel has fancied, she feels alone and frustrated. She can’t even play music or otherwise block away the presence of other people.

  The metro ride should be time to spend as she sees fit, and she wants Whyte, not the mass of people around her. Rachel has grown accustomed to being able to filter reality according to her whim, to escape the mundane people and their talk and odors.

  This ride is torture. Rachel can’t sit in her place even if she tries to, for the man in the seat behind him breathes loudly. The rhythmic huffing and puffing gets on her nerves, and Rachel stands up and wanders through the moving metro, but there are no empty wagons; all of them are occupied by ugly, smelly, and noisy people.

  It is a miracle she survives the metro with nothing to block reality away. Rachel’s personal data space is empty of notifications. Only the Program’s documentation is waiting for her to read it, but Rachel is not going to pay attention to the details about her false detention and rules of engagement related to Narcodome. It’s useless, as everything will be swiftly over. She stares out, counting the minutes, and is the first one to rush out at her station.

  The escalator back to the street is like the stairs of heaven, opening to light and a fresh breeze. The sky is grey, and the air is heavy from humanity’s smells, but at least there are fewer people in the residential area compared to the station. Rachel walks out and turns the corner at the grey, tiled building.

  For the first time, she notices the statue and the plate at the nook in the wall. It is a war memorial. Rachel has been intentionally blocking those things away, using the simulated boyfriends to focus her concentration. Now, Narcodome has stripped her defenses away, and the reality feels overbearing, with all the unwanted details screaming for attention. Rachel doesn’t want to remember past wars: they remind her of Schuwalden and the history she avoids.

  Staring at the statue, Rachel feels a long-repressed scream of anguish and frustration rising to her throat. She can’t let it out. She has a life, and everything will be all right in a few days, in a few hours. She won’t soil her reputation of ordinariness by freaking out to a statue that looks like it has been there for decades. Still, a tiny whimper escapes from her lips.