Dead Channel

You are a burned console operator in the Rind, a seawall slum in the port city of Halcyon Bight. Work comes from a patron whose messages arrive without a route trace, which is impossible, and which you take anyway, because rent is due on Tuesday. Nothing in Dead Channel is timed. Nothing is a reflex test. The ice tells you what it is before you touch it, so a run is a routing puzzle you solve at whatever speed you feel like solving it. THE RUN A fog-of-war grid of nodes. Arriving somewhere reveals what touches it, a probe looks a step further, and the vault is on the map from the start so you can plan an approach before you commit to it. Two meters and no clock: CYCLES — your action budget. At zero the deck drops you, and you keep what you carry. TRACE — how much of you is showing. At the ceiling you are ejected. Six classes of ice, introduced one chapter at a time. Barriers block the…